Side Huslte

Prototype showcased at “Radical intimacy” exhibition during Onassis.Air open days
Supported by Onassis.ONX and Onassis.Stegi

An immersive VR game that explores the evolution of labour and fair work standards, challenging traditional ideas about work and examining alternative, equitable models beyond capitalism. In the game, players step into a futuristic scenario where ideal candidates for future work are selected through a series of choices. Each scenario highlights real-world issues surrounding labour, pushing players to confront the complexities of modern employment.

Through interactive tasks, players face dilemmas ranging from conventional to surreal, each decision exposing their underlying values. With each choice—community-centred or individualistic—players carve out a distinct narrative path. Collective choices lead to a vision of a vibrant, tech-integrated world defined by harmony, while individualist choices reveal an isolating, monotonous landscape. In the final moments, the game proposes an alternative path, encouraging players to imagine a future focused on balance, community, and environmental sustainability.

Artist
Esto Association

Collaborators
Markela Bgiala, Maria Paneta, Konstantinos Doumpenidis, Yiannis Mantzaris, Lydia Markaki, Niki Danai Chania

Additional Credits
Development and Technical assistance
Elena Dimopoulou, Giannis Kapasakalis

Backup_villa_V783_fin2

Chimera Platform and Esto Associaiton presented Backup_villa_V783_fin2, a multimedia installation by Marie Arkhipova. The artist invites the audience to embark on a bespoke journey into the Roman Empire to explore the architecture of an ancient villa. In this journey, the machine itself is not only a tool but also a co-author.
In this project, Arkhipova refers to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of language games. According to this concept, words, linguistic expressions, and semiotic units are always immersed in a particular context and acquire meaning only at the moment of their use. Arkhipova applies this approach to the visual arts, inviting the viewers to participate in the hoax of the ancient Roman Empire.

Artist: Marie Arkhipova
Curated by Anastasia Ustrugova
Photos by Valeriia

TABLE OF LABOUR

A multimedia installation presented in Esto’s space is a critical reflection on labour practices, especially connected but not limited to the cultural and creative sector.
It operates as an exploration of alternative models of organising, questioning the reign of individualism in contemporary society by emphasising the importance of collectivity. Esto Association participated in the ONX Onassis acceleration week for the development of a VR experience game under the title “Side Hustle” looking into labour practices via an absurd job interview simulation. The VR gaming experience explores labour ethics utilising technology and imagination, aiming to create an immersive game that challenges traditional labour notions and explores equal models beyond individualism.

As part of the festival “A Collective of Collectives,” visitors are invited to engage with the Table of Labour, an open research space where they can explore resources from ESTO’s “Side Hustle” project and create a fanzine reflecting their own labour experiences. The public can access books, articles, and research materials, interact with the team, and share personal work stories and concerns, turning research into a collective experience.A live projection displays workplace stories from interviews, while visitors can scan a QR code to anonymously contribute their own. These stories are printed in real-time and added to the Table of Labour, making participants’ experiences a tangible part of the event.

Team
Markela Bgiala, Maria Paneta, Konstantinos Doumpenidis, Yiannis Mantzaris, Lydia Markaki, Niki Danai Chania

Paparać Kvietka

ESTO’s hosted the exhibition of Katia She (Legovich), collaboratively developing a meaningful text and visual identity.

Paparać Kvietka is the name of a non-existing fern flower from Belarusian folklore that embodies the essence of sudden miracles and mystical wisdom. In Belarusian mythology, Paparać Kvietka blooms briefly on Kupala Night, granting wisdom and the ability to see the unseen to those who find it. One must wander alone, grasp the flower, and resist night terrors without looking back.Katia She (Legovich) reimagines her homeland as a mystical forest, where ancestral wisdom, feminine energy, and memories intertwine. The fern blossoms and a stormy lake at its heart embody the resilience of a people facing an authoritarian realit

Co-Curated by Esto Association and

Katia She (Legovich)

ULTRASONIC INFRACRIES

Is our social reality actually less brutal and aggressive than the epidemic mental disorders we clinically treat?

The present conceptual group art exhibition explores relations between the symptomatology of manic depression and cultural tactics in contemporary capitalism, from the point of the psyche of the subject in them. It is the diploma thesis of the curator, who studies in The School of Architecture of the Technical University of Crete, and it constitutes their attempt to connect the alienating experience of the disease with the social reality in order to be liberated from it through comprehension.

The experience of the manic-depressive spectrum becomes the occasion for a curation that recognizes rampant inductive thought loops, suicidal ideations, disputed self-confidence, and addictive pleasures in dysphoria in the artistic practices of creators who study the current. This is not an exhibition of the 'mentally ill' and argues for a visibility on the aesthetics of thought. The artist’s work here refers to how the subjects internally respond to the contemporary technocratic capitalist situation and negotiate with their identity.

The space of Esto Association and its individual elements, in dialogue with the artworks and their topology, incorporate the manifestation of the curatorial discourse.

Participating artists:
RUKI I SUPER GONORRHEA and NIKOS GIANNIOS I MILTOS DIGKAS I TØMI aka TOMSCODE I MITIKAFE I ONE SILENCED PUPPET I KHARES TOKATLI

HURRY UP! FREE PUBLIC SPACES END SOON.

Today, 03.10.2022, the first procedures for the regeneration of Strefi hill in Exarchia started. After the assignment from the Municipality of Athens to the real estate company ‘Prodea Investments’ as part of the program 'Adopt Your City', the public space is once again under consideration, and questions are raising for the future use and management of the land.

Read more about the case
https://corporatewatch.org/athens-greece-interview-on-the-battle-for-strefi-hill/

PROVING GROUNDS

What are the territories that we need to navigate today?

Openfabric (NL/IT), an international landscape architecture practice, and Hyperscapes Research Office (IT), an interdisciplinary spatial research collective, presented their approaches to planetary urbanization, exploring architecture as both a medium and the result of complex global processes.
PROVING GROUNDS was a multimedia, research-based exhibition at Esto showcasing the work of Open Fabric (NL/IT) and HRO (IT), alongside an open talk featuring Filippo Albertini, Giada Zuan, and Konstantinos Venis.

The exhibition explored themes of contemporary migration, ecology, and politics through architecture and landscape urbanism. It featured ‘Migrating Mediterranean’, a cartographic project by Openfabric that examines resources, migration, and instability in the Mediterranean.

Curated and hosted by Esto Association, in collaboration with Openfabric Studio and Hyperscapes Research Office. Photos by Danae Panagiotidi

STUDIO STONE AGE

“Technology is not mere tool making and tool use; it is the making of metaphors.”
James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.

A multimedia installation with works by:
Tristan Bera, Niki Danai Chania, Stéphane Charpentier, Florent Frizet, Hannes Livers Gutberlet, Resi Bender (Theresa Hoskins), Joshua Olsthoorn, Céline Pévrier, Matthieu Prat, Ioannis Savvaidis, Uli M Schueppel & Ella Villaumié.

"Die ich rief, die Geister, / Werd' ich nun nicht los?" "The spirits that I summoned / I now cannot rid myself of again." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)

Studio Stone Age is the spatialization of a film project by Joshua Olsthoorn. The not-yet-released experimental film ‘Stone Age’ could be seen as an attempt to reflect on the story of technology in our era, where the notion of the anthropocene is forcing us to reconsider the concept of progress in relation to sustainability. The film construct itself with almost non-stories of characters in research of meaning in a confused environment and time. This film is made in open collaboration and improvisation, with a group of individuals playing often the double role of actor/auteur. The exhibition is showcasing fragments of the film in relation with artworks from the participants, turning this into a collective exhibition format. Studio Stone Age is aiming to reopen the editing process of the film by reconfiguring the studio or cutting room where the visitor is asked to recompose its own cut.

On the closing date 21.10.2020, the composer and sound artist Ioannis Savvaidis, who was involved in the creation of the sound track from the film, did a live performance between the ancient stones in the court yard of the Epigraphic museum. The live performance was a 30’ improvisation on themes from the film and will be framed by a choreography from Florent Frizet performed by Christina Reinhardt reenacting a scene from the film.

Hosted by Esto Association in coproduction with Typical Organization

MOHAJER

Muhajir or Mohajir (Arabic: مهاجر, muhājir) means migrant or traveler. This was the name of the refugee social project that operated in Zaimi 24 before the ESTO Association. The ‘Bag Mohajer’ project, run by refugees with a German designer’s help, produced bags using remnants of plastic boats and life vests from refugees’ arrivals on Lesbos island. Through Nassim Muradi, a young refugee from Afghanistan, we learned about this story and connected with those involved to preserve its memory in our studio.

The multimedia installation featured objects, graphics, recorded stories, and Adrian Oeser’s 2017 documentary on Bag Mohajer. It honored the space’s history, and the stories of the refugees who lived in Exarchia. Inspired by the decorative symbols of freedom and movement (birds, boats, etc.) used on the Mohajer bags and elements from Victoria train station—a key point for many refugees—we incorporated these motifs into exhibition objects that later became part of our furniture.

The installation was carried out in collaboration with the ANKAA project, a former collaborator of the ‘Bag Mohajer’ project, and Tajikistan designer Shafi Qias. Together we created parts of the installation and they also provided us with materials from the bags.

Curated by Esto Association
Photos by Danae Panagiotidi

WE CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY

"We Care About Your Privacy" was Alexandros Coxias' first solo project, hosted and curated by Esto Association in January 2022. Inspired by Zuboff's "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", the installation explored surveillance's ties to emerging power structures in late capitalism. Drawing from Foucault and Zuboff, it examined how corporations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon mine and manipulate personal data, with governments and institutions using this data to monitor and modify behavior. While sensitive user data is exploited, areas of political or economic interest remain "pixelated" and protected on platforms like Google Maps.

Reversing these concealment techniques, the installation used Google Maps snapshots to record restricted areas in Greece. Recognizing digital data as "accumulated human experience," 16 compositions of these snapshots were applied to flags and scarves, symbolically directing attention to places users are not allowed to see.

Artist: Alexandros Coxias

Curated and hosted by Esto Association
Photos by Danae Panagiotidi