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”For the Homeland and the People” ( ”για την πατρίδα κ το λαό”)

”For the homeland and the people” is a mixed media artwork made in collaboration with the late political theorist and philosopher Ernesto Laclau for the Journal De Combate No 7, Populism in Greece, Argentina 2014.

The artwork shows photographic images of the riots and demonstrations in Athens Greece, 2012-2013. The images are formed in a collage technique while connected with each other with strong, clear, dynamic lines forming a pyramid. The background drawing, originally designed by Mr Laclau, blends in the environment creating depth, structure and chaos at the same time.

”…the frustration of a series of social demands makes possible the movement from isolated democratic demands to equivalential popular ones. One first dimension of the break is that, at its root, there is the experience of a lack, a gap which has emerged in the harmonious continuity of the social. There is a fullness of the community which is missing. This is decisive: the construction of the ‘people’ will be the attempt to give a name to that absent fullness. Without this initial breakdown of something in the social order – however minimal that something could initially be – there is no possibility of antagonism, frontier, or, ultimately, ‘people’. This initial experience is not only, however, an experience of lack. Lack, as we have seen, is linked to a demand which is not met. But this involves bringing into the picture the power which has not met the demand. So from the very beginning we are confronted with a dichotomy division between unfulfilled social demands, on the one hand, and an unresponsive power, on the other….” ( ”On Populist Reason”, Ernesto Laclau, Verso Publications 2005)

 

On Populist Reason 

Ernesto Laclau

 

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