ATHENS

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Yes, there are some places where it seems cynical to depart from with the intent to forget about them due to a language barrier or because of general features that characterize them: bars, consumers, gypsies living underground in railway tunnels put out of service, as well as their children smiling at the sound of “kalimera” (good day) who pull their carts full of knick-knack and who live from drugs, who nobody wants and who would be more than happy to leave themselves.

Circumspect Albanians are waiting for the next incoming Western tourists with whom they will exchange inside stories, accomplices of shared culture, and “ok, now you pay so we can leave to wherever you need to go.” Some Asian people, probably Persians, immerged in their own thoughts, so that the stands they made to sell their unsellable product remind us of maps we would like to keep when travelling form one continent of the earth to another, only to prove to ourselves that we lost our culture somewhere out there, but that my own foreign face is not sufficient to remember it.

The Greeks, then, who live a timeless present, for which, maybe, disfiguring a city by removing parts of the solid marble that created it to have something in one’s hand rather than in one’s mind equals to also having strong arms to fight an improbable war that doesn’t do anything other than opening a huge abyss inversely proportional to the importance of a spread, calculation, when you receive the fists of corrupted policemen in their pitch dark, livid black uniforms right into your face.

When a friend tells you “this was my friend,” even though he would not recognize him anymore, because of the swelling.

The swelling, funguses of a society that creates pain without knowing what happiness is – what is happiness, dear Europe?

What did you forget on your long way built on freedom and trade, of people. Maybe now goods equal people?

Guide us all high up through the Mediterranean and lead us consumers towards a world where we don’t give a shit about anything, at least so that we don’t have to fight for a grain of sand that,

in my opinion,

we never wanted before we gave it a value.

Good economy to all,

“kalimera.”

This reportage, realized in Athens, February 2013, is dedicated to this social class, the youth, who, facing the economic crisis, is left with two options:
Be forgotten or be used as scapegoats.
Talking with my Greek peers, I lived the difficult love-hate relationship that they have to live with. A process during which the love for their own country and the red thread that ties them to their majestic, age-old culture, rich of layers, is well represented by their typical hospitality, by the desire to live embedded in their smiles.

Smiles that got completely lost in snapshots that over the past years described the Greek society in a hypocritical way. The youths’ anger towards these international newspapers who observed the situation for a couple of days, just giving enough time to capture

some superficial shots of clashes and demonstrations on the streets, without pausing to ask who was, individually, behind those protests.

An improvised notoriety for these people oftentimes quoted in tourist brochures, famous for the beauty of its islands and for its crowded beaches during summer. Returning home and comparing persons’ faces and gestures with the anonymity of an economic crisis, between stolen, and, worse, repeated images, was perceived as a hypocritical move. The anger is transforming into hatred, hatred towards violent fascists, who are by now populating the linguistic unconscious of young people, students.

The hatred that is expanding and that recognizes among its enemies the principal one: the police. Nightly raids of cynical and corrupted agents from whom one better stays away or avoids them altogether, even though one has nothing to hide, even though one might simply be a citizen. In this fragmented country, in which one doesn’t know well how to place oneself, sometimes it is better to hide and try to move on.

When they talk about their future, uncertainty increases in their discussions, the fear of no longer having a home one day becomes greater every day. It is not rare to find houses literally gone up in ashes: a way out for owners who decide to collect assurance fees by leaving everything behind. Those less lucky, and who ran out of money to pay rent, return, if possible, to live with their parents, while in many other cases those concerned look for an occupied place.

But the Greece of today is also the country in which people work, maybe part-time; it’s the country of graduates who drive around in cars hoping not to be stopped by motorized police squads, they just want to make it to the next bar and have a drink with their friends; they talk about politics and, quite frustrated, define themselves non-Europeans and un-civil referring to the city destroyed by their own hands, in order to obtain something to throw at the police in an ongoing silent confrontation. It’s the Greece of Chinese immigrants, gypsies, and Indians who, like ghosts, circulate in town trying to sell their goods and who at night sleep in the streets. The country of the immobile periphery, of broken glasses and omnipresent graffiti, tangible extensions of Rembetiko lyrics, with whose sound, from time to time, to the one of running motorbikes mixes in, which, like a lament, accompanies the regard of the audience.

By following some of the youngsters my age, strolling around the city with them, I understood how much and how well Athens represents my generation: I was able to observe through the eyes of someone who is waiting for something undefined for an indefinite time.

The Greek youth is existing in a tomorrow, product of a film made 20 years ago, they are the unconscious actors of an economic horror movie.
With these shots, I wanted to make my contribution to my generation, with the wish to stop living as unconscious actors and start to become actors in leading roles.

Simone Marchetti