KONDENZ FESTIVAL 

28.10.2023 / 20h Center for Cultural Decontamination

Viktorija Ilioska

I need a new body

(Non)Aligned Movements – (Non)Aligned Programme

I need a new body is centered around the notions of pumping, sucking, extraction, and exhaustion, both in terms of the human body and natural resources. “In a world where we enjoy a fake image of endless resources, where we sucked the earth to draw out the last bits, how do we continue to pump?” The choreographic piece invites to simultaneously look into the processes of nurturing, enabling, and growth. The process of pumping, relocating matters, seems to be at the very core of most vital processes of both production and reproduction. We draw, suck, elicit, and drain the earth’s body to enrich our lives on it, emptying and drying out our future(s). At the same time we suck, boost, inject and inflate our bodies, challenging their boundaries and their capacities. Pumping can paradoxically refer at the same time to a capitalist practice of extraction as well as the feminist practice of enrichment and enhancement. Once pumped on one side, the other one is being sucked. I need a new body takes place in-between: between a body as an exhibition and a body as a resource, while drawing and defining  the space where these two intersect.

Concept and choreography: Viktorija Ilioska in conversation with Nastya Dzyuban, Laura Stellacci

Performance: Viktorija Ilioska and Nastya Dzyuban

Voices: Amélie Haller and Maren Küpper

Photos by Sonja Stavrova

Sound design: Laura StellacciCoproduction between Lokomotiva – Center for New Initiative in Arts and Culture / Choreographed bodies program, Life Long Burning (LLB) / Performance Situation Room program, NDA Slovenia and Viktorija Ilioska

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia, Creative Europe (in the frame of Life Long Burning)

Special thanks to Dushica Nofitoska, Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski, Kristina Lelovac, Emilija

Cockova, Max Smirzitz, Rok Vevar, Elizabeth Kolevska, Dushica Lazova

30.10.2023 / 21h Center for Cultural Decontamination

Paula Chaves Bonilla

Omni Tóxica

Also known as La ChicaScratch, a choreographer, performance artist and grassroots organizer based in Amsterdam, Paula Chavez Bonilla creates a dystopian laboratory to accommodate the journalistic and forensic performative ritual on the history of Coca. Omni Tóxica examines the politics of death that is behind what we call the Coca-Cocaine complex, revealing the process of commodification and the passage of a sacred, medicinal plant into a whitewashed, capitalist, toxic product that is cocaine, a continuation of the neo-colonial order in place. The coca plant thus illustrates the incoherent gap between justice and legality that is the very base of the multibillion-dollar industry.

“… And when the oppressor wants to do the same and use those leaves to extract its elixir, the opposite will happen. That juice that for you will be strength and life, for the whites will only be disgusting and degenerative vice, while for you it will be spiritual food, for them it will cause idiocy and madness. My children, do not forget when I tell you to cultivate that plant, it is the precious inheritance that I leave you, take care that they don’t extinguish and keep them and protect them among our siblings with veneration and love”.

Decolonial myth of the Coca plant (excerpt)

Concept & Artistic Direction: Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla

Choreography: Thais Di Marco & Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla

Performance: Nadia Bekkers, Karina Villafan & Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla

Visual Artist / Scenographer: Natalia Sorzano

Sound Artist: Nadia Bekkers

Dramaturgy / Artistic Advice: Rodrigo Batista

Research: Natalia Chaves Lopez & Paula Chaves Bonilla

Light Design & Technical Support: Dana Claasen

Produced by: Veem House for Performance & Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam

Picture by: Bas Czerwinski

01.11.2023 / 20h  Center for Cultural Decontamination 

Arkadi Zaides

Necropolis

Arkadi Zaides, choreographer and performer, together with his team, has centered their research around the presumed yet incomplete data referring to the migrants and refugees who lost their lives trying to enter European territory. Necropolis looks into and questions the forensic procedures and the absence of information around the decomposed bodies of victims that remain unidentified and unacknowledged. The European jurisdiction clearly differentiates between criminal, natural, and accidental deaths, which determines the way the bodies are subsequently handled. The thousands of deaths that occur at the gates of Europe challenge this taxonomy, as well as issues such as freedom of movement and necropolitics, while encompassing the story of a collective whose ghost hovers over the continent.

The body of work is conceived as an expanding virtual depository, an archive, a map and an invisible landscape interconnecting the mythologies, histories, geographies and anatomies of those who have entered Necropolis. It is a body of bodies and a no-body at the same time.

Concept & direction – Arkadi Zaides

Dramaturgy, text and voice – Igor Dobričić

Research and choreography assistant, performer – Emma Gioia

Technical manager-  Etienne Exbrayat

Representative Rui Silveira

Sculpture Moran Senderovich 3D modeling Mark Florquin

Avatar animation Jean Hubert

Animation assistant Thibaut Rostagnat

Sound design Aslı Kobaner

Grave location search Aktina Stathaki, Amalie Lynge Lyngesen, Amber Maes, Amirsalar Kavoosi, Ans Van Gasse, Arkadi Zaides, Benjamin Pohlig, Bianca Frasso, Carolina-Maria Van Thillo, Prof. dr. Christel Stalpaert, Doreen Kutzke, Dorsa Kavoosi, Elisa Franceschini, Elvura Quesada, Emma Gioia, Eva Maes, Filippo Furri, Frédéric Pouillaude, Friederike Kötter, Gabriel Smeets, Giorgia Mirto, Gosia Juszczak, Igor Dobricic, Ilka Van Bijlen, Jordy Minne, Joris Van Imschoot, Julia Asperska, Juliane Beck, Katia Gandolfi, Katja Seitajoki, Lilas Forissier, Lina Gilani Tsitouri, Lovis Heuss, Luca Lotano, Lucille Haddad, Maite Zabalza, Maria Sierra Carretero, Mercedes Roldan, Myriam Van Imschoot, Myrto Katsiki, Osnat Kelner, Özge Atmış, Pepa Torres Perez, Sarah Leo, Selby Jenkins, Simge Gücük, Solveig Gade, Sunniva Vikør Egenes, Tamara Vajdíková, Tilemachos Tsolis, Yannick Bosc, Yari Stilo

Administration & production Simge Gücük / Institut des Croisements

Co-produced by Theatre de la Ville (FR), Montpellier Danse 40 Bis (FR), Charleroi Danse (BE), CCN2 Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble (FR), les ballets C de la B(BE), Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (DE), La Filature – Scène nationale de Mulhouse (FR) Residency support STUK (BE), CCN – Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Workspacebrussels (BE), PACT Zollverein (DE), WP Zimmer (BE), Cie Thor (BE)

Support for experimentation RAMDAM, un centre d’art (FR)

Local practitioners who are engaged by collecting information about the migrants died on the Balkan route:

Marijana Hameršak

Uršula Čebron Lipovec

Nevena Delić

KlikAktiv

photo: Sonja Stavrova