Byzantine bath // MEETINGS // THESSALONIKI (Pre-Festival)

Video Art Installation, Video Mapping, Augmented Reality Installation, Metaverse, Performances,Music & Soundscape Installation

Byzantine bath // MEETINGS // THESSALONIKI (Pre-Festival)

Thessaloniki is a city that generates desire. And desire creates meetings.

The Byzantine Bath of Thessaloniki / “Koule Hamam" is a visible but also invisible meeting point of people (but also of ideas, religions, classes, and sexes), on the occasion of caring for their body, an ordinary and sensitive matter for each person.

The Baths, one of the most important cultural assets of Roman times, conveys to this day images of an almost utopian society, a utopia of equality.

Christians, Muslims, Jews, and all social classes and professions are cleansed in Loutra. A place where the sexes move freely. A place where the body precedes politics and worship. A place of common pleasure. A place to feed and warm even the poorest people.

When the Byzantine bath was built (between the 11th and 12th centuries), there were mainly Byzantine monasteries in the area. In the Ottoman period, the bath was called "Koule Hamam" from the Tower [koule] that gives the name to the area. In 1931, the journalist Kostas Skaltsas describes it as "the oldest, the most attractive and the rather interesting district of Thessaloniki".

Today the area is called Koule Hamam. It is full of memories (the Bath closed in 1940), and cultural influences.

The project "Byzantine bath // MEETINGS // THESSALONIKI (Pre-Festival)" invites video & sound artists, performers, dancers, storytellers, musicians, poets, thinkers, collectives, and activists, to create Meetings.

• For the Meetings, participants are encouraged to get in touch with artists, historians, guides, academics and groups from the city of Thessaloniki and gain insight into the city and its history (however you will need to have very specific questions). Ask us for the relevant information.

• For the Meetings, the participants are encouraged to work organically with the residents of the Koule Kafe area, around the Byzantine Bath, to identify memories, oral narratives, and current and past experiences as inspiration for their work.

• For the Meetings, participants are encouraged to bring the global to the local, the private to the public, and the invisible to the visible without any geographical or other restrictions.

Curated by: Filia Milidaki

Production: Eye's Walk Digital festival

Empowered by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Municipality of Thessaloniki.

With the support of the Ephorate of Antiquites of the city of Thessaloniki

Co organisers:"ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΑ" , MOMus, Ισλαχανέ.

Local partners: "InCommon", "Out of the Focus".