When we began, we were completely unaware of the challenges we would face. Affected by the numerous images and shots on TV and the internet, we falsely believed that we had to deal with an unsuccessful revolutionary outburst; one of those that one has to experience at least once, while a student, before entering "real" life. We thought that imagination and power might not have been able to come together, but the students of the Sorbonne University managed to leave behind them dozens of imaginative slogans. And the streets might have become less attractive through the decades, but one may not easily resist the beauty of all these negatives left behind by the reporters who found themselves in Paris at the time. On the other hand, most exhibitions, that are being organised at anniversaries, focus on that same thing: the fabricated image of an uprising which -among others- criticised "the society of the spectacle". The connection of our exhibition to the Conference "Social Sciences today. Dilemmas and outlook beyond the crisis", organised by the School of Social Sciences, of the University of the Aegean, gave us the motive and forced us -at the same time- to look into the mass of all these fascinating black and white pictures, the imaginative slogans, the iconic posters, the numerous diversified testimonies. Doing that, we very quickly understood that what we were facing was more complicated than we initially thought, socially, temporally and spatially. And that -as in every interesting story- one cannot easily distinguish the "good" from the "bad guys", one may not easily name when "it began" and when "it finished". In the end, imaginative constructions, sounds, music, projections, and cleverly utilized documents transformed the basement of a typical University building and took us back to Paris in the 60s. The exhibition seduced us into dipping in space and time and made us realize that May '68 was not a student short-lived fair, but a multi-dimensional political event in which all French society was involved -in one way or another- and which, also, marked modern European history.

Project's team:
Nassia Chourmouziadi, Eleni Galani, Vasiliki Katsamaka, Konstantina Nikolopoulou, Sylvia Laina , Anna Papatheodorou , Erasmia Tzanaki.

Ebook