Loup Abramovici and Tomaž Grom: The Time May Have Come for Us to Take a Moment…

45 minutes

Does a concert sound better than music? What really occupies us while we perform? The performance is an encounter with the audience in which musician Tomaž Grom and dancer Loup Abramovici take a moment to react directly to their own performing.

http://vntheatre.com/projekti/serija-via-nova/mogoce-je-napocil-cas/predstava/

Kristian Al Droubi: A Conversation with the Artist

Idea and responses: Kristian Al Droubi and Bojan Jablanovec / Questions: based on a text by Bojana Kunst, PhD (Nemoč radikalne potrošnje/The Impotence of Radical Consumption, 2009) / Concept, text adaptation and directing: Bojan Jablanovec. 50 minutes

A performance-interview about political impotence and the jadedness of radicalism in contemporary scenic arts, about the imperative of pleasure in contemporary postindustrial society, about the impotence of communication, about the impotence of subjectivization…

http://vntheatre.com/projekti/serija-via-nova/intervju-z-umetnikom/predstava/

Barbara Kukovec: B. K.’s First Law

Idea and text: Barbara Kukovec, Bojan Jablanovec / Sound and video synchronization: Rob Canning / Light sensor: Borut Kumperščak / Technical support: Igor Remeta / Art director: Bojan Jablanovec. 40 minutes

A video performance for four projectors, a bicycle, and a performer. B. K.’s (Barbara Kukovec) First Law derives from the first law of thermodynamics: energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.

http://vntheatre.com/projekti/serija-via-nova/prvi-zakon-b-k/predstava/

We live in a time of boundless choice, of boundless opportunities and boundless freedom to realize our potential. But today, all this potentiality appears to be radically impotent. Although driven by a strong desire to make use of the opportunities to realize our subjectivity we always end up getting just another form of control. Also the radicalness of performance art seems to have become caught in this dispositif. Nothing is gained with the performative act any longer; it no longer has any emancipatory or other potential. Performance art has become a form of radical impotence. (Excerpted from: Bojana Kunst, “Nemoč radikalne potrošnje”)

Via Negativa (VN) is a Ljubljana-based international contemporary scenic arts project. Bojan Jablanovec has served as its art director since 2002. VN is an open project without a fixed number of members, inviting instead the participation of anyone interested in working in the field of contemporary scenic arts. To this end, VN organizes its yearly VN Lab.

The Via Negativa project originated from the need to rethink the sense and significance of, and reasons for, the existence of theater today, and from the belief that the result of artistic creativity is essentially determined by the mode (procedure, method) of its production. Via Negativa’s underlying creative field is the performative “me – here and now”: my story, my body, my situation, my point of view… The creative field is clearly outlined: reduction to the basic performative elements (via negative); theater as a medium of communication and not aestheticizing; emphasis on the relationship between the performer and the viewer and on the question of the real within this relationship.

Over the past ten years VN realized 48 projects with over 80 performers from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Poland, and Denmark. More than half the projects were co-productions or produced in association with various theaters, venues or festivals. Over 200 performances were done at festivals or on tour in 21 European countries and in the US.