Dimitris Kostopoulos

I am a painter and I have been painting walls in Athens since I was seventeen, some of them legally. After the crisis in 2010 the city's walls filled up with work, some angry, some funny, some very beautiful, and a lot of it by artists who later showed in galleries in Berlin and London. My walks cover Exarchia, Psyrri and Metaxourgeio, where I tell you who painted what and why, and which pieces the neighbours fought to keep. I also know the small independent galleries in Metaxourgeio and Kerameikos, which most visitors never find, and on some Friday evenings we visit an opening. I am not a historian. I will not talk about Pericles. I will talk about why a mural of a man with a birdcage for a head appeared on a wall in 2012 and what the people living behind that wall thought of it. The walk is flat but long. Everything I do is now live on video: I walk Athens with my phone, and you can ask me anything as we go.