Anestis Ioannou (b.1992, Athens) is a visual artist living and working in Athens. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts and of the Sciences of Art, University of Ioannina (2015), which awarded him the Erasmus Scholarship to study at the Fine Arts School of Castilla la Mancha (2014) in Spain. He holds a Master’s Degree (Master of Fine Arts) from LUCA School of Arts (2018 in Brussels. Ioannou’s practice explores the relationship between the urban environment, social fabric and the construction of our own subjectivities, while it reflects on the process of reading a place through objects, simple actions or even experiences. He has participated in exhibitions, projects and artist-in-residency programs in Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, Serbia and France.
Ioannou is the co-founder of NOTUS Studio, an artist-run space and non-profit artist-in-residency program in Athens (est. 2017). He is also the co-founder of DELIVERART, a collective project proposing a mobile art experience that takes place in the streets of Athens (est. 2019).
Byron Kalomamas (b. 1993, Athens) studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and completed his Master’s at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In his work, he combines interactive mechanisms as performative tools with visual essays in the form of video, while he is interested in developing transparent and shareable methodologies, which he can subsequently incorporate in his work. Often in the context of collaborative practice, he explores the notion of infrastructures —whether material or immaterial— and of their ability to support and perpetuate displaced counter-narratives.
He has participated in group shows and screenings at Chisenhalle Gallery and Seventeen Gallery in London,Kunstbau in Munich and at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens. His work has been supported by the Schilizzi Foundation, the Gilbert Bayes Foundation and other organisations. Between 2013 and 2016 he was an active member of the artist-run initiative Circuits & Currents in Athens, while in 2019 he co-founded, along with Sepake Angiama, the Module for temporary Infrastructures, an ongoing research series presented at St Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp.
Manos Papadakis was born and raised in Heraklion of Crete. He studied Business Administration at the University of Macedonia and Film and Television Direction at the Lykourgos Stavrakos School in Athens where he still lives and works. He started as a producer of short films (Sunday, Possibly Strangers, -1) and then turned towards scriptwriting (-1, Hem). His first directorial work (“The meaning of August”, 26΄) awaits its international premiere while he won an honorary distinction of sound (43rd Drama Festival) and best male performance (43rd Drama International Short Film Festival, Athens International Film Festival 2020).
He tries to release as many of the stories living in his head in order to prevent it from exploding. So far, he has been fairly successful. He has always been interested in the problematic of violence and the various forms it can assume. Three years after the birth of his son, he is more and more interested in the meaning we ascribe to the term ‘family’. His stories are leaning increasingly more in that direction.
Born in 1985, he studied documentary film in London and graduated with distinction from Brunel University London in 2012. He works in film, television and art projects, as a director, assistant director, cinematographer and editor. He has collaborated with institutions, museums, festivals, production companies and television stations in Greece and abroad (Greek National Opera – Stavros Niarchos Foundation, National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Onassis Foundation, Sadler’s Wells, Benaki Museum, the Venice Biennale, Ibsen Awards Festival, London Review of Books, BBC, CNN, Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, etc.). His films are rooted in the art of documentary and avant-garde cinema and have been screened at international festivals and online platforms (International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, La Nuu Phtography Festival in Barcelona, thespace.org (BBC), greatbigstory.com (CNN ), etc.)
Ιasonas Kampanis was born in 1985 in Athens, where he lives and works. Since 2007, he has been working with painting, printmaking, photography, digital media, performance, installations and scenographic works. His works have been presented mainly in Greece and the United Kingdom, including at the Bishopsgate Institute (London, 2013); London Print Studio (2013); O3 Gallery, with zoologist and painter Desmond Morris (Oxford, 2013); Museum of Typography (Chania, 2014); Ligne Roset Westend (London, 2014); Islington Arts Factory (London, 2015); Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes Gallery (London, 2016); Onassis Stegi (Athens, 2018)’ in the film Salt Wound by Maria Gaitanidi, in collaboration with actress Stacy Martin (2018); Michael Cacoyannis Foundation (Athens, 2019); kunstahallekleinbasel (Basel, 2019)’ and at the Victoria Square Project (Athens, September 2020).
He has directed the 12-episode documentary series Lighthouses (2016-17) for Cosmote History channel, a major satellite Greek broadcaster. Orfeas also directs concept videos for cultural institutions and design agencies, which have been featured at the Benaki Museum, Stavros Niarchos Cultural Centre, Onassis Stegi and the Athens Concert Hall. In 2016, he completed Into the Centre of the Wheel, his first feature documentary, which premiered at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and was acquired for Cinema and TV distribution from Athens-based Neo Films.
His short films have received top prize from the Panhellenic Association of Film Critics and premiered at the Oscar-qualifying Zinebi International Festival of Documentary and Short Film Bilbao, Spain, while he has won a short film pitch award by the Athens International Film Festival. His graduation film, Small Talk (2007), won a Royal Television Society Award in the UK and was awarded first prize at the Drama International Short Film Festival in Greece.
He has studied psychology in Scotland. In 2004, he moved to England to study Film and video at the University for the Creative Arts and Screenwriting at the London Film School (2008). He is a 2019 Berlinale Talent Alumni.
Born in London and raised in Athens, Kyveli Short graduated from King’s College London in 2014. From 2015 to 2018, she worked at Anemon Productions in Athens, as the lead production manager on the documentary Dolphin Man (2017), directed by Lefteris Charitos, which was the recipient of two Hellenic Film Academy Awards. As a freelancer, she is the Associate Producer of Thanasis Neofotistos’ short fiction film Patision Avenue (Venice 2018), as well as Thelyia Petraki’s hybrid short film Bella (Visions du Réel 2020). She is currently collaborating with Maria Drandaki (Homemade Films) on the development of Konstantina Kotzamani’s debut feature film, Titanic Ocean. Kyveli is also co-director of the San Francisco Greek Film Festival, the longest-running Greek film festival in the United States.
Kostis Charamountanis is a film director born in 1994 in Athens, Greece. He has directed five films in total, the most acclaimed being Kioku Before Summer Comes (2018) and the most recent Anthology of a Butterfly (2020). Ηe is presently working on the script of his debut feature film, Kyuka Journeying to the Moon through the Endless Sea, which earned him a place at the MIDPOINT Feature Launch 2020 at the beginning of the year.
Dimitris Anagnostou was born in 1984. He studied Chemistry at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and filmmaking at the Stavrakos Film and Television School in Athens; at the University Paris 1 Sorbonne; and at the University Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, with a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (I.K.Y).
Since 2016, he teaches the courses The Aesthetics of Cinema and Theory of Montage at Stavrakos Film and Television School.
His first short film, Mare Nostrum (2020) had its world premiere at the international competition section of the Vienna Shorts International Short Film Festival. He is currently completing the production of the short film Lumen, directed by Eirini Tzoulia, and preparing his second short film, Atopia.
Born in Athens in 1979, Yannis Veslemes studied film. He has directed feature films, shorts, music videos and tv adverts. In 2014, his feature debut Norway premièred at Karlovy Vary before screening at dozens of festivals and securing distribution deals all around the world. Within Greece, the film won a series of distinctions (five Hellenic Film Academy Awards), and enjoyed a successful run in cinemas, reintroducing Greek audiences to midnight screenings. In 2018, he was invited by the American production company Drafthouse Films to take part in the feature-length anthology The Field Guide to Evil (produced by Tim League & Ant Timpson), which premièred at South by Southwest and was distributed in the US by N.EO.N.(theaters) and Universal (home video). He is currently in pre-production for his first English-language film, She Loved Blossoms More (with which he participated in Sundance Lab Istanbul). As a composer (Felizol) he has released records on many international labels (Optimo Music, Byrd Out, Invisible Inc and Inner Ear) and has composed soundtracks for numerous films (including Tale 52, Wednesday 04:45, Norway, Suntan, Thread, Cosmic Candy, Third Kind, Electric Swan). He is a member of the Hellenic Film Academy and a curator of The Lost Highway of Greek Cinema club.
Vasilis Chrysanthopoulos is the co-founder and head producer of the Greek production company PLAYS2PLACE. His work is dedicated to developing and producing original, imaginative stories addressed to international audiences, with a special focus on discovering and promoting new talents and pioneering voices. His credits include the award-winning festival hit Miss Violence (Silver Lion for Best Director and Coppa Volpi for Best Actor at Venice International Film Festival 2013). Vasilis is a member of EAVE, EDN and Cannes Producers Network. He is an alumnus of the training initiatives EAVE Producers, EAVE Marketing, EAVE B’est, MFI Script 2 Film, MIDPOINT TV Launch and MIDPOINT Cold Open, and has participated in more than 30 film co-production and pitching events. He has received more than 20 development and production awards for his film and TV projects, including the MIDPOINT C21 Award, which he won as an emerging European TV series producer during Sarajevo International Film Festival’s Industry Days 2017. In August 2019, the international magazine Screen International featured his profile in its article ‘Five producers to know from Southeast Europe’. Since 2020, Vasilis is a faculty member of ANT1 Scriptwriting School in Greece, where he teaches production for films and TV series.
Nefeli is a dancer based in Athens. In 2015 she graduated with honours from the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) in Athens. As a member of the Hellenic Dance Company (2013-2016), she performed, among others, in pieces by Martha Graham and Tono Lachky. Between 2015 and 2016, as a member of the Bodhi project of the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), she danced in pieces by Etienne Guilloteau, Eldad Ben Sasson, Juxtapoz (Paul Blackman and Christine Gouzelis), Sita Ostheimer, and Mark Lorimer at various festivals across Europe, as well as in New York and Israel. Choreographers she has worked with include: Ian Kaler, Andonis Foniadakis, Konstantinos Rigos, Iris Karayan, Anastasia Valsamaki, Dimitrios Mytilinaios, Hubert Lepka (Lawine Torren), Etienne Guilloteau, Markela Manoliadi, Xenia Koghilaki and Giorgos Sioras Deligiannis. In 2017, her duet WHEREISYOURSISTER showed in Schmiede Festival (Hallein) and in Raw Matters (Vienna). In 2018, her participatory performance Let me serve you, created in collaboration with Ioanna Gerakidi, was included in the programme of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, as part of the pop-up event The Performance Shop.
Anastasia Valsamaki graduated with honors from the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT) and made her debut as a young choreographer with the performance Sync in 2016, with which she was selected from the Aerowaves network as one of the 20 most promising emerging choreographers in Europe for 2017. Sync was then performed at the Spring Forward 17 festival in Denmark and at the Athens & Epidaurus Festival. In the context of her postgraduate choreographic studies (International Choreographic Exchange programme) at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), she choreographed Aether for the New Faces New Dances festival (2017) in Salzburg, the duet Dimensions of a memory, as well as the performance By the means of a Body based on the work of Nevin Aladag Five Stones Game at the Salzburger Kunstverein. In 2018 she collaborated with the National Theatre of Greece as a movement advisor in the production of Peer Gynt and choreographed Body Monologue as part of the Arc For Dance festival. As a dancer she has performed works by Martha Graham and Anton Lachky for the Hellenic Dance Company and collaborated with several choreographers such as Millicent Hodson & Kenneth Archer, Mina Ananiadou, Kyriaki Nasioula and Stella Fotiadi. In 2020, she created DisJoint for the 7th Young Choreographers Festival by Onassis Foundation. She continues to create, perform and teach contemporary dance.
Danae Dimitriadi is a graduate of the Greek National School of Dance (KSOT). As a member of the Hellenic Dance Company, she performed in pieces by Akram Khan and Martha Graham and took part in Anton Lachky’s creation No More Fairytales. In 2014, she collaborated with Martha Graham Company for the Panorama project, which was presented at the New York City Hall and Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. Between 2016 and 17, in the context of a collaboration with the ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble, she had the chance to perform with several artists such as Mavin Khoo, Jose Agudo, Ivan Perez and others. Since 2015, Danae and her fellow choreographer Dionysios Alamanos have been working together on a variety of different projects, including the choreographies UNCIA and ATMA, which they have performed in festivals and theatres around Europe, Asia and Latin America. With these two productions, the duo has entered competitions and won prizes in the Netherlands and in Germany. Their latest work, Free At Last, was produced by Theater Rotterdam and will soon start touring in more than 30 theatres in the Netherlands. As part of her ongoing collaboration with Dionysios Alamanos, she also runs workshops all around the world and creates works for professional dance schools and other companies.
Born in Athens (1991), Angelos Papadopoulos is a dance artist and a director who steers purposely clear off the camera. He is a graduate of the Athens University of Economics and Business (an economist, not an accountant) and of the National School of Dance (KSOT) in Athens.
Ιn his work, Angelos is particularly interested in the notion of identity, especially his own. He studies his Ego from a psychoanalytic and transcendental vantage point and uses ART to conduct auto-psychoanalysis. He invites his friends and relatives but also complete strangers to rehearsals and shootings and together they study —a word he loves and hates at the same time— the idea of time and commercial value (he is a fervent admirer of the human body, words and money, um, the people). He is constantly performing, dancing, choreographing and directing, especially in the context of house parties. He has dreams of winning a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival and believes in the hands-on approach encapsulated in Ernesto Che Guevara’s quip: realism means pursuing the impossible.
Irini Kalaitzidi is a dance and computational artist. Her practise is situated within the field of Technoscience while exploring the space in-between human and nonhuman, physical and digital, familiar and uncanny dancing bodies. She studied at the Greek National School of Dance (2018) and graduated (w/ distinction) from the ΜΑ Computational Arts Department of Goldsmiths University of London (2019). She has presented her works in Athens (Pistachios, Arc 2016) and London (mic | amplify the body and Within the Vibrant Assemblage, St. James Church, Goldsmiths 2019). Following her latter work, she was invited to talk at Somerset House on Art and Artificial Intelligence (Human Data Interaction, 2019). Among other labs, she has participated at the Choreographic Coding Lab, organised by Motion Bank, Fiber and the International Choreographic Arts Center (ICK) Amsterdam (Dansmakers, 2019). She has performed in productions of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival and at Megaron Concert Hall in Athens and has collaborated as an assistant choreographer with Patricia Apergi for the productions Alcestis (Athens & Epidaurus Festival, 2017) and Primary Fact (Onassis Cultural Centre, 2018). For the period 2020-21, Irini is in residency at Kinono (Tinos, 2020) and ICST Zhdk in the research area of Immersive Arts (Zurich, 2020).
She is based in Athens, Tinos and London.
Andreas Ragnar Kassapis, born 1981, Athens. Lives and works in Athens. The mediums he favours are painting, text, sound and photography.
Solo Exhibitions: Songs (with Athanasios Argianas, H.E.R.O. Gallery, Amsterdam, 2018); Breakwater (alternative exhibition space, Athens, 2015); How can one remember the thirst? (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2011); Bones are tight (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2008); Numb (Loraini Alimantiri Gallery, Athens, 2006).
Selected Group Exhibitions: documenta 14 (artistic director Adam Szymczyk , curator Katerina Tselou, Athens and Kassel, 2017); Reverb, New Art from Greece (curators Evita Tsokanta and Eirene Efstathiou, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2014); Hell as Pavilion (curator Nadja Argyropoulou, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013); 2nd Athens Biennale (curator Christoforos Marinos, Athens, 2009); Anathena (curators Marina Fokidis and Marina Gioti, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, 2006).
Anthi Kougia was born in Athens in 1989. She is a performance maker and since 2015 she works as creator, director and dramaturge. After graduating from the Department of Theatre Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, she completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as another course under the title of PACAP- Advanced Programme of Creation in Performing Arts in Forum Danca, Lisbon. Her work has been presented in the UK, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Italy [Nunnery Gallery, London (UK), Camden People’s Theatre, London (UK), Spazio Teatro NO’HMA, Milan (IT), Performance Art Depot, Mainz (DE), ZdB Negócio, Lisbon (PT), Rua das Gaivotas / Teatro Praga, Lisbon (PT)]. Recently, she completed her first collaboration for the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera with the queer opera Orfeas2020 conceived by FYTA.
Regarding her artistic practice, the visual environment plays a significant role in her performance pieces. She works with speech, movement, sound, video and almost always in collaboration with other artists.
Keywords of her performance practice that keep appearing in her pieces are the following: waiting room, change of given perspectives, distortion, absurdity, the invisible, absence, irony, kitsch and entertainment.
Sevastiana Konstaki (Rhodes, 1989) graduated from the University of Thessaly with a Bachelor’s in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Architectural Design, entitled INSTEAD (parapoesis). Her research interests and artistic practice focus on the ‘in-between’, exploring objects-narratives on the reconnection of the human body with its imagined realities, such as psycho-woven clothes, collages, maps, drawings, art-books and representational tools intersecting between architecture, art and fashion. She collaborates with artists from multiple artistic fields (visual artists, performers and interpreters, social artists, etc.). She is part of the Institute of Post-Epicurean Garden (iPeg) team, which organised a series of meetings and philosophical discussions in Athens, and has participated in various projects, such as the group exhibition Emfylo-poiein. to construct the gender at a.antonopoulou Gallery (2019), documenta 14 (2017), and the Victoria Square Project (2017/2018).
Αimilia Liontou (b. 1991, Athens) lives and works between Athens and Linz. She graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts and holds a Master’s Degree in Time-based Media from The University of Arts and Design Linz, where she studied under a Lillian Voudouris Foundation scholarship. She also attended classes at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow (Intermedia Bachelor of Fine Arts) and the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin (MA in Spatial Strategies) as part of the Erasmus exchange programme. She was a member of the project space Circuits and Currents (2014-2016), while she participated in the artist research programs Survival Kit and InSitu. She has been selected to take part in the Local Artist Residency programme of the cultural organisation Atelierhaus Salzamt (Linz, 2020-22). In her works, she examines the ways through which certain conditions can change the perception of space and the potential impact on a person’s life and his/her personality. Her work is characterised by interdisciplinary practice, research and use of different materials and mediums, depending on the thematic. At the same time, she avoids the classical ‘studio practice’ and prefers to develop smaller or larger in situ ‘situations’, which are placed on the liminal space between art and reality and frequently make use of humor. Her work has been presented in Greece and abroad.