Dates
| 08.05.2025 / 19:30 |
Information
IS JOY is a performance, an installation, an event that researches the potential of joy as a creative force of communicating and relating to and between material and bodily. The process aimed to create a joyful, playful, and sustainable relation to objects. In the time of the all-encompassing threat of environmental disaster, ongoing exploitation, and colonization of Earth’s resources we ask the question: what is the relation to materiality that would enable us to imagine a radical green transition. In searching for answers, we need to go beyond the conventional approach of corporate imagination of recycling: recycling objects, their agencies, guilt of the privileged. There seems to be more to human’s relation to materiality than a purely scientific approach that aims to prolong its solipsistic existence. We propose to imagine materiality as a transcendental potential, as a collective experience, as a contagious rhythmicality of a ritual that entangles human and non-human entities in a heterogeneous vibrating matter.
Through the process of building (a futuristic-looking) structure and searching for points of vibrations between performing bodies, objects, and audience, IS JOY aims to create a kind of contemporary ritual based on the language of devised and object theater as well as visual art and forms of installation. As performers explore different possibilities of relating to objects, puppets, audience, space, and sound the structure grows in matter and (dis)order. The entanglement of all the present entities detaches the space from gravity and deploys it into a vibrating sculpture of what seems as a timeless state of existence.
IS JOY combines moving bodies, trying to establish a common rhythm of being, objects that inhabit the visual and haptic component of the performance, and the sound which, like a wooden spoon mixes all the ingredients in a living organism and allows the audience to become an active part of of the universe that it proposes. IS JOY is not limited to a venue. The entangled relationships between performers and objects are set to travel and traverse theater as a fixed social and cultural form. IS JOY is not to be claimed, it is to be explored and experienced.
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Director: Aljoša Lovrić Krapež
Dramaturge and light designer: Pedro Gramegna Ardiles
Sound designer: David Ficek
Scenographer: Jasmine Molinari
Costume designer: Mara Ingea
Performers: Michaela Čajkovičová, Michal Salwiński, Ana Nežmah, Filip Mramor, Sai
Morikawa
Artistic consultant: Sodja Zupanc-Lotker
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The team comprises international artists who met while studying at The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Coming from all over the world (Japan, Chile, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia) they established a unique and collective sense of creating in a field of object and devised theatre. Their previous performance an essay on pleasure (2022) was selected to be a part of a program of Prague Quadrennial 2023.
Aljoša Lovrić Krapež
Graduated from the bachelor’s program Dramaturgy and Performing Arts at Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. In 2021, he started his studies at DAMU – MA Directing of Devised and Object Theater. Since the start of his studies has been active as a dramaturg and performer in several different performances such as Dreamy Walking (co-produced by Nová síť and Offcity 2022) and How to Just Do It (in collaboration with collective PYL; produced by Motus, z. s. 2023).
In his directing practices, he researches notions of engaging with materiality as a holistic and collective experience, where a sensing body becomes a fundamental medium of being; creating ephemeral communities, providing a place for encounters. Under construction (produced by Glej theatre 2021) was awarded the grand prix as well as award for the most inventive acting and award for authorial concept at Biennale of Puppetry Artists of Slovenia 2023, an essay on pleasure (produced by DAMU 2022) was selected to be a part of the program of Prague Quadrennial 2023, IS JOY (produced by DISK Theater 2023) was a part of Prague Biennale 2024. Aljoša’s research is based on the idea that performance art can be explored as a medium of presence – the presence of a collective that is yet to be named and that lies on the borders of haptic, somatic, non-verbal, dance, visual, object, and devise-based theater practices: theater as a celebration of existence.
Language: non-verbal
Duration: approximately 60 min
photo Michael Lozano