Neven Korda: Echoes
Drama performance

Repetition: Wednesday, 19 May 2010 at 8 pm
The Old Power Station (Stara mestna elektrarna), Slomškova 18, Ljubljana

We are informing you about the project conducted by our associate in the field of video art and archives Neven Korda.

Gone are the times of great stories. Gone are the times of great stories gone by. The world has diffused into a multitude of fragments. The multitudes of fragments are no more. Fear is on its way. Dictatorship and oppression are on their way. The terrible reality of slavery is coming. Small cruel characters are ascending to the heads of the armies of malice. In this horror, only you and me... Who are you? Do not leave me in the coldness of these frigid highlands.

Husband and wife. Father and someone. Leaders without followers. Slovenian mother and her daughter. It doesn't matter. It matters not. Who cares. A mere trifle. A detail. A tiny, insignificant occurrence. Minute, minute, minute. We're really far away now, look. Far, far, bye, bye ...

The drama performance Echoes is the story of the “fragments” of human civilization, the cruelty and violence of the 20th century and the uprooting and appropriation of historical memory that cue the streaming obliteration of human stories, of true information and individual groups of ideas. In this context, Echoes elucidates the crumbled world, in which the discipline of the singular memory becomes reality, the category of the nomadic a necessity, and utter deterioration the only liberty. The author of Echoes, Neven Korda, places his own “echoing” process parallel to the “fragments of civilization”; through the shattering, uprooting and reconstruction of his own visual, textual, motoric and sonic (processed and unprocessed) materials from the period of the past five years, which were developed mainly in co-operation with the dancer and choreographer Igor Sviderski. Motion remains at the core of the current performance as well, albeit Echoes is presented in the format of a 20th century television show, hosted by two “grounded” dancers (Katjuša Kovačič, Sabina Schwenner), two “airborne” acrobat-dancers (Anže Kreč, Urška Štrukelj) and the connecting link between air and earth, Sarah Al Saleh.

The performance Echoes thus maintains the basic form of performative dance video, within which it communicates with a multitude of societal contexts (historical, social, philosophical) and formats (video, lighting, motion, sound) that are simultaneously established, transposed, arranged and rearranged. Through these instruments, it on one hand blurs out and on the other hand arbitrarily delineates and reinterrogates the boundaries between the artistic and the social discourse. Echoes thus – as an inter-media drama performance & locomotive television show – tests the plasticity of various genres, while also fundamentally riddling the category of “preferential thematizing of the modern world” and of man trapped in a “multiplied category of reality” of time and space within which he lives – or makes a living.
Andreja Kopač

Author and director: Neven Korda
Dramaturgy: Andreja Kopač
Actors: Katjuša Kovačič, Sabina Schwenner, Anže Kreč, Urška Štrukelj, Sarah Al Saleh
Stage design: Tomaž Furlan
Lighting design: Miran Šušteršič
Sound design: Brane Zorman
Video: Boštjan Čadež
Costume: Urška Recer
Make-up: Tina Lasič Andrejevič
Motion advisor: Igor Sviderski
Speech advisor: Maja Cerar
Graphic design: Lijana Veličković
Assistant for video: Jure Sajovic
Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana 2009
Coproduction: Zavod Bunker, Zavod Zank

Thanks to: Brane Ždralo, Elektro Ljubljana, Intakt, Janez Štamberger, Kreatorij DIC, KUD Mreža – Galerija Alkatraz, Marko Kovačič, Moderna galerija, Plezalni klub Stena, Prešernovo gledališče Kranj, Vlado Repnik, Zavod Maska, Zavod SCCA-Ljubljana

The performance Echoes employs audiovisual material from the performances Letters from the present, TWO, and YYY, which feature the co-operation of Aldo Ivančič, Aljoša Rot, Borut Kumprsčak, Boštjan Gombač, Damjana Grašič, Igor Sviderski, Irena Tomažin, Luka Prinčič, Maruša Oblak Gejmajer, Renata Vidič, Rosana Hribar, Sebastjan Starič, Slavko Glamočanin and Živa Rogelj, and the song Ortega, v kino greš from the record Retinal Circus.

Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art
Neubergerjeva 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Contact: Marcela Okretič
tel.: 01 430 15 11, 041 250 830
e-mail: aksioma4@siol.net

The Aksioma's programme is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the RS and the Town Municipality of Ljubljana – Department of Culture

[Published May 19, 2010]