Exiled from the sphere of the collective and withdrawn into the supposedly “comforting” intimacy of the individual, postmodern humanity has arrived at an autistic worldview and a one-dimensional existence, even when disguised as a polished form of difference. It is within these conditions that The One was born — the offspring of an atrophied society and a fragmented reality.
Konstantinos Pittas was born in Athens in 1990.
He is an architect, researcher, and writer, holding a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, with research focusing on cultural institutions as agents of democratization. He has served as a visiting researcher at Columbia University in New York.
He also completed a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and European Culture at the University of Cambridge and is a graduate architect engineer of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).
Konstantinos Pittas has taught Critical Theory, Political Theory, and Cultural Studies, and has participated in numerous international conferences. His essays and articles have been published in academic journals and edited volumes.
He has received distinctions and scholarships from the Cambridge Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, the Onassis Foundation, and NEON Organization.
Alongside his architectural practice, he organises cultural productions and designs contemporary art exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
In 2015 he collaborated with Dimitris Papaioannou for the opening ceremony of the First European Games in Baku, and in 2017 he served as coordinator for the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) during the international art exhibition documenta 14.
Now alone, he struggles to find a place where he can take root, a collective ideal to hold on to, and a meaningful bond to build. He moves through life burdened with an identity lacking a stable core, a sense of direction, and the warmth of belonging. Through a deep immersion into the experiences of the One, hidden aspects of human nature come to light, reinforcing the belief that by reconstructing a multifaceted self — through shared suffering, commitment to collective narratives, and creative liberation — one may still forge a counterweight to a society driven by calculating self-interest and pervasive disenchantment. And that even if such an effort ultimately proves futile, it is still preferable to unconditional surrender to a world condemned to live on the surface of appearances rather than in the marrow of existence. (From the book’s back-cover presentation.)