Co-funded by the
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
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.
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.
Passing bodies (Choreographing Ecocritical Routes) is an ongoing dialogue between two dramaturgues, Eylül Fidan Akıncı and Tery Žeželj in the frame of the European network ACT – Art, Climate Transition. It aims to connect ecocriticism, choreography, and activist practices of place making and is designed as an exchange of discursive practices. Passing Bodies centers on the importance of body, mobility, and space for ecocritical activations in the performing arts. This exchange will take choreographer Eiko Otake’s film A Body in Fukushima as its focal point.
In its very beginnings the partnership was called On Thin Ice, renamed Imagine 2020, and ultimately ACT ̶ Art, Climate, Transition – following the key year transition. Present throughout was a collaborative pledge to raise awareness, inform, forge connections and collaborate to effect change. The partnership has survived many challenges around the involvement of collaborating organisations, people and project cycles. Its adaptiveness has allowed it to reach its final phase, taking the form of a closing event at the Mladi Levi festival as not merely a condensed overview of achievements accomplished, but also an announcement of goals and ambitions to come.
The full evening event In the Groundwaters of the Body takes the form of an immersive journey delving into the re-imagination of bodies as porous multivariable communities. Stops on the journey, created by various artists and scientists in collaboration, draw inspiration from both science as well as traditional knowledge, arising from a close relationship with and dependence on nature, linguistics and uttering the unknown, from sensual experiences and tasting.
Passing through stories of family heritage, legacy and ecology, The Last Night of the Deer is an autobiographical-fictional road trip performance that concerns itself with the state of affairs that we leave behind for our children. In the artists’ own words: “This is a story of too many human forests and too many human ghosts that inhabit them”.
The Ljubljana edition of the ‘Cotton under my feet’ exhibition assumes the format of an artist talk, through which Walid Raad talk documents his free fall through the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections, and the various frightening, joyous, and perplexing situations, objects, and figures he met along the way. As any storyteller will tell you, the more specific a story is, the more general it turns out to be. And the more Walid Raad speaks of one specific collector and his art collection, the more we find ourselves in different parts of the world (amongst others also in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and in different pockets of history and the present day.
Engaging amateur actors, representatives of social groups, non-professionals or professionals from different fields to generate material for documentary theatre, or simply bringing in your average Joes – none of this is new. We will examine the trends of »authenticity«, de-professionalisation, collaboration with various social groups to gain impact, democratisation and pluralisation, which propel us to open up our stages and offer them to groups that may not have a voice in public. Naturally, there is no definitive answer, but we aim to ask pertinent questions and address these trends also through the lens of festival performances.
Robertina Šebjanič and Ida Hiršenfelder are bringing two compositions to this year’s festival edition – both draw on field recordings, which the authors process by using the tension between the beauty of biodiversity and human interventions in biological processes. Their artworks aim to invoke empathy and solidarity with different ecosystems and organisms, fostering an understanding of their interconnectedness and importance of coexistence. Hearing what normally resides outside of our usual sound experience and diving into (pun intended) these unique soundscapes serves as an empathic strategy.
There is a sense of care-ssing tenderness subtly penetrating the festival (invoking care as its etymological derivative), either in examining different registers of manhood, representing lamenting practices as they span from Mediterranean traditions to the present-day sadness of the sea, using acupuncture as an intervention to treat maladies of brick walls, tasting non-human holobionts or delving into stories of non-human animals.
As per request of the Retirement Home Centre – Tabor unit – this year we turn to trees, especially those inhabiting the Tabor city quarter and greeting the residents in their journeys. This week-long workshop will intertwine the belletrist art now residing in the newly open retirement home library, expertise on biology and arboriculture, and the vivid memories and impressions of nature embedded in the residents’ hearts and minds.
A wet terrain that is the stage and the training ground to find out how to become like Ophelia – embodying the laws that govern a special environment to satisfy the desires and fantasies of others. Water is the element of assimilation and adaptation, a symbol of the limitless capacity for expansion, of an eternal, inseparable unity with the outside world. Symbolically, water is associated with femininity – and with death. An oceanic landscape emerges, full of illusions, cultural and historical references to all kinds of aquatic creatures and drowned strangers, a scenario that not only asks the question… whether training and exercise can help us escape the precarious conditions of the present with climate catastrophes and other disasters to come. It also invites speculation about future life forms that have assimilated these conditions, transformed them and created new forms of being.
A performance tour through the Kunsthalle’s collection – and into the abysses of the art and finance world, including angels and the undead. Walid Raad’s exhibition merges several historical and fictional realms, revealing images of clouds that appeared mysteriously on the back of several Old Masters, cups that attract specific types of arthropods, and angels that self-restore.
Based on motives from Jason Hickel’s Less is More and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing The Mushroom at the End of the World
In life, we are constantly facing different crises – be it personal, professional, social, political, refugee, health, existential, etc. Behind them lurks maybe the biggest one in the history of humankind: the environmental. But in spite of its magnitude we are losing energy to solve other, ever new crises, trying to just restore the current situation … and forgetting that a crisis can be an exceptional time when seemingly impossible ideas become possible. The key question is: Which ideas? Those that would ensure more security, protection, health and well-being to everyone, or those meant to make the already unimaginably rich even richer? In Crises, Žiga Divjak and his team tackle all these questions and explore the human capacity for collaboration and the need to re-discover natural world not as a source but as our kin.
Performance as a genre canonically belongs to the spectrum of art, and associations often refer to activism and exhibitionism. However, what are the philosophical and theoretical dimensions of performance? What do we take as reference points for its definition, and how much space is left in the existing setting for areas outside of art? What information do performances provide us and what kind of worlds can they open for us? All these and similar questions will be answered by Sonja Leboš, Josipa Bubaš, Igor Zenzerović in a conversation with moderator Juraj Šantorić.
Heroes is a new dance performance by Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar in which they enter a universe full of intimate questions about the meaning of everything we know and, especially, everything we don’t know, that awaits us in the future. The title of the play is significant not only because it suggests it finds its initial point of reference in the character, work and mythology of David Bowie, but because it opens up the possibility of the existence of heroes in some other dimensions where the show takes us. Needing to escape the avalanche of information we face every day and the responsibility towards the threats that currently cast a shadow on our planet, we turn to the stars and escape into space.
As part of Art, Climate, Transition (ACT), Artsadmin is co-hosting an international symposium over two days, from Wednesday 28 – Thursday 29 June.
The ACT Symposium will feature lectures, panel discussions, performances, audio walks, and feasts. This programme includes: a practical exploration of resilience within environmental movements with Zamzam Ibrahim, a movement workshop with Brussels-based artists Daniel Linehan & Michael Helland, a masterclass in Legislative Theatre with Katy Rubin, weaving with Sheila Ghelani, and a keynote performance lecture from Mathieu Charles, whose innovative performance art reflects his Mauritian Creole heritage, his stance on anti-colonialism, and his embrace of diasporic futurisms.
Working conditions, opportunities for young people, dependence on the independent scene, activism and resistance, institutionalization, the street, the everyday life of performance artists, performativity in everyday life… all these and similar topics will be discussed by Ksenija Kordić, academic painter and multimedia artist, and Mia Štark, multimedia artist, together with moderator Juraj Šantorić.
Manifestos para Depois do Fim do Mundo takes inspiration from the curatorial work of Hans Ulrich Obrist. Seven actors perform manifestos written during the new millennium. The show takes place along different spaces in and outside the main building. Favouring intimacy, each manifesto is performed for a limited audience at a time, when tradition would have it read in loud tones from a platform. The show was born from a desire to spread considerate words that speak of our times. Some hopeful, some denouncing, they are words from the world, and from everyday life.
A Night of Performances will be held in Medica, in Zagreb – an event that presents performances, spatial and audiovisual installations, experimental forms with light, sound, and movement, as well as various spatial interventions and participatory projects by artists and art collectives that are selected in 2023 through a public call – on Feminism in Art, Community and Practice. The artists and art collectives that will present their works are: SoXe (Sonja Leboš and Ksenija Kordić), žuž (Dora Fodor and Hugo Baranger), Nikolina Butorac, Ana Katulić and Irena Boćkai, Igor Zenzerović and Lucija Žuti.
The winners of the Prix COAL 2023 – Plante! bear witness to artists’ attention to the forms of living plants, and to the many potentials of art in favor of their preservation and resilience. The COAL 2023 Prize was awarded to the Al-Wah’at collective for its Wild Hedges project. The jury’s special prize was awarded to Fabiana Ex-Souza for her project Trouxas de mandinga. This year, two special mentions were also awarded: the NOVA_XX mention in partnership with the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris to Laura Cinti for her project AI in the Sky and the Ateliers Médicis award to Shivay for his project Talking skies.
Taking place in Artsadmin’s home at Toynbee Studios and across Aldgate East and the City of London, What Shall We Build Here will stage an eclectic programme of talks, walks, feasts, workshops, performances and meditations which imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and planet.
Join us in conversation, in play, in reflection and in rest, as we imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and planet!
Domino brings the Škart collective to Zagreb, who together with the members of the association NEPRAKTIKNI ŽENE from Belgrade are running a workshop on designing brick walls. The workshop “Thoughts and thoughts on the canvas are compressed” is intended for elderly people, and is held in the Home for the elderly “Park” in Pešćenica. Verses for everyday use try to give a new shape and life to traditional brick walls and send loud messages of not giving up for the lack of public spaces.
A protean artist and choreographer, Robin Decourcy offers everyone an experience of perception in a natural environment through the writing of guided scores. This so-called eco-somatic practice invites us to dive into an intensified relationship with the surrounding biotope: to taste the silica in the stampian silence of the Oligocene, to enter into empathy with the gogottes, the rock-mushrooms, to connect with the flora and fauna, present and past. The experience is playful and concentrated. The atmosphere is respectful and benevolent, open to various states of consciousness and body.
A unique encounter for the Nuits de Forêts between these three artists with different practices, whose love of natural spaces brings them together on this stage in the open air of the Fontainebleau forest. The choreographer Robin Decourcy, in a dance experience in a modified state of consciousness, will be accompanied by the hypnotic songs of the poet and singer Abdullah Miniawy and the saxophonist with a circular breath, Peter Corser. An experience of the night and the invisible that promises to be unforgettable.
A national event for the general public, the Nuits des Forêts are back from June 9 to 18 in 170 forests throughout France. With more than 20 new sites, discover the agenda of this 4th edition! Partner and artistic advisor of the Nuits des Forêts, COAL is preparing a reinforced program in the forest of Fontainebleau on June 9, 10 and 11, in the footsteps of the Artistic Reserves. Discover the entire program online.
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.
For the 5th edition of TRipp [space], Merel Smitt will travel to Skopje to participate the SummerLab #4 where she will encounter with urbanists, ecologists, activists and other 10 artists of ACT ) Art, Climate Transition Network. After that she will return to Rotterdam and start to collaborate with Floor van Leeuwen for the preparation of new cycles of How To Start A Movement? In collaboration with Humanistisch Verbond from Ecohumanist perspective. Floor van Leeuwen will participate to Relay Lecture in Rotterdam and will kick off their Swarming project in collaboration with Arts Admin in London in the end of June during What Shall We Build Here – a festival of art, climate and community – and will continue to work there with the LGBTQ+ community till end of August’23.
The main focus of the Summerlab Skopje 2023 will be the many public spaces in the country, known as the ‘empty spaces’ especially in the city of Skopje, which were privatized during the political transition of North Macedonia from a socialist into a ‘turbo-capitalist’ society. As part of the program, collaborators from Skopje will share and present the historical and political context of the city and its ‘empty public’ spaces, as well as urban ecology. Also, collaborators from Floating University in Berlin to present their project and approach, and the participants will share their work and experiences.
UDIV & IDNI is a visually charged trip with room for experimentation and interpretation. The performance mixes elements, tendencies and experiences from our living world in a speculative universe with fiction, movement, light, costumes, Sound, scenography and video mapping. Fokovisme challenges the audience to question and take a look at transhumanism that seeks to push the boundaries of the universe and one’s own life.
Curated by the world’s premier, green, autistic drag queen Oozing Gloop, Tentacular Spectacular is an (ad)venture into networking networks of narrative, phobia, hope and utopia by showcasing the self made cryptids of 21st century trans* performers. Oozing Gloop is joined by the architect of your eternal suffering, Olympia Bukkakis. Together, these Jesters of the new Dark Age will lure you through a psycho-sexual swamp of fester, rot & future relics. Emerging from this decay are the fruitful offshoots of this tentacular undergrowth; Shrek666, Bonnie Bakeneko and a mystery guest artist working with themes of monstrosity & mulch.
Philippe Descola’s comparative anthropology focused on the relations between humans and non-humans revolutionized the landscape of human sciences, and had great impact on ecological thinking. Par-delà nature et culture (Gallimard, 2005) was a landmark in his work, as well as highly influential for anyone concerned with the connections that link nature and culture. Published in 2021, Les formes du visible (‘The forms of the visible’) sets the ground for a figurative anthropology and reflects on the ability of each culture to conceive images and figurative devices. Revisiting his first book, Descola resumes the theory of four basic ontologies that govern the variation in collective life. Each one – animism, naturalism, totemism, and analogism – draws its own line between human and non-human. Les formes du visible earned Descola the Martine Aublet Foundation award in 2021.
In this new work, Samara Hersch continues her practice of staging intergenerational conversation as performance, working with teenagers and seniors who will meet for the first time, in the dark. Taking place in a shifting landscape of appearances and disappearances, twilight and shadows, here, the performers ask questions about change, uncertainty and impending darkness. Together reflecting on how time invisibly shapes who we are and who we will become. Through this work, Samara and her collaborators question how the darkness (and the theatre) might reveal alternative ways of gathering and listening to cultivate curiosity, vulnerability, intimacy and resilience.
Warming up to Philippe Descola’s conference, Culturgest shows Composer les Mondes (‘composing the worlds’) a film written, shot and directed by Eliza Levy. Her subject is Descola himself, and the thinking that made him a noteworthy anthropologist. Which should be our starting point to rethink the world with an aim of changing it? Descola devoted his life in anthropology to the study of how human beings form their worlds. He began his investigation in the Amazon region, and then he focused his attention on Europe, seeking to understand how us from the modern world managed to turn the Earth increasingly less habitable.
With this 3-day workshop during Hamburg’s May vacations, graphic designer, street art and tattoo artist Hanadi Chawaf invites Hamburg youth to embellish the Kampnagel facade with political art. You like to design and paint, and the protection of species is close to your heart? Over the course of three workshop days, you can create a mural depicting birds that are threatened with extinction here and now in Hamburg. After an expert talk about the threat to biodiversity posed by climate change, the urbanization of natural habitats, and human intervention in protected areas, you and the other participants will select the birds that should not be forgotten by humans and should therefore become part of the mural.
Within the Performative Book Fair (Hamburg), British artist Ama Josephine Budge opens a portal for time travelers with the APOCALYPSE READING NOOK HAMBURG, a traveling mini-variant of her installation “The Apocalypse Reading Room”: Upon entering the cabin, visitors* find themselves in an apocalyptic future – with the invitation to delve into texts that do not primarily look back to what was, but rather try their hand at dreaming as well as practical guidance to new worlds. Stay as long as you like, you have time.
For Forest Silent Gathering, a group of audience members meet inside a forest at sunset and follow a soundtrack with the help of headphones. An audio-social architecture is created that lets the viewer be alone together. Changing distances invites us to find new proximities. Absent figures become protagonists. As the communal space takes shape and transforms, Forest Silent Gathering makes us reflect on the bonds between people, forests and histories. What is it that keeps us together?
A diptych on violence and beauty, Fúria (2018) and Encantado (2021), the two most recent shows from Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, are awe-inspiring statements about our ever-accelerating times, and powerful indictments as much as they are messages of hope. Encantado [‘enchanted’] is synonymous with charmed, and mesmerized, but in Brazil it also refers to entities that exist in realms of perception from the Afro-Brazilian culture. The encantados exist somewhere between heaven and earth, in the jungle, the rocks, rivers, seas, and all the surrounding flora. They turn nature into a sacred place. Will we be able to re-join the enchanted world where we can reunite with our own, and other living creatures in all their diversity?
PL3MONS is a hybrid, Afro-futuristic, 3D-style multimedia performance that floats on a post-apocalyptic scenario: climate change is a reality and the population is in survival mode. FOKOVISME immerses the audience in a new reality, where plastic lives and plants gaze at you.
After their acclaimed performances, Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere present the final part of their trilogy on mining. This time they focus on a completely new industry, deep sea mining, with the performance Out Of The Blue. ‘We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean.’ At a moment in history when the planet we live on seems to have been explored extensively, some places remain unstudied and untouched.
A diptych on violence and beauty, Fúria (2018) and Encantado (2021), the two most recent shows from Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, are awe-inspiring statements about our ever-accelerating times, and powerful indictments as much as they are messages of hope. In Fúria, the frenzied presence of all eleven dancers from the company evokes a world of violence, but also the incessant struggle against all forms of oppression, through an unrelenting succession of images built and demolished. Conceived at, and born out of the favelas of Maré in Rio, Fúria lies where Carnival parade meets archaic procession and protest march.
PREY will consist of three solos by three generations of women. Each has its own focus: text/language, song/music and dance/performance. With every solo, the tension between the human and the landscape, performer and scenography, becomes more intense and intimate. The essence of PREY is finding solace in the frightening fact that we too are food, that we too belong to an ecological cycle of life and death.
Latai Taumoepeau is an Australian artist. Her body of work spans more than a decade of presenting cathartic works about the impact and injustice of climate change on low lying islands of the Pacific Ocean. She centered her indigenous concepts of faiva (performance) and fonua (land/body) in her contemporary work to raise awareness and empathy for front line coastal communities. Latai is fully evolving her art practice into a deeper relationship of body and land advocacy through mitigation and adaptation; expanding her cultural performance practice to that of her ancestors for the next ten years. She brings a strong message of sustainability from the global south. Latai lives on the land of the Gadigal and sovereignty was never ceded.
Queer B-Cademy is a performance art installation, a festival-esque gathering and exchange of intersectional perspectives, a practice of queer utopia and futurism. The festival includes multiple art genres and results in a temporary diverse sanctuary for queer people of all ages, identities and beliefs. Sharing knowledge and experience with everyone is a big part of it that takes place in workshops, at the bar, during a queer version of the Game of Life or on the dancefloor to some house music. There is also performance art and dance pieces, concerts, visual art, installations, talk shows and dj sets. The objective of Queer B-Cademy revolves around the notions of knowledge – Which/whose knowledge is being validated? Whose experiences are left outside academia or generally speaking outside the public narrative? It takes inspiration from the works of José Esteban Muñoz and Fatima El-Tayeb who both connect the necessity of visionary queer concepts and a close and sharp look at the present situation of the diasporic PoC and migrant communities in Germany and Europe.
The Sixth and the Last Forest School session will take place online on March 28 at 3:00 PM (EET) / 2:00 PM (CET) and will be hosted by Latvian artists Rasa and Raitis Šmiti and habitat expert Anete Pošiva-Bunkovska.
In the last Forest School session Latvian artists Rasa and Raitis Šmiti will share their work and findings while making the exhibition Atmospheric Forest, an immersive installation that visualizes the complex relations between a forest, climate change and the atmosphere. This work is the outcome of their three-year artistic research project on Pfynwald, an ancient Alpine coniferous forest. Artists will be joined by the habitat expert Anete Pošiva-Bunkovska from .. surprise, surprise .. a forest located in Latvia.
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?
In Not all is lost, Davy Pieters links the element earth to the young adult stage of
life. In doing so, she creates room for growth, but also for decay, death and
silence. The performers share the floor with a living, earthly landscape. In this evocative physical performance, body and landscape together tell a panoramic story about care and neglect.
With Plant! the COAL Prize 2023 invites artists from all over the world to sow the seeds of creation and action, to germinate new research and experimentation, so that an inventive and resilient plant-based way of thinking can flourish in the world to come. This Prize is a call to act, to transform, to heal, to revive, to hybridize. A call to feel the richness of plants, their balances and dynamics, from seed to calyx, from molecule to ecosystem. A call to try and, why not, to fail, because failure is the seed of growth. Open until March 19, 2023
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.
Call-out for ACT Symposium
On the 28th/29th June 2023 Artsadmin and Art, Climate, Transition (ACT) will be co-hosting an international symposium exploring the intersections between contemporary performance, democratic participation, & environmental justice. This two-day symposium will be based at Toynbee Studios in London and sits alongside What Shall We Build Here festival.
This symposium takes an expanded understanding of political discourse and knowledge dissemination. To get to grips with the big themes we are looking at, and to move the conversation forwards, we need many modes of communication. We are delighted to include an eclectic mix of panel discussions, workshops, walks, performances, talks, keynote lectures, meals & meditations.
We are looking for artists, arts workers, theorists & activists to be a part of this programme. Read more…
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.
After the decline of the shipping industry in New York City, the piers stood empty and decayed, but quickly found new life as venues of artistic and sexual expression (cruising) for New York’s gay men. The photographs and accounts from that time bear witness to that brief historical period when queerness could finally be lived with pride and the debauchery of gay sexuality was still untainted by the public stigma of HIV. Together with her performers, the exceptional actress and director Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, a researcher in gender studies and a dramaturge, examine the lore of these places with regard to the potential they hold for a community of bodies without norms, which is characterised by a longing search for community, a caring in the midst of strangers, but also by excess and freedom of rules. THE PRESENT IS NOT ENOUGH is the contemplation of a “past that becomes a foretaste of the future”.
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 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.
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 TUTTO BRUCIA (Everything burns), exceptional actress, dancer, DJ and Gucci model Silvia Calderoni is once again on the Kampnagel stage – this time alongside dancer Stefania Tansini and R.Y.F. (Francesca Morello), who provides the live soundtrack to this tragedy, which is as contemporary as it is dark, loosely based on »The Trojan Women of Euripides«. It begins with the end: on the scorched ground of the just-fallen city of Ilion, the women of Troy mourn the death of those closest to them, and face their future as spoils of war and slaves. In the context of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Mediterranean, climate change, and the global pandemic, the agonies of the Trojan women inevitably become readable as a political indictment of our present.
Appel d’air is a participatory and environmental work by the artist Thierry Boutonnier. It will accompany the construction of the Grand Paris Express until 2030. Local inhabitants take part in this artistic and civic project. Indeed, they adopt 68 trees that will grow in an urban nursery, under the watchful eye of a nomadic nurseryman.
Ôss is how you say ‘bone’ in Creole. It is also reminiscent of the expression OSS, common among karate practitioners, which refers to ideas such as pressing, pushing, supporting. What interests us in this show is the bone as a keeper of ancient secrets, revealing anatomical orientations, a structuring box for soft and fragile parts. Building a strong skeleton, where the foot serves as the brain, the heart serves as an elbow, and the knees are a liver and an ear, will naturally be possible for us, since the difference between hard and soft matters little.
Imagine yourself on a beach, or not, watching it from above. The scorching sun, sunscreen, shiny bathing suits, and sweaty bodies. Weary limbs sprawled lazily on a mosaic of towels. Imagine the occasional shouts of children, laughter, the sound of an ice cream van in the distance. The musical rhythm of the waves in the surf, a soft sound. The rustle of plastic bags swirling in the air, then floating silently, like jellyfish, below the waterline. The roar of a volcano, or an airplane, or a speedboat. Then a chorus of songs: everyday songs, songs of worry and boredom, songs of almost nothing. And below them: the slow creak of an exhausted Earth, a sigh.
Buried in forest litter or sprouting from trees, fungi might give the impression of being silent and relatively self-contained organisms. During these sessions with the overarching theme The Unknowns: An exploration beyond the mysteries of the fungi world, with invited artists, scientists, designers and activists, we dive into a collective process of examining the natural phenomenon fungi and its mysterious eco-social life.
With Chris Julien, Prof. Andrew Adamatzky, Noor Stenfert Kroese, Weaving Realities & Amir Basani
ZOE is a temporary co-existence between the reishi mushrooms and a custom-made robotic system. Noor Stenfert Kroese and Amir Bastani explore with ZOE the possibilities of internal communication between its robotic system and reishi mushrooms. During this live stream, one can follow the visualization of the communication between them and has an insight of their relation. Follow the live stream until the 5th November here.
Drawing on a variety of practices – the study of fungi, fashion, fermentation, dance and sculpture – MOLD approaches the theatre machine as a multiplicity of bodies. It strives to stage not only a performance but also a farm, an environment where dance, objects, audience, light, music, scents and costumes interact as living cultures. A garden dedicated to cultivating, abandoning, inoculating, braiding, duplicating, sprouting, warming up and decaying.
“Thinking out of the box is exactly how the box thinks. We are the boxes we strive to out-think,” writes philosopher Bayo Akomolafe, speaker at the eighth edition of Ecopolis where artists, thinkers and doers break open our frames. Social, ecological and economic crises force us to think about a radically different way of living. Can unheard stories help us with that? Stories that link different generations, geographical areas that are far apart or ancient knowledge and technology. Can activism as a form of love take us further than doomsday thinking? “The world is not about to end; we are already living with a different world,” Akomolafe continues. Ecopolis brings stories that depict an inclusive and sustainable future for this new world.
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. The war in Ukraine also puts violence forcing governments to strive to make our energy sources more sustainable on the agenda.
In May 2021 Kaaitheater invited art theorist and curator Suzana Milevska for an online lecture on ecofeminist art practices. This October she will resume this talk in live Brussels and will be joined by researcher and ecofeminist activist Myriam Bahaffou. In her lecture, Suzana Milevska will discuss various art practices of ecofeminist artists who revoke the existing systemic hierarchies and models of knowledge production. Myriam Bahaffou will formulate a response to Milevska’s views, by answering them in the prism of her own thoughts. The idea is to create a fruitful ecofeminist dialogue between two researchers who value the place of the dirty, the mixture and the hybrid.
Under the direction of Chilean choreographer and expert for crowd choreographies, Jose Vidal, 40 dancers from the Hamburg HipHop Academy and the Contemporary Dance School come together for a flashmob-like large-scale event in a dance intervention in public space. Based on the structure of flocks of birds, schools of fish, and herds, the work asks what invisible threads or multidimensional networks (tramas = tissue) must be at work so that a multiple organism emerges from the sum of individual bodies that is more than the sum of its parts.
What kind of attention do we give to the sounds of the environment we inhabit?
The Silencing is a sensitive exploration of the role of the spectator in a theatre space. It mirrors what is happening outside of it – the profound impact that human activity has on its physical surroundings. On stage, a group of young storytellers establishes a shared practice of listening by interweaving autobiographical narrations, speculations, and audio recordings. They fill the theatre space with words and sounds. Until words fail them and there are no more stories to tell.
During this year’s edition of our artist – in residence program, with the overarching theme The Unknowns: An exploration beyond the mysteries of the fungi world, we will attempt to discover – yet unknown – alternative ways for understanding our planet as a shared space for fungi, microbes, humans and all other living beings.
ZOE is a temporary co-existence between the reishi mushrooms and a custom-made robotic system IIWA. Noor Stenfert Kroese and Amir Bastani explore with ZOE the possibilities of internal communication between its robotic system and reishi. Within this seeming paradox between nature and technology an ecosystem occurs, that cares for and affects each other through sensing technologies. A tactile space of data visualisations is created around ZOE in which visitors can explore ZOE’s outcome.
In life, we are constantly faced with various crises, personal, business, social, political, refugee, health, existential, etc. Behind all of them lurks one that is perhaps the biggest in the history of mankind: environmental. However, despite its seriousness, we run out of energy to deal with the new crises that keep appearing, while we persistently try to maintain the existing situation… forgetting, at the same time, that a crisis can represent an extraordinary period in which ideas that otherwise seem impossible, become possible. The key question is: what ideas?
Hamburg 2027: For the ceremonial opening of her artistic directorship, Mable Preach literally reviews old and new pioneers. The grande dame of emancipatory theater welcomes us to the grand gala of self-empowerment. Authentic empowerment, artistic talent and inclusive practice over the past decades have paid off: Mable Preach follows in the footsteps of Amelie Deuflhard, Gordana Vnuk, Res Bosshart and Hannah Hurtzig to lead Kampnagel into an artistic future! INAUGURATION NOW celebrates a future that has already begun: diverse, inclusive, intersectional and mercilessly successful.
Who has the right to define what human rights are? There’s no easy answer. Ideas about what is right or wrong in the way people organise and interrelate vary greatly from culture to culture, and the possibility of a communion of values is all the more difficult the more one tries to achieve a “universality”. Choosing a group of people who can define human rights poses a problem of representativeness and, with regard to the representation of minorities, highlights the limits of democracy itself. Furthermore, the limits of what is considered “human” raises doubts, insofar as rights of other entities directly involved in human action should be considered.
The synergies and challenges that the encounter between the biological and technological worlds presents have been at the center of attention for the berru collective. Their works tend to combine living and non-living structures, whose interaction allows us to understand the complexity of these same structures and speculate on their potential collaborations in creating sustainable systems. This is a Collection Europe project, promoted by ACT partners COAL and Culturgest, in the framework of the Portugal-France Season 2022.
This conference is part of a program of two debates on eco-acoustics and energy issues related to the ocean, bringing together French and Portuguese researchers and artists. On the 15th of September 2022, before the opening of the Berru collective exhibition at the Vidéoformes festival, a second roundtable will take place at the Clermont-Ferrand University with the Berru collective, Roberto Gamboa, researcher at the University of Lisboa, specialist in marine energy production, among others, moderated by Elise Aspord, co-founder of the Vidéoformes festival and researcher at Clermont-Ferrand University.
How do we see Croatia after 30 years? Vlad Gotovac’s speech, the ZET orchestra and the cake of the Republic of Croatia await you from September 15 to 18 at various locations in the metropolis. Bruno Isaković and Zvonimir Dobrović have gathered an impressive number of artists who will offer us their pictures and versions of this great birthday of Our Lady. It will be cheerful, critically aware and witty. And we will see how beautiful or ugly she is…
What kind of attention do we give to the sounds of the environment we inhabit? What sort of agency do we have when these sounds start to disappear? The Silencing is a sensitive exploration of the role of the spectator in a theatre space. It mirrors what is happening outside of it – the profound impact that human activity has on its physical surroundings. On stage, a group of young storytellers establishes a shared practice of listening by interweaving autobiographical narrations, speculations, and audio recordings. They fill the theatre space with words and sounds until words fail them and there are no more stories to tell.
Within ACT, social justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion receive a great deal of attention. Not only are these topics inextricable bound up with climate change, but they also pose challenges that we need to deal with on a daily basis – in how we do things. On September 8, 14.00- 15.30 pm (CET) professor Aminata Cairo will deliver a webinar in which we will explore will how these ‘big topics’ translate into the task of creating safe spaces in the arts.
In December 2021, Nahuel Cano was traveling from Amsterdam to Riga. Janis Balodis picked him up from a ferry in Klaipeda. They were driving. It was late in the evening, already dark, and a severe snow storm started right after we left Klaipeda. They decided to take a smaller road, and there we hit a deer. “The Last Night of the Deer is a story about that one December evening when they visited Lidl, refueled LPG in Viada and met an anthropologist, hit the deer, crushed a skull, got covered with blood and feces, were running from dogs, and were barely accepted in a taxi. It is a story about all-too-human forests and the more-than-human spirits that inhabit it.”
As part of the Transforming Energy exhibition by the Berru collective and the Temporada Cruzada França-Portugal, Culturgest and COAL present a double conference, the theme being on oceans and the interaction of humans with this global – yet sensitive – ecosystem. At the Culturgest Gallery in Porto where the exhibition will be on display, there will be a discussion between Berru collective, Clara Amorim, a biologist and specialist in acoustic communication of fish, and Olivier Adam, a specialist in cetacean bioacoustics. The moderation will be conducted by Samuel Silva, artist and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Porto.
Latai Taumoepeau is an Australian artist. Her body of work spans more than a decade of presenting cathartic works about the impact and injustice of climate change on low lying islands of the Pacific Ocean. Latai means reminisce and Tau-moe-peau means Battle-With-Waves. Her names are from her ancestors from the Island Kingdom of Tonga. Through her work, Latai has been mourning the eventual loss of her ancestral islands. She centered her indigenous concepts of faiva (performance) and fonua (land/body) in her contemporary work to raise awareness and empathy for front line coastal communities.
The soul is like an aviary filled with birds. It is a place where motion, colors, air movement and purposes become the flesh of what has been, of what grows, morphs, dies out, transmutes into a ghost. Chiara Bersani approaches the death of the swan with her work entitled The Animal: what happens when looking at the deep night we can recognize ourselves through the singing? (Giulia Traversi)
On April 8, 2020, in the middle of the first Covid-19 wave in Europe, artist David Weber-Krebs invited his colleagues around the world to participate in a collective act of imagination. He asked them via email to imagine the future of theatre from that specific moment when theatres were closed and it was not clear how, when, and even if they would open again. The answers were compiled in the book and then the doors opened again, which was published in September 2020 by Onomatopee.
Since then, the book has been used as a tool to generate further speculations and reflections about spectatorship in pandemic times and beyond. David Weber-Krebs and dramaturg Simone Basani have worked in different cities (Brussels, Skopje, Rotterdam), through walks around a theatre, conversations, online and offline workshops. In Summer 2021 they had a series of conversations with spectators of different ages, cultures and professions, in Rēzekne and Riga. All these encounters have been documented, their traces collected in the archive of and then the doors opened again. For Homo Novus 2022, David and Simone want to unfold the archive with a group of local artists and intellectuals as a starting point to explore the question: as spectators, what do we crave for now?
Raw materials around the world are becoming increasingly difficult to find; some are already running out, prompting large mining companies to turn to the depths of the sea. It is said that only about ten percent of the seabed has been explored – the potential of its discovery seems endless, and the desire for raw materials unstoppable. Four kilometres below sea level, a mining robot of the Belgian company Deme-Gsr scrapes the seabed in search of rare metals. On another ship, an international team of marine biologists closely monitors the operation. On board the third ship, the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace activists protest wildly. What are the implications of this possible future industry?
After the Collection Europe (ACT) project developed last year at the Mladi Levi 2021 festival, Škart, the pensioners from the Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home, and Bunker, gathered again for a workshop dedicated to environmental issues – endangered bird species. The working methodology still includes drinking coffee together, as well as a visit to the Ljubljana Marshes and a meeting with the experts from DOPPS – Birdlife Slovenia. A mural will be created on the wall of the Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home, which will remind us of the beauty of birds and the beauty of daily gatherings that are disappearing in time.
International festival Mladi Levi is one of the more prominent annual events of the Bunker Institute, bringing the most current stage performers from all over the world to Ljubljana every end of the summer, since 1998. It bears a mark of a demanding artistic profile, placed within the arena of contemporary progressive theatre and takes pride in its reputation for discovering young talents. The Festival has a distinctive atmosphere, marked with creativity and vibrant spirit, curious audience and social nature.
Through a guided walk from the Bikčević path on Medvednica to the author’s temporary installation – a forest cabin, Tin Dožić publicly presents the research carried out so far as part of the work ‘Dromomania adriatica’. The basic research and working method is dromomania, which comes from the Greek word “dromos” and means running, and denotes a need to travel, that is, to change one’s place of residence. In this sense, Dromomania turns away from homogenizing forms of representation of the environment, either through tourism or geo-information systems (GIS).
“Wall applause house laughter” performance is dedicated to the earthquakes that devastated Bania in December 2020. The house is our cosmic womb, a place of safety and permanence, a refuge from the immense sum of external uncertainties, a point of order in chaos. The wall is a border and a dividing line, once personal, but in the history of mankind it is often similar to a house and its function. A large part of popular psychology and self-help literature convinces us that the experience of reality has very little to do with that “reality” and more to do with our decision on how to interpret that reality. And although we can reasonably claim that the earthquake in Bania is a tragedy, nothing prevents us from applauding the earthquake and laughing in the face of those in charge of the house of our community. And to build a wall in their honor.
Transforming Energy presents the latest work by the Berru collective and investigates the potential of the oceans as an element capable of responding to the challenges that the energy crisis and the management of natural resources pose to us today. This is a Collection Europe project, promoted by the ACT partners COAL (FR) and Culturgest (PT), and it is presented in the framework of Portugal-France Season 2022.
The 1st performance reading of the Zagreb Fair is an urban ideogram through a series of performance propositions, some of which are participatory and co-performed by the audience. The Zagreb Fair creates haptic dialogues on its monumental and wounded forms in groups around the narratives of the city’s (sometimes traumatic) history.
Burdened with a load of woven baskets, the artist walks in circles around the Dolac market (Zagreb), going up and down the stairs, while balancing the installation on her head. Baskets are empty. The plot has no end, because it goes in a circle. This walk is dedicated to burden women, who in the recent past carried heavy loads of 5, 10 or 15 and more kilograms on their heads every day, often to and from the market. How much did all the burdensome women who preceded us bequeath us and what are our burdens?
In the dictionary, words are defined by the meaning known to speakers of that language. Creative use of language changes or enhances the basic meaning of words. This is especially evident in literature when words in friction with other words affect each other. Politics is an activity that should strive to organize society for the benefit of as many members of that society as possible, but we are witnessing how politics, not only through actions but also through the “creative” use of language, often does the exact opposite. Our actions and words are at odds, so over time words no longer mean what they should mean by definition, which also affects value judgments and the experience of reality. That is why dictatorial regimes, as well as some nominally democratic ones, often perversely change the language and meaning of words.
In all nine of this year’s femicides, there were witnesses to the act itself or incidents that preceded the femicide, and the question arises whether they were victims or accomplices. This installation raises the same question. How much we turn a blind eye to devastating statistics when they are just statistics, with special emphasis on the fact that the victims are women – women who continue to fight for their rights and equality in Croatia. Unequal in life, unequal in death.
In a joint performance, Vesna Stilinović and Vlasta Delimar connect their similarities and opposites through elemental eros. However, through tender friendship, they do not want to be one, they want to be two. Vesna is 77 years old and Vlasta is 66. Vesna is an actress and Vlasta is a performer. They decide that their aging will be a successful, active and healthy aging, because aging is not deterioration, but an increase in one’s own potential.
The relationship to nature and the relationship between modern life and past times are the basis of Mija Štark’s first author’s play. In the foreground is the search for links with the origins of man in nature, the recognition of elements of pre-Christian culture and agricultural preconceptions of the world related to the cult of the earth and fertility rites. Transforming over time, these remained at least fragmentarily in the customs of the community, world view or language.
Dealing with the position of a stranger. A foreigner within the state apparatus. Within the profession. Within your own family. On stage. An executive search for a place that could resist all the unknowns that this stranger brings with him. A place where the body could be pressed. Merge. Grow together. At least for a moment, forget about your own impermanence. A place they could call home.
An invitation to discover the forest close to home and meet the women and men who inhabit it, cultivate it, protect it and draw inspiration from it. Nature experiences, collective actions in the forest, shows, artistic works, vigils and sharing of knowledge and know-how by foresters, wood professionals, committed actors or scientists…
In the near future, two friends meet in a forest. Michel, just back from two years of deep mindfulness in an ashram, did not follow the news. Taylor hurries to tell him about his adventures with the ‘Context and Modality Platform’, a kind of political party that – as an out-of-control joke and against all odds – has landed at the gates of power. Taylor tells his story using a nifty futuristic device that can project your memories in front of you as a hologram.
The theme of the Riga Summer Lab, promoted by NTIL, is peatlands – a source of life for rare plants and animals, and a major carbon absorber. Peatlands in Latvia occupy more than 10% of the land and although draining and burning of peatlands for agriculture and other purposes is a massive source of greenhouse gas emissions globally, peatlands are still being used for extraction purposes in Latvia, peat being a major export product. The carbon storage potential of peatlands is still widely underappreciated. Thus, we invite artists to Magical Peatlands Summer Lab to wander through various peatlands, spot endangered bird species, listen to nature and various biologist stories.
Marina Gioti was awarded the COAL Prize for her project Sounding the Silent World. A special jury prize was also awarded to Brandon Ballengée for his project Searching for the Ghosts of the Gulf. The prizes were awarded during a ceremony held at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, in the presence of the nominated artists and members of a jury made up of experts in art, ecology and research, chaired by Christine Germain-Donnat, Director of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, and Bruno David, President of the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle.
The nineteenth Queer Zagreb Season 2021 will be held this year from May 26 to 29 at the Zagreb Dance Center, Pogon Jedinstvo and on the streets of Zagreb. The audience will have the opportunity to watch and participate in a rich cultural program characterized by ethno-queer aesthetics, queer bodies and of queer history. During the four festival days, a series of performances, workshops, lectures, two new titles from Domino’s publishing house will be presented, and an ethno-queer trip to Ličko Petrovo Selo will be organized.
This conference is a platform that brings together theoreticians and practitioners of various kinds to share and discuss knowledge about the possible ways of transforming the future into a liveable one, for both humans and non-humans (in an ecofeminist, post-colonial framework of care, solidarity and anticapitalism). The conference is part of the activity “Other Spaces”, from the EU project “ACT – Art, Climate, Transition”, which consists of lectures, discussions, artistic research, discursive programmes and other formats. Through them, we try to open up spaces for reflecting, questioning and mapping the role and responsibility of culture and art in our society and their political action; including their relation to issues of extractivism, erosion/appropriation and preservation/development of the commons and the environmental catastrophe.
Lokomotiva аs partner of the project ACT: Art Climate Transition, is one of the partners in the campaign “Your birds, our birds” which is organized in Marseille and in the member countries of the ACT network in Europe. The campaign brings together 10 cultural and art organizations from 10 European countries that will create a mural and a programmme to give visibility for a certain rare bird in the region in which they operate. The project ACT puts the stories of these 10 murals into a collection across Europe, to be presented September 2022 online and onsite. Lokomotiva Skopje in cooperation with the Macedonian Ecological Society and the artist Dorotej Neshovski developed a programme in partnership with the primary school “Goce Delchev”, Skopje and the municipality of Centar.
A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. Set in a fictional film studio, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this ‘funny, clever and thoughtful two-hander, rich in playful imagery’ (The Guardian) their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’.
What attention do you pay to the sounds of your environment? What if those sounds slowly fade away? In his performances David Weber-Krebs (BE/D) explores the role of (human) spectators at a time when their activity has a profound impact on their physical and ecological environment. With The Silencing he enters the realm of sound and invites the audience to listen collectively to a world that is becoming increasingly silent.
For more than a decade, Isabelle De Voldere – senior researcher at IDEA Consult – is conducting impact assessments on behalf of strategic knowledge centres in Flanders (Belgium). In this webinar she will share some insights on how impact-oriented thinking has evolved over time in those organisations and how it has become a strategic instrument for both internal reflection and external positioning on their role in societal transitions. She will reflect on lessons that can be learnt from those insights that are relevant for ACT and the ACT partners.
An introduction with Isabelle, followed by a conversation moderated by Jacco van Uden & Arie Lengkeek.
Please write to Jacco van Uden to register for the webinar: [email protected]
Where Daniel Linehan’s previous performance Listen Here: These Woods took place among the trees, Listen Here: This Cavern invites you to descend into the darkness of a cave, to sharpen your senses and to listen. The music of Pauline Oliveros – recorded in a gigantic underground cave – accompanies the dynamic movement spirals of the performers. Let your senses get used to the dark and listen to the sound vibrations and dancers circling in the darkest space of Kaaitheater.
Kate McIntosh’s latest performance throws the work of several writers, composers and performers into the mix. To Speak Light Pours Out immerses you in a powerful listening space: it is a world where rhythms, voices, texts and their meanings shape and channel each other. Surrender to exhilarating polyrhythmic beats and the raw energy of layered voices that unleash sonic and spoken images, both political and poetic, liberating and activating.
Parade of Horribles is a roaming devised work, combining performance, spoken word and projection to celebrate differences with empathetic humour and amplify consciousness around the psychological effects of Climate Crisis. Going from City to Town, spending time with community groups in each area to better understand their lived experience, their fears and desires to translate into imagery for the street. Audiences will happen upon, share, and remember images designed to start conversations. Parade finds ways to create empathy between people and rejoice in the vibrancy that difference brings to our lives.
Based on Marco Martins’ new performance, this debate hacks the multiple dramaturgies of masks. As a medium and stage for the figuration of the Other, masks show, hide and perform profound human technologies of the game. Face and mask differ and resonate with each other. From supernatural beliefs, masks deal with what fascinates and is feared, turning the wearer into hybrids beyond the culture/nature, animal/human and true/disguised dichotomies.
Every last Saturday of the month, Einat Tuchman invites you to the Marché Bildy Markt at Molenbeek’s Gare Maritime. This new local market is a meeting place, where you together shape a more sustainable future. Artistic events, such as concerts, workshops or interactive performances, highlight a connecting theme every month. The Marché Bildy Markt lets you consume locally and differently: you can buy products made by residents of Molenbeek and Laeken, local farms will be selling their produce at democratic prices, and snacks and drinks will be available in the café!
Marco Martins proposes in WILD a reflection on the use of the mask in ritualistic practices that, since time immemorial, collectively mark crucial moments in Europe, such as the equinoxes and solstices, integrating characters such as the Wild Man, the Bear, the Goat or the Devil.
The pandemic continues to polarise planet Earth. The weekly Corona Denialist Pride parades through the streets, accusing science and politics and proclaiming the end of freedom. From a queer point of view, this sounds strangely familiar – but those who still hope that the long-awaited queer turn will result from the lateral thinking movement will probably be disappointed… This is where the Queer B-Cademy will have to help in the future – that non-state-recognised educational institution whose highest task is to keep alive the perspectives, knowledge, struggles for survival and experiences of those who have been marginalised in the longest pandemic of this world: patriarchy.
bodies of knowledge (BOK) considers the city as a rich source of valuable knowledge. Every passer-by could teach you something from their own background and life-experiences. BOK seeks to share this invisibilized or suppressed knowledge through oral transmission, that potentially could give rise to a socially more just society.
The Big BOK Multiplication tells the story of one and a half year of BOK in Brussels. BOK has been travelling as a nomadic classroom space through various parks and squares in Brussels for the past 18 months. Each week, passers-by and regular visitors could participate in the free programme, where they could learn about topics like: the central place of women in the Kurdish liberation movement, practising listening when you are used to being in the centre, Africa – a customs officer’s perspective, fighting structural injustices in mainstream education – as mothers, surviving and living with little money, saga of a happy borderline person and many more. All issues that don’t get a place, or not enough, in our schools, in mainstream institutions and in the media.
Based on photographs of scientific missions organised by the Portuguese Institute of Tropical Scientific Research (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT)), and within the scope of project Photo Impulse, which focuses on photographic collections of Portuguese scientific and geodesic missions in Africa throughout the 20th century, this roundtable discussion establishes a dialogue between the epistemological perspectives of that colonial scientific past and contemporary ways of thinking philosophically, artistically and conceptually about the relationship of humans with plants and botany.
Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux introduces an interdisciplinary project that brings together scientists, legal experts, artists and other professionals to think about the ties that bind humans and other living beings. Vibrating in the World invites us to imagine a presence on the planet that is both an embodiment of the self, and also – evoking Édouard Glissant and his philosophy of relation – the act of becoming sensitive to all living things and to our cosmic condition.
How has colonial history marked our relationship with nature? In a two late afternoons program, we gather several disciplines of knowledge to open the photographic archives of contemporary Portuguese history, trying to see them as documents that, simultaneously, reveal traces of multiple ecologies, and are the expression of how colonial history marked nature.
The ocean is our geographic, dreamlike and political horizon. While the United Nations proclaimed the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development 2021-2030, the COAL Prize 2022 invites artists from around the world to explore these submerged universes to make them accessible to as many people as possible; to reveal what is playing out in the belly of the ocean, from its abyss twenty thousand leagues under the sea to its surface, to give to see and feel what is still unknown; and to imagine new concrete actions to rekindle resilience with the water worlds.
It seems to be far away, but it’s getting closer than ever. We are able to precisely alter the genetic code of our body cells, embryos, bacteria, viruses and plants. With the CRISPR cas9 technology we can adjust the properties of any organism to our liking. A revolutionary development that will have major consequences for humans, plants and animals. The performance CRISPR zooms in on the children who are born after applying these ‘genetic scissors’. A search for identity in a world that has more and more control over the technical side of existence.
From February 11 to 25, 2022, a selection of some of the most prominent actions and happenings from the sphere of political performances in Croatia, from the sixties to the present, will arrive at Laub — House for People and Art. The exhibition “This is not my world” is named after Željko Jerman’s intimate slogan from 1976, and gathers over 30 artists who recorded and reacted to regime changes with political gestures, from resistance to cultural and social conformity at the end of the 1960s, to the erasure of alternative culture during the reign of Tuđman, until historical revisionism in modern Croatia.
Exhibition based on the History of Political Performance project of the Domino Association, with the aim of becoming a comprehensive source of political criticism of domestic performances in Croatia. The project also traces the development of a strong peace and human rights movement, the emergence of the queer movement and its clear development into today’s struggle for trans rights, an initiative to defend public spaces, freedom of the media, the continuous struggle for women’s and minority rights rights, and more recent resistance to neoconservatism and populism.
For its second edition, the Nuits des Forêts festival reopens its call for participation to all artists, creators, performers, actors in the cultural and educational sectors, thinkers and poets, to weave an artistic and sensitive program in the heart of the forest. The call is open until January 30, 2022!
A nationwide festival intended for the general public, the Nuits des Forêts (FR) invites you to discover the forest close to home and meet the women and men who inhabit it, cultivate it, protect it and draw inspiration from it… At a time of climate change, forests are at the heart of societal debates: droughts, tree diebacks and diseases, forest fires, carbon offsets and uses of wood… Because forests are a common heritage, the Nuits des Forêts wish to create a time of exchange, bringing together forest stakeholders, wood professionals, but also experts and scientists, thinkers and philosophers, artists, and inviting all citizens to mobilize on these issues. Through the encounter between culture and nature, this event intends to make society aware of forestry issues and promote new relationships with living things, at the level of each territory.
In 2017, Catherine Hoffmann’s ovary and fallopian tubes were removed after a 10-pound cyst was discovered in her abdomen — a cyst the size of a 22-week-old baby that she named Leonard. How did it get there? Was it the fault of the egg cell and follicle, or had Catherine herself conjured them up through underlying emotional causes? The director and performer recorded her thoughts and experiences in a diary, which would later form the basis for a show about illness, (re-)production, sexuality and aging. During the creative process, Catherine Hoffmann spoke to many other women about what she had experienced, immersed herself in the world of gynaecology and retrieved lost knowledge about the female body.
Even the biggest revolution starts with the smallest of shifts. Even a gesture can inspire us to strive for freedom. MOTIONS OF REVOLUTION is about the rights to one’s own body. Based on the numerous ongoing demonstrations against the repressive and conservative government course in some European countries, above all the abortion law in Poland, the new choreography by Maria Zimpel, who was born in Hamburg, focuses on the body as a political place. In the tension between glitch and continuity in the music of jazz minimalist Wacław Zimpel and the video of Australian radical choreographer Rosalind Crisp, the dancing body is dissected in its concentrated states. Maria Zimpel, who is always looking for physical challenges and creates new, sometimes utopian perspectives on the world through choreographic processes, wants to show in MOTIONS OF REVOLUTION that the dancing body has always been and will always be revolutionary.
In their first duet for the stage, the artists Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld dedicate themselves to creating new ways of a community hospice. To do this, they weave objects, stories, projections and fantasies and create future worlds for each other through experimental dance, text and video practices. Hailing from Brazil and the US, Rodrigo and Liz met in Berlin almost a decade ago and began an artistic exchange about their own desires, experiences and stories associated with a queer position on death, dying and end-of-life care. What care options are there during this phase of life for queer communities and families who are not related? How do people want to be seen and perceived in this vulnerable phase of life? Together, the two artists met with diverse people who work with death in both pragmatic and creative ways, including a palliative care physician, a dying doula, a choir director, a bondage expert, and a tattoo healer. Inspired by these conversations, Rodrigo Garcia Alves and Liz Rosenfeld have built their current hospice, this duet for the present.
The ocean holds numerous stories of kinship between the human and the more-than-human. One of those stories tells of the ancient oceanic ancestors of our present-day (human) bodies of water. Traces of many of those ancestors, such as the amoeba or the jellyfish, are still present in the human body. This last session in our Series of More-Than-Human Encounters is entirely devoted to oceanic storytelling in kinship with hydrofeminism. This form of feminism is particularly sensitive towards watery creatures and our solidarity with them.
In this development/process project, Ana Lazarevska presents part of her research which is based on careful and unrushed observation of nature and society. Their functions, relations, and ways of functioning as a system. She compares them to the system by which the human body functions, which exists in its complexity as nature does, which depends on the functionality of the organs, their connection, the environment in which it develops and lives, depends on external influences, trauma, safe keeping, love, care, etc. By deconstructing the body, she reflects on the process of creating and on the bodies and systems in which they function, i.e. how cells combine to form tissues, tissues to form organs, and organs to form organisms that exist in systems – social systems and ecosystems.
The person is first and foremost an idea, to think of it in terms of a particular embodiment is to be within a tradition that forces the idea of personhood into a particular shape. In the western world, this has been an imagined rational, individual human of a particular class. This way of thinking is neither the only one nor the most fruitful – it hides the different ways of knowing inherent within multiplicity. During this evening, we will explore how human personhood has been constructed, and how it can be decentered and made to expand into different ways of seeing and being.
With Marisol de la Cadena and Isabelle Stengers, Mod. Mihnea Tanasescu
Follow the lecture on the You Tube channel of Lokomotiva, Skopje: https://youtu.be/9tDK4E6fdBg
Faced with increasing inequalities and the inability of the neoliberal state to offer institutional mechanisms for the fulfilment of all people’s social and economic rights, which the market simultaneously fails to provide, the pressure to find alternative modes of production, social relations and forms of organization is overwhelming. The challenges that the TINA (“There Is No Alternative”) paradigm faces and the opening up of possibilities to imagine non-capitalist societies, as well as to avoid the capitalist appropriation of attempts to bring about change, are always present. At the same time, it is encouraging to see narratives and practices of resistance emerging, transforming and sustaining, and therein promising such possible change. Over the last decades, the concept of the commons has emerged as one of the potent political paradigms that has inspired different social actions and political mobilizations across the globe.
Networking as part of the ACT project is an important segment, in which partners are sharing and discussing the activities’ state of the art. This meeting was organised and hosted by Culturgest, Lisbon with participation of other project partners and representatives from: Arts Admin/London, Bunker/Ljubljana, Kaaitheater/Brussels, COAL/Paris, Domino/Zagreb, Kampnagel/Hamburg, NTIL/Riga, Theater Rotterdam/Rotterdam, and Lokomotiva /Skopje.
A play that behaves like a stone: what would that look like? What form would a ‘mineral’ representation take? What if we try to imitate what is never born, never will grow and never dies? In How to Turn to Stone, stones, as ‘non-living’ things, are models for a different kind of resistance. Manuela Infante brings pieces of eroded stories together. The fragments become landscapes and she stacks those landscapes like geological rock layers – using looping and sound landscaping. This creates a ‘mineral’ representation telling you something about what is written in stones, and what stones have written in us.
The artist collective Baltic Raw Org, with the active support of the Migrantpolitan team, has subjected the wooden house on the Kampnagel site to a general renovation. About the architecture: The redesign of the Migrantpolitan was done in the spirit of Bauhaus: »light, air and sun«, recyclability, circular economy & adaptation by the artist collective Baltic Raw Org. As a long-term and sustainable public space intervention, Migrantpolitan’s building acts as a transition from theatre and urban space. It is located at the intersection of neighbourhood use and cultural production, laboratory & studio, an eco-social retreat, in a word: a platform of possibilities.
The importance of the art practices and production in political action and activism (not just politics in art practice, media, or messages) has been central to movements such as Ocuppy Wallstreet, the Arab Colored Revolutions, or those in Southeastern Europe, the conservation movements, and even in one of the most common organized forms – the occupations (of theaters, dormitories, faculties and other public institutions). There, apart from the establishment of a new (often temporary) system of relationships, mechanisms of care, rules of conduct; there was also a discourse of applying artistic practice in joint action and organizing cultural and artistic policy (production, activity and use) as part of the assumed needs and potentials of the members of the new (temporary) micro society.
As part of the program Other Spaces, Lokomotiva creates a space for production, creation of knowledge and reflection on diverse issues concerning our future and topics related to social justice, the environment, post humanity, the Anthropocene, cultural policies, queer and feminist issues, etc. In that regard, we are supporting Viktorija Ilioska, a performer and choreographer who will work in Skopje on the development of her piece A Womb for an Adult in the period between November 10 and November 21. The research, which started in Germany and was partially developed in Skopje during the summer, will have its final stage of development in Skopje and later its premiere at the Theater Neben Dem Turm, Marburg on December 10 and 11.
Welcome To Our Guesthouse is the beating heart of Production House Theater Rotterdam. Welcome To Our Guesthouse is a warm and heartfelt welcome to makers who think across borders, both geographically and artistically. It is also an invitation to the public to become acquainted with and be part of the processes of carefully researching artists who value social engagement. The overarching theme of this year’s edition is Illumination in Darkness.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, nightclubs have been closed and the right to demonstrate is under pressure. With RÆV rehearsals*, Tools for Action + Floor propose a hacking of the streets of Rotterdam, igniting the public space, reclaiming sociality, making the city beat through the pandemic. During their residency at Welcome To Our Guesthouse they will address questions relating to performing in public space in a workshop and rehearsals, that are partly open to the audience: how to interact with each other, the traffic, the architecture and the local residents? How to initiate patterns of movement in crowds? Which movements unleash energy and a sense of freedom.
The global Covid crisis brought healthcare into the spotlight. But care extends beyond the strictly medical: it includes everything we do to preserve and restore the world. The erosion of the welfare state, the plundering of the Global South and the crossing of planetary boundaries is worrying. What about the connection between exploitation of man and of nature? What if tomorrow we found the courage truly to care for all people and other earthlings, for our unique living world?
Around the same time the precursors of Carl Linnaeus (Lobelius, Clusius, Dodoens – whose books were all printed by Christoffel Plantijn) started their dubious classification of the natural world, radical botany got born. It is a genre of fiction in which the speculative energy of plants to imagine new worlds gets fully unleashed. The genre tackles important issues about ‘agency’ revolving around the question: ‘How to re-think agency outside of the notions of desire, exploitation and power, outside the animal logic?’
Gosie Vervloessem invites Natania Meeker, Antónia Szabari, Gry Ulstein & others
Emke Idema develops theater forms that expect an active role from the audience. Forest is about building a new world order in which the tree is central. We are on the threshold of the age of the tree, the Dendrocene. After the Turnaround, the tree was canonized worldwide, and cutting down, or even damaging trees, is considered murder. The world will soon be forested, and that will have major consequences for our way of life.
The last white male rhinoceros is extinct. Forest fires, floods and landslides are the order of the day all over the world. What can we do to turn the tide? Theater makers Anoek Nuyens and Rebekka de Wit have been closely following the climate debate for years. They attended shareholder meetings of multinationals, read speeches and interviews with Shell, plowed through government policy papers and agreements and systematically noted the comments of their uncles or neighbors whenever climate change was discussed at Christmas dinner. They want to know which images, arguments and rhetoric cause so little progress in solving the climate problem.
In December 2007, the front page of Germany’s most important tabloid and Europe’s bestselling newspaper Bild Zeitung, proclaimed with big letters: “Tonight lights out from 20:00 to 20:05!”. Participating in the symbolic act of switching off the lights, people felt part of a large community that cares for climate change and that is determined to solve this problem together. For the time of five minutes…
The role and position of our planet has, once again, been profoundly shaken by the new sciences that reveal how human actions can cause the Earth to react in unexpected ways. If Galileo taught us that the Earth moves, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis have discovered a dynamic and self-regulated Gaia. And, once again, the whole organisation of society seems to be called into question. A lecture-performance by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, in which the social and cosmic order is described as “heading towards an unparalleled political and economic collapse”, due to the climate crisis.
Three celestial bodies launched into orbit vibrate in a lascivious and hypnotic ritual. Dog Rising explores the circulation of physical matter and the passage of vibrations through our bodies. From primitive impulses to gestures that are at times sexual, at times mechanical, Clara Furey’s new creation comes together like a polyphony of pulsating bodies, in turns dissonant and in unison. The choreographer pursues her exploration of physical phenomena, initiated with Cosmic Love.
We are in the future. On the ruins of a failed democracy, small creatures try a reconstruction and test which tools they need to organize their environment. In a strange opening session of this new parliament, where sound recordings, film images, smells, objects and creatures of all kinds come together, the inhabitants of the city are invited to experience, question and construct. The CHILDREN’S PARLIAMENT an installation-based, interactive and multimedia long-term performance developed by renowned Belgian choreographer Michiel Vandevelde. The performance is aimed at younger and older audience members.
In the wake of the Capitalocene and its severing consequences, the issue of humanity’s relationship with more-than-human world asks for searching philosophical and existential trajectories beyond anthropocentrism and Culture/Nature divide. Instead of that, usual reactions to ecological crisis in the field of culture deals with reduction of CO2, energy consumption and other rather technical issues that go by the name of “greening”. We propose going several steps further in rethinking the place of cultural policies and productions in the complex web of life than such “green”, “sustainable” and “resilient” cultural policy and practice approaches entail.
Our Skin is a dance film by Yael Karavan and Rita Vilhena. Filmed in the wilderness of Coentral Grande, in Castanheira de Pêra (Portugal), the film is composed of images captured with micro and macro lenses of the skin of the trees, the veins of the rivers, and the bodies of the dancers, breaking the separation that exists in urban society. The film observes and questions how we influence each other: Body-Earth, Earth-Body as it explores the transformation of the female body merging with the natural landscape. The boundaries between the performers bodies and the landscape disappear, highlighting the continuity of our skin into the skin of the earth.
As the natural illumination that we experience as human beings from the direct sunlight gets shorter, we approach a new edition of our artists – in – residence programme Welcome To Our Guesthouse. During this edition, with the overarching theme Illumination in Darkness, we focus on the interconnected nature of our actions, responses and decisions that cause different impacts. We aim to examine the function of the natural phenomena light and darkness in our daily life and question the conditions that control to a large extend how we work, create art and live.
WE ARE STILL LOOKING FOR PARTICIPANTS!
The project THE CHILDREN’S PARLIAMENT by the Belgian artist Michiel Vandevelde is a play that deals with the question of what human coexistence on our planet could look like. It will be performed on 09 and 10 October 2021 at Kampnagel, and you can be part of it! Do you like to play theatre and do you want to experiment and tinker with video and sound? Then come to the workshop: Over the course of seven days you will paint the future, practise transforming into other beings, make costumes and shoot videos for the performance.
The Apocalypse Reading Room is an on-site library curated by Ama Josephine Budge: a world of talking stories in the face of environmental and social collapse, a gathering of all the books we might need to change the end of the world… The Apocalypse Reading Room transforms a public arts space into a post-apocalyptic library installation filled with books for all ages, exploring ways to build, transform, rethink, rewrite and reimagine our futures.
Who are ‘WE’? And what would the world look like if we got rid of the supposed distinctions between humans, plants and things?
BVDS suggests we let go of our focus on the individual and instead practice forming groups in a technological playground. Inspired by the forest, the swarm and the herd, Crowd Simulation Room explores the possibilities for humans to playfully connect with the greater whole, a vast, multitudinous organism. In so called practice space surrounded by other humans, animals, plants and inanimate objects, visitors play ‘The Game of Life’, a simulation where not the survival of the fittest but rather co-existence is key.
An attractor is a state to which any dynamic system tends to evolve. Chaotic or strange attractors are a set of values that never reach equilibrium. In a performance that emerges from a meeting of art and science Latvian artist Voldemārs Johansons offers a rare view in the world of mathematical chaos, where generative computing is depicted with sound and choreographed movement.
Nurture is a one-to-one performance which makes space for tenderness and vulnerability. Through the act of breastfeeding, it investigates the politics of care, gender and coexistence. The performance invites you to examine the interdependent nature of life: the countless networks of human communities as well as the biological processes that sustain our bodies and enable life on earth.
How can you create a safe space in public space for the exchange of various forms of repressed or underexposed knowledge? How can we challenge the hierarchy of public debates and arrive at a more horizontal, fair and inclusive society? These are the starting points of bodies of knowledge (BOK), an alternative school, that stays in the same spot in the city for a few weeks or months, and then moves on again.
In her performance series Diorama, contemporary Norwegian artist Ingri Fiksdal uses choreography as a special effect or lens to change the way we perceive the world. Her performances reflect on the passing of time, on the slow change in landscape, and scenography as an ecological practice of bodies both human and non-human.
Built from a chorus of breath collected in parks and spaces across the borough, the sound is a moment of cleansing and defiance, taking a sound we are surrounded by and tuning into its beauty at a time when breathing has never felt so loaded. Immersion culminates in choral performances across Tower Hamlets and at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios, amplifying and strengthening the sound, and tuning in to the defiance of borough’s history. It is a moment to remember the sacredness of air, of living in a constant cycle of inhalation, transformation and exhalation with the planet and each other.
Immersion is one of the commissions for Season for Change, a UK-wide programme of arts activity focused on a step-change in climate awareness, activism and justice, delivered in partnership by Julie’s Bicycle and ArtsAdmin.
Ræv rehearsal* invites you to rehearse new forms of coming together. Glow shoes, flashing lights, portable audio sculptures, a mobile speaker system and of course: you. These are the ingredients for a new kind of manifestation, a rehearsal in which the participants jointly create a movable light show to a techno beat. Ræv rehearsal uses several TOOLS FOR ACTION to organise these rehearsals safely during Covid. Helikites and floating helium sculptures with LED light strips and Bluetooth transmitter act not only as a strobe and transmitter for the speakers, but also as a warning system when people get too close.
What Shall We Build Here is a festival of art, climate and community at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios in Aldgate East, across east London and in your local supermarket.
From mini-golf for dogs to outdoor drag performance, coffee mornings to a sober party for healing, Artsadmin invites you to events that imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and the planet.
Featuring artists Selina Thompson, Aisha Mirza & Aaks B, Kaajal Modi, Ama Josephine Budge, Oozing Gloop, Alicja Rogalska, the dream(ing) field lab, and Nigel Barrett & Louise Mari.
What Shall We Build Here is part of Season for Change, which is spotlighting artists’ climate leadership in the run up to COP26.
The Feast is a youth-led event – a journey into the world of bacteria, yeast and fermentation. Together with the Berlin artists’ association Edible Alchemy and chef Dita Lase, we will ferment, salt, bake and feast on snacks made from food that others throw away. At the same time, we will discuss with the audience how and where we buy our food, how we use it and how much we throw away.
An attractor is a state to which any dynamic system tends to evolve. Chaotic or strange attractors are a set of values that never reach equilibrium. In a performance that emerges from a meeting of art and science Latvian artist Voldemārs Johansons offers a rare view in the world of mathematical chaos, where generative computing is depicted with sound and choreographed movement.
Forces of Nature follows a movement of an articulate and complex organism composed of five persons with different energies and ideas. Their desires might not be the same, but they have a common goal: the construction of a shared physical and imaginary space.
This mixed media performance addresses the challenge of manifesting the complex reality through the extended metaphor of bees and is structured through three main agential types: a Queen, a drone and a worker. The indivisibility of reality suggests to us ever-widening circuits of existence, located in the agential manifestation of life.
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.
The twelve artists of this exhibition have been nominated for the COAL Prize. Inspired by those involved in the protection of nature, and in close collaboration with other disciplines, they create individual and collective initiatives and offer new hints, exploratory and sensitive, to tackle this living crisis. They invite us, finally, to invent new ways of relating to living things, and thus to better defend them.
The Journey is a week-long hiking workshop through the Latvian countryside. While walking, we are introduced to multispecies perspectives and politics by live streamed lectures, podcasts and other materials by international scholars and practitioners who become our travel guides and remote co-travelers. Shifts between listening and learning, walking and experiencing prompt us to re- learn our relations to the more than human world and ourselves.
This Building Talks Truly is a performative installation of the history of Skopje in the scale of 1:100, which received First Prize at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. The work of Filip Jovanovski, a visual artist and activist who transforms political and social categories into artistic spatial pictures and advocates the preservation of the importance of the public and of public space, combines different forms of scenography: space, stage, exposition, memory, community and communication.
Still Life is a performance that takes its context seriously. The performance deals with human duality towards the living world, using taxidermy or stuffing – a »metaphor for the love of nature. But it can also serve as a metaphor for social ignorance and anthropocentric exploitation of nature. In the corona times, Still Life can also be seen as an exercise in peace and experiencing nature – a still life… In theatre, we live and experience together. Who then is the rabbit who gets up with the help of animators and looks at us from the stage… And who are we?
Listen Here: These Woodsis a literal invitation to go into nature. Set to the soundtrack of the forest, of wind rustling through the leaves and birds zipping by in the branches, the forest is these five dancers’ home, as they draw you into feeling the dynamic aliveness of the forest. The performance becomes a beautiful exchange between forest, dance, and audience, as we all momentarily share space with other living creatures in nature. At that moment, a question arises: what if, at least during these hours while we are here, we all belong in the forest?
The theme of the Ljubljana summer lab is urban trees, which will be explored by all participants – both in practice, with chairs on their shoulders around the city, and by means of artistic tools and theory. Artistic research and creation will draw on the concept of »archiborescence«, a term coined by architect Vincent Callebaut. Attending artists will draw a map of trees with their stories and present them to the audience.
Artists from different countries (Croatia, France, the United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, as well Slovenia – represented by Ivana Vogrinc Vidali and Tery Žeželj) will be united in a temporary collective by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, artist, activist and ecocide researcher (The Guardian of Nature) and Gosie Vervloessem, artist and researcher (The Toxic Detective)
Artists from different countries (Croatia, France, the United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, as well Slovenia – represented by Ivana Vogrinc Vidali and Tery Žeželj) will be united in a temporary collective by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, artist, activist and ecocide researcher (The Guardian of Nature) and Gosie Vervloessem, artist and researcher (The Toxic Detective).
The theme of the summer lab is urban trees, which will be explored by all participants – both in practice, with chairs on their shoulders around the city, and by means of artistic tools and theory. Artistic research and creation will draw on the concept of »archiborescence«, a term coined by architect Vincent Callebaut. Attending artists will draw a map of trees with their stories and present them to the audience.
Nonpractical Women combines creative writing with almost stereotypical handicrafts of the older generation, pushed to the fringes of society by the pandemic. The exhibition, prepared by the residents of Tabor retirement centre, will offer sharp verses and harsh socially critical view, embroidered and drawn on napkins. The opening event in the Tabor Park will give you the opportunity to chat with them in the shade of chestnut trees, and the exhibition will be open until the end of the festival.
This project is part of ACT’S COLLECTION EUROPE.
“You sniff the air and listen to the birds and you realize the animals and trees don’t give a damn about you.”
– Maria Lucia Cruz Correia & Benjamin Verdonck
Nevenka Koprivšek was the wind of change in our city, sometimes she was like a gentle breeze that only inspires slightly, and sometimes she was enthusiastic, rebellious and strong like a storm, pushing the boundaries, or – and this parable might even suit her best – as a hardy tree that grows steadily, adapts, and defies time. Ever since Nevenka passed away, she has remained present in all of us and in her works, her urban and artistic victories. We would now like to inscribe her in the urban space as well, dedicating a small memorial site to her, arranged in her spirit, which will brighten the days of her »locals« and passers by.
This year’s topic is maintenance, or care, in connection with art and culture. In an age when only innovation, improvement and progress matter, we will reflect on the potential of what is already good, what already exists, but is neglected, dilapidated, ignored … How quickly do we discard functioning systems and arrangements looking for something better and new? Wouldn’t it be easier to build on the existing, or do we have to constantly reinvent things?
Director and actress, Iveta Pole travelled to Ljubljana to participate in the ACT – art, Climate, Transition Ljubljana Summer Lab, hosted by Bunker, from August 23 to 27. The central theme as trees in urban environments. Lectures, interaction master classes with Slovenian stage artists, as well as conversations with various researchers took place. The summer school had a strong impact on the Latvian director: “The lectures and events were designed so that we could look at the tree in different ways. To be honest, I had such a realization – I have had an irreversible change in how I look at a tree in the city,” says Iveta Pole.
Lokomotiva, partner in the European project ACT: Art, Climate, Transition, invited Filip Jovanovski, a visual artist and cultural worker who works on socially engaged and interdisciplinary art projects that include working with different communities, cultures, politics and institutions – to be part of the residency in Ljubljana, at the second edition of Summer Lab Program, organized by Bunker.
PLEASANT ISLAND is about the fate of the small island of Nauru in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which was coined Pleasant Island by the first European explorers. The island was swept by colonization, capitalism, migration, overexploitation of natural resources and the resulting ecological catastrophe. Once an island paradise, the island became a synonym for post apocalypse – in addition to economic, humanitarian and ecological devastation, the island is threatened by rising sea levels. Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere managed to get permission to enter the island for a limited time, and are coming back with testimonies and, above all, questions. What kind of future awaits Nauru and what will be the fate of the world striving for endless growth and profit?
Philippe Quesne is a French artist who is a regular visitor to the Mladi Levi festival. This year, he will present himself at the Mladi Levi with Farm Fatale, which portrays the life of scarecrows in a post human world devastated by an ecological catastrophe. The scarecrows lost their jobs after the collapse of humanity and ecosystems, and are trying to inhabit the screaming void of space. But they can’t really do it. Quesne unveils before us, at a steady pace, the bare absurdity of living on the border between the past we have devastated and the responsibility to create something new, better, more sustainable.
How do we introduce a festival, more than a year in the making, which this year alone suffered the loss of its founder; which was created during a seven-month closure of stages; which was almost completely severed from international stages? And yet, the upcoming festival Mladi Levi 2021 fills us with cautious joy and hope. It was envisioned on a grand scale, hoping to prove that the stage remains a relevant public space and that festivals endure as segments of time which create communities, provide space for international and local exchange, communicate with audiences – and give space, time, and attention to art.
ACT-performances in the festival:
Philippe Quesne, FARM FATALE; Silke Huysmans & Hannes Dereere / CAMPO, PLEASANT ISLAND; Bunker, DISCUSSION CAFÉ; Škart, NONPRACTICAL WOMEN; NEVENKA’S GROVE, memorial; ACT Summer Lab: Urban Ecologies – Trees in the City: Ljubljana; Filip Jovanovski, THIS BUILDING TALKS TRULY; Tin Grabnar, Tjaša Bertoncelj: STILL LIFE, Nine Attempts to Preserve Life
From August 8 to 15, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia provided an artistic residency for theatre maker Begüm Erciyas (Turkey/Belgium) to prepare the new production “Forest Silent Gathering”. The premiere will take place in April 2022 in Antwerp, as part of the international arts center’s deSingel program. During the research, Begüm interviewed forest storytellers (ornithologist Viesturs Ķerus, folklore researcher Sanita Reinsone) and recorded the sounds of various forest habitats. Sound post-processing is currently taking place, in which NTIL helps with translations and coordination of materials and archives (for example, Dainis Īvāns’ speech during the Baltic Way).
The Perforations Festival and the Night of Performance, after the Zagreb edition held from June 29 to July 3, and after successful guest appearances in Dubrovnik, Koprivnica and Rijeka, travels to Zadar, the last location of this year’s festival.
With Dance performances by Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar – Shake it off / Filodrammatica, and Šimun Stankov, Una Štalcar-Furač, Espi Tomičić – Arbajt / Exportdrvo. Night of performances by: Igor Zenzerović – Study of one hug / Promenade, Andrej Zbašnik – Postman / Promenade, Josipa Bubaš – Beauty / Gallery Filodrammatica.
This year’s edition of Night of Performance took place on July 2nd at different locations in Zagreb, and within the framework of the Performing Arts Network. The program will also take place in Dubrovnik, Koprivnica, Rijeka and Zadar. In Koprivnica, on July 10, Nikolina Majdak (I support), Josipa Bubaš (Beauty) and Mirjana Đan (Serb, Gypsy, Fag and Muslim) will participate.
From July 5 to 23, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia organized an artistic residency for the Belgian artist David Weber-Krebs, who, together with the playwright and producer Simone Bassaniand, and the French sound artist Samuel Sylvain Repault, worked on their new production “Silencing”. A coproduction of the New Theatre Institute of Latvia and Kaaitheater (Brussels). The first rehearsals took place in Riga, attracting Inta Balodis, Jānis Balodis and Kati Krolli as actors. Sound space and technical assistance were provided by Voldemārs Johansons.
David Weber-Krebs research work focuses on the theater experience in the times of Pandemic. Adapting to the conditions of Covid-19 pandemic David already changed his initial plans in April 2020, and as opposed to making a new performance, he sent out e-mails to European stage art professionals asking them to imagine their first theater visit after the isolation. All of the responses were gathered in a book called “And Then the Doors Opened Again”, which was published in September, 2020. This year, 2021, after traveling to various countries, David interviewed theater professionals and theater audience about their experience. He spent four days in Rezekne, Latvia, interviewing Rezekne city theater “Joriks” crew and the inhabitants of Rezekne, as well as saw the performance “My Neighbor Jew” and interviewed the creative team.
Communities respond to natural disasters with immediate actions of solidarity and mutual support. The Zagreb Summerlab artistically explores ideas and practices of care and solidarity around the 2020 Zagreb and Petrinja Earthquakes.
As part of the Perforations Festival, a very special night forest expedition will take place. From Friday 2.7. on Saturday 3.7, those interested will have the opportunity to participate in the ecological-artistic project of the French artist Thierry Boutonnier, which includes camping and spending the night in the woods, learning about mushrooms and dreams. This collective experience will give participants a dual perspective on mushrooms: from a scientific point of view, they will learn about the indispensable role of mushrooms in the forest ecosystem, and from the artistic side they will have the opportunity to make mushroom handicrafts.
The project will be implemented as a simultaneous mirror experience in France and Croatia. The Croatian expedition team consists of the artist Azra Svedružić, in charge of implementing the Thierry Boutonnier concept in Croatia, and two mycologists Ivana Kušan and Neven Matočec.
This year’s edition of Night of Performance includes works by Nikolina Majdak, Igor Zenzerović, Mirjana Đan, Božidar Katić, and Josipa Bubaš. A guided tour will be organized to guide the audience through all five performances of the selected artists.
The project brings together 75 visions by artists, scholars, curators and spectators, created in response to a question sent to them by David Weber-Krebs in the middle of the first wave of Covid-19 in Europe: What will happen on your first theatre visit after the lockdown? While being confined at home, David found himself thinking about the day when theatres would open their doors again. It somehow seemed impossible to picture this moment.
The Zagreb Summer Lab was organized by Domino, as part of the European project ACT: Art, Climate, Transition. It took place from June 30 – July 3, 2021 in Zagreb. On the topic of “Natural disasters: Lessons from two Croatia earthquakes in 2020”, artists and activists shared their experience and knowledge.
Lokomotiva, partner of the project ACT: Art, Climate, Transition, invited Ivana Dragšić, a sociologist and civil operator working in the area of urban commons and governance, with a focus on ecofeminism, culture, politics and institutions, to be part of the artistic residency in Zagreb.
Perforations Festival, 2021 – the thirteenth edition of the festival of performing arts and independent author productions of contemporary theatre, dance and performance will be held in Zagreb, in the Zagreb Dance Center and other locations, from June 29 to July 3, 2021. The festival will program, during July, within the framework of the Network of Performing Arts, take place in Dubrovnik, Koprivnica, Rijeka and Zadar. The new festival edition includes numerous theatre performances, talks with artists, workshops, an artistic trip to a nature park, an urban safari, as well as another exciting Night of Performances (July 2).
The work of the artist Gabriela Albergaria focuses on understanding the acculturation of landscape and nature, through the migratory processes and globalization from the fifteenth century onward. The artist uses multiple typologies, such as: sculpture, installation, works for public space, drawing and photography. This exhibition provides an overview of her activity over the last 15 years.
According to an old Spanish folk tradition, villagers used to cry directly into the cloudy sky to ward off an approaching storm. With a canticle, they tried to scare away lightning and turn hail into raindrops. A nublo! This performance without players places you in the eye of the storm and in the middle of an intense sensory experience, in a landscape that is halfway between the scenography of an opera and a cloudy valley, between geology and an amusement park. The characters you meet there are neither people nor animals, neither monsters nor gods, but rather natural phenomena.
Last year, more than ever before, we were confronted by our mortality. The vulnerability of a body, but also of life on earth itself, was visible everywhere. In DO NOT LOOK BACK WITH REGRET, director Davy Pieters invites you to consider this. ‘It’s about seeing what we don’t want to see. Our relationship with mortality is not the same as 18 months ago. How do we relate to loss? How do we create the space to stop and process it?’
A project in process about (possible) futures of theatre conceived by David Weber-Кrebs with the dramaturgical support of Simone Basani.
And then the doors opened again continues in Skopje the research phase started in Bruxelles at Kaaitheater, during which a series of spectators shared individually their visions about future spectatorship and theatre. Part of the research is also an online collective workshop on the same topic with spectators from Macedonia and abroad.
The second part of the Ethno Below the Belt programme happens in cooperation with the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb. The interested audience will have the opportunity to participate in a guided museum tour Ethno Below the Belt, with the guidance of the museum expert, Željka Jelavić, and the founder of the Tara Association, Sonja Leka. The elements of traditional culture are introduced with a special focus on sexuality and sexual practices and the elements of clothing associated with them. Special attention will be paid to the protection of the male genitalia.
How to start a movement is a three-week letter project by the artist Merel Smitt. Over a period of three weeks, each participating household receives 14 envelopes in their letterbox. These envelopes contain instructions, (reading) materials, messages and traces of the movement that must be viewed, followed or executed. As a participant(s) you join a movement in which you relate to daily life in a different way. During three weeks you will research, observe, disrupt and question, alone and together, the dynamics of the city of Rotterdam and the rules that are followed and enforced in this society. A journey of discovery that is intimate and collective at the same time.
In cooperation with the Association of Tara Citizens (Ličko Petrovo Selo, Croatia), women responsible for preserving and transmitting the tradition of handicrafts and Lika’s sense of humor, there will be an Ethno-Queer Trip to Ličko Petrovo Selo. Participants have the opportunity through the workshop programme to get directly acquainted with the rich tradition of handicrafts and the phenomenon of nakurnjak. In addition to a knitting workshop and socializing with local women, the trip also includes a tour of the Plitvice Lakes and learning about local history and customs. The trip is part of the Ethno Under the Belt program, which will continue on May 29 with a guided tour at the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb.
Faced with the ever more real prospect of an uninhabitable planet, it is urgent to imagine a closer, more inclusive and more generous relationship with nature and the non-human aspects of life. Inspired by a series of eco-feminist proposals, the historian Teresa Castro suggests that images and the cinema can help us to expand the limits of our attention, thus laying the foundations for an ecological reason.
In her lecture, Suzana Milevska will present various art practices of women artists who have mounted ecofeminism as a critical frame that not only offers environment awareness, but also aims to deconstruct contentious assumptions that dwell on stereotypical and patriarchal hierarchical understanding of women’s creativity and productivity.
In this talk, dr. Suzana Milevska will discuss various art practices of women artists who mounted ecofeminism as a critical frame that not only offers environmental awareness, but also aims to deconstruct the assumptions that dwell on stereotypical and patriarchal hierarchical understanding of women’s creativity and productivity.
“SADiti JE BITNO” is an art installation by Lucija Žuta that will be installed on the Square of Victims of Fascism in Zagreb, from 19 to 24 May, as part of the program to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Beuys, one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century. This installation is produced by the association Domino, and as part of the project Visual construction of the political: 100 Beuys, jointly designed by Goethe-Institut Kroatien and Subversive Festival.
The world may be hiding in fear of the catching and the further spreading of the Coronavirus but QUEER B-CADEMY never closed down. Because queer knowledge continues to claim its place on this vulnerable planet Earth. TAKING TO THE STREETS focuses on the public space – a place many take for granted and others consider dangerous, and where they experience exclusion from society. Queer B-Cademy will be defying the mental lockdown. Binging on TV shows can wait. It is the ultimate preparation for reentering public space. A four-day program that will open up all of your energy spots. Air your mind and embrace your spring fever, summon the street spirits of the past, present and future with all the tales of queer life!
Will we change human behaviour if we transform our idea of “energy”? 2021 marks the 35th anniversary of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, which took place on 26 April 1986. Considering the event from a philosophical perspective, we will look at the profound connection between different ways of obtaining energy. The catastrophe of our century not only lies in other nuclear disasters, but also in our continued adherence to a destructive structure for the production of energy, which is threatening to bring an end to various forms of life on the planet.
A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters #4. To highlight the International Day Against Racism, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson takes the floor to share her innovative thinking on the intricate relations between race, species and the idea of ‘the human’. In her thought-provoking book Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, she scrutinizes key African American, African and Caribbean cultural texts. She argues they generate conceptions of ‘being’ that disrupt the human-animal distinction that persistently reproduces the racial logics and orders of Western thought.
A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters #3. Over the course of this evening, the intersections between animal liberation and disability liberation are explored. How do speciesism and ableism intersect and operate in relation to other -isms in a system of oppression? If certain abilities are the prerequisite to include other animals into the circle of moral consideration, what ethical and practical implications does this hold for humans who do not possess these abilities?
With Agnes Trzak and Geertrui Cazaux.
Are you – or rather, were you – a regular theatre goer? How do you feel about no longer being able to see a live performance? And what do you think your first theatre visit will be like when the doors of the theatres will open again? That is what David Weber-Krebs wants to know.
By the end of 2019, the City of Paris initiated a process of mobilising cultural actors as part of its circular economy plan, in order to assess and promote a transition towards circular economy models in the cultural sector, based on its specificities, needs and the experiences of peers. This resulted in a first booklet of 9 toolboxes published on Paris.fr. In 2021, the City of Paris, in partnership with COAL and Les Augures, is continuing this collaborative work by exploring new thematic fields through two cycles of workshops around digital sobriety and materials, which will complement the tools already available.
We live in an age in which human activity has a profound impact on our physical and ecological surroundings. How can we create stories, aesthetics, and spaces of experience to deal with this situation reflexively and critically? What role can the performing arts play in the debate on climate crisis?
In the second instalment of A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters we are inviting researchers, activists and artists in a three-day-programme to explore the meaning and potential of justice in a multi-species post-imperialist world. Should we confer fundamental rights to animals and natural formations – such as lakes, the seas, rainforests and the soil? What can historical, present-day and future human and more-than-human alliances of resistance teach us? How are the worldwide decolonial struggles related to the global and local struggles for the live, safety and autonomy of non-human animals?
With Eva Bernet Kempers, Darko Lagunas and The Dunes of Schouwen-Duiveland.
After Marko Marković performed Delirium interruptum on January 9 in front of the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, on January 15, in Vukovar, we will continue with the project Future of Political Performance, where the artist Nina Bačun will present her work Sketch 1 IDEAS. The idea of sliding authorship, transferring responsibility or taking over it, it’s the sub-topic of the mentioned work, which is set up within the expert advocacy panel ‘EU as a forgotten peace project?’.
The Audubon Mural Project is an art project in the public space. And it consists of painting, on the city walls, frescoes depicting birds threatened by climate change. This concept aims at fostering creative civic participation and raising awareness on biodiversity loss. It is a collaboration between the National Audubon Society and the Galerie Gitler & _____. COAL launches the Audubon Mural Project in France: Les murs d’Audubon.
In this talk, Maneesha Deckha calls for a non-anthropocentric reorientation for Canadian law and other Western legal orders, by criticizing their treatment of animals as property, but also finding fault with personhood as an appropriate animal-friendly replacement. Instead, marshalling feminist and postcolonial insights, as well as critical animal studies, the book theorizes a new legal category altogether, namely beingness, as better able to protect animals from exploitation and value animals for who they are. Professor Deckha’s talk will delineate this new concept as well as outline how the foundations of anthropocentric legal systems must otherwise change to move toward justice for animals.
The video “Grow me, water me, caress me!” is part of an ongoing project of the same title, which tries to record the rapid urbanization of the city and the growing need to go back to caring for public green areas. The video tries to document the “urban, domestic and abandoned gardens” in the hidden parts of the city, and at the same time record and map visible and invisible activities related to the importance of plants, nature and clean air in the city of Skopje. This work is part of the author’s extensive research and moves on the border between activist documentary and devotion to nature.
The Trees Remember! is a research study in process, which starts with this action of “remembering” the history of the city (and the world) through the memory of the trees. With this action we start building an archive of the trees’ memories, an archive of the violence and destruction of the public space in the city. This action starts at the park near the Bristol Hotel, the place where we can still hear the “shriek” of the fallen trees, the sound of the chainsaws, we can see the shadow of the faces of the arrested peaceful citizens on the armored vehicles of the special task force units – the trees remember all of this. Our society forgets, keeps forgetting, and it is our job to collectively remember so that we can move forward, without forgetting our solidarity and struggle for public spaces.
Keinberg deals with the moral and economic collapse of a small industrial community. The performance is based on the research of real case studies of several cities. One in particular is a small town on the very north of Sweden, whose inhabitants are mainly working class employed in the local mine. Thus, the mine’s long term exploitation endangers the very existence of the community. The local authority’s solution is to move the entire town elsewhere – to literally copy it and transfer it to another place, inhabited by an indigenous community that lives in accordance with nature.
Gabriela Flores del Pozo, Lucia Monge and Gianine Tabja, the three Peruvian artists from the FIBRA collective are the Prix COAL 2021 laureates, with their project “Desbosque: desenterrando señales”. By drawing on underground networks, the collective represents the invisible links between life in the forest and the actions of urban dwellers in the city, and thus highlights the intersecting social, political, cultural and economic causes and impacts of deforestation.
The photographic research project of the urban and peri-urban forestry in Skopje investigates the politics of space and environment in the specific local context. It takes a form of an urban landscape photographic series that maps and documents individual trees on the level of the street against a backdrop of the built environment, groupings of trees, parks, and other urban woodlands. It is not a scientific, environmental project, although it uses some convergent trans-disciplinary approaches in its methodology, but rather a personal, poetic view of the shrinking nature in the city by one of its inhabitants.
The five fundamental mechanical principles of movement are gravity, inertia, resistance, momentum, action, and reaction. And they inspire Ivana Müller in her new work. Thus, these principles compel bodies, objects, animals, water, minerals and plants to move. Indeed, we must control them if we want to walk and dance. What if these forces apply to social, political and emotional bodies? A new perspective arises on the world around us.
This show has been cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Multispecies urbanism puts forward a ‘just’ urban development on the basis of policies and practices that give priority to reciprocal interrelations between humans and more than humans. By giving primacy to the care of the ‘natural world’, multispecies urbanism de-centers humans as limited, single species and reorients towards strategies, which go further than mere human strategies: diverse and fluid humans become participants in their multispecies communities. This new urban planning and design paradigm is now only beginning to take place in municipal practice, but is setup to survive the ongoing crises of democracy, planetary climate catastrophe, and uneven resource distribution.
Artists Selina Thompson and Ama Josephine Budge discuss the possibilities for new futures of artistic practice amidst the climate crisis. Part of Season for Ex-Change, a three-week programme of free online events for artists, arts organisations and cultural practitioners.
For city dwellers, landscaping and management of city trees are very important. However, the legal organizational framework for the integrated management of urban trees is currently weak. The need for a comprehensive and professional work with urban trees is increasing over time. Climate change and public health problems require more trees and a better management of the existing ones. The experts have been addressing such demands to decision-makers for a long time, so far without success. Lets draw attention to this issue together!
In Rijeka, the Night of Performances includes works from the Croatian artists, Petra Mrša and Antonio Grgić.
People fleeing from slavery in Brazil would go to the places called Quilombo, in search of shelter. As a result, autonomous communities survived in a profound ecological relationship with the territory. Today, they still hold important practices and provide valuable knowledge. António Bispo dos Santos is a writer, a Quilombo-master, and a farmer.
The year is 2020. From Australia to the Campine, nature is on fire. There is rapid deforestation, constant building projects, and millions of species of plants and animals are under imminent threat of extinction. This exploitation of nature is radically undermining and destabilizing our world and thus our very existence. When a new virus creates an epidemic and then a pandemic, existing tensions come under even more pressure. As always, vulnerable groups here and in the global South pay the highest price.
In Zagreb, the Night of Performances takes over the Ganz Event New Perforations. The programme includes a wide variety of works and Croatian artists, such as Milijana Babić , Centar Za Ženske Studije Rijeka, Petra Mrsa, Antonio Grgić, Vladimir Novak, and Vlasta Delimar I Milan Božić.
The Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos took the natural phenomena of collective movements of birds and fish, as a starting point to create a dance performance. From there, he zoomed in on ions, electrically charged atoms, only to rediscover the same basic forces of attraction and repulsion that govern not only all existing life, but also all human relationships.
Theater Rotterdam is warming up. Just like the rest of the world. But what does that mean? And how do we deal with it? How do we live together on a warming planet?
In collaboration with Impact Makers, Theater Rotterdam presents the Warming Up Track. Five days in a row that include an exciting theater programme with works from Lotte van den Berg, Emke Idema, Marjolijn van Heemstra, Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot and more. In these performances, the visitor is invited to think about possible future scenarios, with room for discussions and expeditions afterwards.
how to start a movement is a durational mail art project aiming at empowering the everyday life of the 60 participants. During 19 days each participant will receive 15 envelopes in their physical mailbox. The envelopes contain messages, instructions or traces that invite the participants to move, to act. Thus, they create opportunities to engage with their lives in Rotterdam in a different way. You might pick up some traces of their experiences while visiting the presentation days of Welcome To Our Guesthouse #4.
Who Cares? is an artistic project researching the place ‘care’ has in our society. In order to do that, Moha dives into 6 different professions, that deal with care one way or another. As part of the Welcome To Our Guesthouse residency, promoted by Theatre Rotterdam, Moha will open a temporary office, which will be open to discuss the topic of ‘care’ with people that pass by. During each presentation day of Welcome To Our Guesthouse #4 Moha is organizing a bingo around the topic of ‘care’.
In AKOMFRAHDIO we follow a character who receives messages from different timelines and dimensions in the past, present and future. The character receives the messages through radio waves. They contain directions and blueprints to ‘create’ something that should free the marginalized and doomed of the earth.
Call Me Anytime You Want is a conversation about being together, across physical and emotional distances and is an attempt to fantasize about all the things the future may or may not provide.
The play Correction is Inspired by conversations with the inhabitants of Darda in Baranja. This performance is a testimony and analysis of the paradigmatic problem of life in still post-war Croatia. Thus, the play deals with intimate relationships and broken ties between people. Also, it observes them in the context of political and sociological reflections of everyday life. Through a theatrical response to the documentary material, CORRECTION will try to establish its own specific response to the painful place of the context in which we live, which is currently additionally affected by the corona-crisis.
Sightings-Sitings is a project that explores the locations of the North Sea, the area between La Manche and the Norwegian Sea. The initial methods of movement and observation are walking, walking on seabed during low tide, observing the sky, stars, tides, architecture, organisms, meteorological forecasts. The artists record movement with photography, sound, text, bodies. Thus, they collect textual material, experiment with narrative structure, voice and agency, explore potential vocabulary of non-human subjects, record random human statements, write down everyday life and experiment with multi-subject positions, unclear positions, undefined, non-subjects.
Silvia Federici is an activist, feminist, writer and teacher of Political Philosophy and International Studies at Hofstra University (New York). In this lecture, she examines the relationship between “witch hunting” and new forms of capitalist accumulation. Thus, this event follows the launch of her most recent and highly acclaimed book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and the Original Accumulation, (Portuguese edition) published by Orfeu Negro.
In the new Theater Rotterdam production ANTIBODIES, the performance duo Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot honours feminine anatomy as the source of creation during a ritual meeting. In a technologically mediated séance, we see a woman moving in a closed capsule between reality, fiction, dream and hallucination. On the basis of her online data, she descends into twilight zones where she meets variants of herself.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas is internationally acknowledged by her virtuoso and expressive choreographs. Moreover, she is one of the most original and influential voices in modern-day choreography. In 2018, she was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale.
COAL commissioned the solo show by Fabienne Berthaud, novelist and director. The exhibition “Au vent, au ciel, à la terre” [“Heaven, wind, earth”], is at La Halle aux Sucres, in Dunkirk. From October 19 to December 22.
As Covid-19 is not leaving anytime soon and become a part of our daily life, we approach a new edition of our artists – in residence programme Welcome To Our Guesthouse. With this edition, we focus on the challenges that we as makers, cultural workers and public are facing during this pandemic: the interconnected nature of our actions, responses and decisions have caused different impacts local en international. If It is the uneven conditions that controle to a large extend how we work, create art and live, ”How to gather together?” becomes a key question in our current shared moment. From this starting point and with the main attitude of learning by doing we designed a Lab Week in collaboration with the Art Of Performing Track of Theater Rotterdam. During this second edition of Welcome To Our Guesthouse Lab Week, the makers of Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam meet regularly for performances and series of sessions called Encounter & Exchange, where we collaborate with artists Hooman Sharifi, Enkidu Khaled and Naomi King.
Welcome to… 2020!
As COVID-19 is not leaving anytime soon and has become part of our daily life, we approach a new edition of Welcome To Our Guesthouse. With this edition of our artist-in-residence program, we focus on the challenges that we face with the main theme How To Gather Together? With this theme we aim to unfold our routines and become a sustainable artistic platform for future ecologies. By doing so, we activate ourselves, the makers, our partners and the audience to construct our future from the present: careful, sustainable, radical, transnational and socially engaged!
It’s not a secret that cut off trees outnumber planted ones, in the city of Riga. Empty places overgrow with grass or concrete, shadows disappear from the streets leaving no refuge, no place for taking a breath. This work expands and develops, hopefully, many decades after the festival. It is an invitation to imagine, to observe, and to grasp such a strange process as a form of life.
To the voices of Timo and Helene and inspired by the lockdown, Dalton Jansen made a choreography about the animal that hides inside in every human being, and that emerges as soon as we feel trapped.
HICCUP was developed in a residence at Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam during Welcome To Our Guesthouse 2019 and is about male and female roles, as they are handed down and recorded in myths and other repertoire.
Alida Dors has been the artistic director of Theater Rotterdam since April 2020. She curated the Opening track and created a choreography that can be seen during this track, inspired by her earlier performance Or Die Trying. An energetic performance in which dance and Thai boxing complement each other. This new tailor-made choreography is about transformation, and is made for all dreamers and the fighters among us.
The Grande Loge Foundation is a producer of socially inspired and innovative, contemporary performances for a wide audience and a brother sisterhood – brozilians – for young adults. Grande Loge offers space to makers with an art training and to (urban) self-taught artists. It brings together popular street culture with more classical forms of art and culture and uses the combination and power of individuality and education to bind audiences and cultures.
URLAND’s contribution to the opening week is in the light of finiteness. Thomas Dudkiewicz, in the embodiment of the British philosopher Alan Watts, gives a seminar on death and the way it is viewed in the East and West. A guide to reflect on death together.
Stephan Bontje (known as Sbontje) grew up in Rotterdam, the number 2 city when it comes to diversity in cultures. He has always had a great fascination for the history of these cultures. He is therefore inspired by the many types of visual languages that these cultures carry with them. He investigates patterns, architecture and religious prints and tries to transform them into a new image in the form of illustrations, paintings and sculptures.
We throw it away and like to keep it out of sight, but our trash is everywhere. In this performative intervention, new life grows out of that which we discard. A mutating plastic entity that roams around and chases us. The performances of Davy Pieters (1988) are investigations into the future of humankind and the way in which they are influenced by technological developments and visual culture. Her performances are characterised by a strong visual, physical and cinematic style.
In Accusations: Walks & Fragments, Ann Van den Broek, together with the performers, dissects the meticulous puzzle that is Accusations. In 2017, the performance was based on the biographical material and character of Van den Broek. The Walks manifest as a continuous procession moving through space. Accusations: Walks & Fragments: Past / Present / Future draws the audience and the performers along in a critical (self) reflection, always on the way to a better version of themselves.
Specially for the openingstrack developed the Performance duo Boogaerdt / VanderSchoot in collaboration with Jimi Zoet (URLAND, composer) a dance ritual in antiseptic suits.
G-Roots originated in 2002 from an initiative of three black gospel soloists and has since grown into a gospel choir with talented singers and its own band.
The choir has performed on many stages and gained experience in different areas in the music world. G-Roots’ repertoire is very diverse and ranges from modern Blackgo games to Dutch songs. Alida Dors asked the choir to provide the final chord during Opening Week.
If the current situation teaches us anything, it is that we should never make the distance
between us so big that we cannot longer find our way back. Under the artistic leadership of Alida Dors, Theater Rotterdam is developing a program with the overarching theme: The Careful Re-Encounter. The opening parcours has the theme TRANSITION, in which TR artists-in-residency co-curate and execute their contributions.
Together with the artistic group GolfClayderman, young people from different origins in Riga are going to challenge the super power of fashion industry by creating an alternative collection, out of materials found in their neighbourhood. At the DIY fashion show, Party Animals invite them to discover an alternative version of beauty and success.
The Question Project explores doubt, hypothesis, proposition, uncertainty. It is a conversation with city dwellers who think in the form of a question. What would you ask the city? What would you ask your body? Indeed, these are just a few of dozens of questions that came up in different cities around the world. The Chilean artist, activist and architect collective MIL M2 creates and conducts this mobile performance.
At the end of the year, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia and the Chilean interdisciplinary collective MIL M2 invite to have a look at the digital booklet of mobile urban performance “Question Project” that took place during this year’s international festival of contemporary theatre Homo Novus and invited Rigans to pose a question to their city, their neighbour, the future and themselves.
Over the past months, we experienced solitude and socio political anxiety. We were searching for good interlocutors, but in the conversations through computer screens, they were limited by the strict rules of technology. Throughout the months of constant change, we are trying to think, to understand, to influence change. Also, at the same time, we are trying to understand the future. Indeed, we miss the charm of juicy conversations! We want to be able to feel and see the reactions of our interlocutors. For this reason, this year’s Mladi Levi conversations will take place outdoors, in a relaxed café atmosphere.
Keeping up with this year’s changes, the 2020 edition of the Mladi Levi International Festival was adapted. Thus, it focuses on promoting exceptional local artists. A wide diversity of artists presents their work: young Slovene artists, women artists from different disciplines. Also, guest international artists are coming from Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Austria, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, among others.
In this Night of Performances, the Croatian artist Siniša Labrović performs “Pecanje”. It’s a durational performance that underscores the absurdity, but also persistence as opposed to a prospective hopelessness. Everything seems wrapped-up and ready-to-use, as well as ‘safe’, but the performance still insists on testing the limits, to surpass the impossible. This performance hopes for a miracle.
In summer 2020, The Apocalypse Reading Room: Room2Room goes digital and you can listen to readings online each week on a newly curated Apocalypse Reading Room webpage. Selected guests are invited to read a section of their apocalypse survival guide from their favourite reading rooms: nooks, living rooms, bedrooms, attics, garages, closets, stairwells and basements.
The Art of Walking is a durational performance walk of 312 km. Departing from Amsterdam, the artists walk through the borders of the city of Rotterdam, all the way to Calais. The Art of Walking is a performative project that raises awareness to the ongoing struggle of migrant laborers displaced. Indeed, after the COVID-19 lockdown in India, countless migrant workers have been walking long distances from big cities to their native villages.
In frame of the programme Contemporary Culture and Cultural Policies/Other Spaces, Lokomotiva organises SERIES OF LECTURES WITH DISCUSSIONS related to the position of the artists and cultural workers in the labour market, relations between artists, managers, and the public and their interrelations and influences, as well as, the mutual influence with the social authorities and the environment in which we operate. Besides, lecturers will offer views related to the ethical dilemmas and thoughts about the responsibility towards the relations between us, but also the environment, nature, and other beings with which we share the world.
Benjamin Verdonck is an all-round artist. He creates visual work and theatre – poetic, nimble and compelling – both in theatres and in public spaces. In this performance, he builds and operates an unusual planetarium of sticky tape, ropes and cardboard.
Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Under the title THE CHILDREN’S PARLIAMENT, Belgian artist Michiel Vandevelde has been working on a series of projects with Hamburg children and young people between 8 and 13 years of age since the current season. DAS KINDERPARLAMENT is a democracy-building project that deals with the question of what human coexistence, but also the future of all living beings on the planet could look like or how it could be shaped. Michiel Vandevelde investigates what other social, economic and cultural alternatives can be imagined in order to question and change dominant logics and modes of organisation.
Who are we? Are we the ones who created the environmental crisis? Are we the ones that feel it? And whose world is coming to an end? The elementary basis of this audio visual installation is a set of several technological, random and personal information about various scientific discoveries. Thus, these provide an alternative to the current methods of production in organization of life, waste, emissions, etc.
We seem to be living in a time when comedy and satire can proclaim they have been overcome by reality. It’s hard to be more ridiculous than reality, which is becoming the greatest absurdity of the absurdity itself. The improvisations we are playing to comply with the new regulations, government outbursts, our own feelings, have flooded our everyday lives and become the new normal.
Imagine an organism that feeds you, heals you, reveals secrets of the universe and could help save the planet. (Fantastic Fungi, 2019)
Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.
The philosopher Zhao Tingyang introduces ‘Tianxia’: a conceptualization of the world as the composition of three realms. These are the physical, the psychological and the political, thus placing inclusivity and harmony at the heart of a global worldview.
Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus
In 2020, the COAL Prize foccuses on the topic of biodiversity and its destruction. This 11th edition is part of the VIVANT programme, a cultural season on Biodiversity. Furthermore, this festival sets the way for the IUCN Congress on World Conservation (postponed to Jan 2021).
Award ceremony: June 2020, in Marseille (FR).
Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.
Art critic, media theorist and philosopher Boris Groys argues that modern ‘antiphilosophy’ does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal, but rather proposes the universality of life.
Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Working with artist and mental health activist ‘the vacuum cleaner’, curator and agitator Cecilia Wee and a stellar line up of international artists, activists and academics, With For About 2020 creates a vital, slow and complex space between art, activism, care and social practice in response to COVID-19.
The organisers are looking for contributors from anywhere in the world. Thus, they are very keen to hear about things they won’t have heard about, the unchampioned, undiscovered and low-key.
“Facing these unpredictable times and our already fragile position in society, we found ourselves in need of urgent reflection with our colleagues, partners and friends.” Therefore, Lokomotiva decided to promote online reflections on the changing conditions brought about by the actual pandemic situation. It is an attempt to create a new public space since the existing one has been taken away by the virus. All reflections are on Lokomotiva’s YouTube channel.
We live in an age in which human activity has a profound impact on our physical and ecological surroundings. Thus, there is the need to question what role can the performing arts play in the debate on climate crisis? Indeed, in this performative conference by David Weber-Krebs and Jeroen Peeters (curators), a variety of hybrid artistic and theoretical interventions wander around these issues.
Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Locked down at home during the first wave of Covid-19, David Weber-Krebs kept on thinking about the day when theatres would open their doors again. At that point, it was somehow difficult to even picture that moment. On the 8th of April, 2020, in the middle of the lockdown, David sent an e-mail to his peers: artists, scholars, curators, and spectators belonging to different art communities. In this e-mail, there was a simple question: What will happen on your first theatre visit after the lockdown? It was an invitation to imagine the future of theatre from this very specific moment when theatres were all closed and when it was not clear how and when and if they would open again.
Daniel Christian Wahl’s live streaming conference on how to redesign the human impact on Earth. In Wahl’s perspective, both as a biologist and sustainable development expert, the capitalist system is no longer working for the majority of the world’s population. Would a new paradigm enable us to become more resistant to the test that the recent Coronavirus ordeal presents to the global economy?
Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.
Indeed, what objects exist in the social world and how should we understand them? Founder of object-oriented philosophy, Graham Harman sheds light on the nature and status of objects in social life.
Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
This is a humorous and passionate monologue rooted in a form of artistic barefoot anthropology. Indeed, Orla Barry directs Einat Tuchman, exploring the boundaries of art, gender, and the rural everyday. Thus, the artist reflects on a culture in which the connection with nature has been broken.
Silence is not a luxury, but rather crucial to physical and mental health. However, we cannot celebrate silence acritically. Being silenced is what happens to the victims of abuse. Furthermore, the concept of bad noise is often controversial. Even silence has its politics. For two days, writers, artists, architects, astrophysicists and philosophers, all get together to discuss the importance of silence.
Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.
The posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Thus, it helps us to measure the effects of post–anthropocentric thought. A talk by philosopher and feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti.
In his new performance, inspired by Derrida, Ariel Efraim Ashbel offers a critical and equally hopeful view on the world’s end. Investigating apocalyptic culture, the show unveils the possibilities and aesthetics of a reality after human kind. Thus, it proposes a revelation: joy without nihilism, optimism without compliance, and fun without irony.
This performance is part of the RECLAIMING HISTORY Festival.
The term AZIMUT – from Arabic السموت , as-sumūt, is a term from astronomy. It means, among other things, “the paths”. Following the traces of colonialism, the young performers of the transnational ensemble Hajusom travelled to their countries of origin. They brought back stories and transformed their memories into choreography and songs, thus creating this multilingual performance.
This performance is part of the RECLAIMING HISTORY Festival.
RECLAIMING HISTORY’s artists and theorists reflect on the colonization of history and its contribution to postulate a stable patriarchal power. Thus, the festival presents unheard narratives. It also practices alternative cultures of remembrance and “herstory” telling. Indeed, the goal is to think of a present and a future that gives both visibility and a voice to those who have been left outside of his-story until now.
The artist Lucy McCormick presents this “as trashy and crass as it is honest and exposing” (The Guardian) performance. Thus, she crawls through the annals of history in this enthusiastically humiliating exploration of power and purpose.
This performance is part of the RECLAIMING HISTORY Festival.
The three show days nicely exhausted all of us. But instead of chilling in your own bed, come to Queer B-Cademy’s annual hangover brunch: How do we do in the end of the week? What moved, calmed and touched us? Did we find a new home? Aside vegan treats the table is also set with queered classic board-games developed for last year’s Queer B-Cademy – cause home is where your board game is! A good selection of some sweet sounds from DJ Waxs’ collection will complete the feelgood moment. Come brunch, play and gossip with us!
The Day 3 of the Queer-B-Cademy includes the following programme: “Ness – The Miracles of oral pleasures”, a workshop with Valentine Tanz; “Tiered Tongues”, a workshop with Samra Mayanja and mother tongues collective; “SEXXES”, a performance by and with Mamoru Iriguchi; “JOY NDUKU” by and with Subira Joy and Wandia Nduku; a concert by The Muslims; a DJ-Set / Performance by B2BCREW.
The Day 2 of the 2020 Queer-B-Cademy includes: “SEXXES”, a performance by Mamoru Iriguchi; “BAD LUGANDAN”, a performance by and with Samra Mayanja; a concert by Fayim fka Sidney Frenz; a ballroom dance by Kiki House of Angels; two DJ sets by Seven Angel and Saeleen Bouvar.
With HOUSE OF HOPE – the first part of the TRILOGY OF TOMORROW – QUEER B-CADEMY sets out on a visionary journey within our own four walls. How do we experience being at home, where and under what conditions do we feel at home? What if we have never felt that way? For four days Kampnagel is being transformed into a home, with a bathroom, open-plan living room and a play area. The heart that seeks a home needs hope. And hope is at the heart of the QUEER B-CADEMY curriculum.
Theater Rotterdam hosted the second Network Meeting of the ACT – art, climate, transition project. Apart from strategic and operational decisions that took place at this gathering, Theater Rotterdam designed a special two days program to welcome all the partners. This program included exchanges with resident artists Boogaerdt / VanderSchoot and
Zarah Bracht, as well as the guerrilla curation program with Maureen de Jong and Rodrigo Batista.
Au ciel, au vent, à la terre is the work of Fabienne Berthaud, novelist and director. She is exhibiting at Ground Control some thirty photographs taken during the two years preceding the shooting of her film “Un monde plus grand”, freely adapted from Corine Sombrun’s story, “Mon initiation chez les chamanes”. Following in the footsteps of her heroine, she traveled the most remote steppes of Mongolia, where the winds shape landscapes and uses.
An expedition to the source of the Styx led Karen Røise Kielland and Katja Dreyer to the heart of Greek mythology. This mythical river symbolized the border between our upper world and the underworld. Indeed, its water made Achilles immortal, it made Narcissus fall in love with his own reflection. They breathe new life into an old myth through numerous encounters with local residents and their stories about the river.
Youth for Climate Justice promotes this Carbon Roundup Round Table, with the purpose of debating national strategies and policies. Together, the goal is to critically examine the comprehensive National Energy and Climate Plan. Thus, looking for ways in which Slovenia can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Ten years ago, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty published “The Climate of History: Four Theses”. This was the first of several Anthropocene-focused articles that turned out to be as influential as controversial. Indeed, Chakrabarty’s work fostered an extensive discussion on the relevance of political and socio-economic divisions between the northern and southern hemispheres, namely in the threats to survival.
“Slow disasters” are events whose damage and disruption result from factors developed over a long time, such as climate change, environmental degradation, desertification or wildfires. In this Conference, Scott Knowles addresses the topic of risk, governance, vulnerability and resilience in relation to slow disasters.
The Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT, Lisbon PT) is establishing a series of initiatives to advance and disseminate new experimental modes of higher education and research, within the Anthropocene Curriculum. Indeed, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science initiatied the Anthropocene Curriculum in 2013, and it is nowadays a collaborative network spanning around the globe.
The COAL Prize 2019 tackles the subject of displacement related to natural disasters and climate change. Indeed, this 10th edition of the COAL Prize takes place in collaboration with the Platform on Disaster Displacement and DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys.
Award ceremony:
28 November 2019, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR)
3-5 December 2019, at the COP25, Madrid (ES)
The massive protest of young people against the climate impasse represented the most sensational event of 2018. Indeed, the Generation Hope holds up a mirror to politicians and shifted the climate crisis to the center of our social debate. They became united, refusing to accept half-hearten measures and insisting on radical climate policies. Thus, young people conquered a prominent place on the political stage.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
This performance installation represented the Republic of North Macedonia on the Prague Quadrennial for Performance, Design and Space (6-16 June, 2019). On this occasion, it received the award “Golden Triga” | 1st Prize.
MOONLIGHT is a choreographic project that focuses on poetic structures. This project explores dispersed meanings, as well as a malleable reality, on stage. It rediscovers identities that are persistently established, by unfolding and queering normativity.
Lokomotiva – Center for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture is hosting the first ACT network meeting, in Skopje. The main topic on the agenda is how to act, towards a just transition.
The Festival VIVANT is a cultural manifest aimed at drawing public attention to Biodiversity. Initially scheduled for the summer 2020, within the sope of the 2020 IUCN Congress on World Conservation. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the IUCN Congress was postponed to January 2021.
Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.
Extrastatecraft controls everyday life in the city: it is the key to power – and resistance – in the twenty-first century. A talk by the American architect and urbanist, Keller Easterling (Yale University). Also, it is part of the Ecopolis festival.
In his trilogy Porca Miseria, Trajal Harrell’s inspiration is the study of “bitches”, aka strong women from literature and history. The key figure of this performance is Maggie, from Tennessee Williams’ classic “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. Thus, Harrell reveals and deconstructs the social fabric of a segregated society, while dancing, voguing and celebrating the American South.
Inspired by the digital’s effect on the bodies, the choreographer Mette Ingvartsen creates a new universe. There, people, technology and organic matter coexist and create an abstract set of movements. Thus, the performance explores a poetics of plasticity, abstraction and imagination.
Bunker promotes a press conference, a petition, and a media campaign to call for action. The purpose is to raise awareness to the Climate crisis and to ACT accordingly.