acte vide | Onassis Foundation

acte vide (“empty act”) is the elusive electroacoustic duo project of Yannis Kotsonis and Danae Stefanou. Active since 2006 as an improvisatory unit, they persistently explore noise and silence in ever-changing real-time formations, usually unrecorded, and often in ad hoc dialog with other musicians, visual artists, and directors. Past commissions include collaborations with Vicki Bennett (In Mute 2014) and Tarek Atoui (Locus Athens 2015), as well as live improvised soundtracks for Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” (Goethe Institut Athen 2016) and early French animation films (Festival du Film Francophone 2013).

The duo has appeared in numerous performances and installations in Greece, Italy, the UK and Ireland, and has participated in several international festivals (Borderline, Moving Silence, ΜΙR, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and more). They organise and convene improvisation and active listening workshops for children and adults in Athens and Thessaloniki, as well as residencies on sound art and site-specific sonic experimentation in the island of Syros, Greece, having hosted over 100 artists in the past seven years, including David Toop, Graham Lambkin and Aine O’Dwyer, Michael Pisaro, Mike Cooper, and many others, in the context of Syros Sound Meetings. Their first and only CD, “Noeud”, was released on Moremars in 2011, while the majority of their early releases from 2006 to 2013 are available for free download.

Yannis Kotsonis

Yannis Kotsonis has composed electronic music for theater plays, video dance pieces, multimedia installations, and films. He gives concerts on a regular basis, often in collaboration with other artists. Yannis has released seven solo albums as “Sister Overdrive” and under his own name "Rotating Surfaces" (2016, Thalamos), “The Shape Of Failures Past” (2013, Granny Records), “13.6.2013” (2013, Somehow Ecstatic), “Honey” (2011, Organized Music From Thessaloniki), “Retroversion: Selected Recordings 2001-2004" (2010, Memoryformat), “Annick / Philomela" (2009, Low Impedance), “ManicHope Sessions 01" (2005, Post-Digital)], and has contributed to several compilations. His music has been described as “wonderfully asymmetrical” (attn magazine) or “rough, raw and alive” (Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear). Since 2009 he has been active as an independent workshop, residency, and concert coordinator (Syros Sound Meetings, KNOTmusic, minor act). He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Media Studies, Film and Philosophy, and Sound Design at the University of Wales Swansea and the University of Piraeus in Greece, and currently leads DIY electronics and sound art workshops for schools around Athens, as a collaborator of the Onassis Cultural Centre’s “Interfaces” project partnership. He is also a co-host on “Proschedio”, a weekly Athens-based underground and experimental music internet radio show since 2014.

Danae Stefanou

Danae Stefanou makes improvised sounds and texts. She is Associate Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and previously Research Associate / Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her releases include “herewith” for solo inside piano (Holotype Editions, 2014) and “Crease”, a duo with guitarist Michalis Moschoutis (Coherent States, 2017). Her visceral, intensely tactile approach to the piano has been described as “real-time composition with no safety net” (mic.gr) and compared to the sound of electronic and noise musicians such as Russell Haswell, Kevin Drumm, and Phill Niblock (“The Quietus”, “Just Outside”). In her research, she examines experimental and improvised music histories and aesthetics from a variety of ethnographic, archival, and analytical perspectives, and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals (JRMA, JIMS, Musicae Scientiae) and edited volumes, including “the Cambridge Companion to Film Music” (CUP, 2016), and “Made in Greece: Studies in Greek Popular Music” (Routledge, 2018).