Koumaria Residency

Medea Electronique’s collaboration with the International Institute for the Critical Study of Improvisation (IICSI) is now in its seventh year. Within this collaborative framework, it has staged a fortnight-long research residency each year in Koumaria (Sellasia), near Sparti in the Peloponnese, with a focus on cross-media improvisation and new media practices.

Inspired by Greece’s natural landscape, pioneering artists from around the world meet to generate a multicultural and multimedia dialogue. The works produced vary markedly and cover a broad range of hybrid art-forms: site-specific installations, dance, sound art and music, video and other visual arts. However, the works are all connected by a common thread: the fact that they were created in a spirit of exploratory improvisation by artists who are open to collaborative exchanges with the other residents.

In the wake of the recent wave of immigrants, the theme of this year’s residency (25 September - 8 October 2016) is multicultural collaborations, immigration, population movements and borders. In this context, performers, sound and visual artists, composers of electronic music and programmers are invited to improvise and create collective art-works which will be presented at the Onassis Stegi in the context of the “Diasporas in Dialogue: Multiculturalism, Immigration and Improvised Imagination” conference.

In the context of the actual refugee crisis, Koumaria Residency 2016 also presents video art pieces dealing with the theme of diasporas, via improvisation within new media.

Medea Electronique