Where Kifissos meets the sea – a hot and abandoned place between a harbor on one side and decomposing ship-wrecks on the other side – sometimes it’s possible to see man fishing in the water. Even people canoeing appear from time to time. Walking along the last couple of hundred meters through stones and trash, the division of the stream right at the mouth of the river attracted my attention.
When we first spoke about your practice, you told us that you never sketch or write when you visit a place, but rather depend solely on your senses; sight, smell, hearing, etc, and thus your memory. When you visited the area of Kifisou/Iera Odos, for example, it seems that you experienced a bit of sensory overload…the limited space, the loud passing cars, the heavy air… When you tap back into a memory, does it always come naturally, as if your senses become re-triggered or brought back to life, or do you ever struggle to remember?
In the second story of our series «De-constructing the Kifissos River», Alexander Schellow meets Arif, an immigrant from Bangladesh. In their discussion, Arif points out specific issues around his stay in Greece. Where the Iera Odos crosses the former riverbank, even in ancient Greece, there was a bridge. Myth says that it was a particular …
As we are selecting points from the dialogues Alexander Schellow had, we find some interesting coincidences in the story of the woman named Galateia who lives by the Kifissos River. One of them refers to the myth surrounding her name. Galateia is said to be a daughter of Nireas and Doris, deities of the calm sea. Furthermore, it is said that she married Pygmalion, King of Cyprus.
During his walks Alexander Schellow met Galateia, an 80-year old woman living in Kallithea, who today dedicates her life to feeding pigeons. The first post of our series «De-constructing the Kifissos» tells the story of this meeting by the river.