We are going to make something about war, gender and liberty, it will be titled:
WHAT WOULD CHELSEA SAY TO ME
Irena Ristić & Đorđe Živadinović Grgur
[then in reversed order]
Premiere: 25th of august 2023. at 8 p.m.
Cultural Center Belgrade • Podroom gallery
A theater inquire dedicated to whistle-blowing and the concept of radical transparency. It is inspired by the testimony of Chelsie Manning, a former military analyst who [by her actions] has changed our perception of imperial wars and expanded the scope of the struggle for human rights [Readme.txt, 2022]
The polemics that Chelsea Manning continues to evoke these days, with her increasingly controversial actions in the public sphere, can be seen in the light of the concept of radical transparency that unites issues of personal and social transformations, grounded: [on the one hand] in a dissonance in which the violence of Western hegemony, protected by all forms of simulation, confronts human conscience, and [on the other hand] in the struggle for the actualisation of transgender identity, against the oppressive system of patriarchal pathology. These processes are complementary, and only when they are observed together, entangled, they do reveal the paths of direct action, which may be the only possible outcome at the moment.
This is the performative homage to Chelsea Manning, and the experiment based on a dynamic form in which the audience becomes an accomplice, in the pathway of change, and mobilisation for direct actions. Research and artistic activities are not of a closed type, but rather based on heuristic tasks: Local echoes of macro political movements are explored and performed in a public inquire of an immersive character.
Set-up, costumes and design: Škart collective
Video: Olga Košarić
Sound: Antonio Andrić
Models: Katarina Gavrilović,
Boško Zdravković and Vera Petronijević
Production:
Hop.La! in association with Cultural centre Belgrade
Support: Reconstruction Women Fund
Irena Ristic 