My friends are black birds

who seesaw on the terraces of houses that are ready to collapse

Exarcheia, Patission, Metaxourgeio, Mets

They do whatever

Sell recipe books and encyclopedias

They fix roads and unite deserts

Interpreters at the cabarets of Xenon

Professional revolutionaries

They crowded them, before, and took them down

Now they take pills and alcohol in order to sleep

but they have dreams and do not sleep

My friends are tight wires

on the terraces of old houses

Exarcheia, Victoria, Koukaki, Gyzi

On them you have hung millions of iron clothespins

items of your guilt,

decisions of congress,

borrowed suits,

cigarette burns

curious migraines,

threatening silences

vaginal infections

they fall in love with homosexuals

trichomonads

delay

the telephone

broken glass

the ambulance

No one…

Poet: Katerina Gogou 

In  my old house

the  kitchen

had a balcony

the back balcony we used to call it

and would go out for a smoke

morning and evening

on the opposite side, there was a wall

not on the opposite side

exactly in front of it

you would touch it if you stretched your arm

sometimes I sat

there and thought

and when I think

I don’t see

so

since I did not see the wall

deep inside me

I felt that it was the sky

when I realized it

the wall was again wall

now

I’ve come to Germany

and they have lots of space here

nobody sees the wall

of the other

so from my balcony

I see the sky

everywhere is the sky

except that when I think

the sky

is

an endless wall

Poem: Ania Vouloudi

In recent decades, countless artificial “paradises” were developed around the world and their number still grows faster than ever before. This industry that manufactures an entertainment product of mass consumption meant to satisfy the average man’s need for recreational time and fun, is called tourism.

The tourism industry has drastically intruded the land, transforming it into a product while causing several effects with a severe socio-cultural character. Destinations are in danger of losing their original appearance, structure, and identity, through a standardization process that aims to satisfy the tourists’ wishes. What is not understood though, is that this process doesn’t degrade only the final product but mostly affects the local societies which have to survive the low periods relying only on the remnants of a seasonal industry.

“Paradise Inn” aims to highlight the consequences of this massive and uncontrolled tourist development.  In Greece, as in Southern Europe in general, these effects are reflected on the constructed landscape mostly through the unregulated and shoddy architecture, the kitsch and folklore decoration,  the construction and adoption of artificial elements and entertainment structures, the falsification of identity and cultural heritage, the violation of the natural environment and finally the desolation that occurs after peak season.

            “The only true paradise is the paradise we have lost…”

            – Marcel Proust

I am interested only in “nonsense”; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.

 

– Daniil Kharms