Jaha Koo: CUCKOO (Belgium, South Korea)

Jaha Koo is a South Korean musician and theater maker who lives and works in Belgium. After graduating in theatre studies in his native country, he obtained a master’s degree from DasArts in Amsterdam. Since 2014, he has been working on Hamartia trilogy (the term originates from the ancient Greek, signifying a tragic mistake by a protagonist leading to their downfall): the first part of the trilogy, Lolling and Rolling, is about children in Korea getting tongue operations for better English pronunciation. After Cuckoo comes the third part, The History of the Korean Western Theater (working title), which will premiere next year.

Koo’s theatre is devised theatre, he is the author of texts, music, videos, also performing on stage. Koo describes his work as a mix of politics, history and personal stories. This is also true for Cuckoo, which uses the tragic financial breakdown of South Korea as a political and historical background – an event which was followed by IMF forcing the country into bankruptcy and consequently controlling its finances. Koo skillfully navigates the socio‑political, social and personal consequences of the post‑bankruptcy crisis, combining them with personal stories – of himself and his friend – in a dialogue with Cuckoos, rice cookers (Cuckoo is a trademark). The Cuckoo cooks rice so well because it is a pressure cooker – but what happens with a society and an individual when they are under pressure?

Concept, direction, text, music, video: Jaha Koo
Performance: Hana, Duri, Seri & Jaha Koo
Cuckoo hacking: Idella Craddock
Scenography, media operation: Eunkyung Jeong
Dramaturgical advice: Dries Douibi
Production: Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek
Excecutive production: CAMPO
Co-production: Bâtard Festival
With support: CAMPO, STUK, BUDA, DAS, SFAC & Noorderzon / Grand Theatre Groningen
Funded by: Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

60 minutes

The performance is in Korean with Slovene and English surtitles.

Foto: Radovan Dranga

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Teresa Dillon: MTCD – A VISUAL ANTHOLOGY OF MY MACHINE LIFE (United Kingdom, Germany)

Teresa Dillon is a researcher, artist, curator, pedagogue, hacker … Her educational background consists of theatre studies, scenography, and psychology. She inhabits several scopes of action – she deals with the topics of interest from various angles – scientific, artistic, activist, or in a multidisciplinary way. She delineates her field of interest as »the relations existing between people, communities, technologies, and management«. Her field of interest is also a culture of maintenance and repair, where she uses her hacking skills and her artistic strategies and tactics. A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life  is a lecture performance, in which the artist walks through key machines that have marked her life – it begins with an incubator, which has significantly affected her life, but not just hers; for most machines in her life, almost all of us remember their first use: the internet, for example, an android robot, or a mobile phone. She talks about machines, but also about people and places and relationships – therefore, it is not a performance about machines, but rather about us. The relationship between people and machines is one of the key relationships of the present and the future. If we used to learn about bicycles, steam engines, electricity, etc., it is now time to deal with the machines of today – not only with their functioning, but also with what they mean to us.

Author: Teresa Dillon
Set design and live image: Teresa Dillon, Rod Maclachlan, Luke Bennett
In collaboration with the Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
45 minutes

The performance is in English, Slovene summary will be available.

Foto: Kia K., transmediale, 2018

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Eclipse: MONSTRUM NOSTRUM (Slovenia)

exhibition with an opening performance

The exhibition will be open until August 31st in time of performances in the Old Power Station.

Performing duo Eclipse has been quiet and hibernating for a while. Their new performance, with the premiere staging at this year’s Mladi levi festival, will mark the 20^th anniversary of their collaboration. Eclipse consists of two visual artists: Tina Kolenik recently published the book Koža kot kostum (»Skin as a Costume«), which is a theoretical derivative of her costume design work, and last August, she has been exhibiting her series of self‑portraits with watermelons. Samira Kentrić is a designer, illustrator and author of two visual novels: Pisma Adni (»Letters to Adna«) and Balkanalije (»Balkanalia«). In their common performative career, they decided to stage the images. They create images which capture our attention and make us – sometimes with the subversion of pornographic imagery – reflect and take sides: to find, in today’s world bombarded by images, one that sticks out from others and provokes us.

In Monstrum Nostrum, they remain committed to the medium of body, 20 years after their performance Zajtrk na travi (»Breakfast on Grass«), shifting focus from the questions of kitsch, art, porn art, to the issue of otherness and initiation into the dominant, the correct, the ours. They will perform an initiation rite of cleansing, transferring to the civilized: a baptism. Who are the others of today, who is being washed by water before they can come over to our side, who are the monsters? Monstrum nostrum, mare nostrum, mare monstrum …

Authors: Eclipse
Director of photography: Dejan Ulaga
Assistants: Gaja Mödendorfer, Iris Kovačič
Montage: Žan Žvižej
Author of soundscape: Darja Hlavka Godina
Vocals: Shreya

30 minutes

Foto: Dejan Ulaga

Information and ticket reservations: info@bunker.si

Mart Kangro, Juhan Ulfsak, Eero Epner: WORKSHOP (Estonia)

Mart Kangro is a choreographer, director and dancer, Juhan Ulfsak is an actor and director, and Eero Epner is a dramaturg and art historian. They have cooperated on several occasions in the past. Their common ground (in addition to Estonia and performative art, of course) are perhaps devised theatre, as well as Theatre NO99, where they all worked, and Eero Epner was one of its founders. It was just this year that Theatre NO99 has been dissolved, but the cooperation continues.

Workshop is a performance that feels like throwing the paradigm of lifelong learning, together with mansplaining and a sense of humor and the bizarre, into the blender of devised theatre. Three men who are helping us to learn something more in life, in which we are made human and can only exist through learning. But there is nothing patronizing in the performance, no pedagogical ballast or dull facts. At a time when there is video tutorial for everything – from how to install a child seat in a car, to how to properly eat a pineapple – watching live advice is almost as anachronistic as watching three white men on stage. However, Kangro, Ulfsak and Epner transform the workshop into a performative cabinet of wanders, from which they are drawing bizarre advice and out of which eventually emerges a community bound together by the story. What is theatre, after all, If not common learning and working in the laboratory of wonders?

Idea, execution, performance: Mart Kangro, Juhan Ulfsak, Eero Epner
Producer, consultant: Maria Arusoo
Sound design: Artjom Astrov
Light design: Oliver Kulpsoo
Co-produced by: Kanuti Gildi SAAL

110 minutes

The performance is in English.

Information and reservation: info@bunker.si, 00386 51 269 906

Urša Vidic: THE WALL

installation opening

The eastern wall of the Old Power Station in Ljubljana is not the »original«, bricked one, but a zigzag wall forming boundary between the street and the still operating transformer station of the power plant. The Old Power Station celebrated its 120^th anniversary last year, and this year, we are celebrating 15 years since the renovation and reopening of the facility – in its new edition as a stage. In August 2004, we began with our regular performance programme in the building with the opening of the Mladi Levi festival and the event »If we didn’t exist, you would have to make us up«.

The Old Power Station wall, currently covered by Applause by Toni Soprano Meneglejte, will be decorated by Urša Vidic this year, on the 15^th anniversary of the Old Power Station venue. In selecting authors, our principle for the second time in a row is to invite visual artists, but the ones connected to theatre. Urša Vidic is a scenographer who works in various different fields, and she also worked at the Old Power Station. The opening of her new wall painting will be on August 23^rd. Her work is characterized by simplicity and complexity at the same time. Her wall will be homage to artists who have been working at the Old Power Station for the last 15 years, and at the same time, it will be her message to all of us who are gravitating around the Station: a slogan written down in the alphabet of sounds. Let’s hope it conveys the message of what the Old Power Station is and what it wants for all.

Author: Urša Vidic
Producer: Alma R Selimović
Technical implementation: Igor Remeta, Duško Pušica, Marjeta Pogačnik, Andrej Petrovčič, ŠPELA ALTEN?
Supported by: Create to Connect -> Create to Impact, European Union – program Creative Europe: Culture

Information and reservation: info@bunker.si, 00386 51 269 906

INVITATION TO VOLUNTEERS – MLADI LEVI 2018

We are inviting to the heart of the festival people of all profiles, experiences and ages who want to collaborate with us in preparing and organizing the 21^st International Festival Mladi Levi!
Mladi Levi 2018 will be held from August 24 to September 1, during which time various local and international performances and other artistic events will take place, plus a traditional festival picnic for all the volunteers and artists.
You are kindly invited to join us in creating a fun and memorable festival together!
For more information, please contact us at info@bunker.si or +386 51 269 906. (more…)

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