Traces of Commerce 2: New Creative Cells of Exchange
Year: 2015 | Status: Completed | Partners: City of Athens, Athens Development Agency, Public Social Security Agency, AT Management | Team: Haris Biskos (Founder, Director), Martha Giannakopoulou (Curator in Charge), Clelia Thermou (Program Coordination), Anna Mastori (Communications), Helias Dagas (Production), Konstantinos Stamatopoulos (Graphic Design & Web Development), Babis Giannikakis (Director of Photography) | Program Budget: 10.000 Euros | Funding: Athens Development Agency-Project Athens Program
While most of the cities in the world lack space, the city of Athens, an urban context severely hit by the financial crisis, witnesses 30% of its building reserve empty. The city’s ground-floor network, once the steaming engine of its urban welfare, has now become a redundant landscape of empty pocket spaces. Within this pragmatic context, «TRACES OF COMMERCE» was organized as an initiative aiming to bring back to a state of activity a vacant public space of Athens, «Stoa Emporon» (Arcade of Merchants). A dead zone in the heart of Athens city center which remained stagnant, with its small shops empty of any commercial activities for more than a decade. The vision of the initiative was the re-birth of this symbolic public space through the establishment of a productive platform with interdisciplinary synergies that opens up to the city. The program launched its 2nd phase in December 2014 under the umbrella theme «NEW CREATIVE CELLS OF EXCHANGE». Following an open call for proposals, 10 shops of Stoa Emporon were assigned for free to creative start-ups and small entrepreneurial collaborations transforming the ground level of the Social Security Agency for the Merchants building into a transparent laboratory of creativity and exchange.
