Event: Kočevje-Yeah!
Artist: Polonca Lovšin
Day and Time: Saturday 14.10.2017. From 16:00
where:
Industrial area Kočevje, Novomeska ulica
Description:
Group performance with 10 minutes speeches and actions, in industrial area of Kocevje, in front of an empty lot where new factory Yaskawa will be built.
People creating electricity for a microphone by paddling three bicycles on a platform.
Participants:
– Gasper Jarni (actor), Reading a poem by Slovenian poet Matej Bor, A Men Traveled Through the Atomic Age
– Mihael Petrovic (self built anthropologist, historian and writer) A sudden Loss of Inhabitants
– Klavdija Kriz Potisk and a dancing group Poza (dancers), animation of words by movement, words are taken from old Kocevje language like: love, work, forest, future
– Romana Novak (poet), a poem, Tax of Tangible
– Pankeroschi,(punk band- not live performance), Working
– Children from a drama group, statements and drawings about work and robots
– Ervin Djuvelek (student), slam poetry Kočevje
– Zan Petric (student), slam poetry Kočevje
– Polonca Lovsin (artist) and Ljupco Todorovski (scientist of AI), Kočevje 2067, a science fiction story of future Kočevje
Photos: Xenos
Curatorial Observations:
A red stair staged in the middle of nowhere, impressively pointing to a vast empty field. Lined-up with chains of kid’s robot drawings. A future factory is here to come: robots out from Asia. Climbing up the stairs were many locals, artists, kids, in a preast-like situation to form words and mimics into meaningful appearances of slovenian tongue. Sermons were rapped by serious teens, literary readings, speeches held by grown-up adults. Could be a welcome, could be a warning, could be a meditation. Two manipulated bikes, like iron horses, were used aside for getting the (electric) power to speak out loud with mike and amplifying system. Always in action, supported by volunteers. Dots of colour, a violet wig, and a white ceremonial pixie were hovering across the scenery. In between some additional punk tunes. Visitors kept looking distance. Four girls overall in green and dark and lucid orange, waiting for a blue collar job. Languidly loitering on natural straw bales they suddenly jumped up to fulfill a secret choreography. A vivid d-i-y performance set out at the fringes of Kočevje, set up at a haunted place, waiting for its time to come – to get kissed awake by big business. A rural region on the verge to be pulled (or pushed) into a globalized market. Memories of a charming slovenian Saturday side trip, Oct 14 2017.
(Dirck Möllmann, KIÖR, Remembrance of a Saturday Detour to Slovenia, 14. 10.2017)