Julia Tulke, Free Researcher, aestheticsofcrisis.org

Aesthetics of Crisis. Street Art, Austerity Urbanism and the Right to the City.

In the context of the European crisis a wave of new urban social movements has transformed cities all over the

region into dynamic laboratories of a new spatial activism. Street Art and other forms of Urban Intervention

have become important political practices in these struggles constituting a new aesthetics and culture of protest

committed to the Lefebvrian claim to the Right to the City. Based on my own empirical research on political

street art in Athens, this paper examines how street art, particularly in the European periphery, forms part of a

larger project of reimagining and reappropriating cities in crisis.

Street Art, Social Movements, Crisis

Introduction

In the wake of the complex state of crisis Europe has been experiencing in the past five years, a wave of new

urban social movements has erupted and transformed cities all over the region into dynamic laboratories of a

new creative spatial activism. Street art and other forms of urban intervention have become important political

practices in these struggles constituting a new aesthetics and culture of protest committed to the Lefebvrian

claim to the Right to the City – the right of urban citizens to actively participate in the creation and reinvention

of cities according to their own human needs and desiresi. The preoccupation with urban space and its

reappropriation that is so characteristic of these contemporary social movements is not surprising given the

symbolic significance of cities in the current crisis. On the one hand, they represent key sites for the production

of the crisis – both as centers of political administration and financial accumulation, and as sites of

megaprojects of neoliberal restructuring, commodification, and speculative investment. On the other hand,

cities have been most severely affected by the effects of the crisis and particularly the austerity apparatus

implemented most harshly in the Southern and Eastern peripheries of Europe. “[M]any cities [bear] the

physical scars of disinvestment, disuse and decline . . . [opening up] spatial cracks . . . in what had been a fairly

unbroken field of accelerated development” (Tonkiss, 2013)ii. These cracks in the urban landscapes – such as

abandoned buildings and structures – are now being occupied by a panoply of activists for conceptualizing and

living new urbanisms that question and point beyond capitalism as the sole organizing principle of urban public

space.

I examined this dynamic empirically in the context of a research project on political street art and urban

activism in Athens that I conducted in 2013. Relating materials from this case study to some theoretical

reflections I will describe the ways in which, particularly in the European periphery, street art has become part

of a larger political project of reimagining, transforming and reappropriating urban space in the context of the

crisis. Consequently I argue that profound analyses of street art – its iconographies and vocabularies, the actors

engaged in the field, its dialectic oscillation between local and global dimensions, the spaces occupied etc. – are

crucial for understanding the interrelation of the crisis, urban space and social and political movements. In

order to do so I will first engage in some theoretical observations about the relationship of the crisis, austerity

politics, urban space, and social movements. Building upon the established theoretical vocabulary, I will

proceed to describe the spatial transformation that Athens has experienced in the course of the crisis and the

impact it has had on the street art scene. Subsequently, I will describe some of the strategies of subverting and

processing the crisis that street artists in Athens employ to eventually propose some potential trajectories and

questions for further research.

Crisis Cities and Austerity Urbanism: Some Theoretical Reflections

The associations evoked by the term crisis could hardly be any more numerous, diverse and complex. It has

been used to mobilize discourses about economics, politics, societies, and culture on global, regional, national,

and local levels. It has been used for capitalist critique and nationalist propaganda; by politicians, activists,

journalists, scholars, citizens. It is thus all the more crucial to establish a critical approach to the term. The

understanding of the crisis that my work is based upon recognizes it as both a series of connected empirical

effects – such as mass youth unemployment and the dismantling of welfare states in southern Europe – as well

as a discursive formation deeply permeated by regional power asymmetries and national agendas.

Furthermore the crisis constitutes an asymmetrical system of knowledge production. Specifically in the case of

Europe the crisis is discussed as a phenomenon that takes place in and affects the periphery and has to be

described and regulated from the relatively stable centre. In the contemporary context the term crisis is most

commonly used to describe the global financial crisis and simultaneous deep recession in mainly North-America

and Europe since 2007/08. At least two competing meta-narratives circulate about the origins of the crisis, the

more conservative one focusing on the events that lead to and followed the bankruptcy of the US-American

bank Lehmann Brothers in 2008. The problem is here located in certain faulty institutions and actors (e.g. bad

banks and corrupt governments) that subvert the otherwise unproblematic economic and political system.

Following this discourse austerity has been established and justified as a punitive political strategy to sanction

supposedly deviant governments and put them on a path towards fiscal disciplineiii. A more progressive

approach sees the basis of the crisis in the system of neoliberal capitalism itself and assumes that the origins of

the present crisis go as far back as the 1970s and an escalation has since been delayed. Most critical theoretical

reflections on the matter, share the idea that the crisis is structural, multidimensional and transformative for

politics, economics, as well as the material quality of everyday life. The multidimensional crisis operates on

several interdependent levels – social reproduction and political representations to just name two – and

manifests a series of interconnected empirical effects. As a prolonged state of exception the crisis ultimately

creates a situation in which existing modes of action cannot be continued, opening spaces for new practices

both repressive and emancipatoryiv.

Fig. 1 Welcome to Athens artwork by WD, photo: Julia Tulke

The concept of austerity urbanism is perhaps the closest theoretical approximation currently available to

conceptualize how this dynamic plays out in urban space. The aforementioned disinvestment and deregulation

cities are experiencing in the wake of increasingly austere governance have devastated urban landscapes and

biographies profoundly and lead to some disastrous social effects such as the drastic deterioration of public

healthv and the production of a whole new class of urban poverty

vi. Simultaneously, the same dynamic has

liberated urban spaces and surfaces for creative and political appropriation such as occupations or creative

interventions. Even though it has been pointed out that such practices may easily be reintroduced into the

exclusionary circuits of commodification and gentrificationvii

the crisis has produced some remarkable

opportunities for subversive spatial activism.

Athens: A City Transformed by Crisis

The drastic welfare cuts enforced in Greece in accordance with the austerity apparatus have paved the road for

an accelerated social meltdown, manifesting among other things a general health decline, growing

unemployment, and increasing suicide rates (Dalakoglou 2012)viii

. This has also lead to extreme changes in the

physical and social fabric of the city: homelessness, increased unsafe drug abuse, prostitution, vacant shops

and houses – often nailed shut to prevent people from living in there – abandoned construction sites and an

increased presence of police surveillance. Urban space in crisis is thus at the same time deregulated and

militarized. Particularly revealing is the new class of the nouveau poor, often people who formerly belonged to

the ranks of the aspiring middle classes but have fallen through the ever-expanding gaps in the grid of social

welfare. The nouveau poor cut across lines of ethnicity, age, gender, and education and do not directly

participate in political and social movements. As the city of Athens has never faced such extreme amounts of

people in need, there are hardly any institutions fit to deal with homeless people or drug users. Instead the

problems are visibly laid bare in the streets of the urban centre. Many of the political mobilizations that have

formed against the backdrop of the crisis are deeply embedded urban space. Perhaps the most meaningful

practices therein are the uncounted protests and riots that have startled Athens since 2008. By temporarily

claiming and transforming public space, protests provide an opportunity to explore common grievances,

negotiate and represent concerns and issues in an inclusive manner. “By creating a march in the midst of the

city space, the protestors achieve a subversion of the hegemonic uses of space” (Tsilimpounidi 2012, 548)ix.

While the destructive and aggressive character of riots may not find general approval, they inscribe the spatial

claims expressed in protests into the cities physical surface therein permanently transforming urban space.

Micheal Herzfeld (2011) observes:

After the demonstrations were over, the jagged edges of marble facings in the centre of Athens offered expressive testimony to the rampaging demonstrators. These young people, clearly unimpressed by the neo-classical pretensions on display in these extravagances, but perhaps with fine historical sensibility associating them with both wealth and Western domination, had torn off chunks of the stonework and hurled them at the police (23)

x.

The peak of the crisis-induced protest movement can probably be seen in the occupation of Syntagma square

in June 2011. For almost a month the square was claimed for both traditional strategies of protest and

confrontations and new experiments of cultural expression and direct democracy (Leontidou 2012)xi. Similarly

the anti-austerity movement is not – and was never – restricted to the practice of protest and occupation.

There are growing numbers of projects attempting to address the needs of a city in austerity in a more

pragmatic fashion – including non-monetary exchange systems such as most prominently time banks, direct

consumer-producer networks, neighborhood initiatives, community gardens, and attempts at establishing

autonomous institutions such as health clinics (Dalakoglou 2011)xii

. Furthermore artistic expression – mainly

street art and graffiti – has become as crucial an aspect of dealing with the realities of the austerity city.

Crisis and Street Art

When taking a stroll through contemporary Athens it is hard not to note the overwhelming force that graffiti

and street art has turned into. Particularly in central districts such as Exarcheia or Kerameikos – neighborhoods

where a lot of students, marginalized migrants and left-leaning people live – the densely written painted on

walls form an integral part of the physical appearance of public space. By now there is a general understanding

that the Athens street art scene is one of the most upcoming ones in all of Europe and it has been receiving

specific attention regarding its connections with the crisis, which has repeatedly been a topic in widely

recognized international media such as The New York Times, Time Magazine and The Guardian.

Fig. 2 Two views of the Trilogy, photo: Julia Tulke

The current boom in both quantity and quality of street art in Athens has an obvious connection to the spatial

transformations incited by the crisis. For one, due to an increasing lack of capacities in the public sector,

artworks on the walls even of public buildings are not regularly removed or painted over anymore. A very

drastic illustration is the trilogy, a set of three neo-classical buildings – the National Library, the Academy and

the original Athens University – set along the central Eleftheriou Venizelou street. Probably due to its specific

location – the street connects the central squares Syntagma and Omonoia and is thus an essential vein in

demonstrations – and high visibility the sides and pillars of the buildings have been a popular site for slogan

writing in the past years (Fig.). Most of them are removed eventually but stay around for considerable amounts

of time. This specific deregulation thus means that artworks and slogans stay around longer and in larger

quantities, which simultaneously enables more of a dialogue to unfold on the walls. Additionally artists can

often work more freely and invest more time into their artworks. On a more general level the transformations

of the city in the course of the crisis produce an abundance of surfaces that are potentially intriguing for artists,

such as empty shop windows, houses nailed shut, and abandoned construction sites. Yet another argument

that resurfaced in multiple conversations and interviews is that the crisis itself stimulates artistic expression of

all kinds and released enormous potentials of creativity as well as a newfound appreciation for art and culture.

Artist Refur describes this dynamic as follows:

And through all this crisis I think we all actually should feel lucky – in quotation marks – because it makes us more creative. I was talking with Lathos [another artist] yesterday and we were talking exactly about that thing, we are creative now because if we were in a period that everything is calm and nothing really happened…you know…we wouldn’t have the motivation to express ourselves. It’s not a good situation to be in, I’m not saying that, but I think it makes you creative.

xiii

Another artist, Sonke, describes a similar shift in the awareness of the general public:

I think people are more focused now on the simple things, not so much on the cars and style as before. We had a period that lifestyle was really promoted in Greece because the government told us we have a lot of money and we are doing the Olympic Games so at this time the society, the media and the newspapers were very lifestyle with cars and pools and nice homes. And now the people turn back to the basics. So art I think is something that…now I think that people in Athens are more interested in, in art, in music, in the simple things, in the things you don’t have to pay to have.

xiv

The dense activity on the streets that is characteristic of contemporary Athens – particularly regarding its

politicization – has only really started since the events of December 2008. The massive riots that succeeded the

murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by two police back then mark the point at which especially slogan

writing started being used as a systematic political strategy. French street artist describes this in contrast with

his home country:

About aesthetic and political issues, the big difference is how, since the murder of Alexis by the police in December 2008, graffiti and street art became like a weapon for the youth to express what they feel about this society. And with the collapse of the economy, that matter grows. I think the Greek scene is much more political than France, definitely.

xv

While the riots of 2008 and 2009 eventually declined – paving the way for a new anti-austerity movement –

street art remained a powerful new means of political expression. Simultaneously the political circumstances

that gave birth to this new idea of public expression permanently shape the contents and forms that the public

expression takes, constituting a specific aesthetics of crisis as I will argue and elaborate upon later.

The Artists

The circle of currently active artists in the growing Athenian scene is made up of roughly three groups. Firstly

there are large numbers of anonymous political activists who engage in the omnipresent slogan writing. In fact,

learning how to handle a spray can, even if just for the sake of spreading the anarchy-a or the squatters-n

symbols, seems to be an integral part of the political socialization of teenagers. For those activists, slogan

writing does not constitute a distinct identity but is rather seen as a part of the wider political struggle. The

repetitive writing of simple, recurring slogans – kill fascists, we are all immigrants, acab (acronym for all cops

are bastards) – and recognizable symbols often follows a logic of territorial marking and can be found on

buildings of political and economic meaning, as on the trilogy, monuments, bank branches or shop windows,

and along the three main streets for demonstrations and marches. Secondly, there is the community of people

who identify themselves as street artists and are motivated by artistic expression. A small group of them has

been active since the early 1990s, but most have only started in the past seven years. As for their professional

and economic backgrounds there is a rather wide dispersion. Some manage to support themselves working as

artists, some have quite plain daytime jobs or study, and others are unemployed trying to make ends meet by

taking smaller jobs. The majority comes from an educated middle-class background but is currently in a more

or less precarious situation. When it comes to artistic influences, many state that comic books, graphic design,

art, and illustration have played a big role for them, mostly in a mixture of international and Greek origins.

Frequently international study and work experiences brought the artists in contact with street art culture

elsewhere – mainly Great Britain and the USA – and inspired them to get involved themselves. Even though

these artists don’t consider themselves explicitly political, many deal with socio-political issues. Artist Cacao

Rocks describes his aesthetic politics as follows:

All graffiti and street art is a political action and an effort for communication. Some artists try to do propaganda with their work and I’m not one of them, I just try to change our environment and the city landscape. I try to do it without the permission of the authorities and of course by breaking some rules. My work is more like telling a story without trying to change the ideas of the spectators if this is possible. I just want to make them feel other things than just waking by a grey wall in the city.

xvi

Thirdly, there is yet another group of street artists that are highly politicized and motivated by their desire for

political expression. Despite not being permanently active members in political groups, those artists solidarize

and associate themselves with the anarchist and antifascist cause and aim to support it the best way they can.

The artworks they produce often send out clear political messages and are meant to form a sort of counter-

propaganda undermining dominant political and media discourses. An example for this is the issue of the

κουκουλοφόροι (hoodie-wearers) which have become the symbolic emblem of the deviant urban rioter in

media and politics – up to even a factual criminalization and likening to terrorists. Some artworks try to subvert

this discourse in an ironic way or by redefining the responsibility for the extensive riots in the past five years as

responses to political decision making. A frequent slogan states the state is the only terrorist while a more

elaborate work by political artist Pol shows the face of a κουκουλοφόρος and the caption terrorism is the eight

o’clock news. Other topics that can frequently be found in political street art are social justice, antifascism,

consumerism, the right to the city, surveillance and militarization, protest and riots in general as well as media

critique. The participation in demonstration and direct actions has a formative effect on many of those artists,

as stencilist Mapet describes “The 2008 riots gave me a boost because at the time I participated many squats,

actions, assemblies and stuff so I was, I spent many hours of my time there so I had more ideas, I became more

politicized, all of this with the anarchists mostly, so I produced more stuff” (Interview with Mapet, 4 April

2013). At times this involvement also resulted in workshops, for example to teach activist in squat projects how

to make their own stencils. When asked about the influence the crisis has had on their work as street artists,

most artists talk about being influenced by the current situation in both direct and indirect ways while often

rejecting the notion of the crisis as represented by political and media discourses. Mapet, for example, calls the

crisis a brand name, while artist D! strongly rejects the idea of crisis as a whole:

Firstly I'd like to clarify Greece is not having the so called "crisis". The word denotes an unplanned situation that can often be out of control and against the will of those who handle it, often a truly unexpected situation. The situation in Greece is planned and controlled by state officials who pretend to be incapable of handling what they present as the "crisis". You have to be very naive to believe what the political parties tell the media to tell the world, I believe in facts, not in irrational press releases and absurd statements. The correct "word" for what happens here is Gradual Degradation Scheme of Greece or GDSG.

xvii

Fig. 3 Terrorism is the eight o' clock News artwork by Paul, photo: Kostas Kallergis

Aesthetics of Crisis

After having laid out the ways in which the crisis impacts urban space and activism in general and having

explored the specific case of Athens, the following section will examine what I term aesthetics of crisis, the

qualitative transformations of iconography and forms of expression brought about in the context of the crisis.

Aesthetics herein denotes not a normative judgment of the visual representation of the city, but the sum of the

sensory and symbolic qualities of the artworks and their relationship with the material and mental landscapes

of crisis as a whole. While this analysis is exclusively concerned with street art, the aesthetics of crisis

potentially include all material and visual changes that occur in the urban fabric within the context of the crisis:

abandoned and decaying houses, riot police, homeless. The underlying logic is to approach, explore and come

to know the crisis through its manifestations and artifacts. Attempting to clarify the analytical properties of this

approach, I will propose and describe the three aesthetic clusters that came to evolve prominently out of my

research as ways of representing the crisis: representation through the immediate institutions and

personifications of the crisis, the representation of the crisis as a lived reality and quality of everyday life, and

the representation of the crisis as a political struggle. All three overlap in multiple ways and are certainly not

meant to be fixed or exhaustive. However, they do all exhibit specific symbolic and iconographic vocabularies.

Fig. 4 No Euro, No Vision artwork by bleeps, photo: Julia Tulke

The smallest group of artworks is concerned with the crisis directlyxviii

. They can be found all over town with no

particular point of spatial concentration. The most frequently used references are the EU – often in the €

symbol or the characteristic yellow stars of the flag and the faces of different Greek politicians and public

figures such as current prime minister Antonis Samaras or former Athens mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis.

Occasionally artworks incorporate the Greek flag, refer to international institutions such as the IMF, or revolve

around the very word crisis. The tone underlying the consistently negative depictions of crisis is always either

dystopian or ironic. Even though as an aesthetic cluster the images directly engaging with the crisis are perhaps

the least cohesive, there are two often recurring symbolic discourses and strategies within: the subversive

linguistic manipulation of terms, and the use of a pictorial vocabulary quoting from imaginations of ancient

Greece. There are countless examples for the first tendency: a large depiction of the IMF logo lined with the

words irrational monetary fund in a pedestrian street in Exarcheia, a recurring stencil just plainly stating

catastroika or a paste-up of a coin, modeled after the Greek version of the Euro, saying ελευθερία, freedom.

What these works share is a deep mistrust in the institutions involved in managing the crisis in Greece. Instead

of just accepting them as the given partners of cooperation the artists conceive and represent them as part of

the crisis and its repercussions. The messages entailed are accordingly communicated in a simple and direct

manner. A more complex artwork that also utilizes this kind of wordplay can be seen in Figure 4. In it a woman

in a striped blue dress holds a sign stating No Euro, No Vision, evoking at the same time a reference to the

European entertainment spectacle of the Eurovision Song Contest – which was in fact hosted by Athens in the

year 2006 – and a criticism of the lack of creativity in dealing with the crisis which is hardly ever discussed

publicly without the overpowering frame of reference of the European Union. This is further reverberated in

the bits of ancient Greek foot and leg wear the woman sports.

Far more common than direct engagements with the crisis are its representations as a lived reality. Spread all

over the neighborhoods of the city, these works are quite often paste-ups of drawings or hand-painted murals

suggesting a more personal and artistic character. The overwhelming majority of artworks display realistic and

expressive portrayals of human form. One important exception represents the crisis tag βασανίζομαι, meaning

I am tormented, that can be found written all over the city in all sizes and styles imaginable. The walls of Athens

are covered in faces and bodies bruised and broken by the crisis and its austerity imperative, pale faces with

hollow cheeks and tired eyes in expressions of fear and despair, emaciated bodies hanging flaccidly in urban

space. Often these bodies and faces belong to children and young adults, who are thereby constructed as the

ones most affected by the consequences of austerity and crisis. A sequential series of paste-ups created by the

artist Dimitris Taxis powerfully illustrates this tendency. The paintings pasted to the walls of different

neighborhoods show young boys that despite their bodies bear no signs of childhood but instead hold on to

guns in terror, hide in tree logs, or sit motionless in between huge stacks of books. The displacement of

temporalities seems to play a crucial role, particularly in the last artwork (Fig. 4). Socrates, Plato and

Democracy is written on the spines of the book stack he is sitting on, the ones pressing on him from the top

read Athens means Luxury, No Future, and Survival Guide. The hunched boy is stuck in time between past and

present with, literally, no future in sight, evoking a feeling of standstill that Athenians express quite often in

crisis-related conversations. A similar symbolism can be found in another series of pasted drawings by WD.

Faceless people of all kinds – men with hats, children, and mothers – are captured in a moment of liminality.

The wings on their backs are broken, yet they still remain afloat in the air for the time being, the inevitable

downfall always present. One striking characteristic found in most artworks is the isolation of the humans

depicted, almost none of them showing larger groups in interaction. Similarly, expressions of optimism or

solidarity are rare. An exception can be found in the work of art student STMTS, whose paste-ups of children

show both the negative impacts of the crisis but also elude a general sense of hope, the laughing faces of

children becoming again beacons of hope for the future. In sum, the many artworks showing the everyday life

under crisis represent the recent situation not as a political or economic problem but as a lived reality with

grave consequences for the city’s population. The overwhelming majority emphasizes humanity in emotional

expression and physical vulnerability – frequently projected on the bodies and faces of children and young

adults. Depictions of skulls and wounded bodies further mark the crisis as essentially a struggle of life and

death. In their realistic portrayal of the humanitarian crisis that Athens has been experiencing in the past three

years they claim the walls of the city as a space for emotionally processing the situation. Therein they

undermine popular media representations and political discourses externalizing the urban crisis by placing the

blame for it on certain groups of urban others. In contrast, the related pieces of street art make visible how

universally the crisis permeates the life of every single inhabitant of the city. In fact, one particular project even

lays bare the wounds that have been inflicted on the very city of Athens. The anonymous artist uses a virtual

pen to draw attention to the cracks urban decay and almost five years of intense protesting have left in the

urban surface.

Fig. 5 I wish you could learn something useful from the past

artwork by Dimitris Taxis, photo: Julia Tulke

By far the largest amount of artworks on the walls of Athens relate to the aesthetics of protest or display

specific political statements. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of them can be found in the politicized

neighborhood of Exarcheia. The most frequent technique employed is stenciling, followed by freehand graffiti

and sprayed or painted slogans, proposing a slightly more aggressive stance on reclaiming space. Stencils

particularly enable a simple and quick repetition of an artwork or slogan with a relatively small effort so that

they prove particularly effective for spreading political messages. Further they enable people with little artistic

skill or patience to participate in the street art scene as well. Tellingly, the three most productive stencil artists

in Athens all have explicitly political motivations. More than in any other aesthetic cluster discussed here

symbolic elements play a role, most prominently gas masks, molotov cocktails, fists but also televisions and

signs of specific social and political movements. A large number of artworks depict either realistic scenes of

protest – at times clearly referencing certain photographs that have circulated prominently in mass media – or

portraits of protesters, their faces usually hidden behind gas masks or scarves. The depictions of protest usually

show larger groups of people marching in dynamic action carrying flags assigning them to a certain group and

weapons like stones and petrol bombs. The image of the burning city, either in depiction or in the slogan

Athens burns, recurs quite commonly. In contrast, the portraits of protesters are often rather static and

expressionless. In the case of the faceless masses of heads in gas masks that seem to appear around every

corner, the symbolism is meaningful on two levels. On the one hand they relate to the actual reality of protest

where a gas mask has become an obligatory accessory, on the other hand they become emblematic of the

increasing militarization, violence and social polarization of the city. Both the depictions of scenes and actors

transform the specific temporality of protest as a momentary eruption of political sentiments by permanently

inscribing it into the surface of the city. In this way protest is not only manifested and present around every

corner of the city, it becomes a part of it claiming urban space as a canvas for subversive political practices. This

fundamentally displaces the narrative disseminated by media and politics, where protest particularly the riots

they tend to turn into are externalized and attributed to a disruptive group of mayhem-loving hoodie-wearers

and anarchists. Generally the artworks revolving around protest and politics hold a rather critical stance on

mass media – some of the artists even explicitly name counter-propaganda as their motivation – which at times

even becomes the central topic of concern. Usually juxtaposed with simple depictions of television sets, they

read slogans such as the television will not be revolutionized or bash it. A small yet notable number of the

protest-related artworks examine a completely different aspect: romance. As I was told by several people the

long hours of standing around waiting for a protest to take off are quite popularly used by participants to

approach one another. The walls of the city bear testimony to this romantic potentiality of political action with

phrases like anarchy is for lovers or as the fires burn our hearts will unite. Though some of the politicized

artworks stand for themselves, a large amount is clearly associated with political and social groups. Most

frequently this association is with the anarchists, the antifascist action, and the squatters’ movement. The

messages are often quite simple, promoting solidarity – e.g. with migrants or threatened squats – and

resistance – e.g. against authority, police, capitalism, nationalism and fascism.

Conclusion: Chronicling the Crisis through Street Art?

As indicated by the Athenian case depicted above there is a clear connection between the variables crisis and

austerity, urban space, social movements and street art. However, the ways in which they intersect are just as

complex and fluid as the phenomenon of the crisis itself. Closely examining the walls of Athens as artifacts of

the crisis helped me understand how urban space is claimed as a democratic medium of communication,

expression and subversive political speech – both on an individual and a collective level. Whether the actual

artwork follows a logic of confrontation or beautification, dialogue or propaganda, it encourages the passersby

to engage with their surroundings and to consider certain power relations inscribed in them. Additionally, the

walls of Athens provide a variety of insights about the social movements and political groups strategically

claiming them. Even though there are millions of images of uncontextualized crisis street art floating around on

the internet, there is a distinct lack of qualitative research in this area. In order to deeply engage with the topic

it is crucial to explore the particular political geographies of the respective cities and the ways in which

artworks tie into it. Some potential questions for guiding such research are: How are the present states of crisis

reflected on the walls of crisis cities? Which iconographies and discourses do they mobilize and how do they

relate to the narratives and images of the crisis circulated in mainstream media and politics? Who are the

actors involved, what conflicts occur and which alliances do they forge? How do they oscillate between local

and global contexts and how do they create transnational networks? As for a more theoretical question it

might be interesting to look at the issue of temporality and temporal displacement in the crisis and how it

resurfaces in the artworks. Another promising field is affect, particularly the study of the crisis as both an

affective regime and a ground for affective politicization. Such an analysis would greatly profit from a

comparative perspective. In the European crisis context one might investigate other Mediterranean crisis and

austerity cities such as Lisbon or Madrid. Recent events also suggest a broader look at the South-East margin of

Europe – cities such as Istanbul, Sofia or Tuzla. Specifically the crisis revolving around the Occupy Gezi protests

and its immediate adaption and representation in street art display a variety of remarkable similarities with

Athens. Investigating further into any of these connections will not only potentially sharpen an understanding

of how street art works as a means of protest and social movements but also open new perspectives through

which to read the complex issue of the crisis.

Notes and References

i See Harvey, David. Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012). ii Tonkiss, Fran. Austerity Urbanism and the Makeshift City. City 17.3 (2013): 312-324.

iii The term austerity derives from the latin austeritas and can be translated as rigor, discipline. In financial

politics austerity describes a strategy in which government spending – typically social welfare – are radically reduced in order to achieve fiscal balance. Austerity measures have been prominently employed in the European crisis with a particularly harsh regime implemented in Greece. Here the so called Troika – an institution consisting of the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund – negotiated a contract offering loans to the bankrupt Greek state in exchange for the implementation of harsh budget cuts. Since the signing of the first Memorandum in 2010, representatives of the Troika have periodically returned to Greece to monitor the execution of the agreement. For an analysis of the moral ramifications of the austerity regime see Graeber, David. The Greek Debt Crisis in Almost Unimaginably Long-Term Historical Perspective. in Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a Present Yet To Pass and a Future Still To Come. edited by Antonis Vradis and Dimitris Dalakoglou (Oakland: AK Press, 2011). iv For a critical analysis of the current crisis see Aftermath. The Cultures of the Economic Crisis. edited by Manuel

Castells, João Caraça, and Gustavo Cardoso (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). v For a detailed study of the Greek case see Alexander Kentikelenis, Marina Karanikolos, Aaron Reeves, Martin

McKee, and David Stuckler. Greece’s health crisis: from austerity to denialism. The Lancet 383 (2014): 748-753. vi For an account of Athens see Kaika, Maria. The Economic Crisis Seen from the Everyday. Europe’s Nouveau

Poor and the Global Affective Implications of a ‘Local’ Debt Crisis. City 16.4 (2012): 422-430. vii

For a critical account see Mayer, Margit. First world urban activism. Beyond austerity urbanism and creative city politics. City 17.1 (2013): 5-19. viii

Dalakoglou, Dimitris. The Crisis before ‘The Crisis’: Violence and Urban Neoliberalization in Athens. Social Justice 19.1 (2012): 24-42. ix Tsilimpounidi, Myrto. Athens 2012. Performances ‘in Crisis’ or What Happens When a City Goes Soft. City 16.5

(2012): 546-556. x Herzfeld, Michael. Crisis Attack: Impromptu Ethnography in the Greek Maelstrom. Anthropology Today 27.5

(2011): 22-26. xi Leontidou, Lila. Athens in the Mediterranean ‘Movement of the Piazzas’. Spontaneity in Material and Virtual

Public Spaces. City 16.3 (2012): 299-312. xii

Dalakoglou, Dimitris. Beyond Spontaneity. Crisis, Violence and Collective Action in Athens. City 16.5 (2011): 535-545. xiii

Refur (street artist and design student), interviewed by the author, April 2013. xiv

Sonke (street artist and graphic designer), interviewed by the author, June 2013. xv

Oré (street artist), interviewed by the author, June 2013. xvi

Cacao Rocks (street artist), interviewed by the author, July 2013. xvii

D! (street artist and visual artist), interviewed by the author, June 2013. xviii

All quantitative judgements of the Athenian street art scene are based upon an extensive photo archive of 850 artworks that I compiled during my research in Athens. All photographs were geotagged and coded using the scientific software MAXQDA.