Commodification – Dark Nights

“Thought and dynamite, thought to lift up the weak,
dynamite to bring down the powerful.”
(Paul Schicchi)

The meagreness of the times does not happen by accident. For those with a world to demolish, abstraction and insignificance are increasingly becoming spectres. On the one hand, it is clear how an extremely technological system makes alienation abstract: real and virtual tend to mix, and feeling is devoured by it. What to do when despondency emerges in all its inconsistency in living? When one perceives the stasis but does not want to see the substance? This weightless alienation is strongly linked to the loss of meaning of every word. With whom to argue if everything has become unintelligible? If the juxtaposition has blurred the opposition? If one can say this and do its perfect opposite? If one considers life separate from survival because so much of this separation makes it comfortable to submerge in the safety of need, rather than to venture into the dark wilderness of desired and elusive freedom?

Then reinventing oneself might become an endeavor all to be explored. The struggle against oppression is but a tiny part of the insurrectional incumbency to take what is unheard of: life. We are always too young to wait, our existences are too short, and there have never been so many heads of tyrants to outrage and their kingdoms to destroy. To become expendable commodities in false consciousnesses is the opinion good for all seasons and to soothe tempers: realism. But my ideas, my body, my actions are not yesterday’s, will not be the same in tomorrow, and belong to no one but myself, for I think and feel. What has already been minted on currency, what has already been identified on commodities, what has already been programmed in infrastructure, what has already been shouted from captivity, what has already been drawn in art and what has already been written on so many smeared sheets of paper, hidden behind the imperatives of daily living, there is only the bondage that places us in a completely totalitarian constraint: lingering in the future.

The rulers of time and censors of space want to impose their own measure on all and everyone. Only our boundless pretensions can become the indispensable device to overturn all the abjectness of this world. Something can always happen, beyond generalized insignificance and alienating abstraction.

Without making an appointment with anyone, clutching the unpredictable by the hand, enjoying endlessly to embody what is furthest from technology: the thrilling beauty of revenge.

(Dardi, n. 8)

Source: Inferno Urbano

A new condition is shaping everyday life in the neighbourhoods of the city centre. The pre-election “promises” of Mayor Bakoyannis* for the complete transformation of the centre of the Athenian metropolis into a tourist zone are being put into practice with the fencing of the last squares and their conversion into metro stations.

The displacement of oppressed populations from the neighbourhood of Exarchia, the foundations of which have been laid under the Syriza government, through the evacuation of migrant squats, continues in terms of class warfare through the appropriation of the neighbourhood.

The unaffordable rents, the posh shops with expensive goods and services, the cameras on every corner and face controls at the entrance of shops make it impossible for the social base to stay.

Housing becomes a commodity and capital is called upon to exploit it to the fullest. Houses and former squats are being converted into airbnb and luxury housing, which local and international capital is throwing into the real estate market at the expense of the needs and burdening the lives of those below. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia” →

Tag: Commodification

Abstraction and loss of meaning

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia