Onassis ONX at CPH:DOX 2025: Two projects in the INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, one award winner, plus the 2nd annual CPH:DOX x Onassis ONX Award

As part of CPH:DOX’s interdisciplinary platform for forward-thinking documentary practices, INTER:ACTIVE showcases works that push the boundaries of nonfiction storytelling through technology, performance, and audience engagement. This year’s theme, “Untamed: Humanity Rewilded,” explored the resilience and interconnectedness of human and non-human worlds in response to ecological and social shifts.

Two Onassis ONX-supported projects premiered internationally within the exhibition:

• “Constantinopoliad” (2025; 60 minutes) by Sister Sylvester and Nadah El Shazly
  International Premiere; Winner of the INTER:ACTIVE Award
• “NATURAL CONTACTS” (2024; 24 hours) by Peter Burr, Matthew D. Gantt, Mark Fingerhut, and Bridget DeFranco
  International Premiere

Onassis ONX member Sister Silvester’s “Constantinopoliad” is a handmade book, read collectively by the audience inside of a sound installation. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the work is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in “Constantinopoliad, an epic,” the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.

This installation version of Constantinopoliad is supported by the British Council. Based on a live performance, “Constantinopoliad,” which was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, supported by residencies at Onassis Air, and with the support of the Cavafy Archive, Athens.

“NATURAL CONTACTS” by Peter Burr, Matthew D. Gantt, Mark Fingerhut & Bridget DeFranco is a piece of malware designed to arrest control over its host machine for 24 hours, transforming it into a dynamic virtual garden. The beta of this work was shown in the 2024 Winter Exhibition last year, and is now ready for its international premiere in the Inter:Active exhibition!

This imposed malware was designed for a slow collective drama unfolding around a quietly rotting corpse. As the piece progresses, the once verdant landscape transforms into a barren, snow laden field, only later to become overgrowth. Seasonal birds, appearing from offscreen, come to rest on the branches while flies disappear behind the cursor movement. As days become nights and the seasons pass, remnants of the landscape’s prior states reappear as wind-swept images strewn across the desktop.