The Archaeology of In-Between Places; Finds Under the Ilissos River

The archaeology of in-between places Finds under the Ilissós River bridge in Athens Abstract The ongoing recession has provided new layers in the tangible and intangible palimpsests in the city of Athens, especially in its neglected urban pockets that can be central but always outside the city’s normal, social life. This paper arises from my experience of participating in a cleaning activity under the Anapáfseos Street Bridge over the encased Ilissós River in central Athens in September 2010. In it I challenge Formatted: English (United States) the official rhetoric regarding the use of marginal sites for parasitic activities, transforming by re-appropriating urban waste into empirical evidence and attempting to read through the lines of the graffiti left behind by a community of migrants that used the bridge as a temporary camp site. By providing an alternative reading of the bridge as an in-between spaceplace, this paper seeks to problematise the assimilation of hidden communities in the city. It can also be considered as a gesture of contemporary-urban archaeology, a way to both approach and understand these communities in a form of a publicly engaged and politically relevant archaeological practice. Black spots on the map of Athens Late modern era urbanscapes are dotted with obscure spaces, in-between places into which neoliberal activities and their policing have been siphoning irregular citizens and parasitic activities: a landscape feature spared by ever expanding urban development, an alley, a forgotten park, an unattended archaeological site gobbled up by the commodified surroundings. These neglected niches are segregated from the ‘normal’ social life of the city, forming seemingly ‘urban gaps’, and destined for use by the subaltern populations that inhabit or use them (the homeless, undocumented immigrants, drug users). In the course of time, they amass rare textures in overlooked palimpsests that, if properly studied and interpreted, can provide us with a better and politically relevant understanding of contemporary urban life. This process becomes more evident in cities undergoing social and political stress, altering the meanings, uses and textures of their public space and enriching these Formatted: Font color: Text 1 neglected urban pockets in a manner that could not have easily been predicted Formatted: Font color: Text 1 (Harvey 2013). Athens is a paradigmatic case study, especially when examined Formatted: Font color: Text 1 through the lenses of the ‘Greek crisis’ and the austerity narratives, clinging on the Formatted: Font: (Default) Calibri, Font color: Text 1 Greek capital in the last decade (Tziovas 2018). See for example the Pedíon Áreos Park enclosed in 1930s by the state the public area in Kypséli, Athens, which -in the 1930s- Formatted: Font color: Text 1 was converted into the state-owned Pedíon Áreos Park to commemorate the fighters Formatted: Font color: Text 1 of the Greek War of Independence. Up until the 1980s it was systematically used by the Athenians as a place for recreation. In the middle of 1990s the Region of Attica, the administrating body of the park, was accused of mismanagement after it lowered its annual budget and reduced the number of personnel tending to it, prompting marked decline in visitor numbers that contributed to its developing ‘liminal’ status (see below). In 2008-2010 the park underwent systematic renovations, however, these failed to bring back its former visitors. In the summer of 2015, a side-episode of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean brought 50 families from Afghanistan to the 1 park for more than a month, sparking a wide public response that varied from a heart- warming solidarity movement to complains about the unguarded, degenerate state of one of the biggest parks in Athens (Tsagkari 2014). Since 2016, the park has been used for prostitution and drug dealing after the police pushed the latter away from nearby areas such as Tosítsa Street and Váthis Square. In generalndeed, these in-between spacesplaces, as the Pedíon Áreos Park, have caught the attention of the newly formed grass-roots collectives that engage in reclaiming and/or, cleaning and tidying up marginal urban spaces for the betterment of the life in their area of interest. Depending on the initiative, their activities produce new public or common outlets for the people of Athens or merely contribute in their gentrification from the bottom up (Lekakis 2013b, 77). Four kilometres to the South of Pedíon Áreos Park lies Anapáfseos Street Bridge, the last remaining bridge of the historic Ilissós River, now running channeled under the centre of Athens. The space under the bridge and the remnants of the submerged valley of Ilissós (Agía Photiní Park), are being used by different communities and for a variety of reasons. Although cruising-for-sex and new-age activities seem to have been a constant historically, the residence/use of the site by a small community of migrants for several months, sometime in the years 2005-2009, provides a new perspective in the discussion of in-between places, especially when considered through the material remains left behind. In this paper, I will be reflecting on my participation in the cleaning activity of Agía Photiní Park in 2010, as a member of the MONUMENTA NGO, attempting an archaeological reading of the material culture and the graffiti on the walls of the bridge. Thus, following the systematic and documentative work of MONUMENTA and contrary to the Although ostensibly ‘apolitical’ character of , these beautifying activities by various collectives that have the effect of purgeing all traces of various temporary, unofficial, and transitory uses of the urban spaces, I propose that . The lack of documentation of the material remains discardedfrom in-between spaces, can illuminate further conceals latent textures and marginal activities tucked away at the corners of the city, along with the communities that occupy them. What is more, I believe that encompassing them in the interpretative narrative It might also apprehend a moremight allow for a more political understanding of the city and the impact of neoliberal economics on the precarious lives of the dispossessed communities in the city. Spaces outside the city’s normality Politically informed Geography and other disciplines have systematically commented on the production and representation of contemporary cities; metropolises formed inside the jutting forces and spaces of neoliberalism and the omnipresent dogma of development to cater for the ‘proper’ citizen, the working, law-abiding, tax-payer (Lefebvre 1991; Lefebvre 2014; Harvey 2001). However, far less attention has been paid to what we can call in-between spacesplaces: the left-over spaces/areas, commonly omitted from developmental projects which fall between gentrified areas 2 (Graves-Brown 2016, 63). These spaces might include alleys, dead-ends, edges of motorways, abandoned complexes, unattended parks, archaeological sites, old buildings, ruins, slums or deserted plots. They are sequestered away from the formal life of the city, laying in common view but still invisible to the public eye. More often than not, these spaces are inaccessible to the respectable everyday citizen as they shelter the Others: the dispossessed, the subaltern, as for example, the homeless, beggars, prostitutes, undocumented immigrants, refugees and irregular activities, as rough sleeping, drug use and heavy drinking (Harvey 2013; Morris 2010). Even a cursory review of the scholarly literature on in-between places is enough to demonstrate that the manner in which they are categorised is problematic. Referred to as “marginal”, “liminal” or “interstitial” in-between spaces places are typically grouped together with other ‘non-proper spaces’ in ill-defined categories, resulting in obscure generalisations such as ‘all spaces that cannot be categorised’. Inconsistencies in their description, in terms of scale, function and potential (Harrison & Schofield 2010, 249-281) are equally commonplace. Augé’s arguments discussing the parent category of ‘non-proper’ spaces 'are widely cited in discussions of this topic. In his widely-referenced work, Augé coins the term “non-lieux” (non-place) to refer to the unmediated spaces produced in supermodernity, for example, the architectural installations associated with the circulation of passengers and goods or with leisure and temporary residence (airports, hotel chains, malls) (Augé 1995, 78). These spaces evoke a shared identity on the basis of solitary contractuality of their users (passengers and customers), instead of the organic sociality of any other place (Augé 1995, 34, 94). As such they are non-places; conclusively but still vaguely defined as each “space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity” (Augé 1995, 83). On the other hand, this all-inclusive, debasing negation, recurring in their description1, hints at a series of negative aspects that these spaces hold. These are dead-end spaces that you cannot relate with as in ‘normal’ places of the city. They linger blank and blunt, devoid of meaningful social interaction. They are stable and perhaps under- utilized since there the city has yet to fulfil its potential but also in a state of future development, in order to be enveloped in the positive reality and acquire a status of affirmation, as a ‘place’ (Carmona & Wunderlich 2012, 223-244; Loukaitou‐Sideris 1996, 92). This passivity can only be understood, if perceived through the lenses of the ‘normality’, organized, produced and controlled by the neoliberal concept of the city and its relevant manipulation of the everyday life: how each space and area in the city should look like, if aligned with the authoritative scenario of an entrepreneurial, active, safe, colourful, sustainable and inclusive city, littered with the occasional non- places, counterparts of normality, that affirm the general concept (Lefebvre 1991). 1 See e.g. “Interstitial” and “liminal” places, as “not on the way to anywhere” (Graves-Brown 2016, 57-58 or Harrison & Schofield 2010, 227), “lost space” and “antispaces” (Trancik 1986, 3-4) or “slack” (Worpole & Knox 2007, 14).

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