<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, presents:<br>
<div class="moz-forward-container"><span style="font-family:times
new roman,serif"><br>
<b>BADco.<br>
<i>Responsibility for Things Seen: Tales in Negative Space</i></b><i><br>
Spatial intervention and video installation</i><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.aksioma.org/badco"
target="_blank">www.aksioma.org/badco</a><br>
<br>
<b>Aksioma | Project Space</b><br>
Komenskega 18, Ljubljana<br>
8 - 24 May 2013<br>
<br>
<b>Exhibition opening: Wednesday, 8 May 2013 at 8 pm</b></span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"></span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><span
style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><i>Responsiblity
for Things Seen</i> is a spatial intervention and five
channel real-time video installation by the Zagreb-based
theatre compnay BADco. It present as a an effort to
recreate "theatre by other means", pushing the audience
center stage, and creating a narrativised interactive
environment that focuses on the ethical questions relating
to watching and participating in images. The work was
commissioned by curatorial collective WHW and first
presented within the Croatian presentation at the 54th
Venice Biennale in 2011.</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">The present
times, ridden with the sustained crisis of capitalism,
environmental catastrophes and the depletion of common
resources, require a reordering of economic and political
relations on a global scale. As is repeatedly echoed
throughout BADco's work: "When there is not enough for
everybody, there is no equitable order that can be
negotiated. It can function and be understood only on the
basis of active policing of differential entitlements and
exclusions." Yet attempts to fathom the ongoing reordering
of the global space and to imagine a different course of
social development to the existing capitalist system run
aground at the limits of representation of systemic
totality and the fragmention of agency within it. Even in
the face of crass injustices, the collective capacity to
imagine and project the common future remains captured in
images, creating generalised desires, consumerist
fragmentation of responsibility and a sense of public
progress that are ultimately mobilised to sustain and
maximize private profit. BADco's work reflects this
conundrum using what’s most immediate to them as theatre
makers: investigating strategies of representation,
spatial orderings of representation, future scenarios and
asymmetric acts of collective communication.</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><i>Responsibility
for Things Seen</i> starts as a spatial intervention: an
insertion of the outside space into the exhibition room.
The existing gallery wall has been replicated in the
gallery space, and the non-space behind the original wall
now populates the exhibition room. This non-space is a
withdrawal of space, a double negativity: not quite this
exhibition space, not quite a different place. This
non-space is populated by video screens, that extend
Badco.'s intervention from space to time. The comings and
goings of people are recorded and displayed, together with
pre-recorded footage that makes the audience become
co-present in time with someone who is not with them in
the space. The image is a time machine, a transport in
time. It opens and forecloses the imagination of the
future. Present, past and possible futures are endlessly
mixed and overlapped. Three videos provide intimate
cinematic accounts, each accessible only to one spectator
at any one time, of displacements in space, image and
human presence. The first is a photo essay. The second is
a mix of choreography of performers absent from the actual
exhibition space and the inadvertent movement of
exhibition visitors who are present. The third display
shows a live camera shot processed by software subtracting
or adding the human presence in the exhibition space.
Furthermore, two interactive videos show short cinematic
narratives algorithmically edited in real time using
prerecorded material and live feed from cameras in the
exhibition space. Finally, intermittent choreographic
interventions are staged during the opening of the piece.</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">This work
endures as a temporal installation: it records in images
the comings and goings of people. Theatre, BADco's actual
line of work, always requires the presence of artists. It
cannot take place if they are not there. And here, in the
exhibition, they remain in their absence. In recorded
images – as the audience will too. And in images on
screens the audience will see the presence of its absent
fellow-visitors, just as it will perhaps witness the
absence of its own presence. Become co-present in time
with someone who is not with them in the space. </span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><i>Responsibility
for Things Seen</i> demands a scopic act: the much
maligned capacity of images to capture our imagination and
to supplant our sociality by its simulation is only
commensurate with our capacity to always produce new
images, new configurations and new disfigurations of
images. Here it’s no different. BADco. did produce
images, BADco. did attempted to create images differently.
And, yet, things don’t stop here. There seems to be
something incomplete in images that coax out our action in
the receptive act of viewing: our intent capacity to
become captured, our passionate passivity in surrendering
to our own hijacking, our engaged absorption in the
intimacy of images. And it’s not the sovereign,
enlightened spectator that is the agent of this activity.
Rather it’s a beholder that loses her firm ground as she
becomes immersed in an image, while the image loses its
clarity as she starts deciphering its detail, unraveling a
scene that becomes more and more impossible to relate to
as she looks closer and closer, requiring a spiral of
reading, a responsibility disturbed by the non-totalizable
subject of the image.</span><br style="font-family:times
new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><i>Responsibility
for the Things Seen</i> is based on BADco.’s analytical
performative principles. It is an evolving work, presented
as ‘theatre by other means’- through an installation and
an intervention. </span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<br>
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><b>BADco.</b>
is a collaborative performance collective based in Zagreb,
Croatia. As a combination of four choreographers /
dancers, two dramaturgs and one philosopher, since its
beginning (2000), it systematically focuses on the
research of protocols of performing, presenting and
observing by structuring its projects around diverse
formal and perceptual relations and contexts.
Reconfiguring established relations between performance
and audience, challenging perspectival givens and
architectonics of performance, problematizing of
communicational structures – all of that makes BADco. an
internationally significant artistic phenomenon and one of
the most differentiated performance experiences. So far
the group has produced more than 15 performances that were
presented all over Europe and in the United States.</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">The artistic
core of the collective are Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana
Ivković, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej
Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Lovro Rumiha and Zrinka
Užbinec.</span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Presented at
the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di
Venezia as part of the Croatian Exhibition, 2011</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Curators:
What, How and for Whom/WHW</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Venue:
Arsenale</span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Software and
interactive installation: Daniel Turing</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Light
design: Alan Vukelić
</span><br style="font-family:times
new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Cinematography
and still photography: Dinko Rupčić
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Camera
assistant: Hrvoje Franjić
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Video
editing: Iva Kraljević
Costumes: Silvio Vujičić
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Architect:
Ana Martina Bakić
</span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Additional
performer: Ivo Kušek
</span><br style="font-family:times
new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Architectural
visualisation: Antun Sevšek
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Draftsmen:
Igor Pauška, Slaven Josip Delalle
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Production
assistant: Valentina Orešić
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Modelers:
Lidija Živković, Ivana Hribar, Barbara Radelj
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Promotional
photos: Dinko Rupčić, Ivan Kuharić
</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Props
production: Zagreb Youth Theatre workshop</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Coproduced
by:BADco., Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
andZagreb Youth Theatre.</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Supported
by: City Office for Culture, Education and Sports – City
of Zagreb</span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<b><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Responsiblity
for Things Seen at Aksioma | Project Space:</span></b><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Production:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2013</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.aksioma.org"
target="_blank">www.aksioma.org</a> </span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Artistic
Director: Janez Janša</span><br style="font-family:times
new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Executive
Producer: Sonja Grdina</span><br style="font-family:times
new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Public
Relations: Mojca Zupanič</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Technician:
Valter Udovičić</span><br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<br>
<b>Thanks</b>: Ljudmila<br style="font-family:times new
roman,serif">
<b><br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
</b><i><b><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">The
programme of Aksioma Institute is supported by the
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and
the Municipality of Ljubljana.</span></b></i></span><br>
<br>
<br>
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Contact:</span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Sonja Grdina,
0590 54360, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:sonjagrdina@gmail.com" target="_blank">sonjagrdina@gmail.com</a></span><br
style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<b><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Aksioma |
Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana<br>
</span></b><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif">Neubergerjeva
25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.aksioma.org">www.aksioma.org</a></span><b><span
style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><br>
</span></b><br>
<br style="font-family:times new roman,serif">
<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
<br>
</body>
</html>