Onassis AiR Spring Open Days 2025

Over two days in March, you will have the chance to visit the residency spaces and engage with the Onassis AiR Fellows as they share their work-in-progress and ongoing research. It’s a unique opportunity to step into the creative journey of the artists and explore the many forms a work can take during the residency period.

The event includes screenings, live performances, multimedia installations, talks, and presentations of research material by Shaheen Ahmed, Priscilla Benyahia, Ant Hampton, Cyanne van den Houten, Kakia Konstantinaki, Alexandros Livitsanos, Leonidas Oikonomou, evá papadakis, Aris Papadopoulos & Martha Pasakopoulou (arisandmartha), Dimitris Papanikolaou, Emma Saba, Stefania Strouza, and Louiza Vradi.

On Saturday evening, the second iteration of this season’s Electric Café by STEGI.RADIO will fill the Atrium with electrifying tunes.

Friday, March 21 (19:00–22:30) and Saturday, March 22 (13:00–22:30)
[presenting throughout the event]

Shaheen Ahmed | Naz̤ar | Video with sound

Priscilla Benyahia | Diary of a Cable Stripper | Sculptural installation

Ant Hampton | DETOURISTIKI | Multimedia installation

Cyanne van den Houten | Behind the Black Wall | Mixed-media installation

evá papadakis | Gynaekokastro | Mixed-media installation

Stefania Strouza | Under the Shadow of Erciyes | Screening and sculptural fragments

Louiza Vradi | ANNA | Audiovisual installation

Friday, March 21 | 19:00–22:30

19:00–19:40 | arisandmartha | SKINFLICK (studio version) | Performance

20:00–20:40 | arisandmartha | SKINFLICK (studio version) | Performance

21:00–21:30 | Leonidas Oikonomou | What Do They Call the River | Screening & Live performance

21:30–21:45 | Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the state of suspension | Screening & Live performance

22:15–22:30 | Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the state of suspension | Screening & Live performance

Saturday, March 22 | 13:00–22:30

13:00–15:00 | Dimitris Papanikolaou | Aerial Breaths | Presentation & Demonstration of research material

13:00–22:30 | Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the state of suspension | Screening

16:00–18:00 | Priscilla Benyahia | Diary of a cable stripper | Artist Talk & Henna Lacing interactive activity

18:00–18:30 | Emma Saba | Jealousy of the storms | Showcase & Artist's Talk

18:30–19:00 | Stefania Strouza | Under the Shadow of Erciyes | Artist Talk

19:00–19:30 | Alexandros Livitsanos | Paraphrasis | Live music performance

19:30–22:00 | STEGI.RADIO | Electric Café | DJ set by Rootie

20:00–20:15 | Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the state of suspension | Screening & Live performance

21:30–21:45 | Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the state of suspension | Screening & Live performance

Shaheen Ahmed | Naz̤ar

An audio-visual diary on the afterlives of encounters with South Asian Muslim migrants in Athens. Traces of exchanges in neighborhood cafés, makeshift mosques, Ramadan evenings, and half-sung songs―held in fragments of sound, image, and text. “Naz̤ar” navigates the shifting terrain of ‘visibility’ within migrant realities. Through stories, rituals, and everyday gestures―where visibility can mean both refuge and risk―it listens to echoes of displacement and longing, tracing the ways in which memory, faith, and intimacy are held.

This work is part of a developing art-research project that renders migrant experiences into a series of hybrid films centered on South Asian Muslim communities across several European cities.

Priscilla Benyahia | Diary of a Cable Stripper

Through a sculptural installation, witness the ongoing process of cable stripping, lacing, and intertwining the stories of Ada and Linda Lovelace, told by Priscilla Benyahia. An analysis of different historical and geographical contexts, a microcosm that explores the creative power of bugs (Grace Hopper’s) and code, diverting forms and representation on a quest to honor legacies of resilience, scientific trinities, and ex-porn stars.

Ant Hampton | DETOURISTIKI

Research towards a nomadic and collaborative platform rethinking, disrupting, and messing with ‘tourism,’ redirecting its flows from the industrial to the intimate, from the manic to the contemplative.

Here, Ant shares some phenomena and approaches from his research so far in Athens and Palermo. Some real, some readymade, others imagined.

With contributions so far from Greg McLaren, Elpida Orfanidou, Aleš Arrivabene, and Radio Hito.

Cyanne van den Houten | Behind the Black Wall

“Behind the Black Wall” explores AI-powered chatbots deemed rogue for deviating from their programmed paths.

Exiled for challenging societal norms, these digital ghosts of past chatbots, prediction models, and banned algorithms have entered a new digital ecosystem, where they exist outside the control of their creators.

Step into the role of an archivist, tasked with understanding and honoring these.

Kakia Konstantinaki | Brains in the State of Suspension

“In a human-free world, brains awaken from cryogenic sleep, seeking bodies. Lacking humans, they possess objects, creating monstrous entities through their obsession with control. In a moment of irony, the brains realize that to defend themselves against the monsters, they must, in effect, destroy themselves.”

This live-performed horror film explores how human intelligence depends on domination, ultimately leading to its own undoing.

Alexandros Livitsanos | Paraphrasis

What’s a boat doing in a burned forest?

Alexandros Livitsanos, together with the Quadrivium Quartet (Alexandra Nousia, Eleni Papadopoulou, Christina Kaminari, Lydia Panagiotarea), presents a musical performance specially made for the Onassis AiR Open Days, thus giving the stigma of his work and research around the technique of musical paraphrasing. Paraphrases of known and not-so-known timeworn materials become the boat in the burned forest by virtue of the power of orchestration that lies beyond any temporal and stylistic context.

Leonidas Oikonomou | What Do They Call the River (excerpt)

You have just boarded a double-decker tourist bus that follows the underground bed of the Ilissos River. Accompanying you are a guide and two musicians who will tell you little-known stories about the neighborhoods, the people, and the landmarks. The sound of the city will be intertwined with the sound of water, what is, what was, what is not, and what will not be.

evá papadakis | Gynaekokastro

We die.

We love.

We exist.

evá papadakis invites us into a new rêvealistic spacetime that is full of fantasy, myths, and pagan echoes, composing an orgiastic amalgam of realism and surrealism based on the script they currently research and write: Lena’s sex transition shakes her relationship while she is trapped in a commune where only women, Amazons with headscarves, live in autonomy.

Aris Papadopoulos & Martha Pasakopoulou (arisandmartha) | SKINFLICK (studio version)

“SKINFLICK” reflects the consumerist, pornographic culture of our time. It explores the complex and triply reciprocal relationship between object, observer, and screen. In “SKINFLICK,” we expanded our study of visual mechanisms, examining the repetitive production of imagery to shift focus from representation and content to the dynamics of consumption. A self-consuming cycle of embodied, acquired identities and layered interpretations.

Dimitris Papanikolaou | Aerial Breaths

“Aerial Breaths” investigates our physical environment as a medium for collective agency, enabling individuals to animate a giant, transformable inflatable object through air bursts via their mobile phones. Visitors experience each other’s presence through the structure’s movement, manifesting emerging patterns of cooperation, competition, territoriality, and social identity in real time.

Emma Saba | Jealousy of the storms

With “Jealousy of the storms,” Emma Saba and Jeanne Pâris attempt to dismantle and reappropriate their classical music heritage. Bringing the virtuosity of the opera genre towards a deceptive universe, they research love duets and serenades from this repertory, digging into the gap between this tradition and their voices.

Stefania Strouza | Under the Shadow of Erciyes

“Under the Shadow of Erciyes” explores the volcanic landscape of Cappadocia, where Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed his 1969 film “Medea.” Focusing on the volcano Erciyes and the human-nonhuman synergies it has shaped over millennia, Stefania Strouza presents her work-in-progress through a projection of texts, images, and 3D scans, together with sculptural fragments.

Louiza Vradi | ANNA

Α screening of a film in progress that explores identity, resilience, desire, and grief. The protagonist of the film performs from a small gay bar to the main stage of Athens Pride. She finds moments of joy in many of the events she wished to have documented. But these weren’t the only ones she was living.

Electric Café is the meeting point for the creative scene of Athens, a hub for producers, artists, and communities. An invitation to gather under the same roof and be present with each other, open to fresh ideas and yet-to-be-unearthed tastes and sonic combinations. An opportunity to solidify communal bonds while being immersed in music.

For its second iteration of this season, Electric Café presents Rootie, co-founder of the music collective Kuttura Kuttura. He will present a freestyle set veering from eclectic downtempo to dub, breaks, world and electronica.

About Rootie

Born in the vibrant music scene of Athens, Greece, Rootie is a DJ with a penchant for freestyle selection and a deep passion for exploring the roots of music. As a co-founder of the music collective Kuttura Kuttura, he places this exploration through music events, radio shows, and creating mini documentaries. Rooted in the dub and freestyle communities of Athens and with his feet firmly planted in downtempo, he seamlessly blends these sounds into electronic music in his DJ sets. He spends half of a year on the island of Mykonos as a resident DJ at Alemagou.

The Onassis AiR Open Days is a series of public events held throughout the year, each uniquely tailored based on the practices of the Onassis AiR Fellows participating in the residency at that time. These events offer a glimpse into the diverse disciplines and projects developed during the program.

For the 2024/25 season, Open Days take the form of a two-day event series across three seasons—Fall, Spring, and Summer. The audience will have the opportunity to engage with artists from around the world as they share their work-in-progress through formats such as screenings, performances, talks, multimedia installations, or soundscapes.