Z/Zei!

Z/ Zei! [Athens, 2015] Urban action in collaboration with: Arthesis and P.I.G.S. The Z is a letter that has a very special meaning in Greece. Z refers to the Greek protest slogan “Ζει”, which, in ancient Greek means “He lives / He is alive”. It became a very popular graffiti that began to appear everywhere in the Greek cities during the 1960’s, illustrating the growing protests against the Regime of the Colonels (1967-1974), following repeated political murders, the most renowned being the assassination of the peace-activist and left-deputy Gregory Lambrakis, in 1963. The military junta ended up banning it, but then it was taken up and renewed in the famous political novel “Z”(1967) of Vassillis Vassilikos and, later, in the award-winning film “Z” directed by Costa-Gavras. The Z is, therefore, in Greece, a symbol of dissension and resistance, a very sharp simulacrum of denunciation, that Laura Pinta Cazzaniga decided to take up, after many years, restoring its purpose in the current Greek’s financial and social crisis. To do so, she attached hundreds of Z all over Athens, going to the seat of Parliament, in Syntagma Square, to the NTUA Polytechnic, a historical place of students’ revolts, and to the anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia.

Laura Pinta Cazzaniga