Season

GEOGRAFIE / GEOGRAPHIES

“History is the teacher of life”. From childhood, we are used to repeating it to the point of exhaustion. So abused is the ancient saying that it has ended up losing power, and from history, it seems we have learned little, more often nothing. The twin sister of history is geography. There is no history without land, no history without borders to cross, conquer, restore, sacrifice. There are no peoples who do not say, rightly and more often wrongly, ‘this is mine.’ There is no history without geography, therefore: yet, always, in cultural rhetoric and in the construction of scholastic and academic paths, geography is the child of a lesser God. A childhood memory of lists of capitals and names of lakes and heights of mountains, and nothing else.

It took the overbearing reactivation of history, the brutal reshuffling of the cards of the economy, the boiling of young blood that feels all the boundaries of body and soul, deserts and seas, to remind us that geographies exist, they affect us, they define us: and so do humans with them. It took the clear, incontrovertible, and swift arrival of signs of inequality to the poorest, to mobilize them to cross over. It took human action to change the global ecosystem, producing droughts and floods, to push the caravans of salvation to move northwards, precisely following the opposite route to the one that, hundreds of thousands of years ago, led a few thousand homo sapiens to guarantee a future for our species, surviving in the heart of Africa.

It was a time without nations and without borders, a time of survival without boundaries without which humanity would not have existed. An era in which the factors of an unknown and indomitable nature decided everything, and pre-human geography could only adapt: if it could manage to do so.

Today, in the time of hyper-humanity, of the Anthropocene that has irreversibly altered atmospheres and temperatures, investigating the geographies of the world and of the soul means traversing the choices of peoples and those who dominate them, and the very concept of democracy, its utopian dimension, the temptation to consider it obsolete. It means questioning, criticising, thanking or cursing humanity itself, which in space builds and names places, designs harmony or incubates domination and destruction. The geographies we look at, finally, put us right in front of a crossroads: they remind us that nothing is given, and every right promised land is only the result of choice and decision.

Jacopo Tondelli
[journalist and writer, co-founder and editor of Gli Stati Generali].


March – May 2024

FOCUS #1 · TRANSITI / TRANSITS

Faustin Linyekula / Mamu Tshi (RDC/CH)

Lina Majdalanie e Rabih Mroué (LB/GE)

Zoë Demoustier / Ultima Vez (BE)

Ant Hampton (GB/CH)


June – September 2024

FOCUS #2 · TERRITORI / TERRITORIES

Caroline Barneaud, Stefan Kaegi (CH/GE)

Be Flat (BE)

Massimo Furlan, Claire De Ribaupierre (CH)

October 2024

EXTRA FOCUS

4 – 6 October c/o ZONA K
Laboratorio d’Arte Performativa Guinea Pigs (IT)

October – December 2024

FOCUS #3 · ROTTE / ROUTES

Diana Anselmo e Sara Pranovi (IT)

Simon Senn (CH)

Berlin (BE)

Tolja Djokovic (IT)

The images of the 2024 season’s poster and materials are by Cesura, an independent photography collective whose work focuses on authorial photographic documentary. Founded with the desire to be a new and autonomous force on the international photography scene, Cesura also founded its own independent publishing house and printing workshop. Its publications have received countless prizes and awards over the years.
Alessandro Sala deals with social and environmental issues and has followed the migration crisis in the Mediterranean with particular attention, focusing on the reception process of asylum seekers. In 2022, he won the PAC ministerial grant with the DIORAMI project, a tale of 8 Sicilian botanical wonders exhibited at the Botanical Garden in Palermo.

Design: Neo Studio by Leonardo Mazzi

FOCUS #1 · TRANSITI / TRANSITS

Transits, passages. Passages, borders. Borders, transits. The circle closes and it is a very ancient circle, which brings together the atavistic migration of mankind with respect to the self-determination of populations within a territory, in some way seizing a geography, constructing a proprietary map on a common good.

If transit was for centuries linked to expansionist aims where land, read food and taxes, and power (temporal or linked to religion) were the drivers of conflict, at least since the Second World War to the present – after the opposition in blocs – asymmetrical wars arise not over food, but over raw materials, strategies of influence and the arrangement of new logistics markets. Power and hoarding are sold as wars of freedom and exports of democracy, which seems to be a unique characteristic of the Western world.

Power corrodes and progress gallops. The expansion of a group of countries that have united within the acronym Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has experienced an enlargement in recent years that has seen 22 other requests from other countries and Egypt, the Arab Emirates, Iran and Ethiopia joined the group. On the table is the de-dollarisation of the economy, a different conception of power relations, the end of routes linked to a past, even a colonial past. 

It is a new step, very definite, but still little perceived, in a particularly weak era of the former superpowers and their uncharismatic and/or bloodthirsty leaders.

From the sky comes rain and scorching heat that will overwhelm us because we have failed to make a reasoned transit to rescue temperatures. Written like this, reality looks more like a script from a tragic horror film, where no hero can escape the inevitable fate.

In 2024, it is still possible for the nation-state to block the prohibition of border crossing, in the name of free and complete transit, in accepting that passage is inevitable and must be governed, not suffered. Without forgetting that there exists a humanity, the majority, of women and men who want to transition into a new era, but who are periodically disappointed by the 1% in charge. In this scenario we, billions of humans, also transit. With our dreams, miseries and happiness. There is a street in Milan where an association operates that helps undocumented migrants. It is called Via dei Transiti. It happened like this, by chance, but sometimes they seem like signs of destiny, which leave an often salvific fuse lit, that of hope.

Angelo Miotto [journalist, documentary filmmaker, podcaster. Founder and director of Q Code Mag].

PROGRAM

8 + 9 marzo c/o ZONA K
Faustin Linyekula / Mamu Tshi (RDC/CH)

22 + 23 marzo c/o ZONA K
Lina Majdalanie e Rabih Mroué (LB/GE)

24 marzo c/o ZONA K
Lina Majdalanie e Rabih Mroué (LB/GE)

4 + 5 aprile c/o ZONA K
Zoë Demoustier / Ultima Vez (BE)

16 + 17 maggio c/o ZONA K
Ant Hampton (GB/CH)

Photo by Cesura – Design Neo Studio by Leonardo Mazzi

Faustin Linyekula / Mamu Tshi (RDC/CH)

dance | duration 50 min
in French with Italian subtitles

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed upon 2024 membership


Amandine Ngindu, a renowned krump dancer from Lausanne who goes by the stage name Mamu Tshi, met her Congolese compatriot Faustin Linyekula at Vidy. Together they traveled to the Kasai region to meet her grandmother, with whom she has no common language. In this danced portrait composed together upon their return, Mamu Tshi expresses herself through words and the restrained power of krump, reaching across the borders of her history.

With Mamu Tshi (Amandine Tshijanu Ngindu) Concept and choreography Faustin Linyekula, Mamu Tshi (Amandine Tshijanu Ngindu) Assistant director Angélique Tahé Music Twin Traxamus, Groupe folklorique Atandele (Kananga, DRC) Recorded voices Kaku Musambi Papa Ngindu Papa Mako Griot Tshimina Video Faustin Linyekula Zima Tukala Thanks to Aunt Pauline Bibomba and all the family in Kanyuka, DRC, Zima Tukala (yo moko oyebi), Victor Bafuafua, Sylvie Makela and the Salon Tribus Urbaines General director Veronique Kespi Lighting director Farid Deghou Boussad Sound director Luc Grandjean Stage director Christian Wilmart Production Anouk Luthier Production Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne with support from Studios Kabako (Kisangani, DRC) Support Arts and Humanities Division, New York University Abu Dhabi

photo by Sarah Imsand

Mamu Tshi Mamu Tshi was born in Congo, which she left at birth for Lausanne, where she lives and works today. Very early attracted to urban dance, she is today part of the world krump elite: in 2020 and 2021, she received the title of “dancer of the year” in this discipline. Freestyle dancing, powerful, expressive and liberating, is part of the street dance movement and is considered, among other things, as an artistic response to the systematic oppression of certain groups and the frustration that results from it. The battles, influenced by hip-hop and full of energy, are generally contested in public spaces by different crews. Mamu Tshi frequented urban dances for a long time before performing for the first time in 2019 at the Théâtre Sévelin 36 as part of the “Quarts d’Heure” – a platform for young choreographers. The same theater then invited her to develop her soloWomb: Entrailles as an “associated artist” for a creation in spring 2023. With her playL’Héritière, Mamu Tshi also completes the international trio Portraits in Otherness commissioned by Akram Khan Company for the tour in Switzerland (Steps festival). In parallel and with the collective “Swiss Krump Movement” and the Warriorz, pioneers of krump in Switzerland, she transmits this culture by organizing training and other community events. The lack of resources led her to initiate a project to include cultures and artistic practices from urban and underground environments in the Swiss cultural landscape, CAaUSE, entre d’Arts Alternatif et Urbain Suisse Émergent. At Vidy, she is a choreography assistant and performer in Sous influence by Nina Negri in 2021, and in 2024 she performs Mamu Tshi, Portrait pour Amandine in collaboration with Faustin Linyekula.

Dancer, choreographer and director, Faustin Linyekula lives and works in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of Congo). After literary and theatrical training in Kisangani, he moved to Nairobi in 1993 and in 1997 co-founded the first contemporary dance company in Kenya, the Gàara company. Returning to Kinshasa in June 2001, he set up a structure for dance and visual theater, a place for exchange, research and creation: Studios Kabako. With his company, Linyekula is the author of more than fifteen plays which have been presented on the biggest stages and festivals in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Africa. Among his collaborations are a production for the Comédie Française (Bérénice, 2009), a creation for the Ballet de Lorraine (La Création du monde 1923-2012, 2012), a solo for a dancer from the National Ballet of Portugal. Linyekula has also imagined performances for museums: the MOMA in New York (2012), the MUCEM in Marseille (2016), the Metropolitan Museum (2017) or the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (2018). He teaches regularly in Africa and the United States. Linyekula received the Grand Prize from the Prince Claus Foundation for Culture and Development in 2007. Since 2007, Linyekula’s work and approach have been based in the city of Kisangani, where Kabako Studios supports the training, production and dissemination of young Congolese artists in the field of performing arts, but also video and music. In 2014, Linyekula and Kabako Studios received the first prize from the American CurryStone foundation for the work developed in Kisangani and in particular in the commune of Lubunga with the different communities. In 2016, as part of the Artista Na Cidade biennial, Linyekula was an associated artist of the city of Lisbon, from which he received the medal for artistic merit. From September 2018 and for three seasons, he was associated with the Manège – Scène nationale de Reims in France. In 2019 he was an associate artist of the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. At Vidy, he presented Congo, a trio for singer, actor and dancer based on the eponymous book by Éric Vuillard in 2019. The series of films by young African artists Lettres du continent, which he designed with Virginie Dupray during the pandemic in 2020, was presented by Vidy in the fall of 2020. In 21/22, he led the Imaginaires des futurs possibles cycle with the playwright Claire de Ribaupierre, an initiative bringing together artists, scientists and spectators proposed by Vidy and the Sustainability Center of the University of Lausanne. In 2024 he presents Mamu Tshi, Portrait pour Amandine.

source https://vidy.ch/en/

Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué (LB)

show | duration 50 min
in French with Italian subtitles

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed upon 2024 membership


After its premiere in 2009, Photo-Romance immediately become one of the most successful international theatre pieces and is now, after touring worldwide, is coming to Mousonturm in its newest version: in the roles of author and censor Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué discuss the photo novella adaptation of a historical film document, which shows the enthusiasm of Italian crowds at Hitler’s Mussolini visit. The two of them – him, a former leftist activist, she, a divorced homemaker – met in Beirut in 2006 shortly after Israel’s attack on Lebanon: two lonely people, uncomfortable with the hubbub outside. By mixing fiction and reality, Photo-Romance deconstructs the political logic, as well as the illusion of theatre and shows “truth” to be a construction of possibilities.

Concept, text and direction Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué Translation Masha Refka Set design Samar Maakaroun Music Charbel Haber Soundtrack Lina Saneh, Rabih Mroué, Sarmad Louis Direction of photography Sarmad Louis jeu pour la bande-image Rabih Mroué, Lina Saneh Special guest Mona Mroué Assistant director and executive producer Petra Serhal Costumes Zeina Saab de Melero Makeup Stéphanie Aznarez Production assistant Ashkal Alwan (Beyrouth) With Lina Saneh, Charbel Haber, Rabih Mroué

Director, performer and playwright, Lina Majdalanie is a Lebanese artist, living in Berlin. Her work includes: Hartaqāt (2023), Second Look (serie video, 2020), Sunny Sunday (2020), Borborygmus (2019), Do I Know you? (2017), A Drop of Sweat (2015), 33 rpm and a few seconds (2012), Photo-Romance (2009), Appendice (2007), I Had A Dream, Mom (vidéo, 2006), Biokhraphia (2002), and others… 
She curated several events in Mousonturm-Frankfurt (2016 and 2023), HAU-Berlin (2017), Kunsthalle-Mulhouse (2015) and Tanzquartier-Vienna (2009). She was a fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures”/FU in Berlin (2009-2010) and a member of Home Workspace Curricular Committee-Ashkal Alwan (Beirut 2010-2014). She opted the pseudonym Lina Saneh in April 2015.

Rabih Mroué, born in Beirut and currently living in Berlin, is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright. He is a contributing editor for The Drama Review /TDR (New York) and a co-founder of the Beirut Art Center (BAC).  He was a fellow at The International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures/ FU/Berlin from 2013 -2014. He has been a theatre-director at Münchner Kammerspiele from 2015 -2019.
His works include: Hartaqāt (2023), Sunny Sunday (2020), Borborygmus (2019), So Little time (2016), Ode to Joy (2015), Riding on a cloud, (2013), 33 RPM and a Few Seconds (2012), Photo-Romance (2009), The Inhabitants of images (2008), Who’s Afraid of Representation (2005), Looking for a Missing Employee (2003), Biokhraphia (2002), Three Posters (2000) and others… 

Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué (LB/DE)

video installation | original version translated into Italian
+ meeting with the company

c/o ZONA K, free entrance allowed with 2024 membership


You collect a lot of things over the years, often without knowing why or what you want to do with them. Until one day, you spread them out and start looking at them properly. You try to understand why it is you like them and why you might also be ashamed of them at the same time. You attempt to discover or to invent their stories, struggling to give free rein to your emotions or to tame them. As you look at your collection, you might allow memories to return, and you might try to utter them, mixing your stories with their imagined ones. In brief, you might use them to talk about “you”; you, as an inseparable singular from all the other singulars, you, as an unbreakable moment from history.

written and directed by Lina Majdalanie & Rabih Mroué voice-over Francesca Bracchino e Marcello Spinetta animation Sarmad Louis music Abdalla El-Masri, Charbel Habr, Matef and HoRa’ Mim editing Rabih Mroué, Sarmad Louis sound Rafi Mrad photo corrections Randa Mansour
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’20

Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué were born in Beirut in 1966 but reside in Berlin. They generally work together, while also pursuing personal projects. Rabih Mroué has developed a versatile artistic practice in which he assumes, often simultaneously, the functions of actor, director and playwright, with a peculiar ability to photograph the contemporary. Since 1990, he and Lina Saneh have created performances that blur the boundaries between disciplines in a poetic fusion of theatre, installations, performance art and video. Together they present works that directly reflect the social and political realities of their country, while delving into the underlying issues and contradictions of Lebanese society.

Zoë Demoustier / Ultima Vez (BE)

dance | duration 60 min
in English with Italian subtitles
c/o ZONA K, admission allowed after membership 2024


In Unfolding an Archive, Zoë Demoustier unfolds an image archive of 20 years of war reporting. The man behind the camera is her father Daniel Demoustier. The search for a relationship to the imagery of world events with which she grew up is like a movement from far and near. In an attempt at a reconstruction, she brings the archive to life. She dismantles the mechanisms hidden behind the archive images. Gradually, a choreography of poses and gestures is created in a broken timeline of physical memories.

« In Unfolding an Archive I investigate what news is, how journalism works, how you use images to place reality in a certain frame. But there is also a second, much more personal track: what has my father’s special job done to me? It took a long time before I dared to put that into the performance. At some point I realized I couldn’t avoid that question. And that those apparently very personal topics – how
our family functioned, the father-daughter relationship, the question of how present a parent should be – are just very universal: everyone has to deal with them. » Zoë Demoustier in HUMO

Choreography and performance Zoë Demoustier Live sound Willem Lenaerts Sound concept Willem Lenaerts & Rint Mennes Light design Harry Cole Light and technical support Pieter Kint Interview & editing Yelena Schmitz Design & Costume Annemie Boonen Research Annemie Boonen & Willem Lenaerts Dramaturgy Elowise Vandenbroecke Coaching Danielle van Vree Video and sound archive Daniel Demoustier Co-production STUK With the support of the City of Leuven, 30CC, Platform In De Maak Residences STUK, Ultima Vez, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Voetvolk Atelier Rubigny Thanks to Shila Anaraki, Oihana Azpillaga, Jonas Beerts, Anna Bentivegna, Stijn De Cauwer, Elliot Dehaspe, Dirk De Lathauwer, Lahja Demoustier, Misha Demoustier, Hannes Dereere, Josine De Roover, Pieter Desmet, Klaas De Somer, Willem Malfliet, Hildegard De Vuyst, Silke Huysmans, Karen Joosten, Koen Theys, Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, Gerlinde Van Puymbroeck, Veerle Van Schoelant, Niek Vanoosterweyck, Bart Vanvoorden, Remo Verdickt, Cas-co Leuven, Dag van de Dans, Danstuin.

Photo by TomHerbots

Zoë Demoustier (1995) is performer and choreographer. The body is always the starting point for her visual representations. From movement she makes links with topical and committed subjects to create documentary choreographic work. Zoë made the performances nesten (fABULEUS/Anna Bentivegna & Ayrton Fraenk), Road to Nowhere (Forsiti’A/Yelena Schmitz), Born to be wild (Thespikon) and worked as a performer and assistant with Kabinet K, Michiel Vandevelde, Alma Söderberg/Manyone, Iris Bouche/Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, David Weber Krebs and Marcelo Evelin. In 2021 she was ambassador of Dance Day in which she created tomorrow’s dance makers in collaboration with De Zendelingen. From 2022 she will start a new collaboration as a choreographer at Ultima Vez. Unfolding an Archive is her first solo performance, for which she has already initiated within the Directing course at the RITCS and Cultural Studies at the KU Leuven. In the performance she uses techniques from the mime corporel tradition that she learned during her studies at the Mime Education in Amsterdam. For Unfolding an Archive she works closely with musician and sound designer Willem Lenaerts.

Ant Hampton/Time Based Edition(UK/DE)

live collective experience | duration 80 min | in italian

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed after membership 2024
in collaboration with Ateatro


Borderline Visible begins as a journey from Lausanne to Izmir in 2022 by two artist friends, one of whom experiences health problems halfway and has to stop. As the other continues towards Turkey, suddenly alone, the narration grows into a moving and troubled psychogeography as it shifts between “we” and “I”, present and past, piecing-together value and meaning from the very human ruins of aspiration, history, and language. Ant Hampton’s careful, at times miraculous, process of reconnection gradually lights up a constellation: voices and earthquakes, the Sephardic diaspora, tourism and forced movement, breakdowns and dementia, the end of the Ottoman Empire, swifts and swallows, Eliot’s The Waste Land and an urgent insight into hidden atrocities at the edge of Europe being funded from its centre.

by Ant Hampton voice & sound, english version Ant Hampton feedback David Bergé book design Roland Brauchli image retouching Flavio Milani copy-editing Neil Bennun printing and binding SYL (Barcelona) typefaces Elante, Rom and Unica music Fever, A Warm Poison di Oren Ambarchi from the album In The Pendulum’s Embrace (2007) Corridor Between Days by Perila (2022) Quixotism Parts 1 and 2, by Oren Ambarchi from the album Quixotism (2014) based on a project conceived with Rita Pauls with thanks to Pieter Ampe, Giorgos Antoniou, Sae Bosco and Samos Volunteers, Yannick Christian, Hani Dunia, Effi & Amir, Tim Etchells, Katy Fallon, Martin Hampton, Britt Hatzius, Leo Kay, LAPS, Camille Louis, Eva Neklyaeva, Beyhan Onur, Anelka Tavares, Prodromos Tsinikoris, Giulia de Vecchi, Anny Y published in 2023 by Time Based Editions ISBN: 9789464772609

Time Based Editions is an imprint of PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPANDED PUBLISHING ATHENS Created with the support of: The Resonance Foundation (Los Angeles) Bimeras (Istanbul / Berlin) Théâtre Vidy (Lausanne) Research and prototype support: Lita House of Production and Kundura Stage (Istanbul) National Theatre of Northern Greece (Thessaloniki)

Photo by Doc Lab

Ant Hampton (1975, DE/UK) is a British-German performance maker and writer. His work since 1999 has often involved guiding people through unrehearsed situations and interactive relations, using automated devices. His three collaborations with Tim Etchells are participative experiences for two at a time, combining audio with different engagements with the page: text and silent reading (The Quiet Volume, 2010); archive photography (Lest We See, 2015); and mark-making/ erasure (Not to Scale, 2020). In more recent years his practice has expanded into a wider investigation of risk-taking and leaps of faith, for example with The Thing – An Automatic Workshop in Everyday Disruption, created with Christophe Meierhans. These and many other of his “Autoteatro” works continue to tour internationally in over 80 language versions, some of them without anyone needing to travel – an oxymoronic outcome for an art committed to liveness and presence which in turn informed his 2021 advocacy and research project: ShowingWithoutGoing.live – an Atlas. Together with David Bergé, he co-founded Time Based Editions in 2023.

FOCUS #2 · TERRITORI / TERRITORIES

What a strange condition we are living in. The Earth demands our attention, the climate crisis asks us to finally take care of our planet, just when it seemed we could do without it. Some (very few super-rich), planning to move elsewhere, colonising other planets or transferring their residence onto space rockets orbiting far from here. Others (increasingly more), carving out their own enclosure, within boundaries more and more uncertain yet considered natural, traditional, inherited: we inside and the others outside. A great many (how many billions?) spending much of their time in digital spaces, according to codes and rules of a topological rather than metric nature. We all build exclusive territories, homes tailored to our needs, “particular housing solutions”, we might call them in the casual language of real estate agents. So, artificial territories, which do not exist in nature, our phantasmagorical projections. With one rather significant peculiarity though: to be inhabitable, these territories need resources extracted from the common territory that is the Earth: energy, food, labour, technology, metals, oxygen, water…

Forced to come to terms with the Earth, we escape it. We live by paradoxes: we inhabit the Earth, but struggle to set foot on the ground. We were all thrown onto the Earth, but we wonder how do I recognise my territory? We still measure distances in metres, but we are constantly connected, in networks that transcend them.

Someone, more informed, tells us that we are the Earth, that is, the Earth belongs to all its inhabitants, human and non-human. We should stop distinguishing between the world we rely on and the world we live in. The first is the Earth; the second is the territory. Those who concern themselves with the former are considered idealistic enemies of the people. Those who prioritize the latter tend to define it in demanding terms: Nation, Homeland. In order to live comfortably in “our” territory, we need the Earth. But if we adopt the perspective of the Earth, it follows that we must consider the territories we inhabit as non-exclusive, shared among other earthly beings. At that point, where to place the boundaries? If they cannot be recognised, territories disappear. Territorial pissing would return to being an exclusive practice of non-humans, with humans ceasing to seek refuge in it and ultimately recognising that territory is the use that is made of it: a space of circulation, available to those who move there.

For the thoughts expressed here, I am indebted to Pierluigi Crosta, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, Alain Tarrius, and the Nirvana.

Claudio Calvaresi
[PhD in Urban Planning, he is Principal of Avanzi-Sustainability by Action. He is coordinator, for Avanzi, of MadreProject, the School of Bread and Places].

PROGRAM

8 + 9 e 15 + 16 giugno
Caroline Barneaud, Stefan Kaegi (CH/GE)

10 + 11 settembre c/o spazi urbani
Be Flat (BE)

11 + 12 OTTOBRE c/o SPAZI NATURALI
Massimo Furlan, Claire De Ribaupierre (CH)

Photo by Cesura – Design Neo Studio by Leonardo Mazzi

PAESAGGI CONDIVISI
Sette pièce tra campi e foreste

Paesaggi condivisi is a theatrical journey through fields and forests, seven immersive proposals to provoke an examination of our relationship with the landscape and nature.

What if the landscape were a theatre? What if art did not imitate nature, but rather allowed us to experience it collectively? What is at stake in our relationship with “nature” and its representations, in this era in which climate and resources have made us aware of our fragility and interdependence?


Paesaggi condivisi is an invitation to leave the theatre and spend a day in nature; walking and exploring fields and forests, spectators will discover seven works of art, seven variations on the theme of landscape. Stefan Kaegi, from the Rimini Protokoll collective, and Caroline Barneaud, curator of the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, have invited ten European artists to share their visions on our relationship with the territory. Performative and choreographic interventions, sound and multimedia creations and dives into philosophy offer a collective and participatory experience.


Paesaggi condivisi is part of the European project Performing Landscape, which sees the involvement of eight partners from Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia. Artists, cultural organisers and experts reflect on notions of art, the landscape and the territory. Drawing a visible and invisible map of the European locations involved, they reveal the spaces that the share through the lens of the arts and the sciences. An alternative way to examine and reinvent Europe together. Paesaggi condivisi made its debut on 14 May 2023 in Chalet-à-Gobet with the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and has currently been adapted and presented in the various locations involved: Avignon, Berlin, Milan, Ljubljana, St. Pölten, the Girona region and the Lisbon region.


Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)  

The Swiss and German director Stefan Kaegi invites the audience to lie down under the trees, to put on headphones, and to listen to a conversation recorded under similar circumstances. An immersion into sound for a shift in perspective.
Conversation with a psychoanalyst, a singer, a curious child, a forest ranger and a meteorologist.


Chiara Bersani e Marco D’Agostin 

Chiara Bersani and Marco D’Agostin are two Italian artists, one with disability and the other not, who have been exploring the notion of “political body” together for the past ten years. 
With a local performer, using bodies and words, the duo will stage a strange picnic in which the landscape will become a space of sharing as much as an inaccessible space.

Sofia Dias e Vítor Roriz  

Portuguese choreographers and performers Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz have developed a choreographic language that includes text and voice, creating shows, performances, and podcasts as well as installations… For Paesaggi Condivis, the duo has composed a sound and choreographic piece for audio-guide headsets, which simultaneously guides two audience groups through the forest, in a kind of pas de deux or surrealistic ritual, between instructions and daydreams. A personal meditation and a collective experience that interrogates our relationship to what surrounds us.


Begüm Erciyas e Daniel Kötter

Begüm Erciyas is a Turkish-Belgian artist who develops theatrical devices that offer audiences individual and intimate experiences in a collective context.
Daniel Kötter is a director and filmmaker, and has directed a
series of virtual reality documentaries that explore the effects of extraction on landscapes and communities.

Ari Benjamin Meyers 

Ari Benjamin Meyers, an American artist and composer living in Berlin, creates musical pieces for international stages and museums. He is particularly interested in formats that deploy the social and performative issues at stake in music.  He takes advantage of this unique occasion to deploy a piece for an entire territory and an entire afternoon and composes for Paesaggi Condivisi UNLESS, 4 musical and sculptural works for the trees, the ground, the birds and the air, which unfold as the landscape and the day go by with 6 local musicians.

El Conde de Torrefiel

El Conde de Torrefiel is a Spanish collective that creates visual and textual theatre pieces in which theatre, choreography, literature and the visual arts cohabit. For the end of the day and of the route, El Conde de Torrefiel will install the audience in a situation in which they will contemplate a “subtitled” landscape, augmented by an LED screen on which thoughts, questions, perspectives and revelations will unfurl. A collective reading of the landscape which will highlight the imperceptible and some of the fictions that govern our representations of nature.

Émilie Rousset 

French director Emilie Rousset uses documentary research to create theatrical, installative, and filmic forms in which actors embody the collected archives, creating fruitful superpositions between reality and fiction, original and copy. For Paesaggi Condivisi, she met with an agroecology  advocacy officer, a tractor farmer and a bio-acoustician, and recorded their words. Performers and a machine replay these original and several versions, inviting the audience to contemplate, upend, and examine the connections between science, technology, economy and landscape.

PAESAGGI CONDIVISI Sette pièce tra campi e foreste
Duration (estimation) : 7 hours, including breaks Performative land art (theatre, performances, music…)
In Italian – English translation available
Concept and curation Caroline Barneaud, Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)
With pieces by Chiara Bersani and Marco D’Agostin (Italy), El Conde de Torrefiel (Spain), Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz (Portugal), Begüm Erciyas and Daniel Kötter (Turkey, Belgium, Germany), Stefan Kaegi (Germany, Switzerland), Ari Benjamin Meyers (USA, Germany), Émilie Rousset (France)
Artistic assistant Giulia Rumasuglia, Magali Tosato
Stage manager Guillaume Zemor 
Production and coordination Isabelle Campiche, Aline Fuchs (Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne)
With the support of the production, technique, communication and administration teams of Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Coordination of Performing Landscape Chloé Ferro, Monica Ferrari,  Lara Fischer (Rimini Protokoll)
Production Rimini Apparat (Germany) and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland)
Coproduction Performing landscape, European consortium: Bunker and Mladi Levi Festival (Slovenia), Culturgest (Portugal), Festival d’Avignon (France), Tangente St. Pölten – Festival für Gegenwartskultur (Austria), Temporada Alta (Spain), ZONA K and Piccolo Teatro di Milano Teatro d’Europa (Italy).

Berliner Festspiele (Germany).

Performing landscape, European consortium: Bunker and Mladi Levi Festival (Slovenia), Culturgest (Portugal), 
Festival d’Avignon (France), Tangente St. Pölten – Festival für Gegenwartskultur (Austria), Temporada Alta (Spain), ZONA K and Piccolo Teatro di Milano Teatro d’Europa (Italy).

Berliner Festspiele (Germany).

pic © Léonard Rossi

With the support of INVR Berlin for the virtual reality headsets.

The concept creation was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Germany)

The prototype in Lausanne was supported by Jorat natural park, the City of Lausanne, the Competence Centre in Sustainability of the University of Lausanne.

Be Flat (BE)

urban acrobatics performance | duration 60 min

c/o public space


The two acrobats of Be Flat have prepared a unique tour of (name city) for a select group of followers. The streets of the city, the facades of the buildings and the cobblestones below are transformed into an urban circus piste. But Follow me is not only a performance to be watched, it is a playful collective journey through public space. So turn off your cell phones, tighten your shoelaces, and lets go!

directors / circusartists Ward mortier, Thomas Decaesstecker dramaturgical advice Craig Weston external viewpoint Sander De Cuyper with the support of Vlaamse gemeenschap coproduction Miramiro partners Circuscentrum, Centre des Arts scéniques, Centre des Arts de la Rue, Latitude 50, Circusplaneet, Circus in beweging et Ell Circo d’ell Fuego

Photo by Yngwie Scheerlinck.

Thomas (Tervuren 1989) and Ward (Ghent 1993) first met at a freerunning gathering in Ghent in 2008. Sharing a mutual passion for music and movement during the ensuing years has led them to a unique and solid friendship. Ward studied Chinese pole combined with acrodance at ESAC (Ecole Supérieure des Arts du Cirque, Brussels). Thomas followed training as acrobat and hand-stand artist in Santiago, Chili at the Escuela De Artes Circenses Del Circo Del Mundo. Their mutual interests, combined with their individual specialisations and experiences, guarantee a broad range of skills to be used in a gamma of contexts and situations.

Massimo Furlan / Claire De Ribaupierre (CH)

performance  | duration 60 min

c/o location being defined


Con l’Animale is the second part of the ‘Trilogie des liens‘, a project in which Massimo Furlan and Claire de Ribaupierre ponder our relationships with nature and its inhabitants, to understand how an environment is made up: who the protagonists are, how they interact, how they evolve contextually and constantly. To understand what unites us, what we all have in common. How we build balances or cause imbalances, how we create alliances or break them, how we live together.

The show Con l’Animale starts from interviews with people who have a special relationship with the wild world: wildlife guards, gamekeepers, fishermen, local hunters, ecology theorists, and philosophers. The stories told reflect the wealth of knowledge and connections with animals. Rivers and forests reveal environments rich in contaminations, condensing some of the paradoxes of our time. The artists listen to their stories, anecdotes, and experiences and ponder their habits. Their actions and practices combine tradition and contemporary issues, necessary needs (population regulation, human feeding, etc.) and Sunday pastimes, intimate understanding of animals in their environments and questions about human intervention in natural ecosystems. Today, more and more, we are neglecting ancestral knowledge based on the balance between what we take from nature and what we give it time to replenish. Not knowing the environment anymore means neglecting it, taking excessive advantage of it means destroying it. Without knowledge of the intelligence of what surrounds us, we destroy ourselves.

a project by Massimo Furlan and Claire de Ribaupierre direction Massimo Furlan dramaturgy Claire de Ribaupierre technical and video direction Jérôme Vernez lighting Etienne Gaches sound Aurélien Chouzenoux administration and production Noémie Doutreleau distribution Jérôme Pique production Numero23Prod. co-production Théâtre Vidy – Lausanne (CH), Les 2 scènes – Besançon with the support of Ville de Lausanne, État de Vaud, Pro Helvetia – Fondation Suisse pour la Culture, Loterie Romande (en cours), programme européen de coopération transfrontalière Interreg France-Suisse dans le cadre du projet CDuLaB.

Foto di Pierre Nydegger

After training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Swiss set designer and visual artist Massimo Furlan worked with various dance and theatre companies. In 2003, he founded his own company dedicated to the performing arts, Numéro23Prod, to interrogate the act of representation outside the confines of genres. His multiple performances, essentially articulated around humour and contrast, question popular manifestations, the notion of the team and the themes of image, duration, childhood, memory and play. In 1988 Furlan received an award from the Irène Reymond foundation in French-speaking Switzerland and in 2001 a Prix culturel vaudois jeunes créateurs beaux-arts. In 2014, he received the Swiss Cultural Theatre Prize. Her works have been presented in theatres and festivals throughout Europe.

Since 2023 Claire de Ribaupierre has been the dramaturge of Massimo Furlan’s creations. She holds a degree in Literature and conducts research in the fields of anthropology and contemporary images and literature.

Laboratorio d’Arte Performativa Guinea Pigs (IT)

EXTRA FOCUS

show | duration 80 min

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed with membership 2024


A theatrical fiction on citizenship rights that tells the story of the transition from adolescence to adulthood of a second-generation girl grappling with the construction of her identity, conflict with her family and her relationship with her origins, and the obstacles caused by missed citizenship rights in school life and in the world of sport. The story focuses on a pivotal moment in the protagonist’s life: her turning 18, and sees her coming to terms with the desires, expectations and renunciations that this ‘milestone’ brings to her existence. The show talks about school, the relationship between generations, education, privileges acquired by birth and rights denied by law. The adolescent characters are played by girls and boys met along the production route, while adult actors and actresses represent the family and the educating community. The show marks the culmination of three years of work by the Guinea Pigs Performing Arts Laboratory with groups of teenagers in Milan and Lombardy. Every aspect of the creative process is conceived, written in collaboration, and in dialogue with the working group: a collective and transgenerational creation process where each participant finds a space for storytelling, action, and representation. L’Italia è relativa also wants to be an opportunity to reflect on the unconscious privilege that concerns a large part of the population that is already Italian and to publicly question ourselves on what is the society we are imagining or are consciously deciding not to imagine.

a performance by Giulia Tollis and Riccardo Mallus with Letizia Bravi, Ivna Lamart, Marco De Francesca and a cast of adolescents still to be defined dramaturgy Giulia Tollis direction Riccardo Mallus and Mohamed Boughanmi Rengifo video Julian Soardi set design Stefano Zullo with the collaboration of Ilenia Mia Carrozzo, Giovanni Di Ponziano, Anna Simon Hanna production Laboratorio d’Arte Performativa Guinea Pigs with the support of MiC and SIAE in the framework of the programme “Per Chi Crea“, and ZONA K, Industria Scenica, Ilinxarium multidisciplinary artistic residence, Casa degli Artisti (Milan), Compagnia Carnevale, Barrio’s Cultural Centre

Photo by the artist

Laboratorio d’Arte Performativa Guinea Pigs creates performances, installations, events, and cultural experiences that investigate social issues in theatrical spaces and urban contexts and are the result of meetings and collaborations with third parties operating in the social field and other artistic disciplines. In 2022 the company, together with the publishing house Marcos Y Marcos and the Arci Post club in Parma, planned and realised a cycle of digital and live events to promote the fruition and diffusion of poetry as part of the project Atlante Sonoro della Poesia Mondiale (Sound Atlas of World Poetry) financed by the Fondazione Cariparma.

FOCUS #3 · ROTTE / ROUTES

The route must be established before navigation and then checked along the way, step by step. It is a matter of having a direction to steer the course. This is how we have tended to move for centuries. We set off with a destination and a path. This applies to our movements, to research (the ‘method’ comes from there) as to any path of truth or direction of self-care.

Today, rather, we often have the impression that something is broken. In the great historical journeys of mankind, in the sensible experiences or oriented paths above and within one’s own soul, something has broken.  These ruptures often question us, if not trouble, distress or even despair us.

Yet, the ruptures also allow us to discover something that the direction and the path of truth kept hidden. Caught up as we were by the sense, meaning and direction of our progress, we forget what was happening to us along the way, step by step, and what was being erased at each step because it was inevitably left behind, discarded, (de)cayed.

Another route, then, begins to emerge from the background of our teleological truths. Another adventure, seemingly devoid of the sense that the first knew how to display, but more rooted or radical. More than a story, then, it is a geography, a writing of spaces that become lived, inhabited, traversed places. More than a journey, a wandering. More than a discovery, an encounter.

Learning to inhabit the silent trail of what continually interrupts the route entails a general turning of ourselves and our way of inhabiting the space in which we live. It means beginning to inhabit one of the last enigmatic sentences that Freud left us: “the psyche is extended, knows nothing about it”.

The routes, our routes, are among the places, in the interstices between a life lived and another that we have instead abandoned, written on the landscapes where the traces of ourselves, realised and unrealised, allow us to rediscover what we have always been because we have never been. The psyche is out there, amidst the passages of the city, the chiaroscuros of the parks, the alleys of the houses, the grand buildings of the past and present.

Faced with the feeling we often have that something is broken, it is a matter of inventing passages, interstices, cracks that allow us, as they say, to make it through by the skin of our teeth. It is more than a survival strategy, it is an over-living, a living above life, another method, another step. As Roland Barthes suggested: “I move on to another kind of knowledge (that of the Amateur), and it is in this that I am methodical”. Another politics being announced, a different way of inhabiting the city, one’s own as well as that of others, or rather, of constantly writing and retracing this threshold between one’s own and others. Because, if the psyche is extended, the unconscious is out there, in the polis, or in what will become of it, on the condition of finding it again, forever lost, every morning, at dawn.

Matteo Bonazzi

[Philosopher (University of Verona) and psychoanalyst (SLP/AMP). President of the association “CLAC. Clinic of contemporary adolescence”]

PROGRAM

25 + 26 October c/o ZONA K
Diana Anselmo e Sara Pranovi (IT)

8 + 9 November c/o ZONA K
Simon Senn (CH)

14 + 15 November c/o Teatro La Cucina
Berlin (BE)

4 – 6 December c/o ZONA K
Giulia Scotti (IT)

13 + 14 December c/o case private
Tolja Djokovic (IT)

Photo by Cesura – Design by Neo Studio/Leonardo Mazzi

Diana Anselmo e Sara Pranovi (IT)

performance in Italian and LIS | duration 50 min

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed with membership 2024

In collaboration with Danae Festival


Je Vous Aime is a lecture-performance about a short film, so short that it lasts barely a second: it is 1891, four years before the Lumière premiere. Georges Demenÿ invents a device that for the first time manages to project a faint moving image: his own face uttering the words “Je vous aime”. This is technically the first video ever, which will lead to the invention of the cinematograph and eventually cinema itself.

Starting from History, always the result of a meticulous choice between what can be preserved and what cannot, and from the Archive, a device at the service of a certain system of power, the performance highlights the anti-history, or rather “those whom History does not take into account”; thus revealing how that first video was aimed at teaching lip-reading to deaf children – after they were prevented by law from signing. This was the verdict of the Milan Congress, the consequences of which still affect Deaf people today. In Italy, Italian Sign Language (LIS) was only recognised as a true language in May 2021: 141 years later. Je vous Aime is, therefore, a multimedia performative stage action that unfolds between verbal storytelling, slides, video testimonies in Italian Sign Language (LIS), and Visual Sign (a poetic form of sign languages) with the aim of discussing audism, phonocentrism, and linguicism, and rewriting the “literature of the masters”.

performer Diana Anselmo and Sara Pranovi director Diana Anselmo video testimonies Paolo Girardi, Leonarda Catalano, Mario Minucci, Maurizio Anselmo, Anna Folchi, Vincenza Giuranna, Diana Vantini, Matteo Pedrazzi produced with the support of IntercettAzioni – Centro di Residenza Artistica della Lombardia

Photo by Sara Meliti

Diana Anselmo is a Deaf performer, activist and improvised human being.Bilingual LIS and Italian, she made her debut with her first performance “Autoritratto in 3 atti” (2021), still presented at various Italian and international festivals. Abroad, he made his debut in Berlin with “Le Sacre du Printemps (2022)” by Xavier Le Roy. He is one of the founders of Al.Di.Qua. Artists, the first association in Europe of and for artists* with disabilities.

Sara Pranovi is a LIS interpreter with specific expertise in the world of performance. On stage, she has translated numerous shows into LIS: alongside Marta Cuscunà (Corvidae, Sguardi di Specie) and Irene Serini (Abracadabra), she has also interpreted in sign language the works “Abbracci” by Teatro Telaio, “I Danni del Pomodoro” by Teatro d’Emergenza, “Escargot” by Teatro del Piccione, “Il Tenace Soldatino di Piombo” by Teatro delle Apparizioni and “Pornodrama 2.0” by Giuseppe Comuniello and Camilla Guarino.

Simon Senn (CH)

performance | duration 60 min

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed with membership 2024


In this digital conference that doubles as a demonstration and confession, Simon Senn, a videographer and visual artist from Geneva, demonstrates how the virtual world and the real world are not always in opposition, revealing the unexpected entanglements between technology, representation, gender, and law.

Simon Senn’s experience began when he bought the digital replica of a female body online. He then went in search of the woman whose body he was « virtually » inhabiting. Onstage he conveys this disturbing experience to the audience.

After downloading the replica (a detailed and evidently accurate reproduction), he brought it to life with easily purchased sensors and discovered what it felt like to « have » a female body – at least through his 3D glasses. The experience was moving. Who is this woman ? Can he do anything he likes with this digital body ? What about the new and enjoyable sensuality this virtual form offers him ? He managed to track down the young woman and begin a discussion with her (one that continues today), where together they investigate this third digital body that exists between them. Arielle is now part of the project and is present in the show.

Simon Senn decided to consult a psychologist and explore his feelings of «gender disturbance », which continue to surprise him – does he perhaps suffer from « Snapchat dysmorphia », the clinically accepted psychological illness of those who wish to transform themselves in order to resemble their online image?

conception and direction Simon Senn with Simon Senn, Arielle F. and a virtual body production Compagnie Simon Senn co-production Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne Le Grütli, Centre de production et de diffusion des Arts vivants Théâtre du Loup distribution and tour Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne with the support of Fondation suisse pour la culture Pro Helvetia; Fondation Ernst Göhner; Pour-cent culturel Migros; Porosus

Photo from simonsenn.com

Born in 1986, Simon Senn is an artist and theater director, and lives in Geneva. He obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Haute école d’art et de design de Genève and a Master’s degree from Goldsmiths College in London. At first glance, his work seems to suggest that he is a socially engaged artist, speaking out against a certain type of injustice. However, his works sometimes reveal a more ambiguous approach, exploring aporias rather than articulating addressed criticisms. Even if his videos or installations are normally based on a certain reality, fiction is often mixed in. Be Arielle F is his first proposal for the stage, with which he received the second Prix d’encouragement pour les arts de la scène Premio in 2019. During the health crisis of 2020, a live stream and adapted version of the show was offered digitally by the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne. In 2024, he collaborates with Indian dancer Rohee Uberoi to capture and encode the movement of Bharata natyam in their projet Rohee, to be shown in Vidy.

Berlin (BE)

show | duration 110 min
in English with Italian subtitles

c/o Teatro La Cucina / Olinda onlus via Ippocrate 45, Milan


The making of Berlin is a portrait of a city. It is built around the extraordinary story of Friedrich Mohr, a Berliner who was the Berliner Philharmoniker’s stage manager during WWII. The making of Berlin – with live horn music – offers an unfiltered look at BERLIN’s work process. But above all, it tells the story of one of the ‘unbrave’ who failed to stand up when fellow Jewish musicians and friends were expelled from the orchestra. The making of Berlin is the final part of the Holocene cycle, during which BERLIN made several portraits of cities over the past twenty years.

BERLIN helps Mohr to realize an as yet unfulfilled dream. At the end of WWII, the conductor of the Philharmonic decided to perform Siegfried’s Funeral March from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung one last time. The performance would be broadcast live on German state radio. Rehearsing with the entire orchestra in one location soon proved too dangerous due to ongoing bombing. So the conductor divided the orchestra into seven segments and had them rehearse in separate bunkers. Faltering (recording) technology threw a spanner in the works. Mohr’s ultimate wish is to perform the technical tour de force as initially planned seventy-five years after the date. The Götterdämmerung will be played from seven bunkers simultaneously and can be heard in its entirety on the radio. A daring feat for which BERLIN called on, among others, radio station Klara, the orchestra of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and German actor Martin Wuttke (known from Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

Theatre- and film-maker Fien Leysen records the creation process for a behind-the-scenes documentary. Her footage eventually ends up in the performance as well. You gradually discover together with BERLIN that Mohr’s story is full of inaccuracies and that he seems to want to restore the irreparable. How far can you stretch the truth when you’re looking for atonement?

direction Yves Degryse with (on stage) Yves Degryse, Geert De Vleesschauwer / Marjolein Demey / Bregt Janssens / Eveline Martens / Sam Loncke (afwisselend), Rozanne Descheemaeker / Matea Majic / Diechje Minne / Jonathan van der Beek (afwisselend) ; with (film) Friedrich Mohr, Martin Wuttke, Stefan Lennert, Werner Buchholz, Alisa Tomina, Krijn Thijs, Chantal Pattyn, Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Alejo Pérez, Yves Degryse, Caroline Große, Michael Becker, Claire Hoofwijk, Alejandro Urrutia, Marek Burák, Marvyn Pettina, Farnaz Emamverdi, team BERLIN: Jane Seynaeve, Eveline Martens, Jessica Ridderhof, Geert De Vleesschauwer, Sam Loncke, Manu Siebens, Kurt Lannoye, team Opera Ballet Vlaanderen: Jan Vandenhouwe, Lise Thomas, Eva Knapen, Christophe De Tremerie video e video editing Geert De Vleesschauwer, Fien Leysen, Yves Degryse internship video editing Maria Feenstra drone shots Yorick Leusink, Solon Lutz behind the scenes footage Fien Leysen scenography Manu Siebens set construction Manu Siebens, Ina Peeters, Rex Tee, Joris Festjens set design and construction film Jessica Ridderhof, Klaartje Vermeulen, Ruth Lodder, Ina Peeters musical composition and mixing Peter Van Laerhoven live music (horn) Rozanne Descheemaeker / Matea Majic / Diechje Minne / Jonathan van der Beek (alternating) music film Peter Van Laerhoven, Tim Coenen, Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen olv Alejo Pérez mixing orchestra Maarten Buyl sound design and mixing Arnold Bastiaanse sound recordings Bas De Caluwé, Maarten Moesen, Bart Vandebril technical coordination Manu Siebens, Geert De Vleesschauwer production management Jessica Ridderhof production support Germany Daniela Schwabe, Gordon Schirmer research Wagner Clem Robyns, Piet De Volder research internship Annika Serong photography Koen Broos, Gordon Schirmer technical coordination berlin Marjolein Demey day-to-day coordination and production assistant Jane Seynaeve production BERLIN coproduction DE SINGEL (Antwerp, BE), le CENTQUATRE-PARIS (FR), Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (BE), VIERNULVIER (Ghent, BE), C-TAKT (Limburg, BE), Theaterfestival Boulevard (Den Bosch, NL), Berliner Festspiele (DE) with the support of the Flemish Government, Sabam for Culture, Tax Shelter of the Belgian federal government via Flanders Tax Shelter

Photo by Koen Broos

Founders of BERLIN in 2003, filmmakers Bart Baele and Yves Degryse decided not to choose a particular genre, but to venture into the realm of documentary filmmaking and let the places of their forays guide their inspiration. This philosophy resulted in two project cycles: Holocene (the current geological era) where the starting point is always a city or other place on the planet, and Horror Vacui (fear of the void) in which true and poignant stories are delicately unravelled around a table. The Holocene cycle includes Jerusalem, Iqaluit, Bonanza, Moscow and Zvizdal. The first three episodes of Horror Vacui are Tagfish, Land’s end and Perhaps all the dragons. BERLIN are still working on both cycles. The Making of Berlin is the last chapter of Holocene. The company has worked in 27 different countries in recent years, within various circuits: from theatres to exhibition spaces, from festivals to special locations.

Giulia Scotti (IT)

show | duration 60 min

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed with membership 2024


In my family there are stories that are not told in the belief that what is not told will never be known. Of my aunt’s story no one ever told my brother and me anything, what we did know was that my father had three sisters and that we now have two aunts and that therefore one of the three was no longer alive, Daniela. I have no memories of her alive, nor of us together. There is a photograph of her, I remember that one, I never liked it, it’s a bit grainy, a bit anonymous, and my aunt’s face is yellow, or at least that’s how it looked to me when I looked at it as a child. It is the photo you give to friends and relatives on the day of the funeral. When she died nobody told me. I have an image of that afternoon. I am walking through the house, I stop in front of my parents’ bathroom, I have a feeling. The door is half-open, I look inside: there is my father, standing there, his arms long, outstretched, leaning against the sink, he is crying, desperately crying, shaking, but without making a sound. I remember being worried because I had never seen my father cry.

I grew up and didn’t think about it any more: my aunt was dead and death brings sadness, which is why, I imagined, no one ever talked about it. Then one day, I was twenty-five, my father came to me and told me Daniela’s story. He did it without stopping, without omitting anything, as if he had been waiting for that moment all his life. This is the story of my aunt as I heard it from my dad, it is the story of a man who wants to save his sister from death but cannot.
Almost everything is true, some parts are made up.” Giulia Scotti

Winner of the ‘Tuttoteatro.com’ Dante Cappelletti 2023 Award
Special mention bando Odiolestate 2023

text and direction Giulia Scotti collaboration on the project Andrea Pizzalis consultancy Alessandra Ventrella with Giulia Scotti lighting design Elena Vastano sound Lemmo co-production INDEX, tuttoteatro.com production residence Carrozzerie | n.o. t with the support of IntercettAzioni – Centro di Residenza Artistica della Lombardia, Centro di Residenza della Toscana (Armunia – CapoTrave/Kilowatt), Olinda/TeatroLaCucina in collaboration with mare culturale urbano, Ex Asilo Filangieri production, organisation, administration Valentina Bertolino, Silvia Parlani, Grazia Sgueglia communication Francesco Di Stefano
We would like to thank Antonio Tagliarini, Fabiana Iacozzilli, Francesco Alberici for having believed in it first. Special thanks to Daria Deflorian for supporting the project

Pic by the artist

Giulia Scotti graduated as an actress from Grock – Theatre School. She participates as an actress in several shows, the latest of which Elogio della vita a rovescio directed by Daria Deflorian; in addition to her theatrical practice she explores different expressive mediums, until she approaches comics. In 2018 she was selected for the European project Artists@Work. Fermata Rogoredo was born, a short comic-strip story exhibited during the festival of Internazionale in Ferrara, ed. 2018. In 2020 her debut comic Tutto quello che non ho dimenticato won the first prize, awarded by the writer Paolo Cognetti, of the Milano Pitch for the adult fiction book section. In 2019 he founded, together with a collective of actresses and actors, the Praxis association, which works by proposing a blend of performing arts, anthropological discipline and social research methods. What is not there is the personal project currently in the works.

Tolja Djokovic (IT)

performance

c/o private houses

in collaboration with STANZE


A più voci is a project that focuses on the relationship between female writing and creativity with the theme of the home and domestic work.  Tolja Djokovic responds to a request from the Periferico Festival in Modena to initiate a co-creation process starting from a reflection on art and the lives of women today. Three coordinates become the focus of the work: the first concerns research on literary sources: writers who have spoken of their writing as “domestic”, that is, women who have carried out their creative practice by juggling housework, and authors who have focused on the relationship between home and creativity. The second fundamental coordinate is the involvement of communities of non-professional women in theatre, who are eager to participate in a theatrical creation. The third coordinate concerns the performance venues: private houses that become the occasion to generate an encounter between those who live there, those who have written and those who watch.

After a debut at the Periferico Festival in October, the project arrives in Milan with the involvement of a group of women from the city.

credits in the process of being defined

Photo by the artist

Tolja Djokovic grew up in Rome but lives in Milan. She graduated in Philology and Italian Literature with a research thesis on reading aloud the poetic text, and has been working in theatre as an actress and author since 2009. In 2018 she participates in the International Dramaturg Masterclass of the Iolanda Gazzarro School of Theatre of ERT. In 2019 she founds the company tostacarusa for which she is dramaturg and director. In 2021 she participates in the writing of Per la città dolente, a Teatro Metastasio production, directed by Roberto Latini. In 2022 she is present at the Venice Theatre Biennale with the text En Abyme directed by Fabiana Iacozzilli. In 2023 he won the 57th Riccione Theatre Prize with the text Lucia camminava.

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