About the residency
Het Muziek invited me to work in their residency programme at GRASpunt for about 10 days in November 2025. I put together a team to work with and teamed up with Stichting I/O to support our adventure.
During this residency, I set out to create a shared space of attention, where simple materials, bodies, sound, and light could gradually be transformed. I was interested in spaces where actions condense or slow down, where care and force coexist, and where meaning emerges through proximity and counterpoint. Working together with the residency team, we set conditions for careful observation across three phases: construction, demolition, and aftermath. Slab Altar reflects an ongoing interest in creating situations where presence is heightened and roles remain fluid, inviting an “audience” to sense and interpret an uncanny reality shaped by a rural-urban hybrid.
Asymptotic Freedom
Since I was a teenager, I have been fascinated by astro- and particle physics. While not having specialised knowledge of quantum mechanics, many of its phenomena have inspired me, sometimes finding a place in my work, one way or another. Years ago I stumbled upon the term Asymptotic Freedom. This was the residency’s initial title. Shortly put, Asymptotic Freedom describes the paradox in the relation between the forces that bind quarks together or allow them to move freely. Quarks are elementary particles that make up protons and neutrons, among others. Protons and neutrons consist of three quarks each.
The paradox in Asymptotic Freedom is that the more energy is put into binding them together, the freer they are to move, while the further apart they are, the more strongly they are bound to stay together. This phenomenon has fascinated me. I initially let it inspire me, sparsely making short audiovisual clips. In autumn 2025, while in discussions with Het Muziek about a residency at GRASpunt, their experimental hub in Amsterdam Noord, I decided to bring this framework to the foreground, opening a new cycle of artistic research, in parallel with my ongoing research into Greek rural culture.
In this context, I brought together ideas I had recently been collecting, exploring in GRASpunt’s garage space potential relations and counterpoints: a concrete slab being jackhammered by a construction worker, a performer embodying the energy of a curious animal coming in from the outskirts of the city, and an 8-channel sound setup to test abandoned Ableton Live experiments and field recordings from previous projects. Covering the entire space with plastic sheets for the dust we were about to create transformed the space into an uncanny imaginary sanctuary.
Creating the slab inside the garage in the first days of the residency, and letting it harden, became in itself a strange ritual for us. Sand, gravel, cement powder, glass & plastic fibres, and water came together to form the slab in a cast, placed in the middle of the space. By positioning four car speakers on stands around it, the spatial relations shifted, creating a spike at the centre. This might be one of the reasons the slab started to appear as an altar.
The relation of the performer with the altar was worked out while exploring modes of observation, of distance and proximity, of curiosity and order. We divided the body into three parts, each with its own mechanics and needs for movement. The legs, the body core and arms, and the head, were approached as three independent different lines, mostly moving in parallel, other times organised as one body. Once again, new and older material from previous projects came together to test new ideas.
What is sacred to us and what do we assign to be sacred? The residency unfolded as an interplay of concrete, plastic, sound, light, bodies in action, and water. How bound are these elements to a single meaning, and how free are they to crumble into multiple potentialities?
The team was remarkable, with wonderful reflections, commitment, and valuable support. I thank them all, as well as GRASpunt’s powerhouse duo, Koen Kaptijn and Anouk van Dril, who run the residency programme.
Team
Thanasis Deligiannis - artist / composer / director
Wim Becker - construction worker / collaborator
Jozef Jie Sheng Chua - performer / collaborator
Marie de Koning - sound engineer / collaborator
Milla Mann - artist / intern
Carmela Michailidis - music-theatre maker / intern
residency at Het Muziek, GRASpunt, Amsterdam | November 2026
co-produced with I/O
related websites: Het Muziek & Stichting I/O
video & stills: Milla Mann
photos: Thanasis Deligiannis