EMΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, welcomes the new year with the finissage of the exhibition Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys and a music performance by the Berlin-based duo LABOUR.

Co-produced by ΕΜΣΤ and the Musée de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the exhibition focuses on the most important and ground-breaking work of Xenakis’s visual, literary, architectural, and musical output, while illuminating his personal history by contextualising the composer in his times, and the political and cultural movements that defined him as an artist. Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys, curated by Mâkhi Xenakis, Thierry Maniguet and Katerina Gregos, is the largest exhibition dedicated to the work of Xenakis internationally to date, and includes a wealth of material from the Xenakis Family Archives, on view for the very first time.

As part of the finissage, the Berlin-based duo LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander) will present their participatory multidisciplinary performance sungazing.
sungazing was first created in the context of X100, a festival in Berlin celebrating the legacy of Iannis Xenakis. Shifting sonic densities, masses of performers, stochastic distributions in rhythm, non-linear temporal pursuit, and architectonic electronic music focused on timbral transformation and impact are all key characteristics of LABOUR’s work that continues to draw inspiration from the music and systems of thought of Iannis Xenakis, the original binding agent of the LABOUR duo.

LABOUR is the Berlin-based duo of Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander who create works based on sound. Coming from music yet thriving in a mixture of scenes, they have presented their work all over the world, including at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Kraftwerk, Berlin, Sharjah Biennial, Art Basel, Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin, Grand National Theatre Dakar and Berghain, Berlin. They regularly collaborate on works for theatre, performance, video and fashion; are fellows of Villa Aurora Los Angeles; have a monthly radio show on NTS; and are long-term residents of Callie’s shared sound studio in Berlin, which they helped build-up since 2018. In 2022 LABOUR curated the X100 Festival together with Berlin Atonal, which celebrated the enduring legacy of Iannis Xenakis over three nights.

The exhibition will be open from 11.00 to 19.00.
The performance will take place at 13.00, 16.00 and 18.00.
Free entrance to the exhibition Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys and the music performance.