Performativa II

Adam York Gregory & Gillian Jane Lees: Different North

choreographed durational performance & a temporary sculpture, 600 min.

Is North a geographic location or is it a direction? Is ‘Northern' an identity or an orientation?

Unless you are stood at the exact magnetic North, the point at which all these compasses face, there is always something more Northern. The politics of the North are inherent in us, and the actions we perform, whether that is in relation to an independent Scotland, a Europe-free Britain or a global climate emergency.

We ourselves are magnetic fields. Will our bodies make the needles orientate towards, or away from us, with each person acting as a different North? Your North might be an idea, or a place, a story, a picture, an accent, a memory or a song. Every human is their own compass, with their own North.

A Different North is a project about collecting and sharing Norths, it charts new Norths and forgotten Norths. Norths that are changing and ones that will soon be lost. A Different North is a choreographed durational performance that results in a temporary sculpture.

Over a period of hours, the performer creates 360 compasses through magnetising a pin and placing it on a cork disc within a shallow dish of water. The compasses are arranged on the floor to allow the audience to move between them.

The pins, whilst broadly aligning in the same direction will demonstrate subtle differences as they respond to the environment, the wires in the walls, nearby magnetic fields and even the presence of a spectator as they pass. (Adam & Gillian)

Gillian is a Glasgow based performance practitioner. She makes rigorous attempts to build and control her environment over hours, and sometimes days, by undertaking physically demanding and mentally exhausting durational performances. Gillian’s interest lies in the fleeting moment where her will to succeed meets her diminishing physical ability to complete each task.

Adam is a scientist, games designer, typesetter, comic artist, film-maker and Visual Artist. His practice reflects each of these disciplines, often combining them to create novel areas of exploration, using his background in creating scientific investigations as a starting point for artistic explorations and methodologies.

Together, they make a form of durational sculpture and their practice seeks to explore the notion of ‘the imagined ideal’ through subjective performance, objective experimentation, documentation and observation. Interdisciplinary in nature, their practice encompasses pedestrian choreography, sculpture and installation. They make work that engages through 'slow spectacle’, taking long durations (often 12 - 24 consecutive hours) and repetitive actions to build sculpture through performance. They demonstrate failure, endurance and precision.

Snježana Premuš & Anja Bornšek: Touch Tissue Fabric

dance installation, 45 min.

Choreographers Snježana Premuš and Anja Bornšek are concerned with the nature of communication: they understand it as an interplay between "action-dialogue" and "situation-encounter". They are aware that the main connection comes from physical touch and see the latter in the broadest sense. Together with visual artist Špela Škulj and musician Ida Hiršenfelder, along with the visitors to the installation, they extend the dialogue to the various spheres of "touch" (tangible, perceived/felt, material/transient, intimate/shared, haptic/visual/audible). The spaces or spheres of encounter foster our understanding of boundaries, while also creating safe passageways for us to turn to another.

The dance installation Touch Tissue Fabric deals with "encounter". The artists open up the encounter as a space that co-creates and needs outside space, but also touches and transforms inner spaces. It is a kind of movement, a state of deep mutual concentration ensuing from the sensual-contemplative-physical, that reacts to all the present elements. 

"Snježana Premuš and Anja Bornšek weave a field of meaning in the inventive dance practices through continuous and systematic exploration. By creating an inclusive and participatory environment that gives artists and others the opportunity to explore their own somatics, perceptions and manifestations, they create a unique social body that adorns the Slovenian art scene like the most precious of fabrics /.../." (Taken from the text Prostorsko-koreografske skice [Spatial-Choreographic Sketches] by Erika Šešek, published at https://koridor-ku.si) 

Snježana Premuš is a choreographer, dancer and researcher of somatic principles and has been working in this field for 25 years. Her projects are challenging spaces of participation that do not submit to representation but transcend it as a possible model for a different contemporary society. The work of Snježana Premuš focuses on the exploration of the body, corporeality and the question of how we perceive the body. She creates fascinating performance formats in which she co-creates shared spaces of observation, perception and experience with the audience. In 2017, she was awarded the Ksenija Hribar Prize as a choreographer. 

Anja Bornšek graduated from the Salzburg Experimental Academy for Dance (SEAD) in 2007 and completed her Master's degree in Contemporary Dance Education at the HfMDK in Frankfurt in 2014. She has collaborated with various artists (Delak, Premuš, Podrzavnik, Ferlin) and also works on her own projects. Over the last eight years, she has intensively developed a format for the public called Physical Introduction. 

Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip) is a sound artist and archivist. Using analogue electronics, homemade modular sound synthesisers, field recordings and computer manipulation, she composes immersive psychogeographic soundscapes. Her interests include bioacoustics as well as experimental and microtonal music. In 2023, she completed her Master's degree in Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. 

Špela Škulj is a visual artist. She works in the field of photography and video. Her main interest in her work could be described as personal documentation; often focusing on ecology and the environment as well as the irreversible impact of humans on nature. She is active on the contemporary dance scene as a lighting designer and theatre technician.

Production: Zavod Federacija, Ljubljana Coproduction: NAGIB Maribor, Inštitut MA, Maribor Puppet Theatre

Marko Batista: Sonic Geometry of Space

sound performance, 30 min.

The works of intermedia artist Marko Batista are concerned with homemade electro-acoustic processes at the intersection of electronic sound, technology and contemporary art. As part of Performativa, he will present a new sonic piece which is an offshoot from the installation featured in the Extended Vision exhibition and his extensive years of sound experimentation, since his work is rooted in the examination of the phenomenology of sound resonances within the space and the development of dynamic, self-generating systems. 

The history of electroacoustic art reveals the complex presence of sound in relation to temporality and the architecture in which it appears. This time the artist shapes his characteristic experimental sound with modular interfaces and a homemade loudspeaker system, which will be presented for the first time at Cukrarna: it consists of ten loudspeakers in a "horn" version that produce a unique directed sound. The modular interfaces consist of programmed microcontrollers that utilise gravity, fluctuation and a string object to create an instrument or infrastructure for a performative interplay of microtonal, spatial and sub-bass compositions. The elements are not merely tools but means to transform space and time through the architectural character of Cukrarna's central venue.

With subtly refined frequency modulations and dynamic rhythmic structures, Marko Batista creates experimental soundscapes that shape the spatial perception of listening and build a bridge between performative sound art and contemporary electroacoustic aesthetics.

Marko Batista is a Ljubljana-based sound experimentalist and intermedia artist. He graduated in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana before completing his master's degree at Central Saint Martins in London. His work focuses on performative sound practices and spatial sound installations. He explores the relationships in the field of spatial sound and how sound experiences are perceived in specific acoustic environments. His work has been presented at many festivals and galleries nationally and internationally (U3 – Moderna galerija, MSUM Ljubljana, Wonderlab Novi Sad, Tobačna 001, Radart #7, International Festival of Computer Arts 2018, Koordinate zvoka – Radio Študent, Aksioma Project Space ...).