Magazine for dance art Movements (Kretanja)
Publisher: Croatian centre ITI
in collaboration with project Critical parkour and Dance centre Tala

Performative interdisciplinary symposium
Spaces (no/sustainability, interiors, alternative worlds)
17th – 18th September
TALA PLE(j)S, Radnička cesta 27, Zagreb

In this event, dance and intermedia artists, somatic practitioners, theoreticians, architects, curators and interested audiences, gather to discuss and present various questions and concepts on spaces of artistic and cultural work, accessibility and sustainability, as well as relationship of humans and built environment. The starting point is significant and still ongoing perceptive shift towards performative, urban and private spaces, after traumatic experiences of pandemic and serial of earthquakes in Croatia.
The program of this events is organised in two days: the first brings presentations and discussions focused on spaces of work, economy of collaboration, sustainability and accessibility, as well as specific choreographic and curatorial practises of the synergy of the urban, historical and private environment and dance / physical performativity. The second day brings practical program of workshops and performances that approaches the phenomenon of moving/being and spatiality from the positions of imagination and physicality.

Discussions, presentations, talks, notes and scores generated by this event, will be published in next issue of the magazine Movements / Kretanja, noting 20 years of continual work in dance publishing.

Program leader: Iva Nerina Sibila
Preparation team and moderation: Ana Fazekaš, Silvia Marchig, Sindri Uču
In collaboration with project Critical parkour and Dance centre Tala.
Supported by City of Zagreb and Ministry of Culture and Media.

** Please register to reserve your place to follow presentations and discussions, and note if you want to participate in workshop „Aikido as the change of relational paradigm”, no later than 14th September 2022. on e-mail address hcentariti@gmail.com. Working language of first two sessions is English, and the rest is Croatian. **

 

PROGRAMME

Saturday 17th September

 

  • Session 1

10:00: to 11:30, working language English + live stream online

Introduction and Key -note presentation

  • Gathering (10:00 – 10:30)
  • Iva Nerina Sibila and Ana Fazekaš (10:30 – 10:45)
  • Anna Gesualdi and Giovanni Trono in conversation with Silvia Marchig (10:45 – 11:30) –

Presentation of ALTOFEST festival (Napels) through their concept of THE HOVERING CITY ,  online participation

The festival was born in Naples in 2011, conceived by TeatrInGestAzione, as an act of artistic and political resistance, with the aim of GIVING PLACE to a large and heterogeneous community, generating a critical thought.

The spaces in which Altofest takes place are private homes, of various nature, of different sizes, located in different neighborhoods of the city.

Some extra-domestic places are added, spaces that are often representative of the city, that are in various ways frequented and/or personally cared for by resident citizens

Altofest is built with the participation of resident citizens, who host national and international artists in their homes. Every citizen who participates in the project is its structural and founding part, not user or recipient, but an agent of the process; they take care of the work of art, and the artist in turn takes care of his host and his community of reference. Altofest combines the intimate dimension of houses with the aesthetic and poetic dimension of works and artistic processes that citizens welcome in their domestic spaces.”

  • Short discussion

 

  • Session 2

 12:00 to 14:00, working language English + live stream online

Spaces of work / economy of collaboration  (non/sustainability)

  • Larisa Navojec – Dance centar Tala – dance centre as artistic and working space

Dance centre Tala in Radnička, is the fourth educational, residential and production space that artistic organisation opened in 20 yrs, of their work. TALA PLE(j)S, that was opened in April 2022., is a new operational model, as multifunctional space and incubator for performative and stage arts that gives children, youth, artists and their organisations, as well as wider community, support to develop their creative and artistic potential and capacity. 

  • Orsolya Mátyus (Budmipešta) – Architect and co-founder at WeCare architecture

 “The way buildings are constructed has an immense impact, not only on the planet, but on the lives of people as well. In these times especially, in which society is suffering new hardships and in which our non-physical world is changing faster than ever before, at WeCare architecture we are searching for ways for the physical world to respond to both social and ecological challenges.

The presentation will focus on our projects on different scales and circumstances to show the impact of the built environment on the lives of people and the planet: a car service/office building, a family house, an apartment in a heritage building and a co-working incubation space. “

  • Andrea Divić – Accessibility of public spaces – For whom are cities for?

“When you decide to go to the cinema, to the theatre, to a bar – all you must do is to buy the ticket and off you go. It is so simple and easy. But… what if that was not the case? What if you have to think about stairs, barriers, transport… and so many other factors? Even though accessibility has become a huge concern and many things have been done regarding that there is so much more work left to be done. And no, not only theatres or cinemas or bars are a problem – there are small shops, schools, and faculties where architecture shows no mercy, even when it comes to find and apartment. There are many issues not only for the disabled (and that is also a prejudice!) but also for the elderly or people with strollers. Are our cities really our homes?

Does our city provide us a spatial and architectural quality of life? There are many questions, many examples, and many things to be done and improved. This lecture will try to give real examples and provide real experiences so that problems and possible solutions can be pointed to and provided.”

  • Kristina Lovrić (Split) – Spaces of performance / independent culture in tourist centar

“In the focus of this presentation are the spatial aspects of independent cultural scene in Split, and the potentials of certain city resources. The phenomenon of space as usable as well as economical / truistical resource will be discussed, and the short insight of different aspects of fights / demands for the right to use those spaces as working spaces for art and culture will be addressed.

The notion of space in this context includes indoor (physical) spaces, eg. Cultural centre Dom mladih and similar working spaces used by independent scene organisations and individuals in the field of socio-culture and arts, as well as initiatives that are problematising spaces, the dichotomy of its functional/operational and market value. The questions of (un)accessibility, instability, poor working conditions, insufficient financial and technical support, exhausted capacities of organisations, stagnation in audience development, and in the end the meaning of the fight to achieve the right for the space, the right to the city (Lefevbre), in the tourist season are going to be open in the presentation. “

  • Jasna Jasna Žmak – An Office of One’s Own A.K.A. A Coworking Artist

“In August of 2022 I have spent one month in a coworking space in Zagreb, as part of an artistic research project whose aim was to investigate the artistic potential of coworking spaces. During my stay there, I have kept a diary whose fragments I will read as part of this presentation, together with a few quotes by Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf. Or, as Konstrakta would put it: honey, sometimes I think this life is alien to me, as if someone else were in my place, I let myself drift a bit, but I quickly come back.”

  • Discussion

 

  • LUNCH BREAK

 

  • Session 3

15: 00 to 16: 00, working language Croatian + live stream online

Performances of / in space (alternative worlds)

  • Irma Omerzo and members of dance collective Škvadra – Ema Kani, Šimun, Stankov, Una Štalcar-Furač in conversation with Iva Nerina Sibila, with presentation of films and performances

Irma Omerzo, choreographer and dance artist graduated from National Centre of Contemporary Dance in Angers (CNDC Angers). She worked in France from 1991 to 2005, first with Andy Degroat, then the Company DCA under the artistic direction of Philippe Decouflé, where she was active for 10 years as dancer and assistant to choreographer and with director and choreographer François Verret. In 2001 she has founded an artistic organisation MARMOT. She is the author of numerous internationally acclaimed performances and several dance films, as well as installation for non-theatrical spaces,  several conceptual and socially engaged dance projects, dance-related sociological researches, programation on dance film and collaborations with visual artist and performers. Since 2013. she is teaching choreography at Dance department of Academy of dramatic arts in Zagreb.

The artistic organization Škvadra was founded in 2018 in Zagreb, by nine young professional dance artists: Anđela Bugarija, Ema Crnić, Margareta Firinger, Marta Habulin, Ema Kani, Gendis Putri Kartini, Eva Kocić, Šimun Stankov and Una Štalcar-Furač. After graduating contemporary dance at the Academy of Dramatic Art, they decided to continue working together by creating their own opportunities, collaborations, associates and projects. Škvadra’s work is not only focused on indoor theater performances but also on researching alternative spaces, site-specific performances, different ways of advertising and promoting dance art.

  • Discussion

 

Sunday, 18th September,

  • Session 4 

14:00 to 17:45: participatory workshop, working language Croatian 

Spaces of relationality (interiors)

  • Dobroslav Jakovljević – Aikido as the change of relational paradigm

 “Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss, said legendary swordsman and zen master Miyamoto Musashi (16th cent.). Mortality for samurai was the shadow of the midday sun and the contour on the ground under the moon. When he girded his katana (sword) for the first time, he knew that many, and himself, would die. Battles and duels stamp the transience of life, like cherry tree. Today, although the wars haven’t disappeared, different battles are being led. Existential, within us, between us, next to us. Person-body, material creation in space, moves through everydayness and meets the other, the different. Those encounters sometimes raise the sword under which we shiver…

Ai – to harmonise

Ki – life force

Do – the path of life

Aikido inherits the samurai tradition of fighting with and without weapons. It belongs to the lineage of Japanese martial arts, but it changed the paradigm. Aikido transcends the dominant concept of winning/losing, it shows the Path into the different, nicer perspective of spaces of the body, relationships – spaces of all of us.  

  • Workshop, no. of participants 12, reservation obligatory, (14:00 – 17:00, break included)
  • Presentation and feed-back, open to public, (17:00 to 17:45)

 

  • Session 5

18:00 to 20:00, performative formats and discussion, working language Croatian

Spaces of beyond (interiors)

  Aleksandra Madsen –The triumph of emptiness, trans-spatial performative insight

“This insight is based on fiction.

This insight is concerned with the utopian effort to put things in order.

This insight is concerned with the impossibility of fixed point being instituted.

This insight is concerned with the hopeless severance of the whole.

In this insight the whole has prefix of the fragment.

In this insight the space is an unknown factor.

This insight is touching upon emptiness as the intimate experience, or not.

This insight is experimental imagination of lies.

In this insight, some true statements will be said.

In this insight survival and sentiment clash.

This insight is the fiction about the body.

 This insight is practical alienation in aesthetic purposes.

This insight might be articulated as the mystery of demystification in the attempt to affirm fiction that streams in the flow of imagination thus provoking the emptiness that manifests itself through the fragments of sentimentality in aesthetic purposes reminding on survival as the impossibility of the utopian effort to put lies in order.”

  • KIK MELONE – Mothers in Spring, in Autumn deux-deux – installation resonance of Sadder than the Saddest piece. Ever.

Almost a year after performing of the collective submerge Mothers in Spring. Sadder than the Saddest piece. Ever. (authors: Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Iva Nerina Sibila, Silvia Marchig i Umberto Lancia, with the music and sounds by Josip Maršić, Claude Debussy and Samo Kutin and text by Anne Carson, Virginia Woolf, Jonathan Cross and Radharani Pernarčič), performative forensics Ms Fox and Umberto Lancia are noting the traces petrified in TALA PLE(j)S and transforming the studio space into the performative landscape of – high risk.

And this time, again, we invite the nomads in you to move your imagination through our sedimented, sentimental landscapes of found existence, infused with facts of a scandalous history, an impossible future, and a petrified present… in order to feel together, in the fullest fullness possible, that which comes after the end, after this here and this now, because this too is an end, this place where we stand. And yet, each time is anew. Unavailing, we await the end.

 

DRINKS AND TALKS AND ELSE…