The Margaroni Residency (2022 & 2023) was initiated and directed by Thanasis Deligiannis and Yannis Michalopoulos as fellows of the Onassis AiR program.
Through this research project, our objective was to study the music culture across the Greek periphery 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 woman, the patterns of seasonal work, and the rural landscape of the periphery.
To cater to this research method in the artistic field, the stage of free experimentation for us is deemed necessary. Inside a building that awaits to be transformed, we tried to see if it fits within a world that comes from afar, carrying sounds, images, objects, outlandish connections, and absences.
We are working on a site-specific peripatetic experience that in each new space it will be reconfigured as an ephemeral experience. It takes a hybrid form that combines musical performance, visual installation, lab and documentary.
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 residency was a co-production of the Onassis Stegi and I/O, in collaboration with Lefou Productions and TwoFarEast. For more information on the residency and the artistic team involved please visit the Onassis website.
Thanasis Deligiannis 