A month has passed.

My first (and probably last) EVS experience has started even before I arrived in Maribor – skype calls, packing, paperwork, looking at maps, nervousness. I imagine that at the end of all this I will be laughing at how I felt at the beginning, even though it’s not the first time I’ve been away from home for a long time on my own. It’s always more and more enjoyable – some things are different from last time, some are not. You recall an old feeling at a new place or with a new person and things somehow feel familiar. It’s a feeling I get here almost constantly, since I see more and more similarities between Slovenia and Slovakia – not just the countries‘ names and their language, but the political/social issues, the mentality, the vibe, the culture. I often laugh at how learning slovenščina for me is a bit like trying to read with your head tilted to the side – it’s just beyond understandable and somehow difficult. I feel this way about everything here and I’m slowly getting used to it.

So what’s it like to be here, live here and work here, now that I’ve gotten somewhat used to it?

My flat is a huge apartment from the secession era with white walls and doors, creaking wooden floors and windows with blinds overlooking the street and the Drava river. It has five other people, most of them pleasant students of medicine used to EVS volunteers living there, and an old untuned piano. I was also told that there might be a cat coming soon. (I adore cats.)

Infopeka, Pekarna Magdalenske mreže is a smaller place than I thought, but what it lacks in office space it makes up for with connections, passionate people and work. This month was mostly quiet, since the organization was applying for grants, but the pace should pick up over the next few months. Even without that, there is always something to do – meetings with different groups, checking out other organizations in the city, working on things for Infopeka or for myself as a volunteer, attending events and workshops. There were two grand ones this month, both of which I attended as a photographer – a forum theatre workshop beaming with vibes from all participants who surprised themselves and were thrilled by their performances, and a project happening around Europe called Corners, where four artists collect games in different cities and create new ones, exploring traditions and culture behind them. As I’m writing this, Corners is still in progress in Maribor and I’m excited to see what games will be created.

Maribor is a city like any other in Europe, with pretty parts and ugly parts, small corners worth visiting, tens of coffee shops for everyone’s taste and style, more opportunities than I can count and a seemingly endless stream of people, some of which I already meet on the street sometimes. Everything is unfamiliar and wet and cold now, but I only expect it to get better with spring and summer. I will get to know the city and, in a way, make it mine.

A month has passed. Nine months are left and I await them at the edge of my seat.
Michal

Forum Theatre workshop

So this weekend (20. in 21. 2. 2016) I attended an intensive Forum Theatre workshop. It lasted two days, 6 hours a day. We were pretty punctual, for a workshop with more than 10 attendants and 3 trainers – the breaks did not last for more than established, we started at the announced time and finished on schedule. I think this is quite important, as it gave the whole experience a certain structure and discipline. But without the irritating authority. Forum theatre is about politics and empowerment, and authority is never really empowering.

One of the things I wanted to tackle while on this EVS was my stage fright. Theater is one the things I love most, and no matter what role you play in this art form, be it director, actor, or producer you will, at one point or another, have to face some public speaking or public exposure. Some time on the stage. And so far in Maribor, I feel like I’m making progress with that.

The workshop took place at Vetrinjski Dvor, an interesting and cozy space for all sorts of artistic events. The days were sunny so we ended up using the patio to work on our final performance.

The 3 trainers complemented each other very well. Each of them brought their character into their work.

The exercises were gradually intense – first, getting to know each other, to become comfortable with each other, mostly using our bodies and emotions rather than our words. We’ve then done some exercises meant to show us, in practice, how first impressions can deceive (a particularly telling one was when we had to form two groups, without communicating in any way, just according to who we thought would prefer drinking beer over drinking wine, like warm climate rather than a cold one, is introverted rather than extroverted etc.).

Little by little, we got more accustomed with performing in front of an audience, with expressing emotion, with not judging ourselves as much when exposing ourselves, with getting into the skin of a character.

The final part was building a small forum theatre performance based on a specific oppressive situation that we chose. We split into two groups, each with a joker (a sort of a facilitator, with specific attributions such as presenting the situation, warming the public up, making it familiar with participatory theatre and facilitating the spect-actors’ contribution at the end). We had two performances, one per each group. One spoke about class differences and poverty, the other one about heteronormativity, the ‘normal family’ and other oppressive, conservative expectations and pressures one’s family inflicts upon its members.

We’ll continue to work on the performance, so…maybe more on it later!

by Ioana Sileanu

Actors of Urban Change - EVS

Akterki urbanih sprememb na misiji vzpostavljanja spletne platforme, na kateri se bo predstavilo in sodelovalo skoraj dvajset razlicnih projektov širom Evrope. Gre za različne kulturne projekte, ki so se prijavili na dvoletni program (2013-2015 in 2015-2017) Actors of Urban Change v sodelovanju z MitOstom in Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Anja Koleša iz Berlina

EVS is coming to end.

2^nd January, end of my EVS project, is unstoppably coming. Some melancholic feeling of ending I had already two months ago during opening of exhibiton TU-BITI. This exhibition was about reflection of my stay in Slovenia. Therefore, it was done from perspective of action that is already finished and now is just reflected - thirty photographs that captured my stay in Maribor and travelling across whole country. Fortunately, this recapitulation was a little bit too early. My EVS was prolonged for one more month so there were still another two months. So, quite a lot of time. And moreover, these last last two months were so busy (in good sense) that I didn't have any time for melancholic feelings anymore.

Full of optimism and enthusiasm, we set in our Pizda group end of November as date of publishing new Pizda, number 4. Of course, after while it was totally obvious that meet this deadline will be impossible for us. Result: just one week for drawing illustrations. Moreover, creativity crisis came in this worst time. How to draw refugee crisis and don't be similar to all those previous caricatures that had been already drawn by someone else? How to draw satirical joke about postmodern nihilism if I am postmodern nihilist a little bit too? Fortunately, some muse finally came. Therefore, some my pictures in new Pizda! 4 you can find. (A little bit of promotion: We printed 200 copies of them so there are still some in Infopeka. I recommend to pick one. It's inspirational reading).

As New Year is coming, my next big task for this time was making calendar for upcoming year. But this shouldn't be any ordinary calendar. This calendar is for ZIZ, theatre group that is fascinated by breasts. Therefore, demanding mission was waiting foor me. 10 people and 12 different poses for each month. That means, 120 photographs of breasts. Really strange EVS experience :-)

Everything is finished now. Celebration of new Pizda successfully happened. Photos for ZIZ calendar are taken and calendar itself is printed in printing office right now. Therefore, now I can just enjoy a few last days. Meeting with friends, visiting favourite places like Piramida, eating delicious čevapčiči in Baščaršija, ...

by Marek Šurkala

TU-BITI / BEING THERE razstava / exhibition

Here we are, almost at the end of our EVS experience. We were able during all that time to discover Slovenia as much as possible, enough to be able to 'give it back' a little bit. In that way, we decided to organize our own exhibition and we named it 'Dasein' (Being there), to refers to Heidegger's philosophy. Here is what we wrote about it to explain our approach:

“How much time do we need to get to know a foreign country? How much time a foreigner needs to get over the „touristic perspective“? For how long he or she is determined to experience only shallow exoticism of a visited country?
Actually, what does mean this „get to know“? Fresh foreign eye maybe could be an advantage. A foreigner is not nostalgic. There is not any relationship to visit countries and cities. Maybe that is him who can see clearly the reality.

French Cécile Bondon and Czech Marek Šurkala are spending 10 months in Slovenia. During this period, they have tried to understand their host country. Different mentalities, traditions, habbits, historical and political background, kind of humour, relation with the nature, language, food, … They had to cope with all of these aspects.
Now, they try to articulate gained experience. Their way of artistic expression is totally different. She draws illustrations. Her work is done with traditional skills, such as mechanical pencil or gouache (a specific kind of paint similar to watercolor but modified to make it opaque). She is mostly an illustrator for books. This time, it is more like a soft parody of educational books or user's manuals.
He takes photographs. He tries with his camera to capture the most truthful image of reality as is possible. Simple composition, absence of strong visual style, wide-angle lens, using old analog technology that prevents to do any manipulations.”

To gain the attention of the potential visitors, we tried to do a strong communication (strong of color contrasts actually!). We mixed two of our images to put it on the announcement poster. The result looks silly, on purpose:

We mixed the three flags (Slovenia, Czech, France), and we painted it on the front wall of the gallery K18, where we had the exhibition, in Koroška cesta:

Then we organized our opening and we were very glad to see a lot of people interested by our work ! For me and Marek, it is our first official exhibition. It is pretty hard to show its own work, I still have some problems with that, but as we are two, it is much easier.

 

For my part, I did something different from my usual illustration work. This time, I did a really realistic work to not be too far from the photographic work of Marek, and also because I didn't want to distort anything from what I saw. So, just as it is, without judgement or approval. My work is divided in two parts: a colored part, which is illustrations of objects, one building, or representative element of one event in Slovenia. And another part is in black and white, only graphite on sketching paper, where I am playing with Slovene words. It is actually portmanteau words, several words in one. Funny or poetic details I saw in some words (for example otrok can be otok. Which means child, and island, so totally different with only one letter less). So I was really looking forward to see the reaction of Slovene people. Some of them liked it very much, some other didn't react, some tried to kill me. No, ahah, joking :P but it was interesting to see :) 

I think that I am going to do again this exhibition in France when I will be back, to make french people discover a little part of Slovenia through my own experience. Nothing is planned yet, so we'll see :)

It is still visible till the 23^rd of November, you can check everything here : https://www.facebook.com/events/527924414039409/ 

Thank you for reading!

Cécile