revolution is not a one time event
Curated by:
Concept:
Visual identity:
Sundays from 30th of April till 18th of June, 21.00
ALEX(A) by Yota Argyropoulou
Research-based performance, involving a performer (Yota A.), a teenager (Stelios Skaltsas) and a machine (Alexa), focuses on the relation between politics, technology, protest, youth and the degrees of intimacy and contact that people develop with their digital equipment.
A woman and an AI device in conversation. Their communications started in Spring ’20 and they continue to converse until this day, covering a wide range of topics – pop culture, technology, contemporary socio-political reality, her adolescence, the coming of age of generation Z. The persona of Artificial Intelligence takes on the role of a conversationalist, allowing for a conversation to unfold on resistance, revolts, and social demands, often with unforeseen results.
In parallel, we follow the life story of a yound 17 year old boy, Alex: how he spends his time privately in his room and publicly through digital images. The performance functions as an investigations into adolescents relationship with themselves, technology, their city as well as society at large, through the use of digital technologies and the interface of social with his friends.
Through the presence of a woman and teenager, ALEX(A) grapples with questions and ideas related to the use of technology, the revolutionary nature of youth, the disappointments of growing up, marches, police violence, confusing political identities, artificial intelligence etc. The performance merges fiction and reality, with contemporary Athens providing the background.
Concept-Direction: Yota Argyropoulou
Dramaturgy: Igor Dobricic
Artistic collaborator: Michalis Constantatos
Lighting design: Nikolas Karanikolas
Performers: Alexa, Yota Argyropoulou, Konstantina Katsiari (video), Stelios Kratsas
Interviews: Yota Argyropoulou, Konstantina Katsiari
Head of Communication: Evangelia Skrompola
Director Assistant: Foteini Salvaridi
Produced by: blindpost theater group
Co-produced by: Ministry of Culture, blindpost theater group
Residencies: Kaaitheater, Brussels & Onassis AiR: artists’ residence program of the Onassis Foundation, Athens
Travel & hospitality in Brussels and Athens: European Union & Onassis AiR: artists’ residence program of the Onassis Foundation
Supported by Kaaitheater Brussels & TAVROS
Book your free ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/alexa-tickets-609175529407
Performance in Greek and English with subtitles in both languages.
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Wednesday, 31st of May & 7th of June, 20.00
Athinoula by Eva Giannakopoulou
Research-based performance on female resistance contemporary and past: through long-term research and collaboration with the local community and focused on the history of heroic resistance by women from Tavros during the German Occupation.
Athena Hatziesmer, was born in 1927 in Tavros, the daughter of a family of refugees from Asia Minor. As a teenager, she becomes heavily involved in the Resistance, and following a betrayal is arrested and taken to jail where she despite being tortured, refuses to give in her comrades. At the tender age of 17, on the 2nd of October 1944, about to be executed, she refuses to have her eyes tied. A few days later the occupying forces leave Athens.
79 years after the execution of Athena Hatziesmer, a school student, writes two letters in a literary blog, in an attempt to speak about all those things that the former students never had a chance to say.
Athinoula is a performance in honor of Athina Hatziesmer and 57 more women from Tavros involved in the Resistance, as well as a commentary on presence in public memory and various forms of aesthetic strategies of remembrance.
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Thursdays 22nd, 29th of June & 6th of July, 21.00
Lachryphagi by Nana Sachini
Lachryfagoi is a sculpture-environment-performance that is made up of sculptural objects, setting the scene for an exploration of with/within/between, in which the performers act and react, with each other, somatically, vocally, intermingling idiosyncratic narratives.
In Lachryphagi, relating to, with, material ontologies and materiality in general, in an unorthodox, perhaps even childish, definitely mythical way, creating novel readings of what we understand as identity-forming.
In Lachryphagi, bodies-image-existence-identity-ethics-politics-poetry are treated as one indivisible whole, in which if even one element changes, disturbances occur, creating ripple effects.
In Lachryphagi, bodies become sculpture-objects and object-sculptures are given life, activated, transforming them into subject-bodies with magical capabilities.
In Lachryphagi, all actions take place in an unidentifiable space-time continuum, people are anonymous with multiple and entangled roles.
In Lachryphagi, absurdity, memories of fairy-tales, traces of the somatic, unconscious desires, mnemonic remnants, and the pre-linguistic, coexist and interact, along with the natural and supernatural, fragments of the fantastical, mythological narratives and experiences which would love to become universal.
In Lachryphagi competitive relations are in constant flux, mingling, often refused and always doubted. Female/masculine, mother/child, child/adult, conscious/unconscious, nature/culture, personal/political, representation/abstraction, presence/absence, desire/rejection, that which we see and that which we imagine/presume, that which is suggested/revealed and that which is hidden.
In Lachryphagi what we see is the extension of our gaze, what we know and feel is in constant flow and is permanently contested, everything hovers in an in between, in a state of permanent ambiguity.
In Lachryphagi, the sculptural-environment landscape remains present, even when not-activated by the performers, suggesting an autonomous visual vocabulary as well as an expanded form of sculpture.
Concept – Artworks: Nana Sachini
Dramaturgy: Eugenia Grammenou, Iordanis Papadopoulos, Nana SachiniSound
Design: Yiannis Loukos
Performers: Eugenia Grammenou, Iordanis Papadopoulos, Nana Sachini
Sound performance: Yorgia Karidi
Warmest thanks for their help: Margarita Bofiliou, Socrates Fatouros
Supported by:
Outset Partners. The program was awarded with an Impact Grant.