'Fight Together/Write Together': Street art as documentation of affect in times of unrest in Athens. Issue 1 (1st April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chiotis, Theodoros
• Is Part Of: Journal of Greek media and culture. Volume 1:Issue 1(2015:Apr.)
• Page Start: 153
• Page End: 164
• Publication Date: 2015-04-01
• Subjects: Mass media and culture -- Greece -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Greece -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Greece -- Periodicals; Greece -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 302.230949505
• DOI: 10.1386/jgmc.1.1.153_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2052-3971

Abstract

This visual essay attempts to map how evolving feelings of unrest have been captured in slogans and street art painted on the walls of Athens over the past few years. Slogans and street art demarcate alternative spatialities and alternative subjectivities within the city limits. In effect, slogans and street art function as signs of a community struggling to articulate itself in the face of political stagnation; ontology, politics and art thus become intimately entwined. Street art and graffiti are collective gestures of desire, movement and flux coming from a loosely defined collective of artists and amateurs making use of their artistry to create works which comment, disrupt and create alternative ways of building communities and subjectivities.