Since the 80s the area of Exarcheia has been targeted by the state and mainstream media, both exercising a "politics of fear" rhetoric, presenting the neighborhood as a no-go zone center of lawlessness. After its election in May 2019, the right-wing "New Democracy" government promoted its central goal of a "return to normality", with a series of squats evacuations(many of them were squats to provide shelter for refugees), police raids, and state occupations of public space. A few years before the election, the current prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated that he would "clean up" the Exarcheia area if his party would be elected. Right before the 2019 elections, a parliamentary candidate of the "New Democracy", Thanos Plevris, posted a video on his personal Twitter account, showing him making a "patrol" in a deserted Exarcheia square, at 6 in the morning. In a low voice, obviously frightened, and looking anxiously in every direction stated: "Good morning from Exarcheion Square. On July 8th(the date of the election), we hand over the square to the residents. Iniquity ends, and shamelessness ends. On July the 8th, the square will be a normal square." Kostas Bakoyannis, affiliated with the same party, and elected as a mayor of Athens, argued that: "Our plan for Exarcheia is to make it a model neighborhood. Our starting point is to end the 'we must' discourse. It is now time for the 'we will' discourse to begin. 'We will' end the hostage situation in the neighborhood". On August 2022, a month that most of the Athenians are on vacation, police and workers blocked off Exarcheia Square with metal panels to begin constructing a new metro station, while the nearby Strefi hill was already blocked by the municipality for construction concerning the gentrification of the district.
Exarcheia Square / A New Vendôme Column is an alleged proposal for the erection of a monument in the area's central square, which is basically a duplicate of the Vendôme Column in Paris. A project that is reversing the history of the demolition of the column during the Paris Commune in 1871, is depicted as a typical set of architectural plans and presentations, rendering images of the area with the monument, along with the installed panels blocking the access to the square. In an ironic pseudo-narrative, the erection of the monument signifies the occupation of public space from the New Democracy state, as a symbolic establishment of government dominance towards the radical, far-left, anarchist aura of the district. The column is almost a replica of the Parisian monument, with its main difference being the statue on top, replacing Napoleon with Apollo, the Olympian deity recognized as the god of the Sun and light. Associating the god with the "cleansing" of the "darkness" of the area, the supposed monument comically projecting a romanticized notion of the harsh and revanchist policies of the New Democracy government during the last few years.
EXARCHEIA SQUARE / A New Vendôme Column, 2023 Created by Michalis Zacharias 3d topologies created with OSM2World and based on data exported from OpenStreetMap. 3d models developed in Blender 3d. The statue on top is based on "Statue of an Emperor" by Geoffrey Marchal, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.