‘presence (Un) presence’ is a current, exploratory chapter of work by artist-composer Martijn Tellinga, focusing on how to read, bend and interpret principles of musical structure, temporality and process to negotiate the layered composition of performative installation work. The project is concerned with imagining a kind of extended, trans-modal musicality: a musicality able to function as a generative creative device crossing material and formal boundaries, and as a fluid mode of being and relating which allows for a musical experience to be shaped differently by changing material and contextual forms, beyond sound and beyond the concert setting.

Guided by such considerations, the work Tellinga developed over the past year occupies an intermedium between music composition, spatial installation and durational performance, which activates site-adaptive movement and performative action, registrative techniques, text, and the spatial setting. Disconnected from the necessity of sound and listening, ‘presence (Un) presence’ invites the visitor to engage with the fundamental ideas of music composition and performance through a proposed, speculative musical space. How can musical ideas — as abstract objects — travel between and be conveyed through different media and situations?

The instance of the work presented at EIGHT/ΤΟΟΧΤΩ involves two similar but independently evolving performance areas, connected and integrated by video transmission. A score-based progression of this environment evolves over the course of seven days through the live enactments of two performers. In a reflection on the musical agency of four of our basic postures — standing, walking, sitting and lying down — they suggest extensions of these postures by applying instructions lifted from earlier written experimental music scores.

A spatio-visual narrative between the two areas gradually builds through constant recording, archiving and superimposition of audiovisual material. Using two opposing projection screens, a traversing between the virtual and physical instances of the performances is explored. By synchronizing or contrasting video images with live action within and between areas, the bodily presence and identity of the two performers obtain both an expressive and a temporal function in situating the immediate action within the larger spatial and relational patterns unfolding on each performer’s individual timeline and between each other.

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Martijn Tellinga is an artist, composer and occasional performer. His practice enfolds elements of concert, installation and performance art. It explores the boundaries of composition and musical space and continually proposes rearrangements of what constitutes a musical medium and musical agency. Much of his work is score-based and includes a wide variety of conceptual actions and chance operations, probing the emergent field between intended and accidental occurrences.

He performs and exhibits his work worldwide, lectures and works in residence. With DNK-Amsterdam he is co-responsible for a long-running series of events, concerts and exhibitions. He lives and works in Amsterdam.

www.martijntellinga.nl

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Achilleas Chariskos and Astarti Athanasiadou are choreographers and performers who first met during the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) intensive course in Amsterdam in 2009 and began an ongoing collaboration in 2010. Working across performance, choreography and interdisciplinary artistic formats, their shared practice has explored physical presence, performative image-making and the psychological and relational landscapes emerging through movement, text and scenographic experimentation. Their collaborations have often developed through improvisational processes and dramaturgical research, engaging questions of identity, vulnerability and change of perspective, while approaching the body as a site of negotiation between exposure, imagination and lived experience.

https://www.astarti-athanasiadou.com

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EIGHT is a self-organised collective space activated in the centre of Athens that attempts to explore the possibilities of critical intervention in an ever-changing precarious landscape. EIGHT started in 2019, bringing together forms of artistic, political and theoretical production, urban research and social action. Building on radical experiments of recent years, EIGHT seeks to investigate forms of continuity and instituting that challenge neoliberal demands of sustainability.

EIGHT has hosted group and solo art exhibitions, theatre performances, festivals, discussions, talks, workshops and screenings, and organises artist residencies for international artists. Through forms of unconventional collective research, critical intervention and cultural action, the collective aims to repeatedly produce instituting moments of response implicated in the here and now of the city, which also reflect global challenges at this moment in time.

https://8athens.wordpress.com/

28 July – 3 August 2021, Athens, GR
13–19 November 2023, Rotterdam, NL

From 15th of December to 2nd February 2020 Zone2Source will present, in collaboration with The Warp, Congress of Glassolallia, an installation of light, glass, and sound that can be experienced from the outside of Het Glazen Huis. Recommended viewing time is after 4 PM during sunset. On 15 December, 12 January and 2 February het Glazen Huis will be open for a series of unique performance events.

Each year, Zone2Source invites The Warp, known for their unique multi-media performances at the nearby Kunstkapel (www.thewarp.org), for our winter programme. During these dark days, Het Glazen Huis is the perfect setting for The Warp’s light artworks. The Warp has produced and curated a set of specific works to explore the mysteries of glass, light, optics, reflectiveness and the unique spaces of altarity which it conjures. The installation and décor is a result of the performance of The Glass Chain Correspondence by the October Collective.

The changing lights and instrumentals entrapped within the glass walls resemble a kaleidoscope to passers-by. The installation triggers a new kind of visual and audio perception and challenge spectators’ idea of reflection, transparency, fraction, echos, and synergy between materials.

The performance night leads up to a light installation, which is on view daily from outdoors in the following weeks. We are expecting stages of a performance series in January and a closing event in February.

Performance on 15 December 2019, 7 PM
For the opening night Saturnalian Festival of Lights we welcome our guest with soup and gluhwein to celebrate the winter. The programme includes works from various artists. The Ensemble Todo Modo (Alan Purves, Dirk Bruinsma, Robbert van Hulzen and Christian Smith) will perform a set of Glassolallias, music made entirely by instruments of glass. Members of The Shark Infested Custard will perform The Gem Stone Operations, very miniature operas based on outlandish conspiracy theories. The Supernumeraries (Maria Mavridou and Izabella Pacewicz Wsocka) will create a movement piece based on reflection from Thru the Glass Darkly and The Afterwords Searchparty will contribute an audio visual experience The Precise Cut of the Sutra.

Performance on 12 January 2020, 3-6 PMThe Ensemble Todo Modo (Dirk Bruinsma, Robert van Hulzen, Bart de Vries and Frank Rosalie) performs Selected Glassolallia – music made entirely on glass instruments. The Afterwards Search Party (Anthony Murrell, Lise Brenner, Andreas Tegnander) performs Minutiae – an audio visual performance of cutting images, texts, and glass based on the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text in the oldest existing printed book. Last but not least, the Paranural Record performs the Scrying Lights, a work of sound and light based on the occult idea of writing on black glass as a divine ritual.

Performance on 2 February 2020, 5-7 PM ‘The Glittering Pieces of Eight are Only Glass’
Fragments from the eight Diamond Sutra Factory projects are both isolated and intermixed in this third entirely different presentation of performances built around the central installation, including performances by: The Ensemble Todo Modo (Dirk Bruinsma, Alan Purves, Christian Smith and Robert van Hulzen) performing Glassolallia – music made entirely on glass instruments; The Shark Infested Custard featuring Bjork Nielsdorttir & Yan Bicaki & Ensemble; The Afterwards Search Party (Anthony Murell and Andreas Tegnander) performs Minutiae – an audio visual performance of cutting images, texts, and glass based on the Diamond Sutra; Max van der Wal Performance is made up of live camera and sound feedback made on the installation to turn the room into a closed-circuit feedback instrument and the Supernumeraries (Stefania Petroula and Astarti Athanasiadou) perform VIGIL #1 , #5, #7.

I performed for Alegia Papageorgiou for her final project at KABK, MA art and science, in 2017. 

Performance / Music–dance improvisation, 2017

Bistecchiño & Cortege; Fallen Wonders from the Sky was a retro-futuristic synth-pop music and dance improvisation developed in response to the sonic universe and performative character of composer Stefano Sgarbi (aka Bistecchiño). Working as a quintet, the performers engaged with the album’s musical textures and dramaturgical atmosphere through live improvisation, exploring the relationship between embodied presence, stylized character work, and speculative futurity. The performance unfolded as a collective, image-driven encounter between sound and movement, where physical scores emerged in dialogue with the music’s rhythmic structures and affective landscapes.

With: Astarti Athanasiadou, Stefania Petroula, Tashi Iwaoka, Fazle Shairmahomed
Music: Stefano Sgarbi (Bistecchiño)
Lights: Ellen Knops
Organized by: Manuela Tessi at MD series at OT301, Amsterdam

Music Dance improvisation.

Dance by: Stefania Petroula, Yurie Umamoto, Astarti Athanasiadou

Music by: Volkan Tezcan.

Photo: Noor Nuyten

Presented at:

Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam, NL | July 2017

campus

by Sarah Pierce

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Zhenia Vasiliev, Mirjam Linschooten, Joy Mariama Smith, Valentina Curandi, Wilfred Tomescu, Hannah Kindler, Avan Omar, Sanne Kabalt, Sofie Hollander, Flora Woudstra

The performance was developed from a workshop that was conducted with a group of students of Dutch Art Institute in the presence of an audience.

Photos: Tom Janssen

Presented at:
BAK, Utrecht, NL | May 2017 

Music Dance Improvisation.

Dance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Izabela Pacewicz-Wysocka, Fazle Shairmamohamed, Tashi Iwaoka

Music by: Gabor Hartyani, Maarten Ornstien, Joel Ryan, James Hewitt

Lights: Ellen Knops

Presented at:

Bimhuis, Amsterdam, NL | April 2017

Performing Rana Hamadeh's work at Contour8 Biennial, Mechelen, BG | March 2017

Night of January 16th: a counter-play.

By Zachary Formwalt.

Performance by: Mira Adoumier, Astarti Athanasiadou, Ulufer Celik, Agata Cieslak, Benedicte Clementsen, Giulia Crispiani, Valentina Curandi, Iva Kovac, Aldo Ramos, Despina Sevasti, Savannah Theis and Wilfred Tomescu

Presented at:
Dutch Art Institute Roaming Assembly No11, The Strange Case of the Case | February 2017 | Huis Oostpool, Arnhem, NL

A spiral dance. A circuit.

By Hu Wei.

Performance by: Hu Wei, Astarti Athanasiadou

Hu Wei’s video performance unfolded in three distinct parts: a dance of mirrored gestures with a dancer; a handheld experimental video piece; and the reading of an original text with the dancer. In a first duo, one agent directs the other as they mirror each other’s language, but it soon becomes clear who is leading. Then, a video work showing Hu Wei and the dancer curiously encountering an unknown (to-them) living organism suggests alternative subject-object relations. Finally both speakers make commands, and speak out comments, thoughts, questions, and phrases such as “I am a rational animal”. A Spiral Dance, A Circuit asks: What is agency? When does divergence lead to opposition? How does circuitry develop the “capacity to be the other”?

Description by Les commissaires anonymes.

Presented at:
Chapel of Greylight Projects, Brussels, BG | September 2016
Showroom Arnhem, Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, NL | July 2016
Opening Songs for a Deaf Ox exhibitions, Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, NL | June 2016

Performance by: Lars Berg, Astarti Athanasiadou, Kannakee Bhuyan, Marieke van Buren, Matthew Carney, Renee Copraij, Tashi Iwaoka, Kalli Kouf, Abel Kroon, Winston Nanholy, Clara Saito and Ariana Wescott.

Presented at:
De Ateliers, Amsterdam, NL | May – June 2016

Galaxy.

By Blitz Theatre Group (GR)

Performance by: Luit Bakker, Astarti Athanasiadou, Naomi Velissariou, Marios Bellas, Tim Schmidt, Giulio d’Anna en Thijs Bloothoofd.

Presented at:
Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam, NL | December 2015

Read. Move. Implicated.

Choreographer: POST-Cie/Emilie Gallier
Performance by: Emilie Gallier, Astarti Athanasiadou, Fazle Shairmahomed

Presented at:
Artistic Research, Is There Some Method? Academy of Performing Arts Prague, CZ | April 2016
C-DaRE, Digital Echoes Symposium – (Re)collecting the past: (re)making the future, Coventry University, UK | March 2016
Symposium Practice as Research, Medical School Hamburg, GTF Gezellschaft fur tanzforschung, GER | October 2015
Connect! De relatie tussen performer en toeschouwer, VDO Vereniging voor Dansonderzoek, Utrecht NL | February 2015

Twist in the body of the big spectator.

Choreographer: POST-Cie/Emilie Gallier

Performance by: Ola Maciejewska, Adaline Anobile, Jean-Baptiste Veyret-Logerias, Astarti Athanasiadou, Mariangela Tinelli

Presented at:
De Meelfabriek, Leiden, NL | May 2015
Very Implicated Spectator event, ICK, Amsterdam, NL | July 2013
Dansmakers, Amsterdam, NL | March 2012

It's coming closer.

By Goeun Bae.

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Maria Mavridou
FLAM V, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, NL | May 2014

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Sandrina Lindgren
RijksOPEN, Amsterdam, NL | December 2013

Sitting on benches.

By Pernille Lontstrup.

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Pernille Lontstrup, Emilio Salas.

Presented at:
Bern Collective, Amsterdam, NL | February 2012

Timelapse.

By Maria Lalou.

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Skafto Aymo-Boot

Presented at:
FLAM IV, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, NL | May 2012

Performance by: Astarti Athanasiadou, Lara Witzleben, Zakia El Abodi

Presented at:
Von Cirne Gallery, Keuln, GER | December 2011