Since the deconstruction of our large-scale installation Trash Temple at the grassroots artspace Chaosmos ∞, its parts are being scattered out into the city scapes of Athens, challenging the boundaries of public art and street art. But since the lockdown of Greece in early March we are unable to finalize our project to fill the city with a new life of ritualistic sites, hidden oases of silence in the midst of the buzzing metropolis. Instead we created a series of works as a new project to make our imagination flourish in this time of isolation: ‘Find the imaginary spot’.

Trash Temple is a site-specific large-scale installation that was built collectively with golden, empty beer cans found and collected in the culturally diverse neighbourhood of Exarcheia in the centre of Athens. Initiated by the Vandaloop collective, it included collaborations with refugees and local artspaces, international artists and researchers and was exhibited in the local grassroots artspace Chaosmos ∞. Find the spot – Urban Athens was meant to finalize the whole project in bringing the beer cans back to the streets in which we collected them – now no longer in the form of trash but in the form of sophisticated art.

While Athens is well known for its growing artistic scene, it is dealing with huge issues of ecology and the recent eviction of its squats which were the homes of refugees. At the same time there are many abandoned neoclassical buildings that could be used for living or artistic events. Our project was meant to create awareness of these issues, not only between the walls of an exhibition but in the public space for everyone to see.

‘Find the spot’ as a public and urban intervention emerges from the extracted parts of our exhibition that are expanded to the public space, to landscapes, rooftops, taking over abandoned buildings in different neighborhoods of the urban space of Athens. It merges future potentials and hybridity with functions of public art, creating a bizarre ecological perspective.

Image I: Tryptophobia - bee-hives made of beer cans occupying an abandoned neoclassical building in the district of Metaxourgeio

Image II: Urban Temple - sun disk made of beer cans on the rooftop in the district of Exarcheia, in the background the Lycabettus, one of the three hills of Athens

Image III: Extraterrestial - satellite dish made of beer cans on the rooftop in the southern suburbs of Athens

Find the spot – Urban Athens

Trash Temple is a site-specific large-scale installation that is built collectively with golden, empty beer cans found and collected in the culturally diverse neighbourhood of Exarcheia in the centre of Athens, Greece. Initiated by the Vandaloop collective, it includes collaborations with refugees and local artspaces, international artists and researchers. Trash Temple was funded by a Burning Man Global Art Grant.

Trash Temple was co-created on the three upper floors of the artspace Chaosmos_/79Au, Exarcheia, Athens. Used golden beer cans of a Greek brand were collected from the streets in order to provide the base material of large-scale installations: golden hybrids from inorganic to botanical, reptilian and bird-like creatures occupy the space, build gates and tunnels, climb up walls until the rooftop …

On a highly philosophical level, the project is inspired by the attempt of the modern writer James Joyce to raise the mundane and every-day-experience on the level of sophisticated art and beauty. In a similar sense, it is inspired by ancient and medieval alchemy which, famously, had the ambition to create gold out of minor elements. As the philosopher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna suggests, this ‘quest for gold’ is, however, not to be understood literally but metaphorically, as a quest to purify spiritually. Moreover, the concrete forms of the installations are inspired by the temple architecture of the Mayas, who didn’t use gold as a means for the economy but solely as a gift to their gods. The golden temple made of trash is, therefore, not a praise of the economy but, to the contrary, a praise of spiritual growth. 

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Vandaloop collective