The program
Friday May 8
16.30-17.00 Inauguration and mingle
Antonia Baer & Latifa Laâbissi (DE, FR)
Consul & Meshie
Installation by Nadia Lauro (FR)
17.00-20.30
Get your tickets on Tickster.
In the beginning of the 20th century, chimpanzees Consul and Meshie lived like human beings, with human beings, and ended up considering themselves as such. Antonia Baehr and Latifa Laâbissi put on their own apish identities occupying an installation by Nadia Lauro. Hairy, impertinent, and shameless, they exhibit themselves for 3 1/2 hours while the audience is free to come and go. Consul and Meshie embody hybrid figures who address the violence of assignations and mess up distinctions such as nature-culture, man-woman, the self-the other.
Uppsala City Theatre
Ivo Dimchev (BG)
Sculptures – a concert with unpretentious choreography
21.00-22.30
Sculptures is the title of Dimchev’s newest album, and its songs are the backbone of this unique evening, standing on the border between a pop concert and a contemporary dance performance. Ivo Dimchev considers his songs to be three-dimensional structures that he can expand with choreography, recognizing them as ‘sculptures’. In Sculptures - a concert with unpretensious choreography his voice brings the dark poetry of his texts to the fore and offers a moving experience for the audience.
Ivo Dimchev is a choreographer, visual artist, singer- songwriter from Bulgaria. His work is an extreme and colourful mixture of performance art, dance, theatre, music, drawings and photography. He has received numerous international awards for dance and theater and has presented his work all over Europe, Asia, South and North America.
Saturday May 9
Uppsala Art Museum
Lundahl & Seitl (SE)
Symphony of a Missing Room
Only Prebooking 20 min slot between
13.00-18.00 at Tickster. Free of charge.
To what extent does ‘the world’ originate from every individual perceiver as a form of projection? Does reciprocity exist? What happens when historical events and art float free of their bibliographic and museum anchoring and becoming present experience? Time and evolution are the key experiences of this serial composite work that reflects on the museum as phenomenon, its tradition and its potential future. During the experience that is facilitated by googles and an audio composition the visitors pass through walls, down into tunnels traveling through a network of past exhibitions and museums. Other artist, dead and alive, echoes inside the symphony as an infinite conversation about the changing condition of being sentient in relation to a current environment of values and belief.
Symphony of a Missing Room has been conducted at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Royal Academy of Arts in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Acropolis museum i Athens, M Leuven in Belgium and Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India amongst others. The work will also be acquired to the museum art collections.
Lundahl & Seitl are a pioneering postdisciplinary artistic collaboration that interrogates the nature of being, with backgrounds in visual art and choreography. They are based in Stockholm and London and internationally exhibiting. By appropriating different art forms, methods and technologies they create immersive installations fostering resonance between the connectivity and interdependence that exists within any given environment, between a world and its inhabitants.
And still I rise
Shakuntala Kulkarni and Arundhati Chattopadhyaya (IN)
14.00-14.20, floor 1
15.30-15.50, floor 1
And still I rise is a site-specific performance that raises questions about the need for protection of the female body in public and private spaces, using wearable sculptures in the form of cane armour. With a sense for ornamental qualities, the artist Shakuntala Kulkarni let an eclectic mix of Indian dance forms, Victorian costumes, Bollywood hairstyles, exoskeletons merge, that creates a dialogue between lived experiences from different centuries. Does the armour actually protect you or entrap you? Through movement and words, the experience of violence, like the gaze and touch, is explored. At the same time, adornment of the armour helps the body to feel empowered and move on with dignity and grace. It is a collaborative work between visual and performing artists, who will explore the elements of improvisations, which will be kept open to everyone present - a mythic gesture on its own premises.
The title is taken from Maya Angelou’s poem.
Shakuntala Kulkarni has a long career in painting, multi-disciplinary and multimedia work. In recent years she has incorporated several perforamtive mediums within her installations and has explored different materials and social context. In the oeuvre Of Bodies, Armour and Cages the artist focuses on women’s rights and urban gentrification processes. Shakuntala Kulkarni has worked internationally and represented India at the Venice Biennale 2019. She lives in Mumbai.
Arundhati Chattopadhyaya is a choreographer, dancer and actress. she has learnt Bharatanatyam, traditional Indian dance. She has worked internationally and collarborated with several prestigious directors such as Elizabeth Swados, Tisa Chang and Ellen Stuart in for example New York. Chattopadhyaya intiates and participate in various types of collaborations and workshops where visual arts and architecture meet theather and dance, most recently in the Goa open arts festival, in the city of Goa where she also lives.
Rani Nair (SE)
Dixit dominius cantata variations
14.30-16.30, The Auditorium
No tickets
The dancer and choreographer Rani Nair has worked with memory and archives for many years. It began when she inherited the work Dixit dominus, a solo created for the Indian dancer and choreographer Lilavati together with choreographer Kurt Jooss. Since then she has attempted to understand what it means to inherit a dance and the ways in which she can share the work with others. Rani is interested in cultural translations and uses a fusion of dance styles. At Uppsala Art Museum the choreography will be translated into different media and materials. The work is presented in the form of brief actions with intervals. This will be the second version of Rani’s performance at Uppsala Art Museum during spring 2020
Rani Nair is a dancer and choreographer. She is interested in ideas about postcolonialism and the body in social contexts. Using a fusion of traditional Indian dance, contemporary Western dance and martial arts, Rani Nair has danced, choreographed and worked with research internationally in, for example India, Mexico, Syria and London. She has also been on the advisory panel for Swedish arts grant’s committee.
Ivo Dimchev (BG)
Selfie Concert
16.30-17.40
Selfie Concert is an interactive performance in which Ivo Dimchev proposes a new approach to the idea of a concert that includes the audience. Dimchev’s work often depends on audience participation in his performance works. This time he proposes a brand-new selfie concert that himself describes in a few words: “I like the idea of a concert during which people constantly take selfies with me while I sing. Selfie is a choreography. Selfie is a sculpture. Selfie is a tragedy. Selfie is love. Selfie is less for me, more for us.”
Uppsala Konsert & Kongress
Kimatica (GB)
Transcendence
20.00-21.00
On the border between technology and performance, the London-based performance collective Kimatica explores human consciousness and its limitations. Transcendence is a unique, interdisciplinary project that, thanks to a team of psychologists, technicians, performance artists and audiovisual designers, approaches uncharted terrain in both science and performance.
Inspired by the limits of human consciousness whilst exploring the power of ancient spiritual practices, Transcendence takes its audience onto an immersive journey through the subconscious mind through the combination of interactive lighting and visuals, sound design, physical performance, live vocals, character design and wearables.
Kelly Jayne Jones (GB)
Multiple dimension initiates part III
21.00-22.00
Free entrance no tickets
Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester based artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. She began working in experimental concrete music and her practice has expanded to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film. Her work traverses the emotions of desire and anxiety, the comfortable and uncomfortable edges of our inner spaces and social co-existence. She is interested in presence and performance as a site for potential transformation; interpersonally and communally.
“This is an ongoing seeding performance, where I invite the audience to explore with me the possibility of other dimensions as predicted mathematically in theoretical physics.”, sais Kelly Jayne Jones.