An Aesthetics of Pollution. the Coastline of Elefsina Through the Lens of New Materialist Theory.

1. Introduction

Rocks and winds, germs and words, are all different manifestations of this dynamic material reality, or in other words, they all represent the different ways in which this single matter-energy expresses itself.
Manuel de Landa, A thousand years of non-linear history, 2000

Elefsina^[1] (ancient greek: Eleusís) is a coastal city whose name originates from the ancient word eleftho (ἐλεύθω) which means ‘to arrive’, thus symbolizing the arrival of the sacred. In antiquity, Elefsina was famous for approximately 2,000 years (1600 BC - 400 AD) as the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries which attracted pilgrims from all over the then known world. In modern times the city was the third and newest historical industrial center of Attica, following with a time delay of a decade the other two: Piraeus and Lavrio. The arrival of industry in Elefsina is located into main three periods: the first dates from the end of the 19th century and the early years of the 20^th (1875-1906), the second during the Interwar period (1923-1939) and the third shortly before the end of the Civil War and until the middle of the Dictatorship (1948-1971). Currently, the two realities of Elefsina—its sacred past and the industrial present—coexist in a despoiled landscape. The entire coastline of the city is inaccessible, occupied by factories, while the archaeological heritage is endangered by the expansionist policies of heavy industry. The environmental degradation of the coast is not, however, limited to the infrastructure but also takes the form of anthropogenic ruins and toxic substances. Man-made pollutants have affected the natural heritage, destroying nature reserves along the water, and endangered human and non-human lives as well as antiquities through the toxicity of the air and the sea. In Elefsina environmental degradation is not something contained in specific areas but rather the leitmotif that binds everything, from living beings to the soil and waters, in a state of dissolution.

Starting with the coastal landscape of Elefsina, what could, however, be a theoretical framework for understanding pollution as an all-pervasive phenomenon? If pollution is defined as “the introduction of harmful materials into the environment,”^[2] it is through a renewed notion of materiality that such an inquiry must begin. In the essay, it is specifically through the lens of new materialist theory, that a non-anthropocentric interpretation of the contaminated shore of Elefsina is explored. New materialism—an interdisciplinary theoretical field that incorporates philosophy, feminism, science studies, and cultural theory—focuses on the primacy of matter as a dynamic element; the latter animates not only human bodies but also nonhuman organisms, inorganic substances, natural phenomena, infrastructures and technologies. “Reworking received notions of matter as a uniform, inert substance or a socially constructed fact, new materialism foregrounds novel accounts of its agentic thrust, processual nature, formative impetus, and self-organizing capacities.”^[3] In the essay, this new understanding of matter focuses on the non-organic sphere, as highlighted in the writings of Manuel de Landa and Jane Bennett. For both authors, material bodies and forces are a means of creating assemblages, terrains of human and non-human relationality that have historical and political repercussions.

A complementary methodological approach, in dialogue with the new materialist theoretical framework, is on-site research. In the case of Elefsina pollution is examined through three case studies: 1. the underwater environment of the gulf, 2. the topography of the coastline and 3. Elefsina’s hills in relation to the archaeological terrain and the quarry of the cement factory TITAN. Field research in these sites traces transformations of matter that have taken place from antiquity to the present, that is in a period that spans approximately three millenniums. In this process, the term ‘matter’ encompasses a diverse set of things such the soil, water, antiquities, minerals as well as industrial and urban infrastructure. Through the introduction of Bennett’s and De Landa’s insights into the analysis, new entanglements between these different sites of Elefsina and diverse phenomena of anthropogenic waste begin to arise.

What the essay ultimately seeks to bring forth is a non-anthropocentric aesthetics—‘an aesthetics of pollution’—that pertains the analysis of the environmental degradation in Elefsina. Rather than a response to an art historical discourse that involves the contemplation of passive objects by active subjects, the essay takes a new materialist approach by focusing on the “sensuous stuff of earthly bodies” (Bennett, 2012, p. 230) and their morphogenetic and affective capacity. Such a notion of aesthetics highlights “matter’s inherent creativity” and its “potential for self-organization” (De Landa, 2000, p. 16), or what Bennett names the “thing-power”, “the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle.” (Bennett, 2004, p. 351). While both De Landa and Bennett do not directly formulate an aesthetic theory, they contribute to a renewed understanding of Nature in the era of the Anthropocene: instead of an object of aesthetic contemplation (or domination), Nature is the material manifestation of life forces and assemblages that extend beyond human agency. When viewed from the perspective of polluted landscapes —as that of the city of Elefsina—this affective turn to the notion of active materiality has deep ecological and political repercussions; as Bennett argues, it “might help us live more sustainably, with less violence towards a variety of bodies” (Bennett, 2012, p. 232)—geological, nonhuman or otherwise.

2. The gulf of Elefsina

Lovely view of the sea: the gulf of Lepsina, surrounded by mountains, looks like a lake, we know not where its opening lies.
Gustave Flaubert, 1851, excerpt from the exhibition Raw City - 2023 ELEVSIS

An understanding of Elefsina in terms of its current environmental degradation begins first and foremost underwater. The gulf of Elefsina is a geomorphological embayment located in the northernmost part of the Saronic and is considered today one of the most environmentally degraded marine areas of Greece. As geological data show, the bay of Elefsina was affected by the Holocene sea level rise, turning within ~3,000 years from a fresh water environment into a closed lagoon, while around 10.5 thousand years ago the environment finally became marine. (Mavrommatis, 2018). Today it consists of a semi-closed basin whose oceanographic characteristics maintain a similarity to those of a lake. Its closed, shallow (maximum depth 33m) geomorphology favors the accumulation of pollutants. Additionally, the lack of strong currents and its anoxic conditions intensify the problem, by favouring the aggregation of sediments and inhibiting the natural decomposition of pollutants (Mavrakis et al., 2004).

Image 01.The coast of Elefsina © Stefania Strouza

The main source of the environmental degradation of the gulf is industrial pollution. In the Attica region, along the bay’s 15 km coast, 12 km are occupied by the harbour activities of industries. These consist of the industrial zone of Elefsina and Aspropyrgos. The region hosts some of the largest industrial compounds in Greece, including two oil refineries, two steel industries, two cement factories, and one industry of munitions. Large warehouses and oil distribution facilities, three units of used lubricant processing, one paper mill, a lot of chemical industries, industries and manufacturers of plastic products, quarries and a lot of smaller units also exist there (Mavrakis et al., 2004). Thus, the main source of pollution of the bay is from industrial waste and atmospheric particles from fertilizer companies, steelworks, refineries, dyers, etc. Other major pollutants are the expansive ship industry and specifically the handling, repair and construction of ships, as well as the central sewage pipe of Athens, the stream of Agios Georgios, which carries the liquid waste of the tanneries, and also the drains from the waste burial site in Ano Liosia.

Altered by urban and industrial pollution, the gulf’s geochemical composition contains what is a soluble combination of organic waste, oil residues, heavy metals and microplastics, together with pebbles and soil carried by streams. How can these fluid, underwater relations be perceived, historicized and located within a wider environmental perspective? The process of sedimentation—that is the deposition of floating sediments in the bottom of the sea—is key to understanding the environmental history of Elefsina. While seawater samples provide a current, momentary image of the underwater environmental conditions, the material accumulations of sediments are solidified data, tracing histories that go way back in time. In the geochemical and mineralogical analysis of sediments from the gulf of Elefsina a strong accumulation of heavy metals and alunite is observed. The main, however, characteristic of its underwater environment is the black coloration of the seabed. Covering the entire area of the Gulf is a muddy black layer 12 cm thick which is connected to the increased deposition of organic material due to human activity (Kanellopoulou et al., 2004).

The toxicity of the underwater environment is more than evident in the sedimentary formations of Elefsina. But rather than interpreting these material entities as simple indicators of pollution, can the sedimentation of anthropogenic waste be also understood as a morphogenetic process? That is, can underwater sediments be viewed as historicized formations in interrelation to the urban structures of the city? Manuel de Landa describes sedimentation from a structural, or even architectural, point of view: “[Sedimentation] consists in cementing the sorted components together into a new entity with emergent properties of its own […] This second operation is carried out by certain substances dissolved in water […] As this percolating solution crystallizes, it consolidates the pebble’s temporary spatial relations into a more or less permanent “architectonic” structure” (De Landa, 2000, p. 60). The result of this process, that is sedimentary rocks, are “historical constructions, the product of structure-generating processes” (De Landa, 2000, p. 62), and also scientific data that allow for a view of the past. The water currents and the pollutants of the gulf—perceived as energy and matter respectively—compose, in the form of sediments, yet another structural layer in the geological section of the city. As natural history infiltrates human history, it is these underwater formations that compose the mirror image of the industrialised landscape above the sea surface, thereby connecting societies with the underwater terrain, “mountains and other non-living historical structures” (De Landa, 2000, p. 20).

3. Accumulations of matter

The most beautiful arrangement is a pile of things poured out at random.
Heraclitus, Fragment 124

In the documentary film “The Mourning Rock” (Agelastos Petra), Thodoris walks on the embankments by the sea of Elefsina. It is there where he searches for fragments of surviving antiquities, hidden among the rubble that covers the coastline. But what is the understanding of debris in an industrial city that has been founded upon the ruins of an ancient one? Debris^[4] can be generally defined in three categories: 1) as ‘something discarded’, such as rubbish or waste, 2) as loose natural material, usually ‘an accumulation of fragments of rock’ and 3) as ‘the remains of something broken down or destroyed’, such as ancient ruins. In Elefsina all three definitions apply. Natural materials such as marble chiseled by the human hand centuries ago, merge with soil and rocks, as well as industrial ruins, such as fractured cement slates and plastics. Elefsina is a place where multiple things coexist in a fragmentary state; some valuable, some harmful and some simply as materials that have always been there.

Image 02.Agelastos Petra © Filippos Koutsaftis

But rather than passive or undifferentiated matter, debris can be understood in a different light through stratigraphy, the branch of Geology that deals with the succession of strata and their interpretation in terms of a general time scale. The field has been introduced in urban archaeology where “the contemporary city was investigated and studied as if it was an archaeological site, including in its stratigraphy different ideas of the city, autonomous from the previous historical ones.” (Caja, 2021, p. 45) In this framework the ancient ruins together with the abandoned industrial infrastructure are interpreted “as documents to be exposed.” (Caja, 2021, p. 44) In the case of Elefsina, therefore, the piles of rubble are not simply the accumulation of inorganic matter but can be rather understood as a material archive of the city’s multiple temporalities. Seen from a new materialist perspective, however, stratigraphy moves beyond the rather static idea of the fragment as ‘historical document’ and towards its morphogenetic capacity. In this light, geological and historical forces contribute to the ongoing morphogenesis of natural and urban environments. Manuel De Landa explains this continuity between earth processes and human as well as non-human structures as follows: “reality is a single matter-energy undergoing phase transitions of various kinds, with each new layer of accumulated “stuff” simply enriching the reservoir of non-linear dynamics […] available for the generation of novel structures and processes.” (De Landa, 2000, p. 21) Debris thus ‘petrifies’, or better, momentarily ‘friezes’ in different formations, each one embodying diverse historical strata: not only the archaeological but also those of urbanization, industrialization and ruination.

In the case of Elefsina, debris can be interpreted not only as historical formation but also as that which actively generates the future, in the form of embankments by the sea. Walking these days near the shore it is difficult to connect the current coastal topography with the flowing, idyllic shorelines in 19^th century lithographs.^[5] The original landscape feels like a ghostly presence, underneath successions of material layers added throughout the 20^th century in an effort of Greek industry to expand and capitalize the natural terrain. Elefsina’s seaside contour is a historical and natural heritage that has been violently modified by the ongoing industrial development, with 1000 square meters of sea embanked with soil, rubble and cement since 1967. The embankments from debris along the coast are part of a larger network of material accumulations that have formed a new topography of the area. Approaching the area of Vlycha one encounters different types of practices, mostly unauthorized, related to rubble. There, the disposal of material into the sea consists of an illegal private activity. Large quantities of rubble, amounting to several tons, have been over a period of years been disposed into the coast, deforming Vlycha’s natural environment.

Image 03.Mounds of construction materials at Vlycha © Stefania Strouza

A side-effect of urban and industrial development, these accumulations of matter constitute yet another form of environmental pollution in Elefsina. There is nevertheless a strange allure in these formless mounds of discarded matter; one that seen from a new materialist perspective consists in the sheer ‘thingness’ of debris itself. In her essay “Encounters with an Art-Thing” Jane Bennett describes a ‘thing’ as follows: “The radically demoted object […] floats on the surface of context and bobs over and shrugs off the grasp of established norms and judgments. As thing it paradoxically rises to a new status, that of a more active party in encounters. It becomes a body among bodies with the capacity to affect and be affected.” (Bennett, 2015, p. 13) Viewed from such a perspective, debris constitutes a condition of possibility for encounters between human and non-human bodies, between persons and things. It forms the type of abandoned landscape that according to Cristina Casadei “tenaciously preserves traces of events that rarely disappear at all” resulting in “a rich, sometimes messy, and interrupted pattern” (Casadei, 2022, p. 139). Its capacity to produce affects might also interpret the obsession of the protagonist of “The Mourning Rock” in searching among these piles of disposed matter. Perhaps the attraction lies not so much in the antiquities themselves but in the dissolution of subjectivity inside the raw, primordial materiality of these kind of sites; that “vein of thingness […] that both enables and chafes against, overflows, or even breaks the mold of subjectivity into which most of us daily labor to cram it.” (Bennett, 2015, p. 15)

4. Excavation and Extraction: from marble to cement

[she] syncs with the (unwhole) shape, the (jagged) edge, the (unintended) color,
the (ragged) texture or, in other words, her “aesthetic” capacities are heightened.
Jane Bennet, Encounters with an Art-Thing, 2015

If the deformed coastal landscape and the artificial mounds of Vlycha are anthropogenic constructions, the products of an additive material process, there is also another side of the matter, that of excavation or extraction. The two processes, have run in parallel in Elefsina during the 20^th century and relate to two distinct enterprises, the archaeological expeditions that have taken place in the area and the operation of the cement factory TITAN. In this case, it is the subsoil that becomes an object of negotiations, as a source of antiquities or mineral wealth. In this last section pollution is explored as it manifests in the interior of one of the city’s most prominent geological and cultural formations, the hill range of Elefsina.

Image 04.Kynodontes (Dogteeth) © Stefania Strouza

The landscape of Elefsina and by extension its cultural heritage is defined by an elongated hill range that extends to the southwestern end of the Thriasio Pedio, separating the plain from the sea. In an intermediary terrain, outside the confines of the official archaeological site, yet of archaeological value, lie two hills, named as “Polis” and “Hellenistic Fortress”. In the past, between 1882 and 1894 archaeologist D. Filios in collaboration with the German architect W. Dorpfeld will conduct excavations, followed by A. Skia. The research, however, did not remain unscathed by the industrial development of Elefsina. In 1902, the cement factory TITAN, the first production plant for reinforced concrete, was established on the south side of the “Hellenistic” hill next to the sanctuary of Demeter. The unit is until today located at the western end of the coastal front of Elefsina, next to the hill of the ancient city. By 1932, when the law Ν. 5351/1932,^[6] the most important legislative work to protect ancient monuments, was constituted, the factory had already expanded around and on the hills, its chimneys located within a radius of 500 meters of the ancient monuments.

Despite their archaeological and cultural value, the importance of the hills neighbouring the Acropolis was silenced and these natural formations eventually became the quarry of the cement factory, due to the area’s mineral wealth. Hidden inside the earth were not only marble fragments, remnants of a mythic past, but also high-quality limestone, invaluable for the successful operation of TITAN. The area was thus rented from the municipality in order for the factory to extract the necessary raw material for producing cement. Instead of archaeological expeditions, it was now quarry operations that took place on the site. 50 years after TITAN’s opening, in the map of I. Travlos of 1953 a void appears on the saddle between the two hills on the western side of the archaeological site. It is the expanded quarry. Both hills gradually crumbled into raw material. What currently remains of them is three geological protrusions named by the locals as Kynodontes (Dogteeth), punctuated by a few cement structures. In the middle of the now abandoned quarry lies an empty space, resembling an open pit. The view of environmental destruction that the western hills offer the visitor seems to be an inverse image of the debris thrown into seafront. It is only through a leap of the imagination that one can imagine the vast quantities of material removed for TITAN’s use.

Image 05.The quarry © Stefania Strouza

The now abandoned quarry seems to serve another use as a site for the disposal of rubble, domestic and industrial waste; that is the by-products of the city’s capitalist expansion.^[7] Rainwater drains have carried away with them the scattered debris, ‘sculpting’ a new stratum in the wounded landscape, one resembling a formless anthropogenic lava. Standing in the center of the site the visitor experiences a certain unease but also a feeling of empathy and reciprocity towards this emptied out geological body. It might resemble to what Bennett describes as an affective experience that occurs in her encounter with the broken thing: “This stuff has no future to look forward to; the orphaned body itself has no past to which to appeal. But it is also a positivity: it is the shape of the present as such, an a-futural a-historical temporality-spatiality of just-here-just-now.” (Bennett, 2015, p. 15) What Bennett describes here in an indirect manner is an aesthetic experience occurring between bodies, geological and human, one that nonetheless has political undertones. The emptied-out hills of Elefsina—manifesting as an all-encompassing void—resemble the fractured object in Bennett’s description: “It is a shape that is both useless and capable of producing powerful effects, a combination that neoliberal capitalism tries to rule out in its attempt to turn everything into a useful means for making profit.” (Bennett, 2015, p. 15) The quarry is the ghostly afterimage of the hills. Its spectral presence ‘haunts’ the contemporary landscape just as its status as an archaeological space, industrial landscape or ruin of modernity remains perpetually suspended.

5. Conclusion

The exploration of Elefsina’s inorganic materials, ‘things’ (geological, ancient or contemporary), landscapes and anthropogenic substances implies a story of entanglements, where pollution manifests itself as a central narrative thread. In the essay, the three main sections offer a spectral image of pollution while each of them reflects the specific materialities on site. What nevertheless appears as a constant is that in Elefsina—as toxic sediments construct an underwater ‘architecture’, shorelines disappear under the rubble and hills are emptied out of minerals—the “thing-power” comes forth in all its force. It is thus from this visceral non-anthropocentric perspective that the essay aspires to formulate an 'aesthetics of pollution’. Such aesthetics challenges our disposition towards material entities and the world they compose of even if this world—in which we are also enmeshed as material bodies—is one of toxicity, catastrophe and loss. Such standpoint has profound ethical and political implications. As Bennett argues, “The self that acknowledges its thingness is, paradoxically, a body with newly activated sensory capacities—including the power to detect the presence of material agency. That activation can now filter into other aspects of our ethical lives, our relations with nature, our political sensibilities.” (Bennett, 2015, p. 15) In the midst of the ‘Anthropocenic drama’ acknowledging the creative power of bodies and forces while perceiving despoiled things and landscapes as “loci of affection and allure” (Bennett, 2012, p. 231) might be the path against human exceptionalism.