The first performative interpretation in the Possibilities of Villa Tugendhat Space Interpretation series is guaranteed by the performer and multimedia artist prof. Tomáš Ruller. On Monday 28 June 2021, PERFORMANCE / OPEN SITUATION will be held in Villa Tugendhat by Central European performers:
Zygmunt Piotrowski alias Naah Waw (PL)
János Szirtes & Ágnes Éva Molnár (HU)
Rokko Juhász (SK)
Projekt <8> (Veronika Bromová & Veronika Drahotová + guest Tomáš Pospiszyl) (CZ)
Lenka Klodová (CZ)
Darina Alster (CZ)
Jana Orlová (CZ)
Tomáš Ruller (CZ)
Michal Kindernay (CZ) – video & streaming
The unique premises of Villa Tugendhat and their rich historical context directly encourage performative artistic interpretations. The intention of the project is to bring the monument to life in an open dialogue, from the perspective of contemporary live art and current experience.
Selected renowned artists will first perform individually (or in close partnership) in the adjacent areas of the building, in places they find suitable and choose for an interaction. Following this part of individual consecutive shorter interventions, all performers will meet together in the main living area, as residents in a contemporary social and creative mode.
They will create a model of free creative coexistence in a long-running format, as a social experiment, based on tolerance to stylistic and opinion differences, taking into account the different needs of expression and approaching to topics, with sensitivity to mood swings, rhythm of events, sequence of events and careful to the passage of time. In order to be truly and fully consciously present, here and now, they will share this experience with each other and with the audience behind the windows in the garden, and pass it on to the spectators watching the event remotely online.
The series of individual PERFORMANCES and the subsequent OPEN SITUATION will be streamed live through several cameras under interactive direction. A panel discussion of all participating artists will follow – in the garden in good weather, inside the building in case of rain.
Photos and video will then be presented online, from 7 July also on the technical floor of Villa Tugendhat in the form of an exhibition of photo prints and video screenings.
(text: prof. Tomáš Ruller)
Partners:
Heritage Foundations, Warsaw, PL
Moholy Nagy University, Budapest, HU
Kassák Center, Nové Zámky, SK
FaVU VUT Brno, AVU Praha, DU Brno
instagram.com/moznosti_interpretace
The project is realized with financial support of the Ministry of Culture, Czech Republic, and the Fund to support the culture of national minorities, Slovakia.
Video documentation of the solo performances:
More about artists:
Tomáš Ruller (*1957)
has been working in the field of action art since early 70's, is the founder and professor of the first Performance Art studies in Bohemia (1993). He curated the international Black Market / Open Situation in Prague (1989 & 2007) and In'fr'action at the Venice Biennale (2011, 2013, 2015), Tour to Hong Kong, Cheng Du, Xi'an (2015) and live streaming performances (as Piece of Peace with H.K. Zamani between CCA Warsaw and PØST Los Angeles 2009). The themes of solo events, such as durational Weighing Waiting Weight (2010), situational Foam and Trash (2011), Incognito (2013), Appearance and ceremonial Channeling (2015), include the mediated disappearance of Inactive in Active (2013) and anonymity of No-Body (2014) on TianAnMén in Beijing, the intercultural dialogue Ashes, Shift and Game (2015) in Mexico, the post-performative Alter-Performer (2012), the participatory Performance Accummulator (2013), the new platform for collaboration on Performance Podium (2018) and the Perform-Made post-performative presentations (2017, 2018). He works and lives in Brno and is curator of the event.
Zygmunt Piotrowski alias Naah Waw (*1947 Poland)
represents the Polish artistic alternative. He presents the philosophical ground of his basic artistic research in the form of conceptual publications together with live performances and creative exercises. He has been involved in street events since 1972, founding the School of Attention (1983) as part of the East-West Study Project, and is a co-founder of the Black Market movement (1985), with which he participated in Documenta 8 in Kassel (1987). At the end of the 80's he presented 'Shan-discipline and Stalker practice, since the 90's he has been implementing projects such as Upperstanding, Main Stay, Inner Garden, Eastern Gate, Thy Art Rite, Art Foreground, Performative Call, Heavenwave Way, Game Beyond, Groundwork@Worldwide and founded Heritage Foundations. He lives in Warsaw.
János Szirtes (*1954 Hungary)
Professor in Fine Arts, known for action paintings, live and video performances, where he explores his specific strength of personal presence in different, mostly absurd situations. Active in public since the 70's, performing Dawn at Kassel Documenta in 1987, working solo, but also in various group projects, brings collaboration with Ágnes Éva Molnár (*1980 Hungary) media artist, working in genres of photography, video and performance art, with interest in the themes such as gender inequality, violation of human rights and power relations in society. In La Santa, she visualizes the social expectations towards women in the form of a fictious female hero.
Together, they perform on topics of male-female relations, as in Evolution or Freestyle Swimming series. Both live in Budapest.
Rokko Juhász (*1963, Slovakia)
Lives and works in Budapest and Puerto Vallarta (Mexico), is an intermedia-oriented performer, poet and art-organizer. He has performed in hundreds of performances around the world and published six books of experimental poetry. Since 1987 he has been active as a curator, publisher, workshop facilitator, editor. He has organized 30 international performance art festivals under the Transart Communication banner. Since 2009 he has conducted dozens of performance art workshops in Slovakia, Chile, Israel, India, Mexico, Hong Kong and China. Since 2011 he has been working with long duration performance projects such as Where are you Piri about unconditional love (since 2017), Made in Czechoslovakia in 1922 travelling with grandpa's suitcase (since 2018), Paranormal Sport Activity (since 1996). Another one of his significant areas of focus is ad-hoc performance in public spaces. He represents Kassák Intermedia Creativity Centre in Nové Zámky, Slovakia.
Veronika Šrek Bromová (*1966)
focuses on the specific iconography of the body often in confrontation with the camera in Views (1996), Lovers (1996) and I (1997). She deals with femininity, family, nature and mythology, giving herself a quasi-theatrical role, in which auto-stylization takes place. Parts of Me (1998) and Zemzoo (1998) uses selfies of her body and Me Table (2000) is a self-installation. In the Kingdom (2003-2008) she performs in various places and positions as interfaces between reality and dream. Her current ceremonial and ritual events deal with "higher meaning", finding her own life path, or destiny, for which she creates her own mythical world and therapeutic ceremonies as Ritual Greeting Performance of Balance and Unity (2015). These processes are a basis for inter-human communication, attempting to break down barriers, borders and limits between the public and private, between convention and traditional roles. She represented Czech Republic at the Venice Biennale 1999 and since 2011 she is the curator of Planet Chaos creative homestead.
She brings a collaborative project <8> with Veronika Drahotová (*1975) whose oeuvre includes objects, intermedia installations, public art, video, photography and paintings. She ran the Home Gallery, and writes regularly on visual arts. In recent years she is also involved in performance, mainly as a member of Die Früchte collective. The topics that she is interested in are universal, and at the same time intimate, these include themes of consciousness, concepts of choice, time, memory, space or freedom.
Their performing guest will be historian, theorist and curator of modern and contemporary art Tomáš Pospiszyl (*1967) whose central theme is the relationship between East and West, and performative activities include membership in The Stunners group (1986) and participation in the Entropa project (2009).
Lenka Klodová (*1969)
focuses with a conceptual attitude and a sense of humour mainly on female being, physicality and sexuality. She thematizes non-realistic aspects of female roles (Life with a Handicap 2001), motherhood (Drag Show 2001, Who´s Afraid of Motherhood? 2003), dictation of female beauty (Dolly Buster 2003, My Stockings 2003), usage of female body in advertising (To Kiss 2006), or pornographic industry (In Hand 2001, Virgins, Isles of Desire, Folk Tunes, Scenes). Expressing female erotic desire and relationships between man and woman are topics she often revives. She also covers the area of activism (Demonstration 2001) and became a member of a Mothers and Fathers group. She founded a porn-magazine for women (Ženin 2005) and since 2015 has organized monothematic international multi-genre Festival of naked forms (FNAF).
Lenka Klodová unfortunately had to cancel her participation due to health reasons.
Darina Alster (*1979)
The main themes for her include identity, religion and relationships. She transcends the boundaries of reality, disrupting common situations with incomprehensible irrational phenomena, thus letting the subconscious speak through archetypes. She combines new media with archaic media, such as astrology, magic and fairy tales, i.e. Personal Tarot (since 2007). As a Fortune-teller in the TV show Artmix, or in Treasure (2005) she even examines the social critique, but mainly corresponds with personal mythology on the basis of feelings of motherhood in combination and comparison with ancient myths, fertility cults and witchcraft. She often organizes co-operations with other artists. In Cluster Body 2018 (together with Jana Orlová) two opposite parts of psyche are fighting with ego. These are two strong female archetypes, relatives of fight and making love, in conjunction of an inner healing process. Tension Relay (2018) is a collective performance reflecting post human tension, identity research, reclaiming emotions, reinvention of love as a common prayer for civilization. Theatrum Mundi (since 2016) project introduces art as a living process, building on the principles of Psychomagic. A multimedia collective performance experiment displays a model of the universe metaphorically as an endless circle of life, where everyone is a co-creator in open organic form of living organism.
Jana Orlová (*1986)
For her, performance is live poetry. Her main focus includes her physical experience and female sexuality. Married to Jakub Orel Tomáš, they performed together in Art of Dying (2010), In Bed We Trust (2011) or Picnic (2012), since their split they both perform solo. Jana during Memories of Sacrificial Rituals (2013) reminds us of Joan Jonas with the mirror and Marina Abramoviè by cutting her underbelly; in Scallop (2013) she got free inspiration from Interior Scroll by Carolee Schneemann and in Video NoD (2015) she covered her naked lap with a video display of TV Bra by Charlotte Moorman. She collaborated with Filip Turek (*1968) on Rape Face (2015) and has completed the Body Cluster (2018) project with Darina Alster. In the Maqlu Annual Burning series (2018), she produced an old-Babylonian text dedicated to ritual protection to avert adverse circumstances, a different site-specific concept referring to various spiritual traditions. She is also engaged as a curator and editor.
Michal Kindernay (*1978)
artist of interactive video, streaming and video editor of the event.
Mobile cameras operators:
Sandrine Amadou Titi, Eva Marie Růžena Sližová, Tomáš Lorenc, Jamie Hrabců, Hana Magdoňová, Katarina Kadiević (graduates of the Performance Art studio, FaVU VUT)
