Families Otherwise

Who in Slovenia can be a parent and who is childless against their will due to legal obstacles? How to render parenthood a social matter, beyond wider blood relations and institutions? How to revolt against the idealisation and essentialisation of motherhood? In what kinds of family forms do we live and what kinds of family forms would we want? We shall be discussing all these questions, despite conservative and liberal standpoints that would dictate their answers to us.

Discussions’s Moderator: Tea Hvala

The discussion will be in english.

Admission free.
Information: info@bunker.si, 00 386 51 269 906

Oona Doherty: To Unlock The Valves of Feeling – Francis Bacon

The class starts with a yoga-style warm up, using the body and the lungs to relax and open the mind. We will move into a led improvisation working with images of Concrete, white Peacocks, magma, Manuka honey, drugs, Jaxson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Carravagio, mistakes of the father and glory white, Ascension into Lazarus. Because the number of the participants is limited, you need to register in advanced.

Photo: Luca Truffarelli

Registration: production@cityofwomen.org until October 1st.
Fee for the individual day of the workshop is 10 EUR.

FUTURE OF FESTIVALS – Festivals and cultural tourism

On the 20th anniversary of the Mladi levi festival, our state of mind is marked by – remembering the Gramsci’s maxim – pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. The circumstances are increasingly pressing and difficult for the festivals like ours, and on the other hand, we find them increasingly necessary. Therefore we feel that we have to diagnose well all the pressures on the festival, to anticipate all the problems and at the same time to believe in the power of festivals, in the power of socializing events, where art is used to create transformative moments or states.

Of course, the purpose of anniversaries is to look back, but more importantly, to try and chart the future course of the festivals. What are the challenges that await them, how are we supposed to profile them at the time when almost anything can be called a festival, how to resist the pressures of commercialization, confining to local environment, how to resist curating dictated by financial, geopolitical and logistical circumstances. In the near future, we see two key driving forces in the development of the festivals: connecting with tourism – where we believe in nano‑ and microtourism, that is sustainable tourism rather than in mass tourism – and preserving the position of internationality, of exchange, rather than growing nationalism and populism.
In the coming months, we will organize a series of discussions, lectures and presentations on the future of festivals, and this year’s Mladi levi festival will host a roundtable discussion on the topic of festivals and cultural tourism. We will talk about how to establish a link between tourism and festivals in the next two years, when culture will be at the core of Slovenia’s national tourist strategy, in a way that would benefit culture and tourism, and above all, visitors to art events and tourists.

Speakers:
Janez Leban, president of the Festival Sajeta, Union of Associationa of yound and creative Tolmin
Deborah Pearson, performing artist, co-founder of the festival Forest Fringe
Anže Zorman, journalist and editor at Culture.si and Kulturnik
Tjaša Pureber, coordinator of Asociacija
Tanja Hladnik, Initiative of film festivals of nongovernmental organisations

Moderators:
Nevenka Koprivšek, Alma R. Selimović

In collaboration with: Društvo Asociacija

Information: www.ljudmila.org/~bunker, info@bunker.si

Toni Soprano: THE WALL (SI)

The Stara mestna elektrarna is an iconic building in Ljubljana that will celebrate its 120th anniversary next year. Its chimney is one of the city’s landmarks. Elektrarna leads a double life – it is still the electric heart of Ljubljana, but at the same time also serves as a theatre. Sometimes though, its theatre role is somehow invisible, hidden deep in its bowels. Therefore, we have decided in cooperation with Elektro Ljubljana to mark our presence in Elektrarna from the outside as well. And what better way to do it than with art?

The first to take on the challenge of the great wall will be Toni Soprano, an intermedia artist and set designer, who is a regular guest of Elektrarna. So far, the wall has only belonged to Elektro Ljubljana and graffiti artists, but from now on, it will belong in part to every artist creating in Elektrarna, to all those who live across the street, and to all passers‑by.

Foto: Toni Soprano

MILESTONE ANNIVERSARY! 20th Mladi levi closing celebration

For the closing of the festival, we invite you all – children, adults, families, , residents of the Tabor neighborhood, and all friends of the Mladi levi festival – to join us at the relaxing atmosphere marked by music and gourmet cuisine on the last day of the festival.

You are welcome to come between the shows or just like that, for a refreshing tea, snack, selected music, chat, or a game of ping‑pong. Free child care will be available between the performances at kindergarten Lion Cubs, with a bunch of fun games and Workshop of protests, where children will be able to express all their complaints and write them on banners to show them to the adults.

Programme
3.00 pm–midnight: Chill out and hot-up music by MC Kitch, with oriental flavors by special guests
3.00 pm–midnight: Games (table tennis, elastics, hula hoop, hopscotch, etc.)
4.00 pm and 6.00 pm: Workshop of protests
4.00 pm–10.00 pm: Tasting of delicious dishes made by chefs from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan
7.30 pm: Toni Soprano: THE WALL, opening
7.30 pm: FPZ Z’borke, concert

Idea and implementation: Kitch
Workshop of protests led by: Urška Boljkovac
Set design: Kitch, Tanja Radež
Lighting design: Igor Remeta
Producer: Lea Kukovičič

OPENING OF THE 20th FESTIVAL MLADI LEVI

We invite you to join us at the opening of the 20th Mladi levi festival at Španski borci Culture Centre in Moste on August 18 at 8.00 pm!

The 20th festival will be opened by the international coproduction Pursuit of Happiness, created by the directors Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška, in collaboration with EnKnapGroup. The performance embodies the spirit of the Mladi levi – bold, engaged, full of humour, pushing the limits of theatre territory, and combining the best of the local and the international.

After 10.00 pm, the performance will be followed by the traditional Mladi levi dance! The indispensable ladies from the Day activity centre for the elderly, under the supervision of the chef Primož Dolničar, will once again prepare us snacks to make the night sweeter and spice up our dance moves to the rhythms of DJ Šanti Prija.

Producer: Mojca Jug
Set and lighting design: Tanja Radež & Igor Remeta

Photo: Nada Žgank

FPZ Z’borke: concert (SI)

In Slovenia, the phenomenon of choir singing is close to legendary; every school, every village has its own choir, and not a single school or state celebration, feast or funeral goes by without one. But in recent years, we’re experiencing a revival of choir singing – choirs are selling out the largest halls, exciting all generations, and new choirs are emerging in all areas: from entertainment wonders and renewed popularity of partisan choirs to this year’s guests of the Mladi levi festival: Feminist Choir Z’borke.

Z’borke are fighting with songs to make the voice of feminism more heard – to bring it on the right streets, in the right ears, and to make female artists heard. They sing a new feminist anthem, Brave Feminist and sometimes they change the lyrics of some popular song, transforming its patriarchic message. They are not only raising the morale of their female and male comrades in the fight, but also their own. A beautiful manifestation of channeling powerful messages into art, of the empowerment through art. True young lionesses!

Foto: Rebeka Bernetič

Daniel Wetzel (Rimini Protokoll): EVROS WALK WATER 1 & 2 (DE)

Daniel Wetzel is a member of the Rimini Protokoll, a well‑known art collective visiting us already with their fifth project. Wetzel, Stefan Kaegi, and Helgard Kim Haug founded the collective following their common experience at the Giessen Institute for Applied Theatre Studies. They are known as (co)founders of the reality theatre trend – using various innovative theatrical approaches, their works provide new perspectives of what we perceive as reality.

The title Evros Walk Water 1 & 2 combines two elements as the basis for the performance: a three-minute piece Water Walk by John Cage, where the musician creates music on the set that featured a bathtub, transistor radios, a pressure cooker, a plastic duck, etc.; and the name of he river which separates Greece from Turkey, a deadly border of “Europe” for those who tried to enter before it was closed with a massive fence – the Evros. In Athens, Wetzel cooperated with eight boys who arrived in Greece by boat from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. They have not been permitted to travel in Europe, so what they share about their life, had to find another form. With audio recordings over headphones we listen to their stories and jokes, and to their instructions how to perform Water Walk. This way, it becomes a playground for the audience combining the stories with Cage’s playful piece, to play with them based on their instructions, making music in their and the author’s witty style. Part 2 beams the piece into the present. The boys have grown older, some of them have chosen to find other places to live in Europe, so the instruments change, and thus the sound of their concert to us, that we perform.

Cast: Abel, Aron, Ehsan, Jawad, Jined, Massoud, Moussa, Omer, Sowie
English version: Andreas, Dennis, Elektra, Maria, Nefeli, Orfeas, Thodoris
Concept and direction: Daniel Wetzel
Dramaturgy: Ioanna Valsamidou
Research: Konstantinos Kallivretakis, Ioanna Valsamidou, Nefeli Myrodia, Margarita Gerogianni
Set design: Adrianos Zacharias, Magda Plevraki, Maria Kakaroglou
Sound: Peter Breitenbach, Lampros Pigounis, Panos Tsagarakis
Lighting design: Guy Stephanou, Michalis Kloukinas, Martin Schwemin
Light objects: Guy Stephanou, Michalis Kloukinas
Video: Ehsan
Flute, caval: Dimitris Brendas
Translation: Bakar Albakar, Abbas Golbas
Producers: Violetta Gyra, Juliane Männel, Heirdun Schlegel, Charlotte Streck
Production assistant: Kostas Valsamidis
Production: Rimini Apparat, Onassis Cultural Centre / Fast Forward Festival
Co-produced by: HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Funded by: Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe – Department of Culture
Based on: Evros Walk Water – a coproduction by: TAK Liechtenstein, Schloßmediale Werdenberg, Rimini Apparat

Foto: Daniel Wetzel

The performance is in English.

90 minutes

Allan Sekula & Noël Burch: THE FORGOTTEN SPACE film (NL)

The Forgotten Space is the latest film project by Noël Burch, film theorist and filmmaker, and Allan Sekula, photographer, writer, critic, and filmmaker, whose creative and research opus is marked by “the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world”.
If the performance Said to Contain captures transport, logistics and modern capitalism through the optics of container and by means of theatre, The Forgotten Space approaches the same topic by means of film. A poetic film essay, awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, that brings before our eyes the things that are not really hidden, but certainly distant from our view.

Directors: Allan Sekula & Noël Burch
Producers: Frank van Reemst, Joost Verheij
Co-producers: Vincent Lucassen, Ebba Sinzinger
Script: Allan Sekula & Noël Burch
Directors of photography: Attila Boa, Wolfgang Thaler
Sound engineers: Eckehard Braun & Joe Knauer
Sound design: Mark Glynne
Music: Riccardo Tesi & Louis Andriessen
Editor: Menno Boerema
Production company: Doc.Eye Film
Co-production company: WILDart FILM

Foto: The Forgotten Space

The film is in different languages with English subtitles.

113 minutes

Anton Pavlovič Čehov & Maruša Kink: THREE SISTERS (SI)

Meeting point: Parmova 23

Maruša Kink is finishing her master’s program of directing at Academy of theatre, radio, film and television; but she entered the theatre and theatre directing through acting. She works as a theatre director in Margareta Schwarzwald Institute which she co‑founded and where she works as Artistic Director. She is still acting and directing for youth and adults and cooperated with repertory theatres and the independent scene.
Chekhov represents a challenge to any author; how to stage this theatrical canon in a way that it becomes fresh and up‑to‑date again, and is not suffocated by the anon of all previous enactments. Three years ago, the Mladi levi festival was opened by the performance What if They Went to Moscow, a remake of Three Sisters by Christiane Jatahy, a play in a fresh format, with parallel and multi-layered film and theatre action, which was filled with yearning of Moscow, of something else, something different. The adaptation and staging by Maruša Kink is also bold, not afraid to intervene in the text. It transforms the protagonists to the present time, the actors switch between characters, and the play is moved outside of the theatre. It is performed in the premises next to the railway, close to the Railway Museum, which used to be one of the festival’s home places. In the performance about longing to leave, yearning for something else, the millieu of the play, marked both by the place and by the sounds of trains, may remind us that we are looking at life, here, in front of us, while trains are passing by.

Direction: Maruša Kink
Performing: Daša Doberšek, Jure Kopušar, Matija Vastl, Lucija Tratnik, Aja Kobe
Musician: Danijel Bogataj
Dramaturgy: Nika Leskovšek
Costumes and set design: Tina Bonča
Executive producer: Mija Špiler
Produced by: Zavod Margareta Schwarzwald, AGRFT

Foto: Željko Stevanić, Arhiv CTF UL AGRFT

Performance is in Slovene with English surtitles.

90 minutes