How can one write an immaterial history of a building evading from mere architectural and spatial concerns? How can the body mediate the social and urban fabric of a city?

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Located in the centre of Athens on Stadiou street, the imposing mansion Megaro Athinogenous that was built in the last quarter of the 19th century stands out as an example of the transitioning moment in architecture with neoclassical and French neo-baroque influences.

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Megaro Athinogenous had many lives, from a typical Athenian bourgeois family house, to hosting a bank, shops and a political party head quarter, the building also survived a storm, an earthquake to eventually succumbs to fire.  

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Choreographer Ioanna Angelopoulou’s interest on this now listed building bring into focus the inhabitants of this mansion at the turn of the century. Researching the photography archive ELIA, from fragments, she created an imaginary family album, an ethereal genealogy of ghosts.

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The mansion bore witness to the first steps of children, several generations of spectres that ran up and down the stairs, slammed doors, sat at lively family dinners debating politics. What remains are Effigies that imprinted the photographic paper.

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Angelopoulou created a choreography that re-enact the creation and the apparition of an image, in a constant back and forth between their tridimensional nature that precedes the inscription and the bidimensional movements of effigies that found a dwelling in the photographs.