The Margaroni Residency (2022 & 2023) was initiated and directed by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos as Onassis Culture Fellows through the Onassis AiR program.
Through the Margaroni research project, our objective was to study the music culture across the Greek countryside while offering a novel understanding of its evolution and acceptance in the 1970s and 1980s. By revisiting the life of a female folk singer as their case study and the creative assembly of multimedia material, we conducted field trips to Xiromero and Thessaly, recorded, filmed, sought, found, and suggested answers to questions around the position of the female body in such societies, the patterns of seasonal work, and the rural landscape of the periphery as opposed to the urban center.
To cater to this research method in the artistic field, the stage of free experimentation for us deemed necessary. Inside a building that awaits to be transformed, we tried to see how it fits within a world that comes from afar, carrying sounds, images, objects, outlandish connections, and absences.
We have been working towards a site-specific peripatetic experience that in each new space it can be reconfigured as an ephemeral experience. It takes a hybrid form that combines musical performance, visual installation, lab and documentary.
The Margaroni Residency gave birth to a vast archive of field recordings, interviews, performative workshops and immersive tryouts. A brief timetable:
Preparing the adventure (February-June 2022)
The field recordings (July-August 2022)
Workshop A | Legaki building (November-December 2022)
The carnival (February 2023)
Studio work (March 2023)
Workshop B | Ydras building (April-May 2023)
Roaming the countryside (August 2023)
Presentation at the Onassis AiR Open Days & Workshop for professionals (October 2023)
In a condition of transition between enclosed and open space, fragments of memories or meanings are arranged in layers. They are installed in any room that could be transformed into a performance venue, whether it is an industrial monumental building or a traditional theatre or concert hall.
This immersive event is built in each new site it takes place in, it is presented, subsequently dismantled, and then disappears to travel elsewhere, like the panegyri, the traditional Greek country fair.
photo credits: Pinelopi Gerosimou & Yorgos Kyvernitis
The Margaroni Residency workforce
Thanasis Deligiannis & Yannis Michalopoulos – directors
Elia Kalogianni, Yorgos Kyvernitis, Kostas Chaikalis, Fotini Papachristopoulou – artistic collaborators
Natasa Tsakiridou, Lina Alatzidou, Dafni Nikolaou, Christina Kemanetzidou – singers
Spyros Rakis Nikolaou – clarinet, Yannis Zarias, Christos Dalianis – violin, Dimitris Tigkas – double bass, Stamatis Passopoulos – keyboard
Sofia Karakantza, Miranda Terzopoulou, Tasos Koukoutas, Jeph Vanger – artistic consultants
Stavros Nikolakopoulos – technical director
Konstantinos Margkas – lighting engineer
Danai Belosinof – production assistant for I/O
Frank van der Weij – project development
Produced by I/O
Production companies in Greece that collaborated with I/O:
Lefou productions (Legaki workshop)
TooFarEast (Ydras workshop)
With the production and technical support of the Onassis Stegi.
Onassis Culture Fellowship / Onassis AiR program.
Related links:
Onassis AiR page
I/O page with photographic footage
Lifo: in-depth article on the residency (GR)
