Onassis Stegi Season 2022-2023 English

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For the Onassis Foundation, Culture is an integral part of our DNA. It is one of the three major pillars of our activities, alongside Education and Health. From the very beginning, we have embraced a collective identity, moving from ‘I’ to ‘we’ through our public benefit initiatives, by bridging communities, fostering empowerment, and acting as a catalyst. At Stegi, we channel the energy that emanates from art, uncovering hidden gems in the capital, across the country, and around the world, using captivating digital culture. The performances, choreographies, music, and exhibitions featured in this year’s program at Stegi reflect a vision of a new way of life. This is because Culture, for us, means challenging stereotypes, asserting accessibility and inclusion, instigating conversations, fostering connections between different cultures, and showcasing inspiring examples, from the neighborhoods of Athens to Ioannina, from Alexandria to New York, and beyond. Onassis Stegi’s track-record to this date is a guarantee of what it can offer, as we strive to transcend borders and reach both the Greek and international audience. Stegi supports Greek artists who engage in a dialogue with our society, in an age when it demands space to breathe. Simultaneously, it serves as a bridge for foreign creatives who share the vision of subversion as a prerequisite for creation. The heart of Onassis Stegi is its people. It is the team that carefully selects and curates the experiences that move and engage us. It is the artists who trust us on our shared journey. And, it is the open community of our audience which supports Stegi because it presents not just one but multiple alternatives to our reality. Anthony S. Papadimitriou President of the Onassis Foundation


Respublika Photo: Andrej Vasilenko


And now, what are we to do? We do not wait. Nor do we carry on, unphased. We speak, and we roar for all those wounds from which we ought to bleed. And with the question “What’s the point of Art?”, comes the moment when we need it the most. May we find the words, may we give a name to every senseless cruelty that ravages our lives. May we set our feelings on a path that leads somewhere other than silence or violence. And what of joy? What of spontaneous joy, that human need we’ve come to miss? Where does that fit in? We make way for it, by whatever means, lest we get used to the darkness. May it lift us to our feet. Cognisance and joy often seem at odds. And so, we take to the mountains, all together, we put on pagan feasts and dance until dawn. Because in the end, life must win. Afroditi Panagiotakou


THE HOUSEp. 12 DRIVE YOUR PLOW O p. 16 THE DEAD OEDIPUS IN SEARCH O TRAVELSp. 26 OPEN DAYS ONASSIS A FUTURESp. 30 ROMALANDp. 32 CAVAFY p. 40 CONSTANTINOPOLIAD CAVAFY R I’M POSITIVEp. 44 CATARINA & THE B EMBODYING PASOLINIp. 50 ΝΕΚΥΙΑp. 5 p. 60 GRACE STEGI RADIO TAKEOVER MOSp. 70 ALL OF MY LOVEp. 74 RUNWA SLAMMINGp. 82 ONE SONGp. 86 THE T CONNECTS THE ONASSIS STEGI AN ROHTKOp. 94 CORRESPONDENCESp. BORDERLINE FESTIVAL 2024p. 110 WA p. 120 RESPUBLIKA WHY THE MOUNTA VISUAL CAVAFY p. 128


OVER THE BONES OF p. 22 OF COLONUS PYTHEAS AiRp. 28 MEDITERRANEAN Y ARCHIVE IN ATHENSp. 36 p. 42 RESIDENCE IN ALEXANDRIA BEAUTY OF KILLING FASCISTSp. 46 54 STRANGEp. 58 LAURA JANE p. 64 p. 68 R ONASSIS DANCE DAYS 2024 AY p. 78 WE ALL NEED THERAPY p. 80 TRADOXICALSp. 90 MUSIC p. 92 ND THE PANTEION UNIVERSITY . 98 HEATWAVEp.102 LAPIS LAZULIp. 106 AITING FOR GODOTp. 112 p. 126 AINS ARE BLACK ΙΙ


Theater

10

Upper Stage


11

The house


DIMITRIS KARANTZAS

Our house. Our little corner of the world. Our definitive retreat. Where we are safe. Or perhaps not? A new, original work—elliptical and revolving mainly around action in silence—comprises the textual material of the parable forged by Dimitris Karantzas and his team, featuring scarce dialogue, relentless tension, and two actors—Alexia Kaltsiki and Fidel Talampoukas—carrying out the daily housekeeping ritual at their home until the world’s violence breaks in and uproots all. In The House, two figures, a woman and a man (Siblings? Flatmates? Partners?) spend a typical day in their home, which may be in Athens, Tokyo, London, Madrid, Amsterdam, or New York. In any metropolis where people live in cell-houses, bereft of identity and where everything looks alike. The two figures perform their chores, arrange the shopping, pay the bills, fold the clothes, and tidy up the space and their structure. The art of doing nothing substantial is elevated to a poetic parable, with the daily routine seizing the hinges of the heroes’ thoughts and conquering the stage. Both entrench themselves to avoid confronting reality and soothe the nooses that the outside world has in store for them. Yet, a window feeds and is fed by them. A window of the house faces a quiet street in which passers-by stroll from time to time. As their day moves on, the window transforms into a funnel, a hellish kaleidoscope, in which various manifestations of our era’s violence and extreme instances of contemporary 21st-century history parade. The two figures, passive recipients of the images’ violence, try to follow up the maintenance of their space and microcosm until the moment violence invades their retreat and displaces them. All that remains is the hum of catastrophe.

3 0. 09

19 .11. 23

Theater

The 12

Upper Stage


Dimitris Karantzas returns to Onassis Stegi with a performanceparable on violence, image addiction, and the elimination of illusions or, otherwise, on the reality that sooner or later will come to greet you whatever you do to avoid it.

Written and Directed by: Dimitris Karantzas • Concept: Dimitris Karantzas, Geli Kalampaka, Tassos Karachalios Direction: Dimitris Karantzas • Video: Geli Kalampaka • Set: Clio Boboti • Costumes: Ioanna Tsami • Movement: Tassos Karachalios • Music: George Ramantanis • Lights: Dimitris Kasimatis • Assistant to Direction: Kelly Papadopoulou Set Designer Assistant: Angeliki Vassilopoulou Kampitsi • Line Production: Rena Andreadaki, Zoe Mouschi • With: Alexia Kaltsiki, Fidel Talampoukas • All the above contributed to the play’s dramaturgy • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.

House 13


Theater

14

Main Stage


15

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead


Simon McBurney

Directed by

Based on the titular novel by Olga Tokarczuk

7.1 0. 2

3

Drive Your Plow Over the 0 — 04 Bones of the Dead

Theater

16

Main Stage


A theatrical play on the border between crime thriller and black comedy. The new production of the iconic Complicité theater group is based on the multi-translated novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk. Why is the killing of animals a sport and a hobby and that of humans a murder?

Seven years after the unforgettable The Encounter, Simon McBurney and Complicité return to Onassis Stegi, with a play that glorifies physical theater and polyphonic storytelling as performed by a ten-member ensemble. The story of Tokarczuk begins in the depths of winter in a small community on a remote Polish mountainside. Men from the local hunting club are dying in mysterious circumstances and Janina Duszejko—an eccentric older local woman, environmentalist, amateur astrologist, and enthusiastic translator of William Blake—has her suspicions. She has been watching the animals with whom the community shares their isolated, rural home, and she believes they are acting strangely… Engaged in fierce resistance against the injustices around her, Janina refuses to be a prisoner of society and gender. Her actions ask questions both of the male world which surrounds her and of our deeper human intentions: what does it mean to be human and what does it mean to be animal, and can we separate the two? Why is the killing of animals a sport and that of humans a murder? This darkly comic, anarchic noir caused a seismic reaction in Tokarczuk’s native Poland due to its defiant attack on authoritarian structures, with right-wing press branding the writer an “eco-terrorist” and a national traitor. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a thought-provoking, wry, and otherworldly murder mystery tale about the cosmos, poetry, and the limitations and possibilities of activism. 17


Theater

18

Main Stage


Conceived and Directed by Simon McBurney • Revival Co-direction & Original Additional Direction: Kirsty Housley • Set & Costume Design: Rae Smith • Lighting Design: Paule Constable • Sound Design: Christopher Shutt • Video Design: Dick Straker • Dramaturgy: Laurence Cook, Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre • Movement Direction: Toby Sedgwick • Original Compositions: Richard Skelton • Associate Costume Designer: Johanna Coe • Staff Director: Christina Deinsberger • Wigs Designer: Susanna Peretz • Casting: Amy Ball CDG • Associate Lighting Design & Programming: Tom Pritchard • Associate Video Designer: Mark Morreau • With: Thomas Arnold, Nigel Barrett, Gemma Brockis, Johannes Flaschberger, Amanda Hadingue, Kïren Kebaïli-Dwyer, Weronika Maria, Toby Sedgwick, Sophie Steer, Alexander Uzoka • Production Manager: Niall Black • Associate Production Manager: Jamie Maisey • Company Stage Manager: Tisch • Deputy Stage Manager: Elspeth Watt • Technical Stage Manager: Sarah Ware • Wardrobe Supervisor: Heather Judge • Wardrobe Assistant: Amy Shearer • Lighting Supervisor: Tom Pritchard • Lighting Technician: Ben Webster • Stage Supervisor: Leo Liles • Sound Supervisors: Sean Gallacher and Amir Sherhan • Video Programmer: Caitlyn Russell • Video Supervisor: Ted Latus • Additional filmed content — Additional Video directed by Adam Smith @flatnosegeorge • Additional Video Production Company: Treatment Studio • A Complicité co-production with Barbican London, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Bristol Old Vic, Comédie de Genève, Holland Festival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, L'Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, The Lowry, The National Theatre of Iceland, Oxford Playhouse, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, and Theatre Royal Plymouth • Complicité — Senior Producer: Tim Bell • Project Producer: Josie Dale-Jones • Project Producer: Rima Dodd • Executive Director: Amber Massie-Blomfield • Artistic Director: Simon McBurney • Creative Engagement Producer: Natalie Raaum • Finance Manager: Louise Wiggins • Administrator: Emma Dawson • Administrative Assistant: Amy Sze • Tour — General Management: Jennie Green and Marlous Lang-Peterse for Great Leap Forward • Tour Booker: Kayte Potter for Great Leap Forward • Production Assistant: Sara Cormack for Great Leap Forward • Marketing Director: Emma Laugier for Emma Laugier Marketing • Marketing Manager: Suzannah Bowles for Emma Laugier Marketing • Marketing Assistant: Matthew Meldrum for Emma Laugier Marketing • Surtitles' translation: Vassilis Douvitsas

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead


Stills from the film’s pre-production.

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21

Oedipus in Search of Colonus


LOUKIA

ALAVANOU

OEDIPUS IN SEARCH OF COLONUS 10.10 —

30

.11. 23

The virtual reality installation that represented Greece at the 59th Venice Biennale comes to Stegi -1. Its protagonists are members of the Roma community from Nea Zoi in Aspropyrgos, West Attica, who follow in the footsteps of Oedipus. Digital

22

Exhibition Hall -1


Documentary, fiction, drone flights, slapstick, video clips inspired by the trans-Balkan pop culture of contemporary Roma artists, sophisticated pranks, VR technology, hemispherical domes, and hybrid posture chairs— inspired by the architect of modernist utopia Takis Zenetos—comprise Loukia Alavanou’s installation Oedipus in Search of Colonus. In the semi-lit exhibition space of Onassis Stegi at -1 Level and within a theatrical atmosphere, the visitors of the installation are led to the specially formulated hemispherical domes, inside of which are the hybrid posture chairs—a cross between an office chair and an anatomical TV recliner chair—that, due to their ergonomic design, allow the visitors to experience the 360° spectrum of the film unrestrained. In addition, the sound design of the VR film is directional and, like the image, is responsive to the movements of the visitors, culminating in an unparalleled experience. With her installation, Loukia Alavanou invites the audience to a journey through time, with a plot revolving around the themes of aging and death, human dignity and universal freedom, and permeated by our current societal reality, immigration, displacement, minorities, and human rights. Alavanou has previously been an Onassis Foundation scholar and is currently a fellow artist at ONX Studio, the New York-based and global-wide initiative led by Onassis Foundation on Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality. Regarding Oedipus in Search of Colonus, she notes: “I was visiting an off-the-map area to the west of Athens when I got lost and found myself in the Roma ghetto, which is one of the toughest places in Greece. This Roma community moved here in the 1980s from Thebes, just like Oedipus, who was also from Thebes. There is actually an assumption that the path Oedipus took on his way from Thebes to Colonus passed through this precise location, Nea Zoi – which interestingly means ‘New Life’.”

Εxhibition Credits — Artist: Loukia Alavanou • Curator: Heinz Peter Schwerfel • Production Consultant: Christina Pigaki • Produced by: VRS [Virtual Raw Synergy] • Architectural Study & Installation Design: Korres Engineering • Head of Construction: Martin Tabaku • Sound Design: Manolis Manousakis • Lighting Design Concept: Sakis Mpirmpilis • VR Consultant: Michael Tebinka • Sound Engineer: Kostas Stilianou • Technical Support VR360: Giannis Loggovitis • Construction Assistants: Kastriot Fetahu, Vilson Fetahu • 59th Venice Biennale — Commissioner at 59th Venice Biennale: National Gallery of Greece—Alexandros Soutsos Museum • Production Advisor at the Greek Pavilion: Christina Pigaki • Exhibition Catalogue Design & Layout: Nowhere Studio • Research Advisor at the Greek Pavilion: Yorgos Tzirtzilakis • Acoustics Advisor at the Greek Pavilion: Georgios Theodoropoulos • Associate Curator at the Greek Pavilion: Yannis Arvanitis • Assistant Curator at the Greek Pavilion: Phaidonas Gialis • Executive Producer at the Greek Pavilion: Despina Mouzaki • Architectural Concept at the Greek Pavilion: Loukia Alavanou in collaboration with AREA—Architecture Research Athens • Film Credits — Produced by VRS [Virtual Raw Synergy] • Writer & Director: Loukia Alavanou • Actors — Oedipus: Panagiotis Tsiriklos • Antigone: Mary Louloudaki • Creon: Evangelos Tsiriklos • Theseus: Orfeas Vasilaris • Narrator’s Voice: Alexandros Mylonas • Antigone’s Voice: Rena Kyprioti • Voices of Oedipus & Creon: Gregory Patrick Karr • Associate Producer: Afroditi Panagiotakou • 360 Cinematographer: Giannis Kanakis • Music & Lyrics: Elbrus Hysenaj • Editing: Natalia Papadopoulou, Loukia Alavanou • Animation: Haris Lalousis, Em Kei • VR Post-Production: VRS and East City Films • 360 Ambisonics Sound Design & Sound Synthesis: Manolis Manousakis • Mediators / Translators from and to Romani: Despina Tsiriklou, Matina Vavouli • Production Manager: Nikitas Vasilakis • The first edition of the film Oedipus in Search of Colonus is part of the Onassis Collection and was powered by Onassis Culture, supported by PCAI/Polygreen Culture and Art Initiative • The installation’s presentation at the 59th Venice Art Biennale, curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, was realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, powered by the Onassis Foundation, and implemented by the National Gallery, as well as the further support of the Greek Film Center, NEON Organization, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and OUTSET • The film was initially developed at the program FEATURE EXPANDED (HOME, Manchester / awarded by Lo schermo dell’arte, Florence) where the director had received a scholarship. 23


Music

24

Main Stage


25

Pytheas Travels


Pytheas Four musicians, a video with landscapes of Tinos and Northern Norway, a party on board, and AI developers meeting in the belly of a whale. A surrealistic cruise from the Mediterranean to the northern countries, with the journey of Pytheas the Greek—the unassailable explorer of antiquity—in its very center.

Travels Music

26

Main Stage


HYPERCOMF

&

MAJA

S. K.

RATKJE

Do you find it hard to float through life? Do you feel tangled in the nets of your daily routine and seek escape? Embark on one of the state-of-the-art vessels of Pytheas Travels cruise fleet and become part of the most oceanic experience of your life. A musical cruise with four musicians of the Ergon Ensemble as passengers and a video screening as a backdrop: a compilation of animation, live shootings on board and in various locations in Tinos and Northern Norway, as well as green screen footage, all inspired by the sea element. The immersive experience of Pytheas Travels includes furthermore many surrealistic touches that involve opulent parties, a great wildfire, and AI developers that meet in the belly of the whale. Shall we hop on board? The title of the performance refers to the historic journey of Pytheas the Greek—the Columbus of antiquity— where in 325 BC sailed north from Marseilles to a place he called Ultima Thule, the mythical island, to reach the “frozen seas.” Unable to extend the exploration of the mythical lands of Northern Europe, Pytheas returned to the Mediterranean to document his legendary journey in a manuscript titled On the Ocean which vanished forever in the great fire of the Library of Alexandria. Pytheas Travels is a staged audiovisual simulation of the experience of being on board a passenger vessel, traveling from the Mediterranean to the Northern Seas. It is a maritime story, an imaginary journey, and a critical insight into the mass tourism industry and its consequences on environmental, cultural, and societal structures. The music score is courtesy of pioneering Norwegian composer and performer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, for whom in 2015 the Financial Times noted that “she brings a feral disregard for conventional form, combined with an extravagant imagination, linking it all to a fascination with the human voice and its communicative possibilities. Her works are dramatic, engaging, and wildly diverse.”

15 13 —

.10 .

23

Created by Hypercomf and Maja S. K. Ratkje • Art Direction & Film Direction: Hypercomf • Music Composition: Maja S. K. Ratkje • Greek Performing Ensemble — Ergon Ensemble: Manos Ventouras, French horn • Andreas-Rolandos Theodorou, bass trombone • Konstantinos Panagiotidis, violin • Dimitris Travlos, cello • Norwegian Performing Ensemble — Tøyen Fil og Klafferi: Hanne Jones Rekdal, flute/bassoon • Elena Perales Andreu, bass clarinet • Eira Bjørnstad Foss, violin • Marianne Baudouin Lie, cello • Tove Margrethe Erikstad, cello (onstage Oslo) • Animation, Modelmaking & VFX by Out . There • Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou • Costume Design: Lita Kokkonari • Director of Photography: Alexandros Tiniakos • Pytheas Travels is a co-production of Onassis Stegi and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway), in the framework of the Transmissions project, funded by the EEA Grants and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021. 27


OPEN DAYS

20.10

0 1. 0 3 4 2 8.0 3 2 . 2 . . . 23 01.12 6. 24 24 26.04 A series of events that take place throughout the year, open to the general public.

Onassis AiR Fellows

28

Stegi


ΟNASSIS AiR

Open Days by Onassis AiR is an opportunity to meet the creators and Onassis AiR Fellows and learn more about their artistic research through short talks, presentations, performances, or screenings that opt to shed light on their projects’ courses. The various Open Days events are formulated according to the artistic practice of the fellows participating every time, making each Open Day utterly unique. At the Onassis AiR Open Days events for the 2023-24 season, artists from all over the world participating in the program will present their work to the public. Tune in at onassis.org for the full schedule. 29


What is the electronic sound of the Mediterranean? Inspired by the past and in tune with the future, the Mediterranean Futures festival is part of a series of online and physical events that turn up the volume of the region’s electronic music scene.

Curated by: Voltnoi & Quetempo, stegi.radio

MEDITERRANEA Music

30

Kypseli Municipal Market


Seeking geographical connections and alternative narratives through the culture, ideas, and peoples of the Mediterranean, the 2023 Mediterranean Futures by Stegi Radio—with Athens at its core—builds a bridge from the Mediterranean basin to the rest of the world, to foster a locus of encounter between the local and the international electronic scene. Futuristic, oriented towards the dancefloor but also charged with traditional elements and defying the limitations imposed by borders, it constructs an expanded network of cultural communication, a sono-geographical hub of discourse between the archipelagoes. Stay tuned to onassis.org for the detailed program.

1 2 1.

AN

0.

23

FUTURES 31


Romáland Once upon a time, between real and unreal Seven years after Clean City, directors Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris return to Onassis Stegi with a new theatrical production that walks the line between documentary and fiction. Its theme is the lives of Greek Roma.

02—2

6

.11 . 23

Theater

ANESTIS AZAS & PRODROMOS TSINIKORIS 32

Main Stage


Carefree nomads? Great artists? Victims of social structures, or dangerous and delinquent? What, after all, are Roma? And what are they not? According to historians, the community of Greek Roma can be traced back to the 15th century, making it one of the oldest in Europe. Based on the number of Greek words within the Romany language, linguistics studies reveal its historical connection to Byzantium and the Greek territory. Yet, until the end of the Greek dictatorship (1974), Greek Roma were stateless. Despite their naturalization in 1979 and the steps taken since then, a great part continues to live exposed to extreme poverty conditions and multiple vulnerabilities in ghettoized areas or camps, bearing the stigma of the dangerous “other/stranger,” forever condemned to an intermediate state, a constant “between real and unreal,” as the catchphrase with which the gypsy tales begin goes. During the past year, the killings of two young Roma following a police pursuit occupied public opinion and mass media: Nikos Sampanis in Athens and Kostas Fragoulis in Thessaloniki. The two cases will soon be tried by the Greek justice system, and together they form two iconic events with Roma as victims, who, however, are not the only ones. From the worker accident at the collapsed bridge in Patras to the eight-year-old Olga in Keratsini, who was trapped by a sliding factory gate and died helpless, monstrous incidents of violence and indifference reveal that the Roma lives in Greece are often treated as “lives not worth living.”1 But, concurrently and in direct contrast with the actual incidents of racial violence, the public imaginary is keen to see Roma people as blithesome entertainers, children of nature who live outside norms and rules. However, is there such a vast difference between Roma and “Gadjo/Baleme”? Specifically, if we go back a few generations, we will find many men and women—among them our grandmothers and grandfathers—who didn’t even finish primary school, were married against their will, sacrificed their desires to follow their father’s profession, and even lived as wandering nomads who based their survival on constant movement. Why is it then that the lives of Roma seem so distant to us? Following months of research from Zefyri and Aspropyrgos to Thessaloniki, Larissa, and Serres, the Romáland performance aspires to tell an inverted journey across Greece’s contemporary history through the perspective of Roma. Ascribing to the tradition of the documentary theater genre, the performance is shaped by the participation of Roma protagonists, who narrate their real stories live, and aims to highlight the multiple social exclusions they face as well as their daily efforts to overcome them. Seven years after Clean City, the most-traveled theatrical production of Onassis Stegi in Europe, starring immigrant cleaning women in Greece, the two directors-dramaturges Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris return, and this time they attempt to approach the lives of Greek Roma, looking back at facts, toying with stereotypes, and evading romanticization.

Research, Text & Direction: Anestis Azas, Prodromos Tsinikoris • Set & Costumes: Dido Gkogkou • Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou • Music & Sound Design: Panagiotis Manouilidis • Video: Oliwia Twardowska • Scientific Consultant: Giorgos Tsitiridis • Assistant Director: Avraam Goutzeloudis • Assistant in Dramaturgy: Michalis Pitidis • Dramaturgy Consultant: Camille Louis • Performers’ Training: Liana Taousiani • Set & Costume Designer Assistant: Margarita Tzannetou • Line Production: Zoe Mouschi – Rena Andreadaki • With: Giorgos Vilanakis, Theodosia Georgopoulou, Avraam Goutzeloudis, Angeliki Evangelopoulou, Melpo Saini • Production: Onassis Stegi • The research for the performance was conducted with the help and support of the NGO “Klimaka” and the Confederation of Greek Roma “HELLAN PASSE” • Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program • Surtitles’ translation in English: Memi Katsoni • Simultaneous Surtitling: Yannis Papadakis 1

A phrase used by the Nazi regime to describe people it considered to have no “right to life.” 33


FROM The universal poet C. P. Cavafy continues his journey around the world. Following the successful Archive of Desire festival in New York, both the Cavafy Archive, a new space in the center of Athens dedicated to the poet's archive, and the Cavafy House in Alexandria, restored by the Onassis Foundation, are due to open their doors to the public.

TO AND C. P. Cavafy

34


NEW YORK

ATHENS ALEXANDRIA 35


Cavafy Archive

21.11. 23 C. P. Cavafy

in Athens 36

Plaka, Athens


A SPACE OPEN TO ALL, PUBLIC AND SCHOLARS ALIKE.

The Cavafy Archive will open in the heart of the historic center of Athens in the Fall of 2023, on Frynichou Street in Plaka. The new space will host both the poet’s archive and library, as well as a collection of personal items and artworks that bear references to him. Following the publication of the digital collection of the Cavafy Archive in March 2019, which rendered the archive open and accessible to all, the Onassis Foundation responds once more to the challenges of openness, accessibility, and dissemination of the archive. It invests in the establishment of the Cavafy Archive, a venue that will house the poet’s archive and collections in Athens. Another international pole of attraction of cultural heritage opens its doors to all residents, scholars, and visitors, in an architectural design by the Flux-office of Eva Manidaki and Thanassis Demiris. Design: Flux-office • Scientific Advisory Committee: Peter Jeffreys (Suffolk University, USA), Gonda Van Steen (King's College London), Amalia Pappa (Deputy Director General of the General State Archives of Greece) 37


C. P. Cavafy

38

Onassis Library


39

Constantinopoliad


Constant 21

—26.11. 23

The interactive performance by visual artist Sister Sylvester and Egyptian musician Nadah El Shazly is not easily described or categorized, yet it is experienced with all cavafian senses. Appearing like an open invitation-challenge to a journey at the borders of genders and diverse worlds, between East and West, to what you expect and what you have experienced through Cavafy, Constantinopoliad, the multi-prismatic and interactive performance devised by visual artist Kathryn Hamilton, aka Sister Sylvester, along with Egyptian musician Nadah El Shazly, visualizes the empty and blank pages of “Constantinopoliad: an epic,” the diary kept by Cavafy when he and part of his family had to flee Alexandria in a hurry for Constantinople. The three-dimensional handmade book offered to you during the performance becomes the beginning of a multifaceted artistic experience accompanied by music, narration, a sound installation, and reading, even touching upon video installation and singing. With the diary entries of a young Cavafy during his journey to 19th-century Ottoman Constantinople as a point of reference, the two performers invite us to shape our own journey, actively participating in what he wrote, lived, listened to, and fantasized. “How can we truly reconstruct the days and nights of Cavafy if we cannot hear the music he was listening to?” is the question that emerges through the book’s pages; the answer comes from the performance that unfolds before our very eyes. Nothing in this performance is destined to be forsaken, even after you have long exited the room; in this multi-prismatic wonder that Constantinopoliad unfolds—as a coming-of-age journey of C. P. Cavafy—we encounter all our own ghosts.

C. P. Cavafy

40

Onassis Library


tinopoliad SISTER SYLVESTER — NADAH EL SHAZLY

Writer, Director, Book Co-Designer: Sister Sylvester • Composer & Performer: Nadah El Shazly • Video Designer: Tei Blow • Dramaturgy: Andrew Kircher • Illustrator and Book Co-Designer: efrîn nowar • Lighting Design & Technical Direction: Bruce Steinberg • Sound consultant: Garth MacAleavey • Sound Engineer: Daniel Dominguez • The performance was first presented in April 2023 as part of the Onassis Foundation Archive of Desire festival in New York, which was consecrated to the 160th anniversary of the birth of C. P. Cavafy.

41


Cavafy

House

The Onassis Foundation completes the restoration and return to prominence of the apartment where C. P. Cavafy lived.

Starting with the acquisition of the Cavafy Archive, its digitization and disposal to the public and scholars, the Onassis Foundation undertook at the beginning of 2022 the restoration of the Cavafy House, to turn it into a hub for visitors from all over the world. One year later, the Cavafy House opens its doors to the public. Under the architectural design by the Flux-office of Eva Manidaki and Thanassis Demiris, the place where C. P. Cavafy spent most of his life and created a large part of the work that elevated him to the status of a globally-renowned poet has been restored and refurbished, to bring to the fore the image of the residence during the years the poet lived there, shed light on the relationship of the poet with the city of Alexandria and the impact of his work to this very day, and transport us back in time. Breathing images stemming from his biography acquire shape within an apartment in the center of Alexandria. The restoration of the Cavafy House was realized in collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, which is also its managing entity. Design: Flux-office • Scientific Advisory Committee: Peter Jeffreys (Suffolk University, USA), Hala Halim (New York University), Gonda Van Steen (King's College London), Alexander Kazamias (Coventry University), Louisa Karapidaki (Member of the Board of Directors, Hellenic Foundation for Culture; Head of the Museum Collection, Academy of Athens)

C. P. Cavafy

in Alexandria 42

Alexandria



LGBTQIA+

44

Main Stage


For the sixth year at Onassis Stegi, people living with and without HIV talk about their lives in an open discussion about inclusion, visibility, and acceptance, against stigma and prejudices. In collaboration with the Greek Association of People Living with HIV “Positive Voice”, we provide a floor to stories that need to be heard out loud and inspire, so that no one suffers anymore from taboos, ignorance, and inequalities. Together, on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage, we speak openly again and again, until every human being claims the rights that should be universal. Science has moved forward. It’s time for society to follow suit.

I’m Positive “It's important to have your hand held by those who love you”

29.11. 23 45


CATARINA & THE BEAUTY OF

Theater

46

Main Stage


FASCISTS

TIAGO

.12 .

23

KILLING

8 0 04—

RODRIGUES 47


The members of a family in southern Portugal have the strange tradition of leaving their normal lives once a year to kill a fascist. This dystopian play by the artistic director of the Festival d'Avignon addresses the burning issue of our time: What does fascism actually mean? Theater

48

Main Stage


It is a beautiful evening. The family is gathered in their country house somewhere in the Portuguese south. The wild boar is roasting. Asparagus with eggs is ready. Yet, something seems not right. Why everyone—both men and women—is called Catarina? And why is everyone wearing floral aprons and skirts? Everything is part of an absurd ritual. It is because this family kills fascists; a tradition followed by all its members for over 70 years. It began in 1954, in retaliation for the murder of 26-year-old revolted peasant woman Catarina Eufémia, an “Antigone” of her times—a real person and an icon of the resistance against the dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974. As of then, one fascist and woman killer must die every year on the altar of revenge for her unjust loss. We are now in 2028, and while a totalitarian regime has usurped power, Catarina, the family's youngest member, is about to kill her first fascist, who has been kidnapped precisely for this purpose. “It is a day of celebration, a day of beauty and death,” as her family says. However, young Catarina refuses to proceed with killing the hostage. Then a family feud breaks out. Ghosts of the past arise and request revenge. Dark prophecies demand the sacrifice to be fulfilled. Unresolved questions emerge. What is fascism? Is there room for violence in the fight for a better world? Are we allowed to violate the laws of democracy in our effort to defend it? A thrilling contemporary tragedy with an unexpected ending that has been described as “coup-like.” From a theater creator who restates the concept of humanism today in terms of an agonizing dialectic, the Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues, artistic director of the Festival d’Avignon, who was first introduced to the Greek audience by Onassis Stegi in 2016 with his work By Heart.

Text & Direction: Tiago Rodrigues • Artistic collaboration: Magda Bizarro • Stage Design: F. Ribeiro • Light: Nuno Meira • Costumes: José António Tenente • Sound Design & Original Music: Pedro Costa • Choirmaster & Vocal Arrangements: João Henriques • Voices-over: Cláudio de Castro, Nadezhda Bocharova, Paula Mora, Pedro Moldão • Choreography: Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz • Weapon coordinator: David Chan Cordeiro • Translation: Thomas Resendes (French), Daniel Hahn (English), Vincenzo Arsilio (Italian), Igor Metzeltin (German), Yannis Papadakis (Greek) • Surtitles: Patrícia Pimentel • With: Isabel Abreu, Romeu Costa, António Fonseca, Beatriz Maia, Marco Mendonça, António Parra, Carolina Passos Sousa, Rui M. Silva • Production: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Lisboa) • Executive production: Festival d’Avignon • Co-production: Wiener Festwochen, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (Modena), Théâtre de la Cité - CDN Toulouse Occitanie & Théâtre Garonne Scène européenne Toulouse, Festival d’Automne à Paris & Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, Comédie de Caen, Théâtre de Liège, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens, BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Le Trident – Scène nationale de Cherbourg-enCotentin, Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães), O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo). • Support: Almeida Garrett Wines, Cano Amarelo, Culturgest • Copyright Spectacle / Show © Filipe Ferreira; Tiago Rodrigues © Christophe Raynaud de Lage • Thanks to Mariana Gomes, Rui Pina Coelho, Margarida Bak Gordon, Rita Mendes and the team of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. We also thank Sara Barros Leitão and Pedro Gil who, even though they are no longer on stage with us, will always remain Catarina. • Music from the show: Hania Rani (“Biesy” and “Now, Run”), Joanna Brouk (“The Nymph Rising” and “Calling the Sailor”), Laurel Halo (“Rome Theme III” and “Hyphae”), and Rosalía (“De Plata”) • Created in September 2020 at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães, Portugal) • Nominated in the Best international show category of the Premis de la Crítica, in Catalonia • Winner of the Best Foreign Show Award UBU 2023 in Italy • Winner of the Best Foreign Show Award from the Critics Association in 2023 in France • Age guidance 16+ • Duration: 2h30 49

Catarina & the Beauty of Killing Fascists


OLIVIER SAILLARD & TILDA SWINTON

11— 1

3 2 . 6.12

EMBODYING PASOLINI Theater

50

Exhibition Hall -1




Oscar-awarded Tilda Swinton appears in a ritualistic performance, featuring the costumes from Pasolini's iconic films: from The Gospel According to St Matthew and A Thousand and One Nights to Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. “Lacrimae rerum” (“[there are] tears of [or for] things”): the meaning of this Latin dictum is called to surface by the special performance/contemporary ritual Embodying Pasolini, as the costumes and the props in the films of the unforgettable Pier Paolo Pasolini, as unconventionally they are revealed to us and lay ripe for discovery, can genuinely bring tears to our eyes. At once a ritual-like performance and an absolutely idiosyncratic tribute to the great nonconformist filmmaker, poet, and activist Pier Paolo Pasolini—who was brutally murdered in 1975 at the age of 53—is the original performance/live installation conceived by fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard and actress Τilda Swinton, constant artistic collaborators throughout the years. High fashion meets high art, with the androgynous body of Tilda Swinton as a canvas, on which unfurls and registers as real a collection of more than thirty costumes and props designed by Danilo Donati during the 1960s and 1970s and crafted by atelier Farani for the films of the Italian director. Costumes and props that are works of art in and of themselves: from the biblical costume of Herod in The Gospel According to St. Matthew in 1964, inspired by the caftans of the Bedouin tribe and dyed in emerald green—as if it jumped out from a painting of El Greco—to the entirely handmade and adorned with feathers and shells costume and crown worn by Silvana Mangano in her role as Queen Jocasta in 1967’s Oedipus Rex and from there to the costumes and props of the exotic Arabian Nights and the sweeping Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Only in this case, Swinton herself, like a silent window-shop mannequin, wears the costumes one by one, for all to see. Captured behind the fabric, she does not interpret the roles of the actors who wore them first. Instead, her role is precisely the absence of any role, revealing another costume, an orphan one, disentangled from the body, the actors, and the films, a costume with the capacity to stir emotions as it flashes in its hieratic detachment.

Created and interpreted by Olivier Saillard and Tilda Swinton • Artistic collaboration: Gaël Mamine • Assistant: Nafsika Keke • Costumes: Danilo Donati & Ateliers Farani, directed by Luigi Piccolo • Wooden shapes: Pieroni workshops, directed by Massimo Pieroni • Studio manager: Aymar Crosnier • Produced by Studio Olivier Saillard • Co-produced by Zetema Progetto Cultura, Roma and Azienda Speciale PalaExpo • With the support of the Ateliers Farani – Luigi Piccolo for the costumes and the Laboratorio Pieroni • Acknowledgment: Romain Blot, Clara Tosi Pamphili 53

Embodying Pasolini


GIANNIS AGGELAKAS

ΝΕΚ Direction

CHRISTOS PAPADOPOULOS

Theater x — Music

54

Main Stagex


28

. 0 1 . 24

ΚΥΙΑ 21.12. 23 —

ODYSSEY WITH KEYBOARDS, VOICES AND ELECTRIC SAW 55


“I dreamed of an evocative narration of the Odyssey” declares Giannis Aggelakas coming for the first time to the Main Stage of Stegi with a hybrid show that is neither a concert nor a performance. What it is, it is an echotropic experience. Theater — Music

56

Main Stage


Nekyia is a unique viewing and listening experience of the most arresting rhapsody of the Homeric epic, forged by the premier creator of the Greek rock scene, Giannis Aggelakas, on original music and the Europe-wide emerging choreographer and stable collaborator of Onassis Stegi, Christos Papadopoulos, on stage direction. On 21 December, the longest night of the year, we shall be led to the most otherworldly, arcane, and almost occult Homeric landscape: that of Odyssey’s Book 11, which details the descent of Odysseus (Ulysses) to Hades. The viewer is not invited to an ordinary dance or theater performance. They will not typically attend a concert, but rather a sonotropic state in the form of a ritual, a distinct experience of “descent” with the original music score by Giannis Aggelakas and the images of Papadopoulos as companions. Narration on stage is performed by Olia Lazaridou, as well as Giannis Aggelakas. Together with two musicians, four female voices, and the sound design of Coti K., they accompany us on a “surround” descent into Hades, our core emotions, and deepest selves.

Based on Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey • Concept, Original Music & Curation by Giannis Aggelakas • Direction: Christos Papadopoulos • Orchestration: Giannis Aggelakas, Elias Baglanis • Sound Design: Coti K. • Set Design: Clio Boboti • Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou • Costumes: Eleftheria Arapoglou • Dramaturgy Consultant: Theodora Kapralou • Director Assistant: Eirini Boudali • Narration: Olia Lazaridou & Giannis Aggelakas • Musicians: Elias Baglanis (keyboards), Nikos Giousef (musical saw) • Vocals: Nefeli Bravaki, Eirini Koliousi, Panagiota Koliousi, Myrto Stavrakidou Zachou • Production - Line Production: Wild Rose Productions / Giorgis Dragatakis – Evangelia Petraki • Line Production: CULTOPIA / Kassie Kafetsi • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. 57

Nekyia


22

& 3 —23.12. 2

30.12. 2 — 9 2 3

Strange Music

58

Exhibition Hall -1


The new concert series of Onassis Stegi is called “Strange.” Listen out loud at the Exhibition Hall -1 of Onassis Stegi to the future of the local scene.

Four young music curators, Whystine, Vasilis Paxinos, Saber Rider, and KOKETA MC exclusively select unexpected sounds that reflect the future of the local scene on four distinct dates in December ’23. Drawing inspiration from an array of diverse musical plateaus that range from electronic dance music and experimentation to hip-hop, they invite artists from the Athenian music scene to present an original, live audiovisual production. The support of young artists and cultural professionals at every stage of their career, especially those who make their very first steps, is essential to the fostering of a vital and thriving music ecosystem. The “Strange” concert series is a manifestation of Onassis Stegi’s unwavering commitment to nurture and support new talents that work in the field of contemporary music, while at the same time, it aims to suggest a new meeting point among the music community, where its members can exchange ideas and work with the most experienced technical crew of the city. Gathering together artists that push creative boundaries and an audience thirsty to discover the next “new sound,” the Strange series is here loud and clear to host and highlight the city’s new talents.

Curated by

Organised by: stegi.radio

WHYSTINE, VASILIS PAXINOS, SABER RIDER, KOKETA MC 59


.2 4

LAURA JANE GRACE 13.01

The punk rock icon performs an explosive concert at the Onassis Stegi Exhibition Hall –1, which is primed to become the underground music stage of the neighborhood of Neos Kosmos. Anarchist musician, Emmy nominee, writer, and LGBTQIA+ activist. We heard her in Christos Sarris’ Walls, the short film presented at the Archive of Desire festival, giving a jarring performance of a song inspired by the titular poem of C. P. Cavafy. Laura Jane Grace is a leading figure in the contemporary rock scene, both in her personal career and at the helm of the band Against Me!, which she founded in Naples, Florida, in the late 1990s. In 2012, the revelation of her gender transition in Rolling Stone magazine was a defining moment in her career, bringing a significant issue to the fore and helping to raise further awareness around gender issues and identities in the music world. Two years later, she released one of her seminal albums, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, a creative statement of profound significance for an entire generation, as well as Against Me!’s most successful album to this day. As for her band, it has created highly personal and politically charged music that incorporates various influences and elements from numerous musical genres. The strong critique they put forth through their lyrics reflects their struggle for individual and social freedom, as well as their resistance to social injustices. Laura Jane Grace’s music is undoubtedly political. “Initially, I had been attracted to punk and anarchism because I saw them as a means to make a positive change, where everyone was equal. While there were some people in the scene who upheld those values, the more punks I dealt with, the more I realized that most of them were privileged white kids taking advantage of this idealism.” In 2016, she released her much-anticipated autobiography, entitled TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. The book, co-written with journalist Dan Ozzi, was named one of the “100 Greatest Music Books of All Time” by Billboard magazine, while Harper’s Bazaar noted that “the memoir establishes her as at once a transgender icon and a modern day heroine.” Moreover, it was featured in highly popular American television shows, such as Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, who heralded it as “a truly gripping tale, and a beautiful exploration of what a human being is.” In recent years, Laura Jane Grace has released solo albums, at times with her new band, Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers, which also includes the drummer of Against Me!, Atom Willard, and sound engineer Marc Hudson. With her albums Bought to Rot (2018), Stay Alive (2020), and At War with the Silverfish (2021), she continues to gather all her inner fears, rage, and agony and unleash them like a Molotov cocktail hurled into the abyss. Music

60

Exhibition Hall -1



Music

62

Main & Upper Stage, Exhibition Hall -1, 5th Floor


With over 160 producers in continuous 24-hour broadcasts across two channels and more than 5,000 archived shows, Stegi Radio's program is a diverse composition of rhythm, extraversion and experimentation. 63

Stegi Radio Takeover


STEGI RADIO

The Stegi web radio enters its 4th year of broadcast, always growing and evolving. This year, Stegi Radio’s broadcasts are louder than ever.

Movement Radio grows bigger, evolves, transforms, and completes three years of operation. The online radio station of Onassis Stegi, staying true to the nature of its name, never stands still. Moving on to greater things, Movement is renamed Stegi Radio, and, as in every evolutionary process, it maintains its defining traits: it preserves its strong ties within the Athenian music scene, the Mediterranean basin, and the rest of the world, and moves forward with its gaze fixed on the future. With Athens as its steady base of operations, it helms the curation of Onassis Stegi’s music happenings and extends throughout the city with events, talks, and workshops. Likewise, it furthers its research on the musical and cultural currents of the Mediterranean, traversing an imaginary archipelago beyond geographical borders and boundaries. It focuses on musical and cultural communities and music creation; it seeks novel ideas and sounds that reflect the new musical production as well as its historical course, creating an ever-expanding network between the cities of the Mediterranean and the rest of the globe. As Stegi Radio, it remains a transmitter that records and disseminates the past, present, and future, serving as a cultural glue between people, communities, and artistic creation. Through a large and constantly enriched archive, it tries to tackle the question: How can a radio station express the fluidity of cultural exchanges that have shaped the Mediterranean area? Counting more than 160 producers on a constant 24-hour stream, with two channels and more than 5,000 archive radio shows, Stegi Radio’s program consists of an eclectic roster brimming with pulse, extroversion, and experimentation. Under the artistic direction of Voltnoi and Quetempo, it continues to propose a new perception of how we listen to music, while its program becomes a meeting point for the latest trends in electronic dance music with podcasts exploring culture, theory, and contemporary artistic production. At the same time, it serves as an incubator for the young generation, as it hosts an array of new producers and artists on its roster. Stegi Radio welcomes the 2023–24 season with an upgraded webpage and new tools for listeners to explore content through genres, thematic series, and talk shows.

Music

64

Main & Upper Stage, Exhibition Hall -1, 5th Floor


TAKEOVER . 2 — 0 4.0

24

02

Stegi Radio takes over all the Onassis Stegi venues for three days, inviting the public to a diverse musical event that spans the entire spectrum of contemporary artistic production, from avant-garde and experimental electronic music to digital pop, dancehall, and hip-hop, with a series of live DJ sets as well as concerts, talks, discussions, and screenings. Stay tuned to onassis.org for the full schedule.

Curated by: Voltnoi & Quetempo, stegi.radio 65


Dance

66


67

Onassis Dance Days 2024


ONASSIS

DANCE

DAYS

2024

ODD

ILISSOS / limbo eξótica, Natasha Sarantopoulou, Onassis New Choreographers 8 (2021)


Giving precedence to sound and igniting the concept of sound design, the ODD 2024 introduces the Flemish visual artist Miet Warlop to the Greek audience with One Song, an ecstatic dance performance that is at once a live concert and sports marathon—also a triumph in the Festival d'Avignon and currently an international touring staple—and re-introduces the most emerging Greek choreographer who received last year’s Aerowaves award, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, presenting two sound-kinetic works: the awarded MOS and her new and utterly intimate project All of My Love, which sings its heart out right from its title, nodding to everyone who once happened to dance to this “song of songs” by Led Zeppelin. Three more new projects that sprung out from Onassis Stegi’s recent open call are having their premiere, with their performers…giving it all they‘ve got like true rock stars, having their music collaborators by their side instead of their dancing coaches. The crowd’s anarchic movement during a concert, with all the moshing, headbanging, and stage diving, turns into a dance style (Slamming by Xenia Koghilaki and George Poulios in music). A confession of a panic attack assumes the form of public psychotherapy, accompanied by live electroacoustic music (We All Need Therapy by Panos Malactos, in collaboration with Die Architekt). A female body runs on a treadmill under the unremitting hammering of sound and time (RUNWAY by Christiana Kosiari, with Jan Van Angelopoulos in sound design).

23

25

.02. 24

These are not only days of dance. These are not only days of music. These are the days of adrenaline. This year’s Onassis Stegi contemporary dance festival will see its choreographers, performers, composers, and musicians with their bands smash it up live on stage.

GIVING

IT

ALL 69

YOU'VE

GOT


Dance

70

Upper Stage


IOANNA PARASKEVOPOULOU A soundtrack is created before our eyes. An on-stage interplay of images, sound and movement, starring two performers, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou and Giorgos Kotsifakis, who lend their own original sound imprint to a series of cinematic scenes and moving images.

— 03.03. 24 2 0

MOS 24 —25 . 24 & .0 2

71

Onassis Dance Days 2024


Coconuts cut in half, with their flesh removed. Washtubs filled with water. Bathroom plungers. Tap shoes. These are some of the objects employed by the two performers-orchestrators in MOS to produce sound. Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, after being selected by the internationally recognized dance platform Aerowaves as one of the 20 most promising young makers of the year, continues her intensive presence abroad with her first choreographic work, MOS, commissioned by Onassis Stegi. Following the ONE Dance Week festival (Bulgaria), the Carlow Arts Festival (Ireland), the Atelier de Paris / CDCN / June Events Festival (France), and the 29th Kalamata Dance Festival, MOS keeps on its impressive journey across the stages of the world: from Italy to Norway, from England and the Dance Umbrella Festival at London’s Barbican to Spain and the Otono Festival, among many others, to return, for just a few “collector’s edition” nights at Onassis Stegi, where it all began. MOS is a duet where the choreographer herself and her co-dancer Giorgos Kotsifakis enter into discourse with a disparate series of images and seek to impart their own transcription in space. The body and (micro-) movements coexist with curious objects and materials to act as a means of sound production. The material is intensified, exploded, paused, repeated, and distorted in order to bolster the sound experience. Within the scenic formulation, individual pieces of information are teased out of the reused materials, thus inviting audience to generate new connections and interrelations. They find themselves successively transformed into listeners of a makeshift and heterogeneous soundtrack that unfolds before them. The performers become the intermediaries between the archive and the audience, offering up their own personal footage, composing their own sound adaptation of a nonlinear cinematic script, and ultimately opting what could possibly be heard.

Concept & Choreography: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Performance: Georgios Kotsifakis, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Audio Technical Support & Live Sound Design: Danis Chatzivasilakis • Dramaturgy: Elena Novakovits • Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou • Tour Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou, Tzanos Mazis • Video Engineer: Konstantinos Asimakopoulos • Set & Costume Design: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Video Editing: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Wooden Constructions: Miltos Athanasiou • Poster Design: Bois Futuri • Photography: Pinelopi Gerasimou • Production Management: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Tour Management: Cultόpια & Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Tour Coordinator: Christina Liata (Onassis Stegi) • Special thanks to Eleni Tzarou, Thanos Daskalopoulos, Alexandros Tomaras • Produced by Onassis Stegi, and first presented as part of the Onassis New Choreographers Festival 9 • Τhe international tour of MOS is made possible with the support of Onassis Stegi’s “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. Dance

72

Upper Stage


73

Onassis Dance Days 2024


IOANNA PARASKEVOPOULOU

2

2 5 .0 2. 2 — 4 3

&2

0 . 3 9.0 2 — 0

4 2 . 3

All of My Love Dance

74

Upper Stage


It is not just a choreographic composition of disparate memories and images. It’s a letter of love, remembrance, and a tribute to all those who are (no longer) with us.

Borrowing its title from Led Zeppelin’s homonymous track, All of My Love is a sound-choreographic construction that transpires through the recollection of experiences, texts, objects, craft practices, and manual operations. A shifting landscape in which nothing remains soundless. An invitation to a sensory intense experience that gropes the edges of loss. A choreographic composition of diverse memories and images. A letter of love, remembrance, and tribute to all those that are not with us anymore. Seeking motives and emotion, the artist begins with a question: “What would a last dance sound like if there was no tomorrow?” To try a first answer, she chooses to restore memories through the diversion of dissimilar elements and their sonic re-composition. Extracts of favorite movies, lyrics of beloved songs, voices of loved ones, excerpts from amateur family Super8 films, sounds made of agricultural tools and household appliances, photographs, and bodily memories, generate a ritualistic circumstance through which modes of being are challenged. All of My Love escapes linearity, inspiring temporal discontinuities and calling into question duality by blurring the boundaries of beginning and end. It discloses personal origins, traumas, and fantasies in an effort to reconcile with the idea of death. It captures memories and transmutes them into a locus of catharsis, inviting the spectator to join a paradoxical reminiscence. It chases a feather in the wind. All of My Love is a kinetic and sonic cry for all that is not here, for all that is ending, for all that exists and transforms, for all that is always there.

Concept & Choreography: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou • Audio technical support & Sound Design: Danis Chatzivasilakis • Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou • Dramaturgical contribution: Elena Novakovits • Photography: Yannis Bournias • Executive Production: Cultόpια • Many thanks to Kalamata Dance Festival • With the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development • Residency supported by La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. 75

Onassis Dance Days 2024


Dance

76

5th Floor


77

RUNWAY


CHRISTIANA KOSIARI

—25.02. 2

4

23

RUNWAY Dance

78

5th Floor


A solo piece on a treadmill that never stops, a speed race against the corrosion of time.

A woman, on a decisively important day for her, indulges maniacally in jogging in place—in this practice of health as much as self-torture. Someone is monitoring her like a metronome of her steps: the composer Jan Van Angelopoulos, live, along with his keyboards and electroacoustic soundscapes, among the audience. It’s her birthday. A particularly charged and special day. And she runs, runs, runs, fervently preparing her night out. Inspired by catwalks (European, New York, Dramatic Catwalks, etc.), RUNWAY explores the array of behaviors and transformations of a woman, based on the era’s dominant beauty standards. Catwalks morph into a form of silly walks, as the performer walks, runs, stumbles, puts on make-up, fixes her hair, stumbles on her heels, and recovers her balance in a race against the corrosion of time and the terror it induces. The treadmill is used as a beauty and wellness tool, as well as an existential prison, a torture instrument, and a conveyor belt for standardized products with expiration dates. It is elevated, eventually, to the symbol of a grotesque and absurd catwalk. A dancer and choreographer, Christiana Kosiari made the best impression following the presentation of her dance performance Bouboulines in the summer of 2023 in Elefsina, with her mother and other elderly nonprofessional dancers in the leading roles holding a heroic ritual against the wear of time in a seaside tavern. Now it’s her very turn to harness time, as RUNWAY is her very own solo on a treadmill that never stops.

Choreographer & Performer: Christiana Kosiari • Dramaturgy: Dimitra Mitropoulou • Assistant Choreographer: Katerina Foti • Original Music: Jan Van Angelopoulos • Set Design: Evangelia Therianou • Costume Design: 2plus1equals2 • Production Management & Line Production: TooFarEast • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program • Duration: 30 minutes • Age guidance: 15+ 79

Onassis Dance Days 2024


PANOS MALACTOS A panic attack confession takes the shape of public psychotherapy, on the border between dance, performance, theater, rave, confession, and group therapy.

“I was never concerned with psychotherapy before. I didn’t believe that panic attacks even existed. Until it happened to me,” notes the Cypriot choreographer and performer, inviting and challenging us to an utterly confessional “rave as therapy happening” with him and musician Die Arkitekt live on stage. A dancer in the permanent ensemble of the internationally renowned dance theater group Peeping Tom, Panos Malactos, who gave a sample of his work two years ago in Onassis Stegi, choreographing the performance We Are in the Army Now by Elias Adam, is now presenting his own work for the first time as part of the Onassis Dance Days. Revolving around the meandering subject matter of mental health, Panos Malactos creates this piece drawing inspiration from his journey through trauma, acceptance, and healing. Like life, We All Need Therapy is a state of fun, admission, (self)care, stress, and sharing. For this new project, Malactos dives into Die Arkitekt’s music universe, seeking peace and relief in the darkest timbres. Panos Malactos and Die Arkitekt coexist on stage to deliver and challenge this bold statement: WE ALL NEED THERAPY. Blurring the lines between dance, performance, theater, rave, confession, and group therapy, this piece engages the audience in such a way that each viewer feels safe and free to share (optionally) their own story. A multidimensional, performative, and unpredictable experience that fathoms the vast depths of human emotions while exposing the viewer to the rawness of the Western contemporary human condition.

Choreography: Panos Malactos • Performance: Panos Malactos and Die Arkitekt • Music Production: Die Arkitekt • Dramaturgy: Ody Icons • Lighting: Vasilis Petinaris • Costumes: Orestis Lazouras • Production Management: TooFarEast • Co-production with Cyprus Choreography Platform • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program • Duration: 40 minutes • Age guidance: 16+ • Strobe lights will be used during the performance Dance

80

Exhibition Hall -1


WE

ALL

2. 2

4

NEED THERAPY 23 —25.

81

0

Onassis Dance Days 2024


XENIA KOGHILAKI

Slamming

Dance

82

2 . 2 —25.0

4

23

Exhibition Hall -1


A sweaty ritual. A dance performance on the anarchic and soaked in the adrenaline behavior of a crowd during a punk rock concert, in search of the radical aliveness and the invisible solidarity rules that accompany it.

Equally based in Athens and Berlin, Xenia Koghilaki is already in an orbit of extroversion following her work Bang Bang Bodies, which premiered at the Tanztage Berlin and was later presented as part of the Onassis Dance Days 2023. Her new work, Slamming, in organic affinity with her previous work that bore headbanging as its main theme, deals once again with the choreographic expansions of a crowd-in-concert, featuring herself and two performers on stage. The three of them commit to one shared agreement: a ritualistic dance that originates from slamming. They transform mosh pit practices on stage, oscillating between rage and softness, rawness and trust, ache and pleasure, violence and tenderness, exploring these notions not as dipoles but as interconnected elements within a sui generis dance form. The audience “sees” the sweat dripping, the breaths intensifying, and the hearts beating faster while the three performers are wholeheartedly “caught into a mosh.” The new choreographic work by Xenia Koghilaki seeks certain emotional nuances in the aggressive crowd, unveiling a collective ritual that lurks behind an ostensible rage. Slamming approaches crowd dances not as something to be deciphered but as a site of experience, exploring the significance of collective movement as a practice of resistance.

Conceived, Choreographed, and Performed by Xenia Koghilaki • Original Music: Giorgos Poulios • Dramaturgical and Choreographic Support: André Uerba • Assistant Choreographer: Nondas Damopoulos • Production Manager: Olga Tsatsouli • Line Production: howtomakeyourlifeharder • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. 83

Onassis Dance Days 2024


Dance

84

Main Stage


85

One Song


ONE SONG

“Ecstatic. Exhilarating. Hilarious. Most touching.” These are some of the comments that accompany One Song, the performance that stunned the audiences of the 2022 Festival d’Avignon and has since been touring internationally. It all began when the Flemish theater NTGent invited the Belgian visual artist and performance maker Miet Warlop to answer the following question: “What is your story as a creator in theater?” She then proceeded to choreograph a bizarre hymn to life, exorcizing personal and collective demons, paying tribute to the memory of her late brother, and glorifying “the human condition” in all its sweaty glory. “Run. Run for your life till you die,” the lead singer of the One Song house band urges us to do over and over, while he is panting over a treadmill from where he is giving his recital. In this performance, the main ensemble of dancers is an off-the-wall band: musicians playing the violin while balancing on a beam; doing push-ups every time they need to strike a bass string; going back and forth to play the percussion or attempting small leaps to touch the keys on the keyboard. They play only one song. Over and over. In another tempo every time, but always with undimmed passion and intensity. An immaculately choreographed concert is taking place before us for the sake of a single song, which gradually acquires, by virtue of repetition, an anthemic status; it turns into our primal scream. “What if Philip Glass led the Ramones?” an article rhetorically notes about One Song. Indeed, balancing between an avant-garde happening and a rock concert, One Song serves as a fascinating ritual for farewell, life and death, hope and rebirth. By way of singable texts, snapshots from a gym, oxygen and sweat, moments of exhaustion, and gestures of resilience, it invokes “our human condition.” Time and time again, someone among their cheerleaders and fans or the elderly coach steps up to push them once again to their limits. They, too, will defy time and exceed themselves, inviting us to endure the very same.

Contemporary dance, sports marathon, or concert? 15 musicians-cum-athletes play the same song over and over in a choreographed concert, every time differently, always with undimmed passion and intensity. From the Belgian visual artist Miet Warlop, who is doing her debut in Greece. Don’t you already feel your body shaking to its rhythm? Dance

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With: Simon Beeckaert, Stanislas Bruynseels, Rint Dens, Judith Engelen, Elisabeth Klinck, Marius Lefever, Willem Lenaerts, Luka Mariën, Milan Schudel, Melvin Slabbinck, Joppe Tanghe, Karin Tanghe, Wietse Tanghe, Flora Van Canneyt, Jarne Van Loon • Text: Miet Warlop, advised by Jeroen Olyslaegers • Concept, Director & Set Design: Miet Warlop • Music: Maarten Van Cauwenberghe together with everyone • Costume Design: Carol Piron & Filles à Papa • Light Design: Dennis Diels • Dramaturgy: Giacomo Bisordi • Assistant Dramaturgy: Kaatje De Geest • Translation Lyrics: Erik Borgman • Production Management: Greet Prové • Technical Production & Stage Manager: Oliver Houttekiet, Patrick Vanderhaegen • Tour Manager: Carla Beeckmans • Technique: Flup Beys, Dietrich Lerooij, Gilles Roosen, Bart Van Hoydonck, Raf Willems, Laurent Ysebaert, Pieter Kinoli • Realization, Props & Costumes: Ateliers NTGent • Thanks to Kris Auman, Imran Alam, Barbara Vackier, Jasper Houttekiet, Warlop family, Rossana Miele, Lotte Van Craeynest, Christel Simons, Patrick Vanderhaegen, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Jarne Van Loon • Production: NTGent, Miet Warlop / Irene Wool vzw • Co-production: Festival d'Avignon, DeSingel (Antwerp), Tandem Scène Nationale (Arras-Douai), Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne Centre dramatique national, HAU–Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), La Comédie de Valence–Centre dramatique national Drôme-Ardèche, Teatre Lliure (Barcelona) • With the support of the Flemish Government, Stad Gent, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government • With the help of Frans Brood productions • Duration: 1h 87

Onassis Dance Days 2024


LENA PLATONOS

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The Tradoxicals


The Tr Not traditional, but “tradoxical” (i.e., a wordplay on traditional and paradoxical), Lena Platonos, one of the most significant figures of the Greek electronic scene, returns to Onassis Stegi with her new musical endeavor that combines music tradition with synthesizers and contemporary electronic sound. Music

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LENA PLATONOS & STERGIOS T.

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In 2015, she presented the adaptation of Emily Dickinson’s and Kostas Kariotakis’ poetry on the Main Stage. In 2017, she staged a special live concert together with the great Philip Jeck that framed the screening of the lp documentary by Christos Petros on her life and work. This year, Lena Platonos, along with her steady collaborator Stergios T. (Stergios Tsirliagkos), will present a cluster of traditional songs under their distinct perspective, with the aim to elicit the arcane element of our music tradition: from the song of the misty northern woods, lakes, and rivers of Macedonia and Thrace to the metaphysical laments of Mani and the unflagging voice of Crete. More than twenty songs from across the country will be presented for the very first time under a “tradoxical” light. Three performers and four traditional instrument soloists along with Lena Platonos and Stergios T. will occupy the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi on a sensual and emotional journey, embracing traditional sounds and nuances, as well as synthesizers, computers, and other contemporary media. 91


MUSIC CONNECTS THE ONASSIS STEGI Routes of the sea, routes of music. In this year’s concerts, we listen to fragments of primeval music in works of the last decades that narrate journeys and stories of our times. For the ninth year, the collaboration between Onassis Stegi and the Panteion University forges a music bridge above Syngrou Avenue, having as a starting point the contemporary music of pioneering composer Maurice Ohana.

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In this year’s iteration, we cross the oceans through three concerts. The point of departure is the Iberian Peninsula and the last part of the tribute to traveler-composer Maurice Ohana (1913-1992), which we didn’t have the chance to listen to in 2023. Maurice Ohana was recognized as one of the leading composers of his generation in France as early as the 1960s, bearing a music work that remains as intricate as his musical language. From the Iberian Peninsula centuries ago began the ship routes of the transatlantic slave trade to the shores of Central Africa and South America or the Cape of Good Hope and Southeastern Asia. With the program as our vehicle, we pass through the same routes and listen to the music of today from Central African countries, Brazil, and Japan, as a counterpoint to some of the music that was born out of these very first journeys. With our thoughts on the sea routes that many people are forced to undergo in our times.

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Project commissions: Niki Harlafti, Gundega Šmite, Filippos Raskovic • Program curation, tutorship, coordination: Lorenda Ramou • Supervising Professor at Panteion University: George Michael Klimis • Laboratory Assistant: Pavlos Kordis, PhD Candidate of the Department of Music Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens 93


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ROHTKO Theater

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The play, which was cherished by audiences and critics alike last season, is back this year. A monumental spectacle of an experience on the border between theater, film, and video art by Poland’s leading contemporary director Łukasz Twarkowski, who introduced himself to Greece and Onassis Stegi last year and made an impression with this iconoclastic performance that dives deep into the abyss that is contemporary art and centers on the strange individual that was the expressionist artist Mark Rothko.

Once witnessed, never forgotten. Like Rothko’s paintings. A Chinese restaurant, with hanging lanterns and cooks standing over pans of noodles, an all-white New York gallery with neon signs, the messily unmade double bed of an artist from Latvia who would go on to change the course of contemporary art history, and three giant screens on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage. This setting–a cross between a film set and a video art project flooded with loud, atmospheric beats–is to be inhabited by famous painters and Chinese cooks, gallerists, art dealers and forgers, patrons of the art world and food delivery drivers. At the heart of it all is the true story of an art forgery: a painting by the pioneering abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko, which sold for the astronomical sum of 8.5 million dollars. As it turns out, the painting was a forgery, making the affair one of the most scandalous instances of fraud in contemporary art history. Can a forged painting still move you? What do originals matter in a time of NFTs and blockchains? Who decides the value of a work of art? How free is an artist? What is art, at the end of the day? What does art matter– what does life itself matter–now that virtual realities exist? A series of such questions are threaded through this four-hour performance by the up-and-coming European director Łukasz Twarkowski, appearing in Onassis Stegi for the second time to present an epic, masterful, and singular story about our troubled times. Director: Łukasz Twarkowski • Dramaturg: Anka Herbut • Set Designer: Fabien Lédé • Costume Designer: Svenja Gassen • Choreographer: Pawel Sakowicz • Composer: Lubomir Grzelak • Video Designer: Jakub Lech • Light Designer: Eugenijus Sabaliauskas • Cast: Juris Bartkevičs, Kaspars Dumburs, Ērika Eglija-Grāvele, Yan Huang, Andrzej Jakubczyk, Rēzija Kalniņa, Katarzyna Osipuk, Artūrs Skrastiņš, Mārtiņš Upenieks, Vita Vārpiņa, Toms Veličko, Xiaochen Wang • Director’s Assistants: Mārtiņš Gūtmanis, Diāna Kaijaka, Adam Zduńczyk • Costume Designer’s Assistant: Bastian Stein • Playwright's Assistant: Linda Šterna • Video Designer’s Assistant: Adam Zduńczyk • Video Camera Operators: Arturs Gruzdiņš, Jonatans Goba • Rehearsal Translators: Diāna Kaijaka, Elza Marta Ruža • Performance Manager: Iveta Boša • Producer: Ginta Tropa • International Distribution: NewError • Performance is created by Dailes Theater in Latvia in co-operation with JK Opole Theater in Poland and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute with co-financing from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland 95


Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli of the contemporary sonic arts platform Soundwalk Collective meet up with Patti Smith. Music

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Correspondences


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Correspondences Music

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The legendary poetess Patti Smith lands on Onassis Stegi to take part in Soundwalk Collective’s sonic landscapes, in a two-day event full of images and sounds born of contemporary reality.

Correspondences is an ever-evolving project between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith. Spanning over 10 years, it traverses a wealth of geographies and their natural environments, where the artists have uncovered sonic steps left by poets, filmmakers, revolutionaries, and the impact of climate change. Soundwalk Collective’s founder, Stephan Crasneanscki, has explored, captured, and collected the world’s remotest places in sound to awaken a sonic memory within the landscape, uncovering traces of past and current histories of the world we are living in. The resulting compositions are made of sounds that reflect our relation to this world, the environment, the soul of our existence, and the creative process of the artist. Initially composed as long traveling shots, soundtracks to an invisible movie, Stephan brought these recordings to Patti Smith, giving her new landscapes to channel her poetic vision. This ongoing resonance between the artists–which started during a chance encounter on a plane–has been shaped by their correspondences: ongoing conversations with the intention of reflecting on life and nature. From a collaboration with TBA21-Academy exploring the destructive impact of seismic airguns and human interventions in the oceans, to the resilience of Nature in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, to the decentralized societies envisioned by Peter Kropotkin, to the wastelands of Pasolini’s last night, the pieces presented become thought-provoking audiovisual journeys. Featuring live films and director's cuts, Correspondences is performed by Soundwalk Collective’s Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, Patti Smith, and special guests. Visuals by Pedro Maia. Soundwalk Collective is the contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli. Working with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, they develop site- and context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. Evolving along multi-disciplinary lines, Soundwalk Collective has cultivated long-term creative collaborations with musician Patti Smith, late director Jean-Luc Godard, photographer Nan Goldin, choreographer Sasha Waltz, and actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others. Soundwalk Collective have performed and exhibited at a diverse range of arts and music institutions, such as Berghain, Centre Pompidou, CTM Festival, documenta, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manifesta, the Mobile Art Pavilion by Zaha Hadid, and the New Museum. 99


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Heatwave


A peal of bitter laughter at Greek summer, an imagined ethnography of Greece, through the stories of everyday people as they follow their petty rituals. All on a scorching day. All in a scorching summer.

During a scorching summer day cluttered with crummy cottages, warm seas, and naked bodies, a breathing museum of anti-heroes sit carefully around the table of the holy Greek family, among doilies, television sets, fruit pits, running juices, and everything from which we must avert our eyes. They fool around watching videos from the 1990s, as things went south after that. They pray to their gods, they swim and they preach, they sell and sell themselves at affordable prices. They offer experiences and they enjoy, enjoy, endlessly enjoy. They await the big final score and if they never make it, “remember where we started” always saves the game. Alas. In their summer “paradise,” what they really want is for someone to understand and care for them, to touch and be touched. A performance for the Greek summer made of dreams and nightmares, eroticism, and voyeurism is what Heatwave by Υiannis Panagopoulos is. Drawing dramaturgical material from Vivian Stergiou’s short story collections Liquid Blue and Skin, the performance conjures a fictional ethnography of a world that is heading with breakneck speed towards the end. Small stories of everyday people within an urgently shrinking framework. As they cling to their rituals. As their communication falls apart. A performance about lazing beneath the scorching Mediterranean sun. Until the grand moment, or the grand finale.

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Text based on short stories written by Vivian Stergiou • Direction: Yiannis Panagopoulos • Assistant Director: Marianthi Pantelopoulou • Original Music & Sound Design: Jeph Vanger • Set & Costume Design: Dimos Klimenof • Assistant Set & Costume Design: Nafsika Keke • Movement Direction: Katerina Foti • Lighting Design: Evina Vasilakopoulou • Archival Video: Eleni Mylonas • Video Art / Editing: Alexandra Riba • Performers: Zoe Mylonas, Νatasa Sfendylaki, Giannis Karababas, Ioannis Bastas and more • Also on stage: Yiannis Panagopoulos, Dimos Klimenof • Production Management & Line Production: LEFOU Productions (Vasia Attarian / Serafeim Radis) • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.

AVE Text based on short stories written by Vivian Stergiou

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Lapis Lazuli


Lapis Lazuli Having completed three stage works—RELIC (2015), TITANS (2017), and ELENIT (2019)—that continuously tour around the world, Euripides Laskaridis presents, first at Onassis Stegi, his new international co-production.

Able to conjure magic from the most diverse and trifling materials, originator of a unique hybrid form of spectacle that spans the realms of performance, dance, and visual arts, seamlessly blending the sublime with the absurd, Euripides Laskaridis returns with the creation of another idiosyncratic performance, where elements of the grotesque, the comedic, and the horrific coexist. Continuing his ongoing exploration on the themes of transformation and ridicule, Laskaridis aims to craft anew a captivating and enigmatic world, intricately tailored to suit his peculiar, quirky, yet consistently endearing characters. The new work’s title, Lapis Lazuli, draws inspiration from the semi-precious stone of the same name, renowned for its striking blue color. Lapis lazuli is a metamorphic rock that exhibits unpredictable behavior under pressure. From the mask of Tutankhamun to the Renaissance paintings of Titian and Yves Klein’s (post)modernist monochromatic works, lapis lazuli has graced a legion of artworks with its radiant and mysterious color. In this new work, Euripides Laskaridis focuses on our existential relationship with fear and terror, seeking to explore a multitude of intriguing dualities, such as the material and the spiritual, the dreamlike and the nightmarish, the conscious and the subconscious, waving on stage a dense web of antitheses. These antitheses are also found— unexpectedly even for the creator/performer himself—within the very name of the stone, which draws its etymology from the conjunction of the Latin word ‘lapis’ (stone) and the Arabian ‘lāzurd’ (light blue), which accordingly derives from the Persian word ‘lājevard’ (heaven). Therefore, lapis lazuli is often rendered as the “Stone from Heaven.” An international co-production between Greece, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, and The Netherlands • Produced by Onassis Stegi • Supported by the Onassis Stegi's “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. Theater — Dance

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Borderline Festival 2024


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At the limits of sound. A two-day festival for the future of contemporary music, with young Greek creatives and emerging international artists. Music

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ERLINE FESTIVAL 2024

In Borderline 2024, Stegi Radio continues to probe the connections between pop, experimentation, and electronic music, this time through the perspective of liminality. What are these sounds, faces, and positions that lie “in-between”—between genres, geographies, and boundaries? How are musical identities, artistic and political movements that subscribe to the notion of the border articulated? What are the diverse elements borrowed and assimilated? Stegi Radio will attempt to address these questions at Borderline 2024, researching the origins, influences, and novel aspects of pop, avant-garde, black industrial, and other genres, through artists that create precisely from within this position of liminality. Curated by: Voltnoi & Quetempo, stegi.radio 111


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by Samuel Beckett

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WAITING FOR GODOT 112

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The internationally renowned Greek director and the play that defined the 20th century, in its first presentation at Stegi. A grand co-production with Emillia Romagna Teatro and a landmark performance, on the border between monumentality and comedy.

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Waiting for Godot for the first time at Onassis Stegi and like never seen before. Monumental, on the border between high poetry and audacious comedy. The direction carries the stamp of internationally renowned Greek theater director Theodoros Terzopoulos, who guides an exceptional Italian cast in a major co-production of the Emilia Romagna Teatro that is currently on a worldwide tour. “Nothing is more real than nothing,” said Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), and with Waiting for Godot, he launches this “nothing” like a meteorite onto the stage. For, nothing remarkable in terms of stage action and plot happens in the work of the Nobel Prize-winner Irish thinker, poet, and writer. Two street pariahs, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, dressed in rags, stand by a tree, chit-chat trivially, and meet by chance two or three equally weird figures, while basically, they are waiting for someone who never shows up. Who, after all, is Godot of the title who never shows up? Some savior or God himself, as his name implies (God-ot)? Becket has, however, admitted that he was not interested so much in Godot as in “Waiting.” This endless waiting is approached direction-wise by Theodoros Terzopoulos with a sense of tragicomic officiation. In his performance, a black gallows pole is erected on stage like a funerary monument. A cross of light tears it in half. At its base is a tiny bonsai tree. Church hymns, tangos, bombings, and air raid sirens resound. There, like figures who were restored to life from an unknown ancient frieze, refraining from looking or touching each other, lie and wait Vladimir and Estragon, played by veteran Sicilian actors Enzo Vetrano and Stefano Randisi. They swoop in their respective roles with the madcap wisdom and holy despair of Buster Keaton. Figures that are bizarre and contradictory, witty as well as naïve, blabber on while waiting statically and ecstatically for the one who will never come to save them from their existential cul de sac of always waiting for something. The play by Terzopoulos—the director who began from Makrygialos in the region of Pieria and in the last forty years travels the world with Attis Theatre, teaching his much-admired acting method from Asia to Australia— unveils “a crucified humanity in which the nails are words,” as noted in the foreign press, before concluding that this is “an opera that will be included in the annals of contemporary theater.”

Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett • Copyright: Editions de Minuit • Italian translation: Carlo Fruttero • Direction, Set, Lights & Costumes: Theodoros Terzopoulos • With (in a.o.): Paolo Musio, Stefano Randisi, Enzo Vetrano, and Rocco Ancarola, Giulio Germano Cervi • Music: Panayiotis Velianitis • Assistant to the Direction: Michalis Traitsis • Assistant to actors’ training: Giulio Germano Cervi • Production: Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale, Fondazione Teatro di Napoli – Teatro Bellini • Premiere: 12 January 2023, Teatro Storchi (Modena, Italy) 115

Waiting for Godot


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Respublika


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Respublikax


RESPU What might a fairer world look like? Welcome to the utopia of Łukasz Twarkowski and the most immersive experience of your life. A six-hour rave party, with a bar, sauna and a chill-out room comprise the latest production by the Polish director, who last year put on the ultimate theatrical event with his rendition of Rohtko.

ŁUKASZ TWARKOWSKI Lithuanian National Drama Theatre Theater x — Performance

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Director: Łukasz Twarkowski • Producer: Vidas Bizunevičius • Text & Dramaturgy: Joanna Bednarczyk • Set Designer: Fabien Lédé • Video Designers: Karol Rakowski, Adomas Gustainis • Choreographer: Paweł Sakowicz • Composer: Bogumił Misala • Costume Designer: Svenja Gassen • Light Designers: Julius Kuršys, Dainius Urbonis • Stage Operator: Karolis Juknys • Director’s Assistant: Bartė Liagaitė • Playwright‘s Assistant: Simona Jurkuvėnaitė • Set Designer’s Assistant: Rokas Valiauga • Consultant in Cinematography: Simonas Glinskis • Sound Designers: Karolis Drėma, Adomas Koreniukas • Light Operators: Edvardas Osinskis, Dainius Urbonis • Video Operator: Adomas Gustainis • Camera Operators: Šarūnas Liudas Prišmontas, Naglis Kristijonas Zakaras, Ričard Žigis • Editing Operator: Vytenis Kriščiūnas • Production Assistant: Lukrecija Gužauskaitė • Play translated by Vyturys Jarutis • Produced by Lithuania National Drama Theatre • Co-produced by Münchner Kammerspiele • Supported by Ministry of Culture of Republic of Lithuania • Age guidance: 18+ • Duration: 6h • Premiere: 3 September 2020 121

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“Theater is experience. Theater is one of the most sensual art forms. It uses the human body, sweat, loud music, and camaraderie,” notes Łukasz Twarkowski, who introduced himself to the Greek audience through the staging of the absolute performative experience, Rohtko, on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage, and returns now to beam us into utopia. For, only one year later, the Polish director invites us to a spectacle-cum-edifice from another, fairer society and, at the same time, to a six-hour rave party, with loud music, a bar, a sauna, as well as a retreat, beyond the bounds of Onassis Stegi. The audience here is fully emancipated: they may watch everything from one place or wander around the project’s settings. They may enter the various rooms of the set together with the performers—or even dine with them—, watch the actions in their preferred sequence, stay for the entire six-hour duration, leave whenever they want and return later, and of course dance every time the DJ assumes the position for his sets. Techno music, theater, performance-installation, dance, cinema, visual arts, and DJ sets become one in Respublika, the holistic and hybrid spectacle-situation within space and time that was first presented by Twarkowski in 2020, having been previously tested as a long-term experiment. For almost a year, amid the pandemic and the quarantine, he and approximately twenty production members—of various ethnicities, genders, and ages—isolated themselves in a forest in Lithuania. Based on this utopian communal ideal, coexistence developed like a social experiment, with everyone, jointly, imagining how will it be for a community to cut ties with society and its main norm of survival: labor and monthly income. They explored alternative labor prospects that did not fall into the established notion of the 40-hour work per week, but it soon became apparent that what interested and united the participants, despite their differences, was dance and music. Ideal styles? Rave and techno. The experiment led to a series of challenging questions. Is there any value to an experience that cannot be quantified and assessed in monetary terms? Does this elusive bond between dance, music, and resistance correspond to the current era? Can music and dance empower an intimidated and worried human being the way rituals can do? Make people feel less helpless? More responsible? Sincere? Can the idea of a republic and all that it entails transcend all political structures and acquire a new, existential meaning? In his forties, Twarkowski—currently the rising European director worldwide par excellence—expands the limits of technology and new media in the framework of performing arts, eliciting the tenor of his directorial work from the mockumentary genre; that is, he constructs works of art that, while they never happened, he is treating them as real events. Respublika is such a mockumentary: it builds a utopian future of theater and society in the present tense. For, maybe one day, we shall all be free and equal, dancing until the break of dawn. And if not forever, at least for six straight hours. An emancipated experiment for an emancipated audience.

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Why The Mountains Are Black II The Musical Cultures of the Southern Balkans


Why The Mountains Are Black II THE MUSICAL CULTURES OF THE SOUTHERN BALKANS

Curated by

CHRISTOPHER C. KING

Those of us who met at the House of Hamko last year agreed on one thing polyphonically: that this music festival must happen again. The Onassis Stegi and Grammy Award-winning producer Christopher King are returning for the second year to Konitsa to seek novel answers to the question Why the Mountains Are Black. And the ritual goes on. Music

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Konitsa


Onassis Stegi returns to the town of Konitsa, together with Grammy Award-winning music producer Christopher King, for further explorations of their internationally acclaimed program. Why the Mountains Are Black is a three-day music festival fusing the traditional sounds of the Balkans with experimental improvisations and ethnographic cinema. This second annual festival will invite musicians from Croatia, Korce, Missolonghi, North Macedonia, Lake Prespa, Thessaloniki, and beyond. There will be screenings of two films after the first two nights of performances.

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The most representative example of Athenian Belle Époque open-air theater architecture, which was re-introduced to Athenians last year with the presentation of a part of Romain Gavras’ impressive work Gener8ion, is due to host new film works in April 2024. This time, drawing inspiration from the timeless and ever-contemporary C. P. Cavafy, the under-construction Onassis Mandra at Dionysiou Areopagitou Street in Plaka, will present a series of short films that reflect the universality and boldness of Cavafy’s language, emphasizing his work’s capacity to spark new ideas within a wide spectrum of artistic idioms. A selection of films originally created and screened for the first time in New York, as part of the Onassis Foundation Archive of Desire festival, will activate once again “Mandra” as a vibrant hub of culture and expression, highlighting the cinematic power of the Alexandrian poet’s language. C. P. Cavafy

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Onassis Mandra


Still from Helena Park’s film featuring actor and performer Taylor Mac.

Films inspired by the life and work of the timeless and ever-contemporary Alexandrian poet are shown for the very first time at Onassis Mandra. C. P. Cavafy still speaks to each of us privately, sometimes with a whisper and others with a roar. 129


Spyros Staveris The frantic course of Greece through time. The Onassis Foundation, in collaboration with internationally renowned photographer Spyros Staveris and a special team of archivists, curators, and digitizers, are classifying and digitizing the Staveris Archive—an archive of images about everyday life, the world of labor, spectacle and politics, about the simultaneously old-fashioned and contemporary, carefree and tumultuous, surrendered and revolted, socialite or marginal Athens. Regarding the city and its society as a dynamic locus of symbiosis and mutations, the Onassis Culture collects through this initiative the precious images that resulted from the personal explorations and the unique gaze of the photographer, as well as his multiple collaborations with printed press from the 1980s to today. The Staveris Photographic Archive is organized parallel to the artistic residency and research of Spyros Staveris as an Onassis Fellow, with the objective of preserving it, as well as making it accessible to anyone interested in delving into the societal and political history of the last forty years in Greece and beyond.

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Stories

Neighborhoods

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Unexpected


Justice

Digital Stage

Evolution

Hyperreality

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Still from the film Crossing by Katerina Mavrogeorgi and Aineias Tsamatis.


Onassis Cinema

New films reveal new worlds At Onassis Foundation, we like reading scripts, watching movies, and becoming an active part of artistic creation. From Vasilis Kekatos (I dream like a ghost) to Panos Koutras (Dodo) and from Yannis Economides to Evi Kalogiropoulou (Cora), Onassis Culture supports established artists and new talents through script development and the production of short and feature films. Furthermore, it embraces the process of creation, research, and artistic development by offering fellowships. It collaborates with significant institutions, such as the Hellenic Film Academy, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Drama International Short Film Festival, and the Athens International Film Festival, with the outer aim to strengthen Greek cinema inside and outside the borders. Moreover, it has established film awards to support the development of new scripts. This season, we celebrate Greek cinema in all its forms and expressions once again. 145

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I dream like a ghost

Vasilis Kekatos

The multi-awarded director’s first feature film is a co-production of the Onassis Foundation. Chloe is 27 years old, wild, impulsive, and lost. She dreams of a life she can live by herself and free. When she suddenly finds herself without a home, after being kicked out by her parents, she is forced to leave for the other end of the country to spend the summer with her older sister. On the road, she will happen upon a crew of youngsters who cross Greece with a trailer and help people on the brink of poverty. Chloe immediately falls in love with their ideals and delinquent lifestyle and follows them down their revolutionary path, which passes through the tottering Greek countryside. She will dream of the craziest future and be disappointed in the most violent way. And she will walk down this frenzied road of revolt to cross the threshold of real adulthood, learning that it becomes less painful only when you are not by yourself. Golden Palm winner Vasilis Kekatos presents his first feature film, starring Daphne Patakia and Nikolakis Zeginoglou, produced by Eleni Kossyfidou, Guillaume Dreyfus, Delphine Schmit, and co-produced by the Onassis Foundation, which is currently in the stage of filming and is expected in cinema theaters in 2024. It is the director’s second collaboration with the Onassis Foundation, following the short film, As you sleep the world empties, which was created within 120 hours in the framework of the ENTER project during the pandemic. Onassis Cinema

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Cora

Evi Kalogiropoulou

Following the Cannes award-winning On Xerxes' Throne, the Onassis Foundation supports the director in her first feature film. Cora is a story that takes place in a dystopian universe, a small city-state ruled by armed men and where a gigantic oil rig is worshipped almost like a god. Maria was born in this city, with her mother and sisters being the heirs of a family mysticism and witchcraft tradition. As Maria does not question the established order that is premised on violence, she becomes accepted in the gang circles of these potent men. The newly arrived Eleni, who works as a singer in the local bar, tips the balance of things. The Onassis Foundation supports the director from her first steps. In 2020, she created the film TILES, in the framework of the ENTER project by the Onassis Foundation during the pandemic. A year later, she made the short film On Xerxes’ Throne, for the needs of the You & AI exhibition presented by the Onassis Foundation at Pedion tou Areos Park, which later received the CANAL+ award at the Critic’s Week of the 75th Cannes Film Festival. The following year, she created the short film Alexandria, presented at the Cavafy Festival in New York. Her first feature film, Cora, produced by Amanda Livanou, is currently in the stage of development and is an international co-production (with France and Belgium). Onassis Cinema

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Why We Do What We Do?

Eva Stefani

Taking the performances of Transverse Orientation as a starting point, Eva Stefani creates a documentary on Dimitris Papaioannou’s work, produced by the Onassis Foundation. In 2021, the leading Greek choreographer presents at the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi his work Transverse Orientation. Briefly after, the multi-awarded filmmaker Eva Stefani follows the tour of the work across theatrical stages in Europe and the US and monitors Dimitris Papaioannou and his collaborators with her bold gaze, in their effort to give shape and breathe life into the work. For two years, the camera documents scenes from the rehearsals and performances in Rome, Paris, London, the United States, and Lithuania. Within these two years, when everything is postponed or paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the central question that permeates the documentary is “why we do what we do?” Art as a means of resisting the futile state of things and as a way to re-apply meaning to life. Onassis Cinema

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TACK

Vania Turner

TACK intimately follows Olympic medalist Sofia Bekatorou and Amalia, a young sailing champion, as they suddenly find themselves at the forefront of a seismic shift in Greek society. Sofia reveals her rape by a powerful figure within the Hellenic Sailing Federation and sparks the #MeToo movement in Greece. Amalia then reaches out to Sofia for support—who was raped by her coach from the ages of 11 to 13—leading them to a joint path toward justice. In a milestone trial that follows, Amalia faces grueling courtroom proceedings and intense victim blaming, while attempts are made to discredit her. Sofia, whose own case has exceeded the statute of limitations, preventing her from having her day in court, stands firmly by Amalia’s side, providing support in any way she can. As she copes with her trauma and confronts her relationship with her father, Sofia unexpectedly becomes an activist while defending the rights of abuse victims. However, while her advocacy for abuse victims sparks a reform of the penal code, incidents of violence against women continue to make headlines. Sofia and Amalia achieve a measure of justice but realize that their fight to modernize Greek social norms has only just begun. As they navigate this challenging journey, they must “tack” like sailors, maneuvering through the winds of adversity to keep moving forward. TACK transpired after a commission by Christos Sarris, on behalf of Onassis Culture. It participated in the Docs in Progress program of the 24th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and received an award from the Greek Film Center. Onassis Cinema

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Walls

Christos Sarris The short film by Christos Sarris, which had its worldwide premiere as part of the Onassis Foundation Archive of Desire: A Festival inspired by the poet C. P. Cavafy, begins its journey at the 46th Drama International Short Film Festival. Walls by Christos Sarris is based on the director’s personal involvement with the inmates of Nigrita Prison, wherein they were taught the basic principles of filmmaking at a theoretical and practical level through an educational program. Sarris provided them with the tools to create a film that does not simply deal with their personal experiences but further resonates with audiences all over the world, addressing self-evident rights and values. Walls serves as a reminder of the power of storytelling as well as the capacity of human beings to restore hope and meaning in even the direst circumstances. The film is accompanied by a musical adaptation of Cavafy’s poem “Walls” by Laura Jane Grace, the Emmynominated artist, writer, activist, musician, and founder of the American punk rock band Against Me!. For Christos Sarris, “Walls is a thought-provoking film that takes place within the boundaries of a prison. Through the eyes of the inmates, we are granted the opportunity to explore issues of freedom, dreaming, hope, and the human condition in a way that is both poignant and emotional. Laura Jane Grace’s dynamic musical adaptation of Cavafy’s poem ‘Walls’ adds another layer of emotion and depth to the already captivating narrative.” Walls were created in the framework of a short film series especially centered on the cinematic power of C. P. Cavafy’s language, first presented at the Archive of Desire festival at the New Museum in Manhattan, New York, in May 2023. Onassis Cinema

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The new movie by Yannis Economides

The creator behind Matchbox, Soul Kicking, Knifer, Stratos, and Ballad for a Pierced Heart, presents his new film which is currently in the stage of development. Trying to save his house from the hands of a loan shark, a businessman makes a fruitless attempt to collect the amount he owes. Facing an absolute cul de sac, a last-moment idea leads him to a familiar single-family house with hidden money and consequently to an unimaginably absurd crime that the human mind cannot fathom. The director co-signs the script with the actor and protagonist of his films, Vangelis Mourikis. Following the Ballad for a Pierced Heart, as well as the musical adaptation of the film Matchbox—which was enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike—the Onassis Culture takes another deep dive into the Economidian universe, supporting as a co-producer his long-awaited film. Onassis Cinema

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Open Call

Big Short Films

Short films harbor big emotions Onassis Culture supports Greek cinema, releasing the potential and talent of emerging filmmakers. In 2023, for the very first time, it addressed an open call to Greek and international filmmakers to submit their proposals for short films. A total of 132 proposals were received, of which five were subsequently chosen to receive funding for 10,000 euros each. They shall go into production within the year, to find their way to the big screen and meet local and international audiences at festivals worldwide. The next Open Call is scheduled for announcement at the beginning of the new year. Onassis Cinema

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Still from the award-winning film Magma by Lia Tsalta, which is presented in the context of the “Big Short Films 2023” in October on the Onassis Channel, on YouTube.


Tassos Langis during the filming of his documentary.


The Public Private House

Tassos Langis

How do we coexist in the city of today? The new documentary by Tassos Langis delves into the contemporary reality of Athens. The awarded documentary Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens, co-created with Yiannis Gaitanidis, was the starting point for director Tassos Langis to delve into the history, culture, and human aspect of the Athenian apartment building (the “polykatoikía”). His new film—entitled The Public Private House, currently in the shooting stage and produced by Onassis Culture—attempts a leap into the present moment, the complex social, cultural, and physical reality of Athens, to pose the vital question of how we coexist in the city today. In what ways can we commonly inhabit it? Employing once more symbiotic forms of storytelling, incorporating novel studies and findings, the new and much-anticipated documentary by Tassos Langis about Athens could well be a projection into an urban future brimming with life. Onassis Cinema

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Onassis Film Awards

We support independent Greek cinema. The Onassis Foundation has collaborated throughout the years with the most eminent film festivals in the country, turning the spotlight on the voices of rising creators in their first steps. Every year, it offers the Onassis Film Awards to Greek filmmakers for the development of their feature films. From the Drama International Short Film Festival and the Athens International Film Festival to the Thessaloniki International Film and Documentary Festivals, the Onassis Foundation is present in every celebration of Greek cinema, releasing the potential and talent of young creators. Onassis Cinema

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Cactus by Dimitris Zouras received the Queer Drama Award 163 at the 2022 Drama International Short Film Festival.


Neighborhoods

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New Buildings

The Onassis Foundation is present in new spaces across Athenian neighborhoods. From Neos Kosmos to Patision Avenue and from Dionysiou Areopagitou Street to the uncharted neighborhoods of Renti, the Onassis Foundation embraces evolution and creates new meeting points in the city. Starting from Dionysiou Areopagitou Street in Plaka, we find “The Mandra.” The most representative example of Belle Époque’s open-air theater stage in Athens was reintroduced to Athenians last year by showcasing a part of Gener8ion, Romain Gavras’ play starring Charlize Theron, and is expected to host new works in the near future. Further down, between the neighborhoods of Kypseli, Exarchia, and Patision, the historic Matala Arcade is destined to become an unexpected meeting point with exhibitions, DJ-sets, colorful fanzines, and the presence of local communities, as well as Stegi Radio, Stegi’s 24-hour radio station. A little further away, in the neighborhood of Renti, the Onassis Foundation transformed a huge industrial building into an extraordinary space for artistic experimentation. Onassis Ready is growing by the day and the building will soon be filled with people and light. 167

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Onassis Ready

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Νέα Κτίρια

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The Drop of Knowledge

Nikomachi Karakostanoglou Onassis Stegi’s new artistic intervention in the city is the impressive outdoor sculpture by Nikomachi Karakostanoglou, a gem for the Neos Kosmos neighborhood and the Athenian sky. Placed above Onassis Stegi’s new offices on Leontiou Street, Karakostanoglou’s minimalistic sculpture hovers between the blind facades of two buildings, directing our gaze from the incurious vacant space to the absoluteness of form. The unadorned perfection that characterizes The Drop of Knowledge converses harmoniously with the unfeigned intimacy exuded by the neighborhood of Neos Kosmos—a neighborhood that is being transformed every day for the better without altering its character. Drawing inspiration from the history of the Dourgouti quarter, the artist created a work that invites us to reflect on the past, present, and future of the Greek urban landscape, and thus of modern Greek identity. The timeline of the creation of The Drop of Knowledge captures the perpetual mutations of urban space, as we experience them daily as citizens in the flow of time. The bronze piece comprises the “distillation” of the digital sculpture Flux, which was first presented as a video in the exhibition Plásmata II: Ioannina and was the continuation of an unrealized site-specific sculpture titled Dourgouti. By juxtaposing the transformations of matter with those of human existence, Karakostanoglou managed to trap light within a single sculptural form. Karakostanoglou’s golden droplet (to recall Michel Tournier’s book of the same name), with its “wondrous glow and appearance,” interacts in a way with the other artistic interventions of Onassis Stegi in Athens: the plain Kiss by Ilias Papailiakis in Avdi Square, the neon Talisman of All Beings by Angelo Plessas on Alexandras Avenue, The Wave by Sofia Stevi in Mavili Square, and the funky See Who Protects by Aristeidis Lappas in Omonoia Square. Like the sculpture A Tear for Kyra Frosyni by Christos Lambrou in Ioannina, Nikomachi Karakostanoglou’s precious “tear” aspires to become a new city landmark. 175

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Justice

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Onassis with Pride

Onassis Stegi is #present. Until we all feel and be safe. Each year, Onassis Stegi presents performances and artistic experiences that defy stereotypes while standing by the side of the LGBTQIA+ community through actions and interventions in Athens and around the world. In 2015, Stegi performed her very own coming out, supporting for the first time the Athens Pride institution. In collaboration with “Positive Voice,” it organized “I’m Positive” and invited representatives of the scientific community as well as people living with and without HIV into a dialogue, endowing awareness campaigns against fear and prejudice with a “positive sign.” Since 2021, it has dreamed and demanded a more inclusive Athens through the “Athens Home for All” campaign, while in 2022, it shouted together with Rainbow Families Greece that “it is love that makes a family,” initiating a public dialogue around the rights of same-sex families. Until all people, regardless of gender, race, and age, can live, fall in love, and evolve freely, Onassis Stegi will be #present. Justice




Society Uncensored

Uncensored discussions about Greek society, live at Onassis Stegi and on the Onassis Channel. The “Society Uncensored” series allows engaged citizens to speak freely about their experiences. Important aspects of our social lives are brought to light through honest and in-depth discussion on an open forum that promotes dialogue and fruitful exchange. The series has highlighted several issues, including femicides, Black Lives Matter, gender violence, hate speech, body shaming, Roma rights, and disability and culture. This year, three new episodes will tackle current social issues: fascism, euthanasia, and touristification. Before being shown on the Onassis Channel, the “Society Uncensored” discussions take place at Onassis Stegi in front of a live audience that can actively participate in the dialogue.

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Art & Accessibility

How can we enhance accessibility in the cultural sector of people with disabilities? Onassis Stegi, in collaboration with international European bodies, participates in festivals and actions to ensure accessibility to culture by all. It continues to support artists with disabilities through a comprehensive program aimed at promoting their creative journey. It makes its productions universally accessible to all, with simultaneous interpretation in Greek sign language, Greek surtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description for the visually impaired, as well as designing specialized workshops and mentoring programs adjusted to the unique challenges and talents of artists with disabilities. New commissions and productions highlight the significance of inclusion in art. However, we do not stop there. We continue to actively participate in Europe Beyond Access, the innovative program seeking to bring artists with disabilities from performing arts to the forefront of the European cultural scene. Together, we create a vibrant, free of exclusions cultural ecosystem. Justice

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Tactile tour during a performance of Matchbox: The Musical.


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Digital Stage

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Σtella


Stages A/Live

Live and via streaming, a new way to experience every concert. “Stages A/Live” was launched in January 2021 as an Onassis Foundation initiative to support the independent music scene, where a series of filmed live performances pumped up the volume of the digital stage on the Onassis Channel on YouΤube. In the 2023-24 season, “Stages A/Live” travels to Alepochori and returns to the center of Athens. This time, however, the audience will be live. Marina Satti takes to the stage at Technopolis, Stella sings to the rhythm of the waves at Cariocas Beach Bar in Alepochori, Pongo broadcasts live from the neighborhood of Neos Kosmos, and so does Laura Jane Grace from Stegi -1. Stay tuned to the Onassis Foundation's digital stage on the Onassis Channel on YouTube, because this year’s lineup will shake you up.

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Live From Mount Olympus

In 2024, another myth for your ears. In the Onassis Foundation award-winning podcast, Live From Mount Olympus, after three seasons, the gods step down from Olympus and tell us one more story. Combining the art of leading contemporary theater auteurs with the timeless tales of Greek mythology and the unique capacities offered by the audio medium regarding imagination, Live From Mount Olympus amounts to a sonic adventure for both children and adults. The first and second seasons of Live From Mount Olympus (featuring the stories of Perseus and Persephone, respectively) were nominated at the Webby Awards, the so-called “Oscars” of the internet, in the category of Best Scripted Fiction Podcast among pioneers of the genre, such as HBO, BBC, and Comedy Central. The adventure never stops. The Perseus season received the Bullhorn Award for best podcast for children, while Persephone’s season was nominated for a Silver Signal Award at the New York festival. Digital Stage

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Educational Programs 2023—24

We dare to think about the future. At the Onassis Foundation, we create educational programs for the young generation that is being shaped today to lead tomorrow with empathy, curiosity, and boldness. We instigate discussions about issues of sexual identity, provide access to new technologies, fab labs, and artificial intelligence, and offer digital materials and asynchronous courses. We join hands with parents and educators who want to navigate the challenges and conditions of the present, forging a promising future for all. We give priority to health early on as a matter of knowledge and personal responsibility toward a society of people who know how to love their bodies and the value of organ donation. We believe in the uniqueness of everyone, inclusion, and group learning and are committed to further investing in the needs of families and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Together, this year we are starting a journey of discovery, innovation, and empowerment through a bountiful universe of books, screens, workshops, artists, professionals, music, the Onassis Library, the Alexandrian poet C. P. Cavafy, and your talents. At the Onassis Foundation, we don’t see children, adolescents, and young people simply as that. We envision responsible global citizens within a world that is constantly evolving with them.

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Onassis Foundation Scholarships

Shaping the society of the future. Since 1978, we have offered more than 7,600 scholarships to students and researchers for postgraduate and doctoral studies in Greece and countries worldwide. As members of the Foundation's extended family, Onassis Foundation scholars are links in a chain of progress, innovation, and excellence. Knowledge becomes a universal passport, research turns into passion, and art unites disparate worlds and improves society, an image that also embodies the Foundation's vision for Education and Culture: continuous investment in excellence with the potential to transform society. Scholars at the Onassis Foundation serve as ambassadors for the Foundation's vision of an open society, constant forward movement, and knowledge that, once gained, is brought back to Greece— celebrating Greece at its best. The Onassis Foundation Scholarships open call for the new academic year is expected to be announced in December 2023. Evolution

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Still from the film The City of Scholars.



Onassis Prizes

Awarding the visionaries of tomorrow. The Onassis Prizes are awarded every three years to distinguished personalities and organizations of international prestige in the fields of Finance, International Trade, and Shipping—the very same fields in which Aristotle Onassis himself excelled. Internationally renowned academics—among them “the father of modern empirical finance,” Eugene Fama, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2013, as well as younger economists Mary Brooks and Wayne Talley, whose research addressed shipping risks due to sea piracy—help society advance one step further with their work. The Onassis Prizes 2023 ceremony will take place this November at The Guildhall in collaboration with the Centre for Shipping, Trade, and Finance at Bayes Business School, City University of London. An international jury comprising prominent academics, including two Nobel laureates, will select the prize recipients.

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Hyperreality


Onassis Digital & Innovation

The Onassis Foundation’s Digital and Innovation initiatives aim to foster an extrovert program in the field of digital arts, especially those relating to the creation of immersive storytelling and employing Artificial Intelligence (AI). Through the ONX program (Onassis Extending Realities) which includes an artistic incubator in Athens (ONX Lab) and an artistic accelerator in New York (ONX Studio) at the Olympic Tower in Manhattan, Onassis Stegi seeks the development of original artistic and creative content in digital arts and at the same time the empowerment of artists, so they are in a position to produce artistic, societal, and economic value, safeguard their works’ sustainability, ensure their autonomy, and amplify the impact their work might have. Since its launch in 2020, members of ONX Studio have presented their work in numerous festivals worldwide, such as the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance, SXSW, Ars Electronica, IDFA, and most recently the 80th Venice International Film Festival. Through Plásmata, a series of public space events, Onassis Stegi creates a world-class art program on the digital, emphasizing the multitude of identities, the connection of the local with the global, and the investigation of the climate crisis and its consequences.

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Multimedia installation MANA by Afroditi Panagiotakou & Manolis Manousakis at the Plásmata II: Ioannina exhibition.


204 Niederhauser. xStill from the work Tulpamancer by Marc Da Costa & Matthew

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ONX The future is here, from extended reality to the metaverse. The ONX Studio is a hybrid space where artists involved in extended reality (XR) can forge and present their works. Situated in the Onassis Gallery of the Olympic Tower, the Onassis USA headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, it began its operation in the autumn of 2020 as a joint initiative between Onassis USA and the New Museum’s NEW INC. ONX Studio is now an Onassis Culture project that has further partnered with organizations in New York, including NYU, Games for Change, NEW INC, Rhizome, and MAX, as well as global institutions such as IDFA, CPH:DOX, and DiMoDA, among others. It constantly explores new avenues toward hybrid, digital, and physical experiences, having hosted to date more than 18 creative teams that have developed projects presented subsequently at the Sundance Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Ars Electronica, the Venice Immersive of the Venice International Film Festival, as well as many other festivals and exhibitions, such as Plásmata in Athens and Ioannina. Providing funding for project development, state-of-the-art facilities, and support, as well as a community for artists from New York and all over the world who are involved in extended reality and work from different disciplines, ONX Studio operates as a critical hub, exemplary of the boldness that characterizes the interdisciplinary artistic ecosystems of New York and Greece. The Onassis Foundation, reserving the promotion of innovation as its constant orientation, supports through the array of its programs the creation of innovative works on extended reality and the metaverse. Concurrently, it fosters research that focuses on virtual, augmented, and extended reality through its scholarship program, as testified by more than 80 scholarships on related issues in the last five years at leading universities around the world. From the heart of New York, ONX Studio remains in close dialogue with the Onassis Foundation Digital and Innovation department in Athens, which seeks to promote groundbreaking innovation in various sectors as well as activate an exchange program in the near future.

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Worlds

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Onassis Stegi Outward Turn Program Onassis Stegi supports Greek artists exhibiting their work abroad. Over the last twelve years, more than 90 productions and co-productions of theater, dance and music by Onassis Stegi have put on more than 1,000 performances in 52 countries and in some 200 cities around the world. This season, the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program supports more than a dozen emerging and established Greek artists at all stages of their creative careers.

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Larsen C, Christos Papadopoulos


to be possessed, Chara Kotsali


12+ artists, 17+ stations around the world Amsterdam, Avignon, Bucharest, Carlow, Florence, Gijón, Leipzig, Ljubljana, London, Lublin, Madrid, Nicosia, Oslo, Paris, Plovdiv, Strasbourg, Vienna Last July, noted Greek artists Dimitris Karantzas, Euripides Laskaridis, Christos Papadopoulos, Prodromos Tsinikoris, and Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, who will be returning this season to the Onassis Stegi, traveled, for a fieldtrip, to the Festival d'Avignon and had the opportunity to talk and network with festival directors, curators, and other artists, as well as attend premieres of directors and choreographers from all over the world. Elena Antoniou travels with her work, LANDSCAPE, once again exposing her most vulnerable landscape: the body. The production, seen on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage, as part of the Onassis Dance Days 2023, will be presented at the Fondazione Fabbrica Europa in Florence on September 20. Following her participation in the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna, in July 2023, choreographer and dancer Chara Kotsali presents her work to be possessed—along with its demons—at the euro-scene Leipzig Festival on November 10 and 11. Nefeli Asteriou and Venetsiana Kalambaliki participated in the five-week long danceWEB program in Vienna, always in the context of the ImPulsTanz Festival, and this is a collaboration that continues for the third year. Ioanna Paraskevopoulou begins a long festival career with MOS, having already completed her summer tour, stops of which included ONE Dance Week Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the Carlow Arts Festival in Ireland, Atelier de Paris June Events, and the OperaEstate Festival in Bassano, Veneto region. The new season will find her at DansensHus in Oslo from 22 to 24 September, Dance Umbrella Festival in London on 11 and 12 October, National Center for Dance in Bucharest on 8 November, International Dance Festival in Lublin on 10 November, Otono Festival in Madrid on 17 and 18 November, and Ménagerie de Verre in Paris from 30 November to 2 December. Christos Papadopoulos with his “glacial” work Larsen C travels to Ljubljana's CoFestival on 23 November, one more stop in two years of a successful tour, which will continue through 2024. In Cyprus, as part of the Nicosia International Festival, the performance ENA ENA by emerging composer Thanasis Deligiannis will be presented at the end of September 2023. Additionally, the Cyprus New Music Festival, organized by the Center of Cypriot Composers in November 2023, invites dissonArt ensemble, which with the support of Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program will perform with an expanded lineup: flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The travels of Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program include two more cities: Amsterdam, which will host a tribute to contemporary Greek theater at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, from 20 January to 4 February 2024, and Strasbourg, where Onassis Stegi, in partnership with eight other European institutions participating in the Grand Luxe network, organize a dance platform entitled “Happy Days” at Pole-Sud CDCN, from 3 to 5 April 2024, with sixteen contemporary dance artists presenting their works in front of audiences and professionals in the field. Finally, the Weather Engines exhibition, a production of Onassis Stegi in 2022, will be presented at the illustrious LABoral organization, in Gijón, northern Spain, opening on 6 October and running until May 2024, with the title translated into Spanish: Motores del Clima.

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Dryland

The Greek participation in the Venice Biennale 2024, with the support of Onassis Culture. Objects, sounds, images: How the human experience is captured in the ecosystem of the Greek folk feast. In June 2022, transmedia artist and composer Thanasis Deligiannis and philologist and dramatist Yannis Michalopoulos began their research project entitled Margaroni Residency, commissioned by Onassis Culture, as Onassis Fellows. In this context, they formed an artistic team, with which they worked collectively. The research and the various musical, visual and performance exhibitions of the residency were the materials for the development of the Dryland proposal, which will represent Greece at the 60th Venice Biennale in April 2024. Dryland is a hybrid installation that explores the human experience within the ecosystem created by the Greek folk feast, from the center of a provincial settlement to the outskirts of the surrounding agricultural landscape. Using tools and modes of different artistic fields, a utilitarian irrigation mechanism will be transferred to the space of the Greek Pavilion as the centerpiece of a spatial composition comprised of video installations, soundscapes, lighting fixtures, and a motif of water. The artistic team consists of Thanasis Deligiannis, Elia Kalogianni, Giorgos Kyvernitis, Giannis Michalopoulos, Fotini Papachristopoulou, Fotis Sagonas, Kostas Haikalis, and curator Panos Giannikopoulos.

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Networks of Collaboration

Extroversion, networking, collaboration, co-creation. The basic tools for development and creation provide us the necessary boost to unleash our creative capacities upon the world. Onassis Stegi strengthens its actions beyond borders by actively participating in international networks of exchange of ideas and artistic practices that encourage creativity and innovation in the field of culture and reconsider the boundaries between art, technology, science, society, and education. In close collaboration with organizations abroad, we implement side-by-side actions that aim toward the support of young and emerging artists, research, innovation, and experimentation in the fields of mixed reality, artificial intelligence, inclusion, and sustainability. 215

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Onassis Hospital

In 2024, the Onassis National Transplant Center will be delivered to the Greek State. Along with it, after 30 years of innovation and 2 million visits, the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center enters a new era and becomes the first fully digitized hospital in Greece. The landscape of Health and Transplants in Greece is changing. The Onassis National Transplant Center (ONTRC) is due to become the first national reference center for Organ Donation and Transplants, while together with the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center (OCSC), they will form two fully digitized hospitals in Greece, promoting innovation and research. The delivery of the Onassis National Transplant Center to the citizens, the complete digitization of the OCSC, as well as the establishment within the ONTRC of the Onassis Pediatric Unit, a state-of-the-art pediatric cardiology and pediatric cardiosurgery unit, comprise the upcoming significant initiatives of the Onassis Foundation, which change once again the future of Health in Greece. However, our actions do not stop here, as for the Onassis Foundation, Health is a matter of Culture. Therefore, in partnership with the Hellenic Transplant Organization, we defy myths and foster truth around organ donation through the Organmeetings informative seminars, while we promote scientific knowledge by coorganizing the internationally prestigious Transplant Masterclasses. At the same time, since 2021, with the educational program “Orgamites,” we have shared with more than 300 schools, 10,000 students, and 900 teachers across the country the value of organ donation. And this is only the beginning. If there is anything worth celebrating in 2024, this is indeed life.

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Unexpected




Onassis Shop

In the Onassis Stegi’s store, we find everything we would like to have: From collector’s editions to a mirror ball and a lighter. In the ground floor foyer, the physical shop of Onassis Stegi is as unique as its creations. Browse through the diverse universe of Onassis Publications, the collector’s editions that trace the contemporary trends of Greek artistic creation and beyond. From political ecology and digital culture to vinyl LPs and CDs, a research around the Athenian apartment building (‘polykatoikia’), and an alternative glossary on weather. Discover surprising items, such as a mirror ball, an all-white eco thermos, and a board on art for your home, all bearing the Onassis signature. Garner items and numbered art prints by “Greek Rodin” Yanoulis Halepas, as well as memorabilia from productions you loved, such as Matchbox and Crime and Punishment. Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 18:00-23:00 Unexpected

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Onassis Publications

The diverse universe of the Onassis Foundation is reflected in the pages of its publications. A study on the Athenian polykatoikía and the identity of the city of Athens; a publication on the work of the great Greek modern sculptor, Yanoulis Halepas; the archive of the eminent figure of modern Greek Enlightenment, Athanasios Psalidas; and a socio-scientific glossary on weather. The publications series of the Onassis Foundation listens carefully and documents the trends in contemporary research, highlights the voices of significant Greek creators of today, and poses questions about issues that will concern us in the future, such as artificial intelligence, political ecology, and digital culture. In addition to the printed editions, the imprint also offers a series of vinyl LPs and CDs that weave a distinct universe around the Onassis Stegi productions, presenting music scores from iconic performances or educational programs. The Onassis Publications open a creative dialogue between artists, researchers, scholars, and the local and international community of readers, highlighting the gravitas of research, experimentation, and collective contemplation. They are available at the Onassis Shop in Onassis Stegi and at selected bookstores and other retail spots in Athens.

Unexpected

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Onassis Business History 1924—1975

50 years. 14 countries. 3 continents. A publication on the entrepreneurial activities of Aristotle Onassis. Volume editor: Gelina Harlaftis The Onassis Foundation, the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of FORTH, and the Crete University Press join forces to produce a publication on the entrepreneurial activities of Aristotle Onassis. The book Onassis Business History, 1924-1975, based on dozens of thousands of documents by the Onassis Archive, traces the fifty-year operation of a multinational business group with companies on three continents and fourteen countries, and activities around the globe. The Onassis Archive, an initiative of the Onassis Foundation, consists of hundreds of archive boxes containing tens of thousands of documents from Aristotle Onassis’ fifty-year entrepreneurial activity, as well as from the years that followed. The organization, cataloging, and categorization of the Onassis Archive, as well as the drafting of the Onassis companies history, is the product of a research project commissioned by the Onassis Foundation to the Centre of Maritime History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of FORTH and is the collaborative result of a multitude of researchers under the direction of Gelina Harlaftis. Its creation is a novelty in the field of business history, not only in Greece but also internationally. Find it in selected bookstores.

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Record Scratch! Matchbox: The Musical, special collector's edition, now on vinyl

Turn it up to 11! The deafening voices (and lives) of Dimitri's family of four, whom we met in November 2022 on the Main Stage of Onassis Stegi, now on vinyl to play on repeat. With music by Yiannis Niarros and Alexandros Livitsanos and libretto by Yannis Economides and Dori Avgerinopoulou, Matchbox: The Musical will now play in every apartment in the city, disrupting the quiescence of the “holy Greek family.” Nine musicians, eleven performers, and a host of other contributors transform the family carnage experienced on stage into an “epic, folk, gritty, dark, hilarious, ridiculous, serious, moving, uplifting” aural experience. The album will be available at the Onassis Shop, in record stores, and all digital music platforms in 2024. Unexpected

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ΟNASSIS AiR

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Onassis AiR is an artistic residency program that emphasizes process, acting as a meeting point for creatives of all disciplines and from around the world. Onassis AiR opened its doors in 2019 to support artistic process through the interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and practices of a growing community of artists and other creators who participated in its different programs. Four years later, our ecosystem has expanded even further to bring together all the creators supported by the Onassis Foundation. We open our doors to the artistic community through individual artist residencies announced each year by Open Calls, through Onassis Culture commissions for research and development of new projects, and through collaborations with other organizations within our international networks. As a living organism, Onassis AiR is constantly evolving to support the needs of its artistic community. The 43 artists who participate in the 2023-24 season program as Onassis AiR Fellows are Loukia Alavanou, Larissa Araz, Giota Argyropoulou, Margarita Athanasiou, Mario Banushi, Natasha Blatsiou, Dante Buu, Lisa Colette Bysheim, William Cardoso, Sofia Dona, Panos Fourtoulakis, Kyriaki Goni, Charbel Haber, Agape Harmani, Zoe Hatziyannaki, Irini Kalaitzidi, Mazen Kerbaj, Chara Kotsali, George Koutlis, Tassos Langis, Manolis Manousakis, Yolanda Markopoulou, Orestis Mavroudis & Despina Krey, Peter Miller, Alyssa Moxley, Evi Nakou, Kosmas Nikolaou, Ozhopé Collective, Christos Papadopoulos, Pink House press, Christos Polymenakos, Lykourgos Porfyris, Janis Rafa, Phoenix Rousiamanis, Fotini Stamatelopoulou, Spyros Staveris, Ellpetha Tsivicos, Endi Tupja, Lukasz Twarkowski, Kristina Melbø Valvik, Eva Vaslamatzi, Paky Vlassopoulou. In the following pages you will meet 30 Onassis AiR Fellows from the large family of Onassis AiR.

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Margarita Athanasiou

Margarita Athanasiou is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and creative producer. She engages in digital collage working with video and print, while a significant part of her practice revolves around art publications. She is a co-founder of the Athens Art Book Fair, an ARTWORKS fellow, an active participant in various queer/feminist initiatives, and a passionate meme artist. In her work, she combines autobiographical and humorous elements, aiming to highlight discounted female stories. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the ONX Fellowship, Margarita will travel to the ONX Studio in New York to complete the interactive parts of her video essay entitled VOICES, which explores channeling practices and their historical relationship with female agency.

Larissa Araz

Artist and founder of artist-run space Poşe in Istanbul, Larissa Araz focuses on alternative stories, non-human testimonies, denied shreds of evidence, as well as the fabrication of dominant ideologies, using text and imagemaking as her means. In the framework of Onassis AiR, she will follow the trail of the histories of three female Rums (Romios) artists from Turkey, Eleni Iliadi (18951975), İvi Stangali (1922-1999), and Eleonora (Nora) Archelaou (1937-2021), who, due to the Turkish policy regarding non-Muslim minorities, have been removed from the canon of art history. 235

Onassis AiR


Eva Vaslamatzi

Eva Vaslamatzi is an art historian, art and publications curator, and writer based in Athens. Her research as an independent curator delves into how past folklore practices and rituals are embedded in and revived through contemporary art practices. In the framework of Onassis AiR, Eva will examine the possibilities of coexistence between different generations and the common root of creativity shared by art and crafts in Athenian spaces.

Paky Vlassopoulou

Paky Vlassopoulou is an Athens-based visual artist working mainly with sculpture. The dialectics of traditional sculpture in relation to issues of space, objecthood, functionality, and bodily experiences informs her practice. She is concerned with issues that deal with knowledge production, history, and ruins, while in recent years her work has revolved around the concepts of confinement, care, and hospitality. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Paky will research the history of madness and its institutionalization in the light of personal experience and the need to discuss mental health openly amid the post-pandemic burnout era of late capitalism. 236


Mario Banushi

Mario Banushi, the 25-year-old Albanian creator of the silent spectacles and hieratic installations Ragada (2021), Goodbye, Lindita (2023), and Taverna Miresia (2023), draws inspiration from the rituals of life, death, and rebirth, polyphonic songs, customs, practices, and traditions. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the Dramaturgy Fellowship, he will embark on an on-site road trip to the Balkans—from Athens to Kosovo and from Bulgaria to Montenegro. As part of his research course, Mario Banushi will develop the rationale for his next project, set to be presented in 2025 at Onassis Stegi.

Dante Buu

Artist, storyteller, and performer, Dante Buu represented Montenegro at the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2022, and his works have been presented in numerous international exhibitions. His artistic practice combines the autobiographical with the lives of others, while it spans fluidly and playfully various media. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Dante Buu, with Oh Honey, you are not a Terrorist, will attempt to experience the creation of a work of art in its purest form: he will intuitively seek the proper threads to embroider a colored field, a form, and finally a feeling. 237

Onassis AiR


Kyriaki Goni

Kyriaki Goni explores the political, affective, and environmental aspects of technology, focusing on extractivism, surveillance, human—and beyond— relationships, distributed networks, and infrastructures. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the ONX Fellowship, she will expand her current research on artificial intelligence systems and how these imbricate past and future histories of stereotypes and prejudice, invisible labor, and notions of knowledge and truth. At the same time, she will seek to further expand her mediums and tools, experimenting with emerging technologies that will feed into her immersive installations.

William Cardoso

William Cardoso is a dancer and choreographer based in Luxembourg. He engages with contact improvisation and its reverse meanings. During his research period at Onassis AiR, he will seek to investigate the idea of rupture, which characterizes the contradictory spirit that develops through the body in his last works. Rupture calls for no surprise—instead, it is an apparatus that we employ to introduce a shift in the course of a movement. Cardoso will study the space to transform it into a playground in which the body can tell us its story. Urgent need alludes to something raw and dry, two words that permeate the backbone of his research work. William Cardoso is supported by TROIS C-L—Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois program for the season 2023-24 in the framework of the Grand Luxe Network. The participation of Onassis Stegi in the Grand Luxe Network develops within the framework of its “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program. 238


Charbel Haber

Charbel Haber is a musician, performer, visual artist, and composer from Beirut. He has collaborated with artists from a wide range of disciplines (film, video art, visual arts, and theater), both in Lebanon and abroad. He founded the post-punk band Scrambled Eggs and co-founded two experimental record labels, Those Kids Must Choke and Johnny Kafta's Kids Menu. In the framework of the Onassis AiR, he aspires to study the passage of time and melancholy in the Mediterranean region through the project entitled Random things the gods would say to a traveler who lost his way. The work delves into alternate historical events, echoing the cyclical nature of history, while Haber's guitar gives rise to feelings of nostalgia and introspection, reflecting the experiences of a traveler.

Irini Kalaitzidi

Irini Kalaitzidi is a dance artist and researcher who works with technology, coding, and machine learning to examine critical and caring modes of engaging with the body. Her works—be they dance performances, video art, or research articles—have been presented internationally, within cultural institutions and platforms such as the Onassis Stegi, Somerset House, and DRHA. Alongside her artistic practice, Irini works as a creative computing lecturer at Goldsmiths and UAL universities, bridging choreographic thinking with computational one. In the framework of the Onassis AiR, she will develop a dance research project entitled Feeding Birds. In this, artificial intelligence is invited to discuss the dancing body but also to cultivate reflection on how we see and interpret dance. 239

Onassis AiR


Chara Kotsali Chara Kotsali is a performer and choreographer based in Athens. Her practice includes writing, field recordings, and DIY sound composition. In March 2023, she presented her first choreographic work entitled to be possessed in the framework of Onassis Dance Days, which is currently touring in Greece and abroad (ImPulsTanz Festival, euroscene Leipzig, etc.). The work to be possessed was selected as part of the [8:tension] Young Choreographers' Series at the ImPulsTanz Festival for 2023. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will deal with the concept of noise as a sonic-corporeal event: noise always formulates something and amounts to a sonic form of knowledge, while it also stands for a contested field of sovereignty. The noise music scene—as an artistic counterexample—articulates critical questions around the notions of joy, authenticity, and the performing event itself. Chara Kotsali is supported by Grand Luxe Network for the season 2024-25. The participation of Onassis Stegi in the Grand Luxe Network develops within the framework of its “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.

George Koutlis

Following Nikolai Gogol’s The Gamblers, George Koutlis engages with yet another Russian writer, with the support of Onassis AiR. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the Dramaturgy Fellowship, he will translate and adapt Ivan Vyrypaev’s Oxygen (2001), a work manifesto for a new generation that has preoccupied him since the early years of his involvement in theater. He will attempt to answer the main dramaturgical question of how the ten anti-commandments of the original text can be translated into the “here and now” in a way that corresponds to the needs, dreams, and demands of Generation Z and its own “psychopolitical suffocation.” As part of this artistic research, interviews and auditions with new artists and potential collaborators will take place. The project is scheduled to be presented at Onassis Stegi during the 2024-25 season. 240


Orestis Mavroudis & Despina Krey In 2017, Despina Krey and Orestis Mavroudis founded CURRENT Athens, an online platform for the nonhierarchical promotion of contemporary art. As Onassis AiR Fellows, the two researchers will map the socioeconomic profile of visual arts professionals in Greece, focusing on identifying the financial conditions under which artists and curators live.

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Natasha Blatsiou

As a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker with international distinctions, Onassis AiR Fellow Natasha Blatsiou combines traditional storytelling forms with transmedia narratives, new documentary forms, and technology components. With the transmedia project unwritten land, she will explore the ties of people with the land and how they changed over the centuries on the occasion of the construction of a vast wind farm in the mountainous areas of Agrafa.

Peter Miller

Peter Miller is a British-Barbadian poet and researcher. He specializes in 20th-century Caribbean art and literature, with a particular emphasis on the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM, 1966-1972). With the project The Black Ordinary, he will explore the exceptionalism that has encompassed the concept of Blackness in Western popular culture, from gangsta rap to Afrofuturism. His work deals with the notion of the everyday Afro-Greek space in Athens—grocery stores, street corners, and public squares—and examines how the respect with which the Western cultural imaginary has endowed ancient Greece has proved partly responsible for the exoticism of the Black subject. 242


Alyssa Moxley

Alyssa Moxley is a creator working with sound, listening, memory, and the environment. She seeks to access and share the emotional resonances and embedded memories of locations through sound. She transforms field recordings through composition, performance, and shared listening practices. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Alyssa will examine how personal mythologies, shared folklore traditions, and inter-generational perceptions concerning place may be experienced through listening and compositional works.

Evi Nakou

Evi Nakou is a musician and sound artist. Guided by collaborative methodologies, her practice comprises a mélange of listening and sharing gestures of sound, text, and performance. As an Onassis AiR Fellow and through Tailor-made Residencies as well as the Transmissions European program, that is supported by the EEA Grants program and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021, Evi Nakou will survey how transmedia ethnographical poetry reflects the complexity of how we hear, see, experience, and perceive the notion of camaraderie. 243

Onassis AiR


Sofia Dona

Sofia Dona is an artist and architect. Her work, situated between architecture and art, addresses social, economic, and political issues in an interdisciplinary manner through site-specific practices. Whether focusing on the border region between Mexico and the US, on various strategies of eviction, or on historically symbolic architectural elements of power, Donna creates installations and videos that distort established notions of everyday life. In the context of her research as an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will investigate the rapid change of property and space that has taken place in recent years in the city of Athens, as well as the class arrangement of the apartment building, through the project Retiré.

Ozhopé Collective

Ozhopé Collective makes art of the magical and the political by way of the intellectual. It was founded in 2017 by artists Ella Banda and Massa Lemu, photographer and cinematographer Tavwana Chirwa, and writer Emmanuel Ngwira. They attend to a collaborative mode of art production that inspires conversations and invites people to critically think about social, financial, and political issues of everyday life. In the framework of Onassis AiR, Ozhopé Collective will create collaged parchments bearing images of the thick-textured surfaces of the dugout canoe from Malawi, affixing them to driftwood and other ship remnants or floating objects that wash ashore of the Mediterranean. 244


Christos Papadopoulos The minimalist Greek choreographer—who helms this year the stage presentation of NEKYIA on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage in an unexpected collaboration with Giannis Aggelakas while he is currently on tour internationally with his works ION and Larsen C—is going through a period of research and development of his next project, in a commission and international co-production by Onassis Stegi expected to premier in the spring of 2025. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through Dramaturgy Fellowships, he will forge a choreographic work based on the memories and early musical remembrances of his adolescence in his birthplace of Nemea in the Peloponnese. His primary source of inspiration is the songs by Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis, which he listened to along with his brothers and mother. This time, their lyrical value, verses, rhythm, and pulse come to the foreground, with Christos Papadopoulos seeking to connect the minimum movement with the utmost of words.

Lykourgos Porfyris

Lykourgos Porfyris is a visual artist and queer disability activist, working and living between Oslo and Athens. Porfyris’ practice engages with the production of new mythologies, primed to replace the conservative ones that have proved anachronistic. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, he will create a video audio poetry installation that explores landscapes from the perspective of a lowvision individual who processes them into futuristic and utopian natural landscapes and soundscapes. New mythologies emerge as vision becomes blurred, fusing the boundaries of bodies, spaces, and objects, allowing individuals with low or no vision to become involved as active audiences. 245

Onassis AiR


Pink House press

Pink House press (PHp) is the artistic duo of Ersi Varveri and Gijs Waterschoot, currently working between Syros (Greece) and Antwerp (Belgium). PHp underlines the significance and urgency of printed matter as a possible means and vehicle for generating space and dialogues that touch upon issues such as the development of public discourse through artistic practices and publication as a portable-hospitable artist-run space. In the framework of Onassis AiR, PHp will further their research on sustainable practices that concern the longterm development of their work, One space becoming another: What spaces do we need for the future?.

Janis Rafa

Janis Rafa is an artist who creates works of moving images on the fringes of the urban, haunted by stray dogs, roadkills, hunted prey, forgotten ruins, and abandonment. A visual language that relies on muteness, physicality, and the tactile. In her largest exhibition to date at the ΕΥΕ Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, she will combine moving images with her neon sculpture works. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Janis will focus on invisible cultural structures and spatial practices that have been devised at large to entertain and empower humankind and the dominant male species. Her work proposes a spatial, ethnographical, and visual exploration of the concepts of supremacy, dominance, and marginalization in the relationship forged between horses and masculinities against the backdrop of the complex environment of Markopoulo Olympic Equestrian Centre, southeast of Athens. 246


Phoenix Rousiamanis

Phoenix Rousiamanis (they/she) is a Greek orchestral and electronic music composer, songwriter, and performer based in Manchester. They usually create theatrical pieces that focus on themes of folklore, transidentities, mental health, trauma, nostalgia, and magic. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, they will explore the boundaries of the voice, highlighting the queer teratogenesis of the human body while finding beauty and strength in its fragile susceptibility. The sonic cosmos of their work draws inspiration from the aggressive bubblegum-pink productions of experimental musicians and artists active in electronic and hyper-pop music.

Endi Tupja

Endi Tupja is an artist, filmmaker, and cultural practitioner based in Berlin and Tirana. Her research centers on experimenting with strategies of memory recuperation, visuality, and the subverted geomorphometry influencing identity and history. A continuous attempt to challenge certain ideas of institutional formality in artistic research and academic language is perceivable throughout her research. In the framework of Onassis AiR, Endi will embark on the documentation of female vocal practices within the iso-polyphonic singing tradition of Derviçan in Albania. A syncretism between languages and civilizations in the outpost of geography offers us ways to discern forms of a “Global South” within Europe, as well as gestures that formulate an architecture of voices and practices of hierarchical immigration that affect the latter. Endi Tupja is an Onassis AiR Fellow within the framework of the European Media Art Platform, which is co-funded by the European Union. 247

Onassis AiR


Łukasz Twarkowski

The most sought-after European director of today, the Polish-bred who introduced himself to the Greek audience with the unforgettable Rohtko in May 2023 at Onassis Stegi and returns in 2024 with Respublika, begins his research for his next project as an Onassis AiR Fellow through Dramaturgy Fellowships. Łukasz Twarkowski will delve into the omnipotence of science, specifically quantum physics, and the corresponding inability to debunk our world’s mysteries. This is the first part of the Scientific Trilogy that he plans to complete in the following years.

Panos Fourtoulakis

Panos Fourtoulakis is a curator focusing on media cultures, their capacity to produce subjectivities, and the relationship between liveness and embodied presence and mediation. He devises exhibitions that perceive the exhibition space—online or offline—as a means to examine how a given framework and its attention economy influence the relationship between viewer and image. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, he will conduct research on the artistic responses and the broader cultural reflections on the AIDS crisis in Greece, with a focus on Athens. With his work A Time to Remember, he will salvage oral stories and engage with artworks, music, press, ephemera, and practices of the era that have either been forgotten or have yet to be properly contextualized. 248


Agape Harmani

Agape Harmani was born in Athens, Greece, to a family of Greeks and Greek Ethiopians. Based in London, she is an independent researcher and artist. Her research explores themes of colonial expression, ethics, and sustainability. As part of the Onassis AiR, she aims to document stories of families living in early 20th-century Ethiopia, occupied by British and Italian forces, in a community bearing elements of English, Italian, and Greek, as well as indigenous cultures. A project that explores home, displacement, and migration, but also the conditions that lead people to migrate, settle, put down roots, and make a new start.

Zoe Hatziyannaki

Zoe Hatziyannaki is a visual artist based in Athens, working across photography, digital media, and site-specific installations. Her current research project examines the complications of tourism and its contribution to climate change, taking into account not only its notorious carbon footprint but also its digital one. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will develop the project The Day the Earth Got Data based on a fictional end-of-the-world scenario, using primarily online material shared by different users through Google Earth. The research will focus on the island of Santorini, one of the most popular destinations in the world, which has come to face serious environmental and sustainability problems. 249

Onassis AiR


NETWORKS


European Digital Deal Art–Artificial Intelligence–Democracy

European Media Art Platform / EMAP Arts–New Media

Participating institutions include Ars Electronica (Austria), Braga Media Arts (Portugal), Center for the Promotion of Science (Serbia), Gluon (Belgium), gnration (Portugal), iMAL – Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology (Belgium), Kersnikova Institute / Kapelica Gallery (Slovenia), LABoral – Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Spain), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Pro Progressione (Hungary), Sineglossa (Italy), The Culture Yard (Denmark), Waag Future Lab (The Netherlands), Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation (Spain). The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

Participating institutions include Antre Peaux (France), Ars Electronica (Austria), CIKE – Creative Industry Košice (Slovakia), gnration (Portugal), iMAL – Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology (Belgium), IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] (The Netherlands), Kersnikova Institute / Kapelica Gallery (Slovenia), KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis (Croatia), LABoral – Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Spain), m-cult (Finland), NeMe Arts Centre (Cyprus), Onassis Stegi (Greece), RIXC Centre for New Media Culture (Latvia), Silent Green (Germany), Werkleitz Centre for Media Art (Germany), WRO Art Center (Poland). The project has been funded with support from the European Commission. 251

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Smart Attica European Digital Innovation Hub Artificial Intelligence–Digital Transformation

Sounds Now Music

Participating institutions are all from Greece and include the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos,” National Bank of Greece, Found.ation, “Athena” Research Center, Athens University of Economics and Business, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), SEV | Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), GRNET | National Infrastructures for Research and Technology, National Documentation Centre, Hellenic Corporation of Assets and Participations S.A., Onassis Foundation, Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, Athens Development and Destination Management Agency (ADDMA), Regional Development Fund of Attica (RDFA), and uni.fund. The project is co-funded by the European Union.

Participating institutions include Musica, Impulse Centre for Music (Belgium), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) (UK), November Music (The Netherlands), Onassis Stegi (Greece), SPOR Festival (Denmark), Time of Music / Musiikin aika (Finland), Transit (Festival 20-21) (Belgium), Ultima – Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway), Wilde Westen (Belgium). The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

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Transmissions Music–Sound Art

ULYSSES: European Odyssey Music–Sound Art–Community Art

The project is coordinated by Onassis Stegi (Greece), in partnership with Ultima – Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway), supported by the EEA Grants program and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021.

Participating institutions include Brave New World Producties (The Netherlands), Arts Over Borders (Republic of Ireland), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Museo Joyce Trieste (Italy), Vilniaus miesto muziejus (Lithuania), Xwhy / Agency of Understanding (Lithuania), Budapest Brand nZrt (Hungary), Collectif ildi ! eldi (France), Rimini Protokoll (Germany), Fundación Uxio Novoneyra (Spain), Blaagaard Teater (Denmark), Asociatia Create.Act.Enjoy (Romania), Teatrul National “Lucian Blaga” din ClujNapoca (Romania), Stichting Fotografie Noorderlicht (The Netherlands), Chorus (Greece), Lumo Light Festival (Finland), Arena Ensemble (Portugal), Museum of Literature Ireland (Republic of Ireland). The project is co-funded by the European Union. 253

Networks


Europe Beyond Access Inclusion–Disability

Alexandria: (Re)activating common urban imaginaries Architecture–Heritage–Sound Art–Visual Arts

Participating institutions include Centrum Kultury Zamek (Poland), CODA Oslo International Dance Festival (Norway), Culturgest (Portugal), Holland Dance Festival (The Netherlands), Kampnagel (Germany), Mercat de les Flors (Spain), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Oriente Occidente (Italy), Project Arts Center (Republic of Ireland), Skånes Dansteater (Sweden), in collaboration with The British Council (UK) & Julidans (The Netherlands). The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

Participating institutions include Bozar (Belgium), Cittadelarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Italy), Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark), Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology (The Netherlands), MUCEM – Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditeranée (France), Musée Royal de Mariemont (Belgium), Onassis Steg (Greece), Undo Point Centre for Contemporary Art (Cyprus). Associated partners include Theatrum Mundi (France and UK), the French Institute in Alexandria (Egypt), and CLUSTER network (Egypt). The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme. 254


Dance On, Pass On, Dream On Dance–Senior

Grand Luxe Dance–Professional Development

Participating institutions include Bureau Ritter (Germany), Codarts University of the Arts in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Compagnie Jus de la Vie | Age on Stage (Sweden), Holland Dance Festival (The Netherlands), Mercat de les Flors (Spain), Kumquat (France), Nomad Dance Academy (Slovenia), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Sadler’s Wells (UK), Station Service for Contemporary Dance (Serbia), STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound (Belgium). The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

Participating institutions include Grand Studio (Belgium), Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine (France), Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin – CCN de Mulhouse (France), POLE-SUD – CDCN Strasbourg (France), TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique du Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Theater Freiburg (Germany), L’Abri (Switzerland), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Teatro Municipal Do Porto (Portugal).

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WHO

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WE

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ARE

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ONASSIS FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS Anthony S. Papadimitriou President of the Board Costas Grammenos Vice-President of the Board Dennis Μ. Houston Vice-President of the Board Florian Marxer Vice-President of the Board Stafanos P. Tamvakis Member of the Board Michael-Spyros Sotirhos Member of the Board Simon Critchley Member of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins Member of the Board James Stavridis Member of the Board Paul Holdengräber Member of the Board Nikolaos Karamouzis Member of the Board Panayiotis Touliatos Member of the Board Mary Karagianni-Michalopoulou Member of the Board Eleni Panagiotarea Member of the Board Konstantinos Bikas Member of the Board

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Who We Are


ONASSIS CULTURE

ONASSIS EDUCATION

Afroditi Panagiotakou Director of Culture

Christina Kosmoglou Publications Manager

Dimitris Theodoropoulos Deputy Director of Culture

Pasqua Vorgia Talks & Thoughts Program Coordinator

Chronis Lillis Chief Operating Officer Christos Carras Senior Consultant Vassilis Panagiotakopoulos Head of Production Theodora Kapralou Creative Producer Maria Vasariotou Program Producer CURATORIAL TEAM THEATER & DANCE

Effie Tsiotsiou Executive Director & Director of Education Olga Delidaki Associate to the Executive Director

Alexandra Chrysanthakopoulou PR Executive

Stella Tatsi Manager of Scholarships’ Department

Artemis Palaska Gallery Coordinator

Nikos Athanasopoulos New Projects Advisor

Antigoni-Maria Chantzolou Ioanna Kailani Stella Kouvari Katerina Magkel Polina Panagopoulou Katerina Roussaki Associates of Scholarships’ Department

Evangelos Constantis Special Events Manager

Christina Panagiotakou Educational Programs Coordinator

Myrto Kontoni Project Facilitator

Vicky Gerontopoulou Onassis Library Coordinator

Hara Syrou Gallery Administrator

Iliana Dimadi Dramaturg

Nikos Sideris Librarian

Konstantinos Tzathas Curator

Marianna Christofi Communications and Initiatives Coordinator, Cavafy Archive

Vaso Vasilatou Curatorial Consultant

Angeliki Mousiou Scholarly Research Assistant, Cavafy Archive

MUSIC Yorgos Konstantinidis (Voltnoi) Artistic Director Stegi Radio

Korina Defteraiou Despoina Marti Tzina Papamichael Educational Programs Assistants

Makis Kentepozidis (Quetempo) Artistic Director Stegi Radio

Eleanna Semitelou Educational Projects Administrator

Akis Chontasis Curatorial Consultant DIGITAL ART

Alkisti Iliadi Grants Coordinator

Prodromos Tsiavos Head of Digital & Innovation

Vlassis Adraktas Project Coordinator

Who We Are

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ONASSIS STEGI Virginia Minakouli Procurement Officer Dimitris Tsokalis Nancy Stavropoulou Accountants Christina Papachronopoulou Call Center Agent

COMMUNICATION & CONTENT

ONASSIS CREATIVE STUDIO

Demetres Drivas Group Communication & Content Manager

Christos Sarris Head of Creative

Kanella Psychogiou Senior Campaign Manager

Panagiota Avgeraki Housekeeping Office Assistant

Haris Giakoumakis Elisavet Pantazi Daniel Vergiadis Campaign Managers

ONASSIS HEALTH

Eirini Skoufi Junior Campaign Manager

Alexandros Morellas Health Program Manager Anastasia Stamatopoulou Health Program Administrator

CONTENT Alexandros Roukoutakis Content Leader Elizampetta Ilia-Georgiadou Margarita Grammatikou Evangelia Kolaiti Valia Papadimitraki Copy Editors

Georgia Leontara Senior Graphic Designer Constantinos Chaidalis Senior Motion Graphics Designer Theodoros Koveos Maria Poyiatzi Jilian Viglaki Graphic Designers Elena Choremi Smaragda Dogani Audio Visual Producers Aggeliki Avgeri Audio Visual Line Producer COMMERCIAL Nikos Rossolatos Commercial Manager

Despoina Kalyvi Adrianna Iosifidi Website Editors

Dimitra Pappa Audience Development Coordinator

MEDIA OFFICE

Maria Proestaki CRM Specialist

Vaso Vasilatou Katerina Chortaria-Tamvaki Media Officers

Ioanna Tousiadou Sales Executive

Nefeli Tsartaklea-Kasselaki Junior Media Officer SOCIAL MEDIA Vasilis Bibas Social Media Manager Sylvia Kouveli Alexandra Sarantopoulou Social Media Editors Giorgos Athanasiou Social Media Performance Specialist

DIGITAL & INNOVATION Prodromos Tsiavos Head of Digital & Innovation Iraklis Papatheodorou Digital & Innovation Coordinator Efi Oikonomakou Digital & Innovation Project Officer Anastasia Mavrogianni Innovation & Community Events Coordinator Katerina Varda Digital & Innovation Assistant


FACILITY MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT Giorgos Raptis Facility Maintenance Manager Panagiotis Generalis Antreas Branis Ioannis Karropoulos Mechanical Engineers Hara Sidirokastriti Administrative Assistant Panagiotis Foskolos Building Services Assistant Dimitris Bougioukos Marios Chatzis Electricians Vasileios Chatzieleutheriou Assistant Electrician Iraklis Zervas Petrit Mula Technicians Vaios Mammos Plumber FINANCE & ACCOUNTING Harry Gkizas Finance Manager, Onassis Foundation Theofilos Nikolaou Accounting Manager Maria-Konstantina Panagaki Finance Associate Antonis Seitelmann Supplies Manager Vasia Filippopoulou Accountant Oana-Giorgiana Hirceaga Myrto Giannakopoulou Evangelia Vatsaki Accountant Assistants

Who We Are

FOOD & BEVERAGE

PRODUCTION

Evangelia Aggelidou Food & Beverage Manager

Christina Pitouli Akis Chontasis Despoina Sifniadou Dimitra Chatzicharalampous Producers

HUMAN RESOURCES Sotiris Stamatiou Group HR Director Eleni Mpragia Senior HR Business Partner Sophia Vasileiou Organization & People Development Lead Evi Kateva Senior HR Administrator FRONT OF HOUSE Niovi Polychronidou Visitor Experience Coordinator Konstantinos Iacovou Zenia Agkistrioti Kontantinos Psychopaidis Visitor Experience Facilitators Emmanouil Chatzakis Visitor Experience Assistant

LINE PRODUCTION Marianota Giannaki Dimitra Bouzani Ioulia Stamouli Danai Giannakopoulou Line Producers Mariana Antzoulatou Line Producer Assistant Danis Chatzivasilakis Backliner NETWORKING Theodora Vougiouka Networks & Strategic Partnerships Coordinator Vera Petmeza Networks & Strategic Partnerships Assistant

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Christina Liata Touring & Co-Productions Coordinator

Dimitris Tolias Group ICT Director

Xenia Sotirchou Touring & Co-Productions Assistant

Manos Karteris IT Manager, Onassis Foundation Ioannis Chazakis Network Administrator Theodoros Giannakopoulos Giorgos Panagiotou System Administrators Giannis Chelmis Archontoula Bontzidou IT Support Technicians

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ONASSIS AiR (Artists-in-Residence) Nefeli Myrodia Head of Onassis AiR Program Marina Troupi Communication and Research Coordinator Georgia Giannakea Sotiria Smyrnaiou Onassis AiR Administrators OFFICE SERVICES Vasilis Korobilis Office Services Coordinator Christos Giakoumis Dimitris Lianos Office Services Assistants Giannis Kouros Dimitris Nazos Ihor Davyda Ilias Tolias Konstantinos Karageorgos Office Services Support Giorgos Gaitanos Nikos Mitilineos Messengers PROJECT MANAGEMENT Despina Bourdeka Senior Project Manager Eleni Keratsa Project Manager Anna Karafoulidou Projects Coordinator THEATER TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT Antonis Kokoris Technical Manager

Lefteris Karabillas Technical Project Consultant

Angeliki Dimitrakopoulou Fly Operator-Programmer

Stratos Kariotoglou Touring Technical Manager

Leonard Cela Stage Engineer/Fly Operator

Revekka Stamou Administrative Assistant

Thanasis Ntako Fly Operator-Assistant

Natalia Vorria Katerina Kotsou Melina Lorkidi Stage Managers

Panagiotis Hajisavas Efstratios Toganidis Efstathios Darzanos Production & Video Engineers

Vangelis Moundrichas Chief Lighting Engineer

Iasonas Pierrakos Assistant Production & Video Engineer

Pavlos Pappas Sotiris Muhammed Ali Sompchy Antonios Tsevas Lighting Technicians-Operators

Alexios Politis Chief Sound Engineer

Giannis Psarros Pantelis Michas Eleftherios Daskalantonakis Georgia Tselepi Polychronis Stamatakis Ioannis Vollelis Veaceslav Rusu Ioannis Christodoulakis Evina Vasilakopoulou Assistant Lighting Technicians-Operators Iakovos Darzentas Chief Theater Engineer Stelios Bourdis Stage Engineer Konstantinos Petronanos Nikos Nizamis Platonas Tsamados Spyros Pitsos Nikos Papanikolopoulos Giorgos Koulianidis Ioannis Kontorouchas Michail Faitakis Stage Engineer Assistants

Giannis Gkliatis Theodoros Tsachalos Stefanos Papoutsakis Sound Technicians-Operators Alexandros Tzovaras Giorgos Tsatsoulis Dimitris Samaras Assistant Sound Technicians-Operators Fotis Andiranopoulos Kyriakos Xanthopoulos Electricians Areti Antonatou Maria Beraha Hospitality SAFETY & SECURITY Andronikos Pandis Group Safety & Security Director Dimitris Stamatopoulos Safety & Security Coordinator Nikos Kampanis Safety & Security Administrator

Giannis Ntovas Deputy Technical Manager

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Who We Are


Spyridoula Takopoulou Afendra Mparola Anastasios Korobilis Ioannis Giannakos Georgia Oustabasiadou Konstantinos Vlachos Dimitris Karykis Lefteris Loukatos Alexandros Bechlivanidis Athanasios Nikiforakis Dimitrios Oikonomou Evangelos Chalikias Nikos Fotopoulos Margarita Kousouri Giannis Lelis Dimitris Delikaris Dimitris Georgiou Maria Stavroula Gobran Konstantinos Milis Efi Vasilakou Ioannis Kafesakis Spyros Stratis Anastasios Zeibekis Alexandra Azariadou Giorgos Moschos Giorgos Moutzalias Giorgos Touris Evgenia Krania Giorgos Resvanis Aristea Sagani Kyriakos Tsoupis Safety & Security Agents

All the aforementioned have more or less collaborated over the last 13 years with our beloved colleague Kostas Alexiou, Chief Lighting Engineer of the Onassis Stegi, who is no longer with us but will always be.

Who We Are

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TICKETS The Onassis Foundation champions unlimited access to culture for all by offering a range of concession and discounted ticket options. Concession tickets are available in all seating zones for young people aged 26 and under, older adults aged 65 and over, parents of three or more children, and serving Greek soldiers. Concession tickets are available in all seating zones for those studying at Greek and international state-run and private educational institutions. Tickets at €7 for all.(1) Tickets at €7 for Onassis Stegi neighbors.(2) Tickets up to €5 for the unemployed, available in all seating zones, for all events. Tickets up to €5 for persons with disabilities and their companions, available for all events. Discounted tickets for Onassis Stegi Friends, available in all seating zones. Discounted early bird tickets, available for select events. Discounted combo tickets (to see multiple shows), available for select events. 20% discount on all Onassis Stegi event tickets for holders of a European Youth Card (not available for third-party productions or external bookings). (1) Tickets at €7 for all A set number of tickets in this price bracket are available for each event. Tickets purchase are subject to availability at time of booking and there are no conditions that make someone eligible. When regular tickets for an event are priced at €7 or less, “tickets at €7 for all” pricing does not apply. (2) Tickets for Onassis Stegi Neighbors Available for residents of Neos Kosmos, Koukaki, Nea Smyrni, Paleo Faliro, and Kallithea. Anyone buying Onassis Stegi neighbor tickets must present a recent utility bill showing they reside in one of the areas listed above. Each local resident is entitled to purchase one (1) ticket per production. If local residents wish to buy tickets for other family members that live with them, they must present a recent utility bill alongside a civil status certificate listing all their family members. Tickets are limited to one (1) per family member for each production. Ticket purchases are subject to availability at time of booking; there are no limitations regarding choice of seat. When regular tickets for an event are priced at €7 or less, special local resident pricing does not apply. Onassis Stegi neighbor tickets cannot be booked over the phone or by email. BOOKINGS For the general public, tickets go on sale three weeks before each event. Onassis Stegi Friends enjoy exclusive early access one week before the general public. The exact dates on which tickets for each production go on sale are announced on our website, onassis.org. Booking launch dates are indicative; Onassis Stegi reserves the right to change them at any time.

Amex, Visa, Mastercard, and Diners credit and debit cards are all accepted. Online Ticket Sales Tickets can be bought online by logging into your account using your username and password. Onassis Stegi Friends will find their discounted and early access booking options unlocked in their online accounts. Digital tickets are issued for purchases made online. Access the PDF file using your smart device and save your ticket to your Android or iOS wallet, or print it out and proceed directly to the auditorium. Ticket Hotline Tel.: +30 211 19 81 784 | 10:00–21:00, Mon.–Sun. Onassis Stegi Friends Hotline Tel.: +30 213 01 78 200 | 10:30–18:30, Mon.–Fri. Onassis Stegi Box Office The Onassis Stegi Box Office is located on-site (Syngrou 107) and is only open on days where there are performances. For more information about opening hours, please consult our website, onassis.org/onassis-stegi/tickets. Alternatively, send us an email at infotickets@onassis. org or give us a call on +30 211 19 81 784. Entry to all Onassis Stegi events requires the presentation of a ticket, either in digital form or printed out. Holders of discounted tickets have to show the relevant proof of entitlement at the entrance. TICKET INFORMATION Tickets are strictly for personal use and are nontransferable. Tickets can only be returned under certain conditions: - In the event a performance is canceled, in whole or in part, ticket holders will be informed about how to claim their refund via an announcement on the Onassis Stegi website, onassis.org. - Tickets can only be canceled and refunded up to thirty (30) minutes before the start of the event for which they were issued. Tickets that have been lost, stolen, or destroyed are not covered by Onassis Stegi. E-ticketing Availability Tickets are available to be issued online or over the phone up until thirty (30) minutes before the start of each event. Accessible Seating for Persons with Disabilities Accessible seating is available in the stalls, and on the balcony and mezzanine levels of our auditoria, for persons with disabilities and their companions. With the support of

TICKET SALES Tickets can be purchased on our website (onassis.org/ onassis-stegi/tickets), via our ticket hotlines, and on-site at the Onassis Stegi Box Office.

Visitor Guidelines

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GENERAL INFORMATION Standard Performance Start Times at Onassis Stegi MAIN STAGE 20:30 UPPER STAGE 21:00 These start times apply for all performances unless otherwise stated in our program, or on the Onassis Stegi website. onassis.org. No-one is allowed to enter the auditorium after the start of a performance. The taking of photographs with or without flash, recording of any kind (sound and/ or video), and the use of cell phones are all prohibited during the course of a performance. Smoking is prohibited throughout Onassis Stegi. Children under the age of six (6) are only allowed entry to attend educational programs or other events addressed at children. The tipping of Onassis Stegi staff is not allowed. Please follow the instructions of our security staff and ushers as you enter and exit the auditoria. Onassis Stegi reserves the right to eject any ticket holder refusing to follow the rules and regulations set out here. Getting to Onassis Stegi By Bus or Trolleybus: Panteios stop By Metro: Syngrou-Fix station Line 2 (red line) Anthoupoli – Elliniko By Tram: Kasomouli stop Line 6: Syntagma – Pikrodafni By Car: Onassis Stegi offers free parking to all visitors for the duration of their stay at the venue. The Onassis Stegi building has an underground parking garage with 150 spaces available to be used by all visitors upon presentation of a valid event ticket. Parking spaces are available on a first come, first served basis. There are accessible parking bays for persons with reduced mobility beside the elevators on every underground level. Entry to the parking garage is from Leontiou Street. Accessibility Access for all at Onassis Stegi is made possible by a ramp leading up to the building’s side entrance, at the corner of Leontiou Street and Syngrou Avenue. Upper stories are accessible via elevators, and all Onassis Stegi event spaces are wheelchair accessible. Wheelchair accessible restrooms are available on every floor.


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Media Sponsors

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Medical Cover

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Cover Illustration Izabella Papadimitriou Artworks Konstantinos Chaidalis Photos p.14—18 Alex Brenner / p.28—29 Margarita Yoko Nikitaki / p.30—31, 62—73, 90 (up), 107—111, 176, 179 (b/w), 189, 195, 202, 209—210, 214 (b/w), 222, 232, 246 (up) Pinelopi Gerasimou / p.32 Prodromos Tsinikoris / p.35 Cavafy Archive, Onassis Foundation / p.36—37, 42—43 Flux-office / p.38—41 Zachary Schulman / p.44 Dimitris Michalakis / p.46 Joseph Banderet / p.48 Filipe Ferreira / p.51—52 Ruediger Glatz / p.56, 130—139 Spyros Staveris / p.57 Nick Knight / p.58 Thanos Sarris (illustration) / p.61 Bella Peterson / p.74 Yannis Bournias / p.78 Stephie Grape / p.81 Gaetan Dubroca / p.87 Michiel Devijver / p.96—97 Jesse Paris Smith / p.98 Barbara Klein / p.104 Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 Attribution license / p.112—113 Johanna Weber / p.114, 124—127, 185, 203, 208, 238 (down) Andreas Simopoulos / p. 118—119 Vainiaus Sodeikos / p.120—122 Andrej Vasilenko / p.151 Julian Mommert / p.156 Yiorgos Kaplanidis / p.166 Afroditi Panagiotakou / p.168—173 Panos Kefalos / p.182, 194 Pavlos Fysakis / p.188 Dimitra Tzanou / p.192 Jason Adam Katzenstein (illustration) / p.198 Britt Lloyd / p.199 Duncan Phillips / p.205 Caroline Xia / p.212 Thanos Tsantas / p.213 Thanasis Deligiannis / p.214 Tobiasz Papuczys / p.219 Yiangos Papadopoulos / p.222 (b/w), 225 Stelios Tzetzias / p.224, 226, 227 Ellastration / p.229 Alexandros Livitsanos / p.236 Alexandra Masmanidi (up), Robert Szymanski (down) / p.237 Afroditi Kapotaki (up), Eva Puella (down) / p.238 Vanda Dos Santos (down) / p.239 Stathis Doganis (down) / p.240 Periklis Pravitas (up), Stelios Masinas (down) / p.241 Nikos Katsaros (right) / p.242 Peter Miller (down) p.243 Stephane Charpentier (up), Giorgos Koutsaliaris (down) / p.245 Elina Giounanli (up), Samira Shaterian (down) / p.246 Xara Pelekanou (up), Giacomo Bianco (down) / p.247 Gabriel Alexander (up) / p.248 Yria Tamari (down) / p.249 Agape Harmani (up), Evelyn Mitropoulou (down)

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© 2023—24, Onassis Stegi


PUBLICATION CONTRIBUTORS Director Afroditi Panagiotakou Consultants Dimitris Theodoropoulos Demetres Drivas Creative Director Christos Sarris Managing Editor Alexandros Roukoutakis Editor-in-Chief & Project Management Christina Kosmoglou Design Konstantinos Chaidalis Theodoros Kovaios Georgia Leontara Jilian Viglaki Texts Iliana Dimadi Elizampetta Ilia-Georgiadou Margarita Grammatikou Evangelia Kolaiti Valia Papadimitraki Vaso Vasilatou Content Coordinators Kanella Psychogiou Smaragda Dogani Charis Giakoumakis Adrianna Iosifidi Elisavet Pantazi Eirini Skoufi Nefeli Tsartaklea-Kasselaki Daniel Vergiadis Translation Vassilis Douvitsas Alkisti Efthimiou David Kynigos Alexandros Vagenas Apostolos Vassilopoulos Text Editing – Proofreading Vassilis Douvitsas Design Implementation Anna-Maria Vlasopoulou Print Management Yiannis Alexandropoulos







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