Love Solidarity Death (L.S.D.) | The Callas
Mediterranean psychedelia, fluorescent carpets, catwalks, concerts, and film screenings by the subversive artistic collective at the Onassis Stegi Exhibition Hall -1
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Live performances 16.12 & 17.12
Admission to live performances on Friday 16.12 and Saturday 17.12 is free with entrance tickets. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Age guidance
The Callasettes performance and catwalk are suitable for ages 16 and up.
Information
“Last night I dreamt I vomited light” video installation involves swift and intense switches between images that allude to strobe lighting.
Introduction
Twenty years after first appearing on the scene, Aris and Lakis Ionas (The Callas) are taking over the Onassis Stegi Exhibition Hall -1 to present a hallucinatory exhibition suffused with Mediterranean psychedelia.
Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou
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Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou
A band, an arts duo, and brothers of course (in life and on stage), the pair always work together, and always work with their friends, from Greece and beyond, as well as with their relatives. Weaving and embroidering their “flying carpets” are none other than their mother and aunt. And the Callasettes are none other than the women by their sides – their partners, associates, and friends. Their wide-ranging, multiform oeuvre has been presented in New York, London and Paris, as well as in Athens, on Hydra, and in their village – Thermissia – which lies across from the island, on the Peloponnesian coast. It’s there, at their family farm, that they host bacchanalian, communal arts gigs, like their recent 24-hour art event held on June 21, 2022 with the support of Onassis Culture, in anticipation of this Onassis Stegi exhibition.
A polymorphic, kaleidoscopic, visual arts exhibition by The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas, with embroideries, installations, painting works, live performance, and a book publication at the Exhibition Hall –1 of Stegi.
Twenty years after first appearing on stage, The Callas (Aris and Lakis Ionas) encapsulate their polymorphic presence in the arts scene with “L.S.D.”: a retrospective exhibition/event series, taking place in the future and defined, conceptually and affectively, by the title “Love Solidarity Death (L.S.D.)”.
Founding figures of the Greek DIY scene, musicians, visual artists, performers, publishers, organizers of urban and rural festivals, filmmakers and video creators, welcoming hosts at their own spaces and restless explorers of other places and approaches, ever ingenious and versatilely faithful to a de-developmental artistic experience, standing in solidarity with counter-hegemonic collective practices, The Callas delve into the source materials of their co-animating actions.
They occupy Onassis Stegi with episodes drawn from an adventure that is resolute in its radical teachings of solidarity, its profligate forms of love, and the fragmentary, transformational psychedelia of death.At the installations, events, mixes, and happenings of “L.S.D.” we will find, among other things, a largely unregistered archive of collective practices in Greece, as well as the kind of improvised communitarianism that emerged quietly and sensuously in the work of Ionas brothers. Thus, “L.S.D.” puts forth not only an open ecosystem of self-sufficiency, osmotic revisions, and ecstatic knowledge, but mostly a therapeutic, yet uneasy, speculative reality of cosmopolitics.
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It’s dawn, you are walking, hugging each other, hungover, over the slabs of Pikionis’ paths, and you sense fragments, thirst, ancient marbles, and Korai coexisting with plastic sewage pipes, cats and oleanders, and the sun always rising behind the crazy old Hymettus (you softly shut your eyes).
Love, Solidarity & Death
-The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas, November 2022
Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou
Program
Main Lobby Foyer, Exhibition Hall –1, 18:00 – 23:00
18:00 Opening
21:00 Performance Catwalk (20΄)
The Callas performance
The Callasettes, namely Philippa Dimitriadi, Dionysia Bosmi, Anita Polychroni, Lina Rokou, and Daphne Kyriakidou, along with dancers Martha Pasakopoulou, Christina Karagianni, and Angeliki Hatzi, choreographed by Angeliki Hatzi and directed by The Callas, use the exhibition’s facilities as a stage presenting a hybrid catwalk.
Main Lobby Foyer, Exhibition Hall –1, 18:00 – 23:00
Film screenings, Upper Stage, 19:00 – 23:15
Onassis Stegi presents for the first time ever the entire film work by Lakis and Aris Ionas, aka The Callas.The Callas and their friends/ collaborators/ partners, acting as a cinematic guerilla collective, have been presenting handmade, existential, direct, and emotional films for the last ten years, always ending with a comma rather than a full stop.
(All films with subtitles in English)
19:00 | Marble is cut with water (or the crying game), a hi8 film for the Callas by Jackie Lentzou (premiere) (suitable for ages 16 and up)
Runtime: 6´
Written & Directed by Jackie Lentzou
Cast: Sofia Kokkali, Nikolas Papadomichelakis
Cinematography: Konstandinos Koukoulios
Editing & Title Designer: Despina Alexopoulou
Produced by Faye Minopetrou-Kasimati, Nikolas Kouloglou
Lustlands, 2013 (suitable for ages 16 and up)
Runtime: 73´
Written & Directed by The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas
Cast: Angeliki Hatzi, Terpsihore Savvala, Anita Polychroni, Aphrodite Psarra, Kostas Varotsos, Ilias Papazaharias, Anastasia Drouza, Dimitris Kotselis
Cinematography: Dimitris Kotselis
Editing: Dimitris Kotselis
Produced by The Studio Art Projects / Velvet Room Projects – Haos film
A film noir under the hot Mediterranean sun.
During midsummer, four female friends leave the city and unemployment behind and find shelter on a seaside farm. Far from tension and trouble the four young friends let themselves free to summer laziness and lust. Male friends from the past invade the girls' lives, teen romances are rekindled, friendships are tested, and long-forgotten secrets resurface as threats.
15’ Break
20:30 | The Great Eastern, 2017 (suitable for ages 16 and up)
Runtime: 83´
Written & Directed by The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas
Cast: Iro Sofoulaki, Dimitris Politakis, Katia Dimopoulou, Valisia Odell, Elias Papazacharias
Cinematography: Dimitris Kotselis
Editing: Dimitris Kotselis
Executive Producer: Venia Vergou
Produced by The Studio Art Projects / Velvet Room Projects
Isolation, hope, lust, and darkness. Five people standing like trees are waiting on an isolated island for the ocean liner “The Great Eastern” to pick them up for a journey towards some kind of hope. A tiny butterfly flies between them and everything turns shit.
15’ Break
22:00 | Sick, 2021 (suitable for ages 16 and up)
Runtime: 73´
Written & Directed by The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas
Cast: Melia Kreiling, Nikos Zeginoglou
Cinematography: Lakis and Aris Ionas
Editing: Lakis and Aris Ionas, Melina Tavoulari
Produced by The Studio Art Projects / Velvet Room Projects
An experimental, handmade movie filmed with mobile phones and selfies during lockdown in Athens and Los Angeles. A poetic, internet romance dealing with isolation, staring at ceilings, memory’s fragmentation, and existential problems arising from ball-shaped or straight cheese puffs.
Film still from the "Great Eastern"
Main Lobby Foyer, Exhibition Hall –1, 18:00 – 23:00
Admission is free with entrance tickets. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
20:00 | Escape-ism (Ian F. Svenonius), live (30’)
21:30 | The Callas, live and performance with The Callasettes (40΄)
Three new songs by The Callas accompanying the performance
The Callas band members: Aris Ionas, Lakis Ionas, Chrysanthi Tsoukala, Chris Bekiris
The Callas guest members: Marilena Petridou, Kostas Stergiou
Music: The Callas
Performance
Direction: The Callas / Lakis and Aris Ionas
Choreography: Angeliki Hatzi
Dancers: Martha Pasakopoulou, Christina Karagianni, Angeliki Hatzi
Performers: Philippa Dimitriadi, Dionysia Bosmi, Anita Polychroni, Lina Rokou, Daphne Kyriakidou
Sound Engineer: Nikos Triantafyllou
Sound Mix: Iraklis Vlachakis
Main Lobby Foyer, Exhibition Hall –1, 18:00 – 23:00
Admission is free with entrance tickets. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
20:00 | Ian F. Svenonius, talk (30΄)
Talk will be conducted in English, with no Greek translation
21:00 | PapithedogTV, live (30΄)
22:00 | The Callas, live and performance with The Callasettes (40΄)
Three new songs by The Callas accompanying the performance
The Callas performance
The Callas present three new songs and their new collection of handmade knitwear/visual artworks. The Callasettes, namely Philippa Dimitriadi, Dionysia Bosmi, Anita Polychroni, Lina Rokou, and Daphne Kyriakidou, along with dancers Martha Pasakopoulou, Christina Karagianni, and Angeliki Hatzi, choreographed by Angeliki Hatzi and directed by The Callas, use the exhibition’s facilities as a stage presenting a hybrid catwalk.
Ian F. Svenonius (Escape-ism)
Ian Svenonius, through his Radical Elite multifaceted journey in music and books, presents his latest book "Against the Written Word" and talks about the text he has written for the publication "The Callas – Notes on L. S. D." taking the work ‘Punkthenon’ by The Callas as a reference point.
