Jan Rozman: MEMEMEME

Who is ‘me’ in ‘meme’ in ‘MEMEMEME’?

MEMEMEME is the space of a community’s flow of association, a clash of an infinite number of memes* and their reverberations. Through the performers’ bodies, their mobile phones and digital video and sound references and associations, the performance layers gestures, movements, images and expressions. Its performative score plays with and around the mechanics and aesthetics of internet memes. As a living mimetic organism, the stage actions are multiplied and repeated, diversified and mutated to open up the potential semantic splits and gaps that reflect the fragmented and alienated nature of modern communication and the internet society.

*A meme is any idea that is, despite its potential randomness or nonsense, repeated and multiplied through variation and selection. The term meme (from Ancient Greek mimeme, ‘imitated thing’) was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins as a cultural equivalent of a gene to designate language, stories, knowledges, habits, styles and behaviour that is transmitted through imitation. As a consequence of the near universal use of the internet in the digital age, the most widespread, flexible, resilient, and circulated are precisely (viral) internet memes.

THE INTERNET IS A STAGE AND THE PEOPLE MERELY MEMES – Essay by Varja Hrvatin

Concept, direction & choreography: Jan Rozman (janrozman.net)
Performers and co-creators: Peter Frankl, Kaja Janjić, Julija Pečnikar, Daniel Petković
Dramaturgy: Varja Hrvatin
Sound and video: Vid Merlak
Costume design: Tanja Pađan (Kiss The Future)
Light design: Urška Vohar
Set design adviser: Dan Pikalo
Graphic design: Matija Medved
Video documentation: Hana Vodeb
Photo documentation: Nada Žgank
Executive producer: Sabina Potočki

Producer: Emanat
Partner: Bunker / Old Power Station, Ljubljana, Mediterranean Dance Center, Svetvinčenat, Croatia
In collaboration with: CoFestival 2019, Ljubljana

***

Jan Rozman (1991) is a freelance dancer, choreographer, improviser, performer, and performance maker, based in Ljubljana and Berlin. His artistic practice engages with extended embodiment, material semiotics, textures, gaps, errors and confusions, ecology, imagination, (science) fiction, and humour as he searches for relevant performative articulations of the post-internet/anthropocene era.
He studied contemporary dance at Arts Secondary School in Ljubljana and choreography at School for New Dance Development (AhK) in Amsterdam. He received his Master’s degree in solo/dance/authorship from Inter-University Centre for Dance (UdK), Berlin. He also graduated in physiotherapy from the Faculty of Health Sciences (UL), Ljubljana. In 2019, he received the Ksenija Hribar Award, presented by the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia, as the most “promising choreographer” and was also the recipient of the DanceWeb scholarship at the ImpulseTanz Festival in Vienna.
www.janrozman.net

Date

22. 11. 2019
Expired!

Time

19:00

Cost

10 € / 7 €

Location

Stara mestna elektrarna
Ljubljana