Before Now After is an interdisciplinary project bringing together contemporary dance, traditional live music, oral history, documentary film and photography.
Through a contemporary journey on the island of Leros, the project creates movement while focusing on the meeting with ‘the other’ body (that of the local population, the co-creator, the place, the object) and a dialogue across the collective past, present and future.
The project explores the excavation of the past as an opportunity to listen through the body and to meet with opinions and events of another era. A chance to converse through art with the local community, to set in motion different ways of relating to our history and exploring the collective undertaking of shaping our future.
IN PRESENTIA deals with the Asia Minor Catastrophe through the notion of mourning and the encounter with the sea. The work highlights the complexity of the trauma’s longevity, combining light, the sea’s movement, and sound. A visual and sound installation – it functions as a score for the performance.
A silent ‘in-memoriam’ tribute to all refugees who experienced the trauma of displacement, who lost their lives in this very sea or moved on to a new life. We attempt a dialogue inside the silence of loss, recollecting memories from our past, like invaluable flashes of insight that shed light to the darkness of mourning.
We bring the dead to life within our memory, with tenderness towards what remains in presence, as a part of our lives, invaluable.
Ammophila Vol.3: There Was Land Here Before is an exhibition that renegotiates the way in which we perceive and experience places and the dominant narratives projected onto them.
We are concerned with places, which we regard as our subsoil, rituals of coming together and coexisting, and stories that have shaped these relationships. The exhibition is inviting us to give new interpretations and stories to places that can be real or made up through our collective phantasies: phantasies of a non-existent land, a land that is different, a land that is differently inhabited.
A land that can shake us, a land in decomposition, a land in bloom, a land that trembles, a limitless land.
Seventeen refugee settlements were integrated into Northern Evia. Four out of these transformed into separate refugee villages that took their names from respective regions of Asia Minor: Neos Pirgos, Neo Mousarli, Nea Egin, Nea Sinasos.
Refugees from Prokopi of Cappadocia, Makri and Livisi, Marmara, the region of Smyrna, Ardassa in Pontus, Michaniona in the area of Kyzikos in Propontis, and Yosgati in the far reaches of Asia Minor, settled in Northern Evia, bringing along their traditions and know-how, and breathing new life into the place.
A performance combining the screening of stories of present-day descendants of refugees and archival photographs with the live presentation of original compositions based on the rhythms and melodies of Asia Minor, attempts to capture the contribution of refugees to the shaping of this place’s new identity, taking the audience on a journey across a past yet recent space-time continuum.
Two separate inter-artistic projects: a photography installation titled Compositions and a musical performance titled Zruits I-II, which means Dialogues.
Compositions presents stories from the interwar period and historical moments of the Armenian community through 150 unique pictures from the archival photographs of the “Armenika” magazine, curated by Vangelis Ioakimidis. Zruits I-II is a meeting of duduk with classical guitar, a conversation between the traditional and contemporary Armenian music by Vahan Galstyan and Lefteris Chavoutsas, performed by singer Maria Spyridonidou.
Compositions and Dialogues take root in the same place and call attention to stories and memories, whole worlds that are brought to life in the shade of an apricot tree, a Prunus Armeniaca – the symbol of Armenia.
An interdisciplinary project by Bill Balaskas, which attempts a poetic reading of the anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922). It revolves around a new large-scale neon installation consisting of the phrases “THERE IS NO SEA WITHOUT A LAND” and “THERE IS NO LAND WITHOUT A SEA”.
The project proposes a more contemplative or – even – optimistic approach to historical trauma, and is accompanied by a bilingual publication, two workshops, a dedicated website, and an international conference co-organized by Kingston University, London.
Through the project, 2291 becomes an imaginary date that refers not only to the universal and timeless nature of refugee disasters, but also to the hope that they will disappear sooner rather than later.
“And yet, the Earth moves!” said Galileo in 1610 and humanity had to come to terms with the idea that the Earth does move. In 2023, however, we must accept that the Earth trembles and reacts against human interventions.
At the crossroads of art and technology, visual and musical performance, GAIA produces a different narration about the Earth and the way we should be inhabiting it. Inspired by the rich theoretical work of Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, this new – visual and stage – narration about the Earth is both about man and non-human factors, without however putting aside the human element – as is often proposed by the meta-human discourse. Yes, we do experience a destruction. But that can be reversed. We need to produce a new world creation, by renewing our representations of the terrestrial, biotic and abiotic world.