Athens anti-tagging initiative issues open call for artists
Initiated by Athens Partnership (a non-profit organization founded by the Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis), a program titled “This is Athens – Polis,” aims to clean up the city’s historic center by eliminating tags and other vandalism on the city’s walls, and at the same time add a new creative touch, for which an open call for artists has been issued.
A similar project carried out by the organization, launched in February 2017 and titled the “Athens Trigono Project,” resulted in the cleaning of 8,300 square meters of walls, the creation of 6 new pedestrian streets and seven abandoned buildings being brought back into use; it also included 30 art events.
This time, sponsored by the A.C. Laskaridis Foundation, Beat, Constantine M. Logothetis, Cosmote, Ionian Hotel Enterprises and Lampsa Hellenic Hotels, the organization aims to clean 20.000 square meters of walls, some of which form part of buildings designed by distinguished architects such as Ernst Ziller and Panagiotis Kalkos.
The walls will also be treated with anti-graffiti and hydrophobic materials, to prevent new illegal posters being affixed and to make the cleaning of new tags easy. The goal is to remove every new tag from the buildings in the area within 48 hours.
To add some color to the streets, about 100 of phone company Cosmote's cable terminals in the area will be decorated by local artists, who are now asked to send in their ideas. Any ideas are welcome, and artists may provide more than one suggestion. The artworks will be treated as permanent installations, and covered with the same anti-graffiti material as the walls.
For a chance to have your artwork on permanent display somewhere in Athens’ historic center, send a short resume (max. 150 words), a description of your idea (max. 150 words) and 1-2 sketches (preferably scale 1:20) to [email protected].
This article first appeared on Greece Is (www.greece-is.com), an English-language publishing initiative by Kathimerini.
