Public Intervention in front of the Greek Parliament

Four women dressed in uniforms start cleaning the marble pavement in front of the Greek Parliament. They do not ask or answer questions. This passive and persistent behavior provokes the intervention of the police. Soon, under threat of arrest, the “cleaners” are removed from the area. According to Plato, the craftsmen have no time for anything other than their work, thereby excluding them from any possible public speaking. However, Jacques Ranciere argues that politics begins precisely when those who have no time for anything but their work use that time they do not have to be visible as part of a common world. Cleaning, this important social work, is reproduced here in an apparently inappropriate space and time frame, in an attempt to comment on the two poles of work and obedience. But by projecting it into the public space, it automatically becomes, as events have shown, a threat to disrupt the political and social normality.