Urban Heat

Since 2012, Drugajanje festival is part of Festivals in Transition, a network of 13 festivals that seek to examine, by means of artistic research within projects such as the current one, Urban Heat, the relations between cities and art and the invisible communities within cities. (more…)

Culture Camp – Theater Playground 2.0

Theater Playground 2.0 is a pilot project of cultural and artistic education for the young, which aims to integrate contemporary art and formal education through the development of learning models involving artists. (more…)

Our plans for the midweek? RocketPlans!

festival party with DJ Kozmonavt

Wednesday will be right in the middle of the festival – which means time to take a break and breath in with music!

Abandon all expectations you who enter DJ Kozmonavt’s Rocket named Muzika Fantastika. (more…)

Andra Aaloe & Flo Kasearu: COSTUME DRAMA: CITY PATROL MARIBOR

Estonija/Estonia

Flo Kasearu and Andra Aaloe are Estonian artists living in Tallinn and working in various fields of art and with different media. In Maribor, they decided to address the issue of security, which is becoming one of the pressing issues of modern times. We live in a world that seems increasingly dangerous. In a world where security is increasingly shifting from national and local levels to the private sector. Is the world really becoming more and more dangerous? Are we becoming increasingly safe with private security? (more…)

Rima Najdi: THINK MUCH. CRY MUCH.

Nemčija, Libanon/Germany, Lebanon

Think much. Cry much. je delo, ki je nastalo po polletnem intenzivnem raziskovanju meja. Rima Najdi je bivala in ustvarjala v vrsti rezidenc: v Talinu, v Vidmu, Droju, Münchnu, Helsinkih in tudi v Mariboru. V vseh krajih je raziskovala meje – v Sloveniji recimo rezilno žico in izkušnje beguncev. Predstava Think much. Cry much. se izvaja kot kompleksna koreografija, ki jo izvajajo udeleženci predstave po navodilih, ki jih prejemajo prek slušalk. Predstava je skupinski eksperiment, kako naše telo izvaja in dojema različne vloge v mejnih procesih: begunec, socialni delavec, policist, carinik … (more…)

EnKnapGroup & Nature Theater of Oklahoma: PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

EnKnapGroup is currently the only Slovenian permanent contemporary dance ensemble. It is skillfully led by the artistic director Iztok Kovač, a world‑renowned dancer, choreographer and founder of the EN‑KNAP Institute, who is shaping a topnotch collective by constantly choosing new choreographers and directors, making EnKnapGroup an ensemble capable of tackling not only dancing, but also acting and directing challenges. For the performance Pursuit of Happiness, the collective collaborated with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the New York artistic duo Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška. (more…)

Rima Najdi: CONFESSION #1

Photo: Rima’s archive

24th November at 3pm at GT22

»Confession#1 an ongoing work on a lecture performance that aims to research the imaginaire around Arab women created through their attire. In this series I recycle material from a previous performance Dress ME how YOU like, wearing the clothes to travel to Lebanon from Berlin. Visit villages in the southern area of Lebanon pose next what became landmarks in 2006, make a costume party at a family dinner, then photoshop myself to some touristic destination in the Arab world. I kept a personal journal during the process. During the lecture I display the photos and read from the personal journal.”

Part of  Urban Heat LAB #5, SURVIVAL NARRATIVES: Socio-economic Power Structures

Rima Najdi is a performance artist currently based in Berlin. She works across disciplines including performance, video, installation. Much of the motivation in her work stems from the curiosity to research the production of propositions that challenge and occupy inbetween spaces: spaces that exist perhaps only between the self and the other, reality and fiction, physicality and emotion. She focuses on the body as a tool and as a map of experiences and identity politics. She is interested in the vulnerabilities of one’s body looking at gender politics, safety, mobility and representation. A research for an act, a statement, a photo, an art work that questions issues such as stereotypes, identity, gender, failure of language, borders and its representations. Her art practice tackles identity politics (see: Dress ME how YOU like, and GRAPHIC WARNING: It is not ME it is YOU) and the dynamics that govern frames and gazes (see: Who are they? Who are we? and Madame Bomba: The TNT project). It is not the representation of identities that her work seeks, it is the unearthing of the governing dynamics and strategies. Najdi has a Diploma in Dramatic Arts from High Arts Institute, Lebanese University, 2008, and an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 2011.

www.rimanajdi.com

Svetlana Slapšak: ESCAPISM, EVACUATIONISM, MICROCOMMUNISM OR MONASTERIES, ISLANDS, FORESTS: all the escapes from revolution (lecture)

Photo: archive Svetlane Slapšak

22nd November at 11.30 am at GT22 

Svetlana Slapšak’s realm of expertise, publishing and research is so vast, that – as Dijana Matković put it – it is admirable that it is mastered by only one person. Her areas of expertise include linguistics, antic studies, Balkan studies, gender studies … She has published numerous essays, translations, books and also – started more than 50 petitions. She has fought against death penalty, for peace, for human treatment of refugees, for women’s rights … She is also the current columnist of Maribor’s biggest daily – Večer. Svetlana Slapšak seems to embody the ideal of engaged intellectual who is not afraid to get her hands dirty – either with politics or with banal topics such as cabbage (she wrote a book on cabbage and sexuality) – but at the same time bases her activism and thought on thorough understanding of history and anthropology. Who best to speak about the future and survival than someone who knows about the history and human nature – either from anthropology or from Greek drama?

Part of  Urban Heat LAB #5, SURVIVAL NARRATIVES: Socio-economic Power Structures

Vahe Budumyan, Vilmos Koter, Tanja Radež, Giorgi Khasaia: Caucasus-Balkans: MARIBOR

Photo: Vilmoš Koter

Thursday, 24 November 2015 at 7pm
Trg Svobode square (by the Kojak statue)

The street collective Kavkaz Balkan sprang from the project Kavkaz Balkan Express, a platform for inspiration, contemplation and participation within the cultural sector of South Caucasus and the Balkans. Both these regions face challenges conditioned by a particular cultural-historic framework and their transition from old school socialism into hybrid democracy and market economy. The latter is cause for constant confusion and disappointment in the social context, and a breeding grounds for ethical conflicts.

The project unites four visual artists: Vahe Budumyan from Armenia, Vilmos Koter from Romania, Tanja Radež from Slovenia and Giorgi Khasaia from Georgia. Together, they’ve already stayed in residence in Georgia, Armenia, Romania and also Ljubljana; Maribor is now their current artistic HQ. The group have developed various techniques of urban intervention, based on their shared experience of co-existing and their individual artistic expressions. Thus, having spent their time in Maribor, they will prepare a series of spatial interventions specific to the issues they identify.

Deborah Pearson: HISTORY, HISTORY, HISTORY (GB, Canada)

Photo: archive Deborah Pearson

Wednesday, 23 November 2016 at 7pm
Second Gymnasium amphitheatre

Free entrance.

The performance is in English.

On 23 October 1956, revolution broke out in Hungary with student demonstrations, as a spontaneous rise against the communist government and Soviet hegemony. Many perished during the following insurrection, over 200,000 emigrated, among them the grandfather of Deborah Pearson; an actor appearing in a film comedy / political satire about the Hungarian national football team which was incidentally to be premiered on that very day … the day Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest.

History History History is a nuanced, comical yet painful tale in which global momentum collides with personal history. Pearson builds upon the film farce featuring a simple pen peddler who is, due to a series of outlandish coincidences, mistaken for the football superstar Ferenc Puskáš, to a degree so extreme he is contracted to play for a South American dictator (tycoon). There’s more to the funny piece than meets the eye, though. Through a brilliant interplay of reality and illusion, Pearson illuminates the subversive piece as a “commentator” exploring its satirizing of the tyranny of dictatorship, the struggles of a diaspora descendent weighed down by history, the spirit of the times, by familial tragedy and linguistic embarrassment. A Hungarian football comedy from 1956 subliminally weaving the story of a writer who loses his name, an actor who loses his voice, a nation that loses its revolution.

The performance is followed by a talk with the author.

90 minutes

Author: Deborah Pearson
Dramaturgy: Daniel Kitson
Artistic advisors: Tania El Khoury and Laura Danneqin
The project was developed with the assistance of the National Theatre Studio
Production: A House on Fire in partnership with Theatre Garonne (Toulouse, FR) and BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen, Norway)