Onassis AiR Programs 2020/21
In the beginning, any organism, form, format, structure or institution goes through the formation stage where it imagines a possible future self. It searches for and carves out an identity usually in symbiotic relationship to its environment. Taking the formats, the house, the institutional function of Οnassis AiR as an example in evolutionary process, conventional logic dictates that we should expand, deepen, and develop the programs we have started on our first year of existence in a linear way forward.
Onassis ΑiR goes against the grain of expected institutional evolution. We choose instead institutional malleability. We choose a synthesis of all our "instruments" —our existing programs— that challenges the expectation of "one" identity existing in "one" environment. We choose to refuse the institutional binary of singular identity and singularity of one environment; or to follow Giorgio Agamben’s thought "to have the potential to become".
During our second year (2020/21) in existence, Onassis ΑiR will concentrate all of its energy and resources on a single format, a format for learning together, a year of concentrated study. We will convene for the first time the school year of Infinite Rehearsals. Inspired by the title of a novel by Wilson Harris, The School of Infinite Rehearsals is conceived as a collective research program focused on two thematic areas we find urgent to explore: identities & ecologies.
The School of Infinite Rehearsals is composed of four Movement Groups, each consisting of six participants who will engage in a collective “rehearsal”, bringing their own “instrument” in the form of their existing practice that clearly engages with one of the research topic areas in a radical way. In Fall 2020: Identities annihilated, performance theorist Hypatia Vourloumis will convene Movement I & Il. In Spring 2021: Everything equally evolved, writer and artist James Bridle will convene Movement III & IV.
Also, in 2020/21 we continue the Emergency Fellowships program, accepting applications on a rolling basis throughout the year, for those who have an extremely time-sensitive need that cannot wait to go through the usual long application processes.
