The Municipal Regional Theatre of Kavala, in collaboration with the Kavala Photographic Club, presents the Visual and Sound Installation entitled Metamorphoses: And I Never Hunted Again, as part of the 69th Philippi Festival. The installation will be open from Thursday, July 23, to Saturday, August 1, 2026, at the “Leftheris Athanasiadis” Cultural Centre, located in Kapnergati Square, Kavala.
An installation about the moment in which the hunter is exposed to the place of the prey; about metamorphosis as a rupture in the distribution of roles between the human and the non-human.
Drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and more specifically on the myth of Actaeon, the work approaches this passage as an extreme experience of displacement: from the standpoint of the one who observes and pursues to that of the one who can now be tracked, hunted and consumed.
Actaeon’s metamorphosis remains unfinished: he has barely become a stag when he is recognised as prey by his own hunting dogs and torn apart. He never has the chance to exist as an animal—except for the brief instant required for the possibility of another relationship with the being he had until then pursued to emerge. Perhaps the one that, centuries later, Napoleon Lapathiotis would express through a single act of refusal: “And I never hunted again.”
Spatial interventions, fur geometries, sonic environments, surveillance imagery and multitudes of tiny deer come together to form an environment where the boundaries between categories begin to weaken and the mechanisms of metamorphosis are set in motion. In dialogue with the installation, nineteen members of the Kavala Photo Club present a hybrid visual work, extending its questions through a parallel artistic trajectory.
Concept & Visual Design: Michaela Pliaplia
Soundscapes: Nikos Sotirelis
Technical Support: Vasilis Anastasiadis, Kostas Garoufalidis, Panagiotis Lazaridis, Giorgos Mastorakis, Giannis Stavridis
Visual Component: Hybrid Video
Photo Curation: Christina Beza, Myrto Konstantinidou, Panagiotis Rontos, KonstantinaTsirogianni
Video Editing: Kostis Argyriadis
Photographs: Aslanidou Militsa, Bakogianni Stavroula, Berbataki Georgia, Beza Christina, Efthimiadis Padelis, Georgakoudi Dora, Karofillidou Maria, Konstantinidou Myrto, Koumoulidis. Ilias, Markoulidis Anastasios, Momtsos Alexandros, Neokosmidou Kiriaki, Ntimos Dimitris, Panagiotidou Eleni, Rontos Panagiotis, Sarridis Nikos, Tsirogianni Konstantina, Zografou Vasiliki, Zopoglou Maria
Artificial intelligence tools have been used in selected sequences of the video as part of the artistic process.
Special thanks to Vicky Baklatzi, Vasia Chronopoulou, Dimitris Fragkos, Vaia Koulaxizi, Maria Koutsiouki, Maria Kriara, Panagiotis Pagiatis, Fotis Sagonas, Nikos Sentikiotis, Matoula Stratilati, and Paschalis Zervas for their invaluable support.
No animal-derived materials were used in the construction of the installation, and no animals were harmed or subjected to distress.
