This is a Poem/Afto einai ena Poiima: Graffiti, public space and poetry in the contemporary Athenian cityscape

While most responses to contemporary Greek cultural production have referenced the ongoing economic and social crises, not as much attention has been paid directly to the art that has arisen directly out of such pressures. This article focuses on one small mode of cultural production, QR Code Poetry, an amalgam of graffiti, poetry and technology. Code Poetry comments on contemporary Greek social and political landscapes and is clearly indebted to larger global political and aesthetic movements as well. The brainchild of artists and poets Theodoros Papatheodorou and Ioannis Dimitriadis, Code Poetry is an art form that critiques neo-liberal ideology and its role in dismantling both the contemporary welfare state and any notion of a public commons. Code Poetry achieves these goals by making city space itself an integral component of the art object itself, suggesting that the relationship between the observer and the artwork must be a politicized one in order to produce any potential critique.