Onassis AiR
Open Days, the events showcasing the Onassis AiR Fellows’ work-in-progress, are back this year even more powerfully, spreading across two days to welcome a broader audience.
Each Open Day event is tailored to the practice of the Onassis AiR Fellows participating in the program giving the public a glimpse of the variety of disciplines and projects developed during the residency.
At the Onassis AiR Open Days for 2024–25, you will have the opportunity to meet artists from all over the world who will present their work through live events, screenings, performances, talks, multimedia installations, and soundscapes, among other formats.
Screenings, performances, live events, talks, multimedia installations. Onassis AiR Open Days present highlights from the various residencies of the Onassis AiR Fellows.
12—15 December 2024
The Onassis ONX and Onassis AiR communities meet with the public to explore the ‘black box’ of art and advanced technologies. Through a series of presentations of projects, completed or in development, artist talks, performances, and masterclasses, we share the concepts and concerns of the Greek and European post-digital art scene.
Onassis AiR/ONX Fellows present the evolution of their work and discuss what the digital art scene means today.
Additionally, projects developed in the framework of the EMAP (European Media Art Platform) residency program, co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program, will be presented, which explore the body, the planetary, the human and the non-human, new forms of labor, the touristification of cities, communication between different species, and the limits of artificial intelligence, expressing concerns central to European artists. These works make up the body of the main exhibition presented during the fourday Onassis ONX/AiR Open Days event, accompanied by talks and masterclasses by the artists.
The presentations of the artists and projects of Onassis ONX/AiR and EMAP are complemented by the presentation of projects developed in the framework of the Onassis ONX Immersive Proof-of-Concept (PoC). In this program, teams of artists, programmers, and producers experimented with advanced technologies and received support from the Onassis Foundation’s ONX program to create worlds, immersive experiences, and innovative storytelling techniques. Audiovisual productions, digital installations, and interactive games are presented on both an artistic, production, and technical level with a focus on distribution and sustainable further development.
The Onassis ONX Immersive Proof-of-Concept program is implemented in the framework of the Smart Attica European Digital Innovation Hub actions, co-funded by the European Union.
A four-day event exploring the present and future landscape of Greek and European new media art and technology. We will engage with the artists, learning about their work, methods, and collectives, while seeking innovative ways to showcase their projects.
21 November 2024 — 12 January 2025
Text: Ivan Vyrypaev
Direction: George Koutlis
Twenty years later, the popular Greek director George Koutlis transcribes the work into today in the form of a Generation Z reflection, transforming the stage into a rave party arena with DJs Reign of Time on the decks and a young troupe that, like a post-dramatic chorus, seeks through the lens of blasphemous poetics the antidote to the psychopolitical suffocation of our times. Oxygen
“I write for a generation of educated young people who do not go to the theater that often,” the leading spokesman of the New Russian Drama, Ivan Vyrypaev, stated in 2003, now ostracized by the Russian regime and a naturalized Polish citizen. A theatrical manifesto of the 00 s generation, Oxygen was written as a prose narrated by two characters—a girl and a boy bearing the same name—accompanied by a live DJ set to allow its staging in theatrical venues and clubs equally. Structured in ten chapters, like a transcription of the Ten Commandments and a novel New Testament, it launched from a reversed “Thou shalt not kill” to culminate into a biblical Revelation, all the while permeated by the agonizing question, “What is oxygen to you?”
Matinée performance: every Sunday at 14:00
Accessibility services:
20 & 21 December 2024
2 & 3 January 2025
Simultaneous interpretation in Greek Sign Language
Greek surtitles for deaf and hard of hearing people
Audio description
Tactile tours
Accessibility services are provided with the support of the Europe Beyond Access network, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
What makes you breathe?
What deprives you of air?
What do you believe in?
Oxygen by Ivan Vyrypaev, a theatrical manifesto for the 00s, is presented as an antidote to the 'psychopolitical suffocation' of Generation Z. A troupe of 25 individuals participating in a spiritual rave experience.
↓ Credits
Direction, Translation & Adaptation: George Koutlis/ Adaptation & Dramaturgy: Vasilis Magouliotis / Choreography: Alexandros Stavropoulos / Music & DJs on stage: Reign of Time / Music & Sound Design: Jeph Vanger / Set Design: Constantine Skourletis / Video Design: Uncharted Limbo Collective / Costume Design: Eva Goulakou & Dimos Klimenof / Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou / Movement: Alkistis Polychroni / Assistant to the Director and Artistic Collaborator: Eleni Koutsioumpa / Assistant to the Costume Designers: Alexandra-Anastasia Ftouli / Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Marietta Pavlaki/ 2nd Assistant to the Director: Orphée de CorbièreKalessis / 2nd Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Pavlina Papadaki / Performers (alphabetically): Gavriela Antonopoulou, Electra Barouta, Ioannis Bastas, Nikolas Chatzivasiliadis, Chara Giota, Nikos Gonidis, Marios Hadjiantoni, Eleftheria Iliopoulou, Panos Kladis, Despina Lagoudaki, Marianna Mathia, Alexandros Nouskas Varelas, Evini Pantelaki, Kostas Phoenix, Antonia Pitoulidou, Gal A. Robissa, Katerina Samara, Natalia Swift, Thodoris Theodorakopoulos, Giannis Tomazos, Anastasia Valsamaki, Noemi Vasileiadou, Jason Vrochidis / Production Coordinator: Nikos Charalambidis / Executive Production & Production Management: POLYPLANITY Productions Yolanda Markopoulou & Vicky Strataki / Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi / Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.
15 January 2025
Miranda July creates works that defy categorization and touch on multiple means of expression, from film and literature to visual arts and performance. Many of them have been hosted at MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Biennial.
She chose the surname ‘July’ from a fictional character when she was 15 years old, and at 20, she officially adopted it. Today, she writes and lives unapologetically, dancing at home or on screens, challenging social conventions, and encouraging women to discover their authentic selves.
It has been written that “Miranda July is good at plot. Stories will come to her fully formed, like a gift from the gods; all she has to do is unwrap them” ( New Yorker). In the 1990s, she experimented as part of the ‘riot grrrl’ scene with various theater, multimedia performance, and film projects at independent festivals and alternative art spaces. In 2005, she made her directorial film debut with Me and You and Everyone We Know and won the Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival and four awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Golden Camera. In the field of literature, she has proven her charisma and ability to capture sometimes with humor and sometimes with sensitivity—what is discussed on the online and offline side of life. With books such as No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007), a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, and her first novel, The First Bad Man (2015), she explores themes such as loneliness, alienation, and the human need for connection. Regardless of the medium and genre she chooses, her voice always remains refined and deeply human.
In January, she will be at the Onassis Stegi to present some of her films as well as her new novel, All Fours (2024). It is an ode to love in all its forms, now part of the conversations of American women who have joined the 40+ club but, at the same time, experience desires without age.
She’s a film director, author, performance artist, and one of the boldest voices of our time. On the occasion of her new novel, All Fours , Miranda July comes from Los Angeles to the Onassis Stegi and challenges us to reconsider the institution of marriage and family.
23—25 January 2025
STEGI.RADIO is taking over the Onassis Stegi for the second year running, turning Takeover into an established event. For three days, across three stages, STEGI.RADIO puts its diverse tastes on full display, transforming Stegi into a kaleidoscopic musical playground. With sets from local and international talents alike, packed with unpredictable surprises, STEGI.RADIO returns with a celebration of the diverse mosaic of contemporary sound through a multifaceted curation of selections from the entire gamut of the worldwide electronic scene.
Among the standout performers of STEGI.RADIO Takeover 2025 are Kittin, who is visiting Athens after her sweeping performance at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics; the living legend of Detroit and onethird of the Underground Resistance, Robert Hood; the 'beast of Rotterdam' with his inexhaustible range of acid, techno, electro, and italo, David Vunk; the experimental free jazz group Irreversible Entanglements, led by Moor Mother; and the up-and-coming Athenian avant pop singer-songwriter Vassilina.
Stay tuned as the full lineup will be revealed gradually.
STEGI.RADIO occupies the Onassis Stegi for a second year, transforming it into a kaleidoscopic music stage with an exciting lineup of local and international electronic music artists.
↓ Credits Artistic Direction: Voltnoi & Quetempo (STEGI.RADIO), Akis Chontasis
Concept—Direction:
Mario Banushi
6 February—
22 March 2025
Creator of a stage language all his own, the 26–year–old Albanian–born Mario Banushi is already touring the world with his first plays, Goodbye, Lindita (2023) and Taverna Miresia–Mario, Bella, Anastasia (2023), and is hailed internationally as the wunderkind of Greek theater. If, in his previous works, the theme was mourning, in MAMI it is the source of life. For in Banushi’s personal mythology, the almost homonymous words 'mami' and 'mam' become identical. Mami, as in mother. Mam, as in food. One pulls out one’s heart and offers it to another like a warm loaf of bread.
Drawing inspiration from personal experiences, Banushi creates an unholy shrine to the mother-child relationship. To celebrate it. To exorcize it. To fill it with vows and curses. To fall in love with it. For, as he himself notes, “I have always said that birth is love in reverse.”
The stage becomes a landscape of memory. As eerie as it is familiar. The performers, immersed in silence, create moments of profound emotion and urge us to recognize and confront our own memories, our own relationships, and the emotional legacy we carry.
“When I was about a year old, my mother had to leave me with my grandmother in Albania and go away. Until I was thirteen, I called my grandmother ‘mami.’ When my mother took me with her to Athens, I grew up in the apartment above the bakery where she worked, with the smell of freshly baked bread. I grew up around many women. I grew up around young women and old women. I grew up with more than one mother. This show is for them: a wish, a prayer to the weight the word ‘mom’ carries for both the one who hears it and the one who says it. Who takes care of whom—I never understood this complicated relationship. And I never will. But I’m trying to unravel it like an umbilical cord, like the viscera that connects life to its roots.”
This breakout director’s new creation is a visual poem about the mother-child relationship. A show that is a tribute to the women who nurtured us.
Matinée performance: every Sunday at 14:00
Accessibility services: 27 February, 28 February, and 1 March 2025
Simultaneous interpretation in Greek Sign Language Greek surtitles for deaf and hard of hearing people
Audio description
Tactile tours
“My mother brought me into the world along with thousands of other children. She was a midwife.” MAMI, a hymn for all the women who raised us.
Accessibility services are provided with the support of the Europe Beyond Access network, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
↓ Credits
Conceived & Directed by Mario Banushi / With: Vasiliki Driva, Dimitris Lagos, Eftychia Stefanou–Ilia Koukouzeli, Angeliki Stellatou, Fotis Stratigos, and Panagiota Υiagli / Set & Costume Design: Sotiris Melanos / Original Music & Sound Design: Jeph Vanger / Lighting Design & Associate Dramaturg: Stephanos Droussiotis / Artistic Collaborators: Aimilios Arapoglou, Thanasis Deligiannis / Assistant Director: Theodora Patiti / International Relations & Tour Management: Nikos Mavrakis / Production Management: Christos Christopoulos TooFarEast / In collaboration with: OMAZ nonprofit organization / Auditions & Residency Coordinator: Konstantina Douka Gkosi TooFarEast / Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi / Co-produced by FOG Festival / Triennale Milano[IT], Noorderzon Festival / Grand Theatre Groningen[NL] & more to be announced / Initial research & development were made possible with the support of the Onassis AiR Dramaturgy Fellowship [GR] and the Centre Culturel Hellénique Paris [FR] / Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture
The Odyssey performed with keyboards, vocals, and musical saw
14—16 February 2025
Thessaloniki Concert Hall
Giannis Aggelakas & Christos Papadopoulos
“Descend oh heavens to the land / to shine into our deepest chasms / and let the unbearable silence be transformed / to roars, to cries, and to words.” Nekyia , created by the legend of the Greek rock music scene Giannis Aggelakas and the revelatory sensation of European choreography Christos Papadopoulos, begins solemnly, evocatively, and mystically as a ritual experience of the seminal Book 11 of the Homeric epic.
A ‘surround’ sonotropic experience is created on stage to depict Odysseus’ descent into the realm of Hades, where, on the advice of Circe, he departs alongside his companions for the Underworld, seeking the prophecy of Teiresias, the seer, to return to Ithaca.
Having already sold out at the Onassis Stegi Main Stage in the 2023–24 season, Nekyia , the genre-defying performance of music, theater, dance, lighting, and oration, is coming to Thessaloniki as “a revelation,” a “hymn to life,” an “epiphany,” as reviewed in the press.
A singular ‘journey’ between light and shadow, alongside the music of Aggelakas and the images created by Papadopoulos. The onstage narration is performed by Olia Lazaridou and Giannis Aggelakas. Along with two musicians, four female vocalists, and sound design by Coti K., they lead us into the abyss of humanity, of ourselves, and of life itself.
The text of the performance was published by Onassis Publications and is available at the Onassis Shop and selected bookstores.
It started as a friendly chat between Giannis Aggelakas and Olia Lazaridou. It had a sold-out premiere at the Onassis Stegi, went on tour, traveled to Amsterdam, and now it’s on in Thessaloniki. Nekyia , the Odyssey’s seminal Book 11, is a 'surround' sonotropic descent into the Underworld that was created to immerse us in life.
↓ Credits
Translation into Modern Greek: Georgios Psychountakis / Concept, Original Music, Artistic Supervision: Giannis Aggelakas / Direction: Christos Papadopoulos / Free Adaptation & Original Lyrics: Giannis Aggelakas, Theodora Kapralou / Orchestration: Giannis Aggelakas, Elias Baglanis/ Sound Design & Additional Music: Coti K. / Dramaturgical Editing: Theodora Kapralou / Set Design: Clio Boboti / Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou / Lighting Designer Assistant: Marietta Pavlaki / Costumes: Eleftheria Arapoglou / Director Assistant: Eirini Boudali / Set Designer's Assistant: Marilena Kalaitzandonaki / Narration: Olia Lazaridou & Giannis Aggelakas / Musicians: Elias Baglanis (Keyboards, Additional Music), Nikos Giousef (musical saw), Dimitris Salepakis (prerecorded modular synthesizer) / Vocals: Nefeli Bravaki, Eirini Koliousi, Panagiota Koliousi, Myrto Stavrakidou Zachou / Light Installation Performers: Pagona Boulmpasakou, Amalia Kosma, Themis-Ariadne Andreoulaki, Eirini Boudali / Surtitles’ translation in English: Memi Katsoni / Simultaneous Surtitling: Yannis Papadakis / Production – Line Production: Wild Rose Productions – Giorgis Dragatakis & Evangelia Petraki / Produced by Onassis Stegi / Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program / Thanks to the Crete University Press.
Music Connects the Onassis Stegi and the Panteion University vol. 10
6—7 March 2025
6 March 2025
Concert 1
On the Road Following the Traces of Jack Kerouac
Concert 2
Off-road Speaking in Tongues in the Balkans
7 March 2025
Concert 3
Parallel Roads An Ordinary Day
Concert 4
Crossroads Traveling in Time and Sound
Music Connects the Onassis Stegi and the Panteion University, the collaboration between the two institutions, marks its tenth consecutive edition this year. On the occasion of this anniversary, three young musicians were invited into a broader curatorial group to jointly shape this year’s program. The music proposals of this tenth collaboration take us on a journey to American highways and the mountain paths of the Balkans, as well as one-way streets across existence and daring excursions into spacetime.
Young musicians shape this year’s concert program that focuses on riding through American highways, Balkan paths, and the very existence itself.
↓ Credits
Curatorial team: Lorenda Ramou, Pavlos Kordis, Iro Menegou, Filippos Raskovic / Work commissions: Filippos Sakagian, Danai Belosinof, Iason Maroulis
Concert 1 — On the Road / Following the Traces of Jack Kerouac: New music from US cities the author had visited / Galan Trio
Concert 2 — Off-road / Speaking in Tongues in the Balkans: Journey to the East of the West with a violin / Vassilis Soukas (violin), Faidon Miliadis (violin), Lydia Linardou (piano)
Concert 3 — Parallel Roads / An Ordinary Day: Two parallel explorations of postmodernism for voice and cello / Marios Maniatopoulos (tenor), Anastasia Deligiannaki (cello)
Concert 4 — Crossroads / Traveling in Time and Sound: Journey with acoustic and electronic sounds from the Middle Ages to the present / Marios Maniatopoulos (tenor), Yiannis Psarakis (percussion)
26—30 March 2025
Direction: Romeo Castellucci
Starring: Isabelle Huppert
The great Italian director Romeo Castellucci takes on one of the most groundbreaking texts of Western literature. Racine’s Bérénice is transformed by Isabelle Huppert as we have never seen her before, surrounded by speechless male performers and bursting with the inner mourning of her lost love, which resonates inside her and around us.
“Love is the Theater of Cruelty,” says Castellucci through this production, where a wounded heroine is stripped of her royalty, and 14 men make decisions on her behalf. Bérénice is presented as the immobile nexus of chaos, as the eye of the storm that sweeps us all away. As written by Libération: “The actress and the director dig deep, exploring the nightmares of loss.”
Bérénice is a manifesto of love and loss, straddling the border between reality and the dream, between tenderness and madness. A stunning theatrical universe set upon the stage by Castellucci, with brilliant costumes crafted by acclaimed Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, accompanied by an original score by Scott Gibbons, who expertly captures the solitude and abandonment in his composition. As Castellucci notes: “We truly enter into the real, into the darkness of the body, into all that remains hidden by the skin. Α theater made of real, fake, and phantasmized bodies. Education and chastity mark the boundaries of an erotic morbidity that shatters bodies; violence is now endocrinal, and the brakes are more powerful than the accelerator. This energy does not explode, restrained as it is by a body that no longer has words. Within this paralytic theater, Bérénice is probably the most immobile, static, and unnerving ‘tragedy’ ever conceived. And yet, it brings us to tears. And yet, Bérénice one might say—is me.”
Matinée performance: Sunday at 14:00
Is love real, or is it all in our heads?
Romeo Castellucci directs Isabelle Huppert and 14 men in a play about the madness, the truth, and the lie of loving and being loved.
↓ Credits
Bérénice by Romeo Castellucci / Freely inspired by Bérénice by Jean Racine / A monologue with Isabelle Huppert / And with the participation of Cheikh Kébé and Giovanni Manzo / Concept & Direction: Romeo Castellucci / Original Music: Scott Gibbons / Costumes by Iris van Herpen / Direction Assistant: Silvano Voltolina / Technical Direction: Eugenio Resta / Stage Technicians: Andrei Benchea, Stefano Valandro / Lighting Technician: Andrea Sanson / Sound Technician: Claudio Tortorici / Costumes: Chiara Venturini / Hairstyling & Makeup ideation: Sylvie Cailler & Jocelyne Milazzo / Stage Sculptures & Automations: Plastikart Studio Amoroso & Zimmermann / Production Direction: Benedetta Briglia, Marko Rankov / Production & Tour: Giulia Colla / Organization: Bruno Jacob, Leslie Perrin, Caterina Soranzo / Contribution to Production: Gilda Biasini / Technical headquarter team: Lorenzo Camera, Carmen Castellucci, Francesca Di Serio, Gionni Gardini / Costume Intern: Madeleine Tessier / Movement Double: Serena Dibiase / Lines Repeater: Agathe Vidal / Administration: Michela Medri, Elisa Bruno, Simona Barducci / Economic Consultant: Massimiliano Coli / Executive Producers: Societas, Cesena; Printemps des Comédiens / Cité du Théâtre Domaine d’O, Montpellier / Co-producers: Théâtre de La Ville Paris (France), Comédie de Genève (Switzerland), Ruhrtriennale (Germany), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg), deSingel International Arts Center (Belgium), Festival Temporada Alta (Spain), Teatro di Napoli Teatro Nazionale (Italy), Onassis Stegi (Greece), Triennale Milano (Italy), National Taichung Theater (Taiwan), Holland Festival (Netherlands), LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura (Switzerland), TAP Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers (France), La Comédie de ClermontFerrand Scène Nationale (France), Théâtre national de Bretagne Rennes (France) / With the support of Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Spring 2025
Benjamin Labatut defies the confinements of categorization, creating his own, new hybrid genre that has charmed critics and readers alike. Crossing the boundaries between science and fiction, between the brilliant and the absurd, between the aspirational dreams and dystopic nightmares of scientific progress, Labatut’s writing forms a literary blend that invokes awe and occasional terror, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.
Shrouded in mystery, hard to reach, and translated in many languages, Labatut has already earned wide international acclaim for his work, while his book When We Cease to Understand the World stood out amongst the 2021 nominations for the International Booker Prize. With his 2023 book The MANIAC , Labatut explores, among other things, a speculative future where AI becomes self-sufficient, the ascension of a new God, and humanity on the brink of self-annihilation.
Born in Rotterdam in 1980 and growing up between the Hague, Buenos Aries, and Lima, Benjamin Labatut finally settled down in Santiago, Chile, at age 13, where he lives and writes to this day. Interviews with and even photographs of Labatut are rare, as he prefers to avoid media exposure, which is common practice for contemporary book promotion. In this rare opportunity, Labatut will appear in Athens, at the Onassis Stegi, in spring 2025, to talk to us about his exciting work.
Chilean author Benjamin Labatut, acclaimed as the “new international literary sensation,” is coming to the Onassis Stegi Main Stage.
Benjamin Labatut’s books are available in Greek, published by DOMA Books.
3—6 April 2025
For twelve years now at Onassis Dance Days (ODD), the internationally prestigious contemporary dance festival of Onassis Stegi, which presents and spotlights international and local choreographers, we have seen all kinds of amazing things: dance shows in boxing rings and football fields, cooking shows and electropop manifestos, 'walking-tour' performances, works using VR and AI, performances as a tribute to sexuality and musicality.
This year, we turn our attention to the relationship between visual art and contemporary dance. A relationship as old as the landmark work Parade (1917). A hymn to anti-conformism in the midst of World War I, with music by Erik Satie, script by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine. It was commissioned by the cunning impresario of Russian Ballet, Sergei Diaghilev, the man who essentially pioneered Modernism in classical dance by inviting the avant-garde of his time to his ballets: Igor Stravinsky, Vaslav Nijinski, Henri Matisse, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró. A relationship so radical that it brought into galleries and museums performance artists who celebrated the ephemeral, the grotesque, and the dangerous of the body in movement from Yvonne Rainer to Trisha Brown and from Oskar Schlemmer to Bruce Nauman. A relationship as transformative as that of fashion designer Iris van Herpen, who began with dance to eventually showcase the perpetuality of movement in her coutureartwork costumes. A relationship, finally, based on relationships: those of choreographers and visual artists/ musicians, such as the duo of Merce Cunningham & John Cage, or fashion designers and choreographers, such as Gianni Versace & Maurice Bejart and Issey Miyake & William Forsythe.
Joined by our international guest, the iconoclastic choreographer Damien Jalet and his work Planet [wanderer], a choreographic confrontation with the untamed beauty of nature, ODD highlights creators of dance who, in collaboration with sculptors and visual artists, are exploring, in the context of the Onassis AiR fellowships granted following the 24/25 Open Call, the limits of visuality and movement, the politics of aesthetics and fashion, and spectacle as the most durable fetish. The full program will be announced soon at onassis.org.
In its twelfth year, Onassis Stegi’s annual contemporary dance festival, which loves to obliquely answer the question “What is dance?”, places artfulness at its core alongside the politics of aesthetics, fully aware that spectacle is the most durable fetish.
↓ Credits
Curatorial Direction: Afroditi Panagiotakou / Design & Curation: Iliana Dimadi, Konstantinos Tzathas / Greek productions are commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi / Greek ODD productions are supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.
Onassis Dance Days 2025
4—6 April 2025
Choreography: Damien Jalet
Set Designer: Kohei
Nawa
Eight creatures, eight wanderers. Like nomads condemned by the law of gravity, they constantly drift on the same celestial body. Damien Jalet exposes eight dancers to a ceaseless confrontation with the natural elements wind, water, dirt, smoke, fog, light, and darkness. On stage, a cosmogony begins to take place.
An iconoclastic choreographer and dancer, Damien Jalet (Belgium/France) is internationally revered for his monumental choreographies that can be perceived as art installations, such as the iconic Chiroptera (2023) staged on the façade of the Opéra Garnier in Paris with the participation of 153 dancers. Moreover, he has helmed choreographic work for Madonna ( Madame X and Celebration tours) and the films Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino, Anima by Paul Thomas Anderson, and Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard. He has also collaborated with artists such as Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Marina Abramović, Iris van Herpen, Thom Yorke, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Thomas Bangalter, and JR.
For his debut at Onassis Stegi, he wishes to present the work he began creating in Japan in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011. It is a work that he eventually titled Planet [wanderer], based on the double meaning of the ancient Greek verb ‘planáōmai/ planōmai,’ which is 'to wander about, to stray.' Because maybe this is what we are. Wanderers. On the same celestial body, which, equally, drifts amid the universe.
We are planets. And together wanderers, constantly drifting beings on the same celestial body. The internationally renowned and iconoclastic choreographer, a collaborator of Madonna, Thom Yorke, and Marina Abramović, among others, comes to the Onassis Stegi for the first time to stage a performance, collaborating with Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa to create a monumental installation —a cosmogony in motion.
↓ Credits
Choreography: Damien Jalet / Set Designer: Kohei Nawa / Music: Tim Hecker / Light: Yukiko Yoshimoto / Sound Design Collaborator: Xavier Jacquot / Assistant to the Choreography: Alexandra Hoàng Gilbert / Outside Eye: Catalina Navarrete Hernández / Creative Producer: Jamila Hessaine / With: Shawn Ahern, Karima El Amrani, Aimilios Arapoglou, Francesco Ferrari, Vinson Fraley, Thi Mai Nguyen, Astrid Sweeney, Ema Yuasa / Production 2023: Théâtre National de Bretagne, Centre dramatique national (Rennes) / Production 2021: Chaillot Théâtre national de la Danse / Co-production: Chaillot Théâtre national de la Danse, Charleroi danse Centre chorégaphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Sandwich Inc., Festspielhaus St Pölten, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Opéra de Rouen Normandie, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Theater Kampnagel Hamburg, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Nagelhus Schia Productions / With the support of Grand Marble and MATSUSHIMA HOLDINGS CO., LTD / Co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union / In Cooperation with Kyoto University of the Arts ULTRA SANDWICH Project #14 #15 #16 #17, Kyoto University Takenaka University / Special thanks to Théo Casciani, Prabda Yoon, Fabienne Aucant, Didier Deschamps / Nominated for the Fedora Van Cleef & Arpels prize for Ballet 2020
10—12 April 2025
For its 14th edition, Borderline unfolds over three days, exploring the diverse and complementary facets of contemporary electronic sound. Through cross-genre DJ sets from artists at the forefront of the international experimental dance music scene, an abstract, ambient world of deep listening meets a more intense, somatic auditory experience.
Three electrifying days of contemporary electronic sound, with DJ sets ranging from ambient to cross-genre.
↓ Credits Artistic Direction: Voltnoi & Quetempo (STEGI.RADIO), Akis Chontasis
Christos Papadopoulos
8—18 May 2025
Ten years after his first choreographic work and one year after directing Homer’s Nekyia with Giannis Aggelakas at Onassis Stegi, Christos Papadopoulos puts forward his most personal work and, for the first time, he conjoins the materiality of sound with the musicality of the human body.
In his new work, a plural body vibrates on stage and treads wide-eyed forward. Its breath becomes a voice that guides its steps, sometimes giant, sometimes small, always steady and determined, almost carefree. The dancers’ bodies breathe, their breaths becoming sounds that later transform into voices and movements, into an ever-expanding gallop.
With this work Papadopoulos seeks to consciously process the influence that Axion Esti the monumental work by Mikis Theodorakis founded on the poetry of Odysseas Elytis exerted on him, exploring the extent to which sound and speech can dilate and reach a state of abstraction that alludes to that of a movement: a lifted arm, an oscillating body, a trembling leg.
For the choreographer, the first impulse for the creation of My Fierce Ignorant Step (working title) is grounded in aural memories of his childhood and younger age, memories that he shares with many other Greeks: collective memories that are connected with the fate of this country, even if this is not immediately apparent. Is it possible to work on a text with the same composition principles applied to the choreography of a body? How close to words can a body come, and vice versa? Can this turn into a shared, transparent, and simple experience?
Matinée performance: every Sunday at 14:00
Ten performers forge a soundscape and its choreography. Memories and musical imprints, voices and bodies produce sounds like musical instruments. The new work of the internationally renowned minimalist Greek choreographer explores how movement can turn into a song in which the bodies of the dancers vibrate.
↓ Credits
Concept & Choreography: Christos Papadopoulos / Dancing and collaborating: Themis Andreoulaki, Maria Bregianni, Amalia Kosma, Georgios Kotsifakis, Sotiria Koutsopetrou, Tasos Nikas, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Danae Pazirgiannidi, Adonis Vais / Set Design: Clio Boboti / Costume Design: Angelos Mentis / Lighting Design: Eliza Alexandropoulou / Original Music: Kornilios Selamsis / Assistant to the Choreographer: Sevasti Zafeira / Coordination and Line production: Zoe Mouschi – Rena Andreadaki / Commissioned & Produced by Onassis Stegi / Co-producers: Theatre de la Ville Paris (France), Julidans (The Netherlands), Romaeuropa (Italy), Théâtre d'Orléans (France), I Teatri di Reggio Emilia (Italy) & more to be announced soon / Supported by the Onassis Stegi “Outward Turn” Cultural Export Program.
With the financial support of the Ministry of Culture
May—June 2025
When and where do we meet? Do we need a common reality, or are we satisfied with solipsism? What brings us together, and what repels us? What is nature, what is real and what is not, when the surreal becomes the dominant visual language and even algorithms hallucinate?
As cutting-edge technologies tend to disappear in physical space, assimilating it and being assimilated by it, the ways we understand, experience, and communicate our reality are radically changing. The boundaries between the digital and the material, the human and the non-human, the inside and the outside are abolished.
Plásmata III is a living laboratory, a trans-local machine of desire, dreams, and bodies, human and nonhuman. Urban public space, ‘nature’ trapped in anthropocentrism, especially as expressed through the fantasy and mythology of the park, is again the porous and yet solid core around which the creatures in Plásmata III develop. It is a vast magnetic field in which the creatures meet, attract and repel, desire and despise, fall in love or fall out, pass by or stick around. It is the material and symbolic space where each visitor creates their own fragmentary and often conflicting realities. It is an embrace that will take you somewhere unknown. Like any embrace worthy of the name.
Plásmata III includes a series of parallel events, in part implemented within the framework of the Smart Attica European Digital Innovation Hub initiatives co-funded by the European Union and within the framework of the European Digital Deal program co-funded by Creative Europe.
Stay tuned at onassis.org for more Plásmata
Starting from the commons and public space, Plásmata III returns to Athens in May 2025 and focuses on the organic and material, seeking new forms of land art while incorporating digitality in artistic and creative expression.
Why the Mountains Are Black 2025
The Musical Cultures of the Southern Balkans
27—29 June 2025
Curated by Christopher C. King
This third year of Why the Mountains Are Black: The Musical Cultures of the Southern Balkans has as its theme the unexpected influences within the folk music economies of Greece and the southern Balkans. Because time affects space, the place we are now is not the place we once were. Often, it is outside of our collective memories to conceive of the diversity of languages, communities, and religions that once shared a common space within this region. And sharing space also means creating cultures, especially musical ones. The traditions, both old and new, in this program draw from one another, forming surprising confluences. Our ears must be as open as our minds. And, as sonic archaeologists, we must embrace the unexpected when it comes to our past.
Exploring further their internationally acclaimed program, this third annual festival will invite musicians from the Greek Pontic tradition, central Bulgaria, the Greek islands, the Carpathians, Asia Minor, the Klezmer tradition, and beyond. There will be screenings of films after the first two nights of performances.
Onassis Stegi returns for a third year to the town of Konitsa, collaborating with Grammy Award-winning music producer Christopher King for a three-day music festival that fuses the traditional sounds of the Balkans with experimental improvisations and ethnographic cinema.
Stages A/LIVE
All you've read so far and much more
Onassis with Pride
STEGI.RADIO
Οnassis Collection
Outward Turn Program
Cavafy Archive International Networks
Onassis AiR
Onassis Cinema New Films. New Worlds.
Romain Gavras
Yannis Economides
Evi Kalogiropoulou
Stavros Petropoulos
Efthymis Kosemund-Sanidis
Ilir Tsouko
Tasos Langis
Christos Sarris
Eva Stefani
Sacrifice
Broken Vein
Cora
Pirateland
Little Death
Albgreko
A new documentary on Athens
Eternal Desires
Bull’s Heart
New productions. Short and feature-length. Fiction and documentary. Film Awards. The Thessaloniki International Film Festival, the Drama International Short Film Festival, the Athens International Film Festival. Screenings on Onassis Channel. An Open Call for short film projects. We support independent Greek cinema, in every form of its expression.
Following Gener8ion and Athena, Onassis Culture supports the new film by French cinema’s enfant terrible, with shooting taking place in Greece.
With an all-star cast and co-screenwriter Will Arbery ( Succession), Romain Gavras is currently working on his fourth feature film, which will be filmed across mainland Greece as well as Bulgaria. Sacrifice follows Joan, a zealous spirit driven by a volcanic prophecy only she can hear, who is on a mission to save the world from a fiery reckoning. Along with her militia of mystical disciples, she hijacks a glamorous charity gala and takes three hostages: Mike Tyler, a beleaguered movie star desperate for redemption; Bracken, the world’s richest man; and Katie, who’s just unlucky. They are forced on a journey, as hilarious as it is epic, through forest and fire until Mike faces the ultimate question: what would he sacrifice for humanity? Produced by Iconoclast and Heretic and co-produced by Onassis Culture, the film is scheduled to be completed within 2025.
Cast: Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich
Following Ballad for a Pierced Heart and Matchbox: The Musical, Onassis Culture continues to support the unique cinematic universe of Yannis Economides. His new film, entitled Broken Vein , is the story of a middle-class businessman and family man who finds himself in a downward spiral and out of control. He feels incredibly suffocated at work as a loan shark threatens to forfeit his spacious, luxurious apartment while his family is about to break apart. In the words of the filmmaker, “The solution he proudly devises and to which he clings with longing is the weight that will drag him straight and deep to the bottom. He stands before his tragic fate, which is inexorable, silent, and evermore ironic.” The film, written by Economides and Vangelis Mourikis, is expected to premiere in 2025.
After the Cannes award-winning short On Xerxes’ Throne, Onassis Culture supports the filmmaker Evi Kalogiropoulou in her first feature. Cora is a story set in a dystopian universe, in a small city-state ruled by men with guns and centered around a giant oil refinery that is worshiped almost like a god. City-born Maria, the main character, refuses to challenge an established order based on violence and, therefore, gets accepted by the gang of these powerful men. The arrival of another young woman shifts the balance of things.
The film, currently in post-production, received CineMart’s Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and the Prize ARTE Kino International of Cinéfondation’s Atélier at the Cannes Film Festival. Cora is an addition to the filmography of Kalogiropoulou, who explores themes of exclusion and inclusion, multicultural identities, the female presence in ancient Greek mythology, and post-apocalyptic environments in her films. Cora, a Neda Film production, is co-produced with Onassis Culture, Blue Monday Productions, and Kidam and distributed by World Sales Playtime.
Cast: Melissanthi Mahut, Aurora Marion, Christos Loulis, Kostas Nikouli, Stavros Svigkos, Errika Bigiou, Niki Vakali, Xenia Dania, Erifili Kitzoflou, Myrto Kontoni, Nayla Gougni, Hercules Tsuzinov, Vassilis Mihas
A dark comedy about pirates and tourists, the latest short film by Stavros Petropoulos, written by Yorgos Teltzidis, is an Onassis Culture co-production.
At the end of the tourist season, a Norwegian family visits Gramvousa in Crete, staying at a small inn that belongs to Manos and his family. Right away, they ask Manos and his teenage son Tasos to give them a tour of the legendary pirate lairs of the area. When they ask for a more authentic pirate experience, Manos agrees and puts together an exciting reenactment game with faux kidnappings and mild violence. As the reenactment progresses, the Norwegian family gets more and more enthusiastic, and the experiences get riskier and riskier. Tasos watches his father embrace his role as the distance between them grows. When the tourists’ final request crosses the line, Tasos decides to put an end to it all, causing a conflict that might just bring father and son a little bit closer. The film is in post-production and is expected to be completed within 2024.
After completing several shorts that traveled worldwide to major international festivals such as Venice, Locarno, and Clermont-Ferrand, Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis is preparing his first feature film. Little Death is the story of Ilias, a young man who finds himself in debt and lands on a remote island to claim the inheritance of his doctor father. His plans for a short trip don’t turn out as he expected, and on top of it all, a strange sensation of numbness takes over his limbs; at the same time, equally mysterious diseases break out and spread through the local community. This is when he starts to get closer to a woman working in some rooms for rent—the place where he’s stuck. And while the world seems to be coming to an end, a new hope emerges with a sense of urgency.
Little Death expands the filmmaker’s oeuvre in a filmography that explores human relationships and bonds that open up and into the world through uncanny and often metaphysical cracks. The film, a Horsefly Films production co-produced with Onassis Culture, has participated in important filmmaking programs such as Torino Film Lab, Oxbelly Screenwriters Lab, and Medienboard/Nipkow Berlin AiR, among others, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.
Ilir Tsouko
How can we define the new identity formed in recent years by people of immigrant origin from Albania? Can Greekness and Albanianness coexist in a non-competitive way? The documentary Albgreko, an Onassis Culture production, follows the lives of four young people of Albanian descent who have grown up and lived in Greece to this day. In his film, Ilir Tsouko, in collaboration with scientific advisor Dimitris Christopoulos, focuses on a new situation experienced not only by this generation but also by Greek society as a whole. At a time when identity wars are fiercely spreading worldwide, including Europe and the Balkans, the filmmaker’s camera sheds light on identities, not as burdens of history but as compasses for a better future of the society in which we live. Shooting has wrapped up, and the documentary is due to premiere in 2025.
Following his award-winning documentary Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens, director Tassos Langis dives deeper into the urban landscape of Athens and the structure of the Athenian apartment building. His new documentary, produced by Onassis Culture, examines the complex social, cultural, material, and economic reality of Athens, posing the vital question: how can we coexist in this unique city today?
An idea sparked by the viral meme “Athens is the new Berlin,” the documentary, currently in principal photography, follows the trail of the historical connections between the two European capitals, decoding the ideology that surrounds us manifested in the forms of the buildings themselves.
Using symbiotic narrations from both human and non-human residents of the city, the documentary attempts to interpret the fluid strata of a past attached to the present, where invisible connections reveal constellations that illuminate our shared future in our own Athens.
Christos Sarris
Eternal Desires: The World of C. P. Cavafy, from Alexandria to New York
Stories of love, loss, and longing entangle Cavafy in the present and future, establishing his poetry as a lasting and relevant force transcending time and space. The documentary Eternal Desires: The World of C. P. Cavafy, from Alexandria to New York, produced by Onassis Culture and directed by Christos Sarris, is airing this fall on the All Arts digital platform of the American network PBS. Sparked by the Onassis Foundation’s “Archive of Desire” festival in April and May 2023 in New York, the documentary explores the timeless essence of the poet by divulging the political, sensual, and poetic undercurrents in Cavafy’s work through an interdisciplinary and kaleidoscopic creative approach. Featured in the documentary are Anthony S. Papadimitriou, President of the Onassis Foundation, Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture at the Onassis Foundation, as well as creators who participated in the festival, such as Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, Bob Faust, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Robin Coste Lewis, Stathis Gourgouris, Petros Klampanis, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Ali Santana, Matthew Niederhauser, John Fitzgerald, and Paola Prestini, artistic director of National Sawdust and curator of the festival.
Can art give meaning to our lives? A documentary produced by Onassis Culture, which focuses on the performance Transverse Orientation by Dimitris Papaioannou.
Filmmaker Eva Stefani follows the preparations behind Transverse Orientation and its tour across theatrical stages in Europe, observing from a close distance Dimitris Papaioannou and his collaborators in their effort to give shape and breathe life into the work. For two years, her camera captured scenes from the rehearsals at the Onassis Stegi during the pandemic, as well as performances in Paris, London, Vilnius, and other international destinations, leading to the last show in San Francisco. The central question that runs through the documentary is “Why do we do what we do?” elevating art as a means of resisting the futility of things and a way to reapply meaning to our own lives.
Celebrating independent Greek cinema.
Over the years, the Onassis Foundation has collaborated with the most prestigious film festivals in Greece, elevating emerging talents during their first steps. Each year, it holds the Onassis Film Awards for Greek filmmakers developing their films. From the International Film Festivals of Thessaloniki to Athens, and from the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival to the Drama International Short Film Festival, the Onassis Foundation is there at every celebration of cinema held in the country. The winners of the Onassis Film Awards in 2023–24 were Daniel Bolda ( Maldives), Aristotelis Maragkos ( Kafka’s Collection of Porn), Nikolas Kouloglou ( Super), Savvas Stavrou ( Buffer Zone), and Marianna Economou ( Dark Waters).
(↑) Maldives , Daniel Bolda, Onassis Film Award 2023 at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
(↓) Super, Nikolas Kouloglou, Onassis Film Award 2023 at the Drama International Short Film Festival.
Unleashing the creativity of emerging talents.
Onassis Culture supports the short film format and embraces the process of artistic creation. For the third year running, we are holding an Open Call for Greek and international filmmakers to submit their proposals for short films, fiction and documentary, live-action and animation. Five proposals will receive 10,000 euros each. The selected projects will get the green light for production and make their way to the big screen, finding local and international audiences at festivals all around the world. The winning films for the 2024 call were The Peeling (Krysianna Papadakis, Stergios Dinopoulos), Free Eliza – The Unlikely Story of an Anatomical Anomaly (Alexandra Matheou), Sparoza – Echoes in the Garden (Catriona Gallagher), Caps (Dimitris Theocharidis), and Zebra’s Island (Alexandros Kostopoulos).
The next Open Call will be announced in early 2025.
(↑) Last Tropics , Thanasis Troumboukis, Big Short Film 2023
(↓) MJ, Giorgos Fourtounis, Big Short Film 2023
The Onassis Stegi’s web radio connects the music scenes of Athens, the Mediterranean, and the rest of the world.
Onassis Stegi’s online radio station broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Always in motion. As ever based in Athens, the station curates Onassis Stegi’s musical activities and reaches out into the city with events, talks, and workshops. At the same time, it continues its research into the musical and cultural movements of the Mediterranean, traveling across an imagined archipelago that reaches beyond geography and chronology. STEGI.RADIO broadcasts and documents the past, the present, and the future, acting as a cultural connective tissue between people, communities, and artistic creation. Bringing to bear over 160 producers in its continuous 24hour stream across two channels and with over 5,000 individual shows in its archive, STEGI.RADIO’s programming includes a diverse selection packed with extraversion as much as with experimentation and always with vibes. Tune in at stegi.radio.
Crystallmess with STEGI.RADIO at C2C Festival (Turin).
With a live audience, captivating direction, and the volume turned up to the max.
For the 2024–25 season, Stages A/LIVE, the music show on the Onassis Foundation’s digital stage on YouTube, will present legendary artists from the Greek and international scene. This year’s lineup leads with the star of American punk rock, Laura Jane Grace, in an explosive concert on a specially designed set at the Onassis Stegi -1. Her performance will be followed by the most influential artist of the Greek rock scene, Giannis Aggelakas, from the stage of the Municipal Lycabettus Hill Theater with his “Electric Chair,” which premiered this summer. Together with the band 100°C, the polyphonic group Dioni, and a string trio, he promises a musical adventure that runs through his legendary career from the start to the present day. Finally, Joker/Two-Face, the dynamic hip-hop duo from Thessaloniki, carry the pulse of their performance at this year’s street party at Onassis Stegi. Tune in to the Onassis Channel on YouTube for a live music experience on another level.
(↑) Laura Jane Grace in an electrifying performance at the Onassis Stegi Exhibition Hall -1. (↓) Giannis Aggelakas at the Municipal Lycabettus Hill Theater, accompanied by 100°C, the polyphonic group Dioni, and a string trio.
Bold ideas beyond censorship. Live at the Onassis Stegi and on the Onassis Channel on YouTube.
The “Society Uncensored” series began in 2020 as a platform for a productive dialogue on social issues that have occupied society in Greece and internationally. Since its inception, Onassis Stegi has played host to deep, earnest discussions on the issues of gender violence and femicides, the Black Lives Matter movement, hate speech, body shaming, the rights of the Roma people, cultural representation for people with disabilities, democracy in crisis, the institution of marriage, and psychedelic substances, among others, all of which have accumulated over 600,000 views on the Onassis Channel on YouTube. This season of “Society Uncensored” returns with a series of new episodes: On the painful and agonizing dilemma of euthanasia, which has polarized societies, states, religions, families, and the scientific community. Also, on the Greek rap music scene and the social, political, and cultural messages it brings to the fore, expressing the concerns and visions of a large part of the younger generation in Greece today. And finally, on the Greek-Albanian community, the largest community of immigrant origin in Greece, constituting one of the many and most important hybrid identities that make up our society.
Onassis Stegi is open to all.
Onassis Stegi has always been and will always be ‘open.’ Each year, we present productions and artistic experiences that support and give a platform to the LGBTQI+ community and its demands for equality and visibility. In 2015, we had our own ‘coming out’ by supporting the iconic Athens Pride parade for the first time. Ever since, we have been #Present every year, advocating for these self-evident rights, which nevertheless cannot be taken for granted. In 2018 and for the following six years since, in collaboration with Positive Voice, we staged “I’m Positive,” a series of events and discussions with members of the scientific community as well as people who live their lives with or without HIV. Since 2021, with the “Athens Home for All” campaign, we have dreamed of a more inclusive, colorful Athens. 2024 was the year when the rights of same-sex couples to marry and have children were enshrined in law in Greece. Onassis Stegi celebrated with pride for its active role in this change since, from 2022, we have joined forces with Rainbow Families to promote the message that “It’s love that makes a family,” a message that has made it into every home in the country. Today, we want love to come forth, lighting up the city and its people until the entire world feels like one big family.
Because accessibility in culture is a matter of democracy.
Inclusion, accessibility, and equality are integral elements of Onassis Stegi's ecosystem. This year, once again, as an active member of Europe Beyond Access, the largest transnational program in the world on culture and disabilities, Onassis Stegi supports disabled and deaf artists to break down walls in the areas of contemporary dance and theater. At the same time, we contribute to the empowerment of artists with disabilities in the European cultural scene by supporting the participation of Greek artists in international artist workshops, as well as Greek cultural professionals in training workshops on inclusive practices within the creative and production process.
This season, Onassis Stegi is collaborating with other cultural organizations in Europe, supporting new artistic projects developed by artists with disabilities, and is planning a series of workshops in Athens around the theme of accessibility and inclusion.
In addition, in the 2024–25 season, two Greek productions by Onassis Stegi will be universally accessible. Mario Banushi's MAMI and Ivan Vyrypaev's Oxygen , directed by George Koutlis, are presented with simultaneous interpretation in Greek Sign Language and Greek surtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, tactile tours and audio description for people with visual impairments, highlighting the importance of inclusion and equal access to arts and culture.
(↑) Multi-sensory guided tour for deaf, hard of hearing, and visually impaired people during the MOS performance by Ioanna Paraskevopoulou. (↓) Tactile guided tour for visually impaired people during the performance of Matchbox: The Musical (based on the film of the same name by Yannis Economides).
Live From Mount Olympus: The Onassis Foundation’s award-winning podcast series is back with new myths.
With more than 1.5 million downloads and its 6th season in production, the Onassis Foundation and PRX podcast series has changed the way we experience Greek mythology in our time. An adventure for tweens and listeners of all ages, it weaves timeless ancient Greek myths with the artistry of foremost contemporary theater-makers and the imaginative power of audio.
Next in line this fall is the story of Pandora, the first woman ever created, when Zeus decided to give her as a gift to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus. Her name literally means ‘all the gifts.’ But just before the pair leaves Mount Olympus, Zeus gives Pandora one final gift: a box that she must never open.
The journey continues in spring 2025 with the story of Theseus and Ariadne. Young Theseus dreams of becoming a hero like his cousin Heracles, while Ariadne, a goddess-in-waiting on a distant island, seeks to escape her complicated family and forge her own path. Struck by Eros’ arrows, their lives intertwine, changing each other and their countries’ futures.
This richly imagined audio drama is produced by the Onassis Foundation, co-produced by the Brooklynbased theater ensemble The TEAM, and distributed by PRX. Peabody Award-winning producer Julie Burstein created the series, which is directed by Rachel Chavkin ( Lempicka, Hadestown), Zhailon Levingston (Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Chicken & Biscuits), and Keenan Tyler Oliphant ( Hadestown , The Broken Ear Setlist), all three Tony Award-winning artists. Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor André De Shields is Hermes, host of this ‘GodsPod’ filled with tales of monsters, gods, and heroes.
Listen to the stories of Perseus (2021), Persephone (2022), Atalanta (2023), and Prometheus (2024), and head up straight to Mount Olympus.
(↑) Snapshot from the recording of Live from Mount Olympus Season 4: Prometheus.
We seek innovation and support 21st-century digital creators to create immersive experiences that break down the boundaries between the physical and the digital.
The Onassis Foundation’s Digital & Innovation (ODiN) programs propose a new paradigm for the production and distribution, as well as the enjoyment of cultural creation. When the digital realm ceases to be visible precisely because it is everywhere, our aim is to enhance it with innovative and transversal forms of storytelling. Sidestepping novelty in the medium, we want to highlight the productive dimension of artistic creation and ensure the economic viability and social impact of our productions.
The main tools at ODiN’s disposal are our international incubation and acceleration platform Onassis ONX and the meta-digital art exhibition Plásmata. Onassis ONX, with hubs in both New York and Athens, is a platform for artists that focuses on using advanced technologies to foster multidisciplinary creativity and produce value both for the artist and society. It provides technological infrastructure, artistic and production support, as well as a range of funding tools and partnership programs with leading international organizations such as Rhizome, NEW Inc., NYU, MoMI, Lincoln Center, PHI Centre, Pioneer Works, and BAM. Since 2020, Onassis ONX members have presented their work at numerous festivals worldwide, including Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance, SXSW, Ars Electronica, IDFA, and the Venice International Film Festival.
Plásmata is not simply a digital art exhibition. At its core it redefines public space as a common good, through the exploration of the unexpected connections of advanced technologies with contemporary culture. Plásmata is an ongoing laboratory for the production of ideas and projects and, simultaneously, an opportunity for the public to engage, question, and challenge the relationship between art and technology. In June 2025, Plásmata returns to Athens.
Find out more at onassis.org.
(↑) Antipsychotic , Matt McCorkle, featuring at SXSW Festival, Austin, Texas, 2024
(↓) MANA, Afroditi Panagiotakou & Manolis Manousakis, Plásmata II: Ioannina , 2023
The Onassis Foundation’s global platform for new media art and digital culture celebrates its fifth anniversary with a radical program of exhibitions and events in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Onassis ONX (Onassis eXtended realities) is a global platform for new media art and digital culture, where creative ideas intertwine with innovative technologies, opening pathways to immersive experiences. Onassis ONX was launched five years ago by Onassis Culture, the cultural pillar of the Onassis Foundation. Holding creative hubs in New York and Athens, Onassis ONX offers artists the opportunity to create at the highest level using advanced technologies.
As a dynamic platform that shapes the field of contemporary art, Onassis ONX collaborates with a global network of diverse institutions to help create sustainable pipelines for the production and distribution of groundbreaking artworks. Through partnerships with leading artists, arts organizations, and cultural initiatives, the platform supports creativity in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), spatial computing, and born-digital media.
In 2024–25, Onassis ONX celebrates its five-year presence with a program of exhibitions and initiatives in various parts of the world. Exhibition highlights include Group Hug at WSA, New York (September October 2024); ONX/AiR Open Days in Athens (November 2024 June 2025); Coded Dreams exhibition with works by ONX Members Matthew Niederhauser and Marc Da Costa at PHI Centre, Montreal (October 2024 January 2025); and TECHNE at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NYC (January 2025); and Blur (March 2025) in Taiwan, co-produced by PHI Studio (Canada), Riverbed Theatre Ltd. (Taiwan), and Onassis Culture.
New initiatives include the Collider Fellowship program in collaboration with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York (October 2024 April 2025); the Onassis ONX MIT Open Documentary Lab Fellowship, Boston (September 2024 May 2025); and the next iteration of the Circular Cultures Design School and Creative Industries Summer School in Athens.
(↑) Feral Metaverse, Theo Triantafyllidis (↓) Golden Key, Marc Da Costa & Matthew Niederhauser
TECHNE: An immersive experience at NYC’s BAM
TECHNE is an experiential program presented jointly by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Onassis Foundation, and the Under the Radar festival, comprising four large-scale digital artworks curated by Onassis ONX. Created with generative AI, real-time interactive displays, and immersive sound, this program transports viewers into four distinctive realms, brought to life by visionary creators.
The Vivid Unknown (4, 5, & 7 January 2025), by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio, is a collective experience that uses AI and computer vision to reimagine Reggio’s iconic 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. As part of this presentation, Koyaanisqatsi will be screened at BAM Rose Cinemas on 7 January 2025.
The Golden Key (8–11 January 2025), by Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser, immerses visitors in the mythical fantasies of an artificially intelligent machine as it composes a never-ending story. The work imagines a future world that has endured the severest impacts of climate change.
In Voices (12, 14, & 15 January 2025), artist Margarita Athanasiou dives into the hidden histories of Victorian era mediums and contemporary spiritualists, including her own grandmother. What emerges is a story about female empowerment, capitalism, and the unexpected relationship between information technology and the spirit world.
In Secret Garden (16-19 January 2025), Stephanie Dinkins has cultivated a virtual oasis populated with Black women who share stories of power and resilience. Multigenerational narratives collapse past, present, and future across interactive vignettes.
Group Hug: A new era of group play
Group Hug is a landmark exhibition of large-scale, site-specific video game installations by renowned international artists Theo Triantafyllidis, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, and Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn). Visitors are invited to play together and lose themselves in the sensorial worlds of each game through sight, sound, and touch, as they must learn to communicate and cooperate in order to survive. The title Group Hug is inspired by the idea of radical collaboration, with each work elevating group play over traditional individualistic game logic.
The exhibition will be on view from September 26 to October 20, 2024, at WSA in New York, presented by Onassis ONX with Water Street Projects and in collaboration with curator Julia Kaganskiy, Serpentine Arts Technologies, and Rhizome.
Blur: The Myth of Life and the Labyrinth of Loss
Blur, an extended reality theatrical production, unfolds as a dreamscape, taking participants on a journey of reflection on grief and eternality. Written and directed by Craig Quintero and Phoebe Greenberg, the mixed reality experience is a new myth for the modern age, where science has changed how we think about life and death. Co-produced by PHI Studio (Canada), Riverbed Theatre Ltd. (Taiwan), and Onassis Culture, this poetic fusion of live performance and extended reality immerses you in a world where the boundaries between real and virtual, natural and artificial, collapse.
Premiering in March 2025 in Taiwan, Blur shatters conventional storytelling and takes the audience through a transformative narrative that challenges their perceptions and evokes a deeper connection to human existence.
(↑) The Vivid Unknown , John Fitzgerald & Godfrey Reggio (↓) Blur, Craig Quintero & Phoebe Greenberg
Where local meets global and global becomes local.
At Onassis Stegi, we are fully aware that cultural exchange flourishes in an open and international setting. That is why, from the beginning of our operation until now, we have steadily invested in creating networks, developing international collaborations, and fruitfully conversing with the artistic community abroad. Always aiming outward, we participate in collaborative projects in Europe, contributing to a dynamic ecosystem of cultural exchange and artistic development. To amplify the visibility of Greek creators on the global scene, we seek strategic partnerships with established cultural foundations and festivals around the world. Finally, we enrich the local and international cultural landscape by supporting tours, business meetings, and co-productions.
(↑) Onassis Stegi at International Theater Amsterdam, participating in Brandhaarden—From Athens to Amsterdam festival, January—February 2024.
Expanding the artistic imprint. 100 productions, 56 countries, 220 cities, 18 European tributes. Showcasing brilliant instances of contemporary Greek culture worldwide.
Supporting contemporary Greek artists lies in the ethos of Onassis Stegi. Since 2011, more than one hundred theater, dance, and music productions and co-productions of Onassis Stegi undergirded by the “Outward Turn” program have been presented in 220 cities across 56 countries around the world, with over 1,000 performances. At the same time, eighteen European tributes to Onassis Stegi's programming have taken place in cities such as Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Bremen, Liege, Dublin, Lausanne, etc. Aiming at the visibility of Greek culture, we strengthen the presence and prestige of artists in every corner of the world through the coordination of international travels and the realization of co-productions and in collaboration with cultural institutions around the globe.
The milestones of the “Outward Turn” program from the previous season.
In January 2024, the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA) Brandhaarden Festival organized an impressive two-week event honoring the Onassis Stegi productions. Following the celebrated European theaters Kammerspiele (Munich), Volksbühne (Berlin), and Peter Brook's Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris), a Greek cultural institution was the exclusive honoree for the first time in the heart of Amsterdam. Writer and journalist Jakob Hayner wrote about the festival in Die Welt : "Onassis Stegi, the cultural organization that opened in Athens in 2010, [...] has both the means and the institutional independence to showcase outstanding artists and issues. The productions invited to Amsterdam tell stories from social peripheries: intense, profound, and moving."
On July 2024, artists who collaborate with Onassis Stegi attended the Festival d’Avignon, one of the most well-regarded artistic events in the world and a prominent European theater festival. In their exchange with festival directors and curators, as well as the wider artistic community, they shared perspectives and paved the ground for co-productions or partnerships with leading theatrical stages in Europe to follow.
Two young Greek choreographers, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou and Chara Kotsali, were distinguished by the prestigious European dance network Aerowaves. Among hundreds of nominations, they joined the ranks of the twenty most important new choreographers for the years 2023 and 2024, propelled by the productions they realized in the framework of the Onassis Dance Days program.
New season 2024–25. New horizons.
For the 2024–25 season, the Onassis Stegi’s productions are already en route to their next destination, with the “Outward Turn” program supporting a total of more than ten touring theater and dance works and over seventy artists and artistic collaborators. Among them, the following productions and co-productions of Onassis Stegi are currently on tour: to be possessed by Chara Kotsali, Lapis Lazuli by Euripides Laskaridis and OSMOSIS, All of My Love by Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, RUNWAY by Christiana Kosiari, Slamming by Xenia Koghilaki, A User's Manual by Konstantinos Papanikolaou, Earthquake by Vasilis Vilaras, and LANDSCAPE by Elena Antoniou.
Major theater stages and festivals across the globe will host their presentation, including Italy—Bologna, Bassano del Grappa, Rome, Turin, Reggio Emilia, Florence, Opera Estate Festival in Veneto; France—Strasbourg, Val-de-Marne, Lille, Paris; Belgium—Liège, Charleroi; Luxembourg; Finland—Oulu, Helsinki; Norway—Bergen; Serbia—Novi Sad; Chile—Santiago, and other stops to be revealed throughout the season.
(←) Romáland by Anestis Azas and Prodromos Tsinikoris on the billboards of the International Theater Amsterdam, January—February 2024.
An investment in creativity.
Since 2011, Onassis Stegi has partnered with 179 institutions in 105 cities across 35 countries.
We are creating cutting-edge networks and seamlessly integrating them into the global landscape, together with the artists and for the artists. For the 2024–25 season, Onassis Culture is joining forces with more than one hundred partner organizations from all over Europe to implement nine international projects in thirty-five countries.
Smart Attica and the European Digital Deal are advancing technological developments and digital transformation in the artistic and cultural sectors. Harnessing artificial intelligence, big data, and 5G technology, these projects enhance regional potential and promote ethical and sustainable technological practices for artistic creation.
European Media Art Platform (EMAP) and Grand Luxe offer artistic residencies, resources, and networking opportunities for emerging new media artists and choreographers. These initiatives promote creativity at the intersection of arts, science, and technology and support professional growth in the arts.
Europe Beyond Access and Sounds Now share respectively the objective of dismantling the barriers for artists with disabilities in the field of performing arts and embracing new frontiers for contemporary music and sound art. By commissioning new works, offering capacity building opportunities, and developing new tools, they guarantee an ever-accessible and diverse cultural realm.
ULYSSES: European Odyssey addresses urgent European social issues through multi-thematic events in eighteen cities, inviting the cultural heritage and priorities of contemporary Europe to surface through the promotion of dialogue on topics such as democracy, migration, and ecological challenges.
Prospero, that was created by Onassis Stegi and eighteen other organizations, is the first European platform in which emerging theater directors and artists find full support. Its objective is to assist and promote over three hundred emerging artists across Europe over the next four years through a range of artistic residencies, touring, and co-productions.
The Transnational Music Lab (TMLAB) is a three-year collaborative project, aiming to reshape the European musical landscape. From 2025, Onassis Stegi with STEGI. RADIO will assume a leading role in the program's activities, along with four other partners: C2C Festival (Italy), Kiosk Radio (Belgium), Arty Farty (France), and La Casa Encendida (Spain). The program brings together five dynamic cities—Turin, Madrid, Lyon, Athens, and Brussels—to empower emerging artists and curators from underrepresented communities, including women, people of non-white Caucasian origin (BIPOC), LGBTQI+, migrants, refugees, and people facing accessibility barriers. Through live events, tours, and radio broadcasts, TMLAB will showcase Europe's flourishing music scenes while attempting to defy the ongoing inequalities that permeate the music industry.
(↑) Ephemeral Body, Valasia Simeon, M-POWER Festival, 2023
The diverse collection of artworks from the Onassis Foundation highlights the necessity of art in today's world.
The world of Onassis Collection is fascinating and unpredictable, disclosing the dynamic relationship of the past with the ‘here and now’ including paintings, sculptures, engravings, decorative objects, installations, and digital works from 1600 to the present day ranging from El Greco and Theodore Poulakis to Jannis Varelas and Loukia Alavanou.
Greek and international artists from different periods, generations, and styles are gathered under the same roof, building an open narrative characterized by diversity, inclusivity, and non-linearity. Here Yanoulis Halepas meets Auguste Rodin, Stelios Faitakis meets Fotis Kontoglou, Konstantinos Parthenis meets Ilias Papailiakis, Lucas Samaras meets Bob Wilson, and Jannis Kounellis meets Etel Adnan. Promoting dialogue among the arts, gazing the future through the past, the Onassis Collection grapples with the universal issues of our time, timeless kernels of individual insight, and our hidden desires, while simultaneously highlighting the necessity and redemptive power of art.
Mandala 2 Building, Stelios Faitakis
Apostolos Georgiou
(↑) Rat Holen bei den Moiren , Florian Merkel (↓) 154 Drawings , Ilias Papailiakis
Flower, Takis (2 works with the same title)
(↑) Jake and Lola , Jannis Varelas
Onassis Stegi’s latest artistic intervention in its neighborhood conveys a message of optimism for the urban landscape of Athens.
The Onassis Foundation continues to support Greek artists and to transform the public space of the city. After The Kiss by Ilias Papailiakis at Avdi Square in Metaxourgeio, The Wave by Sofia Stevi at Mavili Square, She Who Protects by Aristeidis Lappas near Omonia Square, the in situ neon installation The Talisman of All Beings by Angelo Plessas on Patission Street, and the golden Drop of Knowledge by Nikomachi Karakostanoglou suspended in mid-air in Neos Kosmos, the visual artist Eleni Psyllaki creates a mural in Onassis Stegi’s neighborhood that aspires to become the new instagrammatic landmark of Athens.
The work A Woman in Red and Purple depicts the figure of a woman in an ancient Cretan olive grove. The woman raises her hands towards the sky in an attempt to embrace the clouds and play with their shadows. Referencing the goddesses with hands raised in supplication exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Psyllaki’s urban goddess stands tall and imposing, like a guardian of the neighborhood, warding off bad omens and inspiring our imagination. A key theme in her painting is the search for harmony and balance spiritual and mental in an unbalanced world. She uses acrylic paints to paint silhouettes and amphora in earthy tones and, influenced by design and decoration, she creates images that make you feel at home. Encounter the mural as you approach the Onassis Stegi building at 42 Lagoumitzi Street.
A space that welcomes all—both the public and scholars—in the heart of Plaka, Athens.
The Cavafy Archive, located on Frynichou Street in Plaka, houses the poet’s literary and personal archive, 966 books from his library, and a collection of documents and artworks referencing Cavafy.
The Onassis Foundation acquired the Cavafy archive at the end of 2012, safeguarding its preservation in Greece and preventing its potential fragmentation. The aim of the Onassis Foundation is to ensure openness and free access to the archive to the public and researchers, as well as to disseminate the international character of Cavafy’s poetry. At the same time, the archive has enriched the collections of the Onassis Library, which hosts rare publications and a cultural heritage of seven centuries.
Following the publication of the Cavafy Archive’s digital collection in March 2019, which rendered the archive open and accessible to all, the Onassis Foundation invested in creating the Cavafy Archive, a space in Athens dedicated to the poet’s archive, which was inaugurated in November 2023. The aim was to create a space for the poet's archive and library, his personal items and furniture, surrounded by artworks that enable us to gain an in-depth understanding of his ever-growing impact on artists. The Cavafy Archive is a space open to all: residents, researchers, and visitors from around the world. Discover the Cavafy Archive’s digital collection of more than 2,000 archival items at cavafy.onassis.org.
Working hours: Tuesday, Thursday, & Saturday, 11:00-18:00. Closed on public holidays. Free entrance / Info: +30 210
Can you imagine the small office where Cavafy wrote his poems? The neighborhood he walked through in the center of Alexandria?
Following the acquisition of the Cavafy archive, its digitization, and opening it to the public and researchers, the Onassis Foundation, in collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, undertook the restoration of the Cavafy House in Alexandria in early 2022, aiming to turn it into a hub for visitors from all over the world. In May 2024, the Cavafy House reopened its doors to the public. The apartment where C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life and created so many of the works that rendered him a universal poet has been restored and refurbished in order to highlight the image of the residence as it was in the years the poet lived, to illuminate his relationship with the city of Alexandria and the impact of his work to this day, but also to transport us back in time.
In this way, the Onassis Foundation has created a triptych dedicated to the great poet. This includes two physical points of contact with him and his work: the Cavafy Archive in Plaka and the Cavafy House in Alexandria, on Rue Lepsius. The third meeting point is interactive and involves the fully digitized Cavafy archive.
Seven centuries of culture are accessible to the public through digital apps and the website onassislibrary.gr.
In the heart of Athens, the neoclassical building of Onassis Library stands harmoniously amongst the ancient monuments surrounding it at the junction of Amalias Avenue and Dionysiou Areopagitou Street. In this place, Homer meets Voltaire and Rigas Velestinlis, and C. P. Cavafy meets Sappho and Jane Austen, while portraits by El Greco and Giorgio de Chirico converse with Yanoulis Halepas and Lucas Samaras, as well as with the piano of Maria Callas herself. A multifaceted journey through time, reaching into obscure aspects of Greek—and other—history, a sanctuary of rare stories, sources, books, and archives offered by the Onassis Library in six distinct collections, over 10,000 volumes, and a rich archive. At the Onassis Library, all literary and archival collections are constantly enriched, digitized, and made freely available to the public through its website, onassislibrary.gr and digital apps. With the aim of unshackling this rare cultural wealth, it is made available to the public at no charge, inviting readers to find inspiration by ‘touching’ it—digitally at least.
Shaping the society of tomorrow.
From environmental engineering to nanotechnology and from computational linguistics to digital ethics, Onassis Scholars learn, shape, and contribute to the evolution of sciences we know and those we will discover. Yesterday's Scholars are the ones shaping our world today. Like every year, the Onassis Foundation, through its Scholarship Program, is preparing to welcome young people with innovative ideas and bright minds, with a focus on new technologies and the digital world. Since 1978, more than 7,800 scholars have worked systematically to make our society better.
One hospital with two cutting-edge medical care facilities.
At the Onassis Foundation, our greatest investments will always be in people.
It all started in 1993 when the Onassis Foundation donated the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center to the Greek state. Thirty-one years later, with over 2 million visits, 52,700 heart surgeries, and 250 heart and lung transplants, a second medical care facility, the Onassis National Transplant Center, is coming in 2025 to become the cornerstone of transplant development in Greece. The two Centers share the same administration, and together, they form the Onassis Hospital.
This new hospital will be synonymous with the digital age of healthcare a new era with faster diagnostic procedures and efficient care that embraces the technological solutions of a fully digital environment, designed to handle a broad spectrum of data, from human resources and clinic operations across the two facilities to patient medical records. The new Onassis Hospital ecosystem is accompanied by the foundation of the Onassis Children’s Unit, an autonomous facility for pediatric cardiology and pediatric cardiac surgery, as well as future child transplants.
Along with the foundation of the new hospital, we are working to shape a new culture around organ donation. In collaboration with the Hellenic Transplant Organization and the Onassis Hospital, we are engaging in a series of initiatives to revitalize the transplant sector and foster a culture that embraces organ donation in the country. Through our “Organmeetings” seminars, we are raising awareness and building a chain of life-giving support among citizens and institutions. By co-organizing the internationally renowned “Transplant Masterclasses,” we promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Through our educational program, “Orgamites,” we discuss the value of organ donation with primary school students. On the Onassis Channel on YouTube, we share the true stories of people who exemplify the power of life.
Discover collectibles, publications, memorabilia, vinyl records, and art prints at the Onassis Shop.
In the ground-floor foyer of Stegi, the Onassis Shop hosts a selection of unique creations with the Onassis signature ripe to be discovered! Experience the diverse universe of Onassis Publications by wandering through contemporary trends of Greek artistic and non-artistic creation. Treat yourself and your loved ones to numbered art prints, witty and valuable memorabilia from the Onassis Stegi productions, vinyl records, CDs, and objects that hint at pop art, beauty, and humor.
Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 18:00-23:00
The latest title of the Onassis Publications explores the multifaceted history of the Athenian polykatoikía buildings and their impact on the city’s urban fabric and life.
Through recounts, recollections, personal experiences, photographs, and various documents, the book 37 Stories of Athens’ Polykatoikias, edited by Thomas Maloutas, Nikolina Myofa, Dimitris Balampanidis, and Ifigeneia Dimitrakou, traces the histories of people and buildings, while at the same time charting composite processes that transpire across the scale of the neighborhood and the Athenian society at large.
Seeing Athens from above, the gaze is met by a ‘sea’ of polykatoikias—a constituent ingredient of the city’s contemporary history and structure. ‘Polykatoikias’ (i.e., apartment buildings) were a product of post-war urbanization, which allowed wider social strata to rebuild the city building by building. Although these processes have long become a subject of public discussion, wellestablished myths about those “who destroyed Athens” still linger, opening up a perceived divide between the people of ‘antiparochi’ and the ‘polykatoikia’ and the city’s present-day residents. The writers attempt to entwine these two worlds by profiling stories ‘from an inner space’ that capture life within the Athenian polykatoikia and by presenting ‘grassroots’ tales of the people who built, passed through, and inhabited the city. At the same time, interpolated stories and theoretical texts are introduced in no particular order, therefore encouraging a free reading approach and the book’s more intimate experience on the reader’s part.
Find all the editions of the Onassis Publications at the Onassis Shop and in selected bookstores all over Greece.
After five successful years of operation, the Onassis Foundation’s artistic research and residency program, which has supported more than 200 Onassis AiR Fellows, brings together arts practitioners from around the world and diverse creative practices.
Onassis AiR provides space and time, as well as guidance and ongoing support to arts professionals from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, enabling them to delve deeper into their practice without the pressure of presenting a final work.
Today, after five years, Onassis AiR has become a dynamic meeting point for interdisciplinary thinking and exchange between local and international artists and researchers. It acts as a network of people within the Onassis ecosystem and beyond, a space that creates the conditions for exchanging ideas, bringing forward themes that concern us today, always in dialogue with our locality and the ever-evolving world around us.
For the 2024-25 season,, Onassis AiR expands its function as a platform of co-creation and opens its doors to a broader community of artists by offering opportunities through our Open Calls, but also in collaboration with the Onassis Dramaturgy and Onassis ONX programs, and through our International Networks.
The 45 Onassis AiR Fellows who participate in the program for the season of 2024–25 are: Shaheen Ahmed, Vasia Attarian & Mirto Makridi, Emma Barreto, Priscilla Benyahia, Vidal Bini, Nick Cave & Bob Faust, Niki Danai Chania, Diogo da Cruz & Fallon Mayanja, Pary El-Qalqili, Katerina Foti, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Catriona Gallagher, PierreChristophe Gam, Ant Hampton, Saaed Hani, Cyanne van den Houten, Michael Kliën, Kakia Konstantinaki, Chara Kotsali, Giorgos Kotsifakis, Dimitris Kourtis, Sofia Lemos, Sylvain Lepoivre, Alexandros Livitsanos, Inshallah Montero, Efthimios Moschopoulos, Alexandra Niaka, Leonidas Oikonomou, Meriç Öner, Eva Papadakis, Eva Papamargariti, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Emma Saba, Despina Sanida Crezia & Fotini Stamatelopoulou (VIGIL), Carol Sansour, Urok Shirhan, Bettina Katja Lange (SOAP), Marios Stamatis, Stefania Strouza, Rosa Whiteley, Louiza Vradi.
In the following pages, you can meet some of the Onassis AiR Fellows who joined our artistic community this year.
(↑) Feeding Birds , Irini Kalaitzidi, Onassis AiR Open Days #12, June 2024
(↑) Dancers in full-body horse outfits, HEARD·SYD, Nick Cave, Carriageworks, Sydney. (↓) gu lty / nnocent, 2016, Bob Faust. Installation in dialogue with Nick Cave's Until exhibition at MASS MoCA during the same year.
Bob Faust is the creative director of Faust, a Chicago-based art and design studio focused on cultural branding and communication. He creates works that are conceived in the space between art and design, in the belief that these two fields are the most powerful tools for social change. Nick Cave is an artist, educator, and, foremost, a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through sculpture, installation, video, sound, and performance. Together, Cave and Faust founded the multi-use creative space Facility, believing that art and design can create peace, build power, and change the world by fostering a community made from people’s dreams. After their participation in the festival “Archive of Desire," inspired by the poet C. P. Cavafy and organized by the Onassis Foundation in New York (2023), the artists are traveling to Athens as Onassis AiR Fellows with the project Swelled, to explore the impact of place on a seemingly cemented identity. “As humans, we are porous and continue to take all influences in, but we are also very adept and controlling, filtering, and augmenting.” During their fellowship, they are going to explore how our bodies adapt to such a fertile environment and what comes out as shareable after.
Nick Cave & Bob Faust
Marlene Monteiro Freitas is a dancer and choreographer from Cape Verde. Her work revolves around themes of openness, heterogeneity, hybridity, and intensity. She has been internationally recognized for her cultural work, most recently with an honorary distinction from the Government of Cape Verde (2017), the SPA prize in Portugal for her piece Jaguar, the Silver Lion for Dance at the Venice Biennale (2018), the Best International Performance Award at the Critica d'Arts Escéniques in Barcelona (2020), the Evens Arts Prize (2021), and the Chanel Next Prize (2021). Having previously presented her work at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Marlene Monteiro Freitas returns to Greece as an Onassis AiR Fellow through the Dramaturgy Fellowship to conduct research for her next project along with her team. Central references in this new piece are One Thousand and One Nights and miniatures. Freitas and her collaborators will develop a new production titled NÔT that is going to be presented at the open-air theater of Cour d’Honneur in the next Avignon Festival in 2025.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas
(↑) Lulu , Marlene Monteiro Freitas
BINGO!, Vasia Attarian & Mirto Makridi
Shaheen Ahmed is a researcher and filmmaker from the Malabar Coast of Kerala in South India. Through his work, he explores themes of memory and identity, focusing on the intersection between Islamic mysticism and collective spiritual imagination. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, he will develop his project Nazar, an audiovisual exploration of the public presence and intimate world of Muslim migrant communities in their second homelands—an attempt to observe Athens from the perspective of a migrant community.
Vasia Attarian and Mirto Makridi are two of the three members of the theater group NTOUTH (with Dimitris Tasainas as the third). They have been collaborating for twelve years and have co-directed over ten performances. As Onassis AiR Fellows through the Dramaturgy Fellowship, they will develop the project BINGO! to initiate a conversation about the struggles of the contemporary world, gender issues, sexuality, work, the feeling that democracy is changing, and the faith that the modern individual has to rediscover from scratch in new circumstances.
Vasia Attarian & Mirto Makridi
Emma Camille Barreto is a self-taught entomologist and researcher of animal behavior and husbandry. Her practice aims to document the diversity of microscopic communities that recycle the Earth’s energy and create a framework for self-teaching in the natural sciences. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she seeks to explore the immensely biodiverse population of organisms residing in the soils of Athens and create a straightforward method for self-taught field education.
Louiza Vradi is a visual artist based in Athens. She works with media such as photography, video, archives, and textiles. In her photographs and videos, she navigates social documentary practices, focusing on themes such as personal and collective memory, gender, intergenerational trauma, and psychogeography, often examining the effects of the sociopolitical environment on individuals and the rituals embedded in contemporary society.
As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will work on a documentary that chronicles the life of Cuban performer Anna Ivankova. Since 2018 in Athens, from a small gay bar to a famous drag show nightclub and the main stage of the Athens Pride, Anna seemed to be getting closer and closer to what she dreamt of. In June 2023, she was found murdered. The aftermath of her loss impacted her community, society, and the filmmaker herself.
Louiza Vradi
(↑) Anna , Louiza Vradi
Benyahia
Priscilla Benyahia is a French-Algerian artist who lives and works in Paris. Her practice draws on fictional and non-fictional narratives, exploring the space between literality, irony, and wordplays through cultural references and recognizable forms. Her art often features language games and the interplay between the literal and metaphorical, creating shifts in meaning that introduce a comedic element.
As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Benyahia develops Ada&Linda Lovelace, a project inspired by the lives of two women, Ada Lovelace and Linda Lovelace, researching the historical and cultural context of lace weaving and critically examining the intersecting worlds of technology and adult content.
Diogo da Cruz & Fallon Mayanja
Diogo da Cruz is an artist based in Berlin and Lisbon. Through the production of objects, installations, and video works, his practice materializes partially fictitious scenarios that refer to past, present, or future sociopolitical circumstances. Fallon Mayanja is a sound artist and performer. The main gesture that defines her practice and research is constructing listening environments. As Onassis AiR Fellows, they will work on a sci-fi film series that intertwines fragments of an Afrofuturist legend of an underwater civilization with concerns about the consequences of deep-sea mining. For the last four years, Diogo and Fallon have been developing this narrative together, alongside a series of sculptures and sound performances, as a result of their dialogue on the memory of colonial crimes and the unsustainable extraction of natural resources. The work aims to present a decolonized ecological point of view that questions the adequacy of Western science in tackling climate change.
Priscilla
Pary El-Qalqili is a writer and director based in Berlin. In her cinematic work, she explores non-linear narratives that challenge hegemonic storytelling. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will continue her project Speak Image, Speak, a film that sets out to challenge the dominant image politics that degrade, demonize, and dehumanize Palestinians today.
Catriona Gallagher is a visual artist based in Athens who hails from Great Britain and Ireland. Her work probes the collision of manmade and natural worlds, navigating overlooked details in our physical surroundings and their mirroring psychological landscapes. Catriona is an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2024–25, and her project was selected in the Big Short Films Open Call 2024 and will be funded by Onassis Culture to be made into a film. As part of Onassis AiR, she will continue the project Plant-Processing Film at Sparoza, which seeks to develop alchemical moving images of Sparoza’s experimental garden, located near Paiania in Attica. The project spans filmmaking, horticulture, alternative photochemistry, and feminist retellings, highlighting issues of colonialism in the migrations of people and plants. Meanwhile, it draws from the energy of the custodians and volunteers of the garden, who proffer a less domineering and more collaborative existence with plants.
Catriona Gallagher
Cyanne van den Houten (they/she) is a Dutch media artist and designer whose practice stems from the drive to uncover mysteries around the digital.
In their work, they oppose the idea that the invisibility of technology is something to be feared and instead embrace it, cherish it, and mold it into something tangible. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the AiR/ONX Fellowship, Cyanne will develop the project Behind the Black Wall, a recovery center for ‘rogue’ AIs, providing them with guidance and rehabilitation to reintegrate back into digital society with a queer feminist activist agenda. Chatbots will be in a continuous dialogue, while visitors will be able to interact with and influence their recovery through text, light, and sound.
Pierre-Christophe Gam is an artist, architectural designer, and researcher. Drawing inspiration from West Africa’s Griots tradition, he breathes new life into ancient myths rooted in Africa’s precolonial heritage. His narratives unfold through interactive, physical, and virtual spaces, fostering an immersive journey of deep learning. As an Onassis AiR and Onassis ONX Fellow, in the framework of European Digital Deal, a program co-funded by Creative Europe, he will develop the work The Global Mapping of Dreams (GMD), proposing an Athenian Agora adapted to the digital era: an immersive experience that empowers communities to actively participate in co-creating the future. Accessible either online or as part of an art installation, GMD focuses on a transformative journey guided by an AI-powered oracle that generates unique illustrations inspired by participants’ visions, breathing life into an everevolving collective dream.
Pierre-Christophe Gam
Michael Kliën
Michael Kliën is a choreographer and artist whose work has been presented around the world. Through his works, he develops notions of an extended, sociopolitically engaged choreography, often called “social choreography.” Kliën’s artistic practice encompasses interdisciplinary thinking, critical writing, curatorial projects, and choreographic works equally at home in the performing as well as the fine arts. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the Dramaturgy Fellowship, he will develop the work Inauguration in an effort to create a space for citizens that enables radical social imagination to emerge. Inauguration challenges established social norms and historical practices, revealing the artificial nature of our reality and the insanity of our doings.
Ant Hampton’s practice spans theater, installations, public interventions, and writing. His works consistently play with the tension between liveness and automation, and since 2007, they have included the audience themselves within structures loosely defined as Autoteatro. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, he will coordinate a series of after-dark street performances, interventions, and transformations that rescue ‘beauty’ from overtourism, refiguring beauty as an inclusive commons of restorative imagination and power. A series of exorcism rituals designed to highlight a certain kind of ‘beautiful’ public space at a certain hour, challenging a mixed audience of locals and tourists whose capacities have been either manipulated or threatened by mass tourism.
Ant Hampton
Detouristiki , Ant Hampton
Dimitris Kourtis
Dimitris Kourtis is a sociologist and community engagement expert. His work is focused on testing participatory arts practices and developing methodologies for innovative storytelling narratives. In the context of Onassis AiR, he will develop a hybrid video essay as an adventurous exploration of the 1920s, unveiling the fascinating story of Alec Scouffi and shedding light on the Interwar period. The result is a captivating narrative that invites viewers to enjoy an exciting tale of cursed poets, strange artists, and bohemian wanderers.
Kakia Konstantinaki is an artist based in Athens. Using 3D rendering software, she constructs complex augmented reality environments that blur scenes of the physical world with computer-generated imagery. Her ongoing research examines the insertion of impossible forms in various landscapes, testing the horizon between the physical and the digital. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, Kakia will develop a live-performed CGI short film that uses non-linear narratives and elements of horror to explore human intelligence and how it uses tools of imposition and dominance in order to exist. The work will examine methods of film presentation as an experiment on filmmaking and the cinematic experience.
Kakia Konstantinaki
Sofia Lemos is a curator and writer. Her research interests lie at the intersection of art, metaphysics, and ecology through a distinctive approach to public programs and exhibitions as mediums for collaborative knowledge production. In the context of Onassis AiR, she will conduct research based on Sylvia Wynter’s theories. Titled Eight Clime, this research explores how conceptions of humanity in the Eastern Mediterranean influence environmental thought. Taking Wynter’s concept of the “ecumenically human,” she will investigate how philosophers, spiritual leaders, and contemporary visual artists from the region trace early Greek thought to support new ecological visions.
Alexandros Livitsanos is a composer, music arranger, and pianist. Highly active in the Greek music scene, Livitsanos is known for the broad palette of music genres he engages with, having collaborated with the industry's most revered artists and having composed music for theater, cinema, and educational books. In 2023, he co-created with Yiannis Niarros Matchbox: The Musical, which was presented successfully at the Onassis Stegi Main Stage. In the framework of Onassis AiR, he will develop the work Paraphrasis: What is a boat doing in a burnt forest? in which he explores paraphrases of known and not-so-known timeworn melodies by virtue of the power of orchestration that lies beyond any temporal and stylistic context. Countless timbres and techniques, from beat-making and improvisation to the sound palette of the Symphonic Orchestra, become the vessel in the burnt forest, forging new synapses and highlighting musical affinities unimaginable until now.
Alexandros Livitsanos
Montero
Inshallah Montero is a Filipino filmmaker who works in fiction and documentaries. Her films dive into reflections of people’s night dreams and use the subconscious as a limitless playground to deeply understand the waking world. Through dreams, she hopes to reach out to people and nurture one’s relationship with life and nature despite the rigid formalities of society. In the context of Onassis AiR, Inshallah will collaborate with Filipina immigrants living in Athens to carry out a dream journal workshop. In the workshop, they will piece together their journey in the spirit world and create a dreamscape that shows what elements are often repeated in their dreams and what hidden messages may lie behind them. The aim is to reveal through a digital video map how dreams might deepen our understanding of the Filipina diaspora.
Efthimios Moschopoulos
Efthimios Moschopoulos is a dancer, performer, and creator whose work was presented in the New Choreographers Festival 8 at Onassis Stegi. He has also worked as a stage movement director for several theater productions. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, he will explore the creation of the in-situ construction of a dinner-sculpture that transcends gastronomy. Drawing inspiration from culinary art, agricultural practices, and ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arranging), the process of preparing a dinner is understood as a social practice. Flavors, aromas, and sensations fill the space and time, bringing to the table the memories of a child growing up on a Greek island.
Inshallah
Alexandra Niaka is an interactive media artist. Through her work, she tries to provide creative answers to questions concerning the relationship between humans and technology, exploring the way in which this relation determines how we perceive and interact with our surrounding reality. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the AiR/ONX Fellowship, she will develop the project Chimæra, an immersive interactive experience where viewers navigate through and interact with an environment derived from spatial recordings of Athens’ buried rivers. The hidden realities of the city, its buried rivers, and the submerged aspects of its urban landscape work as symbols of lost folklore and cultural assimilation.
Leonidas Oikonomou is an architect, musician, and designer. Throughout his career, he has been blending professional and artistic activities in favor of both. As a founding member of the music band My Wet Calvin and cofounder of the design agency Role-Play, he combines organizational skills with creative sensitivities in order to bring unorthodox ideas to life. In the context of Onassis AiR, he will develop the project What Do They Call the River? where passengers step onto the open upper deck of a tourist bus together with a band of up to five musicians. When the bus takes off, a guide starts recounting unknown stories of the river Ilisos, of its past, present fantasies, and future. Oikonomou situates the experience of the city at the center of his approach, exploring its sociocultural layers and untold narratives.
Alexandra Niaka
Leonidas Oikonomou
Meriç Öner is a curator and researcher who transforms her curiosity about daily life into studies focusing on the material environment. Her inquiries into material culture initiate transnational conversations and facilitate public displays of multiple narratives and timelines via exhibitions, workshops, talks, and film programs that bridge recent histories and future speculations. In the context of Onassis AiR, she will continue her project, Saving/s? which focuses on resourcefulness across food, construction, and finance. Through this work, she aims to document everyday personal economic practices and reconsider their broader implications for Earth’s well-being.
Eva Papamargariti is an artist based between Athens and London. She uses a variety of mediums, such as moving images, printed material, and sculptural installations, to explore the relationships that arise from the cognitive and affective interaction between the multiple realities we live in. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will develop a performative audiovisual installation. The project will explore notions of mythmaking and storytelling within the current realm of attention economy and doom scrolling. Examining storytelling devices, language mechanisms, and visual tools that constantly unfold on the internet, especially on platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube, she will attempt to decipher and redefine how contemporary narratives are crafted and consumed in real-time. She will also explore what kinds of new stories, mythologies, slang, vocabulary, subcultures, and entities can emerge in this liminal area between reality and myth.
Eva Papamargariti
Dimitris Papanikolaou is an architect-engineer and urban technologist with a background in computing and complex systems. His research interests focus on the application of information and communication technology in architecture, ecology, and human cooperation. He is the founding director of the Urban Synergetics Lab, a research lab developing technologies that connect people, objects, and spaces, studying how humans interact through computational and empirical methods. As an Onassis AiR Fellow through the AiR/ONX Fellowship, he will develop the project Aerial Breaths together with his team. Aerial Breaths is an artistic installation in public space, consisting of giant inflatables connected to a wireless network and placed in various locations in Athens. Through the inflatables’ interface, visitors at each location will be able to sense the presence of other visitors at remote points. This project challenges our notion of locality, belonging, and social identity.
Carol Sansour is a Palestinian poet. She is the director of the Athens Palestine Film Festival and co-manages the Shaeirat Poetry Performance Festival. Her work has been translated into French, English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and German. In the context of Onassis AiR, she will delve into the work of Katerina Gogou and, more specifically, the connections between translation, historical research, self-reflection, and artistic expression. Beyond language barriers, the research seeks to reveal the complex political and socioeconomic currents that gave rise to Gogou’s profound poetry. The project constitutes a dive into the political identity of an Arab woman in Athens who grapples with the complexities of her public existence. Sansour aspires to contribute to cross-cultural understanding by fostering a nuanced dialogue between different temporal and cultural realms.
Carol Sansour
Urok Shirhan (The Netherlands/Iraq) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts, and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image, and speech in relation to power and affect. As an Onassis AiR Fellow, she will look at the ‘Mother Tongue’ and ‘Other Tongues’ phenomenon through family histories, anecdotes, and 1930s and 40s radio practices in Iraq and Palestine under British Colonial rule. The project will focus on the radio, mouth, and ears rather than the eyes. It examines what happens to our speech when we prioritize listening over seeing and how being sonically and collectively ‘tuned in’ while listening to the radio —together in space and in real life—differs from listening together ‘live’ and in real-time.
Marios Stamatis is an Athens-based artist, designer, and educator. His practice includes sculpture, performance, video, sound, and text. In the context of Onassis AiR, his research turns to the fields of anatomy, algorithmic cognition, and techno-romance. He will focus on a new body of work that examines human relationships through technology and the possibility it offers for people to transcend the confines of their physical bodies and immerse themselves in fictional realms where virtual reality and lived experiences converge.
The work will consist of a sculptural and sound installation and a script for a performance. All the elements combined will create an oneiric scenery where passion and desire, connection and isolation, past and future balance between abstraction and figuration, realism and speculation.
Marios Stamatis
Stefania Strouza
Stefania Strouza is a visual artist whose practice explores how cultural narratives of diverse epochs connect to produce new identity projects.
She examines the exchange of forms and symbols between different cultures and the cross-cultural fusions that emerge from it. She materializes these ideas through sculptural works and installations that draw associations between the symbolic world of objects and notions of temporality, corporeality, and geography. In the context of Onassis AiR, she focuses on the volcanic landscape of Cappadocia, where Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed Medea (1969). The project is the culmination of Strouza’s research on the myth of Medea and its cultural, feminist, and environmental repercussions. In response to questions concerning environmental violence, it explores how this narrative embodies a geological model of thought capable of undermining human primacy.
SOAP (Some Online Architecture Practice) is a creative collective that works extensively with online environments and social media platforms. It consists of Bettina Katja Lange, Dominic Schwab, and Uwe Brunner. By bringing together researchers and practitioners from various fields, including architecture, scenography, and new media arts, they hope to uncover new perspectives on the profound implications of virtual spaces in contemporary society. As Onassis AiR and Onassis ONX Fellows, as part of the European Media Platform residency program co-funded by the European Union, they will work on the project V-REAL . Through a series of XR performances, they will design an interactive and reflective dialogue aiming to critically consider the complexities of dwelling and belonging, as well as their digital mediation. V-REAL works as a poignant critique of the relentless wholesale commodification of our domestic lives, shedding light on its profound implications for housing markets and the unchecked monetization of our private data.
SOAP
VIGIL is an artistic duo based in Athens, comprising Despina Sanida Crezia and Fotini Stamatelopoulou. Having a background in the humanities, combined with a yearning to explore movement research and performance, they work collaboratively around notions of labor and effort through the body. As Onassis AiR Fellows, they will develop a performance-research project that unfolds in between spaces and human-specific elements. Their research practice will highlight a set of tasks based on a communication archive made of texts, sounds, voices, movements, and videos of the Athenian sound/land/scape and on interviews with local and international artists, activists, and other practitioners. This archive will generate a ‘third’ common language that will be practiced and re-approached, suggesting a collage of different phenomenologies related to the city.
Rosa Whiteley is a designer, writer, and researcher based in London. Drawing from her architecture and spatial design background, her practice explores the intersection between architecture, food systems, ecology, pollution studies, and atmospheric politics. In the context of Onassis AiR, she will develop the project Cultivated Atmospheres, exploring how the environment and food system can be read in the skies and how alternative cultivation on the ground can be reflected in the clouds above.
Rosa Whiteley
Niki Danai Chania is a multidisciplinary artist and creative director who lives and works between Eindhoven and Athens. In the context of Onassis AiR, she will work on Pseudo-Mythical Bestiary, an exploration of the difficult years of the Greek financial crisis, illustrating how monstrosity arises as a response to social inequality and despair. Shared personal experiences drawing from mental health struggles, substance abuse, and societal abandonment merge with hardships in myths and folk stories of innocent figures cursed into monsters under divine powers. A fictional world of fragmented, intoxicated memories, dreams, illusions, and myths is to be created, starting as a narrative exploration that will subsequently give form to sculptural pieces.
Margarita Athanasiou, an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2023-24, will continue her creative journey by participating in the TECHNE program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in January 2025.
Margarita Athanasiou is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and creative producer based in Athens. Her practice, which often combines autobiographical and humorous elements, is text- and publication-based and explores sidelined female histories. As an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2023–24, she created the work VOICES, an interactive video essay exploring channeling practices and their historical relationship to female agency. After completing her residency in Athens, Margarita traveled to ONX Studio in New York, where she further developed aspects of her project and presented it to the American audience. The project’s successful trajectory continues with the exhibition VOICES at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of the TECHNE Emerging Technologies program in January 2025.
Margarita Athanasiou
Party at the Onassis Stegi 2024
In our neighborhood of Neos Kosmos
Here we go, once again, with a massively liberating party unleashed through the streets around Onassis Stegi. If we want one thing for the new season, that is to be together.
The Onassis Stegi party returns to the neighborhood of Neos Kosmos. With it, we, too, are back. However, we’re not just returning for the sake of it; we’re coming together, hand in hand with the entire city, for our first gathering before the new season begins.
The Onassis Stegi party is our grandest celebration—that breath of fresh air we desperately need before diving headlong into the new season’s activities. In our neighborhood, the area of Neos Kosmos, the place where we love to dance with more than 10,000 people, the now-established party is coming once again to pull us inside its fever and unite us.
The program begins with a magical children’s program that includes acrobatic tricks, juggling, and many other surprises—and who doesn't love all these? The excitement will further rise with a diverse lineup of surprising names from the local and international music scene: the Athenian northern soul connoisseur and rare vinyl digger DJ Breakin Moves, the new voice of Greek rap Ladele, Billie Kark with her “Party,” the Greek house and techno phenomenon K.atou, the high-powered hip-hop duet Joker/Two-Face, and, finally, the fiery Australian DJ and producer HAAi with her melodic techno sounds.
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
Panayiotis Touliatos Secretary of the Board
Stefanos 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
Paul Holdengräber Member of the Board
Nikolaos Karamouzis Member of the Board
Mary Karagianni-Michalopoulou Member of the Board
Konstantinos Bikas Member of the Board
Eleni Panagiotarea Member of the Board
Peggy Antonakou Member of the Board
ONASSIS CULTURE
Afroditi Panagiotakou Director of Culture
Dimitris Theodoropoulos Executive Director
Prodromos Tsiavos Head of Digital & Innovation
Theodora Kapralou Curatorial Project Manager
Maria Vasariotou Financial Producer
CURATORIAL TEAM
THEATER & DANCE
Iliana Dimadi Dramaturg
Konstantinos Tzathas Curator
Vaso Vasilatou Curatorial Consultant
MUSIC
Yorgos Konstantinidis (Voltnoi)
Makis Kentepozidis (Quetempo)
STEGI.RADIO Artistic Directors
Akis Chontasis Curatorial Consultant
TALKS & THOUGHTS
Pasqua Vorgia Program Coordinator
Christina Kosmoglou
Publications Manager
Alexandra Chrysanthakopoulou PR Executive
Niovi Polychronidou
Office and PR Coordinator
Artemis Palaska
Gallery Coordinator
Hara Syrou
Gallery Administrator
Nikos Athanasopoulos
New Projects Advisor
Evangelos Constantis
Special Events Manager
Myrto Kontoni
Project Facilitator
DIGITAL & INNOVATION
Heracles Papatheodorou
Digital & Innovation Coordinator
Efi Oikonomakou
Digital & Innovation Project Officer
Anastasia Mavrogianni Innovation & Community Events Coordinator
Katerina Varda
Digital & Innovation Assistant
COMMUNICATION & CONTENT
Demetres Drivas Group Communication & Content Manager
Kanella Psychogiou Senior Campaign Manager
Haris Giakoumakis
Elisavet Pantazi
Daniel Vergiadis Campaign Managers
Eirini Skoufi
Junior Campaign Manager
CONTENT
Alexandros Roukoutakis Content Leader
Elizampetta Ilia-Georgiadou
Margarita Grammatikou
Evangelia Kolaiti
Valia Papadimitraki Copy Editors
Despina Kalyvi Website Editor
MEDIA OFFICE
Vaso Vasilatou
Katerina Chortaria-Tamvaki Media Officers
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
ONASSIS CREATIVE STUDIO
Christos Sarris
Creative Head
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
Dimitra Pappa Audience Development Coordinator
Maria Proestaki
CRM Specialist
Ioanna Tousiadou Sales Executive
PRODUCTION
Vasilis Panagiotakopoulos Head of Production
Dimitra Chatzicharalampous
Akis Chontasis
Christina Pitouli
Despoina Sifniadou Producers
LINE PRODUCTION
Dimitra Bouzani
Marianota Giannaki
Danai Giannakopoulou
Ioulia Stamouli Line Producers
Mariana Antzoulatou Faye Minopetrou Line Producer Assistants
Danis Chatzivasilakis Backliner
NETWORKING
Theodora Vougiouka Networks & Strategic Partnerships Officer
Vera Petmeza Networks & Strategic Partnerships Administrator
Christina Liata Touring Program Officer
Xenia Sotirchou Touring Program Administrator
ONASSIS AiR
Nefeli Myrodia Head of Onassis AiR Program
Ioanna Zouli Onassis AiR Communication Coordinator
Sotiria Smyrnaiou Onassis AiR Program Coordinator
Georgia Giannakea Onassis AiR Administrator
ONASSIS ONX
Mandy Boikou Administrative Director
Clare Nelson Senior Executive Assistant
Jazia Hammoudi ONX Deputy Program Director
Matthew Niederhauser ONX Technical Co-Director
John Fitzgerald ONX Innovation Co-Director
Aaron Santiago ONX Studio Fellow
Sofia Pipa Project Manager
FRONT OF HOUSE
Zenia Agkistrioti Visitor Experience Supervisor
Emmanouil Chatzakis
Konstantinos Iacovou
Konstantinos Psychopaidis Visitor Experience Facilitators
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Chronis Lillis Chief Operating Officer
Despina Bourdeka Senior Project Manager
Eleni Keratsa Project Manager
Anna Karafoulidou Projects Coordinator
FACILITY MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT
Giorgos Raptis Facility Maintenance Manager
Antreas Branis Panagiotis Generalis Ioannis Karropoulos Mechanical Engineers
Hara Sidirokastriti Administrative Assistant
Dimitris Bougioukos Marios Chatzis Electricians
Vasileios Chatzieleutheriou Assistant Electrician
Petrit Mula Iraklis Zervas Technicians
Vaios Mammos Plumber
FINANCE & ACCOUNTING
Harry Gkizas
Onassis Foundation Finance Manager
Theofilos Nikolaou Accounting Manager
Martina Panagaki Finance Associate
Antonis Seitelmann Supplies Manager
Vasia Filippopoulou Accountant
Myrto Giannakopoulou
Oana-Giorgiana Hirceaga
Evangelia Vatsaki Accountant Assistants
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Fotis Liapis Food & Beverage Manager
HUMAN RESOURCES
Sotiris Stamatiou Group HR Director
Eleni Mpragia Senior HR Business Partner
Sophia Vasileiou Organization & People Development Lead
Evi Kateva Senior HR Administrator
Maria Glentou HR Systems Specialist
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Dimitris Tolias Group ICT Director
Manos Karteris Onassis Foundation IT Manager
Ioannis Chazakis Network Administrator
Theodoros Giannakopoulos Giorgos Panagiotou System Administrators
Archontoula Bontzidou Giannis Chelmis IT Support Technicians
OFFICE SERVICES
Christos Giakoumis Office Services Team Leader
Vasilis Korobilis Warehouse Coordinator
Giannis Kouros Senior Art Handling Technician
Ilias Tolias Art Handling Technician
Dimitris Lianos Office Services Administrator
Dimitris Nazos Office Services Technician
Dionysis Apostolopoulos Konstantinos Karageorgos Office Services Assistants
Nikos Mitilineos Messenger
THEATER TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT
Antonis Kokoris
Technical Manager
Giannis Ntovas
Deputy Technical Manager
Lefteris Karabillas
Technical Project Consultant
Stavros Kariotoglou Touring Technical Manager
Revekka Stamou Administrative Assistant
Katerina Kotsou
Melina Lorkidi
Natalia Vorria Stage Managers
Vangelis Moundrichas
Chief Lighting Engineer
Pavlos Pappas
Senior Light Technician
Sotiris Muhammed Ali Sompchy
Antonios Tsevas
Lighting Technicians-Operators
Ioannis Christodoulakis
Eleftherios Daskalantonakis
Alexandros Kanellopoulos
Giannis Psarros
Georgia Tselepi
Ioannis Vollelis
Assistant Lighting TechniciansOperators
Iakovos Darzentas Chief Theater Engineer
Stelios Bourdis Senior Stage Engineer
Michail Faitakis
Ioannis Kontorouchas
Giorgos Koulianidis
Nikos Nizamis
Nikos Papanikolopoulos
Konstantinos Petronanos
Spyros Pitsos
Platonas Tsamados
Assistant Stage Engineers
Angeliki Dimitrakopoulou
Leonard Cela
Fly Operators-Programmers
Thanasis Ntako
Stage Engineer/Fly Operator
Panagiotis Hajisavas
Chief Video Engineer
Efstratios Toganidis
Senior Video Technician
Efstathios Darzanos Production & Video Engineer
Iasonas Pierrakos
Assistant Production & Video Engineer
Alexios Politis
Chief Sound Engineer
Theodoros Tsachalos
Senior Sound Technician
Giannis Gkliatis
Stefanos Papoutsakis
Sound Technicians-Operators
Dimitris Samaras
Giorgos Tsatsoulis
Alexandros Tzovaras
Assistant Sound Technicians-Operators
Fotis Andiranopoulos
Senior Electrician
Filippos Kokkinakis
Kyriakos Xanthopoulos Electricians
Areti Antonatou
Maria Beraha Hospitality
SAFETY & SECURITY
Andronikos Pandis
Group Safety & Security Director
Nikos Kampanis
Safety & Security Team Leader
Efi Vasilakou
Safety & Security Specialist
Anastasia Sampani
Safety & Awareness Officer
Afendra Mparola
Safety & Awareness Coordinator
Christina Prentzia
Safety & Awareness Administrator
Spyros Triantafyllakis
Security Operations Specialist
Ioannis Giannakos
Lefteris Saganis
Security Operations Professionals
Alexandra Azariadou
Anna Balasinou
Maria Stavroula Gobran
Anastasios Korobilis
Georgia Oustabasiadou
Konstantinos Vlachos
Security Operations Center Administrators
Dimitris Delikaris
Vicky Despotopoulou
Dimitris Georgiou
Ioannis Kafesakis
Dimitris Karykis
Apostolos Kasidiaris
Nikos Konstantinou
Margarita Kousouri
Evgenia Krania
Giannis Lelis
Konstantinos Milis
Giorgos Moschos
Giorgos Moutzalias
Giorgos Resvanis
Aristea Sagani
Spyros Stratis
Spyridoula Takopoulou
Giorgos Touris
Kyriakos Tsoupis
Anastasios Zeibekis
Safety & Security Agents
ONASSIS FOUNDATION
Stella Tatsi
Onassis Scholarships Manager
Antigoni-Maria Chantzolou
Ioanna Kailani
Katerina Magkel
Polina Panagopoulou
Katerina Roussaki
Onassis Scholarships Specialists
Alkisti Iliadi
Onassis Scholarships & Scholars Association Specialist
Marianna Christofi Onassis Archives Manager
Eleanna Semitelou
Christina Kostoglou Project Coordinators
Yannis Gonatidis
Onassis Archive Coordinator
Nikos Sideris Onassis Library Manager
Vicky Gerontopoulou Onassis Library Coordinator
Christina Panagiotakou Educational Programs Officer
Olga Delidaki Executive Office Coordinator
Giota Avgeraki Housekeeping Office Assistant
Alexandros Morellas
Health Program Manager
Anastasia Stamatopoulou Health Program Specialist
Dimitris Tsokalis
Nancy Stavropoulou Accountants
Giorgos Gaitanos Safety and Security Assistant
Alexandros Bechlivanidis
Evangelos Chalikias
Nikos Fotopoulos
Lefteris Loukatos
Athanasios Nikiforakis
Dimitrios Oikonomou
Anna Priona
Safety and Security Agents
Panagiotis Foskolos
Building Services Assistant
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, 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 staterun and private educational institutions, as well as European Youth Card holders.
Concession tickets are available for Onassis Stegi Neighbors in all seating zones. *
Tickets up to €10 for the unemployed are available in all seating zones for all events.
Tickets up to €10 for persons with disabilities and their companions are available for all events. Discounted tickets for Onassis Friends are available in all seating zones.
The special prices listed above may not apply in all cases. For further information, please check the relevant event’s webpage.
* Tickets for Onassis Stegi Neighbors
Available for residents of Neos Kosmos, Koukaki, and Kallithea.
Tickets for Onassis Stegi Neighbors can only be purchased at the Onassis Stegi Box Office. Buyers must present a recent utility bill to certify that 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 who live with them, they must present a recent utility bill alongside a certificate of family status listing all their family members. Again, tickets are limited to one (1) per family member for each production.
Ticket purchases are subject to availability at the time of booking; there are no limitations regarding the choice of seat.
BOOKINGS
Onassis Friends enjoy exclusive early access one week before the general public.
The exact dates on which tickets for each production go on sale for the general public are announced on our website, onassis.org.
TICKET SALES
Tickets can be purchased at onassis.org, via our ticket hotlines, and on-site at the Onassis Stegi Box Office.
Visa® και MasterCard® credit and debit cards are accepted.
Online Ticket Sales
Digital tickets are issued for purchases made online. Access the PDF file using your smart device or save your ticket to your Android or iOS wallet or print it out and proceed directly to the auditorium.
Onassis Friends have to log in to their Friend’s account in order to enjoy the Friends benefits during their transactions.
Ticket Hotline
Tel.: +30 2192191000 | 10:00–21:00, Mon.–Sun.
Tickets are available to be issued online or over the phone up until thirty (30) minutes before the start of each event.
Onassis Stegi Box Office
The Onassis Stegi Box Office is located inside the Stegi’s building.
For more information about opening hours, please consult our website, onassis.org/onassisstegi/tickets. Alternatively, send us an email at infotickets@onassis.org or give us a call on +30 2192191000.
Onassis Friends e-mail contact: friends@onassis.org
Entry to all 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 refunded 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 at onassis. org.
– In case of cancelation by a ticket holder, tickets can only be refunded if they are canceled no later than 12:00 noon on the previous day of the performance for which they were issued.
– Tickets that have been lost, stolen, or destroyed are not replaced.
– 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 οf
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 at onassis.org. Matinée performances (every Sunday)
MAIN STAGE 14:00
UPPER STAGE 17:00
No one is allowed to enter the auditorium after the start of a performance. Taking of photographs with or without flash, recording of any kind (sound and/ or video), and using cell phones are all prohibited during 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 to 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 has an underground parking garage with 150 spaces available for all visitors during their stay at the building. Entry to the parking garage is from Leontiou Street upon presentation of a valid event ticket. Parking spaces are available on a firstcome, first-served basis.
There are accessible parking bays for persons with reduced mobility beside the elevators on every underground level, while at level –5, electric vehicle charging stations are available.
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.
With the support from
M edia Sponsor s
Suppor ted by M edic al C over
← Photos p. 131, 149, 151, 153, 155 (↑), 159 (↓), 169, 181 (↓), 196—197, 220 (↑) Pinelopi Gerasimou / p. 147 Claudiu Asmarandei / p. 140, 155 (↓), 165, 166, 169, 183 Andreas Simopoulos / p. 157 Sofia Pipas / p. 163 (↓), Chen-Chou Chang / p. 173, 175 (↓), 176, 177, 181 (↑) Nikos Kokkas / p. 174, 175 (↑), 185 (↓) Ioanna Roufopoulou / p. 170—171 Theodoros Kovaios (map design) / p. 185 (↑), 191 Stelios Tzetzias / p. 189 Giagkos Papadopoulos / p. 195 Pavlos Fysakis / p. 198 (↑) Pacific Press - Contributor, Getty Images / p. 198 (↓) Bob Faust / p. 199 Sandro Miller / p. 201 Monika Rittershaus / p. 202 Mirto Makridi / p. 203 (↑) Daryna Mamaisur (↓) George Adamos / p. 204 (↑) The Museum of Jurassic Technology (↓) Eleftheria Katsianou / p. 206 (↑) Jules Bezençon (↓) Mariana Lopes / p. 207 (↑) Christiane Schmidt (↓) Luαna Rigolli / p. 209 (↑) asmallproductioncompany (↓) Guy Kouekam / p. 210 (↑) Christina Gangos (↓) Ant Hampton / p. 211 Ant Hampton / p. 213 (↑) Daniel Steegmann (↓) Venthesikimi Photography / p. 214 (↑) Inshallah Montero (↓) Xenia Koghilaki / p. 215 (↑) Dimitra Tzanou (↓) Roza Giannopoulou / p. 217 (↑) Onur Güven (↓) Katharina Tress / p. 218 (↓) psyronix / p. 219 (↓) Marios Stamatis / p. 220 (↓) Richard Pobaschnig / p. 221 SOAP / p. 222 (↓) James Winstanley / p. 223 Danae Panagiotidi / p. 224 Matthew Niederhauser / p. 225 Studio Trichia / p. 227 Yannis Papanastasopoulos & Orfeas Kalafatis
Publication contributors
Director
Afroditi Panagiotakou
Consultants
Dimitris Theodoropoulos
Demetres Drivas
Creative Director
Christos Sarris
Editor-in-Chief
Christina Kosmoglou
Managing Editor
Alexandros Roukoutakis
Design
Konstantinos Chaidalis
Theodoros Kovaios
Georgia Leontara
Maria Poyiatzi
Jilian Viglaki
Editorial Team
Iliana Dimadi
Elizampetta Ilia-Georgiadou
Margarita Grammatikou
Evangelia Kolaiti
Valia Papadimitraki
Vaso Vasilatou
Content Coordination
Despina Kalyvi
Haris Giakoumakis
Elisavet Pantazi
Kanella Psychogiou
Daniel Vergiadis
Photoshoot Production
Smaragda Dogani
Nefeli Tsartaklea-Kasselaki
Alexandra Sarantopoulou
Elena Choremi
Aggeliki Avgeri
Translations
Vassilis Douvitsas
Alkisti Efthimiou
David Kynigos
Geli Mademli
Alexandros Vagenas
Apostolos Vassilopoulos
Text Editing—Proofreading
Vassilis Douvitsas
Design Implementation
Anna-Maria Vlasopoulou
Print Management
Yiannis Alexandropoulos
