Knitting / Pletenje
Venue
Premiere
San Francisco Fringe Festival: Knitting
September 2009, 10th @ 7pm, 12th @ 4pm, 13th @ 7pm
Produced by Zavod Masa, Ljubljana, Slovenia
40 Minutes, $10
Buy tickets online by clicking here
Slovene Premiere
ExPonto Festival :: Knitting @ Exponto
Tuesday, September, 22nd @ 7pm
The Mladinsko Theatre
Flyers
Knitting-Pletenje Flyer
Knitting @ Fringe Program Proofs
About
The Self of you
” ” ”me
Who cares about 1-2-3
The Self of you
” ” ” me.
Louise Nevelson
Nine years ago in Modern Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I’ve presented a multimedia performance titled “Woman tasks: hemming, knitting, weaving, sewing”, produced by Zavoda Maska, Ljubljana. I used a contemporary theatre language where I was making a crossing and manipulation of texts, movies, images and poems from the 20th century, made by women artists.
In 2007 our family moved to San Francisco, where we were living for the last two years. In the beginning of our explorations of San Francisco in December 2007 I was enormously touched by one of the greatest exhibition that I’ve seen in my entire life “The sculpture of Louise Nevelson, constructing a legend”. I realized that I need to make a project about her life and her work and compare them to today’s contemporary woman artists in order to speak about the “passionate life” of women artists. What does it mean to be a woman artist and to be a mother?
What does it mean to float between real life, everyday stories and to be with your heart in the midst of a struggle to live as a woman artist. To be a mother, to be a wife, to be part of a family and to be at the same time devoted to art? How can you connect or differ two completely different aspects of life: on the one side, the demanding communication of everyday life stories and on the other side, the isolated world of art in which you find your true essence, your drive, your expression as an artist? How can we make it hapen, how can we knit all these worlds together with a smile on our faces?
I try to find the pieces of women artist’s stories and put them together in a mosaic, which makes a unique story of a contemporary woman artist. I’m making video interviews with American and Slovene artists, women artists-mothers from different fields of art.
The performance’s main theme is based on Luise Nevelson’s sentence “All my life is late.” Are we all late in our lives? The story is a story of numerous stories – stories of our lives, bits of everyday routine, bits of moments. As Luise Nevelson was building the sculptures from found objects I will try to build my story from “stories found” in lives of different woman artists, in the search for truth, illusions, fragments, and moments of a woman artist’s life.
In the focus of the performance is the actress Damjana Černe, a mother herself, who’s manipulating with different women’s stories and boxes/objects containing small pieces of artwork. She’s traveling through the emotions of three different chapters, which are based on the immense work of Louise and are also inspired by Dante Alighieri’s La divina comedia.
Black period
White period
Gold period
I’m trying to compose, to knit another chapter, to define another knot. The composition and the variations of women’s lives, the story of you, me, us, not with the intention to criticize, moralize or teach, but to open and explore the structure life is made of.
“A man simply couldn’t use the means of, say, finger-work to produce my small pieces. They are like needlework… Men don’t work this way, they become too affixed, too involved with the craft and technique. They wouldn’t putter, so to speak, if I do with these things. The dips and cracks and detail fascinate me, my whole life is work and my whole life is feminine.”
Cast & Crew
Concept, direction and visual concept
Barbara Kapelj Osredkar
Performer
Damjana Černe
Music
Bojana Šaljić
Sound, video, photography
Damjan Osredkar
Lighting design
Matjaž Brišar, Matjaž Černe
Design
luKa umeK
Production
Zavod Masa
Coproduction
Fringe Festival San Francisco (USA), Slovensko mladinsko gledališče, Festival Ex Ponto, Ljubljana (SLO)
Participating artists – voices
Anne Halprin, Amal Bisharat, Ana Stegnar, Ana Šalamun, Barbara Kapelj Osredkar, Barbara Stupica, Becky Jackson, Bojana Šaljić, Damjana Černe, Dragica Čadež, Elisabeth Fall, Erica Johnson Debeljak, Laura Albert, Maja Delak, Maja Šubic, Marjorie Sturm, Mateja Bučar, Neda R. Bric, Neža Maurer, Nina Meško, Irena Romih, Rene Rusjan, Rowene Ritchie, Sarah McNitt, Scatha G. Alison, Simona Semenič, Sinja Ožbolt, Treacy Corrigan
Photos
© Phots by Damjan Osredkar