The factory space is an ecosystem of large buildings, raw materials, machines, workers, and many diverse professions related to the processes of production and distribution of goods.

Particularly during the initial stages of industrial development, many specialized craftsmen worked within the factory or around it, contributing thus to the production process. Many professions, such as stokers, coopers, and tanners, are nowadays extinct.

Kronos had stokers, distillers, sugar mill workers, tanners, winemakers, and coopers, an entire department of coopers, who manufactured the wine casks by hand. After manufacturing, the casks needed maintenance, because the rolling and handling was done by hand. They would fill up entire boats outside at the pier, carrying casks by hand. Later on, they built tanks and hoses to transport liquids to the ships’ containers.

MICHALIS GALANAKIS | INDUSTRIAL MEMORIES (2006)

Some of these crafts were brutal, painful, and dangerous, such as the work done by stokers, which was regarded as the "Dachau" of factories.

Stoking was the Dachau of factories during those years. Stokers had to shovel coal into huge carts from outside. These carts couldn’t roll easily, because coal fell on the tracks. They flipped the cart in the furnace room and shoveled the coal into the fuel chamber to produce steam. It was like Dachau. Until 1960. The workers there developed respiratory problems, and those who carried the coal also had eye conditions. They would open the access door, the fire would burn, and they would shovel.

GALANAKIS MICHALIS | INDUSTRIAL MEMORIES (2006)

The complex universe of the factory is revealed through stories that focus on relationships and interactions which shape industrial consciousness. Manual workers and craftsmen developed special relationships with spaces, machines, and factory products, depending on the nature of the production. The first day at TITAN brought to mind the arrival at a lunar landscape, dominated by reclining furnaces resembling rockets and quarries similar to dark burrows.

Depending on the period, the loading and unloading of ships at port included those anchored offshore in the Saronic Gulf, across the port grounds, and those near Pachi all the way to Vlycha, along the shoreline. The dockworker’s job was rich with images of fishing boats, ships, cranes, tugboats, stacks and cargos of timber, paper, steel, and other cargo.

The ships and fishing boats came up to a point where there were vessels, the so-called barges, in which they unloaded the merchandise and the latter transported it to the beach by tugboats or other means. The very first site where they stacked the merchandise is the location we now call Fonias. From what I recall, and from what my father used to tell me–he was a dockworker, too–here is where they unloaded it first. From '85 to '96-'97 the merchandise was abundant: scrap, timber, paper, anything you can imagine; the industry was booming, right? Ore, steel, copper, timber, newsprint…

GIORGOS ROKAS

The workers who operate or repair machinery, such as cranes, develop special ties with it. In the case of Chalyvourgiki, the maintenance of the crane is described as being similar to caring for a physical body, and the role of the maintenance technician is akin to that of a doctor.

The relationship with raw materials and products varied from one industry to the next. At the refineries of ELPE, the foundries of Chalyvourgiki, and the filling plants of PYRKAL workers avoided direct contact with materials, protected themselves from their effects, and paid special attention to their processing.

The product was not something they could own. Those filling up shells felt as if they were under constant threat and learned to live with the risk of a potential explosion; it was like being at a warzone. At the same time, they kept their distance from the ultimate destinations and applications of such products.

In the case of Kronos, however, the products would appear on the tables during the employers' and employees' lunch breaks. In a way, wines and spirits were a common point of reference for workers and employers alike: they could smell them, taste them, and narrate countless tales about them.

The factories were places of coexistence and socialization. In them people would form ideas, create friendships, develop bonds of kinship and establish communities. Breaks were an important aspect of everyday routine in industrial life and consciousness. It was a more relaxed zone: PYRKAL workers would stroll around gardens filled with poppies and wildflowers, while those fortunate enough to be working in more stable posts would devote time and attention to vegetable patches and olive trees.