Below is a selection of program highlights, so-called “Mysteries,” each striving to reveal unseen aspects of Elefsina and signal a new era for the city and its people.

For the full program of events, visit here.

FLAGSHIP EVENTS

Mystery 3 Elefsina Mon Amour
07.07.2023—30.09.2023, Elefsina Old Oil Mill Factory, X-Bowling Art Center

The international group exhibition Elefsina Mon Amour is the flagship contemporary art event of the 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture. Curated by Katerina Gregos, artistic director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, the exhibition posits a socio-political reading of landscape, space, and place. The artists will explore particular chapters of Elefsina’s history to reveal “beauty in the harshest landscape and political struggle in the most apparently serene view.” It will suture memory and experience, space and time, past and present. The exhibition looks beyond the suggested legacy of devastation – brought on in Elefsina by heavy industry – and into manifestations of resilience, solidarity, hope, and commonality.

Mystery 11 Ma
01.09.2023—13.09.2023, Archaeological Site of Elefsina, Sotiriou Gkioka, Elefsina

This new creation by Romeo Castellucci is an experiential performance designed for Elefsina’s most prominent archaeological site, where the most ancient remains of the Eleusinian Mysteries lie buried. Here, a ritual made up of silent visions, far deeper than any words that would later serve to codify the myth, was brought into being. Under the light of the sun, without the use of any consumable energy, the performance develops into a sober, contemporary musical ritual to reactivate the maternal bond. Featuring original music by Demetrio Castellucci and choreography by Gloria Dorliguzzo, the performance revives ancestral and contemporary tensions in relation to the earth – the same tensions that once gave form to the Mysteries of Demeter.

Mystery 14 Human Requiem in Eleusis
22.09.2023—01.10.2023, Archaeological Site of Elefsina, Sotiriou Gkioka, Elefsina

The German director Jochen Sandig, choreographer Sasha Waltz, visual artist Brad Hwang, and other artists, present a transcendental, site-specific re-creation of Human Requiem at the archaeological site of Elefsina’s ancient sanctuary. The ancient sanctuary of Eleusis is to be transformed into an open, communal space of collective catharsis, where text and body, space and sound merge within a complete work of art. The piece, based on Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, reflects upon the same existential questions as the legendary Eleusinian Mysteries, practiced for almost two millennia during antiquity. It is not a Mass for the dead but a rite celebrating life: a memento mori made into a carpe diem.

MORE HIGHLIGHTS

Mystery 89 Elefsina by Night
07.07.2023—08.07.2023 A site-specific performance by Sara Pearson and Patrick Wildrig at the Ship Graveyard – Vlycha attempts a nocturnal tour of the city.

The performance carves a path to shed light on the past, the present, the myth and the history of the city, and ourselves. Lighting installations, light shows, and video projections will illuminate the Ship Graveyard – Vlycha, the “Chimney Stacks,” the Kronos and Iris factories, and Dogteeth. The performance inspects the artists’ personal histories of Elefsina and the tensions of the city’s current state: a combination of decline and rebirth, of ancient and modern, and of the ever-present allure of neglect with a promise of progress.

Mystery 35 Aeschylus Project – Iannis Xenakis: Oresteia
23.07.2023 Athens

State Orchestra will present the “Oresteia” by the Greek musician, architect, mathematician, intellectual, and philosopher Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis, a foundational figure of the international avant-garde music scene, was inspired by archaic grandeur, ritual robustness, and Dionysian ecstasy when composing his Oresteïa (1965-1966). The work distills the very essence of the Aeschylean trilogy, teetering on the cusp between opera, oratorio, and ritualistic dance theater. This centenary year of the great composer’s birth presents a fantastic opportunity for the revival of his thrilling, evocative, and altogether immensely demanding piece of music at the hands of the Athens State Orchestra and its top-tier artistic associates.

Mystery 67 AMOLí - Demeter and Agriculture on the Post-Industrial Thriasian Plain
27.08.2023, Airport

Amoli is an interdisciplinary art project by researcher/visual and performance artist Emilia Bouriti and the Syn+ergasia arts platform. The project centers on the importance of agriculture in Elefsina and Aspropyrgos and the Arvanite farming communities' need for sustainability, spotlighting collective aspects of European cultural assets.

Mystery 115 Big and Small Ships
30.08.2023—31.08.2023, Vlycha Ship Graveyard

As a part of the Aeschylia Festival, Big and Small Ships is a performance on the borderline of theater and music – a monologue interrupting songs that interrupt it back. The show is directed by Argyro Chioti, written by Efthimis Filippou, and features music by The Boy (Alexandros Voulgaris).

Mystery 126 Stelios Kazantzidis: If Only My Life Were a Saturday Night
14.09.2023

Stelios Kazantzidis is a part of Greece’s soil and nature. His life and music represent an entire social trajectory and evolution of the country from the 1950s onward and trigger that famous “I exist” sentiment more than any of his peers – even in the nation’s remotest village, even to this day. As a celebration of his impactful life, we sing his songs and follow his course in music through time so that we may journey back in the history of our land, back to all of our own Saturday nights when daybreak came to the sound of Stelios Kazantzidis.