April weather

Wow, April’s gone! It has been a rollercoaster month with not much to do, then everything to do, then nothing to do again, and it was the same with weather – we had rainy days and warm days and snow in the middle of that. The first big thing happening was the Day for change – Dan za spremembe, with the subtitle Dan za spoštovanje (Day for respect). All the NGOs in the city were invited to participate in promoting tolerance, understanding and respect by attracting people to workshops, food cooked by local Iranians and Somalians and a peaceful walk around the city centre with handmade signs. It may not have been much, but I’m sure it got at least a few people thinking.

During the month, I experienced the first Guestroom Maribor residence artist and the process that happens there. Martina Kartelo, a Croatian performance artist living in Iceland, developed a project about exploring poverty, which included visiting „poor“ areas of the city, doing dumpster diving, discussing the topic and at the end of her stay, creating a solo performance and a final public performance about „burying poverty“ with a funeral march carrying a coffin that was set on fire floating on Drava. I’m still not entirely sure what to think about the performances and how they made me feel, but they were definitely something I haven’t experienced before. With a residence this interesting, I’m curious to see what comes next.

Pekarna also organized the Kje so meje? project aimed towards bringing attention to the refugee and immigrant topic, with a discussion, workshop, and creating a booklet of immigrant stories from people that moved to Maribor. I had the opportunity to interview a Yemenian woman and while our conversation wasn’t as long and casual as I would have wished, it was an opportunity to directly hear a story from an actual person, not the media. More importantly, through the printed booklet, many others will also have a chance to read that story.

And, probably the most fun little project I took part in (not just because of what it was about), was the clown workshop that took place over one weekend in Vetrinjski dvor. I had the opportunity to photograph people learning how to create their own clown, then how they developed them and interacted with each other’s clowns. The red nose really is a magic thing that allows people to become someone completely different once they put it on.

Michal