Leonidas Oikonomou: What Do They Call The River

The rivers of Athens are the long-lost protagonists of its urban topography, being the ancient forces that shaped the capital’s terrain even before the city was conceived. Ilissos, once central in the local mythology for providing water and prosperity to the outskirts of classical Athens, began to deteriorate when the modern city started expanding, and after some lethal flooding events, it was converted into a drainage tunnel. Margarita Papageorgiou sings “What do they call the river?” in Nikos Koundouros’ acclaimed 1956 film “O Drakos”, already questioning the resonance of Ilissos in the collective consciousness of the time. As it happened with Kifisos and the other important streams of the Attica basin, Ilissos’ significance started to fade along with its appearance in the city.

However, the lost river is still an agent of urban fantasies, from the late movement to uncover part of its underground bed to the cruising areas around St. Foteini church. The obsession with recovering the river as part of the urban ecosystem is mainly based on examples from northern cities and seems to neglect the climate standards of Athens in favor of a European-type imaginary. Images of an idyllic river-washed neoclassical Athens are increasingly circulating on the internet. Today, the river, apart from the avenues that run over it, also retains a number of marginal spaces that allow the old Athenian terrain to exude its existence, albeit largely unnoticed.

At the same time, the city prides itself on being a tourist product that is enjoyed epidermally on double-decker tourist buses traversing the avenues, including those built over the former Ilissos riverbed, with the focus being on the mainstream history, the one that can be seen. Could Ilissos serve as an excuse to revisit the hidden stories of the city, following the memories and fantasies of the people who have experienced the river in its presence and absence?

In the project, passengers step onto the open upper deck of a tourist bus, specially configured to host a live stage for a band of up to five musicians. Once everyone is on board, the bus takes off and the guide starts recounting unknown stories of the river, of its past, present fantasies, and future. Along the way, special guests – musicians, artists, and ordinary residents of the riverside neighborhoods – are welcome on the bus to share their personal views of Ilissos in the form of interviews, live performances, or short acts from street level or the balcony of an adjacent apartment building (polykatoikia). Is Ilissos still visible nowadays? Can you hear the water running through its enclosed bed? Why are there so many motorcycle shops along Michalakopoulou and Kallirois avenues? Are there any remnants from the illegal settlements along Ilissos’ riverbanks? The route starts from the springs of Ilissos, in the foothills of Ymittos, and, with stops at selected points, ends at the mouth of the river in the Faliron Delta.

I have a fondness for naming projects after song titles or lyrics. It’s not just a matter of aesthetic choice—it helps the work borrow something intangible from the song’s emotional resonance. When I was applying for the Onassis AiR program, I titled my proposed project “What do they call the River?”—a line taken from Manos Hadjidakis’ 1950s song “Ilisos.” It seemed like an elegant way to hint at my research subject, without directly naming it. By the end of the fellowship, the decision not to name the river explicitly had acquired deeper significance.

In the months that followed, I had to build a methodology from the ground up. This involved reading several books on Athenian history—some rigorous, others delightfully naive—meeting and interviewing people with direct or tangential involvement with Ilisos, and locating as many related artworks and projects as I could. I shifted through archival footage from the period of the military junta, listened to podcasts, compiled a playlist of songs and ambient sounds, and collected old maps that still depicted the river’s course. I shot video along the avenues that now flow above the enclosed stream, made field recordings of everything from junkmen passing by to footsteps splashing in puddles, and even walked inside the underground riverbed. Naturally, I also scoured the web for any additional source material that might be relevant.