“The worst thing is not the violence of bad people, but the silence of good people”
— Martin Luther King, via Ken Loach, Cannes 2026

Prompted by recent events at the National Theatre, where following direct anti-gentrification interventions and mobilizations by artists, actors, activists, and the Palestine solidarity movement, the event series “Is It Sinful?” was cancelled, we are opening a call for public discussion at the queer space LALA on Monday, June 8th (Monday: theatre artists’ day off).

We are facing an unprecedented wave of artwashing, where “socially conscious” art is used as an aesthetic smokescreen to launder genocidal regimes and normalize real estate investment schemes that displace Athens neighborhoods and raise the cost of living for their residents (in food, housing, healthcare, and their social interaction and recreation). From institutional showcases like Plasmata at Pedion tou Areos to sponsorships from hotel giants (Brown Hotel in Omonia), the appearance of social awareness is used as a camouflage strategy for urban gentrification. Within this condition, artists experience a deep class-based frustration, as those working in culture often end up trapped in a survival bind: to secure their livelihoods, they are forced to work within the institutions and establishments that appropriate their struggles and offer them up as performative spectacle, with dangerous shortcomings in the artistic forms that distort the social, collective vision — without the cost of activism, and with the sole beneficiaries being the spoils of propaganda and cover-up.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly important for all of us to examine our own positionality — that is, exactly where we stand, class-wise, socially, and politically, within this system, and from what vantage point we make art. We ask ourselves: What is our position, what are our privileges, needs, or compromises, and how do these shape our relationship with art institutions, as well as the “socially relevant” themes we take on? What is our responsibility as artists for phenomena of shameless appropriation of such themes? We are seeking critical tools of resistance: How can we stand autonomously? How do we resist institutionalization (including internalized institutionalization and self-censorship), and how do we reclaim public space and our artistic independence by breaking the terms of surveillance imposed by an ever-expanding institutional panopticon?

Finally, we want to bring to the table the relationship between collective organizing and individual responsibility. How does personal refusal and ethical stance translate into a collective bulwark, and what are its limits when survival is at stake? Is it possible, through collectivity, to share the burden of our class constraints and build communities of care that will materially and emotionally support those who choose to say “no”? And ultimately: can we remember again our needs, and the reasons we once decided to get involved with art?