Let’s Talk About Sex Work

The ninth edition of Zoom performing arts festival will be held from October 24th to 29th at Filodrammatica and the Croatian Cultural Center on Sušak.

In order to find different perspectives in tackling the problematics of labour in modern society, during this year’s festival we’ll be exploring the topic of immaterial labour, with a special focus on sex work.

Often called “the world’s oldest profession”, which is not based on any historical or scientific argumentation, sex work in the form of prostitution is certainly one of the earliest types of labour that from its workers required the following qualities, which are also obligatory in today’s labour market: adaptability, emotions, sociability, commitment, physical presence, identification, loyalty, etc. Therefore, sex work will not be viewed as merely the act of “selling one’s body”, but as a diverse range of services which are, in today’s societies, intensively mediated by new communication technologies.

This year’s festival program will feature new-media installation, performances and exhibition by artists ⇒ Eisa Jocson (Philippines), ⇒ Ina Sladić (Croatia), ⇒ Olja Grubić (Croatia) i Živa Petrič (Slovenia) i ⇒ Iza Pavlina (Slovenia), as well as the new and critically acclaimed play ⇒ 6 by Slovenian director Žiga Divjak.

– admission to Red Web installation and Rule 34 exhibition is free
– if you wish to take part in Red Web installation, please contact us and select your preferred time slot (day and hour) by sending your name, surname and phone number to info@drugo-more.hr (number of participants is limited)
– admission price for other performances is 20,00 HRK
– tickets can be purchased at the place of performance one hour before the start of the show (Filodrammatica and the Croatian Cultural Center on Sušak)

PROGRAM

Red Web

Olja Grubić & Živa Petrič 

digitalised performative installation

Wednesday, 24th October 2018, at 18:00 / 19:30 / 21:00
Thursday, 25th October 2018, at 18:00 / 19:30 / 21:00

Filodrammatica (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
free admission, reservation required

Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

Created by Olja Grubić and Živa Petrič, Red Web is a digitalised performative installation of a sexual chatroom in which a female performer takes her female or male spectator through a test/experience intertwining the intimate and public space and through an interface addressing everything in between.

The focus of interest in this artwork is the intimate relation of the spectator as an active communicator to the performer upon entering one of the sex portals. It tackles the individual interaction of the performer with a visitor, challenging the limits of communication, levels of perception, intensification of fantasy – as a consequence of a new era of digital reality as a phantasm that blurs the boundary between the public and private spaces.

Red Web is a user’s experience of an individual’s intimate space which includes both the real and the fictional Other at the same time, as well as different performative strategies that generate and transform this relation. It is a fusion of digital communication into a performative situation that will be created in the interaction between the user’s desire and its (un)fulfilment; personal data are valuable goods… The limits of my interface are the limits of my world… You get what you click… Freedom is all around…

Send your name, surname and phone number to info<at>drugo-more.hr, and select your preferred time slot (day and hour): Wednesday or Thursday, at 18:00, 19:30 or 21:00.

Rule 34

Iza Pavlina

exhibition

opening: Friday, 26th October 2018., at 20:00
on view until 1st November, from 17:00 – 21:00

Filodrammatica Gallery (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
free admission

Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

Online pornography has profoundly changed the access of younger generations to sexual content. Online, everything is easily accessible; everything is explicit, categorized to meet any preference and / or perversion; and the explosion of amateur pornography has turned the representation of the sexual sphere into something that potentially involves everybody.

In the recent past visual artist Iza Pavlina began to research peculiar sexual fetishes and filmed staged situations using her own body as a medium to enact them. However, the materials she generated differ from typical pornographic materials in that there is an absolute lack of explicit content. The artist decided instead to place the object of the fetish itself in the very centre of the attention. Then she uploaded her materials on a popular porn website and passively monitored responses and comments from online audience members. This initial experiment encouraged her to carry on her scrutiny of these kinds of practices, communication forms and relationships, this time focusing more on the development of her online identity and the way her alter ego engages and interacts with its audience.

The project Rule 34, is the result of this further investigation. For this exhibition new video and photographic materials illustrating various specific sexual fetishes, such as Exophilia (attraction to non-human life-forms), Plushophilia (attraction to stuffed animals), Agalmatophilia (attraction to statues and dolls), Coulrophilia (attraction to clowns and jesters) and so on, were produced and submitted on a regular basis to all major pornographic media and social networking sites.

Everyday comments, private messages and conversations with the audience were regularly documented and then accurately formatted to become part of a multimedia installation. This specific content is made available to the gallery’s audience through a number of Wi-Fi routers, each of which hosts a set of reactions to a specific fetish…

Ola

Ina Sladić

conceptual dance play

Saturday, 27th October 2018, at 20:00

Filodrammatica, large hall (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
admission fee: 20,00 HRK

Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

Ola is a conceptual dance play that explores the concept of disappearance, concept of art that cannot be grasped and of art that arises at the moment of performing. Based on the conceptual questioning of performing improvisation, the play is created by the artist Ina Sladić, with the help of Olka Osadzińska and the musical support of Simon Pilkington.

When entering the scene, the performer doesn’t know what she will be doing. During the performance, artist Ola Osadzińska treats the performer as her own concept: she tells her what to do on stage, while the performer – as a trained dancer who has been taught to listen to other people’s instructions during the making of the play – listens to her instructions for the first time and responds to them at the very moment of the performance.

The play, then under the title of Ahmet, premiered in 2017 at the Perforacije Festival, with the instructions of Ahmet Ogut. In the New York edition of the festival, instructions for the first performance were given by the legendary artist Penny Arcade, while in the second performance her role was taken by the audience itself.

“This framework produces an interesting form in which everything is actually possible. For me as an author, it gives me an enormous freedom, since nothing is too much. As the whole play is improvised, I choose the way I will take and execute the instructions.”

6

Žiga Divjak (director)

theater performance

Sunday, 28th October 2018, at 20:00

Filodrammatica, large hall (Korzo 28, Rijeka)
admission fee: 20,00 HRK

Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

On 19 February 2016 the principal of the student Dormitory DŠD Kranj gets an unexpected visit from the Deputy Mayor and the Chief of the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief of the Kranj Municipality.

How will we prevent that? How will we prevent that?
Prevent what? Prevent the arrival of underage asylum seekers to the dormitory or prevent the resistance from the students’ parents? 

“Gold medallists from the Youth Olympic Games, international award winners, athletes who will represent Slovenia at the World Youth Championship next week in Romania – they come from your Dormitory. These are our best and future ambassadors of Slovenia in the world, so we kindly ask you to decide to relocate the migrant children, according to the wishes of parents and your residents.”

– mother of a student

„The Council of the Municipality of Kranj, at its 11th regular meeting on 18 November 2015, made a resolution. The Council of the Municipality of Kranj was informed about the intention of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia to temporarily or permanently place migrants in or near the City of Kranj. The Council of the Municipality of Kranj, for security and development reasons, opposes such an intention and, on behalf of the citizens, expects this position to be considered.“

– Boštjan Trilar, Mayor of the Municipality of Kranj

Macho Dancer

Eisa Jocson

dance performance

Monday, 29 October 2018, at 20:00

Croatian Cultural Center on Sušak (Strossmayerova 1, Rijeka)
admission fee: 20,00 HRK

Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

Macho Dancing is performed by young men in night clubs for male – as well as female – clients. Macho Dancing, with its specific movement vocabulary and physicality, is a unique phenomenon in the Philippines. An economically-motivated language of seduction that employs masculinity as body capital.

Macho Dancer is a solo work in which a woman performs macho dance. By embodying a macho dancer, Eisa Jocson challenges our perception of sexuality and questions gender as a tool for social mobility: Through his practice, the macho dancer is relegated to a marginal and weak position in society, even though the image he simulates is that of a strong male. The woman performing a macho dance thus assimilates the role of a strong male; and by transgressing gender, the performer also appears to up her social status. Nonetheless, as she engages in a marginal practice that is macho dance, she remains vulnerable and weak, and maintains the status of an objectified woman. The performance thus generates a “gender loop” in which the performer and audience are entangled.

Eisa Jocson and Macho Dancer in a music video by Canadian singer Peaches

The very act of this woman performing a gender loop veers attention towards her body as a product. By emulating and becoming the Macho Dancer, she also disembeds the sociocultural and economic frames that ultimately expose this perfect normative body as a constructed body.