Chrysanthi Koumianaki: Score for a future panigiris

pan- igiris, [...] (pas, agiris = agora) general or national assembly, especially celebratory honoring a god [...]

What is a panigiri today? Is there a panigiri? Who is all and what is an agora? Where and what do we celebrate today? What is the dance performed? What elements from everyday life are integrated? Will there be any panigiri in the future? What kind of music would we listen to? What would a traditional costume look like? Would there be restrictions on the number of the dancers and the distances observed? Are the festive mass gatherings today in the city squares and venues, manifestations of a current panigiri? Would there be any rituals? Is there a religious trigger for a panigiri today –or any trigger?

This research started on the occasion and taking as an example for redefinition the festival of Karpathos island. Starting with the above questions I study the festival as a ritual and a living organism that changes in different social conditions and brings together elements from different eras and cultures. I imagine its evolution over time and I suggest again the costume, the dance, and the participants, drawing influences from modern reality and everyday life. I redefine these elements by highlighting key social issues that arise in individual parts of the celebration, such as the evolution of the costume due to immigration or the relationships that develop in dance in relation to the discourse on gender. Having worked on individual elements of the above topic last year, such as clothing, decoration, social status and space, I will be working on a piece which will probably close this cycle.

Creator's note

For two months I was at the Onassis AiR space, continuing a research that has been going on for two years on the idea of the panigiri and how it translates into the present day. Where is community located in the contemporary city, when does a pause from work happen, and what does a festive costume look like?

Onassis AiR is located in a building complex, around a patio, which houses the offices of Stegi. Looking for a translation of the village, community, and ritual into the present, I soon began to think of a festival that would take place in the atrium, in “the village square”.

If an office complex were a small community like a village – In the mountains or on an island, on the countryside or in a city neighborhood – then what would be the square where the inhabitants gather to set up the feast, the panigiri? If the year cycle were converted into a day cycle, what would happen in the daily work breaks? How would a panigiri translate into the office setting?

The project I worked on during this time examines companies as contemporary communities, highlighting the workers’ connection point as their cohabitation and coexistence in “today’s villages”, i.e. the buildings they work in. During the Onassis AiR program, I focused on gathering elements that would help me create the iconography of the feast and traditional motifs, and more generally on developing the action and its individual parts, such as music, costume, and movement.

I started by focusing on getting to know the employees through a questionnaire. The questions had to do with breaks, holidays, leave, vacations, celebrations, and team building activities, as well as workplace dressing. The diagrams resulting from the questionnaires were used to create new folk patterns.

Looking at the tools used daily by the team, I made musical and dance notes. Google Calendar became a score where group events and appointments were translated into a sound pattern for the panigiri and a dance beat for the feast. Post-it notes elaborately decorated the folk costume.

With the idea of community and its self-sufficiency/autonomy at the core of the project, I tried to invent collaborations with several departments of Stegi for the implementation of individual parts of the project. I imagined working in collaboration with Pano, the employees’ restaurant, to create the menu, and with Movement Radio to finalize the music for the celebration.

Overall, my research aims at a collective feast and an art installation. Through the process of translation, it reexamines traditional expressions of local communities, such as the panigiri, focusing on central social issues of gender, identity, rights, self-determination, and power as manifested in the context of a celebration as a situation in the making.