VIE Scena Contemporanea Festival

I am 1984

Giuseppe Chico e Barbara Matijević

16/10/2009 , 19:00
17/10/2009 , 19:00

Directed and written by Giuseppe Chico and Barbara Matijević
Performed by Barbara Matijević
Produced by de facto & 1er stratagéme
Co-produced by ZeKaeM theater, Zagreb
Executive producer Grand Ensemble / Marie Roche

Reservation required

running time 50'

I am1984 uses a theatrical set up of a lecture (exploring the ready-made relationship between the lecturer and the audience) to establish a complex exchange of information. The verbal flow of information is apparently facilitated by the graphic/pictorial ones, which soon starts to function as an intricate set of signifiers that activate different cognitive processes in the mind of the spectators, reaching out into their knowledge of history, popular culture, art, science, video games, film, etc., eventually becoming an exercise in information processing.
The final drawing is a kind of mental map, a "conspiracy of the brain", establishing connections between an overwhelming number of disparate events and facts.
This operation, which has become a model of intelligibility central to the current political discourse, is as comical as it is tragic. It aims at giving sense to events, to ambiguous and dramatic situations, to make an intelligible story out of contradictions and transformations that are continually affecting the world, in order to release the unbearable pressure of reality's contingency.
Revolving around the year 1984, it establishes connections between the autobiographical elements (pertaining to the Croatian communist history and childhood dreams of B.M., the performers alter ego) with the facts, people and events from the U.S.A. history (such as the Los Angeles Olympic Games, Steve Jobs, Star Wars, Bob Dylan, Microsoft, Timothy Leary, David Bowie, etc.). It releases the anxiety generated by the feeling of the loss of individuality and autonomy in the face of huge and anonymous forces of the super-structure that seems to control our lives and even our most intimate thoughts and desires.
It is the way for those who are not taking part of the centers of power and knowledge to imagine themselves heroically in possession of that knowledge, but without the intention to parody the impotence of the "ordinary man". On the contrary, it points out to the possibility of each individual to claim their own creative way of making sense of the world, asserting the power of art as still one of the most powerful weapons for defending humanity.

I am 1984 is the first part of a trilogy with a provisional title: The theory of the performance to come or - the only way to avoid the massacre is to become its authors.
The piece received a special award by the international jury of the INFANT festival in Novi Sad for the "expanding of the limits of theatre".

Giuseppe Chico e Barbara Matijević

Barbara Matijević
Born in Croatia, studied Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb (M.A.)Trained as a dancer in the Hypaxis Dance Center, Wilton, (New Hampshire, U.S.A) and the International Center for Contemporary Dance and Performance Art - ATHENA under the artistic direction of Kilina Cremona in Zagreb, Croatia.
She is a co-founder (with Sasa Bozic) of de facto performance group.
As a performer, she is engaged in a long-term project Via Negativa directed by Bojan Jablanovec.
She collaborated with Boris Charmatz, Jan Fabre, Joris Lacoste.

Giuseppe Chico
Makes his debut in theater at the age of 10 after having studied with the Abeliano Company under the direction of Tina Tempesta. He continues his studies in the Kismet Theater with Robert McNeer and Teresa Ludovico. As a stage designer, he collaborates with Paolo Baroni.
Since 2000 he has been living in Paris where he studied dance with Joao Fiadeiro, Vera Mantero, Julyen Hamilton, Mark Tompkins, Vera Orlock, Pooh Kaye, K.J. Holmes, Olivier Besson.
He worked as a dancer in the Mille Plateaux Associés company for four years, continuing with George Appaix.
In theater he worked with Joris Lacoste.

The show

Programme