Thomas Steyaert / Ponyhill
Moving Island
Moving Island is a collective of 5 artists from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Thomas Steyaert (dancer and choreographer), Elma Selman (psychologist and dancer), Irma Saje (costume / set designer), Vedad Orahovac (architect / set designer) and Asja Krsmanović (dramaturgist). The collective is formed in 2016 with the aim to do multimedia projects in local communities and try to raise awareness on the importance of social practices in art and possibilities to make positive changes in communities through artistic practice.
The accent of our work lays on process, exchanging knowledge and experiences with groups whose members have fewer opportunities in society.
Through our work we are tackling the idea of identity by encouraging young people to reflect on what identity is, how flexible, inclusive or exclusive it can be. Putting an accent on multitude of identities we are proposing other identities, less familiar or explored to the youth who is most often seen through one identity - orphans, delinquents, etc. and in that way research how they can express those new or less known identities through artistic means. Identities such as orphans, delinquents are given by society and as such contain a lot of prejudice which constrain present and future presence and activity in a society.
Legacy and history of Bosnia and Herzegovina and more precisely those often neglected institutions needs young people who can actively engage in the society and make a contribution to it.
As a collective we are interested in working within different communities and cities and to offer young people to exit their common surrounding by working in other parts of their city or other cities, being mobile on a micro level.
Whispering dreams
Whispering dreams was a series of physical theatre workshops with juvenile delinquents from the Institute for Education of Male Children and Youth (Zavod za vaspitanje muske deject i omladine) in Sarajevo. The project aimed to give the participants tools to develop their imagination and to practice thrust between participants through physical expression.
The result of the workshop was presented to an audience at the institute.
After witnessing the work, the direction of the Institute invited us to become a part of their structure, focusing on rehabilitation. For "Moving Island", this meant the continuation of our artistic work at the Institute through familiarizing the children and the youth with different artistic practices, environments, ideas, views...
Zenica 2.0
Zenica 2.0 was a social artistic project that started in June 2016 en ended in June 2017, with fourteen children of the “dom porodica” center (center for children without parental care) in Zenica, BIH. Through their imagination we explored the potential architectual and infrastructural changes of Zenica, to create a better city. How different could the city look like? What would you like to destroy or (re)build in the city? How are the playgrounds and parks? How to deal with pollution? Where are the people mostley gathering and why there? If you could build one building/space that could attract people, what would it be and where would you place it? Could we invite street artists?
After few introductory days of lectures and exchange of ideas regarding architecture and city design, imagination and dreams, we started walking and driving through Zenica. Armed with hand-held small video cameras, the kids documented their trips. At the same time, they talked about the changes they would liked to see, or about the aesthetics of certain spaces or buildings. In addition to the video-walks, we asked the children to make a series of photographs of what they perceived as ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ places/spaces in Zenica. Back home, during the observation of the images, we opened dialogue about the aesthetics and the function of spaces in cities. Why is something beautiful and why is something ugly? What does a certain place/space/building add to the city in terms of a social, economic, and cultural context?
At one point during the process we were inspired by a project of the German artist Jan Vormann. It motivated people around the world who participated in his artistic actions and his practise has grown to a worldwide network. The idea is clear, simple and platyful: Fix gaps and cracks of buildings, walls, floors, stairs and roofs with LEGO in cities. The work has a beautiful aesthetic and gives colour and imanigination to the city. In the context of ‘creating a better city’, we became part of this global artistic network.
The first presentation of the project took place at the Juventafest in Sarajevo, in September 2016. The exposition contained a selection of photographs made by the children. The second presentation of the project took place at the Bosnian National Theater Zenica in June 2017. The exposition contained the projections of the video-walks, 3D prints of desired spaces, 3D animation, a selection of photographs of beauty and ugly spaces, drawings created in function of the poster design, a documentation of the spatial interventions with LEGO, a soundscape of Zenica and voice recordings of the kids dreams and desires.
“Moving Island” is dedicated to working with groups whose members have fewer opportunities to become “positive” members of a society. Studies have shown that, after leaving the centres for children without parental care, a high percentage of orphans turn to crime, prostitution, or become dependent on social welfare. Through use of artistic practices, we want to take the kids out of their usual habitat, and create an environment in which they can learn about and appreciate differences, and understand that people have unique values and see things in different ways. We would like to add a little spark to their childhood that can help them dream, imagine, and shape their present and their future. We want to emphasize that their voices matter and that they can make a change in their environment through abstract and concrete action.
Playlist #Shuffle (working title)
Playlist #Shuffle was a 4 day workshop with disabled people from the association 'Joy of Life' in Sarajevo (BIH) and was presented during MESS Theater Festival 2019 at the History Museum of BIH.
During the workshop, various abstract ideas in the context of local and global politics
were proposed for research to create a compilation of performative actions and happenings with the potentiality for multiple readings and different ways of perception.
In 2020, a full creation with the association is planned with the premiere during the 60th anniversary of MESS Theater Festival 2020 in Sarajevo.
SHIFT KEY: In-between spotlight and shadow
Text - Asja Krsmanovic
At the International Theater Festival MESS, on Sunday and Monday, its visitors had the opportunity to see a presentation of two theater work-in-progress projects which were initiated as part of the SHIFT KEY initiative.
SHIFT KEY is a two-year program whereby five European festivals are participating. MESS, as a carrier for the project, and Short Theater from Rome, ATC festival from Bilbao, BE festival from Birmingham and ITS festival from Amsterdam. The goal of this cooperation is to increase mobility of European artists, as well as to provide them with an opportunity to show their work as part of an international context.
Participating in the Sarajevo edition of the program were Belgian artist with a Sarajevo address, Thomas Steyaert with his project Playlist #Shuffle and Mokhallad Rasem with the theater collective Thoneelhuis from Belgium and project Revolution of the Body.
Although conceptually and aesthetically completely different, both of these projects are characterized by important social engagement and placing in center of theater life people and stories from the margin.
Playlist #Shuffle is a continuation of Thomas’ work which he began with the Moving Island collective, and the goal of which is to bring theater to the community, and by means of theater, to give a chance to those who usually haven’t got their own stories to tell. This time, Thomas worked with members of association “Joy of Life” where each of them has different disabilities, from Down syndrome to autism. By creating a collage of scenes, using music, song, dance, movement, but also verbal passages spanning from telling jokes to speaking directly to the audience which is being addressed with their position in society and hopes of changing it, Steyaert makes a democratic space where the scene is equally accessible to everybody. He brings people from the margin of society and places them into a central space of the stage, thus providing them with a voice. And what is most important, he gives this voice to everyone, by allowing everybody to show what they’d like, without needing to fit into predetermined or expected forms, or to achieve aesthetic perfection and sovereign ruling of the theater language. His goal is not to fit people into pre-existing forms, while striving to meet the aesthetic needs of the audience, but to expand in consciousness of the audience the comprehension of the stage and stage expression and to remove the elitist aspect where the stage is reserved only for those advanced, educated, extremely skilled performers – the stage is before all a space for expression. The right for expression should belong to everyone. And what seems most important in Thomas’ work is that there is no counteraction – in it all participants are equal in conversation, which directly reflects on the audience’s attitude, and it seems as the greatest change that happens – change in the consciousness of those who are watching.
Although aesthetically completely different, the project Revolution of the Body, performed in the Youth Theater Sarajevo, also brings stories from the margin. Rasem’s Iraqi background also determines his thematic focus. His collective brought a story to the audience in two etudes lasting 25 minutes each about the Arab Spring., being explored through the form of guerilla dancing. A single dominant director’s solution spans both etudes – a video projection on screens and the bodies of the performers, who are animating it by movement, providing it with texture, re-shaping it and stimulating it, depending on the meaning which they wish to convey. In the first part of the performance, there is a slideshow of photographs of ruined spaces and prisoners who are waiting for death – images of violence and pictures of destruction. Three performers: Mostafa Benkerroum, Mokhallad Rasem and Ehsan Hemat, dressed in white costumes, in order to completely fit into the projection, slowly emerge from the photographs, almost as if it was mimicry. They become parts of the photographs with their bodies, so at one moment the viewers get the impression that they are only textures of the wall, while at other times they take on the direct part of participants, in order to, ultimately, by moving the screen, directly influence the re-shaping of the content. Near the end of the etude, this formal procedure receives its total meaning in narration whereby victims are apologizing for being victims and for bearing down on people with their tragedy. This is why their immersion into the video projection can be interpreted in two ways – as an attempt of mimicry, a retreat from the eyes of wrongdoers and onlookers, but also as their definition of identity – we are these images and these spaces and events permanently shape us.
While the first etude referred to the space of destruction itself, the second deals with the immigrant experience. In this etude Rasem begins with the term waiting. In a line of documentary videos, close-up, different people answer the question: “What for you is waiting?” And while the answers primarily go from everyday-banal to philosophical-poetic, soon, the focus is placed on those who are in regard to the immigrant experience – the tragedy of those who have their life brought to a halt in the process of waiting to have their stay in a new country legalized. In this part of the performance, the performers are holding white canvases in their arms, with faces reflecting on their surface of those questioned. With their movement, they separate and reconnect the picture, re-shaping it and fragmenting it, and so breaking up the faces of people who are speaking – by breaking up their lives and their identities.
It’s impossible to make a critical review of something which is unfinished work, a moment frozen in the process. However, one could say that through this project, MESS opened the possibility to artists to show a small piece of their work, and to have it recognized as important, in professional theater communities, and also the theater audience in various European cities. That is why we hope that this project is successfully continued, and that we will see some of these finished works soon at some of the upcoming editions of MESS.