The Flying Shack, headquarters of the Greek Existentialists. Athens, 1953.

 Flying Shack (Ιπτάμενη Παράγκα) was the name of the wooden house of Simos Tsapnidis (Σίμος Τσαπνίδης), leader of the Greek Existentialists. Here, hundreds of youths used to hang out, from 1953 to 1956. They formed an art group, deep in the heart ofAthens.

The group, involved theater, poetry, dance, visual arts and music. They danced and played a strange kind of music, a mixture of boogie and swing, but with improvisations, in a dada spirit.

Many traveling artists and political fugitives, found a refuge here.  Police termed the Flying Sack, a “home of orgies” and closed it, by 1955. Simos Tsapnidis, fled Greece, in 1956, and traveled all over Europe, for 20 years