Presentations | Transient Encounters  | Curated by Basak Senova and David Chisholm |  Participants: Mauricio Carrasco, Yane Calovski, Basak Senova, and David Chisholm | Press to Exit Project Space, Skopje, December 2019 

The project brings presentations, lecture performances, and lecture recitals together to create a ground to discuss intersecting and transient aspects of artistic research in different disciplines.

Hysteria and trauma as constitutive elements in contemporary Monodrama
Lecture/Recital
by Mauricio Carrasco

Artistic Research in the field of music theatre

This lecture/recital examines how text and music articulate to create an alienated character that suffers trauma and hysterical symptoms, similar to those that Freud and Breuer described in their Studies on Hysteria. Like the late nineteenth-century Leçons de Mardi, where Dr. Charcot staged hysteria through his most prominent patient Augustine, the partial performance of Georges Aperghis’ Fidélité, – transcribed from a female harpist into a male guitarist – will open this lecture/recital, analysing how hysteria has been historically associated to women in Monodrama’s tradition.

Gender and genre are analysed as interchangeable terms, being possible to associate inquiry, hybridity and interchangeability to both. Therefore, the constitution of an Actor-Musician will depend on his/her ability to navigate between different genres, like a drag performer that goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today, paraphrasing Judith Butler.

Lectures and presentations | Arianne Spanier "Contemporary Design and Independent Publishing Practices as a Voice from the Margins"| Cric – festival for critical culture: CRIC 04 | organized by Kontrapunkt and press to exit project space | Chifte Hammam, National Gallery | 22.11. 2019

For the last 20 years Fukt Magazine has been exploring contemporary drawing and over the years has built an extensive archive of hand-drawn artwork, with latest editions critically examining various themes such as sex, text and words in drawing and systems. The talk of Arianne Spanier Contemporary design and independent publishing practices as voice from the margins will focus on the story of the publication, both on a personal level and in the wider picture of mark-making, design and above all the creative process. The past decade has seen a rapid development of independent publishing, especially among the artist community, with art book fairs arising around the globe and many new possibilities in production and distribution. What are the pros and cons to create your own platform and to be an independent publisher in today’s society?

External activity |  Wayside (A performance yet to happen) | Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska’s exhibition  | Tobacco 001 Cultural Center, Ljubljana, Slovenia |  24. 10. 2019–22. 11. 2019

Envisioned as a choreographed installation, the project refers to a number of sources including Hansen’s Open Form theory, the composition ‘Novara’ (1962) by American composer Earle Brown and the recreation of clothing left behind in a sketchbook of Antoinette van Eyck, a young student of tailoring in Maastricht in 1935. Calovski and Ivanoska explored Vevar’s archives, preserved by the MSUM+MG in Ljubljana, focusing on the correlation between practical and conceptual usage of the open form as well as on its notion, within the context of the archives, as a form of performative action. Vevar’s archives thus become a reflection on theatricality as a way of manifesting real life.

Presentation | Jovanka Popova  | Towards a New Heritage Symposium as part of the Motel Trogir project, organized by Loose Associations |  Beton kino, Dom Mladih/ Split Youth Centre, Croatia | 17-20 October, 2019

The three-day symposium / public gathering which will take place in Split and the surrounding area from 17 to 20 October 2019 is organised by the Loose Associations, platform for contemporary artistic practices, as part of the Collective Domain of Cultural Memory (CDCM) collaborative project. The symposium is organised with the intent of fostering the critical reflection and examination of the last decade of dealing with the topic of protection of modernist architecture from the second half of the 20^th century. We intend to consider the processes, protagonists, methods and challenges in this field (of the historicization of modernity and preservation of modernist heritage).

Presentation | Hristina Ivanoska: Document Missing: The Intricate Sense of Truth in Oral Histories  | Summer School as School organized by Stacion Center Contemporary Art Prishtina |  Boxing Club, Kosovo | 12  August,  2019 

Storytelling and the notion of oral transfer of data is a tradition on which we rest the case of most of the official historical narratives in relation to women’s history. The oral/immaterial transfer carries the weight of a document that is unscientific and prone to manipulation. Political currency of certain documents lies in the potential of unlocking a change or a paradigmatic shift in how something is perceived. In the process of critically examining the selection of particulars from the authentic materials we find that synthesis of particulars that lead into a narrative and, as a result, history becomes a contested field where the linearity of stories is challenged.