14.12 @ 12:00 - 16:00
VOJIN PERIĆ (HR)
Crystal Clear, under My Fingers
The last encounter of light with my eyes happened one August day, my eleventh year of inhabiting this planet, and it was the epicenter of a wanton prank, harmless and unnecessary, like countless such in every childhood. The sun was large and yellow, the sky deep and blue, and our play unruly, endless and a rolling ball. He passes to me, I pass back, run, pass, watch your back and...
Pain, long and powerful, like a slide-chute one has sunk through and falls into an unrepeatable black void, and then silence framed by waiting for a first move, the chorus of the day, the essential child's laughter. I lay on the grass with no sense of self and thought of the grass under me, soft and green as always before. I am bombarded with alarmed questions, raised by friends' hands, and I can't seem to lose that blackest hole, can't seem to free myself of it and throw it off like a sticky insect shading light from me with its all-encompassing wings. My whole being becomes a spasm, squeezing the hand of my younger brother and rolling back home, into at least a kind of safety and calm.
All that happened later in me stayed an intangible knot, a mess of different intertangled events, contents and signs. The hospital, sounds of morning, the sun only being warm, rain murmuring but not having drops. I adjusted to my new world, adjusted and waited how my my parents would decide, how they wouldframe and give meaning to my future Me.
And they walked the path of prejudice, crying and confused, often stopped by neighbors and family members, questioned and pitied, directed to quacks, herbalists and other miracle-makers, waiting for something to happen on its own, for the ‘medicine’ to work and the darkness to pass. There was no Internet, there were no powerful media of the “global village”, no lasers or other medical miracles, nothing but the daily life I grew accustomed to, leaning on the radio and anticipating my purposeless day.
Biography
I was born on December 2, 1959, in Sarajevo, where I was educated in the elementary school of the Blind Children Institute. From 1976 to 1980, not having a great choice in the matter, I continued my education in a specialised institution in Zagreb, and enrolled in the telephone operator course at the Vinko Bek Centre. After graduating I took a job in the district economic court on the switchboard, and at more or less the same time started working actively in the Novi Život (New Life) dramatic studio for the blind and visually impaired. In 1980 I enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb to study history and comparative literature. In 1981 I (successfully, so it is said) played my first dramatic role, of Golub in Branko Čopić’s Vuk Bubalo. In 1984 I tried to enrol in the Academy of Dramatic Arts. I found out that according to the academy’s statutes the blind could not be enrolled, and so decided to go on acting in spite of the obstacles to my being trained. I have taken part in the management of the drama course for the blind and visually impaired since 1984, and have directed this institution since 1998. In the context of the Croatian Federation of the Blind I am a member of the executive committee of the Association of the Blind of Zagreb, and a representative in the assembly of the Croatian Federation of the Blind, as well as president of this federation. Since 1983 I have been working on the employment of the blind for the municipal authority of Zagreb. Recently I became a member of the parliamentary committee for disabled persons’ issues. In 1999 my long-cherished idea came true, and we organised the first international festival of theatres of the blind and visually impaired – BIT – Blind in Theatre. In 2003 I won a prize for the best male role in SKAZ. I was accepted as a member of the Croatian Association of Dramatic Artists, and thus won the status of actor. On June 24, 2004, marking Statehood Day, the President of the Republic, Stjepan Mesić, at the recommendation of the Ministry of Culture, decorated me with the Order of the Croatian Daystar with the Figure of Marko Marulić, for outstanding services to culture. In almost twenty five years of work in the theatre, I have tried my hand at various theatrical disciplines, have acted, composed recitals (of Croatian religious or devotional poetry), written plays and poems, assisted in directing and so on. This has been almost twenty five years of art, as well as a demonstration of what the blind are capable of, and an endorsement of my own capacities.
JEREMY ALLIGER (USA)
Dance & Disability, An Impact Beyond the Stage
Many people initially react to the idea of a disabled dancer as 'less than', as limiting the movement possibilities. I always use the following example as a way to explain, in a way that might resonate more easily with the general public, how wrong that way of thinking can be… imagine a painter suddenly discovering a new color on their palette, one that didn’t exist before. Imagine the huge increase in color variety, shade, hue and creative potential that would represent. That is also the gift of dancers with disabilities… a whole new universe of movement possibilities, a whole new and added variety of tools for the choreographer. Thus, an increase of movement possibilities, not less!
Biography
Alliger Arts is a producing entity created by Executive Producer Jeremy Alliger dedicated to presenting and promoting artistic endeavors that push boundaries and challenge perceptions,
Projects include the creation, touring and presentation of unique artistic events and producing landmark festivals, (including Aerial, Hip Hop, Jazz Tap and Wheelchair). Alliger has received the prestigious Massachusettes Commonwealth Award, the Disability Rights Advocates Eagle Award, and Emerson College’s Alumni Achievement Award. He was a featured speaker at the Kennedy Center’s National Forum on Careers in the Arts for people with Disabilities. Inside Arts Magazine published his essay, “A lasting Impact beyond the Stage“. He has served as a panelist and artistic advisor for a long list of organizations and prestigious Foundations.
Lois Keidan (UK)
Live Art Development Agency
In UK there are both cultural and legal imperatives driving issues of disability – imperatives for disabled people to both make art and experience art – and these imperatives have come about primarily through the Disability Arts Movement and the Disability Discrimination Act, both of which have had significant consequences for arts practices and audiences in UK.
Until the late 20th century disabled people in the UK were viewed paternalistically, using a medical model which saw disability as a physical or mental condition, and disabled people as long-term patients. In the 1970s the grassroots Disability Rights Movement led to the development of the social model of disability which distinguished between impairment as a physical or mental condition, and disability as physical or attitudinal barriers to participation. Within this context the Disability Arts movement, which also began as a disability-led, activist organization, developed the term disability arts as a way of describing the work of artists whose work reflected their experiences as impaired people. The Disability Arts movement defined disability arts as simply the creative expression by disabled people of what it is to be a disabled person.
Much later, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995 (updated in 2005) was passed with the aim of ending the discrimination that many disabled people face, and giving disabled people rights in the areas of employment; education; access to goods, facilities and services; and buying or renting land or property. The Act requires public bodies to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people, and makes it unlawful for service providers to refuse to serve, or to provide service on worse terms to, a disabled person.
Biography
Lois Keidan is the co founder and Director of the Live Art Development Agency, London which offers a portfolio of Resources, Professional Development Schemes, and Projects and Initiatives for the support and development of Live Art practices, and discourses in London, the UK and internationally.
Jurij Krpan
The Unwhole Body
Instead of thematizing this abuse set up by the 'normal' majority as a paradigm for disabled, unwhole bodies, we will try to indicate how this paradigm collapses if we equip, extend, improve... the 'normal' body with technological prostheses. We will describe several artistic projects where artists equip their body with additional functionalities – usually electronic or mechanical add-ons – which add new functionalities to existing ones. They enable the artists to expand the potentials of their expression and to attain a clear expressive advantage over the normal body. We could say that from the standpoint of productivity and efficiency, the category of disability has thus been expanded to include what was previously understood to be a normal body, thus revealing bodily disability as an ideologically and historically obsolete paradigm. The method of supplement, that old post-structuralist trick, proves to be well in place in this discourse.
Biography
Jurij Krpan was born in Postojna in 1971, and now lives and works in Ljubljana.
During the time of his course in the Architecture School in Ljubljana, he exhibited his conceptual and research architecture studies in gallery productions. He has participated in solo shows and has had guest appearances at architecture festivals in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Italy and Portugal with Zavod 3a.
Jointly with ŠKUC, he once ran exhibition salon for small scale production pieces in his own appartment. In 1995 he graduated from the Architecture School, and at the initiative of the University Students’ Organisation he set up the Kapelica (Chapel) Gallery, which he still runs today. As curator and selector, he has taken part in numbers of festivals at home and abroad; his major international productions include the organisation and artistic direction of the Slovene Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, and the Cosinus Conceptual Gallery located in the building of the European Commission in Brussels. In 2008 he will take part in the Linz Ars Electronica, with a curatorial presentation of the artistic profile of Kapelica Gallery. Since 2004, as director of the art section in the Biennial Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean (Brussels) he has been concerned with raising the art level of this event. Within this organisation he edited a book called ORIGINAL – 100 Important BJCEM/BYAEM Artists about the artistic relevance of the biennial on its twentieth anniversary. Jurij Krpan has lectured about the artistic profile of Kapelica Gallery, primarily in Slovenia, but also abroad. In 2006 he was curator of the Contemporary Slovene Art Triennial in the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana.
While in his architectural exhibition projects he has been particularly interested in the semantics of art exploits in the production of construction, in his work as gallerist he measures the correlation of the way works of art are thought through and their tactical impingement on contemporary society. At the focus of Kapelica Gallery production, since its very beginning, has been the area of art expressed through technology. Some of the most important proponents of this trend in the world have made guest appearances here, such as Stelarc, Marcel.li, SRL, Peljhan and Stenslie. The gallery has been a trendsetter in the area of science through art (Symbiotica, De Menezes, Orlan, Tabar and Tratnik) and works that derive from the treatment of human corporeality (Kulik, Delimar, Athey, Franko B, Eclipse). In his gallery he takes up the cause of the deconstruction of the white cube principle and favours a combination of artistic expressions that privilege deliberation and thoughtfulness. For this reason he does not understand his gallery as a recreational and contemplative space for the weary masses, but as an exhibition-cum-experimental platform for the active production of and intellectual investment into the values and reality of contemporary society.
