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Sessions, a series of queer happenings
Curatorial project, 2022 -

Sessions, a series of queer happenings, is a public program of queer events spanning from exhibitions, live music, poetry, experimental theatre and dance performances, to talks, workshops, parties, an open library of books, zines and paraphernalia, and film screenings. Over the course of predefined periods of time, the project of Sessions appears as a singular long performance, consisting of a series of cross-pollinating happenings that celebrate the multiplicity of interpretation and engagement, and widen the relationship between the personal and the collective, bringing forth a marginalized and underground queer perspective to the Cypriot artistic discourse. The aim is to build community, strengthen visibility, and showcase the emerging as well as the vast established projects and collectives by queer and underground artists of the island.

The project designed, built, curated and organized by Dimitris Chimonas and Lex Gregoriou, emerged from the need to create a “rehearsal space” for exchange and participation, responding to the constraints and challenges faced by the young generation of artists and society at large in the contemporary, post-pandemic era in Cyprus. Sessions proposes an alternative, experiential, and fluid approach to art, creating a public meeting space encouraging improvisation, questioning, criticism, and disorder. The project was established as a radical political act within the broader local art scene, creating a safe space for catalytic action and the fulfillment of vital needs of artists and marginalized groups, collective reactivation, "deconstruction" of self-identity, and the advancement of dissonance as a means of personal and artistic survival.

Each iteration of Sessions relies on a DIY spatial design that consists of a theatre built out of scavenged material collected from the public space, a playful lounge, a library of donated books curated by artist and collector Loizos Olympios, and a bar with drinks and food sold at solidarity prices, on which the project relies financially. The curation of the program follows an improvised approach based on a chain of invitations from artist to artist, focusing on works that inspire bravery to act, the need and desire for public display, and works that ignite participation and curiosity in constructing a sense of belonging. 

Sound Archive on Soundcloud
Sessions on Instagram
 

Sessions, a programme of queer happenings
Sapfous 6, Nicosia 1011
October - December 2022

For the first iteration of Sessions, a theatre structure was installed by Dimitris Chimonas and Lex Gregoriou at the basement of 6 Sapfous in Nicosia Old Town (ex DriveDrive), designed to elaborate on modes of exchange, participation, and witnessing made of wooden palletes and scavanged sponges. The stage was framed in response to a collaborative project by artist Panayiotis Michael  to make use of and activate a 15m² surface. The surface measure was once a pathway to Michael’s family house that was never built due to the war in Cyprus in 1974. Taking the cue from this invitation, a 15m² space became a stage of play, shadows, and dreams for staging and re-staging present and imaginative encounters. The 360° auditorium invites bodies to become the backdrop of each performance, simultenously observing and being observed.

The lounge on the ground floor consisted of the Soft Sculptures crafted by Eva and Belinda Papavasiliou (courtesy of Morir Soñando), enhanced by the scents of Floricienta Iuvenalis. Simultaneous to the happenings, the duo Pashies LTD were invited to hack the projects’ social media at their own will, whilst an in-situ gesture by Orestis Lazouras was installed in the bathroom, inviting a further series of improvised visual interventions.

 

Sessions’ calendar, Oct - Dec 2022

 

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Credits:

Artistic Direction & Production: Dimitris Chimonas & Lex Gregoriou, Sessions Jingle Recording: Garose, Sessions Scent: Florecienta Iunevalis, Visual Artworks: Christos Kyriakides, Orestis Lazouras, Markos Lamnisos, Olympia Chimona, Soft Sculptures: Eva & Belinda Papavasiliou (courtesy of Morir Sonando), Support in kind: Thkio Ppalies, Constantinos Avgousti, Yiorgos Rossides & Family, Andreas Patsias, Nikos Stephou, Katerina Shukuroglou, Andreas Chimonas, Andreas Andreou, Marianna Pittaridou, Nayia Savva, Veronica Georgiou, Niko Mas, Assistance in set-up: Dimitris Shammas, Zina Moiseos, Nikos Stephou, Andreas Patsias, Yiorgos Rossides, Marilena Kyriacou, Dimitris Rallis, Chryso Kosma, Chryso Charalambous, Alexis Peletie, Nana Michailidou, Lights Set-up: Vasilis Petinaris, Logo Design: Aggeliki Koutsodimitropoulou, Support: Marina Christodoulides, Peter Eramian, Raissa Aggeli, Photographer: Panagiotis Mina

 

Sessions x SPEL, a series of queer happenings
State Gallery of Contemporary Art - SPEL takeover
June - December 2023


The second iteration of Sessions happened as a takeover of the entire building of the State Gallery of Contemporary Art - SPEL in Nicosia, Cyprus. Sessions reclaimed it as a public urban space for the queer and artistic sub-communities of the island, prioritising accessibility, right to action, and inclusivity. The exhibition space was transformed into a dynamic and transformable queer utopia, where audiences were invited to play a central role akin to on-stage performers. The doors of the State Gallery remained wide open with a constantly changing scenography and light design, exhibiting the accumulating performance traces and support structures. This constant play between the spectacular and its construction resisted the definition and institutionalisation of queerness, and gave space for a collective admission to queer failure. Considering this failure as the frame of the Sessions stage, it enabled a public rehearsal of new social arrangements of empowerment and corporeal fluidity. In total, 93 happenings-sessions were produced, including theatre, music, and dance performances, screenings, talks, workshops, a library, and parties, involving more than 200 artists.

The spatial installations included Pista Cacophonias, the Ssssstudio, the Theatro, the Reading Room, and the Cloud. Pista Cacophonias (cacophony floor) included various musical instruments, clothes, microphones, speakers, and lights available for use. Theatro (theatre) consisted of a modular diy theatre auditorium and a stage surrounded by the black backside of curtains, a scenographic gesture by Orestis Lazouras rendering the Sessions stage as an invert, simultaneously a front- and a backstage. The Reading Room, curated by Loizos Olympios, was presented under the umbrella of the Cerebral Gym, a series of activities revolving around printed material. On the roof, the Cloud social space was set up for playful encounters and weekly live podcast shows with the backdrop of north Nicosia’s skyline. The bar, serving drinks and vegan food at solidarity prices, was vital to the project’s operation. 

Visual interventions across the building allowed the project of Sessions to continue transforming and evolving throughout its operation. The importance of queer archival practices was central to the program's design, and seven artists and writers were commissioned to use the Sessions takeover of SPEL as a trigger, each to write a monthly text. The overall archive created was published in the form of a book at the end. 

 

Chimonas is a faggot / Winter is a faggot
Spray paint on wall, 2023

This work is a deliberate recreation of a phrase once written about Chimonas during his school years, a phrase he was instructed by the headteacher to paint over himself to “protect” him from ridicule. Years later, the phrase was rewritten in his own hand at the State Gallery of Contemporary Art as part of Sessions, leaving it exposed and uncorrected. By refusing to erase it again, the work transforms a moment of institutional silencing into a public act of authorship. What once operated as an instrument of shame becomes a site of visibility and confrontation, becoming a core gesture of the curatorial approach of Sessions: unapologetic and self-defined.

Photo by Demetris Shammas

A BOOK OF QUEER HAPPENINGS
January 2024

Acknowledging the limited access to queer histories, both locally and beyond, this publication was compiled immediately following the closing of Sessions, embracing the urgency of “making hay while the sun shines.” The book attempts to capture the rhythm, volume, and multiplicity of what unfolded between June and December 2023, with each page dedicated to a single day of the project.

Edited and assembled by Dimitris Chimonas and Lex Gregoriou, in collaboration with Clio Hadjigeorgiou, Demetris Shammas, Nicola Mitropoulou, and Loizos Olympios, the publication brings together images, texts, and archival material to narrate Sessions’ takeover of the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL. Conceived as both documentation and future reference, the book positions this extraordinary moment within a growing queer archive in Cyprus.

The publication includes a panoptic introduction by Peter Eramian, alongside texts, reflections, and notes by Marilena Zakheos, Elena Vasiliou, Marina Ashioti, and Stavros S. Karyanni. Contributions originally commissioned for the monthly prints — by agia akira, Panayiotis Michael & Christina Lambrou, Pashies LTD, Ioulita Toumazi & Miriam Gatt, and Gervaise — are also included. The book further incorporates photographs and texts contributed by numerous collaborators, collectively shaping a record of a multiplicity of queer quests emerging at a particular moment in Cyprus.

Photo by Demetris Shammas

All that is not it
8-hour film, 2023

All that is not it is the second collectively produced film by Sessions, created during the six-month occupation of the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL. Generated in a single continuous eight-hour live session at the close of the occupation, the work combines live-edited Instagram stories with an open music jam involving members of the public.

Insisting on duration, exhaustion, and accumulation as political form, the film resists clarity and legibility. Bodies enter and exit, rhythms fracture and reform, and attention drifts and intensifies, producing a dense polyphony of shared presence and friction. Rather than serving as documentation, the work operates as a palimpsest in which images, sounds, and social media fragments overwrite one another, turning everyday technologies into unstable, participant-generated archives.

Drawing on José Esteban Muñoz’s notion of queerness as horizon or futurity, the film approaches queerness not as identity but as something rehearsed and never fully reached. As the final gesture of the occupation, it refuses closure, leaving behind a haunted trace of collective presence and still-forming possibilities.

Initiated by Dimitris Chimonas and Lex Gregoriou.
Video edited live by Aggelos Charalambous.

 
 

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Credits:

Artistic Director: Dimitris Chimonas, Technical Director: Lex Gregoriou, Production Support: Demetris Shammas, Graphics / Visual Identity: Clio Hadjigeorgiou, Project Management & Direction: Dimitris Chimonas, Lex Gregoriou, Fumoir, Cloakroom, Sculptural Gestures: Orestis Lazouras, AGORA by Urban Gorillas, Dissociated Payments Officer: Peter Eramian, Production and Communications Assistant: Evita Ioannou, Archive Assistance: Nicola Mitropoulou, Copywriting Assistance: Androula Kafa, Co-organised with the Department of Contemporary Culture - Deputy Ministry of Culture, Pista Cacophonias by Dimitris Chimonas, Lex Gregoriou, Demetris Shammas, Orestis Lazouras with 15m2, Akira, Ben Rawlings, Constantinos Avgousti, Emily Demetriou, Garose, Nana, Nikos Stephou, Philippa Papatheocharous, Polymnia Herzberg, with artworks by Dimitris Chimonas, Evita Ioannou, Marios Pavlou, Savvas Kyriakou, Scent by Floricienta Iuvenalis, 15m2 commissioned by Panayiotis Michael to Dimitris Chimonas, Special thanks to Andreas Andreou, Constantinos Avgousti, Doris Mari Demetriadou, Irini Khenkin, Katerina Mansfield, Katerina Soukiouroglou, Nayia Savva, Niki Charalambous, Nikos Panayiotou, Theatro by Dimitris Chimonas, Lex Gregoriou, Demetris Shammas, Orestis Lazouras, with Alan Ernst Charlie Bender, Garose, Urban Gorillas, Special Thanks to Alex Egglezou, Andreas Andreou, Constantinos Chimonas, Fidelius, Katerina Soukiouroglou, Loukas Kaleburnos, Nicodemus, Nikos Panayiotou, Vasilis Petinaris, The Cerebral Gym & A Reading Room Of Our Own/Ecologies Of Queer Publishing Practices Curated by Loizos Olympios, and Guest book collections curated by Despina Michaelidou, Nikos Panayiotou, Miriam Gatt, Ioulita Toumazi, Demetra Ignatiou, Softer Sculptures By Eva & Belinda Papavasiliou, With Alex Charalambous, Demetris Shammas, Dimitris Chimonas, Eleni Anastasiou, Garose, Lex Gregoriou, Maria Kiriakou, Cloud Soft Sculptures by Eva & Belinda Papavasiliou (courtesy of Morir Sonando), Hosts: Erasmia Mina, Emily Demetriou, Konstantina Violari, Mikaella Socratous, Natalia Gregoriou, Nicola Mitropoulou, Philippa Papatheocharous, Styliana Pagdati, Annie Khouri, Katerina Soukiouroglou, Chef: Andreas Kyprianou, Plant care-taker: Marina Kyriacou, Fumoir & Cloakroom: Orestis Lazouras, Elevator mural: Danae Laou, Interventions: Siga Mensou Po, Markos Lamnisos, Garose, Wisdom, Alan Ernst Charlie Bender, Tasos Antonopoulos, SPEL invigilators: Alex McCawan, Antonis Pittas, Aris Savvides, Elena Panayiotou, Lefteris Charalambous, Loukia Pieridou, Mary Ioannou, Othonas Charalambous, Panagiotis Andreou, Paraskevi Loizou, Peter Eramian, Raissa Angeli, Sophie Finberg, Valia Matsentidou, Vasiliki Riala, Vasya Ivanova Stefanova