Description

The Greek National Opera’s online festival Waves of Light, in collaboration with the PPC and curated by Giorgos Koumendakis, features the first series of site-specific performances inspired by the Megalopolis Steam Power Station.

VOICES OF A SILENT PLANT
Anastasia Katopodi

This video was created using editing (premier, unity) and 2D Animation tools (tv paint, procreate dreams), in an attempt to explore the factory while incorporating our own elements inspired by our experiences at the site. We decided to create a collage of photographs and videos taken at the factory site in Megalopoli, with the goal of depicting a city. At one point, over six hundred individuals worked in this factory; one could, therefore, argue that all these people were members of a community. In our piece, we present this factory community: the structures featured in the photographs and videos are reminiscent of rooms, while various signs like “Attention”, “Danger”, and other indicators from the factory reference traffic lights and road signs from the Highway Code. Their assembly into a collage reveals a city filled with “machine-houses” and streets made of factory cables and control panels, along with the signs. The video collage will be screened in a loop for a duration of 3 minutes.

The Greek National Opera assigned the organisation of a cross-university / interdisciplinary arts workshop focused on the Megalopolis Steam Power Station to the Department of Performing and Digital Arts at the University of the Peloponnese, involving eight university arts departments from across Greece. As part of the online festival titled Waves of Light, 20 young artists and artistic teams from university departments throughout Greece drew inspiration from the striking sites of the old PPC factory in Megalopolis to create 20 new site-specific digital works for GNO TV, the GNO’s digital platform. These works are grouped into various genres that fall within the broader fields of performing, visual, and digital arts. The music and scripts in these works are inspired by the spaces, history, and people who worked there.
Participating in this workshop were students from the following departments: Department of Music Studies (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Department of Visual and Applied Arts (University of Western Macedonia), Department of Culture and Creative Media and Industries (University of Thessaly), Department of Theatre Studies (University of Patras), Department of Sound and Image Arts (Ionian University – undergraduate and postgraduate programmes), and the Athens School of Fine Arts.
PPC, a leader in Greece’s electrification through its emblematic factories, has evolved into an active cultural agent, offering its historical sites as a canvas for contemporary artistic creation. Through the Waves of Light online festival, PPC contributes to repurposing industrial landmarks into vibrant reference points between the past and the future, where energy meets art.

Creative team – Cast