The Greek National Opera will present the new online festival Waves of Light, in collaboration with PPC and curated by Giorgos Koumendakis. Five PPC thermal power stations –in Aliveri, Ptolemaida, Megalopoli, Ladonas, and Lavrio– are brought to life through music and imagery. As part of the online festival Waves of Light, five art groups explore the old PPC factories and create five site-specific video performances for GNO TV, with music and scripts inspired by the sites, their history, and the people who once worked there.
PPC with its emblematic factories, the pioneering force in Greece’s electrification, has now become an agent of culture, offering its historical sites as a backdrop for artistic creation. Through the online festival Waves of Light, PPC contributes to transforming industrial landmarks into vibrant symbols of the connection between the past and the future, in which energy intertwines with art.
The first video of the online festival Waves of Light, titled L’éclairage revient (The Lighting Returns), was filmed at the Aliveri Thermal Power Station and will be broadcast on GNO TV for free, starting from 15 January 2025.
Drawing from writing pads and notes found at the factory, the film’s creators, Pantelis and Michalis Kalogerakis, in collaboration with director Panagiotis Andrianos, created a sound world in which Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry converses with the thoughts of Aliveri’s workers. Michalis Kalogerakis’ music, inspired by factory sounds, the lyre, electricity, and silence, becomes a connective link between images, reflections, and words.
Luminescence is the emission of light without producing heat; it signifies brightness and shine. It is a term associated with the concept of illumination, which metaphorically represents lucid thinking and acuteness. Illuminations was also the name Arthur Rimbaud gave to his first poetry collection.”
On our first visit to the factory site, we found notebooks, suggestions, and remarks from the workers. Those humble records reflect the collective effort of people to operate a machine designed to generate electricity.
Therefore, we wanted to highlight the writings that lay abandoned and covered in dust in the factory, paying special tribute to the people of Aliveri.
Thus, the workers who had worked there since 1953, dedicating their lives to the factory, became the Chorus, while Arthur Rimbaud took on the role of the prophet. As he wrote in 1873: “Millions of people don’t feel the need to know each other, they go through education, work life, and old age in such an identical manner, that their life’s length is innumerable times shorter than what crazy statistics suggest about the populations of Europe.”
Arthur Rimbaud’s prophetic poems engage in a dialogue with the workers’ words and poems by Pantelis Kalogerakis, while the music runs through the entire narration: the fury of the machine, the danger in the factory, and man’s non-stop labour. Through the sounds of the factory, lyre, electricity, and even silence, the music intertwines images with words.
The film is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the tragic incident at the Aliveri Lignite Mines on the 9th of December 1968.
The Public Power Corporation was established by Law 1468 on 7 August 1950. The first PPC project in Aliveri began in February 1951. It aimed to develop two lignite mines that could produce a daily output of 3,000 tonnes. The creation of the Aliveri Lignite Mines paved the way for utilising more lignite reserves in Greece through modern exploitation methods.
The First Energy Programme, which marked the initial phase of Greece’s electrification, was established in March 1951. It was implemented under the supervision of Ebasco, with funds from the state budget, the Marshall Plan, and Italian war reparations. Four hydroelectric plants were planned (on the Agras, Ladonas, Louras, and Acheloos rivers), along with a thermal power station in Aliveri. At the same time, the first transport lines and distribution networks were constructed.
The first PPC electric power production station, the Aliveri Thermal Power Station, was quickly built in Karavos, the port city of Aliveri. It started operating on 2 July 1953 (power: 80,000 KW). Lignite from the Aliveri Lignite Mines, situated at Brinias, was used as fuel. Lignite arrived at Karavos on trolleys. It was first directed to the Washing complex and then to the Thermal Power Station to fuel the tanks. Two modern turbine generators ensured an annual energy output of 600,000,000 KWH. During the 1953-1954 period, the Station consumed over 350,000 tonnes of lignite. Concurrently, the first settlements for the PPC staff were built – a corporate policy that would be consistently implemented in more projects throughout Greece.
The Aliveri Thermal Power Station was crucial for supporting the capital’s energy needs and the initial networks that were constructed until the completion of the hydroelectric plants outlined in the First Energy Programme.
