PSi # 15 OPENING PERFORMANCES: Turbo folk or 1 poor and one 0
Choose your opening performance: HERE
in Croatian National Theater:
Turbo folk
by Oliver Frljić
Director: Oliver Frljić
Dramaturgy: Borut Šeparović
Performed by the ensemble of the Croatian National Theater “Ivan pl. Zajc” from Rijeka (ZAJC OFF): Anastazija Balaž Lečić, Olivera Baljak, Ana Vilenica, Alen Liverić, Jelena Lopatić, Jasmin Mekić, Dražen Mikulić, Damir Orlić, Tanja Smoje and Jolanda Pahor (stage manager)
The much-buzzed-about production of the Croatian National Theater in Rijeka tackles a relatively new cultural phenomenon in the countries of the former Yugoslavia: a curious brand of trash ethnic music dubbed “turbo-folk”, turned epitome of a particular type of social behavior, notably among young people.
Willfully snubbed by the cultural mainstream, the genre has so far failed to break into network radio and television.
Having penetrated Croatian culture in recent wartime, it has become iconic of the spiritual decadence in the region.
Despite the mainstream rejection, turbo-folk has great many fans…
“I was intrigued by turbo-folk, both as a cultural phenomenon and a possible theater project, in terms of the challenge it may pose to Croatian mainstream culture and its normative disposition. The Rijeka National Theater proposal gave me the essential prerequisites for putting this idea into action. The theater itself, its symbolic role within the national cultural context, its architectural parameters and a number of other factors all became stimuli in the development of the project. (…) There is an instance where the view of the empty auditorium is blocked by a giant reproduction of Kosovo Girl, a painting by Uroš Predić, a true icon still very present in the collective consciousness, and a perfect illustration of the various strategies of turning defeat into victory, which is the dominant political matrix with all South Slavic nations. This scene is followed by the frankfurter scene, in which the music and lyrics of Predrag Gojković Cune’s The Janissary run through different contexts, from the markedly melodramatic to the highly illustrative. The idea to seat the audience backstage while setting the stage in the auditorium has equally sprung from the intention to counterpoint turbo-folk – a phenomenon the official cultural policies strive to present as something essentially alien to our national being – with a manifestation of what our authentic culture is supposed to be– gilt and ornamental inflation.”
Oliver Frljić in Frakcija
or
in Zagreb Youth Theater:
1 poor and one 0
by BADco.
Inspired by the work of Auguste and Lois Lumiere, Samuel Beckett, Vlado Kristl, Jean-Luc Godard and Harun Farocki.
Directors: Tomislav Medak & Goran Sergej Pristaš
Dramaturgy: Ivana Ivković
Performed by authors and performers of the BADco.: Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana Ivković, Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Zrinka Užbinec
In 1 poor and one 0 BADco. returns to the scene of the first film ever shot – Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory: the factory gates. The first moving images ever made show workers leaving their workplace. The movement of the workforce from the place of industrial work into the world of film: the starting point for the problematic relationship between cinema and the portrayal of work.
From its outset cinema tended to leave the manual labor out of the picture, focusing rather on atomized stories of individual workers once they have left their workplace: their romances, their transgressions, their destinies in the course of world events. Cinema starts where work ends.
Starting from these initial images, 1 poor and one 0 sets about exploring the multiple ways of leaving the work behind. What happens when you get tired? When is the work we devote ourselves to exhausted? What comes after work? More work? What happens when there is no more work? What is the complicity between the history of contemporary dance and the history of post-industrialization?
1 poor and one 0 is a twofold performance: while the performers develop the manifold forms of dissolution of the working subject before the audience, the audience is slowly drawn into a process of transformation: from the popular medium of cinema to the political theater of populism. Theater exhausted in moving images, images exhausted in the theater of movement. A change of perspective.