IFPA 2025

The seventh edition, which will take place from September 25 to 28, 2025, focuses on the theme: “Homelands / Return to Xora.”

The call for participation, drafted by the artistic director of the event, Mr. Ioannis Mitrou, is as follows:

“The concept of “country” in Plato’s dialogue “Timaeus” refers to an “intermediate substance” that serves as a converter for Ideas, allowing the emergence of the sensible world. This “world” is neither matter nor Idea, but a form that functions as an intermediate place for Ideas, which it transforms into Ideas in the material world. Or, in other words, it places the Idea, through its relationship with the material world, as an existence. It makes it visible and realizable. We could say that this space of transition is, for Plato, a necessary condition for Ideas to be introduced into the material world. This Platonic condition is an inspiration for the way in which the creative act becomes visible after the primary Idea and how, in general, theory is transformed into practice. In an era where digital space is dominant, the subject is identified through quantitative indicators, while scientific and technological dominance projects its stigma in the social, political, and cultural logic of late capitalism, the “return” to the “Country” is a radical act. Firstly, because the Idea as a Platonic gesture is an active agent that enables us to comprehend the world around us and to redefine our relationship with the outside world. To reflect on our existence inside and outside. With the Idea of the multiplicity of consciousness and the Idea of the unconscious.

The “country” is therefore the field of transition and “passage” to another state in which the subject constructs a Discourse. As in the linguistic field, where psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva draws on the Platonic concept of “chora” to analyze the linguistic development of the subject.

In her work “The Revolution of Poetic Language,” Kristeva suggests that “space” functions as a semiotic field in which the subject’s first linguistic and mental functions are activated in order to be structured before the transition to the full development of symbolic discourse. So “country” is the pre-linguistic stage, the place of transition to linguistic expression and the formation of the subject.

“Country” as an intermediate concept therefore needs to be reimagined in order to produce the poetic, the political, the erotic as a new human condition capable, through the necessary place of transition that leads to the reconstruction of the subject, of rediscovering at the same time the “living” body, the “living” space.

We address the heterotopias that are forming in the new era (even in digital space), which are unified in common places (“countries”), those we call homotopias.

The concept of homotopia refers to the unifying tendency or connection of different heterotopias, creating another spatial visibility in the social continuum. The common functions of heterotopias concern physicalities and linguistic or non-linguistic structures of expression, producing subjectivities that are interconnected. We could say that there is an “intermediate” that transforms the heterotopic condition into visibility as a set of intersections of subsets. In other words, a heterotopic superstructure that is formed by the intersections of sets-heterotopias. 

These spaces expand in relation to the socio-political crisis and have the potential to become places of creative production and political radicalization, but also of invention. They are therefore similar places or uniform places from which subjects emerge whose social imagination is opposed to the dominant imagination and therefore to the imposition of the dominant discourse”.
tablet

VIEWING ROOM

Thursday 25.09

20:00
Opening remarks by Managing Director Vicky
Konstantinidou and Artistic Director Yiannis Mitrou

20:30
É(d)ros & Helen
An audiovisual projection inspired by folk rituals,
transformed into a contemporary multimedia narrative
that combines cinema with folk performing arts)
Presented by:
Renata Dalianoudi, Associate Professor of Musicology &
Audiovisual Culture, Department of Audio & Visual Arts,
Ionian University
Panagiotis Sdoukos, Performer – PhD Candidate,
Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University

21:00
Special Tribute to Philippos Tsitsopoulos

22:00
Performance “Chora: The Image-Body—or: the Human”
by Sofya Shaikut composer: Victor Watzel

Friday 26.09

10:30
Educational workshop
“Yoga and Biodynamics”
Maro Theodosiou
Park of Agia Varvara
12:30
Educational workshop “Breath”
Maria Harela
Park of Agia Varvara
16:30
Opening of the Forum
LAB40 – Drama Chamber of Commerce

Opening speech by IFPA Artistic Director
Yiannis Mitrou.
Forum moderated by Sotiris Bahtsetzis,
President of the Department of Culture,
Creative Media and Industries, University of
Thessaly.

  • Inquiring into the Pre-representational: Chora and its Heteronyms in Butoh Dance and Contemporary Philosophy – Carlos Segovia, academic, independent
    philosopher and scholar
  • The Before and After in Performance
    – Giorgos Arampatzis, Professor, Department of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
  • Extractivism and Performance: From Plato’s Cave to the Mines of the Global North and South – Pinelopi Chatzidimitriou, PhD in Theatre Studies, Performance Theorist
  • Situating the Body according to Heidegger – Haris Papacharalambous, Professor of Criminal Law and Philosophy,
    University of Cyprus
  • Homoio-topia through Creative Collaboration – Christina Mitsani, Visual Artist, Performer, Special Teaching Staff at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University (with Niki Matzona)
  • Video Performance “A brief glimpse”
    Jack Catling and the Parlour Collective

20:30
Performance “I Know You…”
Alexandros Monokandylos
Byzantine Walls

21:30
Performance “Lab-performance”
Maro Theodosiou & Maria Harela
Byzantine Walls

Saturday 27.09

10:30
Educational workshop
“My Friend the Mermaid”
Maria Finou
Park of Agia Varvara
12:30
Educational workshop
“Physical Improvisation”
Christina Mitsani
Park of Agia Varvara
14:30
Performance “Earth Rite”
Holly Slingsby
Park of Agia Varvara
20:30
Performances
Byzantine Walls

  • “The Beak & Meta”
    Georgia Velivasaki
  • “Homo Munitus”
    Manolis Vrachnakis – Marinos Papadantonakis
  • “Who is Cutting for the Clams”
    Manolis Vrachnakis – Marinos Papadantonakis
  • “Transition”
    Galini Iliaskou

21:30
Performance “Indelible Traces”
Lisa Coutsoudaki
Byzantine Walls
22:00
Performance “EXODUS”
Nathan Burt
Byzantine Walls

Sunday 28.09

11:00
Installation “Distances”
Sofia Chatzipaschali
11:30
Performance “Polychromatic White”
Agapi Kossidou
12:30
Installation Performance “INTERFACE”
Ioanna Skantzeli
13:00
Performance “CHORA FEEDBACK / Noise in the
Cavity of the Idea”
Giannis Stamenitis, Lazaros Apokatanidis