Open Call: Virtual Workspaces by Edit Kaldor

9, 11, 14 DECEMBER 2020 || Application deadline: 26.11.2020

True to its mission to forge links with important institutions beyond Greece’s geographical borders, to support the professionalization of younger artists and to offer opportunities of connections within the international artistic community, Onassis Stegi is co-organizing the project Virtual Workspaces.

Artists from diverse artistic backgrounds, maintaining a transdisciplinary approach to their practice, offer the opportunity of a creative working space, involving a group of professionals from various backgrounds. From June, Workshops with artists have already been held since June Workshops with artists Rabih Mroue, Medea Electronique, Toshiki Okada, Wojtek Ziemilski have already been held since June. In December, a new series of Virtual Workspaces is performed by the well-known to the public of the Onassis Stegi and one of the most unconventional voices of the modern world theater scene, Edit Kaldor.

Embracing the digital shift that we are experiencing, this series of online workspaces is to be seen as an area that aims to bolster cultural fermentation, to encourage creativity and to build constructive exchanges in relation to specific goals and problematics. It will strive to maintain interactive processes within this safe-space of a temporary, but so valuable virtual framework of a selected group of peers.

Each Virtual Workspaces workshop is designed to foster the circulation of ideas between professionals, very often also involving non-professionals, with the hope to provoke sustained engagement within each group, and nurture the potentiality of new collaborations beyond the frame of the digital environment.

The Virtual Workshop by Edit Kaldor “Ghost In The Machine” is held through the Zoom platform in 3 meetings from 9 to 14 December with free participation, in English. We have seen Kaldor's work at Onassis Stegi, in the context of the Fast Forward Festival 3 (2016) where she presented the Web of Trust performance in a pan-European co-production of the Onassis Stegi and in the context of Transitions Central Europe (2015) where she held the workshop "Inventory of Powerlessness", situated in the borderlands between theatre-documentary and activism, it has set out to make a difference.

The artist mentions for the Virtual Workshop of December:"McLuhan’s observations about technology becoming an extension of ourselves spring to mind when looking at the way we relate to our mobile devices today. These devices, our phones and laptops, have become constant companions and to a great extent also part of our identities. According to a recent study, European adults spend on average about 3 hours on their mobile phones, and pick up the device 58 times a day. Since the beginning of the pandemic this has even increased, and quite substantially. As with other aspects of our lives, the pandemic has magnified what was already there: in this case the fact that we spend a large part of our waking hours on screens. For some of this time we are in communication with others, but for much of it we’re just alone with the device, without the involvement of another human “at the other end of the line.” As our entanglement with our mobile devices continues to increase, it feels like there is never a moment to stop and observe, reflect and evaluate the impact of this intensive and consuming relationship. What is it actually producing? What emotions are involved? How is it changing us? How are our thinking, our skills and habits influenced by the formats, processes, and algorithms that we are constantly encountering while engaging with the device? What is the nature of this intimacy? How strong is the attachment? And where do we want to take it from here?

During this edition of the Virtual Workspace, we will explore the blurry territory between us humans and the machines we are so closely entwined with in our daily lives. We will delve into, mess around with and bend the intimate relationship we have with our mobile devices. We’ll work practically, experimenting with the performative potential in engaging with these machines, and through them with ourselves. In playful and serious ways we’ll warp their existing features and use basic schemes to elicit new ones. We’ll try to develop artificial dialogues together using a toolkit and unearth internal thought processes. During the workshop, participants will develop small, spontaneous performative responses based on shared procedures, but rooted in their own urges, desires and fears towards the encounter with their mobile device. It is a laboratory mode of working where also the seemingly vague, far-out or “stupid” ideas can be tried out, where inexplicable impulses and obsessions can be pursued, materials swapped or combined, and various forms of collaborations tried out. During the work, a playful and shameless approach is encouraged, which allows for welcoming risk and pushing materials through failure into unexpected territories."

Organizers: STUDIO teatrgaleria and Onassis STEGI (Athens)

Coordinators:

for Onassis Stegi: Christina Liata

for STUDIO teatrgaleria: Anna Lewanowicz (Initiator and Head of the Project)

Edit Kaldor - Theater-maker and writer

Edit Kaldor is a theater-maker and writer, recognized internationally as a unique voice in the contemporary theater landscape. She works mostly with nonprofessional performers over extended periods of time and across various projects, merging documentary and fictional materials, and addressing seemingly unspeakable experiences, such as statelessness, abuse, or the dying process. She lives in Amsterdam and works internationally. Her performances, which stretch considerably the boundaries of theatrical conventions, have been presented in over 30 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and North Africa. She often integrates in her work digital media and interfaces, focusing on the metaphorical and theatrical possibilities in the daily use of technology. She is at this moment developing a new piece where she works with the augmentation of reality through the use of the mobile phone and covert performance elements in public space.

Edit Kaldor was born in Budapest, and immigrated as a child to the United States, where she lived for ten years before moving back to Europe. She studied English Literature and Drama at Columbia University in New York and University College London, and performance practice at DasArts in Amsterdam. In the past years, she has taught and lectured at (performing) art academies and universities across Europe and has led workshops in contexts like the International Forum at the Berliner Festspiele and the Shanghai Biennale. Since 2017, she is artistic research fellow at the Norwegian Theater Academy where she has been developing the long-term artistic research project “The Many and the Form” on new aesthetic and social practices for contemporary performance. She is currently also co-editing the book “Theatres of Powerlessness” together with Joe Kelleher from Roehampton University, which will be published by Bloomsbury/Methuen in 2022.

Information

Application deadline: 26.11.2020

Dates: 9, 11, 14 December 2020

Time: 15:00-17:00 (Eastern European Time)

Duration: 2 hours each session

Place: Zoom platform

Notification of participants: by Thursday 3rd December 2020

Applications from artists with different activity profiles (playwrights, theater directors, visual artists, actors, dramaturges, etc.) and students are welcome.

Anybody who has a laptop and a mobile telephone, with preference for arts practitioners –important to be willing to play around, experiment, go into the unknown– can apply.

Selected participants need to have a laptop (or desktop) and a mobile phone during the sessions – if possible with Zoom installed on both (if not possible then only on laptop/desktop).

They need to be willing to have the camera on in Zoom during the workspace sessions.

A group of 12 participants will be selected to take active part in the workspace.

Additionally, a group of participants will be selected to observe the workspace.

There is no charge for taking part in the meetings.

The sessions will be held in English.

The meetings will be recorded via the Zoom platform.

In collaboration with: STUDIO teatrgaleria

https://www.onassis.org/open-calls/open-call-virtual-workspaces-edit-kaldor