Shot on a mobile phone in 2012, this short film captures Athens at a moment of urban fracture. Based on repeated wanderings through the historic center, it observes central squares undergoing desertification, increasingly unable to sustain social interaction. Spaces meant to condense public life appear suspended, emptied, or informally reoccupied.

 

Klafthmonos Square, the case study, was visited repeatedly during research and documented photographically. The film, however, was produced during a single extended visit on February 18, 2012, capturing fragments of what unfolded across those hours. Having already engaged with many of the square’s users, the camera follows presence, conversation, and time rather than spectacle.

 

Functioning as visual fieldwork alongside theoretical investigation, the video tests the broader conditions examined in the dissertation: the erosion of public space under consumerist restructuring and technological mediation, as well as specific Greek urban pathologies - fragmented planning, para-urbanism, the Olympic legacy, the events of December 2008 (#griots), and austerity. Within this framework, the persistent presence of marginal bodies documents a square that itself is marginalised: a public space largely absent from collective memory, experienced as a locus of protest and social negotiation. The mobile phone becomes a methodological tool: its proximity produces a situated gaze, confronting lived reality and questioning whether the degradation of public space is irreversible.

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The dissertation is available in Greek and in English. 

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