Workshop II
Stratagames: A Theatre of Operations

12/10 - 17/10/2009
In English language

By Tomislav Medak, Sergej Goran Pristas & Ivana Ivković / BADco (HR)
With Bryan Finoki (USA), Marko Peljhan (SI), Ana Vujavnović (RS) & Dmitry Vilensky (RS)


Those in positions of authority expect artistic acts to be clear and conclusive when engaging the political or the social - to present findings, to mediate where learning fails, to teach lessons, to enlighten the ignorant, to speak out for those who can't. And yet this ascription of authority, this expectation of clarity, this consolation of conclusiveness leaves us with a very particular understanding of the capacity of art: works of art need to be transparent, spectators emancipated, issues instructed down.
Daunted by this slightly patronising allure, we are setting out to explore dispositions and situations where the work becomes unclear, divisive, antagonized from within; where its unfolding becomes a negotiation between the artist and spectator; where its effect becomes premised upon an equality of their respective capacities. We are interested in how stratagems, strategies and operations can be employed in the work and called upon in the encounter with the work - in order to unsettle its conclusiveness, to bring into play on either side the strategizing reason, to face off the political cunning of the spectator and the creator.
We will follow the trajectory of strategizing interventions – strategames, as we call them – through theatrical, artistic, technological, architectural, political practices, drawing upon board games, military concepts, game theories, deus ex machina, illusionist tricks, Ponzi schemes, ###

political hoaxes and the whole wild catalogue of manipulations, machinations, challenges and negotiations that we can think of.

Co-produced by NXTSTP, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union

BADco. is a Zagreb-based collaborative performance group. It was founded in 2000 while some of the authors were working together on the Confessions project in Theatre & TD. It was founded as a non-profit organization to produce collaborative performance work by Pravdan Devlahović, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš and Ivana Sajko.
The artistic work of BADco. is not so much marked by the choice of subject matter as it is by the production of various problematic aspects of working in/as collaboration, i.e. through specific ways of self-organization of the authors involved in a particular project during the process of work. Authors see their performances as performance machines which can enter various referential contexts such as social, political, intimate, dance and artistic contexts in general. Instead of thematic naming, which stands closer to the traditional ideas of theatre, the group prefers to think in terms of eventuality. Some key words for our thematic interest are: vitalism, virus material, collective, flesh vs. body, strategies of observing, etc. BADco.s "1 poor and one 0" premiered at steirischer herbst festival last year.
www.badco.hr

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