Saturday | 28.02.26
17:30- 19:00:
public talk: Anastasio Koukoutas & Marta Keil
under certain conditions, of course
This duet explores how one navigates the complexities of institutions – their structures, pressures, limitations, and points of exhaustion – and the spaces beyond them. How can actions inside and outside these frameworks intervene, repair, and imagine new possibilities? Anastasio & Marta are invited to reflect on how their positioning shapes practices that circulate through gaps and tensions, producing knowledge, challenging hierarchies, and proposing new modes of working, relating, and advocating for more just and sustainable conditions.
While institutional dependency can offer a sense of validation and visibility – often determining what can be said, who is supported and what is promoted for how long – how can one remain attentive towards practices of interdependence, which persist within independent initiatives and informal networks of mutual support, reciprocity, and accountability?
The conversation frames critical engagement and inclusivity – as active gestures rather than trends – shaping conditions, redistributing attention, and expanding what is possible in constrained spaces. By examining both affiliation and distance from institutions, the duet considers how their positioning informs the ways they invent, sustain, and enact creative, relational, and generative practices in and beyond the structures they inhabit.
bio
Anastasio Koukoutas works as a dance theorist, dramaturge, and writer. He has been a contributing writer for Athens Epidaurus Festival, Onassis Stegi, La Biennale, GnA Mamidakis Foundation and as an editor-in-chief for the publications of major cultural institutions and independent dance artists. As a dramaturge, he has participated in theatre and dance productions across Greece from 2016 to 2026 with works by Lia Tsolaki, Maria Panourgia, Christos Papadopoulos, Ermira Goro, Kostas Tsioukas, arisandmartha and many other. He regularly writes for Springback Magazine, Dapper Dan, Und.Athens and teaches Dance History and Performance Analysis. As a performer, he has collaborated with Denis Savary, Virgilio Sieni, Pierre Bal Blanc, and Dora Garcia, and has served on juries and committees such as the Gdansk Dance Festival and ARTWORKS Fellowship Program.
Marta Keil (she/her) is dramaturge, curator and researcher, currently based in Utrecht. Her curatorial and research practice focuses on institutional dramaturgies and ways of re-enchanting modes of working in performing arts. She works as tutor at DAS Theatre, Academy for Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts and as an associate curator for Zürcher Theater Spektakel. At AP School of Arts in Antwerp, Royal Conservatoire she runs an artistic research project Dramaturgies of Withdrawal: On Gestures of Refusal in Search of More Nourishing Artistic and Institutional Practices. Marta edited several books on curation, choreography and performing arts and holds a PhD in Culture Studies and is a member of the Performing Arts Institute (InSzPer) collective in Warsaw.
19:45 – 21:30:
collective gestures: ft.Elpida Orfanidou
a feast of unspoken truths – mystagogical edition!
A participatory action, a playful gesture, as if it were a different kind of dinner. Around tables, rocking chairs, flavors, movements, exchanges, but also pauses, a process of constant deregulation unfolds. Words and silence function as equal acts, composing a collective experience.With small ritualistic instructions, Elpida Orfanidou, like another compere, guides us into a mystagogical condition of encounter, where the table is perceived simultaneously as a mechanism to contextualise, a discursive field, a locus of advocacy and pleasure. A feast of unspoken truths- mystagogical edition! proposes a temporary space for what usually remains unsaid and/or what is only whispered, footnoted, or parenthetized.
bio
Elpida Orfanidou is a choreographer and performer based between Berlin and Athens, with a professional background in pharmacy and piano repertory. Her work alchemizes crafts, film, voice, healing practices and somatics, often through a biographical lens. Collaboration plays a central role in her practice, cultivating environments where care, humor, curiosity and encounter lead the way.nHer projects have been presented at venues and festivals across Europe, Australia, and Mexico, including Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensaele, and Tanz im August in Berlin, PACT Zollverein in Essen, Gessnerallee in Zurich, SuperCell Festival in Brisbane. She has created and co-created performances and film works exploring the relationship between ethnography, storytelling, and movement, and has collaborated with international artists such as Meg Stuart and Tim Etchells. As an actress, she appeared in Sofia Exarchou’s film ANIMAL (2023).nIn 2024, Elpida completed studies in acupuncture and filmmaking in Athens. She is currently working on a new short film exploring poetries of the banal and the materiality of the image. She was a participant in the Onassis AiR Residencies 2024/25, collaborating with Ant Hampton. https://vimeo.com/elpidaorfanidou