Forest School by New Theatre Institute of Latvia
Co-funded by the
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
is a European cooperation project on hope. The hope we’re interested in is about ‘broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act’.
The ACT – Art Climate Transition partners launched a campaign that consists on starting a conversation with local communities on the loss of bird biodiversity, through developing local small-scale murals in the frame of the Audubon Mural project. The network is raising awareness about the disappearance of many European bird species due to the sixth mass extinction. Local bird alliances and scientists are also invited to join the conversation in each local context.
LEMNISKATA is a dance piece for 14 male dancers and one female performer who portray the origin of life based on female symbols from Mexican culture. With the movements of their naked bodies they visualise infinity. An impressive stage set, sound design based on prehispanic instruments, colourful human-animal masks and live music make this new work by Mexican artist Lukas Avendaño an experience for all the senses.
In Leçons de Ténèbres, four bodies, three adults and a child become the mouthpieces of stories that have been forgotten or that we have tried to make disappear. These people burrow, hunched and curved, until they unearth the invisible. They transform, disappear and metamorphose. In turn, they bring forth visions and assist and challenge them. For this new creation, Betty Tchomanga continues her research on Voodoo cults and crosses them with questions of climatic and social emergency.
New Theatre Institute of Latvia produces this series of residencies. Indeed, NTIL invited three artists from the Baltic region to explore themes related to climate, social and economic justice and change. Their new artworks will be visible at Homo Novus festival in 2021 and 2022.
In Nebula, the stage appears like a burnt black landscape, both natural and futuristic, where everything has been destroyed except for a few bits and pieces: precious stones, coal, water, clay, mirrors… In dialogue with these materials, the dancer quivers with the energies around her, reinventing herself as a tree, a tiger, and a star. Entering unknown universes to reveal what exists beyond the black hole, the solo Nebula opens up even vaster spaces with new forms of life where time is expanded.
The impact and disastrous consequences of war remain a painful and often underexposed topic in the debate on global warming. Access to raw materials is often the root cause of conflict and ecological warfare, such as the draining of rivers, is increasingly used as an instrument of violence. Military exercises and operations waste enormous amounts of energy and leave behind hallucinatory amounts of debris. It is both cynical and ironic, but some exercise areas and war zones are so polluted that no one is allowed to enter them. They are instead declared nature zones where nature is given free rein and can heal.
How can we rethink being human from a radical ecological perspective? What stories can help us grapple with the disruptions of the climate crises? These questions lie at the basis of PREY, consisting of three solos by three generations of women. All three offer a different perspective on the same theme, via a different medium – text/speech, song/music or dance/performance. Be prepared to delve into a scenography in which humans do not play the main role. Can we find consolation in the horrific fact that we are food and that we belong to an ecological cycle of life and death?
Moving in Concert envisions a universe in which people, technologies and natural materials coexist to create an abstract series of movements. Inspired by the way bodies are sensory influenced by living in a digitized world, the performance explores a poetics of plasticity, abstraction and imagination.
Multispecies Landscape is a two-year artistic research on alternative ways of practicing relationships with the environment and diverse bodies that are part of the ecosystems in which we operate and are being transformed. It understands the environment as the process that emerges from numerous relationships and tries to look for methods for overcoming binary oppositions such as nature and culture, dead and alive, etc. The research inspired by the concept of the holobiont as an object of thought that disables thinking through individual categories, but rather focuses on the body as a porous environment of various organisms that are enabling life.
RESSOURCE 0 dives into a new field, at the crossroads of culture and ecology, both in France and internationally. Its objective is to question and respond to environmental issues, by integrating the aesthetic, creative, relational, sensitive and imaginative dimensions specific to art. RESSOURCE 0 defends a collaborative multi-stakeholder approach, in which solutions emanate from different exchanges and sensitivities.
