To the Ganz Festival’s new Perforations competition, which was open from February 26 to March 22, 2019. A total of 54 project proposals were received. Taking into account the quality of the proposed projects, the artistic work of the authors to date, the relevance and potential of the projects for the further development of the artistic medium in which the authors work, and for strengthening and networking the community around current problems of contemporary society, Ganz New Perforations, guided by the desire to consolidate the collaborative, conceptual, financial, spatial and technical “capital” of the independent performance scene, will support 8 artistic projects. When selecting performance co-productions and post-productions, the possibility of further regional and international distribution of artistic works through festival partners outside Croatia was also taken into account. The projects were read, watched and listened to by Silvija Stipanov (artistic director of Ganz New Perforations 2019) in collaboration with Zvonimir Dobrović (director of Domino, artistic director of the Queer Zagreb festival).
In the co-production category – 1.1. contemporary theatre, dance and performance / hybrid performance works – three proposals are supported:
1. Artistic organization for opening new fields of theatrical communication Four Hands – Marina Petković Liker: Talking (working title)
Marina Petković Liker explores the areas of the mutual connection between voice and body, female gesture and the female principle of action in art and life, synesthetic theatre, theatrical co-play and the interrelationship of different performing artists. In her new theatre play Razgovaranje, she continues her exploration of the specific performance form of ‘jazz conversation’ that she explored and established during her previous theatre-research projects.
2. Artistic organization Rebel theater troupe – Miran Kurspahić and Rona Žulj: Victims4Life
Miran Kurspahić and Rona Žulj deal with contemporary political theatre, in which, not without self-irony but also humor, they question the action or, more often, the inaction of the individual. Ten years after the play Victims of Geography 2: Return of the Victim, the original production returns to the stage in a new sequel: Victims4Life – Victims for Life . Plunging headlong down the roller coaster of their own prejudices, while questioning the new cultural paradigm and the spirit of the times, Victims for Life will entertain the viewer, but also make them wonder about their own position in society and their own mechanisms of withdrawal.
3. Art organization Studio Artless – Janjatović-Zorica, Foretić, Bubaš, Miljak, Sekulić: Research interpretation of multimedia theater performance Ende oder Wende
Ende oder Wende is a multimedia performance created in 1983 by Željko Zorica Šiš, Mirjana Vukadin, Dragan Ruljančić and Vladimir Petek, consciously resisting the rigid concept of authoritarian, hierarchically set directorial theatre, dominant in the early 1980s. The new interpretation by the equally heterogeneous team of authors, consisting of performing artist Josipa Bubaš , visual artist Ivana Ognjanovac , dramaturge Morana Foretić , musician Tomica Miljak , academic sculptor Miljenko Sekulić and sociologist and head of the arts organization Ana Janjatović-Zorica , inverts gender roles and places a predominantly male plot in a feminine key.
In the co-production category – 1.2. artistic-ecological projects in public or unusual exhibition/performance spaces – one proposal is supported:
1. Azra Svedružić and Demirel Pašalić: Listen to the Forests! (working title)
Azra Svedružić works in the field of experimental film and video, as well as fine and multimedia art. Demirel Pašalić is a photographer, cinematographer, musician and multimedia artist. With the work Listen to the Forests! they return to the idea of previous joint projects that art may not be able to change the world, but it can change consciousness. Listen to the Forests! is a reaction to the devastation of forests and habitats, especially excessive logging of trees of questionable legality and which is hidden from the public. The goal of the project is to shed light on the problem, activate and network as many citizens as possible through a sound installation in public space, QR codes, a participatory website and a sculpture of a ‘forester’.
In the post-production category (performances of finished works of contemporary theatre and dance/hybrid performance works), three proposals were supported:
1. BADco.: Impossible Dances
At the invitation of the Chicago Center for Culture and the IN Triennial> TIME2019 performance collective BADco. develops and performs a new work based on the documentation and scores of the sequence Impossible Dances (Impossible Dances) from the play The Sea &Poison by the American post-drama theater group The Goat Island. BADco. sets before its authors and performers the challenge of an impossible dance, the outcome of which must be sought in translation into another artistic medium and in the development of one or more transdisciplinary and transformative works at the intersection of collection, video documentation, lectures and performances.
2. Nastasja Štefanić: Viola, me and the two of us
Nastasja Štefanić is a professional musician, dancer, choreographer, and music and dance director.
pedagogue who lives and works in Zagreb. She completed her graduate studies in viola at
at the Academy of Music in Zagreb and an undergraduate study of contemporary dance at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. Viola, Me and the Two of Us is an autobiographical play and examination of the relationship between movement and sound, and the living and the inanimate, within a performance format that is on the border between a dance performance and an experimental concert.
3. Škvadra: I Can’t Hear You, It’s Dark (*a shorter, experimental performance format is supported as part of Performance Night)
Škvadra is a group of 8 young professional dance artists ( Anđela Bugarija, Ema Crnić, Marta Habulin, Ema Kani, Gendis Putri Kartini, Eva Kocić, Šimun Stankov and Una Štalcar-Furač ), formed out of the need to create their own opportunities, collaborations and projects. Through the performance I Can’t Hear You, Darkness, they explore the levels of communication from the simplest transmission of a message to other more complex ingredients that make it high-quality, meaningful, impossible and/or incomprehensible.
In the category of development and support of ideas, experiments and new performance forms, one proposal was supported:
1. Association for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Research (UIII) – Sonja Leboš: Waiting
Waiting is a participatory performance in public space that addresses the problems of the Croatian healthcare system. Waiting is part of an artistic research project titled Retropolis: Care and Solidarity conducted by Sonja Leboš, Maja Marković, Luana Lojić and Stella Leboš.
Thank you to all artists and organizations for submitting applications.
See you at Ganz New Perforations from June 27th to July 2nd, 2019!
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