MLADI LEVI 2023

The Mladi Levi festival has always appreciated the power of the individual story – an intimate insight can be a story of us all, it can touch upon the universal. This year, however, it seems as if the festival programme predominantly consists of performances transcending the individual, the intimate and the lyrical subjective utterance in their effort to tap into the collective arena, possibly reaching beyond the realm of human experience altogether. The performative drive to rise above our individual attempts and efforts pursues the intuitive quest for a solution, be it one that saves us from loneliness and isolation of the fast-paced world, or one that breaks free from the grinding system that keeps us captive in the seemingly impenetrable mill of injustice. These intuitive landscapes of potential solutions seem to lie within community engagement and cooperative action. More than ever before, this year’s edition of the Mladi Levi festival opens the stage to participatory projects and brings forward performances that both literally and symbolically give voice and space to those rarely taking stage or having their voice heard, highlighting artists that seek cooperation beyond the confinement of their subjective »bubbles«, beyond the human realm, as they look for ways of being together. There is a sense of care-ssing tenderness subtly penetrating the festival (invoking care as its etymological derivative), either in examining different registers of manhood, representing lamenting practices as they span from Mediterranean traditions to the present-day sadness of the sea, using acupuncture as an intervention to treat maladies of brick walls, tasting non-human holobionts or delving into stories of non-human animals. Care-ssing tenderness comes forth especially in its drive to articulate performative formats that would allow for aesthetic as well as other types of penetration into the communal without any use of force – merely by offering a hand, an opportunity, a gesture of kindness, and by promoting contextual conditions of gentleness.
It has been twenty-five times now that we have set the festival off on its journey with words of encouragement – the festival is, after all, a culminative manifestation of our work throughout the year, as well as an emanation of our aspirations, desires and convictions. It is a projection of a sort that not only carries our aesthetic imprint, but also a values-based orientation of Bunker in its utopian vision of the community. One that may well be temporary, but then again – so is life and we still take it extremely seriously.

Some while ago Bunker team attended a first aid course. Not to suggest that organising a festival is in any way comparable to saving a human life, but there is still a beautiful analogy one can draw here. The heart doesn’t suddenly stop functioning in the event of a cardiac arrest, but instead each of its fibres pulsates in its own rhythm. It is only by way of an external electric impulse that a synchronised rhythm can be restored again. Perhaps the 26th edition of the Mladi Levi festival can thus be seen as an opportunity and a possibility to allow for the impulses of art, socialising, interactions – and just about anything communal in nature – to bring our pulsating experiences into one synchronised utterance here and there.

We look forward to being with you!

Mladi Levi festival team

 

TICKETS

Tickets have a symbolic price of 1 €.
 
Ticket reservation and information: +386 51 269 906, info@bunker.si
 
Volunteer contributions can be donated at all festival venues.

Tickets can be picked up and paid for at the box office of the event venue, which opens an hour before the beginning.
 

The festival is made possible by:
Ministrstvo za kulturo Republike Slovenije, Mestna občina Ljubljana, Elektro Ljubljana d. d., Evropska unija – program Ustvarjalna Evropa: Kultura, ACT – Art, Climate, Transition, Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition, Ministrstvo za javno upravo Republike Slovenije, Trust for Mutual Understanding, European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists – EFFEA, ŠD Tabor, Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana, Muzej sodobnih umetnosti Metelkova, Plesni Teater Ljubljana, Kliping d. o. o., Mladina, TAM-TAM, d. o. o., ZASLON, Radio Študent, Radio SI, Fini oglasi, d. o. o., Parada plesa, DPG, B & B Hotel Ljubljana Park, Cukrarna / Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljane

FESTIVAL PROGRAM

FRI. 18.8.

6 pm ̶ 11 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

6 pm / ŠD Tabor
Human Territory
Gregor Zorc        
tale

7.30 pm / ŠD Tabor
Record
Francesca Grilli        
musical performance

SOLD OUT

8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Minnite
concert

9.30 pm / ŠD Tabor
DJ Raketa
opening party

SAT. 19.8.

12 pm ̶ 6 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

7 pm / ŠD Tabor
Record
Francesca Grilli        
musical performance

SOLD OUT

7.30 pm / SMEEL
Healing Interventions for Domestic Wounds
Valentina Medda
performative intervention

8 pm / SMEEL
Duets
Temporary Collective, T. Ondrová, P. Tejnorová and collective
performance

9 pm / ŠD Tabor
Record
Francesca Grilli        
musical performance

SUN. 20.8.

12 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

7 pm / PTL
High (Two or three words about ecstatic masculinity)
Daniel Victoria, Michał Salwiński, Aljoša Lovrić Krapež
performance

SOLD OUT

7 pm ̶ 11 pm / SMEEL
Co_sonic 1884 km2 + oOo liquid
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder
audiovisual installation

8.30 pm / Sindikalna dvorana
Cata Strophe
Matea Bilosnić
work in progress

9.30 pm / SMEEL
Reindeer Age #1
Bernardo Chatillon
performance

MON. 21.8.

4 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

SOLD OUT

5 pm / ŠD Tabor
Discussion café

7 pm ̶ 11 pm / SMEEL
Co_sonic 1884 km2 + oOo liquid
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder
audiovisual installation

7.30 pm / ŠD Tabor
The Last Night of the Deer
Jānis Balodis, Nahuel Cano
performance

SOLD OUT

9 pm / SMEEL
Two Drops per Heartbeat
Walid Raad
artist talk

SOLD OUT

TUE. 22.8.

4 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

5 pm / ŠD Tabor
Discussion café

7.30 pm ̶ 11 pm / SMEEL
Co_sonic 1884 km2 + oOo liquid
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder
audiovisual installation

6 pm / SMEEL
Two Drops per Heartbeat
Walid Raad
artist talk

SOLD OUT

7.30 pm / ŠD Tabor
The Last Night of the Deer
Jānis Balodis, Nahuel Cano
performance

9 pm / SMEEL
Two Drops per Heartbeat
Walid Raad
artist talk

SOLD OUT

WED. 23.8.

NO SHOWS TODAY

THU. 24.8.

10 am / SMEEL
ACT  ̶  Art, Climate, Transition
closing event

12 pm / SMEEL
Passing Bodies
Eylül Fidan Akıncı, Tery Žeželj
lecture and sound walk

3 pm / SMEEL
Co_sonic 1884 km2 + oOo liquid
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder
guided tour of the installation

4 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

SOLD OUT

5.30 pm / ŠD Tabor
ACT Festival School
meeting on the benches

6 pm / ŠD Tabor
In the Groundwaters of the Body
Urška Preis, Ivana Vogrinc Vidali, Tery Žeželj
immersive journey

SOLD OUT

FRI. 25.8.

6 am / Špica
The Last Lamentation
Valentina Medda
music performance

4 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

SOLD OUT

4 pm / ŠD Tabor
In the Groundwaters of the Body
Urška Preis, Ivana Vogrinc Vidali, Tery Žeželj
installation

7.30 pm / LGL   ̶   Oder pod zvezdami
Sottobosco
Chiara Bersani
performance

SOLD OUT

9 pm / ŠD Tabor
Unending Love, or Love Dies, on Repeat Like It’s Endless
Alex Baczyński-Jenkins
performance

SOB. 26.8.

12 pm ̶ 8 pm / ŠD Tabor
Not To Scale
Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton
audio performance

12 pm ̶ 8 pm/ ŠD Tabor
In the Groundwaters of the Body
Urška Preis, Ivana Vogrinc Vidali, Tery Žeželj
installation

12 pm ̶ 10 pm / Španski borci
PARL
presentation of works in progress

4 pm / LGL ̶  Tunel
410 kilometres
Karolína Kotrbová, Gašper Lovrec, Filip Mramor, Jernej Potočan, Domen Novak
performance

SOLD OUT

7 pm ̶ 11 pm / SMEEL
Co_sonic 1884 km2 + oOo liquid
Robertina Šebjanič, Ida Hiršenfelder
audiovisual installation

7 pm / LGL ̶  Tunel
410 kilometres
Karolína Kotrbová, Gašper Lovrec, Filip Mramor, Jernej Potočan, Domen Novak
performance

SOLD OUT

9 pm / SMEEL
Life: Live!
Lucy McCormick
performance

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL MLADI LEVI

International festival Mladi Levi is one of the more prominent annual events of the Bunker Institute, bringing the most current stage performers from all over the world to Ljubljana every end of the summer, since 1998. It bears a mark of a demanding artistic profile, placed within the arena of contemporary progressive theatre and takes pride in its reputation for discovering young talents. The Festival has a distinctive atmosphere, marked with creativity and vibrant spirit, curious audience and social nature.

Festival Mladi Levi inhabits a place of encounters and surprises, continuously opening up to foreign artists and guests, who take pleasure in art and spread contemporary artistic or social topics in front of one another. It is a place of exchange as well as a cradle of new ideas, friendships and co-operations, which frequently extend beyond the local concepts or borders in the process of their growth.