I have never traveled to Australia | Alexandros Voulgaris (The Boy)

It is not Australia, but a reading of it. A fictional country born in The Boy’s mind after a film scene in the red desert, a hangover inside a beige Ford Fairlane 500, the dream of green ants, a repressed journey.

Since 2013, this country has lived inside him: hyper-violent, free, and inexplicably familiar. In the Outback of his mind.

“I have never traveled to Australia,” he says, before unfolding, in every corner of the Onassis Stegi and with actress Flomaria Papadaki as the connecting thread, his own Australia.

And so it takes the form of a concert, a theater play, a film retrospective, a video installation, a photography exhibition, a journey through every stage, corridor, and foyer. A school classroom in the middle of the Tanami Desert. Desks and textbooks covered in sand. David Gulpilil explains a dream to us in the Yolngu language.

On the Main Stage, an eco-horror concert by The Boy transforms into a multilayered creation by visual artist Kostas Lambridis and animator Eirini Vianelli, with the contribution of motionless dancers, storytellers who once traveled to Australia, and a cappella interventions by musicians and longtime collaborators of The Boy.

On the Upper Stage, a farewell is staged to the Skyline Matraville Dead End Drive-In, which closed in 1984, with screenings of cinematic masterpieces of the Australian New Wave—the first retrospective of its kind ever held in Greece.

In the –1 exhibition hall, a new feature film by The Boy connects with a photographic exhibition by Myrto Tzima. Nine monologues unfold into a contemporary bushranger crime drama fairytale set against the backdrop of Australia in 1981.

In the corridors and foyers, emotionally charged objects from a life that never existed extend the experience across space and time. Sounds from imagined remote countrysides, childhood nightmares with the Hobyahs, creatures of Australian folklore, Mulkurul stones arriving from the rising sun, Everett De Roche’s typewriter, the remnants of Betty Crabtree’s strange violin, the scent of burnt rubber, and radio signals from nowhere. A score by Miss Trichromi runs through like a vein connecting all spaces and actions.

Australia here is not a place; it is a mirror. It reflects back a distorted version of yourself. It is a soft pillow made of sheep wool from Carriewerloo.

The Boy creates worlds. If you ask him what this “Australia” is, he will answer:

“A concert or maybe a performance or even a scribble.

A film retrospective.

A feature film.

A dream that welcomes you.

A song that feels familiar.

A portrait of Judy Davis and Jack Thompson.

I have never traveled to Australia.”