This year’s twenty-first festival is centred around connecting, embracing, diversifying, both domestic and international collectives, which are uniting in the fight for equity and equality.
Bodeča Neža is awarded for the most sexist statement of the year by the Red Dawns collective and the editorial board of Spol.si website together with the interested public. This dishonorable title can be given to anyone who publicly attacks, humiliates and insults others based on gender, sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Of the many nominated statements we received via our online form, the working group judged that 33 statements met the criteria for sexist speech. Which is the most spiky one?
We leave the decision to you.
Who will receive the dishonorable award is going to be decided together at the award-giving ceremony on 3 March 2020, Tuesday, which will happen this year in cooperation with City Of Women. In addition to the spiky tenderness for the sexist statement, WoW Awards will also be presented for feminist heroines.
Over the years, Billy Roisz and dieb13 alias Dieter Kovačič have directed and produced several experimental short films that deal with classic film genres, such as westerns, horror films or “road movies”. The films explore the internal mechanisms of established cinematic conventions and turn them into an immediate sensory experience. TWIXT uses rearranged recordings of these short films as a score for a live sound recording and merges abstract, and concrete recordings and sounds into a synesthetic experience.
Entrance fee: 5€
Concert series FriFormA\V co-financed by Ministry of Culture of Slovenia.
13 February 2020, Thursday 21.00 – Osmo/za, Ljubljana
The next FriFormA\V event will explore the possibilites of aciting on and interacting with the virtual-reality systems, using both the physicality of the performers and the musical sounds. Terrain Study is a work for solo performer and 3D virtual reality system. During the performance, the virtual space is manipulated by the movements and the sounds produced by the performer, leading to eventually questioning the division of subject and world. Game Over puts the clarinet player’s avatar in the complex 2D game-world, where the music and the game interact. Occasionally, the composer intervenes with the game play, thus reflecting the role of the individual’s expressive potential of rebellion against predefined rules.
Christof Ressi and Szilárd Benes pursue the idea of confrontation of extreme psychological states by the means of music and media art. The instrumental sound of the clarinet dynamically interacts with electronics, video and body movement and lets the audience enter a manifold artistic vision of a landscape of the human soul. Both musicians share a desire for crossing frontiers: Szilárd Benes is constantly seeking to extend the sonic possibilites of his instrument, being inspired by contemporary music, free jazz and also klezmer, while Christof Ressi loves to design live-electronic setups and computer programs which allow him spontaneous and direct manipulation of sound and video. Together they are searching for new means of expression which they believe to find in the confrontation of different media, keeping a personal definition of music as open-minded as possible. The pieces are mostly audio-visual concept improvisations focussing on various aspects and forms of musical interplay as well as interaction between different media like sound, image and movement.
Szilárd Benes (1990) was born in Keszthely, Hungary. He is a classically trained clarinet player, improvisor and expert of contemporary music. His performance of clarinet quartets by Krzysztof Penderecki in Graz 2012 was broadcast over the Austrian radio station Ö1. 2013 he made his debut as a soloist with his project „Colors of Music“. 2015 he developed two new projects: „FModulations“ (premiered in Budapest) and „Clarinetronix“ for bassclarinet, electronics and video (premiered in Graz). 2018 he performed the solo clarinet part in La Chute d’Icare by Brian Ferneyhough. Szilárd Benes is a member of Ensemble Schallfeld and has worked with many composers whose pieces he has premiered. His repertoire includes more than 400 contemporary works. He was invited to numerous important festivals and venues, such as Steirischer Herbst, IMD Darmstadt, Elevate Festival, SoW Milan, Wien Modern, Jeunesse Wien, Impuls Graz, Afekt Festival, Poznan Musical Spring, Klangspuren, Carnegie Hall etc. KUD Mreža invited Benes to play with Tilen Lebar and Gabriele Drab as part of the impro-concerts caravan Borderless Dissonance #2 (April, 2018) which has been traveling from Vienna via Graz to Ljubljana.
Christof Ressi (1989) is an Austrian composer, arranger, software developer and multimedia artists. As a composer, he works in various fields of music such as contemporary classical, jazz, dance/theater or experimental electronics. Besides writing instrumental music, he has a keen interest in interactive live-electronics and audio-visual art and is currently working on an extended series of pieces exploring the aesthetic potential of video game mechanics. He arranges music for all kinds of ensembles and instruments, including big band and orchestra. Together with clarinet player Szilárd Benes he regularly performs as a duo, playing both audio-visuals compositions and improvisations. His music has been performed all over the world, such as Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, China, UK, USA and South-Africa. He has won several prizes and his computer music work has been featured at several international conferences. 2017-2019 he has been part of the artistic research project GAPPP at the Institute for Electronic Music (IEM) in Graz. He colaborated with Slovenian video-artist, Valérie Wolfgang, on her interactive installation piece Hunting for America, presented as a part of group exhibition The Clash in the Alkatraz Gallery at Metelkova City.
30 October 2019, Wednesday 20.00 – Osmo/za, Ljubljana
Appart from the Elektrošokboogie trio 25 years ago, there have only been some rare occasions later, but almost never Tomaž Grom and Zlatko Kaučič never played in a duo. Rare occasion can be seen also in the trombone trio, here composed of three different experiences, taken from the worlds of composed, improvised or jazz music scenes. The trio of Matthias Muche, Matthias Müller and Jeb Bishop first appeared on stage in 2016 in Köln, when they recorded their live album Konzert Für Hannes, published one year later at NotTwo records.