By Anna Vassily '26, English

From February 16th through 27th, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles welcomed renowned Greek director, choreographer, performer, and visual artist, Dimitris Papaioannou as Artist in Residence. The two-week residency was conceived and meticulously curated in close collaboration between the artist and Professor of Classics Katerina Zacharia, inviting students, faculty, staff, and the greater Los Angeles community to a series of events that traversed Papaioannou's artistic universe.

The residency commenced on February 17th with a close examination of Papaioannou's 2004 Athens Olympic Ceremonies, during which students, faculty, and fans gathered in Ahmanson Auditorium for screenings of behind-the-scenes footage, a discussion led by Prof. Zacharia, and an open Q&A with the artist. The event was the first part of two open sessions of Prof. Zacharia's LMU course, "Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern," a class that offers a critical approach to the question of representation and the production of knowledge, considering how Greek identity and its various representations are constructed through socially and historically contingent processes.

In conversation, Papaioannou discussed the mechanics behind executing a production of such magnitude, as well as to how he approached the ceremonies, customarily held to be works of national 'branding' and promotion, as an artist hailing from an underground and non-commercial scene. For Papaioannou, the challenge he faced was how to represent Greece through means that both reimagined the achievements of antiquity and spoke to an audience that stretched beyond the bounds of 'nation'. To address this task, Papaioannou established 'art' as the ceremonies' principal axis. The ceremonies are a performance of Greek identity, punctuating the country's timeline with the diversity of art that has flourished on the land. Here, Papaioannou described his approach to storytelling. To communicate with a universal audience, his work is not to be understood through traditional narrative, but through an appeal to the senses. The opening ceremony unfolds in a striking succession of images that transform architectural space. A colossal Cycladic head emerges from a flooded arena evocative of the sea, before breaking into fragments to reveal an inner Kouros, and finally at its core, the balancing act of humanity. In the ceremonies' realization, Papaioannou sought to illuminate the impact of art on a land. Simultaneously, the ceremonies discourage a nationalistic fixation on a classical past. Art is not something untouchable, only to be kept behind glass display cases, but a fundamental impulse of humanity. The opening ceremony also featured a performance from Icelandic singer Björk. Written for Papaioannou's ceremonies, Björk delivered her song "Oceania," singing as the ocean, the source of life, and embodying sentiments of transnational unity.

On February 20th, Broccoli Theatre hosted two documentary screenings. Bull's Heart (2025, 78 mins), directed by Eva Stefani, was open only to the LMU community, whereas Behind the Wall (2019, 68 mins), directed by Nefeli Sarri, was open to the public and hosted in collaboration with the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. The screenings, followed by a Q&A with the artist, offered the audience an inside look into Papaioannou's creative process.

"While speaking about his preproduction planning for a specific piece, [Papaioannou] said that 'I knew that this meant something…so I kept it,'" noted Elle Sheppard '28, Film & TV Production major and student in "Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern." "For Papaioannou, meaning is something not fully realized until assembled and discussed, observed, and reflected on fully."

Papaioannou is driven by experimentation and curiosity, playing with the capabilities of materials, and pushing the potential of the body as an artistic medium to craft the dynamic and visually evocative images characteristic of his work. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, his process is defined by meticulous revision and reinvention. Although Papaioannou works with precision in mind, urging his dancers to achieve optimal performance, the documentaries also reveal the working atmosphere he creates between teams and collaborators, one of tight-knit bonds and great trust. Speaking about the documentaries, Papaioannou stressed that although he approved the films before release, he did not participate in their creation or construction of narrative, stating that they are works of art belonging to the filmmakers only. In allowing the filmmakers intimate access into his own creative environment, while also granting them complete artistic freedom, Papaioannou presents himself as an artist who ultimately creates the space for other artists to thrive artistically.

On February 21st, the artist's video installation Inside (2011) was shown in Mayer Theater. With a runtime of six hours and originally performed live at the Pallas Theatre in Athens for twenty days, the work transformed the stage into an exhibition, inviting the public to choose their own duration, come, interact, and go as they pleased. Since then, the work has been adapted into a video installation for international audiences. Inside (2011) frustrates the line between life/art and spectator/voyeur. The stage/screen is transformed into an intimate display of habitual routine, a room in which a series of 30 performers 'return home to,' engaging the spectator in an exercise of power through the action of looking in. However, the scene and the notion of the 'ordinary' are ever-complicated as identical movements are ceaselessly repeated, stalled, and overlaid in rapid succession by a plethora of actors, creating tension between mundanity and chaos and arousing a state of eternity for the spectator. Echoing the notion of eternity, the work subverts conventional dramaturgy; it has no beginning, middle, or ending.

Given the opportunity to speak with the artist at the installation and intrigued by the work's unconventional presentation of time and space, I inquired as to what occurs at the 'end' of the six hours and how it was received by the public. As Papaioannou informed me, the work begins before visitors are allowed in and they are promptly ushered out before the end of the six-hour period, furthering the work's presentation as infinite. In terms of public reception, despite being a piece that Papaioannou himself considers among the top tier of his work, it was, at the height of his career, his most underperforming. As Papaioannou explained, this work was not accepted by the initial audience. For one, he found that it was more difficult to sell tickets for a work in the exhibition format. However, I do think that the work requires a particular kind of engagement from the audience, a participatory role in the construction of meaning, which could be an alienating experience for certain showgoers. Perhaps what's really required of the audience is more attention.

"Try as I may, and however I interpret his work, Papaioannou's relationship with representation is to allow the audience to interpret," said Emma Evers '28, Film & TV Production major and student in "Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern." "Several times during the residence, he was asked how the audience is supposed to interpret his work, and he always said "it doesn't matter", as long as people watch it, and he makes art that's true to himself and his view of humanity."

On February 24th, LMU and the greater Los Angeles community assembled in Ahmanson Auditorium for the second open class session of "Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern." The session included screenings of recorded works, Nowhere (2009, Director's Cut 2021) and Primal Matter (2013), followed by a concluding dialogue with the artist on archetypes, his creative philosophy, and the evolution of his work following the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Afforded financial freedom by the success of the Olympics, particularly at the outset of the Greek Crisis (2008-2018), a period of severe economic turmoil in the country, Papaioannou took a step back from his work, allowing him the time and ability to reflect on his artistic endeavors and rediscover his creative drives. Upon returning to the stage, Papaioannou's period of reassessment enabled his work to undergo vast transformations.

In framing the principal discussion, Prof. Zacharia offered a critical reading of Papaioannou's exploration and embodiment of beauty and darkness within his work, an impression with which the artist strongly concurred. Papaioannou engages with dichotomies and transcends them, merging light and darkness, the absurd and the rational, performance and being, into single examined entities. In the discussion of Nowhere (2009), Papaioannou identified the work as an investigation of the theatre, describing it as "a machine," in its essence, "that is no place," but can become "anywhere." With regard to his subversion of conventional dramaturgy, the artist put forth two questions vital to the realization of his work: "How to tell a story that is not a story?" and "How to tell a story without words?" For Papaioannou, images are the answer and the origin, and the body is his medium.

In Nowhere (2009), "one of the most striking sequences occurs when all the performers link together, moving their arms in a coordinated, undulating motion that forms a massive human 'wave'. The sequence does not tell a literal story; instead, it evokes themes of emergence, vulnerability, and interconnectedness, allowing the audience to interpret the imagery emotionally and symbolically," said Kamani Sawyer '27, Film, Media & TV Studies major and student in "Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern." "Through moments like this, Papaioannou demonstrates how the body itself can function as a dynamic expressive language, creating sculptural and immersive compositions that convey meaning through movement, rhythm, and physical relationships."

In what Papaioannou describes as "painting through the body," physicality shapes narrative, and his work, Primal Matter (2013), pushes the potential of the body as the sole vehicle of meaning. Developed amidst the Greek Crisis (2008-2018), Papaioannou endeavored to produce a creative work out of nothing-no music, no theatre, no funds-only two bodies on stage. In the face of the crisis, Primal Matter (2013) took a political stance: "Poetry is possible without money."