Soft Skills (HRV)

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Thursday, 23 May, 20:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

*premiere

authors: Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk, Jelena Lopatić, Edi Ćelić

Photo: Karlo Čargonja

Our today’s topic is the play Soft skills and we are joined by the director and the actors-performers Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk, Edi Ćelić i Jelena Lopatić.

Tell us, why the name ‘Soft skills’? Soft skills, I must admit, makes me think of soft porn; is there a connection?

Edi: Yeah, not really. Perhaps Alex can answer?

Alex: The term ‘soft skills’ challenges what the title signifies, which – according to the World Economic Forum – refer to a set of skills our future will depend on. So it’s a concept from economics, usually associated with practices that include self-representation, self-branding, pitching, storytelling. It has nothing to do with pornography, as far as I know.

Oh you silly performers, how playful… and sexy you are. Yummy in my tummy! So, here we are, inviting everyone to ‘Soft skills’ and, mind you, it is not soft at all… you know what I’m talking about, you can do that at home. This is something very serious.

Alex: Well, I am not sure if it is entirely serious, but a performance like this aims to redefine well-established conventions in the arts and theatre that by nature integrate violent behaviours of individuals or the system as such, under the pretext that quality artistic work allows procedures that would otherwise, in a different social context, be socially, if not criminally sanctioned.

Oh, okay, I get it. Are you telling the truth or are you simply performing as actors? How can we know this is not all an act?

Edi: /

Alex: /

Jelena: /

Fine, I understand, we won’t get much out of you. How naughty of you… So, this is an invitation to ‘Soft skills’, and just so we are clear, it’s not soft – you know what I’m referring to; you’ll be doing that elsewhere.

Alex: I would like to add that I have reflected on the said topics, in the context of the artistic and business position of the authorial team, in order to try to identify the mechanisms we rely on in our performance activity. In my quest, I was faced with a clash between the absurd and the intimate, which made the performance material refer back to itself, back to the authors who are producing and performing it and to the stage that defines the mentioned skills. By playing with the editing and the perception of the performed content, we use the experience of our performance to establish direct contact with the audience, thus laying bare the mechanism of our performance, even when – or especially when – it seems there is no performance.

Sure, great. Contradictions all over. Fine, you don’t have to tell us everything. We’ll figure out the rest on our own, I guess. Aren’t you clever, you sly foxes.

Concept: Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk

Director: Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk

Text design: Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk

Text authors: Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk, Edi Ćelić, Jelena Lopatić

Performance: Jelena Lopatić, Edi Ćelić, Aleksandra Stojaković Olenjuk

Sound design: Nikica Jurjević

Lighting design: Alan Vukelić

Music: Nikica Jurjević

Set design: Marino Krstačić-Furić and Ana Tomić

Visuals: Marino Krstačić-Furić and Ana Tomić

Costume design: Ivan Botički

Executive producer: Jelena Milić

Produced by: Kabinet Art Organization and Pierre Vally Teatar Art Organization

The play is co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Rijeka and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County.

Underground Barbie (HRV)

Friday, 24 May, 20:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

author: Maša Kolanović

director: Natalija Manojlović

Photo: Karla Jurić

Underground Barbie is a novel that follows the everyday life of primary school pupils in wartime, following the transition from the safety and stability of childhood into the adult world of responsibility and insecurity. Even if the war is only hinted at, the life in wartime is unfolding before our eyes as basements are being revealed and school cancelled, in the way refugee children and their bald babies are playing; all the while, the real meaning of life lies in owning the Mattel original Barbie doll.

These are the families that would still drive their old R4 cars, had they not become relics. As real adults are only obsessing over the news, these dolls become more apt models of adults. Instead of contemplating the war, they accepted the sudden overnight transition and instantly internalised the capitalist values, not bothered by their financial limitations. Fake Ken Dr. Kajfeš, dearest actress Barbi Crystal from Dynasty, Ana M.’s Ken with the face of Robert Redford, Borna’s Skipper on a vespa of some Italian police officer, tiny ugly man, and a whole town of Mattel originals of the profiteer’s daughter Dea – these represent the adult future much brighter than shown on national news.

The novel ends where the war stops, but the play starts 30 years later, continuing the lives of the characters created by Maša. Even if the music used in the play reflects the time and story of the novel, the play keeps expanding on the novel, stretching it and compressing it, waiting to see what it tells us today, when we not only read it but also watch and listen to it

Based on the novel by Maša Kolanović

Stage adaptation author and director: Natalija Manojlović

Stage adaptation author and dramaturge: Ivana Vuković

Producer: Romana Brajša

Performers: Maja Kovač, Damir Klemenić and Amanda Prenkaj

Music composers: Ivana Đula & Luka Vrbanić

Costume designer: Ana Fucijaš

Lighting designer: Igor Markić-Nikolac

Assistant director: Petra Pleše

Production assistant: Hana Zrnčić Dim & Dina Tudor

Photographer: Karla Jurić

Design: Verlauf

Production: Punctum art association and KunstTeatar

The play has been coproduced by Punctum Art Association and KunstTeatar with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media, City Office for Culture and Civil Society.

Sex Education II: Fight (HRV, SLO)

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Saturday, 25 May, 20:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

authors: Tjaša Črnigoj, Sendi Bakotić, Vanda Velagić, Tijana Todorović, Lene Lekše

Photo: Nada Žgank

The New Post Office opened the 2022/2023 season with a project exploring sexual pleasure as the basic sexual right in the framework of human rights. The creators researched topics such as painful intercourse and vaginismus,* consent, sexual pleasure of women with disability, alternative sexual practices, and the history of sex education in Yugoslavia. The series of lectures-performances was connected and developed in a full-day event in October 2023.

“Sexual pleasure is the physical and/or psychological satisfaction and enjoyment derived from shared or solitary erotic experiences, including thoughts, fantasies, dreams, emotions, and feelings. […] Sexual pleasure is a fundamental part of sexual rights as a matter of human rights.” (From the Declaration on Sexual Pleasure)

Our interpersonal relationships and also our sexuality are (still) marked by patriarchal relationships. Numerous testimonies about sexual violence indicate how deeply rooted misogyny still is in our society. At the same time, there is a lack of structures that would recognise sexual pleasure as an important source of comfort, satisfaction and empowerment, while prioritising persons, repressed in the society, in the process. Through collecting personal stories and collaboration with experts, the project will give space to sexual pleasure of women* and shed light on it from different points of view. A series of lecture-performances will inform the audience, and at the same time tackle the topics of sexual pleasure with different performing practices and strategies.

*Vaginismus is considered the most difficult sexual dysfunction in women. Vaginismus causes the pelvic floor muscles to spasm, which completely disables vaginal penetration even when a woman desires it.

The fifth and final part of the series of lecture-performances reconstructs the struggle for reproductive rights in Yugoslavia, which touched upon sexual rights only implicitly, but paved the way for the right to sexual pleasure to be spoken of today. The struggle goes back to the time during and after the Second World War, when the so-called epidemic of (unprofessional) abortions claimed the lives of many women. At that time, abortion was illegal and punishable by imprisonment, and the concept of marital rape did not exist in legal terms. The biographies of Vida Tomšič, a partisan and important Yugoslav politician, and Dr Franco Novak-Luka, a partisan, important gynaecologist and Vida Tomšič’s second husband, outline the development of a progressive policy for the time: the development of the idea of family planning as a human right, and of the right to sex education, which goes beyond the biologist conception of sexuality and places the so-called humane relations between the sexes at the centre of the issue. At a time when society is being re-traditionalised and policies are re-questioning the right to safe abortion and contraception, it seems that, far from women’s bodies belonging to them alone being taken for granted, this is something that must be fought for again and again.

Written and directed by Tjaša Črnigoj

Author and performer: Sendi Bakotić

Author and performer: Vanda Velagić

Writer, set and costume designer: Tijana Todorović

Author and set designer: Lene Lekše

Expert collaborator: dr. Maja Vehar, Živa Novak

Vida Tomšič’s voice: Draga Potočnjak

Frantz Novak’s voice: Matej Recer

Grandmother’s voice: Nina Skrbinšek

Narrator’s voice: Sara Horžen

Music selection: by the author of the lecture-performance

Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj

Editing and sound editing: Jure Vlahovič, Silvo Zupančič

Web editor: Tery Žeželj

Producer: Tina Dobnik

Photographer: Nada Žgank

Video editor and cameraman: Hana Vodeb

Technical directors of the show: Manca Vukelič, Igor Remeta

Lighting designers: Tjaša Črnigoj, Igor Remeta, Manca Vukelič, Tijana Todorović, Lene Lekše, Demijan Pintarič

Public relations: Urska Comino (Maska), Helena Grahek (Mladinsko)

Graphic Designer: Mina Fina – grupa Ee

Production: Nova pošta (Maska Ljubljana in Slovensko mladinsko gledališče)

Co-production: City of Women

Partnership: Kolektiv Igralke

Preparing For The Present   (HRV)

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Sunday, 26 May, 20:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

choreography: Ana Kreitmeyer

Photo: Sven Deranja

What is our relationship to the future? The performance traverses from feelings of anxiety to determination, diving into darkness and heightened light. A glimpse of the darkened sky resolves all doubts.

Preparing For The Present deals with the attempt of finding an affective response to the challenges posed by the climate crisis. Its structure is based on a series of exercises (affective, physical, cognitive) which serve as preparation for disasters that we both can and cannot anticipate on the basis of current and bygone ones, while consciously playing with the absurdities and impossibilities of such an endeavor in the context of uncertain consequences resulting from decades of slow violence caused by fossil capital and extractivist logic. Immersed in darkness and allowing bursts of white light, the performance is interested in overwhelming emotions that range from anxiety and indifference to readiness and determination, embracing that chaos and its irresolvability, as well as the frustration with conflicting decisions on how we decide to act in the present.

Preparing for flight, scarcity, or heat is just as important as preparing for endurance, a hug, or perseverance, in the hope that a community based on friendship would withstand all upcoming rhythms and challenges.

Choreography: Ana Kreitmeyer

Performance: Ana Novković, Jovana Zelenović, Koraljka Begović, Margareta Firinger, Silvija Dogan

Dramaturge: Nina Gojić

Set and costume design: Silvio Vujičić

Music: Neven Benko

Light design: Igor Pauška

Video installation: Vanja Babić

Choreography for the video installation: Zrinka Užbinec and Ana Kreitmeyer

Technical support: Jasmin Dasović

Producer: Hana Zrnčić Dim

Assistant of dramaturgy: Margareta Sinković

Video documentation and editing: Dražen Žerjav

Friend of the project: Zrinka Užbinec

Thanks: Nikolina Pristaš, Marko Crnčević, Dražen Šivak, Sandra Banić Naumovski

Production: Ana Kreitmeyer, UO Thearte

Co-production: Domino and CM Ribnjak The performance has been realized as a co-production of the Perforations festival and the Performing Arts Network of the Domino association and as part of the Scena Ribnjak residential program in cooperation with the CM Ribnjak, with the support of the Kultura Nova Foundation, City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and with elements of scenography donated by Pijole-G and STRABAG.

The video installation and the media campaign have been realized through the project The Hybrids of Threat, with the support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.

Cure (HRV)

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Tuesday, 28 May, 20:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

Kolektiv Igralke

directed by: Tjaša Črnigoj

Photo: Dražen Šokčević

The documentary performance Girls is based on the confessions of women from three generations: performers in their thirties, their mothers who are around sixty years old, and their grandmothers who are around eighty years old.

In the performance Girls, the authors explore themes of growing up, first sexual experiences, and sexual education across several generations of women. They are interested in what it means to “lose virginity” for different generations, how much they feared unwanted pregnancy, and what kind of support they had in their exploration of sexuality. Through an intimate excavation of family histories, the authors and performers encounter shame, pleasure, and silence alike, offering an invitation to discuss things we normally do not talk about.

Through personal stories of women, the performance Girls outlines the change of times and socio-political systems. In Croatia today, women’s reproductive and sexual rights are seriously endangered, raising the question of where we are heading, and whether the upbringing of future generations will increasingly resemble the upbringing of our grandmothers. In addition to conversations with grandmothers and mothers, the authors were also inspired by workshops with current teenagers growing up in Rijeka while creating the performance.

Girls thematically continues from the lecture-performance Sex Education II: The Fight by director Tjaša Črnigoj, which was produced by Nova pošta (Maska and Slovenian Youth Theatre – Mladinsko gledališče) and Mesto žensk in Ljubljana, forming a diptych with it. The Fight is part of a broader cycle of lecture-performances about women’s sexual pleasure, created in partnership with the Igralke Collective and reconstructs the struggle for women’s reproductive rights in Yugoslavia.

The performance is not suitable for those under 14 years of age.

Director and playwright: Tjaša Črnigoj

Authors: Sendi Bakotić, Ana Marija Brđanović, Tjaša Črnigoj, Anja Sabol, Tijana Todorović Vanda Velagić

Co-author of the concept and scenography, costume designer: Tijana Todorović

Scenographer: Ivan Botički

Lighting design: Marin Lukanović, Tjaša Črnigoj

Video author: Mara Prpić

Illustration author: Tanja Blašković

Technical director of the play: Marin Lukanović

Cast: Sendi Bakotić, Ana Marija Brđanović, Anja Sabol, Vanda Velagić

DJ at the play and stage manager: Marin Butorac

Co-production: UO Kolektiv Igralke i Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl.Zajc (HR)

Zavod VIDNE (SLO)

Partners: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče i MASKA Ljubljana

Present Past: Comics exhibition and workshop with Aleksandar Zograf (SRB)

Friday, 24 May, 14:00-17:00

Gradska knjižnica Rijeka, Art-kvart “Benčić”, Viktora Cara Emina 1

exhibition authors: Ana Petrović, Boris Stanić, Dragana Kuprešanin, Danilo Milošev Wostok, Zlata Vojnić Kortmiš

mentor: Aleksandar Zograf

Ana Petrović: Savremeno areološko nalazište, detal from the comic

The comics on display have been created under the mentorship of Saša Rakezić (AKA Aleksandar Zograf) as part of the regional project by Goethe-Instituts in Southeastern Europe titled Present Past, which uses different art forms to reflect on the cultural and political relations across the neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The works by five authors from Serbia are connected by ‘coffee’, a word which holds special significance in the Balkan region, signifying more than just a beverage. The inspiration took many forms: Boris Stanić was motivated by the archaeological aspect of the story of coffee, Ana Petrović embarked on a personal exploration of the traces left behind by today’s ‘coffee drinkers’, Dragana Kuprešanin considered it from the perspective of a refugee from a war-torn area, and Danilo Milošew Wostok and Zlata Vojnić Kortmiš decided to go deep into the history of socialism.  

Aleksandar Zograf will also host an afternoon comic workshop, joined by Serbian comic authors Dragana Kuprešanin, Ana Petrović, Danilo Milošev Wostok & Zlata Vojnić Kortmiš. The workshop, titled ‘Psychonaut’, will encourage participants to express their experiences in the format of comics using an autobiographical approach. Everyone is welcome, regardless of age or prior knowledge. Apply by sending an email to info@drugo-more.hr.

+++ Following the comics workshop, from 17:00 to 18:00 in front of the Library there will be a hangout with Aleksandar Zograf and comic authors from Serbia.

Present Past: Photography exhibition (BiH)

Friday, 24 May, 18:00

Galerija Principij, Pod voltun 4

→ the exhibition is open until the 29th of May 2024. → gallery opening hours: working days 10:00–13:00, 17:00–20:00, Saturday 10:00–13:00

Photo: Mitar Simikić

The exhibition by Dijana Muminović and Mitar Simikić, mentored by the VII Academy Foundation director Ziyah Gafić, has been developed as part of the two-year regional project Present Past by the Goethe-Institut, which uses different art forms to reflect on the cultural and political relations across the neighbouring countries of the former Yugoslavia.

Dijana Muminović and Mitar Simikić, both VII Academy alumni, are bringing together their personal, intimate and silent stories about their past and present using a tender and sophisticated visual language. Mitar Simikić has meticulously documented the people and the everyday life by the Janja River, poetically depicting the landscape disrupted by a thermal power plant. The end result is a complex symbiosis of the bitter and the beautiful, their memories of childhood by the river and its unrecognizable transformation.

While preparing photography series dedicated to her family roots from her mother’s and father’s sides, deeply influenced by Catholic and Muslim faiths, Dijana Muminović gets to know Bosnia she had previously only heard about through family stories. Her photography is a record of the authentic everyday life of Olov and Zagrađe, Bosnian villages her family is from, imbued with universal emotions and life cycles that transcend religion and regional borders. The language is one that each of us can recognize as our own.

Photographers: Dijana Muminović & Mitar Simikić

Mentor: Ziyah Gafić, VII Academy Foundation

Curators: Claudia and Bruce Strong

Coordinators: Ajla Eljšani-Arnautlija, VII Academy Foundation

Technician: Miro Šarić

Present Past: Panel discussion in English

Saturday, 25 May, 11:00

Gradska knjižnica Rijeka, Art-kvart “Benčić”, Viktora Cara Emina

guests: Ziyah Gafić (photographer, director of the Foundation VII Academy , BiH), Zorica Milisavljević (project coordinator Goethe-Institut Beograd), Aleksandar Zograf / Saša Rakezić (comic writer, Serbia), Zoran Žmirić (writer, Rijeka)

moderator: Gordana Brkić Žagar (journalist and writer, Rijeka)

The panel opens a discussion about art that kept us sane during the process of economic transition. Our guests will talk about how they are dealing with the changes and what kind of future awaits us, what is the role of arts in dialogue between the past and the present, and how can art make us develop a deeper understanding of both the present and the future.

Ziyah Gafić (1980), Sarajevo-based photographer and director of the VII Academy Foundation, is an award-winning photojournalist who has reported from numerous war zones.

Saša Rakezić (1963) AKA Aleksandar Zograf, is one of the most well-known and awarded Serbian comic book artists, illustrators and cartoonists. In his work, Zograf often explores life as it used to be in Yugoslavia and during World War II, primarily through the lives and experiences of individuals overlooked by official history records.

Zoran Žmirić (1969) is a writer, columnist and musician from Rijeka. He has won numerous awards and recognitions and his works have been translated into many languages. He is known for his anti-war writing which he often uses to confront the past.

Zorica Milisavljević, experienced project coordinator at the Goethe-Institut Belgrad, who has in her work been dedicated to the process, participation, self-organization, experiment, transdisciplinarity and collaborative creative space within the institution.

Present Past: Presenting public art installations with a guided walk and discussion

Sunday, 26 May, 17:00

Exportdrvo, Grobnička riva bb

installations in public space

→ Darko Aleksovski (MK): Daydream Concrete Utopia

→ Ivana Mirchevska (MK): The Horizon is Not an Image I Can Arrest

Darko Aleksovski: Daydream Concrete Utopia

A guided walk through Rijeka’s Delta, organized in collaboration with the Urbani separe association, will offer the perfect opportunity to explore the installations of the artists Darko Aleksovski and Ivana Mirchevska. The aim of the walk is to introduce the visitors to the context of this atypical, industrial part of the city of Rijeka and show the ways in which the artists responded to it in their works.

Daydream Concrete Utopia by the artist Darko Aleksovski considers the constant migrations that happen between bodies of water and land. The series of flags are intentionally installed in different places as an impetus for walking, looking, and wandering. The project was originally developed based on the relation between sea and money, as well as the collective nostalgia for a different point in the local and regional collective history, but also the hierarchies that this dichotomy creates between geopolitical and social identities.

The Horizon is Not an Image I Can Arrest by the artist Ivana Mirchevska is a public art installation weaving together a digital print, serving as a placeholder of fragmented memory tissues, a mirror reflecting the fallen sky dripping over the marine, and a metal rim, serving as a meridian divider. Together, this uncanny ensemble of surfaces act as oracles, offering a spatial exploration of bodily and material boundaries through their inherent systems of division, calculation, and projection. What images do horizons produce, and how are we moved by them? Conceptually the horizon is an abstract mathematical tool of visualization that foregrounds the material and discursive apparatuses that shape the contours of our political, cultural and intimate landscape, thus intervening into the ways we think, feel, move and act. The work is committed to how these fragmented horizons are instrumentalized and politicized, and it ponders how one can replace the currents of control that govern our worldly movements with gentler, more intimate, and unpredictable tides.

Mentor: Gjorgje Jovanovik

In partnership with Urbani separe

Present Past: Literary Café

Tuesday, 28 May, 18:00-20:00

Gradska knjižnica Rijeka, Art-kvart “Benčić”, Viktora Cara Emina

presenting short stories from Rijeka + discussion

with: authors Iva Mladenić, Marija Rađa, Sandra Kordić, Lara Vrsalović & mentor Zoran Žmirić

moderator: Dunja Matić Benčić

Photo: Katarina Zlatec 

At the library in Rijeka, there will be a presentation of the stories made at the short story workshop with Zoran Žmirić, as part of Goethe-Institut’s two-year regional project Present Past. The idea of the project has taken the form of a series of art workshops revolving around the topic of the present and past, which are in an inspiring and complementing relationship, thus creating a chain of sorts.

The first workshop of the kind was held in Rijeka, where the participants Iva Mladenić, Marija Rađa, Lara Vrsalović and Sandra Kordić were inspired by the same concepts as the project participants in other countries: passport/work, sea/money, coffee/security. What stories emerged from these concepts and how they inspired the authors to create amazing stories, we will find out in a discussion with the authors and the mentor.