Kissos Pelion / Zig Zag Festival 2023
3rd Zig Zag Festival at Kissos, Pelion 》One week of Contemporary Culture 》Greek and international artists, musicians - performances - readings.
Kissos Pelion/ Zig Zag Festival 2023
July 24 – 30, 2023
The Kissos Pelion/ Zig Zag Festival takes place from July 24 - 30, in the village of Kissos on the east side of Pelion. This year’s destination is particularly important; for the first time a dedicated contemporary art event opens at Pelion. 35 contemporary artists from Greece and abroad create artworks, on-site visual installations, performances and unique musical collaborations while indulging in the rich history and cultural heritage of Kissos. The "Cultural Zig Zag" explores a combination of art and nature through local experiences with the landscape, architecture and gastronomy.
Kissos Pelion/ Zig Zag Festival 2023 opens before the official tourist season, a period of time quite beneficial for artistic and cultural activity. This allows those who choose to be independent of the general tourism, to engage and enjoy experiencing the exhibition and cultural events.
The 7-day program of the festival aims to connect artists and visitors to the landscape and local community, to bring the general public close to contemporary art expression through a range of artistic activities, and to empower the local economy by visiting businesses, restaurants and taverns and booking locally owned accommodations for the duration of the events.
→ About Kissos Pelion / Zig Zag Festival 2023
→ 2023 Applications
Artistic Frame
The amalgam of culture and nature is the basis of this artistic exploration. The principles and ideological framework of the Greek Enlightenment as represented by the revolutionary Rigas Feraios and his teachings in the natural setting.
«The cabinet of knowledge and nature»
Group exhibition of Greek and international artists in the Old Primary school of Kissos.
The Enlightenment committed to rationality and faith in human progress, calling for radical changes in all aspects of human activity, in political and social establishments, in economy, education and religion. The Enlightenment supported individual freedom and opposed tyrannical rule and oppression.
Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment is an ideological, literary, verbal and philosophical attempt to convey the ideas and values of the European Enlightenment of which it is an extension, to the ethnic Greeks who lived in the Ottoman Empire.
Inspired, on the one hand, by the revolutionary Rigas Feraios who originated from the wider region of Thessaly and later practiced teaching, among other places in Kissos, and on the other hand, the natural environment itself, 35 artists from Greece and abroad are invited to present their works. In the Old Primary school of Kissos, artists create new dialogue on the harmony between nature and humanity.
«Following the Centaurs to paths of knowledge»
Daily photologue
We tame the temperament of the Centaurs, who’s legacy was more animal than human, while their existence, symbolic of the infinity and erratic qualities of the natural world.
Participants and visitors express feelings and impressions motivated by their nature excursions. The photographic images are presented in the form of a photologue, screened within the exhibition space
and updated on a daily basis.
Program and Locations
Kissos Pelion/ Zig Zag Festival 2023 includes:
- Tours to the cultural heritage of Pelion, including the 18th-century Church of Agia Marina, the iconostasis (templum) and iconography.
- Art / Sound Performance
- Walks through nature
- Music events
- Local kitchens and sustainable food, tour to traditional restaurants, kitchens and recipes.
Locations
The exhibition and events of Kissos Pelion / Zig Zag Festival 2023 take place for 1 week in July, in the Old Primary school of Kissos, in selected outdoor locations and traditional cafes, taverns and local kitchens.
Daily Program (in progress)
Friday, Saturday 22 & 23/7 Artists, curators welcoming to Kissos
Saturday, Sunday 23 & 24/7 Installation of exhibition
Monday 24/7 Exhibition opening
Monday 24/7 – Sunday 30/7 Performances and music events, Visits to local restaurants / kouzines
Tuesday 25 – Saturday 29/7 Guided tours to artwork
Sunday 30/7 Finissage
Sunday & Monday, 30 & 31/7 Uninstall exhibition, artwork pickup
Kissos, Pelion
Kissos is located in Pelion, in the eastern part of Magnesia, Greece. Pelion, the mountain of the Centaurs, is a natural green landscape and a protected habitat of the Natura network. The entire area is an inexhaustible treasure of myths, legends, historical and cultural traditions.
Kissos is a mountain village situated at 500 meters altitude. It is distanced 48 km from Volos, 8 km from the beach of Ag. Ioannis and 12 km from the ski resort.
The name of the village may refer to the homonymous plant or, according to the historian G. Kordatou, from the word gold pronounced as (k'sos). Kissos is well known for its local architecture, the sea view, the rich beech and chestnut forest. The church of Agia Marina, a three-aisled basilica from 1650, has been declared a historic monument. The church is adorned with a rare wooden carved iconostasis from 1700 – 1720 and frescoes by the popular painter Giannis Pagonis from 1802. The frescoes are unique, as they combine themes from the New Version of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, but also of Natural History and geography.
During the economic and intellectual prosperity of the 18th century, grey a number of schools operating in almost all villages. Rigas Velestinlis or Feraios, an influential writer, politician, thinker and forerunner of the Greek Revolution of 1821, also taught in Kissos.
Kissos Pelion / Zig Zag Festival 2023
Program Directors: Georg Georgakopoulos, Fotini Kapiris
