Body and industrial landscape: ode to Elefsina
The “Body in the Industrial Landscape of Eleusis” was the theme of the artwork and performance presented by choreographer and visual artist Emilia Bouriti in the context of the “Aeschylia 2015” Festival, impressing the audience with their symbolism and intensity.
For the creation of the artist’s work, we provided sites on our plant, while the old Elefsina quarries, the old shipyard, Hellenic Petroleum S.A. and the industrial facilities of Elefsina (ex Petrola) were also used.
Emilia Bouriti, using the human body, memory and experience as reference points, managed to capture the architecture, the dynamics and the history of these special locations. The means of expression the artist used for her project were body movement, site-specific art, performance, installation, moving image and photography.
Emilia –born in Aspropirgos to a family of farmers– watched the rural landscape gradually turn into an industrial setting and the people abandon the rural zone to look for jobs at the factories.
Thus, she tried to perceive the industrial landscape as a living being and breathe with it, creating a continuous journey that sometimes lasted from sunrise in the industrial areas to night-time.
For Emilia, the TITAN Cement plant in Elefsina represents a living story in itself, an encounter of decades of development, human potential and overwhelming spaces, where the confrontation between body and space is revealed not only through the history of Elefsina but also through the industrial history of Greece.
Photography: D. Tsami and V. Androni