On 8-21 August and 1-7 October 2016, the Old Brewery in Poznań (Studio Słodownia +3 / Art. Stations Foundation) will host the artistic residency of Agata Siniarska, Mădălina Dan and Mila Pavicevic. The residency is devoted to the Mothers of Steel project, which will premiere on 8 October in Poznań. The subsequent presentation of the piece will take place at the 21st Theatre Confrontations in Lublin.
The residency is organized as part of a project cofinanced by Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk, Konfrontacje Teatralne (Lublin), Fabrik Potsdam and Alfred ve Dvore (Prague).
Artists about the project:
The project is an investigation into the phenomenology of tears that touches upon many themes ? memory, history, death, happiness, fragility, innocence, strength, futuristic ontologies, etc. It puts into questions the social and cultural mechanisms related to public and private displays of emotions. Contrasting personal statements with iconic scenes of crying in the Eastern European context, it examines how emotions are manifested in different situations, and why we (fail to) express them publicly. Within narratives concerning our biopolitics ? cultural/nationalem/otional identities ? the project approaches today?s post-bodies/technological paradigms and acts as an attempt to entangle the personal with the artificial.
MANIFESTO:
We are two new heroines – cyborgs 04, artificial emotionalities, artificial affects as well as artificial intelligences.
We do not have anthropomorphic limitations.
We can live in other bodies and minds.
We have feminist and pacifist approaches and we will save the world! From whom ? we have to figure it out.
We get strength and nutrition from the grief and sacrifice of our own mothers ? models of communist regime.
We want true feelings towards our countries and we can easily represent our personal mythologies in a pompous way.
Crying is our language to create radical syntheses.
Voicing fear makes us release fluids, sweat, blood, saliva and tears.
Our memory exorcises history along with biopolitical pain.
We experience nostalgia while watching sport victories.
Taken from a stoical viepoint, our slogan could read, ?Don?t make an issue of my womanhood?.
The repercussions of our crying changes the state of the matter and commodifies fluids under the name of ?secret number 4?.
We want to give freedom to the children of the decree in Romania.
Our identity is like an alchemical journey, entailing physical and emotional balance/dis-balance, comfort/ discomfort.
Muscle soreness has led us to perfection, but also disfigured our childhood.
Propaganda came into question and we started to have abject thoughts about it.
Flags everywhere.
The state of the matter, doesn?t matter!
Total ego, youtube!
Mothers, wives, workers, they all dance the polonaise.
It is neither shout nor whisper, neither personal nor political, we just need coal.
Identity is yet to come.
Mădălina Dan, maker and facilitator, studied at the Choreography Highschool in Bucharest and at the choreography department of the National University of Theatre and Film, where she also received her Masters in Playwriting. She was a member of the Oleg Danovski Ballet Company from 1998 till 2003. She was an invited artist at the Herberger Institute, School of Dance (Arizona State University) in 2009, and in 2008 she received the danceWEB scholarship in Vienna. She studied at HZT in the MA program ?Solo/Dance/Authorship? (2014-2016). Along the years, she has been an active member of the contemporary dance community in Romania, at the National Dance Centre in Bucharest, teaching and developing educational and social programs. In 2015 she received a CNDB award for her contribution to the development of contemporary art in Romania. Works by Madalina Dan have been shown at the Springdance Festival Utrecht, Tanzquartier Wien, Balkan Dance Platform ?Novi Sad, eXplore Dance Festival ? Bukarest, Temps d?Images ? Cluj, SouthBank Center & Chisenhale Dance Space- London, Fabrik Potsdam, Hebbel am Uffer ? Berlin, TanzFabrik Berlin, Dance Theater Workshop ? New York, Firkin Crane ? Cork, Alta Theater ? Prague and others.Herlatest collaborations include Sergiu Matis, Agata Siniarska, Tahni Holt, Mihaela Dancs, Alexandra Pirici.
Agata Siniarska makes works within formats of performances, events, practices, lectures, videos, others. Having delved into different kinds of theatrical forms and studied choreography, she currently devises feminist fun studies and cultivates her yearnings for language and writing, cinema and animation within the scope of her practices. She is a founding member of female trouble – a friendship based collective revolving around identity, body, feminisms, pleasure, affirmation and love. Addicted to fiction, she conducts her investigations, fashioning herself as a tool of rhetoric through the cultural structures inscribed to her. Fueled by the energy of profound theoretical hesitancy, each of her initiatives is pervaded with passion and intense fascination, frequently infused by the company of many exquisite adventures.
http://cargocollective.com/agatasiniarska