The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master's thesis The Amphibian Atlas: Ways of Knowing a River by Nicolás Parise Schneider, supervised by Tania Tsiridou, on Tuesday, 15 September 2026 — 6:00 pm (Greece time) / 12:00 pm (Argentina & Chile), via Zoom. This research-creation project explores how different forms of knowledge can contribute to understanding and representing the Biobío River in Chile. Bringing together geography, artistic research, critical cartography, illustration, field encounters, and editorial practice, the project takes the form of The Amphibian Atlas, an illustrated publication that creates encounters between ecological and scientific knowledge, territorial experience, community-based environmental monitoring, mapping, observation, drawing, and narrative.

The Department Assembly of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University, has approved that the next call for applications to the MARes in Hybrid Arts programme will be for the 2027–2028 academic year. The official call for applications will be published in Autumn 2026 and will include detailed information on admission requirements, the application process, important dates, and the programme curriculum. We look forward to welcoming a new cohort of artists, researchers, and creative practitioners to the MARes in Hybrid Arts community.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts would like to inform students, applicants, alumni, and collaborators that the Administrative Services of Ionian University will be closed for the summer recess from 3 August to 21 August 2026, following the University's official summer closure. The MARes Secretariat will not be processing administrative enquiries during the summer closure. Emails received during this period will be attended to after 24 August 2026.

We are pleased to continue the MSG Talks, an online platform where MARes postgraduate students share their ongoing research, artistic practices, and emerging inquiries with the broader academic and artistic community.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts is pleased to announce The CHAKRA TUNNEL, an interactive sculptural installation by Anna Laura Hafner, currently on view at Spiral House Park in Saugerties, New York, through 27 July 2026. Developed as part of Hafner's Master of Research (MARes) in Hybrid Arts thesis at the Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University, The CHAKRA TUNNEL forms part of a broader body of work and holistic artistic methodology titled SPECTRASOMATICS. The installation invites visitors to walk through each colour of the rainbow, engaging with the corresponding chakras through a series of guided movements and sound experiences presented in an accompanying video. The project showcases work developed as part of the artist's MARes thesis, supervised by Emmanouel Rovithis.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts is pleased to announce Where the Water Flows (9–18 July), an exhibition by Myrto Papadopoulos at Depo Darm Contemporary Art Space (Iroon Skopeftiriou 54–56, Kaisariani, Athens), opening on Thursday, 9 July, at 19:00. Bringing together analogue photography, archival material, artefacts, text, and video, Where the Water Flows explores how land—understood as a living, relational entity shaped through reciprocity, balance, and interdependence—forms cultural identity, memory, and sustainability. The exhibition showcases work developed as part of the artist's MARes thesis, supervised by Associate Professor Maria Chalkou.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master's thesis Reinterpreting Waiting in the Local Landscape: Collective Memory, Thinking, and Political Potential by Kristina Bozhurska, supervised by Maria Chalkou, on Monday, 6 July 2026 — 3:00 pm (Athens time), via Zoom. This practice-based artistic research project explores the area surrounding the final stop of an unfinished east–west railway line in a village in North Macedonia. Developed through the exhibition Waiting at the National Gallery in Kumanovo, the project examines how the site's historical, social, and spatial specificities generate new meanings and possibilities. The thesis reinterprets waiting not as passive stagnation but as a condition capable of fostering reflection, critical thinking, collective action, and social transformation.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Mother Earth: Mothers Seeing Change in Corfu by Zoe Lomax, supervised by Daphne Dagona, on Thursday, 18 June 2026 — 4:00 pm (Athens time), via Zoom. The practice-based artistic research project explores how six mothers living in Corfu experience environmental change through their daily lives, memories, and photography. Developed through the exhibition Mothering Nature at the Anemomylos Windmill, the project presents a deeply personal and maternally informed perspective on ecological transformation, foregrounding care, intergenerational responsibility, and feminist approaches to environmental awareness.

MARes invites you to a new edition of the MSG Talks, featuring presentations by Kristina Bozhurska, Zoe Lomax and Nicolás Parise Schneider. Through artistic research, participatory practices, and environmental inquiry, they explore how art can engage with social transformation, memory, community, and changing landscapes. Join us online on June 11 and June 16, 2026 for an opportunity to learn about their ongoing projects and participate in the discussion.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Ground truth - a view from somewhere by Sujata Majumdar, supervised by Emmanouil Rovithis, on Wednesday, 11 March 2026 — 6:00 pm (Athens time), via Zoom. The project explores how a feminist data-driven hybrid art practice can bridge algorithmic smart-city models and residents’ lived perceptions of urban trees in Amsterdam, using artistic interventions and participatory storytelling to reveal multiple truths about urban nature and to propose more inclusive and caring relationships between people, technology, and landscape. The defense is open to the public, and all interested students, researchers, artists, and members of the community are welcome to attend.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Re-thinking Neon: Beyond the Signifier by Angelina Almukhametova, supervised by Iannis Zannos, on Thursday, 5 March 2026 — 7:00 pm (Athens time), via Zoom. The project reexamines neon beyond its traditional role as a signifier, proposing a post-semiotic framework that understands the medium as an embodied, affective material with its own agency and future within art and culture. The defense is open to the public, and all interested students, researchers, artists, and members of the community are welcome to attend.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Bioelectric Signaling as Pre-linguistic Musicality: A compositional practice emerging from the agency of humans and weakly electric fish by Sophia Osbanova, supervised by Iannis Zannos, on Tuesday, 3 March 2026 — 3:00 (Athens time), via Zoom. The project treats the bioelectric discharges of weakly electric fish as pre-linguistic musicality, transforming multielectrode recordings into an orchestral work (SENSUS) through a transparent, repeatable pipeline that frames composition as a distributed agency across organism, technology, algorithms, collaborators, and listening. The defense is open to the public, and all interested students, researchers, artists, and members of the community are welcome to attend.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Cyborg Balsamine 2.0 by Tatiana Yfanti, supervised by Maria Chalkou, on Tuesday, 3 March 2026 — 19:00 (Athens time), via Zoom. The project drawing on Hannah Höch’s photomontage and Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory, uses glitch aesthetics, digital montage, and archival research to explore posthuman identity and hybrid bodies as challenges to white patriarchal power structures in contemporary digital culture. The defense is open to the public, and all interested students, researchers, artists, and members of the community are welcome to attend.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program (Department of Audio & Visual Arts, Ionian University) invites you to the public online defense of the Master’s thesis Doublespeeches by Nathalie Dubois Calero, supervised by Adam Zaretsky, on Thursday, 19 February 2026 at 10:00 (Athens time), via Zoom. The project is a bioart approach to human identity through the microbiota and the concept of the human holobiont, raising speculative questions about behavior. The defense is open to the public, and all interested students, researchers, artists, and members of the community are welcome to attend.

The MARes in Hybrid Arts program announces the opening of applications for the Half-Tuition Waiver for Merit-Based Achievement. This initiative provides financial support covering 50% of the semester tuition fees (1,000€) for one (1) eligible student who demonstrates academic excellence. Application Deadline: March 8, 2026 — 11:55 pm (Athens time).