Greek antiquity as Hellmouth tunneling underneath us all & St.George’s Mop

2019
Photography



The art school where I teach is next to the Acropolis metro station. Plastered across the main wall of the hall where directions to north and south stations split there is this cinematic poster with the spilled guts of the excavation that took place for the metro tunnels to be built. Antiquity is crawling everywhere underneath the modern city, there is no such thing as an innocent soil in the center area and even far beyond. Replicas of “τα Αρχαία Μας” [our antiquities] are in constant display in many central metro stations where the crowds stroll by in an eternal bliss of pre-crisis modernity + antiquity wedlock glistening eutopia. Every night that I finish teaching late the Acropolis station is quite empty. No tourists, not even more than few locals really use it after 22:00 in weekdays. I am passing by the cleaning staff that meticulously preserves these dioramas in silence.