About The Festival 

The Athens & Epidaurus Festival is the foremost public cultural organization in Greece and one of the oldest active festivals in Europe. Spanning 65 years, the Festival has welcomed some of the greatest music, dance, and theatre artists of the international and local scene, attracting large audiences from around the world.

Up to the year 2005, the Festival was held exclusively at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens and the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. In the summer of 2006, five brand-new theatre stages were launched at the Peiraios 260 industrial venue which has since emerged as a major springboard for contemporary art. Furthermore, artistic productions and site-specific performances are presented in other venues all over the Attica region, under the banner of the Festival.

Nowadays, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus focuses on music, with special emphasis on celebrated orchestras and famous soloists, while the Peiraios 260 venue highlights the latest trends in theatre and dance, inviting internationally acclaimed, avant-garde creative teams, and commissioning new works by talented Greek artists.

The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus features primarily ancient tragedies and comedies by established Greek and international directors. Meanwhile, the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus, whose reins were gradually handed over to the Athens & Epidaurus Festival by the Friends of Music Society in the early 2000s, focuses on experimental music and musical/theatrical performances.

Under its current Artistic Director Katerina Evangelatos, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival aims to expand its international scope through co-productions with world-renowned theatre and dance companies, as well as showcasing Greek artists, supporting artistic research in the area of performing arts, and connecting research with audience development.

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XpatAthens is proud to be a Media Sponsor of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival

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Young Executives Shipping (YES) FORUM (Greece) in partnership with YoungShip Cyprus, YoungShip Turkey, YoungShip Panama, YoungShip Venezuela, YoungShip Singapore, YoungShip Texas, Young Professionals In Shipping Network Hong Kong, Young Shipping Professionals New York, Young Professionals In Shipping Network Shanghai & Beijing, Maritime SheEO India, Shipping Professionals Network London, It's All About Shipping UK will organize an online event on Friday 5th June 2020 16:00- 18:00 (Greek time).

Representatives of the above organizations will answer the audience's questions about the below topics:

- Presentation and best practices of each organization.
- Onboard and Ashore Career: Opportunities and Challenges in each country
- Tips to follow in your career path (soft skills, social media, CV tips, networking, etc)

Moderator of the discussion will be: Danae Bezantakou, Concept Founder – YES FORUM & CEO – NAVIGATOR SHIPPING CONSULTANTS

The e-dialogue will be live via FACEBOOK in this event page so that everyone can have access from different countries and ask questions live.

The discussion will take place in English.

The participation is free of charge. 

To register please click here. 

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XpatAthens is proud to be a Media Sponsor Of YES FORUM

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FokiaNou Art Space is pleased to present “Interstitial Places”, a two-person exhibition by Jane Grover and Dimitra Maltabe. In order to allow for social distancing, the opening will take place over two evenings, the 11th and 12th of June, with the rooftop terrace open for added space. The two artists create photographic fictions, starting with the randomness of the world and imposing order, to paraphrase the photographer Stephan Shore. Jane Grover's photographs of walls and surfaces were taken on trips from as far afield as Mexico and as nearby as Anavyssos. She seeks accidental and serendipitous compositions that have been fashioned by entropic forces on manmade surfaces. Dimitra Maltabe juxtaposes and collages urban residential windows to evoke thoughts about architectural features that function both as openings and as boundaries or borders while hiding different worlds within.

Born in England, Jane Grover studied History of Art at Leeds University before moving to the United States in 1980. She worked in theater and set design all over the U.S. and was a member of the union United Scenic Artists Local 829 in New York City. In 2002 she moved to Taos, New Mexico, to concentrate on painting, where she was represented by a Sage Fine Art as well as two galleries in Colorado. She is happy to have made Greece her home for the past seven years.

Dimitra Maltabe is an Athens-based visual artist. She holds a degree in Painting and Stage Design from the Athens School of Fine Arts and a Master’s in Fine Arts from Kent Institute of Art and Design, University of Kent, Canterbury, U.K. Her work focuses on human and environmental interaction. She has shown her work in many solo and group shows in Greece and abroad, including the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, “Imagined Homes”, as well as a 2018 residency at Kinono Tinos Art Gathering, and at artAmari Residency, Crete in 2016.

About FokiaNou Art Space

FokiaNou Art Space is an artist-run project space in the intimacy of a small apartment in an old building in the center of Athens. The space encourages collaborative creative efforts between Greek and foreign artists, thereby promoting and supporting the local art community. The space hosts exhibitions, workshops, and projects under the direction of two artists, Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris.

The SNF Run returns, this year in virtual form!

This summer, get ready for a powerful comeback from the SNF Run. Adapting to virtually unprecedented times, the popular race is going virtual for the first time, inviting us to run wherever we are to support our local hospitals. We’ll keep our distance, but cover greater ones all over Greece, always together and always for a good cause!

To experience the Virtual SNF Run, pick a day between Monday, June 15, and Sunday, June 21 to run your own 5-km route, then upload your results. You decide where to run: in a park, on city streets, on your favorite beach, on the treadmill, in your garden, or on the stairs at home.

Like every year, this year’s race has a charitable mission. When registering, those who wish can choose to support their local hospital. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) will add double the amount contributed by runners, tripling the overall size of the donation.

Whether you run by yourself, with your family, or with your friends, take a selfie on your run and share it with the hashtag #SNFRun. 

On the evening of International Olympic Day, June 23, at 21:00 (GMT+3), the announcement of the Virtual SNF Run results will be streamed as part of the Summer Nostos Festival RetroFuture Edition in an event featuring your best snapshots from the race. The event will be presented by iMEdD Managing Director, SNF DIALOGUES Executive Director, and journalist Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou.

More information on how to register will be announced soon at SNFestival.org.

Stay tuned, stay connected.

Adapting to the current situation, Athens’ International Music Conference and Festival is reshaping initial activities by combining the physical with the digital world, in order to create the best possible experience for the glocal audiences.

 

Online activities will be fused with physical events (panel-discussions, webinars, artist showcases, Q&A sessions), as well as live music events, always conforming to the official public health guidelines. 

 

As the Music Industry is confronting the consequences of the global pandemic, #AthensMusicWeek supports the Music sector by investing, this year, all resources and assets to creating a high-quality weekly event, which music professionals, artists and music lovers from all over the world can access completely free of charge.

 

AMW’s main goal is to promote music as a tool for local development and drive innovation between stakeholders of the CCIs, entertainment, and the music industry, in order to foster curiosity, boost creativity, entrepreneurship, and social cohesion!

AMW is planned as a multifaceted music experience event. With 4 complimentary pillars –  Music & the City, Music Convention, Athens Music Walk, Music Innovation Hub – the overall event is designed to motivate the broader public, to widen the music boundaries of music lovers and to enhance the creative process and the sustainable development of creative artists, musicians, and professionals of the music sector.

As a whole, the AMWs program aims to enhance music practice and promote the music scene of Athens through happenings and activities encompassing discussions with artists, presentations of music projects, special events, music showcases, festivals, and many concerts.

For more information please click here. 

XpatAthens is proud to be a Media Sponsor of Athens Music Week 

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The Hellenic American Union presents in cooperation with Hellenic American College (HAEC) and Technochoros Art Gallery, in its Kennedy Gallery, the visual arts exhibition by Chrysostomos Mousmoulidis. The exhibition, which is organized under the aegis of the George Zongolopoulos Foundation, is curated by Vivi Vasilopoulou.

Taking into account the safety of visitors and personnel, the instructions, measures, and guidelines announced by relevant authorities to prevent the spread of COVID-19, are followed during your visit at the Hellenic American Union building and exhibition venues.

Chrysostomos Mousmoulidis creates arks of fragmentary moments, filled with sensitivity, re-using canvases and frames from previous works that bear testimony to an earlier self. He combines these (stitches together) to create new works, in which many older ones lie concealed. In some of these new works, hidden behind the bold stitches and patches of a self and a past that opens wounds he seeks to heal, are poems, attestations of his psyche. Each work is a silent cry of anguish and a place of refuge for the artist.

Samsung Electronics Hellas, British Council, and INNOVATHENS Powered by Samsung organize the fascinating webinar “New Experiences using Natural Language Processing in Artificial Intelligence” on Friday, 19 June 2020, at 19.00. The webinar will be live-streamed through the British Council’s and INNOVATHENS’ Facebook pages.

 

Natural Language Processing has been the subject of intensive research and an object of high hopes for decades. Yet, most of us still do not see any spectacular tangible results like eloquent androids or omnipotent AI present in popular Hollywood movies. Still, many companies advertise their AI systems as truly intelligent.

What is the truth? Has anything changed in the NLP area recently? To what extent do we actually use NLP in our life and what exactly is it? Do computers really understand human language? What does “understanding human language” actually mean and what are its potential implications? Finally, what can we expect from the NLP technologies in the close future, and should we be afraid of it? Dr. Lukasz Slabinski will try to answer these questions from the perspective of Samsung Electronics, a company that is one of the largest producers of intelligent consumer electronics. Mr. Kostas Karpouzis will be the moderator of the webinar.

Participation is free.

The science talk will be live-streamed through British Council’s and INNOVATHENS’ Facebook pages.

Dr. Lukasz Slabinski is the Head of the Artificial Intelligence Department at Samsung R&D Institute in Poland. He and his team work in various AI areas like NLP, Data Analytics, and Computer Vision to bring new AI-powered functionalities to Samsung’s global customers. Before joining Samsung, Dr. Slabinski worked as a scientist in research institutes, as a university assistant professor, and as an entrepreneur in his own start-up company – always exploring how AI can aid people in their lives.

Kostas Karpouzis is currently an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in Greece. His research interests lie in the areas of human-computer interaction, emotion understanding (Ph.D. thesis in Greek [PDF]), affective and natural interaction, serious games, and games based assessment and learning. Since 1998 he has participated in 15 research projects at Greek and European level; most notably the Humaine Network of Excellence, within which he completed his post-doc in the field of mapping signals to signs of emotion, and the FP7 TeL Siren project (Technical Manager), which was voted Best Learning Game in Europe for 2013 by the Games and Learning Alliance Network of Excellence. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (formerly Humaine Association) and the Student Activities Chair for IEEE Greece. He’s also a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (Springer), Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Springer), and Journal on Synthetic Emotions. 

On Saturday, 20 June 2020 the Acropolis Museum celebrates 11 years of operation and welcomes back its visitors. The Museum has undertaken all the necessary measures for the protection of the health of its visitors. On this day, the Museum will be open from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., with a reduced entry (€5) to all exhibition areas. Additionally, visitors will have the opportunity to see the temporary exhibition ‘Chisel and Memory. The contribution of marble craftsmanship to the restoration of the Acropolis monuments’, which will continue until 30 September 2020, with free entrance. On Saturday 20 June, the Museum's second-floor restaurant will operate until 12 midnight.

Moreover, gallery talks held by the Museum’s Archaeologist-Hosts will commence this week. Visitors wishing to participate are required to wear a protective mask (not provided by the Museum) and to use the whisper guide system headsets (provided by the Museum to participants).

The lost statue of Athena Parthenos

The Acropolis Museum brings to life, digitally, the statue of Athena Parthenos. Made of gold and ivory, this masterpiece was designed by Phidias for the Parthenon. The Museum invites you on a walk of knowledge about its construction materials and techniques, its myths and allegories, its radiance, and its adventures. 

English: Every Friday at 11 a.m.

Duration: 50 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session. 

Price: €10

A walk through the Museum with an archaeologist 

Visitors have the opportunity to participate in evening walks through the Museum exhibition galleries, making unanticipated stops and various discussions, together with an Archaeologist-Host.

English: every Friday, at 6 p.m.

Duration: 60 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session.

Price: €10

Walking in the ancient neighborhood of the Acropolis Museum 

Visitors are given the opportunity to wander through the archaeological excavation which stretches underneath the Museum, like a giant exhibit. They will be able to walk on the ancient neighborhood’s streets, take a closer look at the houses with their courtyards and wells, enter the heart of the impressive mansions with the private baths, examine the workshops with the water reservoirs, take a magical stroll through time and the daily life of the people who lived in the shadow of the Acropolis’ rock for over 4,500 years.

English: every Saturday & Sunday, at 11 a.m.

Duration: 45 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session.

Price: €10

Flux Laboratory Athens shares the dance project ‘WHAT IF IT WAS YOU?” on the occasion of World Refugee Day, on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Performed by artists Joanna Toumbakari and Andi Xhuma, and choreographed by Markella Manoliadi, the piece has been inspired by Imany’s song “Take Care”, aiming at conveying through dance a call for unity and encouragement among people.

The project has taken the form of a video dance directed by Andi Xhuma and will be openly disseminated through international social platforms and channels on Saturday, June 20. On the same day, the dancers will perform live with the participation of the audience in various, symbolically significant places in the center of Athens as well as Flux Laboratory Athens (12 Geronta str., Plaka). 

Drawing upon the recent solidarity demonstrated by the global community and people’s strength to applaud healthcare workers during the period of confinement, the audience is invited once again to sing and, symbolically, applaud as another gesture for solidarity and unity.

In compliance with the safety guidelines pertinent to social-distancing in the pandemic, the audience is kindly asked to follow the performances, wearing a mask or scarf. During the performance at Flux Laboratory Athens, the participants are encouraged to stand around the perimeter of the building, enjoying the piece through its open doors.

Flux Laboratory produces transdisciplinary artistic projects and experiments with new creative and collaborative processes. Since 2016, Flux Laboratory supports and produces projects in Greece under the auspices of the Embassy of Switzerland in Greece. The research core of Flux programming in Athens is the Body itself. The Body is being explored as an integral tool of artistic creation, a source of knowledge and experience as well as a dynamic element that underpins the concept of social cohesion and community development.

Phoenix Athens presents the opening for the exhibition: ART INSTEAD on Thursday the 25th of June. This exhibition features works by Athens-based artists who participated in the online program and residency that Phoenix Athens created during the COVID-19 lockdown. Art Instead explores the distinctions between the virtual and the physical, the digital, and the palpable while showing how artists found inspiration and survived despite the conditions they faced during the “lockdown.”

The title for the show is informed by the contextual factors of isolation and confinement and the sense of fear and apprehension that so many of us experienced and had difficulty coping with in certain cases. ART INSTEAD proposes art as a pathway to purpose and enlightenment, a way of maintaining hope and optimism while re-examining the familiar through a more focused lens. Art Instead is a manifestation of the global state of quarantine, one in which the audience can now be physically engaged. These highly engaging and personal works span a range of mediums to include video, painting, photography, sound, printing, and rendered imagery.

The exhibition includes works by Electra Stampoulou, Clemence Barret, Vassiliki Koukou, Ilias Georgiadis, Smaragda Nitsopoulou, Catherine Chatzidimitriou, Irini Makri & Angelina Mavrogianni’s, Feeleash Katerina Papazissi.