FROM AGORA TO PANDORA: THE UNPRECEDENTED CASE OF THE SIMPLE SKOPJE SQUARE

Abstract

This paper maps the multitude of symbolic meanings and popular receptions and interpretations that are being discharged in the process of realization of an architectural and heavily ideological project in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje is currently in the process of an intense urban reshaping and remodeling created through a project called Skopje 2014. This project, in all its extravagance, glitter and kitsch, also known and criticized as Antiquisation, prompts one to see the collision of nationalistic frustration that produced it in the first place and that still resonate around it. It is to a great extent an expression of a multitude of frustrations of Macedonians that finally found their reification and palpability in the Skopje 2014 project. It is in this context of plethora of potential significations, both complementary and radically opposed; that the paper tries to map the multifarious nature of the semiotic processes emerged by and through the culturally redefining project of Skopje 2014 by looking at the full spectrum of the meaning production process, form the imposing intention of the maker, through the sociopolitical connotations by the act of its still on-going execution to the accepting or bitterly rejecting end of popular interpretations by the most affected of all, the citizens of both, the capital and the country in general.