THE INTERMISSION presents the ongoing programme Sonic Histories, which explores oral traditions and cultural histories preserved or embedded in music. The program brings together academics, musicians, artists, and theorists in a shared interdisciplinary exchange.

On Thursday, July 2, 2026, at 19:00, the photography exhibition “Passerby” will be presented. The exhibition explores the shared history of Ruvan Wijesooriya and Nick Zinner within New York’s underground music scene in the early 2000s, a period often recalled through Meet Me in the Bathroom and the fleeting allure of indie sleaze, before everything turned into content.

“Passerby” is curated by Vassilia Kaga, who explains the following about the exhibition in the press release:

Drawing from the idea of utopia not as a fixed destination but as something unstable and imperfect, “Passerby” explores the shared history of Ruvan Wijesooriya and Nick Zinner within New York City’s early 2000s underground music scene, a time often evoked in Meet Me in the Bathroom and the fleeting glamour of indie sleaze, before everything became content, focusing on moments where time briefly shifts, where something holds, even if only for a night.
A concert, a crowded room, a conversation that stretches too long, the space between sound and bodies, the afters that never fully end. These moments are fleeting, but they matter. They are the points where something else becomes possible, where proximity replaces distance, where individuals dissolve into something collective, where experience exceeds documentation. Utopia happens there. Not as permanence, but as interruption.
The title “Passerby” is borrowed from the former bar of the same name, a legendary extension of Gavin Brown’s gallery on 15th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue in New York, once frequented by artists, musicians, and downtown weirdos. Initially conceived as
a travelling exhibition with invited curators reshaping the material in each city, “Passerby” first took form in Honolulu in 2023. Athens marks its second iteration.
Through a collection of hundreds of photographs, “Passerby” brings together more than two decades of an underground scene, acting as an archive of something that never stayed still. Wijesooriya documented the emerging downtown music scene as it was unfolding, while Zinner photographed life on tour and behind the scenes, moving through the same environments from within.
At the center of the exhibition is a tension between presence and disappearance. The photographs capture moments that were never meant to last, yet persist as traces. Utopia, here, is not something to arrive at. It is something you pass through. It exists only while it is happening, in the space between people, in the overlap of sound and image, in the brief suspension of everything outside. And then it’s gone.

Event Details: Opening Thursday, July 2
19:00: Talk by Ruvan & Nick
20:00: Exhibition Opening
21:00: DJ Set by Ruvan & Nick – Party
Venue: Castor Place, Asklipiou 5 & Kastoros 48, Piraeus

Exhibition Duration: July 3–9
Opening Hours:
Fri-Sat: 12:00-20:00
Sun: 15:00-20:00
Mon-Tue: 17:00-20:00
Wed-Thu: 12:00-20:00
Free Admission