| 15.30 – 18.00 Academy of Dramatic Art, Trg Republike Hrvatske 5 |
| Sunčica Pasuljević Kandić (University of Novi Sad, Academy of Art, RS) EcoSomatic Protocols of Kinship – walking tour EcoSomatic Protocols of Kinship – bonding with the (non)human is a guided walk where you are invited to explore places of knowledge that shape us and networks that bind us. We will walk through a park as a place of knowledge held by nature and move through the Academy of Dramatic Arts as a place of human knowledge. During this walk we will also explore the knowledge of our bodies through listening, seeing and proprioceptive movements, framed as instructions that will probe you to engage in an act of re-connection with the (non)human around us, that other, critters of surrounding landscape and our devices. The walk will start at 15.30h across the street from Ethnographic Museum and end in the conference hall Frankopanska 22 at 17.30h. It is open to maximum of 15 participants. The event is free but it is necessary to book your place by 28th of January at konferencija.adu@gmail.com. FULLY BOOKED Dress warmly, bring your smartphone and prepare headphones. Everyone will get their carrier gift bags with the QR code to download the audio guide during the walk. (Audio materijal will also be forwarded to you ahead of time). In the case of heavy rain, we will adjust the walk. |
18.00 – 20.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Opening for Conference Participants – There Will Be Food Lucija Klarić (HR) The Bureau of Missing Reactions – performative intervention “Feeling everything and anything? Like it’s too much and nothing at all? You don’t know how to react? What to feel or say? You’re in need of a service? WELCOME TO… …THE BUREAU OF MISSING REACTIONS. |
20.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
| OFFICIAL OPENING PERFORMANCE Dalibor Šandor (RS) Something very special – lecture performance Something very special is a lecture performance about monsters and society’s behavior towards disabled people. Reflecting on his rehearsal process for „We are not monsters” performance Dalibor Šandor engages in a collaborative process with Marcel Bugiel (aka Dr. Acula) as dramaturg, Frosina Dimovska (aka Sylphina) as supporter and Saša Asentić (aka Dark Lord) as a collaborator. That’s all we can tell you so far. ”No spoilers.“ The event is free but it is necessary to book your place by 29th of January at konferencija.adu@gmail.com. |
Pia Brezavšček (Maska, SI)
On the Labour of Listening: Questioning Pedagogical
Hierarchies and Scene Reproduction in the Arts
In small artistic scenes where there is a lack of diversity in formal education, aspiring artists often find themselves navigating institutions that demand infinite gratitude and loyalty for access to the elite club while leaving no room to critique pedagogical methods.This dynamic extends beyond academic institutions to the independent performing arts scene, where gatekeepers—often institutional or NGO leaders, venue directors or festival curators—define the terms of inclusion.
9.00 – 10.30
F22, Frankopanska 22
Romana Brajša (ADU, Zagreb, HR)
Eight Days a Week, 26 Hours a Day
In this presentation, I aim to highlight, using examples from my experience in production and managing an independent theater, the systemic conditions and mechanisms often leading to burnout in the independent performing arts scene. The intensity of daily life, project-based work, limited financial resources, underpayment, a lack of collaborators needed for project realization, constant unpredictability, and a high level of responsibility are some of the factors contributing to the long- term unsustainability of work under these conditions. This presentation seeks to open a discussion on the possibility of creating theater under different conditions—ones that do not involve working “eight days a week, 26 hours a day” (Barada, Primorac, Burušić, 2016; respondent statement from the study, p. 128).
Kristina Lelovac (Faculty of Dramatic Arts – Skopje, MK)
Reimagining Dynamics in the Theatre Academy as a Feminist Pedagogue
Embracing bell hooks’ feminist interpretations of Paulo Freire’s argument that education can both be a tool of domination but also a practice of freedom this proposal aims to uncover the potential of feminist thinking and approaches in acting pedagogy for imagining (and possibly establishing) a more respectful, more nurturing, more inspiring and a more just learning experience for acting students in the realm of the traditional (i.e. conservative) theatre academy.
MODERATOR: Una Bauer
10.45 – 12.15
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Nataša Govedić (ADU, Zagreb, HR) Why is easier to address suicide in literary classroom than to address deep emotional connection to the world? This paper specifically addresses why is much more easier to teach Goethe’s Werther, Charolotte by David Foenkinos and Psychosis in 4.48 by Sarah Kane – famous suicidal narratives – than texts like Shakespeare’s Tempest or Little Women by Alcott or Gospodinov’s Physics of Sadness; something that we may call survival narratives. Why is our literary apparatus so well accustomed to pain, and not to much to the emotions of intense and even joyful growth? Višnja Pentić (ADU, Zagreb, HR) Ignorance as Performance: Towards Emancipatory Strategies in Student-Teacher Transactions By stepping out of the privileged role of “those who know and explain,” teachers can initiate new strategies for both intellectual and emotional emancipation. This approach involves displaying mutual vulnerability, challenging traditional hierarchies, and fostering an environment of shared discovery. The key question here is the extent to which ignorance, as a form of intellectual vulnerability, can be intentionally performed and under what conditions this performance is most effective. Lise Uytterhoeven (The Place / London Contemporary Dance School, UK) Adventures and mishaps in pursuit of radical joy Amidst the ruins of post-Brexit British dance higher education, I entered my fifth year at The Place, London Contemporary Dance School as Director of Dance Studies in January 2024. Impacted by decades of neoliberal policy and – more recently – the work of a new regulator, higher education is almost fully marketized, while conservative political pressures on the sector around freedom of speech are palpable. News of multiple course closures accumulates, while media stories parrot political rhetoric about the poor value of creative courses. Where can hope for dance higher education exist in this landscape and what kind of pedagogies, informed by past learning, are needed to catalyse change both in the present and for the future? MODERATOR: Agata Juniku |
12:30 – 14:00
F22, Frankopanska 22
PANEL
Nikolina Pristaš (ADU, Zagreb), Nataša Antulov (APURI, Rijeka), Sergej Pristaš (ADU, Zagreb)
Practicing the Incomplete: Rethinking Gesture, Artistic Education, and Production in Urgent Times
This panel delves into the notion of gesture—an act distinct from praxis and poiesis—drawing on the idea that gesture represents “means which, as such, are removed from the sphere of mediation without thereby becoming ends.” (Agamben). Anchored in this philosophical lens, we aim to explore how gestures, in their incompleteness, might inform approaches to artistic education and production amidst today’s pressing ethical and political challenges.
14.00 – 15.30
Lunch break
15.30 – 17.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
Efrosini Protopapa (The Place / London Contemporary Dance School, UK), Konstantina Georgelou (Utrecht University, NL)
The Spider, the Sidewinder Snake and the Crab: Dramaturgies of Moving Laterally
Through performative dialogue, we will draw on recent performances and their ecosystems, experiences with institutions, and other case-studies, to raise and politicize sideways practices that question attention, confuse (in)visibility and bring forth unruliness, as ways through which we might rethink our understanding of and reaction to ‘what is going on’. We will move with each other through an open-form compositional approach, in relationship, in complicity and in solidarity. We will include prepared as well as unpredictable material, while inviting participation and attention to the event through lateral operations.
Dragana Alfirević (independent choreographer and curator, SI) & Jaka Bombač (independent writer, philosopher and critic)
Kinesthetic empathy in artistic practices as precondition of learning
By presenting the context in which our project emerged, we will give a few examples of organizations and projects where practice and theory (or dance practice and production of knowledge, archiving, reflection) are in dialogue. We will present the potentials of the two-folded directionality of this kind of work: on one hand the discursive aspect of studio work, and on the other, body practices which open the space for learning and for generation of new knowledge. We will also try to question the difference between the two: knowledge as a product and enabling conditions for learning, which we understand as a multi-directional and internal, though
sharable process.
Branko Jordan (Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, Ljubljana, SI), Alma Selimović (BUNKER, Ljubljana), Maja Vižin (BUNKER, Ljubljana)
SMER B / The B COURSE
Case study of devising educational platform in development between institution (UL AGRFT) and non-institution (BUNKER)
THE B COURSE is direct homage to the intentions of Edvard Ravnikar who introduced a new experimental design program, called the B course at the Faculty for Architecture in Ljubljana.
B course offered an alternative that grew into a separate study program and changed the Academy and we are yet to see what will happen and hopefully change with our course B.
MODERATOR: Ana Letunić
18.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
(Keynote)
Marija Brajdić Vuković (Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, HR)
The Erosion of Identity in the Academia as a Sign of the (Coming) Times
This talk examines how academics navigate tensions betweensocial responsibility and institutional pressures, exploring the impact of these dynamics on their professional identities. Drawing on Latour’s (2004) concept of ‘matters of concern’ over ‘matters of fact’ and Stengers’ (2017) advocacy for a science with ‘public intelligence,’ we propose that academics’ identities are also shaped by their engagement with social and community concerns. However, managerial pressures such as workload demands often lead to resistance—especially among experienced academics whose established identities may conflict with bureaucratic expectations. This talk is based on a project that explores these dynamics through the lenses of infrastructural inertia, collective ethics, and constitutive impurity (Shotwell, 2012). We argue that embracing complexity and complicity can provide a way forward, offering opportunities to create ‘life-promoting patches’ (Tsing, 2015) and contribute meaningfully to a warming world’s pressing ‘matters of concern.’ By discussing how academics reconcile these tensions, aim is to propose pathways for fostering ethical, engaged academic practice in challenging times.
MODERATOR: Goran Pavlić
20.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
PERFORMANCE
Jasna Jasna Žmak (HR)
this is my truth, tell me yours
Taking the stage for the first time in the role of a performer,Žmak deals with issues of truth and representation,
participation and responsibility, taking us through her own dramaturgical and sexual experiences while asking herself and the audience questions about the importance and meaning of artistic production in the age of wild capitalism.
The event is free but it is necessary to book your place by 29th of January at konferencija.adu@gmail.com.
9.00 – 10.30
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Duška Radosavljević (University of Lund, SE & RCSSD, UK) Towards re-professionalisation of theatre training My work converges around the desire to question the 19th century division of labour that has underpinned much of the institutional theatre-making practices and theatre training structures in Eastern and Western Europe throughout the 19th and 20th century, and beyond. I argue that the coincidence between the processes of industrialisation and this division of labour in theatre is also significant, and that this needs to be reconsidered with a view to the changing notions of professionalisation in the postindustrial and digital age. Hana Sirovica (Kurziv), Nina Gojić (freelance dramaturg, researcher and organiser), HR Critical Dramaturgy, a rehearsal As co-organisers of the annual programme Critical Dramaturgy we wish to reclaim the term “organising”, by relying not only on its meaning within the context of cultural work, but situating it in its broader political tradition, thus affirming its agency as different to the concept of curating. We will enter into dialogue with the title of our programme by offering a series of speculations on what critical dramaturgy as a concept could offer for the understanding of knowledge production and dissemination in arts and culture, as well as for modes of collaboration which nurture slow and process-oriented working methods. We will try to unpack what is critical about dramaturgy in relation to existing fields of knowledge that have already been coupled with this denominator before, i.e. critical theory, critical practice, critical pedagogy. MODERATOR: Marko Čavlović |
10.45 – 12.15
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Goran Pavlić (ADU, Zagreb, HR) On non-productive reading From the Lisbon Strategy in 2000 EU policies have been cultivating ever wider intrusion of economic criteria in managing previously almost intact public spheres of human praxis, including higher education. The buzzword of the day was (and still remains): efficiency. The underlying assumption was realignment of the so far „unaccountable“ fields, such as humanities in order to make them more productive, and/or more marketable. Although significant instances of resistance toward such tendencies erupted all over Europe in the last twenty years, situation only worsens, and these processes have serious consequences on the methodologies of producing and acquiring knowledge. Maša Radi Buh (independent dramaturge and researcher, SI) On not suppressing the urge to shout “DID YOU SEE THIS” Through an autotheoretical perspective I am curious to explore how acknowledging fannish relations and accompanying emotions shapes my work as a writer and dramaturge within performing arts. Although my research has always been inevitably linked to pieces, artists, methodologies that I am keen on, until recently the absence of ‘me’ produced a distance which I identify as an obsessive search and application of overarching concepts in order to formally legitimise my (hidden) obsession and affection. What changes when I reveal myself as a fan, what are potentialities in openly adopting this approach? Marija Krnić (ADU, Zagreb, HR) Teaching Medieval Drama Today: Engaging Historical Narratives and Modern Sensibilities Teaching medieval drama within the university context raises complex questions pertaning to engagement, relevance, and inclusivity. How do we make these historical texts resonate with today’s students? What strategies can we employ to navigate the tension between their historical significance and the normative narratives often associated with modern revivals? In what ways can these texts prompt critical reflection on identity, tradition, and community? MODERATOR: Ivana Kukavica |
12.30 – 14.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Saša Asentić (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, NO;DE; RS ) Aesthetics of Access and Politics of Memory The study argues that anti-ableist struggles are inherently linked to anti-fascist and anti-capitalist movements. By emphasizing accessibility, care, and solidarity as intertwined principles, the project redefines how disability history and dance history are understood. It advocates for historical research that foregrounds marginalized practices, proposing that solidarity-driven aesthetics of access can generate more inclusive and just narratives in the arts. Zrinka Užbinec (Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK) The Metastability of Cuteness – Violence through the Lens of Choreography This proposal presents three choreographic vignettes (short videos of 2–3 minutes) to be played during intermissions, unsettling the usual rhythm of a symposium. These pauses act as choreographic disturbances—affective intrusions into the regular flow of the event. By presenting these works as intermissions, I aim to disrupt not only the conference’s rhythm but also its implicit hierarchies and structures. Alongside the videos, I propose a short talk to contextualise their aim, mapping out key concepts—cuteness, violence, choreography, metastability, and autochoreography. MODERATOR: Una Bauer Christel Stalpaert (Ghent University, BE) Hyphenated Thinking in Performance-Pedagogical Prototypes: Institutional engagement in Maria Lucia Correia’s Flotation Schools and Natural Contract Labs The Portuguese-Belgian performance artist Maria Lucia Cruz Correia traces ecological matters of concern in her long-term collaborative art projects Common Dreams – Flotation School (2017-) and Natural Contract Lab (2021-). Common Dreams — Flotation school is a survival climate school built on water co-creating and (re)collecting strategies for survival in a floating society. With her subsequent Natural Contract Labs Correia assembles with a multidisciplinary team, developing a protocol of reciprocal care with the aim to establish a deeper understanding of and a sustainable, caring relationship with the river at stake, and to make justice to the harm inflicted by hydrocolonialism and ecocide on the hydrocommons. |
14.00 – 15.30
Lunch break
18.00
F22, Frankopanska 22
(Keynote)
| Louise Owen (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK) ‘Will to know: reckoning with knowledge in climate catastrophe’ This presentation considers figurations of knowledge in the context of encroaching climate catastrophe. InCartographies of the Absolute (2015), Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle discuss how the digital technologies which form part of everyday life, and which serve an orienting and informational function, speak to an “all-encompassing will-to-know”. I draw on Toscano and Kinkle’s application of theories of cognitive mapping to capitalism as systemic totality and to efforts on the part of artists to reckon with “the problem of visualising or narrating capitalism today”, to examine John Akomfrah’s recent video and sound installation, Listening All Night to the Rain (British Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2024). A multi-modal work constructed of six ‘cantos’, Akomfrah proposes Listening All Night to the Rain as a means to “use the occasion of the approaching crisis to rethink what our past has been, to listen more to what our past has been” (British Council 2024). The installation places a compelling conceptual and formal focus on the historical trajectory of climate catastrophe and its colonial underpinnings, pursuing its enquiry via the presentation of six intersecting works of substantial duration. It thus reckons with the problem that Toscano and Kinkle identify – and, in its experiential offering, it both runs counter to habits and practices of spectatorship conditioned by digital technologies, and frustrates any desire for total perspective. In a social and educational context of “reorganised” attention (Bishop 2024: 8), I analyse the work to pose a series of questions about contemporary intersections between artistic production and conditions of spectatorship, cultural reception, and pedagogy. MODERATOR: Una Bauer |
20.00
(KunstTeatar, Okićka 11)
| PERFORMANCE Čigir – Plazibat – Vuković (HR) Jimmy the Dud In an effort to prove that he is the best gunslinger in the entire world, Jimmy the Dud embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, one that will challenge everything he thinks he knows about himself and his identity. The event is free but it is necessary to book your place by 30th of January at konferencija.adu@gmail.com. FULLY BOOKED |
10.00 – 11.30
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Sibila Petlevski (ADU, Zagreb, HR) Artificial Intelligence and/or Creativity; Immersive Virtual Reality in Art Education Created by Artificial Intelligence The original thesis of this speculative paper is about changing the approach in the learn-and-adapt model that presupposes the possibility of human AI coevolution. In doing so, we are considering how (in addition to establishing appropriate regulations) the development of new forms of creative learning could be encouraged, thereby reducing the risk that future Artificial Superintelligence will threaten human development when it achieves the ability to self-develop algorithms that will not only enable it to learn and adapt, but also to evolve on its own without human intervention. Tina Hofman (University of Birmingham, UK) Can Diversity be Decolonial? Inclusion and Representation in arts: What Now? In this paper I explore the relationship between diversity and (de)coloniality. My overall research is embedded in the arts and academic practices where working with(in) diversity scales and frameworks is totally unavoidable for any entity working in publicly funded arts in England. Within the paper I will draw on the representation of East European artists in England. Nikolina Rafaj (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, HR) (non)written history of colors The emphasis will be placed on the questioning of three possible methodological clearings that remind us again and again of the fragility and multiple conditioning of the research subject, the research field, as well as the productively unstable position of the author-producer. This tripartite structure anthropology as cultural critique – fictocriticism – author-producer orbits around the concept of reflexivity, which remains a fundamental pledge for the formation of a critical perspective on the production of knowledge. MODERATOR: Goran Pavlić |
11.45 -13.15
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Petra Krpan, Lea Popinjač (Faculty of Textile Technology, Zagreb, HR) Slowing Down: Labour and Sustainable Textile Practices in Teaching and Creating Textile Art By examining traditional and contemporary approaches to textile production, this research illustrates how slower, hand-crafted processes—such as weaving, embroidery, natural dyeing, and mending—offer viable solutions by promoting resource conservation, reducing waste, and safeguarding cultural heritage (Fletcher & Tham, 2019). Maja Bekan (visual artist, NL) P for Performance: We could be friends? Friendship as a methodology and tool for public pedagogies My research and work explore the notion of assembly, initiating situations where I use performance as a tool for investigating collective intimacy, and work with performance as a stage of knowledge production. Assembly is used in my practice both as a technique and as a theoretical practice. The idea of knowledge production in performance understands “the stage” as both a physical and metaphysical aspect in the potential for the appearance of new knowledge, and “the stage” as a temporal aspect among other stages, where this potentiality also exists in differing ways. Filip Jovanovski (Faculty of Things that Can’t Be Learned (FR~U); AKTO festival, MK) Laboratory for Performative Space Practices “City As a Stage” is an interdisciplinary platform focusing on research, understanding and creation of contemporary public (performance) space through an experimental, process-based and collaborative approach. The laboratory as an informal educational platform, is spatially located at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, as a partner of the project. This paper aims to focus on presenting an ongoing process of creating a new forms of education as a part of public educational institution. Is it possible to create a platform as a part of the already existing public educational institution in partnership with independent artistic, cultural organizations and public institutions? Do we need new forms of educational laboratories („controlled conditions”), as a opportunity for young people to participate in production processes of art and culture that will oppose to the current dominant neoliberal, market conditions? MODERATOR: Jelena Marković |
13:30-15:30
F22, Frankopanska 22
| Jo Parkes (The Place / London Contemporary Dance School, UK) A Practice for Living Together (workshop) We propose a workshop format for the conference, using asynchronous contributions from the learning community to speak with a multiplicity of voices. Case studies of the situated research of members of the learning community (shared in videos, scores, texts and images) will underpin embodied explorations of key questions in the course, facilitated live by course leader Jo Parkes. The curatorial themes for 2025 – Care, Crossings and Resistance – will focus the exploration of the disruptive/constructive potential of the body working for change. Who expresses resistance? Can activism be soft and pleasurable? Whose body is at risk at what moment? How is state power choreographed where you live? How does (your) community take care of its members? The event is free but it is necessary to book your place by 31st of January at konferencija.adu@gmail.com. No previous dance experience necessary. CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS |
Goran Pavlić
Una Bauer
Romana Brajša
Agata Juniku
Jelena Marković
Academy of Dramatic Art
(Akademija dramske umjetnosti),
Zagreb
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research
(Project: Normality and Discomfort: Folkloristic and Interdisciplinary Approaches (NORMANEL),
NextGeneration EU)
(Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku
(Projekt: Normalnost i nelagoda: folkloristički i
interdisciplinarni pristupi (NORMANEL),
NextGeneration EU), Zagreb
Centre for Drama Art
(Centar za dramsku umjetnost)
Kurziv – Platform for Matters of Culture,
Media and Society
(Kurziv – Platforma za pitanja kulture,
medija i društva)
NextGenerationEU
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia
(Ministarstvo kulture i medija Republike Hrvatske)
Zagreb City Office for Culture and Civil Society
(Gradski ured za kulturu i civilno društvo Grada Zagreba)
F22 – ADU scena
Zaklada Kultura Nova
Punctum
KunstTeatar