Бунтарский Шик (Если не можешь его победить - вылечи его!)

Revolt Chic (if you can’t beat it, recuperate it!)

“Molotovs, sticks, banners, slogans, clashes, road-blocks, demonstrations, bins, fires. Always finding itself in the middle of the action, our company became a target many times over and its walls turned into ’spaces for expression’ – the highlight being the torching alight of our building on Stournari Street!”

From a recent advertising campaign by Greece’s largest computing chain, December 2009

“The youth were right to take to the streets to protest the assassination of Grigoropoulos. The assassination hurt not only the victim’s family but the entire new generation, suffocating as it does, confronted with limited horizons [...] The event came to test many of our certainties and to mark our collective consciousness.”

Michalis Chrisochoidis, Minister of Citizen Protection and Head of the Greek Police, December 2009

The place is a friend’s house in Exarcheia. The time is December 6th, 2009, early in the morning – or so it feels. Last night’s late flight has certainly taken its toll on my sense of time. I wake up to the kind words of the Minister For Our Own Good mellowly coming through the TV set. I roll out of bed, still slightly confused. Someone slides an advertising leaflet for a multinational store under the door. “At these prices, you are practically looting us”. Funny, that: I still remember that store being very practically looted exactly one year ago. My friend walks in with the Sunday papers. This morning they have all come up with long and excited articles on last year’s December. Their magazines have dedicated glossy page after glossy page to those “wonderfully peculiar” days. Self-proclaimed experts of all sorts assure the readers that last December was quite something and reassure them that it was: Whatever happened back then is now (miraculously, it seems) over. This year it’s all safe. Phews all around. Finally, academics can organise their conferences on the new hot topic; corporate publishers can release shiny coffee table books with impressive, full-spread photos of burning and looting side-by-side with communiques from those days, wrapping it all up with a wonderfully discreet copyright note. How exciting is that photo, dear? How cool are those oh-so-angry words? The Christmas trade sky-rockets. Alexis died (just in time) for your festive sales season.