Dimitra Laina

28 Buildings [View from a window]

2023
Mixed media installation
Digital prints on paper, map, book, table, chairs”28 Buildings [View from a window]” follows the sale & leaseback of two portfolios of 28 state-owned buildings undertaken by the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF). As of the time of the transaction, several governmental agencies occupied the office buildings in question located in major urban centres across the country. The agencies included the Ministries of Justice, Culture, Health, Education and the Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-Governance; the General Secretariat of Mass Media, and the General Secretariat of Information Systems, as well as the Hellenic Statistical Authority and the General Chemical State Laboratory; thirteen Tax Offices located in Athens and other cities, such as in Korinthos, Chalkida and Alexandroupoli; the Immigration Directorate of Attica, the Hellenic Police Forensic Science Division, as well as the headquarters of Hellenic Police in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Documentation of the buildings’ transfer to the ownership of the Fund, the transaction and its aftermath is provided through direct references to official documents and legislative acts, many of which can be found in Government Gazette publications from 2010 to 2018. Incorporating textual and visual evidence, the artwork, consisting of a critical map and a book, navigates the privatisation process of the 28 buildings housing the Greek state apparatus departing from the foundation law of the Fund as this was prescribed by the first Memorandum agreement and showcases the extension of public assets included in the Fund’s portfolio; the detrimental conditions of the sale & leaseback contracts resulting in losses exceeding 580 million Euros; and finally, the development of successive law amendments in the light of the charges of embezzlement and breach of trust brought against three members of the Fund’s Board of Directors and six members of the Council of Experts respectively, resulting in granting criminal immunity to the actors involved in the Fund in 2018 after the legal case was considered closed.

The scandalous nature of the case presented here is not symptomatic. Instead, it points to the structural complicity of the modern state in the promotion and management of capitalist accumulation and growth. The fusion of public and private power, or what Graeber calls “predatory bureaucratisation” asserts itself on the foundation, consolidation and expansion of structural violence driving the alignment of lived experience with the values of the market and the techno-administrative structures of the state. The work employs bureaucratic language – from spatial planning to tabulated reports and endless documents alluding to principles of “efficiency” or “rationality”, as well as information technologies – only to manifest its organising principles and objectives, and to welcome inquiries about its origins. 











Multidisciplinary artist & researcher