In a store or a Halloween store? Where does Euripides Laskaridis spend most of his time? This may not be the most common question about the “building” of the show, but its stage universe “feeds” on the trivial, brilliant, kitsch. Most of the time, the distance separating the audience from the stage does not allow the details that make up his grotesque worlds to emerge, but now everything is different.

The new project of the founder of Osmosis called “KAMARES” – the commission of the Eleusinian European Capital of Culture 2023 – takes place in the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Eleusis “Leonidas Kanellopoulos” (until 22/1). The two-story 1930s residence allows him to spread his “premium” over a much larger space than the stage, and for the first time, he also invites new collaborators to help with his work. Each room, loaded with different items and building materials, is an “open” field for the actions of their strange creatures. “Shadows” of the Titans crowd the stairs so that the dinosaur Elenith can pass. Heroes from his previous works meet in the main and auxiliary spaces of the house, which has not even seen the light of the stage. They walk among us, dancing, playing the bouzouki, crying uncontrollably and repeating the same incoherent, heartbreaking monologues over and over again. First you laugh, and then, as always in his speeches, laughter … it turns out to be some kind of sour. You laugh at your shit, our shit. You will find that everything you see is unsettlingly familiar.

The show begins even before you meet any of his “teasing” creatures. When you enter the room, you see a ribbon of the kind worn by crowned beauty pageants hanging from the door frame. “Miss Biennale,” he writes. On the wall, a luminous sign quickly alternates messages: “Eleusin – Secrets – English – French – Roast Pork – Pancakes – Waffles – Worked From the Inside Out.” From the important to the insignificant and from the unknown to the trivial and again from the very beginning. One mind handles it all, I guess. I go into the rooms on the first floor, everywhere there are boards with pinned rubber noses and fingers, ears, mouths. They look like entomologist boards, but I think they’re hanging there as warning signs. Turn on your feelings, leave logic out of the house, they say. Move as if you are in a hallucination. “Now that peace has come, we have the final image of our polymorphic experiment,” Euripides Laskaridis tells me after the end of the general test. “It’s like the last performer has arrived.”

He points out that he was interested to see how the way he serves art through the prism of transformation, absurdity, hidden poetry, can “spill” on the city, take places that are not necessarily picturesque. “I wanted to see how the relationship with the viewer works in this context. In general, a place where visual and performing arts meet always tickles me.” He explains that his studio in Monastiraki is very small. Several square meters connect it. What if he could build multiple parallel worlds and line them up? This perspective contained an element of improvisation and was more liberating for him, because he could no longer control even the smallest details, as on stage. “The show was created more organically, one partner or friend brought another, an idea was worked out, which, in turn, gave birth to a new one, which was embodied in the final result.”

Talking to me, he tries to get rid of the insulating tapes that make up his suit. He cuts off the silver-fringed epaulettes and tights that replace the skin of his disfigured face. Ancient Greek warrior in a helmet made of packaging materials. “Usually there is a work of art behind these films, there are no revelations, we are the work.” Have you ever had this kind of tape stuck to your clothes? It makes an eerie sound when you rip it off and most of the time it magnetizes a lot more filaments. I think that’s how duct tape works in Laskaridis’s mind, which is why he chose it. He collects and distributes what his imagination gives rise to.