Nikos Arvanitis’ work is concerned with the various contexts in which our view of reality takes shape and root, while it attempts to re-formulate the cultural coordinates of such contexts. His practice can best be described as a balancing act in that it engages in managing the tension generated between two different demands: those raised on the one hand by a sincere wish for individuals to meet up and communicate and, on the other, by the effort to undermine the omnipotence of mass culture, so that the inherent contradictions of societies that act as host for it may be revealed. Like many artists of his generation, Arvanitis explores different fields in his effort to activate the processes mentioned above: painting, interactive or sound installations, performances in public space, music or radio productions. He employs the strategy of détournement in his reuse of objects, song excerpts, slogans, images and sounds from pop culture and maximizes on the effect of activities such as playing or of sensory stimuli such as noise to disrupt our perception of the world around us. He thus communicates his concerns in a hushed way, almost hypodermically one might say, forcing us to confront questions that relate to the structure of public space and to the possibility of its being lived in, to aesthetic perception in contemporary societies and to the construction of collective identity. Well aware of his own place inside this world of over-production and over-consumption, he suggests ways of acting within the space of the other itself, as a “tactic” (in the sense attributed to it by Michel de Certeau) for establishing nuclei of divergence and contention within daily reality itself. The effort to change the institutions of capitalist society through micro-subversion, either occurring within or alluding to the realm of everyday life, places his work in line with the most “topical” of strands in what is known as institutional critique, which addresses issues relating to a broad yet quite distinct notion of a globalized culture of the spectacle as institution.