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Pavlos Hatzopoulos

First Event: The mobile phone of an assistant manager of Cosco subsidiary, Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT), rings while he is guiding two journalists around Piers II and III of Piraeus port. The assistant manager is urgently called by his interlocutor to solve a crisis. A client company is complaining that its reefer container has been damaged and the goods stored inside are endangered. The container has to be emptied of what seem to be bananas, and reloaded to another, unimpaired reefer. The assistant manager gives instructions to his interlocutor over the phone of the exact location within the terminal yard where the operation should take place. There is insufficient space at the current location of the damaged container for it to be stacked at the optimal angle so that its cargo can be emptied without the bananas spilling out into the yard.

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Pavlos Hatzopoulos and Nelli Kambouri

Above the Piraeus container terminals stands a place, which seems out of joint. This area, part of the municipality of Perama, expands over the steep hill, which rises above the peripheral road of the port of Piraeus.

The area began to be populated around the 1970s, when its first settlers moved here to encroach and inhabit mostly empty land. The first residents chose these hills because they were empty, they offered a nice view and a relatively easy access to the sea. Some of them remember that they could swim in the sea when they first arrived. In subsequent decades, the port expanded and there is no longer any access to the seafront. In spite of the expansion of the port, new inhabitants kept coming to the area buying and building on encroached land for very low prices. One man told us that when he first arrived here in the 1980s, the price for the land where he built his home “was equal to one month’s salary”. Although some of the owners have been able to legalize their property in subsequent amnesties, most buildings do not meet official urban planning standards: they still lack a permit, they cannot be registered in the cadastre, there are is lack of land ownership titles, but the residents are still required to pay the new property tax levied via electricity bills.

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Software, Machines, People and Things as Tangled Species

The logistical city from above