Background Story

One of the biggest challenges for the planning of the Olympic Games in Greece is the development of a new infrastructure, which is needed for the expected mass of visitors. Transit corridors connect all the places where sport games are held. The space between, which is not only limited to the urban jungle of Athens and Thessaloniki, is the obstacle to overcome. Thus, two different space concepts collide: The existing terretory and the layers of generic spaces. Beyond the airports, the Hyatts and the stadions the old terretory of Greece only exists as the opposite of a net of the new transit space.

This space is so vulnerable, that it has to be protected by 100.000 security people - that is more personell that was needed to invade Iraq. That means, that the so-called “Peace-Games” turn the country into a potential war zone. Security staffs are the first inhabitants of the transit space.

Special “Olympic lanes” are reserved for the media, the athlets and the organizers to travel from one sport location to the next one without loosing time.

Both space models have different conceptions of time and speed. Whilst Greece is associated with a more relaxed way of living, the overlayed transit spaces mean a radical accelleration. Life in transit space is is always much faster. Its speed means, as Peter Weibel points out, the loss of distance, the loss of the antropomorphic space and subsequently a feeling of dislocation.

Dislocation is aggravated by the omnipresence and repitition of media images. Flaneurs become tourists - people become - in marketing jargon - “eyeballs”.
In order to establish a kind of balance between transit space and the rest of Greece, the IOC stages the Cultural Olympics. This part of the Games is promoted as the “essence” of the 28th Games and is all about the cultural heritage in Greece. Once absorbed into the marketing-channels of that media event, parts of the Greek land-scape becomes a “themed space”. Historic sites are transformed into a kind of “Olympic History Theme-Park”. Oddly enough the meaning of these sites appear very much different in that harsh media light. Buildings like e.g. the Acropolis become “3-D-trademarks and icons of the Olympic corporate identity and simultanuously turn - as an exemplification of itself - into a Venturi`”duck”.

There have never been more icons and images in human history before. This means an iconic turn: Images are not just representing the world, they actually create the world anew. Accordingly also public space is constructed through images. Images of the digital revolution superimpose more and more and even
replace the meaning of physical space. A certain event and the locations of such an event only exists from the point of its transformation into a media image. The cultural essence of globalisation is based on these media memories.

Public space is threatened from at least two sides: terror and the fight against terror. It has also become a war zone of media images. When the worlds media attention is focussed on Greece the stray dogs have to pay the ultimate price.

Thousands of strays are being killed systematicly to keep the venues nice and tidy for the worlds TV cameras and millions of foreign tourists.

The Saloniki Soccer Club Art Project calls for acknowledging the legendary strays as a living, cultural heritage of Greece.
Far from proposing a romantic perspective, these animals represent time-capsules of another age (“There was a time, when there was time...; The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig). They are slackers. they give us an impression, that there is a life outside the syntethic spaces. It is in our hands to define the quality of that life.
Straying becomes a metaphor to find lost places. Like seeing-eye dogs they might lead us to the emergency exit out of the vacuum of the transit space. They represent the exact opposite of an
efficiency doctrin, which is defining these spaces.The only substance of that doctrin finds itself in the "climax" of a gold-medal.
Those dogs are lazy and keep on doing what they did for centuries:

Nothing!

Impressum / Contact
Disclaimer