Mladi levi: JULY 3, 1998, NOTHING EVER TRULY DIES
Entering the performance means surrendering to an unpredictable duration, to a vortex of memories, when time is strangely stretched into an indescribable inner sense of suspense, in which our aimless thoughts sometimes become trapped, a sense of idling, of a sentence lingering in the air, of television static, of a loop in time and space, when everything seems to move, yet at the same time nothing moves. Just the slightest change every now and then, a step forward.
The performance draws on two short fragments of VHS tape recordings, which are also fragments of the family archive and at the same time the author’s personal history, which he can only remember through (and because of) the recordings. The performance recreates this past without creating an exact replica of it on stage. Time travel requires the elements arriving from the VHS tapes to change in the living present – shrinking, multiplying, changing materials… Another time-space can thus be anticipated – though never seen – behind the performance, perhaps inherent only to the creator, through which elements, thoughts and actions travel before they inhabit the movement.
Filip Mramor graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana with a degree in acting, and enrolled in a Master’s program in devised and object theatre at the international programme of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). He is a member of the Počemučka collective and has already performed at the Mladi Levi and Drugajanje festivals with the performance 410 kilometres. 3 July, 1998 is his Master’s thesis performance.
Direction: Filip Mramor
Co-creation and dramaturgy: Pedro Gramegna Ardiles
Sound design: Valtteri Alanen
Video design: Filip Mramor
Light and stage design: Pedro Gramegna Ardiles
Props design: Karolína Kotrbová
Graphic design: John Álvarez Esparza
Mentor: Lukáš Jiřička
Consultant: Sodja Zupanc-Lotker
Performers: Filip Mramor, Brina Jenček, Pedro Gramegna Ardiles, Sofija Bičič, Michał Salwiński, Aljoša Lovrić Krapež, Ana Nežmah, Klara Drnovšek Solina, Bruno
Performers in previous versions and rehearsing partners: Domen Šuman, Jeries AbuJaber, Karol Filo, Kirstine Hupfeldt Nielsen, Yael Sofia Webster, Amanda
Photo by: Michael Lozano