Ioanna Paraskevopoulou | hardcore echoes

The project “hardcore echoes” is a sonic and choreographic exploration born from a desire to enter into dialogue with the memories of those who once lived in another time. It begins with a phrase that haunts Ioanna Paraskevopoulou: “Seek things where nothing exists.” The choreographer searches for unheard voices and forgotten stories to reshape them and bring them into the present moment. The intention is to discover ways of reimagining the past, composing its landscapes anew by weaving multiple narratives and acts of translation.

This research unfolds by collecting the lived experiences of individuals who once worked in professions and crafts that are now fading or have already been lost. At its core lies the body, and more specifically, the hands as instruments of contact with the world and carriers of sensory memory. Through processes of bringing together diverse materials—archival photographs, interviews, recordings, and letters—the project explores the interplay between performance and manual labor: as a meditative state of repetition, a method for transforming heterogeneous materials, and a form of expression intertwined with physical exhaustion.

Using a multimedia approach—and particularly through live manipulation of sound and image—“hardcore echoes” borrows various techniques, craft processes, and specific tools and devices. It becomes, itself, a form of manual labor seeking connection through physical contact. Everything we touch touches us back, leaving traces. In what ways are we touched by hands that never met ours? How do we carry the experiences of people we never knew? How do unseen ‘choreographies’ that once unfolded in fields, factories, kitchens, and workshops still resonate with us?

Ultimately, “hardcore echoes” may be seen as an attempt to map lost elements—a persistent effort to document fragments of our collective memory, a dialogue with the ghosts of the past, a resonant imprint of everyday recollections, an experiment in processing grief and loss, a way to prepare for what is yet to vanish, and a physical imprint of embodied workspaces.

In the village, I remember my grandfather waiting while the animals grazed. I would ask him how long we would stay, and he would answer, “Until the sun sets.”

I remember watching the sun move almost imperceptibly. Almost nothing happening. Waiting. I often return to this image. Perhaps because, without knowing it at the time, this was where I encountered another kind of time. Not time that is measured, but time that is inhabited. The time of duration.

This is where the research for “hardcore echoes” began. I came across an archive of interviews with women who had worked in weaving, spinning, knitting, and other forms of thread-related labor. At first, I listened to their stories. Very quickly, I began to hear other things: sounds, breathing, pauses. I became interested in the labor their bodies carried. Movements repeated thousands of times until they became muscle memory. The sounds of the tools. What remains in the body.