Hydra: Island in the Sound –The Origin Myth of Hydra Island  reimagined in Soundscapes.

(Hydra, Greece–June 2025) – Mnemosyne Projects proudly presents Hydra: Island in the Sound, a multidisciplinary initiative celebrating the island’s deep cultural heritage and mythology. This site-specific art installation, staged at the amphitheater of Hydra Lyceum, is accompanied by a limited-edition 7” vinyl EP.

Since 2019, curator Ekaterina Juskowski has spearheaded the Art Residency at the historic Old Carpet Factory mansion, dedicated to preserving and documenting Hydra’s distinct cultural identity. Her work explores the intersection of cultural heritage and contemporary artistic expression, shedding light on the fading traditions and vanishing narratives that shape the island’s character.

Building upon previous research—including the acclaimed exhibition The Warp of Time, which examined Hydra’s artisanal history—Juskowski now turns her focus to the island’s rich musical traditions. In collaboration with artist and ethnomusicologist Angela Tisner and cultural researcher Alkistis Boutsioukou, the project traces the sacred and secular music of Hydra. Through interviews, field recordings, and immersive sound compositions, the artists uncover the island’s rhythms and voices. Meanwhile, newly commissioned works by artist Dimitrios Antonitsis introduce contemporary perspectives, enriching the evolving narrative.

Through this project, Hydra: Island in the Sound reinterprets the island’s history, music, and artistic traditions, constructing an origin myth for Hydra –an island  largely absent from Greek antiquity.

Curated by Tatiana Gecmen-Waldek and Ekaterina Juskowski, the site-specific art installation featuring newly commissioned works by Dimitrios Antonitsis and Angela Tisner is part of Hydra School Projects’ Lithos/Lethe (Stone/Oblivion) summer exhibition.

Dimitrios Antonitsis presents his latest ongoing series Fountains, 2025. Driven by his passion for collecting Greek discarded marble sinks Antonitsis, for the first time addresses the most of noble stone and the repurposing of leftovers by morphing the stone/objet trouvé as a conceptual language: Lithos (stone), Lethe (oblivion), and Αletheia (truth, the opposite of oblivion). His objects invite contemplation on the afterlife of the rejected, elevating the ordinary into vessels of cultural legacy and contemporary archeology.

Curator Tatiana Gecmen-Waldek said: “In his Fountains series, Dimitrios Antonitsis is a forward thinker, addressing an outdated consumer culture. His urban mining renews value to throw away and inspires reflection on how art can become part of the solution. The deliberately naïve hand-carved aesthetic situates his artworks within the unique context of Hydra School Projects, restoring the question on how do we want to leave our planet to future generations.”

Curator Ekaterina Juskowski said: “Dimitrios Antonitsis belongs to a distinguished lineage of artists whose creative trajectories are profoundly tied to Hydra island. Much like   Brice Marden and Janis Kounellis, Antonitsis engages with place as both a source of inspiration and a conceptual framework, through which broader artistic inquiries unfold. His Fountains   are deeply embedded in Greek and Hydriot cultural signifiers, yet they resonate beyond their immediate geography. They articulate the universal tensions between memory and forgetfulness, endurance and fragility, immortality and decay—dualities that define human experience and artistic exploration alike.”

Artist Antonitsis said: “I recognize the secret life of these derelict marble sinks,” Antonitsis reflects, “by restaging them within a conceptual play. The words “Lithos/Lethe/Aletheia” engraved on the stone surface transform their essence, intertwining mythology, philosophy, and environmental resilience into a harmonious dialogue. Here, the primordial Titan Lithos encounters Duchamp with his objet trouvé​​ and Heidegger, who reinterpreted aletheia, the ancient Greek concept of truth, as ‘unconcealment’ or ‘unforgetfulness.’  Together, they become cooperative partners in an imagined escape room, where each must face Oblivion (Lethe) as an existential challenge.”

Meanwhile, Angela Tisner examines through extensive recordings and interviews Hydra’s tradition and mythology by crafting immersive soundscapes that merge voices, conversations, ambient sounds, and melodies. Tisner’s explorations of the sacred and profane dimensions of music culminated in the Hydra: Island in the Sound collection of soundtracks commissioned and curated by Ekaterina Juskowski for Mnemosyne Projects. Developed during Turner's Hydra Art Residency at the Old Carpet Factory, this body of work emerged from extensive field recordings, interviews, research, and traditional songs. By intertwining recordings from the local community with her own orchestrations, Tisner constructs a sonic mythology – an imaginative reworking of Hydra’s rich musical landscape. Through haunting melodies and layered textures, listeners are transported to terrestrial in paradisum – a liminal space where history and sound intertwine, preserving and transforming memory.

Tisner said: “The beauty and historicity of the island of Hydra moves both those passing through and its inhabitants themselves. The latter, carry within them pieces and gleams of this island scorched by flowers and salt. Conversing with the Hydriotes, and with their religious figures, granted me a communion and a luminous connection with a culture that, far from scattering and melting away in the massive waves of tourism, remains alive and rebuilds itself constantly upon its distant ruins. The music and chants I found in Hydra, the ones that still seal the circumstances and emotions of its daily life, narrate and carry us to moments undrawn in time; just as the boats suspended in its silver sea sustaining the impassible Peloponnese. Converging those chants and musical fragments of the island with my own sensibility and narrative, traced itself within me as a visual and archaic process. Bringing the metallic oscillation of the synthesiser and recalling the classicism of strings and orchestra to those voices, responds to an inherent need to portray, through magical realism, something that is worth jointly reimagining. Not only seeing an island of beauty and repose, but to hear a deep and invisible cadence that continues to make its way beneath the sun."

Mnemosyne Projects has produced and published Tisner’s recordings in partnership with Old Carpet Factory Recording Studio as a limited-edition numbered 7" vinyl EP, featuring voices and performances from Hydra’s local community, including:

• Sister Efthimia (Agia Efpraxia Monastery)
• Father Georgios Vlachopoulos (Agia Varvara Church)
• Dr. Sotiria Valavani (Kouloureio Hospital)
• Yiannis & Panagiotis Gavalias
• Father Theologos & the monks (Prophet Elias Monastery)
• Pan Lembesis, Hydra port icon

Exhibition Location: Hydra School Projects at Lyceum Dates: June 20 – September 7, 2025 Opening Hours: 11:30 – 14:00 & 19:30 – 22:00 Opening Reception: June 20, 2025 | RSVP at rsvp@mnemosyneprojects.org

Where to Purchase the Vinyl EP Hydra Book Club, Hydra Island (Aug 31 – Oct 28, 2025) Old Carpet Factory, Hydra Island (Available by appointment: hello@oldcarpetfactory.com) Hydra School Projects, Hydra Island (June 20 – Sept 7, 2025)

For more details, visit www.mnemosyneprojects.org or follow us on Instagram @mnemosyneprojects.

Mnemosyne Projects is a nonprofit curatorial platform committed to preserving sites of memory through artistic and interdisciplinary research. Founded on Hydra Island, it collaborates globally across disciplines, integrating visual art, music, and literature. Mnemosyne Publishing furthers its mission through books, art compilations, musical recordings, and films that bridge past and future narratives.

Website: www.mnemosyneprojects.org Instagram: @mnemosyneprojects

Established in 1999 by artist and curator Dimitrios Antonitsis, Hydra School Projects is a nonprofit platform dedicated to contemporary art and cultural dialogue. For over 25 years, the annual summer exhibition on Hydra Island has brought together prominent Greek and international artists alongside emerging voices, fostering a creative exchange between tradition and innovation. A signature catalog, tetradia, is published annually in the style of a Greek school composition book.

Curated by Dimitrios Antonitsis, Lithos/Lethe is set against the evocative backdrop of Hydra, a place shaped by artistic legacies and examines how creativity is manifested, formed, preserved, and inevitably fades. Featured artists Brice Marden,  Jannis Kounellis, Isabella Ducrot and Konrad Żukowski, Billy Sullivan, William Farrell, Felicia Reed, Dimitrios Antonitsia and Angela Tisner.

Follow Hydra School Projects on Instagram: @hydraschoolprojects