Friday 14th October, 6 pm
Ivana Sajko (Croatia)
Žena-bomba / Woman-bomb
Auto-referential reading
Galerija Gregor Podnar, Kolodvorska 6
In Croatian*
Sajko will be accompanied by the musician Vedran Peternel (Croatia / France)
Author: Ivana Sajko
Performers: Ivana Sajko & Vedran Peternel
Free admittance
* The Slovenian translation of Woman-bomb, published in Apokalipsa, will be on sale prior to the performance. Price: 1500 SIT
Production: BAD co.
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with: Galerija Gregor Podnar
Ivana Sajko
"My short and quiet life as a woman is to end in a noisy death and questions I never managed to answer: Is this a heroic act that ends with my suicide, or is it a suicide hidden behind a heroic act?" (Woman-bomb)
My performance is a lecture aimed at assessing the line between self and the character being portrayed, together with the multiplication of the voice on both ideological as well as musical levels. The strategies employed while writing the text are also used in the creation of the performance.
The creation process of Woman-bomb, an auto-referential reading performance, began in 2004 while taping a conversation with my friends on terrorism-related issues:
- Is suicide hidden behind the heroic act, or is the heroic act transformed into suicide?
- Do the remaining 12 minutes and 36 seconds before the explosion go by faster or slower?
- Is it possible to make a 12-minute-and-36-second performance that could incorporate and relate such concepts?
The conversations used in my lecture are replies to the questions directed to the people on my mailing list while I was working on this piece: What would you do if you had only 12 minutes and 36 seconds left? It was my intention to move the focus of interest away from the heroine-terrorist who is the barrier of 'the clock', and make visible the various aspects from which we can speak, not only about terrorism, but also about art.
The reason behind the deconstruction of my own text and the process of its creation is that I wanted to publicly confront myself with the essential body of the work which I had drafted with reference to documents, interviews, polls, newspaper articles as well as my own insanity. I also employ those same methods that define terrorist methodology, such as use of media for portraying the symbolic nature of a suicide attack. I wanted to deconstruct what I once constructed because I believe that this provides a new performance potential outside that of a standard theatre presentation. Discussion of art is also art. I have provided one such method.
Born in 1975 in Zagreb, Ivana Sajko works as a playwright, director, theatre theoretician and author of radio productions and multimedia projects in which she works with artists from various fields. In addition to her collaboration with American composer David Simons, with whom she released a CD entitled Mass for the Election-Day Silence, Sajko is the author of eleven dramas that have been translated into English, German and other languages. They have been produced for both stage and radio while Sajko presents them in the form of auto-referential reading performances. Most of her texts - which have received several awards - are published in the volumes Executed Faces - 4 Plays about Optimism and Woman-bomb. Between 2000 and 2001 she was the presenter and editor of V-Efekt, Croatian television's first ever programme on contemporary theatre. Ivana Sajko has been the member of the editorial board of Frakcija - international magazine for contemporary performing arts since 1996, and is a co-founder of the BAD co. theatre group.
Born in 1967 in Zagreb, Vedran Peternel has lived in Paris since 1978 where he is involved in music and radiophony. Peternel has collaborated in projects by such groups as Dirty Three, Hurleurs, Curl, Ezekiel, Theo Hakola, and is a co-founder of the Oko 3 group, as well as the illegal off-scene Garage. He also participates in the Pulsart organisation engaged in theatre and music projects with juvenile delinquents in French borstals. In the early 1990s Peternel created programming for a pirate radio station Radio Brod, operating from a vessel just inside international waters in the Adriatic; he also plays with the Orkestar Za Ubrzanu Evoluciju, an improvised sound ensemble, and since 2002 has been the member of the Darko Rundek & Cargo Orkestar. Vedran Peternel is the co-author and sound engineer for such radio documentaries as The Gate of Europe (Danish, Croatian and Bulgarian radio), Mars over Zagreb (ABC, Australia) and An ABC of the Night (BBC, London)
