For three weeks this summer, Pedion tou Areos park in Athens hosted an exhibition by Onassis Stegi that began every evening at six. Each night Plásmata (which translates as “creatures”) came to life: a bar opened, a DJ played the opening track for the on-site radio, and four local restaurants in temporary new homes fired up their grills. Video screens flickered, projectors whirred to life, and a spotlight illuminated a gold-leaf pick-up truck. 

For the people and animals already in the park, not too much would change. Those sitting on benches drinking iced tea carried on. Chaffinches hopped from jacaranda to jacaranda, and children tried their best to follow suit. But they were joined by less likely friends. Manousos Manousakis’ creations (he calls them Neighbours), who began their lives as ink on paper, could be found wobbling toward the corner of a nearby building: a two-legged chimera, half-ostrich, half-lyre, pausing for a while before disappearing around the bend. 

Robert Wilson placed a slow-moving snowy owl high in a treetop, while Natalia Manta’s Mother, a tall, pale ceramic totem, stood in the woods below. Aias Kokkalis made an 18-minute mockumentary, Ares Awakening, a history of this same park as if overrun with mutants. He showed them captured in “rare CCTV footage” that depicts a goat-like creature with glowing, bronchial antlers, a ferret with green fronds growing from her back. 

Some people came to the park to see the plásmata, others to see their friends. Many came to walk their dogs, who barked at the dancing lights or the smell of burgers in the hands of passing couples. From a CRT TV screen, on the floor between two trees, the artwork barked back. Beware of the Dogs is a 2001 piece by The Callas, in which the two men kneel, barking and yapping at the camera. The more time I spent at Plásmata, the thinner the boundaries became between spectator and spectacle, park and exhibition, dog, art and man. 

The interconnectedness of creature and habitat can be overwhelming. Efi Gousi’s Tectonic Riders was the exhibition’s most affronting and beautiful work. Barefooted women performed an urgent and ancient ritual to try and repair the desiccated earth and their (and our) relationship with it. I watched it twice before the screen turned black when, at 11pm, the screens powered down and the exhibition closed. The park didn’t. People made their way out slowly, finishing conversations and beers. I passed Andreas Angelidakis’ Anarchaeological Anaparastasis for the last time, a collection of plush columns left on their sides or half-lifted by a crane. It was almost midnight, and couples lay on giant cushions whispering, kissing, and curled into one another. I was told Angelidakis knew this would happen, and he wanted it to. Beyond the exhibition, plásmata do what plásmata do. .