Razpoke bližine: fuga / plamen / krč

Natalija Milovanović • Shekuza • rastrLAB • Sergej Harlamov • Vitja Balžalorsky • patches.av

The project explores the relationships between the individual and the world, experience and its expression, and intimacy and alienation through poetry, voice, sound, and live-generated audiovisual imagery. Together, the two new media works establish a dialogue between the social and emotional experience of exhaustion and alienation, on the one hand, and the processual and material dimensions of language, on the other. The audience enters a multisensory environment in which poetry emerges not merely as text, but also as voice, signal, image, space, and event.

The first performance, The Train Did Not Rattle, but Hissed Silently, Racing into the Future, takes its starting point from the diptych Scales in Natalija Milovanović’s award-winning poetry collection Foreign Softness, while developing into a text of its own. Through the motif of a freight train, interwoven with voice, modular synthesis, and interactive visuals, it opens up an affective and generational experience of precarious labour, exhaustion, uncertainty, and fragility. Fragments exploring the tension between what is expected, desired, and actual come together to form an audiovisual space of intimacy and alienation.

Created by:

• Natalija Milovanović — voice

• Miha Šajina — sound

• Urša Čuk – rastrLAB — visuals/video

Natalija Milovanović (1995) is a poet and translator who writes in Slovenian and Serbian. She is the author of the poetry collections Self-Evident (Samoumevno) and Foreign Softness (Tuja mehkoba), published by the Centre for Slovenian Literature. Her work has received several awards and nominations, including the Veronika Award for Foreign Softness. Her poetry has appeared in leading literary journals and has been featured on the international poetry platform Versopolis.

Miha Šajina (1979), also known as Shekuza, is a producer, composer, DJ, and keyboardist. He has performed with Intimn Frizurn, Moveknowledgement, Warhorse, and Ewok, and has been a member of the Zvviks collective since 2002, through which he also composes music for the animated films featuring Koyaa. His artistic practice centres on the exploration of electronic sound, modular synthesis, and the connections between sound and moving images. Several audiovisual works he has co-created have received awards. He collaborates with En-Knap Group.

Urša Čuk – rastrLAB (1986) is an audiovisual and intermedia artist. She creates audiovisual performances, interactive installations, and visualisations that respond to sound in real time. She collaborates with musicians as well as theatre and dance practitioners, presenting her work at festivals and international events. She is a member of the Beam Team collective.

The second performance, Hypomnemata, is based on Sergej Harlamov’s poetry collection of the same name and previously unpublished material. It foregrounds the materiality of language, the conditions of artistic creation beyond literature, and the depletion of creative energy: the moment when expression becomes foreign to its own author, and language becomes both a means of communication and a limit to it. Voice, sound, and image are assembled and dismantled in real time, forming a multilayered flow between the precision of technological structures and the unpredictability of noise.

Created by:

• Sergej Harlamov — voice

• Vitja Balžalorsky — sound

• Ana Rome – patches.av — visuals/video

Sergej Harlamov (1989) is a poet, sociologist, and scholar of comparative literature. He is the author of the poetry collections Eaters (Jedci), A Melee of Mythologies (Mnogoboj mitologij), and Hypomnemata, all of which have been nominated for major Slovenian literary awards. He has received the University Prešeren Award for his work. His practice brings together poetry, theory, and social analysis, with a particular interest in the materiality of language, creative processes, and alienation as a fundamental condition of existence in the world.

Vitja Balžalorsky (1986) is a guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music producer active in improvised music, electronic music, and sonic experimentation. He collaborates with Slovenian and international music projects and is a member of Laibach. He is also the artistic director of Ropotarnica, a concert series dedicated to contemporary solo and experimental music practices.

Ana Rome – patches.av (1984) is an audiovisual artist and researcher based between Ljubljana and Berlin. She creates visuals using analogue video synthesizers, with images responding to sound and music in real time. She is a guest artist at events and workshops at Berlin’s SchneidersLaden, a member of the Clockwork Voltage collective, and a regular performer at music events where she brings together audio and video modular synthesis.

Production: KUD Channel Zero (represented by Polona Torkar and Danilo Milovanović). Co-production: Maribor Puppet Theatre. The project is co-funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture.