ATTENTION! BEWARE! HUMANDILE! | “Gazia” Park, Kato Patisia, Athens 2023

About This Project

Ephemeral intervention in public space; in the area of Kato Patissia, Athens ● Friendly participation in the PROJECT: WALK THE LAW, Walking along the lines of legal texts, by Counterpublics [https://counterpublics.org/] ● Theoretical research and audio lecture by Errikos Kalamaras.

The action is part of the 3-day event H(E)AVENS – A four-day event for the intervention of private institutions in the field of culture ≡ Athens, 7-10 December 2023 https://heavens.gr/saturday/

The work/intervention consists of a masquerade construction, a 10-minute audio lecture and a placard. Materials: wire, plaster, paints, fabric, cardboard, clothes and materials for makeup. (The materials and the final form of the intervention may change by the time of the presentation)

Keywords & consepts: spicies, humangeography, displacement, hybrid, animal, crocodilia, dominant, predator, hyperconcumer

The human species Homo Sapiens Sapiens, has evolved over the past 12 millennia into the dominant species on the planet. It is a dominant species in the food chain not as a classic predator that eats what it hunts, but as a “super-consumer”. We are a species that kills and has wiped out from the planet dozens of other species mainly, not only for our food, but for our fetishes. We are the most dominant species over others because of the size of our brains, in the over-technologically conditioned environment of the planet we live in, in cities, in the urban fabric.

The Crocodilia species (crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gavialids) is thought to be at the top of the food chain along with other carnivorous predators. “Over-consumer” man has exploited, driven away, and eventually displaced other dominant species, including the Nile crocodile from the region of Palestine, from the areas where it spread over the last millennia. (The historical distribution of this crocodile placed it in the Attica region as well 8,000 years ago.)

In the same way, although extremely “advanced” intellectually, the emotionally individualized contemporary human, the “superconsumer” of modern capitalism (should he be called Homo Lunaticus?) displaces, persecutes and exploits (even exterminates by genocide) other “human species” (?), races (?), cultures (?).

With my intervention “Attention! Beware! Humandile!” I seek to create a “socio-political spell” of exculpation by implying a transition from the animal state of man to the dominant state of the animal, and vice versa.