New foreign residents from Catalonia!

For the second year, the Arts Printing House continues its cooperation with the circus center in Barcelona - La Central del Circ, as a result of which the exchange of residencies is taking place for the second year. In October, the team of Konstantin Kosovec, Elena Kosovec and Isabelle Kuzyte will go to this circus center for residence, who will develop a joint work – "No Strings Attached" during their residency in Barcelona. Currently, the Arts Printing House is home to artists from Catalonia - Andrea Rodríguez de Liébana and Sergio González, who are developing their work - Masha - in Vilnius. The presentation of the results of the residency will take place on August 30 at 5 p.m., in the Black Hall of the Arts Printing House, and before that we talk to residents of the Arts Printing House program "Footprints in Motion" from Catalonia. 

What do you expect from this residency?

In this residency we hope we are going to be able to investigate about the uneveness percentages starting from 0% to10%. Of course we are going to present our current material and this will be another opportunity to gather more information about the perception of the people.

Tell us more about the project, what is the idea behind it?

Masha is a neutered cat, she lives in a 80m2 flat in Barcelona. Her daily activities consist of sleeping, eating food and pooping. Despite her confinement, she is privileged, European and can go to the vet. New spaces are difficult for her, her animal instinct prevents her and makes her alert, almost bordering on paranoia. She is not able to identify other cats as her own kind. Masha inspires us, her condition speaks of our own.

We have created two avatars, decided that they are devoid of emotions, put them on a smooth, shiny, slippery surface and confine them to 8 metres long by 1 metre wide. We force them to evolve on a journey from "synthetic" to empathetic and caring humanity. In this 8 metre by 1 metre space, we applied body oil to the entire surface of the linoleum floor. We turn something as simple as taking a step into something difficult, tedious but at the same time pleasurable. It is impossible to generate physical feats, the movements have to be simple and functional.

We are a woman and a man on stage, we identify that it is a place of power, that's why we want to use it not to support macho and patriarchal languages. As circus artists, performing the hand-held discipline, usually hierarchised by men, we treat it from the perspective of fluid movement and role reversal. We use movements organised in a way that does not create situations of power between bodies. All actions are conceived from the point of view of collaboration, there will not be a dominant and a dominated figure. 

We designed a singular structure to carry the body oil over the linoleum with a drip system, the drops travel along a braided fishing line until they fall on the linoleum. In this way we created an immersive visual-sound-aromatic installation. Our bodies initially emit from alignment. This alienation as a main concept is divided into sub-concepts such as: instability, abusive masculinity, female role, assisted sexuality, sadism, traditional medicine, emotional cures, pleasure and meritocracy. 

Thanks to premeditated strategies, these bodies modify their morphology through the repetition of simple actions (creating a catalogue of actions), the repetition provokes a physical work from the isometric, aerobic and proprioceptive aspects. With this contemporary circus-action-art piece, we pose situations that make us reflect on the evolutionary nature of our species, the denaturalisation and dehumanisation we suffer.

What are your future plans?

We are doing this piece to develope more creative tools, wich we consider very important to social changing. Our porpose it to engage the audience in this kind of contexts where they can watch a performance and create at the same time. We both work with teenagers using creative tools, we hope we are going to bring this piece to them and involve them in analysis sessions about how an idea becomes a critical artistic manifestation.

What did you hear or already know about Vilnius? 

We know that oher companies from Catalonia went to Arts Printing House to work in their pieces. We know few about Vilnius and we hope to know more about the city and specially about its cultural fabric.