Synthesis

Synthesis, a new performative-installation conceived, planned and curated by choreographer Tzeni Argyriou and visual artist Vassilis Gerodimos, is coming to the GNO Alternative Stage at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on 29, 30 and 31 October 2021. The work was commissioned by the GNO Alternative Stage and will be presented as part of the tribute to the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution.

 More than 30 artists from the whole spectrum of performing and visual arts along with students of the GNO Professional Dance School join their forces to create a long-duration work that correlates the intricate workings of the national liberation struggle with the very process of creating a complex collective artistic endeavour.

The work was created through months-long historical and artistic research and will be presented during three days, each of them conceptually corresponding to one of the three stages of the Greek Revolution (the intoxication of the initial outbreak, the middle-period introversion, and the late-phase fatigue and ultimate prevalence), offering  a new, open-ended and collective account of the revolution. 

During the three days of the event on the GNO Alternative Stage, audience members will have the possibility to move within the installation, follow different approaches from different viewpoints, decide for themselves the length of their stay in the venue, create their own synthesis, and ultimately experience fragments of the Revolution in the here and now.

Synthesis: Public hours 19.30 (Friday), 12.00, 16.00, 19.30 (Saturday), 12.00, 16.00 (Sunday). Each performative unit lasts approximately three hours. 

This production, part of a tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org].

Synthesis is a long-durational performative-installation treating the composite concept of Revolution. The complex conditions under which the Revolution was organised and conducted, agreements, collaborations, contradictions, ruptures, subversions, uncertainties, and acts of transcendence are correlated with the creation of a composite, collective artistic endeavour – a score involving creatives from the visual and performing arts and the social sciences.

The conversion of the Alternative Stage into a workshop space, where the limits between “stage” and “backstage” become permeable, brings out the significance of those invisible stages of an artistic research that do not follow a strictly linear course and help us shift from a unidimensional, static and didactic narrative of the Greek Revolution to an acccount that is personal, multiple and immersive.

In the early stages, in October 2021, the curators involved a large team of creatives from different fields of the arts and sciences in the preparation. A reading group was thus formed, which based its work on a collective process of historical and artistic research. It started with a series of discussions, in which historians and researchers presented archives, records, letters, poems, engravings etc., shedding light upon different aspects of the Greek War of Independence and raising a series of questions (concerning daily life, financial management, corruption, identity etc.).

Knowing from the outset that the history of the Greek War of Independence is an inexhaustible subject, the creative team appropriated some parts of these suggested sources and assumed the task of creating one or more “fragments”, namely fragmentary narratives that give a picture of their own, without following a common logic or method.

All these different pieces of the work make up a bigger score that gets activated when the members of the creative team exceed the limits of their disciplines and participate in all of its parts, regardless of their capacity, – thus, the score constitutes an open-ended collective reading of the Revolution.

This score incorporates the long-duration performance and installation into a new collective body that sets the artists free from strict historical conventions. In turn, audience members are called upon to view the work from different angles, determine the time of their stay in the venue, and eventually create their own synthesis.  

In Synthesis, the installation’s constant transformation defines the work not spatially, meaning the space where the performative fragments get activated, but also in terms of time. The three days during which Synthesis is presented on the Alternative Stage refer to the three stages of the Revolution: the first day is for the intoxication of the initial outbreak of the Revolution, the second explores the middle-period introversion, and the third leads us to the late-phase fatigue. Those featured in Synthesis are not portrayed as individual heroes stripped of doubts, desires and needs; they go through different stages.

Finally, the structure of the installation itself consists of fragments, pieces of sets that have been used in past opera productions of the Greek National Opera and that, through this gesture, acquire a new identity. Under different circumstances, Greek fighters would also use materials they would find in the surrounding environment to make improvised weapons and banners. In fact, the main colours of the installation refer to the original banners of the revolutionaries. Digging up materials from the storage room of the Greek National Opera reveals a tendency towards in retrospection and renegotiation of our identity and of the system in which we act, realising that any effort to create narrative depends on the material(s) available.

For more information about the production process of Synthesis, you can visit the work’s official website https://synthesis21.gr, which includes audio excerpts, videos, and photographs that digitally document the historical and artistic research.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Tzeni Argyriou Concept, planning, curator

Born in Kavala, Greece, in 1977. Independent choreographer. She is a graduate of the National School of Dance (KSOT), Athens, a scholar of the Onassis Foundation, New York, and the artistic director and founding member of amorphy.org. For more than 15 years, her interest in engaging the performing arts with new technologies and other artistic genres has generated choreographic artworks, multimedia installations as well as in situ actions based on the history and community of specific locations. Collaboration is an essential part of her creative process and many works of hers have been co-created with other artists. She has currently returned to the “analogue” body and the empowerment of collective physical experiences. Works such as Phrasis, Αποθέματα: Inventory, ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ, Stigmiographies, Face to Phase, Untitled, Memorandum, etc have been presented in venues such as Onassis Stegi (Athens), Athens Epidaurus Festival, Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis Festival (France), Kalamata International Dance Festival (Greece), Spring Performing Arts Festival (Netherlands), Benaki Museum (Athens), MIR Festival (Athens), ARC FOR DANCE FESTIVAL (Athens), Movement Research at Judson Church (USA). She has been invited as an artist-in-residence by international art institutions and received support from: EU Culture 2000, Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Cultural & Development Non-Profit Organisation NEON, Duncan Dance Research Center.

www.tzeniargyriou.com

Vassilis Gerodimos Concept, planning, curator

He is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts (2010) and the School of Marble-Sculpting of the Tinos School of Fine Arts, Greece (2005). Since 2015, he is a member and co-artistic director of amorphy.org. The majority of his work consist of sculptures and large scale in situ installations. He has had three individual exhibitions: Stellen (Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, Athens, 2020), Hiatus (Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, Athens, 2017) and Horizontal / Vertical (Mare Gallery, Athens, 2015), and has taken part in many group exhibitions as well as other interdisciplinary projects. Selected works are in private collections in Greece and abroad. He has curated the scenography of performances such as ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ by Tzeni Argyriou (Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens), Rapidly Becoming by Syndesmos Chorou (Athens Epidaurus Festival), Transforming Me by Medie Megas (Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art), Mothers by Iris Karayan (Athens Epidaurus Festival), etc. In collaboration with the choreographer Tzeni Argyriou, they have co-created artworks that investigate the active dialogue between visual and performing arts such as Αποθέματα: Inventory (Eleusis 2023 – European Capital of Culture), Stigmiographies (Grevena, Greece), Face to Phase (ASFA, Greece) and Memorandum (Marseille-Provence 2013 – European Capital of Culture, France).

www.vassilisgerodimos.com

Argyro Chioti Stage director

Born in Athens. She works in Greece and France as a director and actor. In 2005 she co-founded the VASISTAS theatre group. She seeks stage forms that turn towards poetry, with emphasis on the choral and physical dimensions, often creating musical choreographies in the present time, dealing with human beings and the way they exist within specific social contexts. Her most recent stagings are Aristophanes’ The Frogs (Athens Epidaurus Festival, 2021), Eau de Cologne (National Theatre of Greece, 2019/20) and the performance No Man Is an Island Entire of Itself in collaboration with the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2020). At the Athens Epidaurus Festival, she has previously presented the productions Apologies 4 & 5 by Efthymis Filippou (2016) and Spectacle (2011), for which the VASISTAS group received the Young Creators Honorary Distinction from the Association of Greek Theatre and Dance Critics in 2011. At the Onassis Stegi, she has directed Efthymis Filippou’s Bloods (2014) and Dante’s The Divine Comedy (2017). In 2013, she was honored with the Eleftheria Sapountzi award for her stage and artistic work. She studied stage direction and dramaturgy at the University of Provence, France (Master 2), as well as acting at the Morfes Drama School, Athens.

Georgia Mavragani Stage director

Born in Agrinio, she studied theatre at the Department of Theatre Studies of the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, as well as performing arts at DasArts in Amsterdam (Netherlands). She wrote and directed The Suicide’s Roof, First-Hand: A Performance on Tobacco Workers, Not Innocent Anymore, Life Is Not an Easy Thing, Everyone Does It That Way, Everything I Know About the World, Old Age: A Choral Ode and Despite All That (based on the testimonies of cancer survivors). Her directorial work includes The Confusions of Young Törless, Giak, Suddenly Last Summer, The Lucky Soldier and Oresteia: Eumenides. She has led both professional and amateur acting and performance workshops that engage with the skills and techniques of documentary theatre.

Babis Makridis Film director

His short film The Last Fakir (2005) won the Award for Debut Director at the Drama International Short Film Festival (Greece). His debut feature film L (2012) was presented in Competition at the Sundance Film Festival (USA), the Rotterdam Tiger Awards (Netherlands) and many other international festivals. It was awarded the first prize at the Molodist Film Festival (Ukraine) in 2012. Pity (2018), his second feature, also premiered in Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival. The film received various awards and was crowned as Best Film at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards in 2019. It also won the Fipresci Award at the Torino Film Festival (Italy), and Best Film & Best Director at the Odesa International Film Festival (Ukraine). His third feature film Birds (Or How to Be One) premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2020.

Maro Fasouli Visual artist

She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2000-2005). In 2009, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Department of Fine Arts of the Athens School of Fine Arts. She is a founding member of the Under Construction art group (2008), with which she has participated in exhibitions, residencies, and performances in Greece and abroad. She has presented her work in two solo exhibitions: From the Elbow to the Wrist (Organisation of Culture, Sports and Youth of the Municipality of Athens (OPANDA) at the Arts Center of the Municipality of Athens, curated by Christoforos Marinos, 2020), Picnic in North Korea (CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Athens, 2017). She became a fellow of ARTWORKS (4th Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artists Support Program). She has participated in group exhibitions.

https://marofasouli.wordpress.com/

http://www.underconstructiongroup.com/

Nikos Papadimitriou Visual artist

Born in Chios. He studied painting and printmaking at the School of Fine Arts in Athens. In 1995, under the Erasmus Programme, he studied at the Edinburgh College of Art (UK) and, in 2000, he was awarded a master’s degree in Visual Communication from the University of Kent (Kent Institute of Art & Design, UK). He has made 17 solo shows and participated in various group shows both locally and internationally. He was chosen to participate in the Biennales of Sarajevo, Tel-Aviv, Prague, Athens and Istanbul. From 2002 to 2018, he taught at the University of West Attica and, in 2012/13, he was invited to teach as a visiting professor at the Konkuk University in South Korea.

Coti K. Composer

Costantino Luca Rolando Kiriakos, born in Milan, Italy, in 1966, moved to Greece at the age of 6, where, since the mid-eighties, is better known simply as Coti K. He has been involved in various Athens pioneering electronic bands. He has released various solo records, written music for film, theatre, dance theatre and TV adverts. Working as a musician, composer, installation artist, record producer / engineer and sound designer, he has collaborated with many artists including Tuxedomoon, Dimitris Papaioannou, ILIOS, Yorgos Lanthimos, Babis Makridis, Nikos Veliotis, Mikael Delta and others. Since 2014, his solo work is focused in writing and singing songs under the moniker The Man From Managra.

Fotis Siotas Composer

Born in Thessaloniki. His involvement with music began at the age of six, as a member of the Ayia Triada Children’s Choir. At the age of nine he began his studies at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki in violin and singing. He was a member of many bands of the city, such as Podilates, Boomstate and Evi Evan. In 1993 he began his collaboration with Sokratis Malamas and Thanassis Papakonstantinou, both as a live performer and as a recording collaborator. He collaborated with Yannis Angelakas and the Episkeptes. He also collaborates with guitarist Babis Papadopoulos. Ιn 2005 he founded the duet Sancho 003 with guitarist Kostas Pantelis, releasing two albums (We Buy Gold, MUZGA). In 2016 he formed the group “SOTIRES”. He has participated in more than a hundred albums as a violinist, orchestrator and singer. In 2019, the album entitled Ta Deftera Yiati Kourastikan ta Prota was released, featuring his own music and lyrics by Thodoris Gonis. He has collaborated with Aris Biniaris in the theatre productions Wake up Vasilis (National Theatre of Greece) and Dance of Fire (Municipal Theatre of Piraeus). He has composed music for the dance group SineQuaNon, the Athens Epidaurus Festival, the National Theatre of Greece and dozens of other productions.

Theo Abazis Composer

He studied composition at the Utrechts Conservatorium (Netherlands) with a scholarship from the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation. He is the Artistic Director of the International Festival of Ancient Olympia. Formerly he has been the Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Greece (2016-2019), the Artistic Director of the Municipal and Regional Theatre of Patras, Greece (2013-2016) and Kavala, Greece (2010-2013). In 2006, he received the Dimitris Mitropoulos award from the Greek Theatre Museum for his music for the theatre. He teaches theatre improvisation and acting at the Drama School of the Athens Conservatoire. Works by him have been performed in many European cities and the USA by several musical ensembles. He has composed music for cinema, theatre, music theatre. He has directed theatre, music theatre and opera in Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Danae Bletsa Soprano, composer

Lyrical soprano and composer. She holds a Master of Music from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Netherlands). She has composed music for the 1st Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki (Greece), the Neuköllner Oper, Berlin (Germany) and the Yo-opera Festival, Utrechtse Stadsschouwburg (Netherlands), Composers’ Festival Amsterdam (Netherlands), Nieuw Ensemble, Atlas Ensemble and the Hellenic Group of Contemporary Music (Athens Concert Hall). She has sung the leading role of Celia in Haydn’s La fedelta premiata at the Vienna International Opera Academy (Austria) and the role of the Priestess at the world premiere of Wim Henderickx’s Mantras (Operadagen Rotterdam, Netherlands, GNO Alternative Stage). She has recorded Dmitri Shostakovich’s Greek Songs and currently works as research assistant at the Geneva Haute école de musique (Switzerland).

Kitt Johnson Choreographer

Danish dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the company Kitt Johnson X-act, one of the most recognised artists on the Danish dance and performance scene. For decades she has been celebrated for her cutting-edge, visionary approach to the art form, and with her iconic performances she has spellbound audiences around the world. She is a minimalist with a crush on the subliminal. Her trademark is solo performance, but her repertoire is broad and also includes many ensemble works, New Circus, site-specific work and productions designed for children. She also organises and curates performance festivals, including the site-specific concept MELLEMRUM and the international biennale Copenhagen Circus Arts Festival / C!CAF (Denmark). She was awarded with the Danish Reumert Award as Dancer of the Year 2015 for her performance in POST NO BILLS, which also earned one of the prestigious grants from the Danish Arts Foundation that same year. In 2018, she received the Danish Arts Foundation’s Lifetime honorary grant and, in 2019, the Prize of Hope from the Institut of Folkeligt Teater (Denmark) / Dell’Arte International, California (USA). Most recently, in 2020, she received the Honorary Award from the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation.

Sofia Mavragani Choreographer

Born in Athens in 1978. She graduated from the EDDC-European Dance Development Centre, ArtEZ-University of Arts, Arnhem (Netherlands). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Dance Making and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Athens University of Economics. Her works have been presented in Greece and abroad: Athens Epidaurus Festival, Aerowaves 2019, documenta 14, ARC FOR DANCE FESTIVAL (Athens), Megaron – Athens Concert Hall, Kalamata International Dance Festival (Greece), Cyprus Contemporary Dance Festival, Dimitria Festival (Thessaloniki, Greece), MIRfestival (Athens), National Theatre of Northern Greece, Dance Days International Festival (Chania, Greece), Apollon Theatre (Syros, Greece), Τeatro Belisario (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Teatro Labrade (Madrid, Spain), etc. She develops projects on improvisation and composition, such as: BREAKING ART workshop on creative collaboration between young choreographers and musicians – composers, imPROject research on stage improvisation, playforPLACE research project on performing arts and artistic collaboration, which has been realised in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Oceania. She teaches dance improvisation and choreography in dance schools and dance centres in Greece and abroad. She is a founding member of the FINGERSIX international artistic network, and of FINGERSIX / Athens. An Aerowaves Twenty19 Artist.

www.sofiamavragani.com

Polina Kremasta Choreographer, dancer

Graduated with honours from the Rallou Manou Professional Dance School and from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ioannina (Greece). Dancer and choreographer in Creo Dance Company, participating in Greek and international festivals, residencies, symposiums, platforms and workshops. Since 2014, she has been conducting the kinetic-dance research Apogeos and is also the creator and founder of a multilayered educational programme for dancers and public-school pupils called Skytali. She has collaborated with many artists and scholars from various fields. Her choreographic works have been awarded in Greece and abroad. She teaches contemporary dance, theory, improvisation, choreography and applied anatomy-kinesiology in two Greek Professional Dance Schools.

Stavroula Siamou Choreographer, dancer

Born in Athens in 1967. She graduated from the Greek National School of Dance and continued her studies in New York (USA), her main interests being in improvisation and release technique. Upon her return in Greece, she danced with various dance companies, Edafos company, SineQuaNon and Tzeni Argyriou being her collaborators for a long time. In theatre, she has co-directed Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Mandragora by Niccolò Machiavelli at the Neos Kosmos Theatre (Athens) and has collaborated with various directors as a choreographer.

Amalia Tsekoura Actress

Actress, born in Athens. She studied at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece. A sample of her work in theatre are the productions The Bridge of Arta (dir. Marianna Calbari, 2021), Equal Rights (dir. Eleni Georgopoulou, 2016), The Happy Prince (dir. Aris Troupakis, 2016), Erofili (dir. Stratis Panourios, 2016), The Marriage of Figaro (dir. Stathis Livathinos, 2015), The Iliad (dir. Stathis Livathinos, 2013), The Trojan Women (dir. Vangelis Theodoropoulos, 2010), Eleni (dir. Giannis Paraskevopoulos, 2009), Antigone (dir. Lefteris Voyiatzis, 2006). Since 2015, she is also a member of the polyphonic band Quintet-à-tête.

Giorgos Zygouris Actor

He is an actor based in Athens, Greece. A graduate of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Engineering School of the University of Patras and the Drama School of the Municipal and Regional Theatre of Patras (Greece). He works mainly in theatrical productions in the National Theatre of Greece and other private troupes, with numerous directors such as Katerina Evangelatos, Antonis Antypas, Eleni Efthymiou, Wang Xiaoying, etc. He enriched his studies by joining the Schola Cantorum, a Renaissance music choir directed by Iason Marmaras. He participated in advertising clips, short movies and, lately, in a TV series in a private Greek TV station. 

Elina Rizou Actress

Born in Athens in 1986. She graduated from the Embros Drama School (2009). As an actress, she has collaborated with Dimitris Karantzas, Georgia Mavragani, Giannis Moschos, Giorgos Oikonomou, Theo Abazis, Elli Papakonstantinou, Ektoras Lygizos, Υannis Anastasakis, Zoe Hadjiantoniou, Aris Balis, Giorgos Valais, Anestis Azas in productions presented at the National Theatre of Greece, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Onassis Stegi (Athens), the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the Athens Festival, the Kefallinias Street Theatre (Athens), the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation (Athens), the Neos Kosmos Theatre (Athens), the Greek Art Theatre Karolos Koun, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (Germany), etc. As an assistant director, she has collaborated with Giannis Moschos, Dimitris Karantzas, Georgia Mavragani and Giorgos Oikonomou.

Konstantinos Zografos Actor

Βοrn in Athens. He studied at the School of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece. He has worked at the National Theatre of Greece, the Onassis Stegi (Athens), the Greek National Opera, the Athens Epidaurus Festival, the Neos Kosmos Theatre (Athens), the Scrow Theatre (Athens). He has collaborated with directors Ektoras Lygizos, Yiannis Kakleas, Stathis Livathinos, Marilita Lambropoulou, Giannis Dalianis, Sofia Vgenopoulou, Dimitris Karantzas, Boris Nikitin.

Kostis Koronaios Actor

Born in Preveza in 1972. He is a graduate of the Embros Drama School (Morfes Theatre Organisation). He has participated in theatre productions such as Othello (dir. Aimilios Chilakis), Molière (dir. Stathis Livathinos), La Dame de chez Maxim (dir. Thomas Moschopoulos), Koutroulis’ Wedding (dir. Smaragda Karydi), Agamemnon (dir. Io Voulgaraki), L’Homme qui rit (dir. Theo Abazis), Βlue Jasmine (dir. Stamatis Fasoulis), Tristan (dir. Maria Magkanari), Penthesilea (dir. Pantelis Dentakis), Plutus (dir. Nikita Milivojevic), Operetta (dir. Nikos Karathanos), Demons (dir. Theo Abazis), Katathlas (dir. Michalis Gigidis), Three Sisters (dir. Dimitris Tarlow), The Motherfucker with the Hat (dir. Thanos Tokakis), Ward No. 6 (dir. Yolanda Markopoulou), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (dir. Konstantinos Markoulakis), Arrival (dir. Zoe Hadjiantoniou), Philoctetes (dir. Costas Filippoglou), Oedipus Rex (dir. Cezaris Graužinis), Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (dir. Michail Marmarinos), Antigone (dir. Lefteris Voyiatzis), The Misanthrope, Jacques and His Master, Liebestod, Look at Me, Les Femmes savantes (dir. Theo Abazis), Parthenon, Hamlet (dir. The Orchestra of Little Things), The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden (dir. Vangelis Theodoropoulos), The Government Inspector, The Merchant of Venice (dir. Spyros Evangelatos), etc. He has participated in films such as Plato’s Academy by Filippos Tsitos, The Heiress by Panagiotis Fafoutis, Guiness by Alexis Kardaras, etc and, on television, I oikogeneia vlaptei, Amyna zonis, Dia tafta, I katallili stigmi, etc.

Dimitra Mertzani Dancer

She graduated with honours from the Greek National School of Dance. She is working as a professional dancer and teaches contemporary dance and improvisation at the Aktina Professional Dance School. She has collaborated with many choreographers including Linda Kapetanea and Jozef Fruček, Christos Papadopoulos, Ermira Goro, Hannes Langolf, Tzeni Argyriou, Kat Válastur, Kiriaki Nasioula and Argyris Angeli, Patricia Apergi, Mina Ananiadou, Christos Xyrafakis, Andy Xhuma and Anton Lachký in productions in Greece and abroad.

Konstantinos Papanikolaou Dancer

He is a graduate of the Postgraduate Dance Department of the Université Paris 8, Vincennes – Saint-Denis (France) and of the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Ηe has collaborated with Gerard & Kelly and Olivier Marguerit and has taken part in the Biennales of Munich (Germany), Lyon (France), Birmingham (United Kingdom). He has also appeared in the Centre Pompidou (France), Hellerau (Germany), The Place (UK), Mercat de les Flors (Spain), etc. In Greece, he has collaborated with choreographers Patricia Apergi, Mariela Nestora, Tzeni Argyriou and, in theatre, with Argyris Pantazaras, Kirki Karali, Eleni Efthimiou, Lilly Meleme, Lefteris Veniadis, etc. He choreographed and danced the solo Tonight and Every Night, presented at the ARC FOR DANCE FESTIVAL (Athens, 2020) and The Diving Horse and Other Mythologies at the Onassis Νew Choreographers Festival, Onassis Stegi (Athens, 2021).

Filippos Tsitsopoulos Performance artist

Born in Athens in 1967. He lives and works in London, Madrid and Athens. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), at the Complutense University of Madrid (PhD degree 1996). From 2005 until 2012, he worked at the Educational Department of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain (workshops and performance). His video installations have been presented in many exhibitions, such as The Serpentine Gallery (UK), FACT Liverpool (UK), Bluecoat (UK), Frieze Art Fair London (UK), Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin (Germany), twice in Tate Modern (UK), Toynbee Studios and Artsadmin (UK), CGAC de Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and Chelsea Theatre London (UK), LADA Live Art Development Agency (UK), Kingston Shakespeare (UK), The Rose Theatre (UK), Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare (UK), among many others.

Virginia Mastrogiannaki Performance artist

Selected participations: οrthros (2021), in collaboration with Elias Mamaliogkas, Marginalia (2021), curated by Anna Kafetsi, Megaron – Athens Concert Hall, SJ (2020), “Akış / Flux”, curated by Paula Garcia & Serge Le Borgne, Sakıp Sabancı Museum & Marina Abramović Institute, Istanbul (Turkey), reading in / reading out (2019), Old Parliament House / National Historical Museum, produced by MOMus, with the support of Outset Contemporary Art Fund (Greece), Mai ’68-’18 (2018), curated by Valérie Dodeur & Jakob Gautel, La Petite Fabrique d’Art, Paris (France), like me (2017), CHART Art Fair, ANNAELLE Gallery, Copenhagen (Denmark), jargon (2016), “As One”, curated by Paula Garcia & Serge Le Borgne, NEON & Marina Abramović Institute, Benaki Museum (Athens).

www.virginiamastrogiannaki.com

Martha Kylafi Performer, voice teacher

Born in Athens, Greece. She studied music theory and composition with Nikos Kariotis at the Hellenic Conservatory of Music and Arts and also holds a voice diploma, having graduated from the class of Giorgos Zervanos. She is a founding member of Marsyas, a choral ensemble that has participated in a number of Greek and international festivals. She is a founding member of the ASMA Independent Music Development Association, which aims at producing and promoting contemporary musical works as well as researching new artistic trends, and of which she has served as president since its founding in 2002. She is currently teaching at the Hellenic Conservatory of Music and Arts and the Greek National Conservatory.

Vassilia Rozana Costume designer

Born in Livadia in 1972. She studied at the Department of Economics of the University of Athens. She took classes at the Akis Davis acting workshop (Athens). She studied further at the Costume Design Department of the Kallithea Working Youth Centre (Greece). She has worked for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the 2011 Special Olympics, the opening ceremony of the 2015 European Games at Baku (Azerbaijan) and the Athens Epidaurus Festival. As costume designer, she collaborates with theatre and dance groups, as well as with film production companies.

www.vassiliarozana.com

Tasos Palaioroutas Lighting designer

Born in Athens in 1968. He studied photography at Eugenia Hatzikou’s School of Film and Television Studies (Athens). He was Filippos Koutsaftis’ assistant for 10 years. Since 1999, he has been working as a lighting designer in theatre and dance productions and as a director of photography in television productions. He is a founding member of the Broken Chair theatrical group, the Dalika Dance Theater and the One Plant theatre group. He is the publisher of ORMI magazine, a publication about emerging artists.

Minas Antypas Historical researcher

He was born in Athens in 1990 and resides in Rethymnon, Crete. In 2014 he finished his graduate studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of History and Archaeology. In 2017, he received his master’s degree in Modern and Contemporary History from the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Political Science and History (Athens). In the same year, he was accepted as a PhD Candidate at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete. For his thesis in 2019, he received a fellowship Grant for PhD Candidate Students by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation.

Εleni Riga Curatorial advisor

Independent curator. She has worked in the Public Program of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (USA), as director of Contemporary Art in Eleusis 2021 (Greece) and as assistant curator at documenta 14. As an independent curator and co-founder of the research and art platform hd.kepler, she has collaborated with cultural organisations and independent venues in Europe and America. She is a graduate of the Department of Science and Technology of Exhibitions of the Sorbonne University (France) and of the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of the Panteion University of Athens. She is currently attending the Curatorlab curation programme at Konstfack University, Sweden.

Armin Kerber Artistic collaborator

He has been working consistently for fifteen years as a freelance dramaturg, author and curator mainly in Germany, Greece, Switzerland and Scandinavia, amongst others at Onassis Stegi (Athens), National Theatre of Greece, Staatsballett Berlin (Germany), Gasteig München (Germany), Schauspielhaus Zürich (Switzerland), Nederlands Dans Theater den Haag (Netherlands), Den Nationale Scene Bergen (Norway), Stadsteater Stockholm (Sweden), Oper Göteborg (Sweden). He was artistic director of the international Theaterhaus Gessnerallee Zürich (Switzerland), head dramaturg of the Kulturfabrik Kampnagel Hamburg (Germany), editor of the Swiss culture magazine DU, curator at Paul Klee Museum in Bern (Switzerland), head dramaturg at the Stadttheater Bern (Switzerland), artistic director of the Kurtheater Baden (Switzerland). For the Swiss national exhibition expo.02, he created a cross-genre and participative programme with a team of artists, scientists and curators that ran daily for six months. He studied psychology and sociology in Heidelberg and Berlin. His degree dissertation was about concepts of memory in the work of Walter Benjamin and Marcel Proust. He worked with the Greek artists Akillas Karazisis, Michail Marmarinos, Tzeni Argyriou, Prodromos Tsinikoris, Anestis Azas. He curated and staged the Greek Autumn Festival in Switzerland and writes regularly for the German magazine Theater Heute about the Greek culture world. He lives in Zurich, intermittently in Athens.

www.arminkerber.com

Miguel Ángel Melgares Artistic collaborator

Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1980. He works as a dramaturg with several interdisciplinary performance artists. He graduated from the Fine Art School of the University of Granada (Spain). His ambitions in the field of performing arts moved him to settle in Amsterdam (Netherlands) to take part in the Master of Theatre programme at DasArts, from where he graduated in 2010. Since 2019, he has held a PhD in Arts with the dissertation The End of Performance Rhetorics. As a dramaturg, he has developed an intense activity, collaborating closely with German artist Julian Hetzel, working on the latest production by Greek choreographer Tzeni Argyriou and being part of the unique performances of Sonja Jokiniemi. These artists present their artworks in the international performing art circuit. Lately, these collaborations were presented, e.g., at La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Onassis Stegi (Athens), Impulse Theater Festival, FFT (Düsseldorf, Germany), Spielart Festival (Munich, Germany), Zodiak (Helsinki, Finland), Malta Festival (Poznań, Poland) or ImPulsTanz (Vienna, Austria). Parallel to his creative work, he has initiated projects like the SLOW DOWN Winter Performance Festival or BastardScene, a Permanent Seminary About Expanded Performance, Language and Edition, a part of the Sobre LAB research group at the University of Granada (Spain). Since 2018, he has been a tutor at the DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (Netherlands).