QUEER ZAGREB 2006 (25-29/4/2006)
Queer Zagreb in its fourth year offers a selection which raises expectations from those ten to fifteen times financially more appealing similar events. Inviting artists from Japan, USA, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Croatia, the festival this year plays with dance, theatre, pornography and fashion. The basis of selection was the relationship between public and private, i.e. we searched for models of transgression of privacy from privilege to obligation. That which makes us different often forces us to silence, while the artists we present this year, quite the reverse, speak about it loudly. Raimund Hoghe, a German choreographer, will open Queer Zagreb with emotionally charged Swan's Lake, which faced audiences throughout Europe with their own perception of eros, physical stamina and strength. This long-time dramaturg of Pina Bausch succeeds in rearranging the myths of beauty we use every day, making them so deeply personal that we simply take them in as our own.
Mark Tompkins, an American choreographer working in France for more than twenty years, and his Cie I.D.A. will perform his most intimate play 'Song and Dance'. This play denudes the artist and combines the public and the private spheres, exposing spaces of weakness and strength one can cloak with. On the other hand, Earthfall try to preserve the innocence of their youth by confining themselves to personal closeness. The show "As Swim Two Boys", based on Jamie O'Neill's novel, is performed in water, in a pool built specially for this purpose, and is to be one of the most striking performances in Queer Zagreb programme this year.
The Japanese segment of the festival, Tadasu Takamine and BuBu de la Madeleine, will present performances designed to perplex and unnerve the audience. Tadasu Takamine in his video "Kimura-san" shifts the borders of traditional perception of asexuality of disabled persons. At the same time, BuBu de la Madeleine in her performance "White Flags - Made in Occupied Japan" gives birth to nations and transforms the audience into midwives and fathers brave enough to witness the birth.
Lesbians are in charge of the educational part of the programme. Manuela Kay, the first lady of the Berlin scene and long-time force behind the Teddy award, will educate us with her famous evening "How to Make Lesbian Porn?". Accompanied by her guests, comprising a disinterested artistic commune "Manuela and Her Boys", she will teach us the exact meaning of "Lesben über 40 Stammtisch". On the same evening we shall also have an opportunity to listen to the first Croatian queer choir - Le Zbor.
The orgasmic finale of the festival will include Cazzo Films actors and a fashion-artistic performance "Exposed to Virus and Fashion" by Silvio Vujičić whose work has been appearing in the festival for years now.
Before we share a post-coital smoke, it should be noted that out of the draft from within public institutions, voices of entrenched bureaucrats emerge constantly announcing further malnutrition of Queer Zagreb. Reaching out to these tombs of tragic politically-bureaucratic mathematicians, who incessantly calculate their position inside the (heterosexual) universe, became pointless as soon as the festival was - ah, nomen est omen - named Queer. On the other hand, taking into account the geographic lattitude and longitude the festival takes place in, dealing with topics like "post-socialist queer identity" or "heteronormativity of childhoods", its fourth incarnation seems more like a postponed again euthanasia. The general position of the so-called independent (or is it invisible?) scene in local culture and in the relevant City offices is subject to whims and caprices of those whose own positions are changing with the seasons.
Peck-on-the-(ass)cheek,
Mark Tompkins, an American choreographer working in France for more than twenty years, and his Cie I.D.A. will perform his most intimate play 'Song and Dance'. This play denudes the artist and combines the public and the private spheres, exposing spaces of weakness and strength one can cloak with. On the other hand, Earthfall try to preserve the innocence of their youth by confining themselves to personal closeness. The show "As Swim Two Boys", based on Jamie O'Neill's novel, is performed in water, in a pool built specially for this purpose, and is to be one of the most striking performances in Queer Zagreb programme this year.
The Japanese segment of the festival, Tadasu Takamine and BuBu de la Madeleine, will present performances designed to perplex and unnerve the audience. Tadasu Takamine in his video "Kimura-san" shifts the borders of traditional perception of asexuality of disabled persons. At the same time, BuBu de la Madeleine in her performance "White Flags - Made in Occupied Japan" gives birth to nations and transforms the audience into midwives and fathers brave enough to witness the birth.
Lesbians are in charge of the educational part of the programme. Manuela Kay, the first lady of the Berlin scene and long-time force behind the Teddy award, will educate us with her famous evening "How to Make Lesbian Porn?". Accompanied by her guests, comprising a disinterested artistic commune "Manuela and Her Boys", she will teach us the exact meaning of "Lesben über 40 Stammtisch". On the same evening we shall also have an opportunity to listen to the first Croatian queer choir - Le Zbor.
The orgasmic finale of the festival will include Cazzo Films actors and a fashion-artistic performance "Exposed to Virus and Fashion" by Silvio Vujičić whose work has been appearing in the festival for years now.
Before we share a post-coital smoke, it should be noted that out of the draft from within public institutions, voices of entrenched bureaucrats emerge constantly announcing further malnutrition of Queer Zagreb. Reaching out to these tombs of tragic politically-bureaucratic mathematicians, who incessantly calculate their position inside the (heterosexual) universe, became pointless as soon as the festival was - ah, nomen est omen - named Queer. On the other hand, taking into account the geographic lattitude and longitude the festival takes place in, dealing with topics like "post-socialist queer identity" or "heteronormativity of childhoods", its fourth incarnation seems more like a postponed again euthanasia. The general position of the so-called independent (or is it invisible?) scene in local culture and in the relevant City offices is subject to whims and caprices of those whose own positions are changing with the seasons.
Peck-on-the-(ass)cheek,
Zvonimir Dobrović
Programme Director
(Αναδημοσίευση από site του queerzagreb)
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