Performances-lectures present/perform an artist (author) through the prism of another artist (author), fitting snugly into the concept of the Performa Festival, which has been striving for a hybrid combining of contemporary art genres and practices since its beginnings in the 1990s. The performers-lecturers’ pimps, STEGNAR, HORVAT & FAMILY, determine who does whom and where: a dancer a dramaturge, a director an artist, a painter a dancer, a musician a painter, a theater writer an author, etc., in a railroad station building, in an art gallery bathroom, at a football stadium, in an aquarium. Performances-lectures question the fundamental dialectic of the view: how I see the other, how I constitute the other with my view, and how someone else may see the other through the prism of my view. How to bear the brunt of another’s view and how to induce a random audience – the passersby – to stop and look. In recent years a number of extraordinary and unique artistic insights, unrepeatable artistic impulses, were achieved through performances-lectures, in settings where such pictures were not part of the furnishings and thus had a much greater potential for being visible, seen, and noticed.

Petra Kolmančič, program coordinator of the Performa festival

STEGNAR, HORVAT & FAMILY: Stegnar (b. 1976) is a performer; Horvat (b. 1976) is an inter-media artist; since 2011 they have been developing the concept of Come Closer performances-lectures as a family. Primož Bezjak (b. 1977) is an actor. Nataša Živković (b. 1981) is a performer. Toni Soprano (b. 1972) is a photographer. Luka Prinčič (b. 1977) is an inter-media artist. Marko Batista (b. 1976) is an inter-media artist. Veli Silver (b. 1983) is a painter. Nataša Berk (b. 1980) is an inter-media artist. Mojca Lešnik(b. 1980) is a curator.

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