PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
a cura di Lýdia Pribišová
ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS AND DESIGN IN BRATISLAVA
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava is a strong and prestigious Slovak university focused on art, devoting much of its efforts to artistic and scientific research, as well as emerging international collaboration within the European education, art, and research areas.
The project To the Rhythm of the Algorithm presents new performative works and explores how algorithms, artificial intelligence, and digital surveillance shape our bodies and our perception of reality.
Tomáš Brichta: Questions and Answers
The performance investigates the relationship between human beings and algorithms through the risky and repetitive act of throwing a stone above one’s own face. It creates a tension between the desire to maintain control and the constant threat that the stone might fall onto the performer’s face.
Julia Pabst: Just Dance
In this performance, Julia Pabst draws from visual and gestural archives of pop culture and the history of dance, transforming them into an algorithmically generated choreography. What initially appears as a carefree game progressively turns into a demanding algorithmic dictation — the movements become increasingly complex, senseless, and difficult to reproduce. The work explores the limits of the human body within a system that knows neither fatigue nor error.
Michaela Prablesková: Give Me Your Phone And I Will Tell You Who You Are
A performance set in a fortune-telling booth — but instead of cards or a crystal ball, the artist asks the audience to hand over their unlocked phones. From the digital data emerges a prophecy of the future tinged with dark humor, confronting visitors with an absurd choice that could change their destiny.
NABA | NUOVA ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI
The project The Absent Community presents four performances created by students from the BA in Painting and Visual Arts and the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies programs at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan campus. The four selected works reflect on the growing sense of isolation and alienation in contemporary society, as well as on the desire—and the urgent need—to re-establish more communal and meaningful relationships with people and with the world around us. Conceived and curated by Andris Brinkmanis, Course Leader of the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA, these performances engage in a dialogue with the other performative works presented.
Penelope Andronico: SWEAT
A performative act in two parts that explores the body as a generator of energy and presence in space.
In the first act, through intense physical gestures — running, jumping, dancing, moving through the space and among the audience — the artist transforms the exhibition context into a field of movement and organic vitality, generating body heat up to the point of sweat, the visible sign of this energetic tension.
In the second act, the artist transfers the accumulated heat to the ground: an ephemeral trace of sweat destined to vanish. With its dissolution, the work is completed in the memory of the gesture and the transformation of the body into absence.
Filippo Paci: The Conformist
The performance originates from a reinterpretation of Giorgio Gaber’s exploration of identity and the fragility of critical thought. With tragicomic tones blending pop culture and fictional screenplay, the “scenic pamphlet” uses the body—deprived of speech but full of intention—as a physical translation of Gaber’s message: the contemporary individual, imprisoned by populism, rediscovers uniqueness through gesture, denouncing collective automatisms and seeking truth through presence, effort, and the body’s own freedom.
The performance thus becomes an act of awareness, in which the silent language of movement restores to political reflection its most authentic and human dimension — independent and personal.
C. Sidonie Pellegrino: Voce ca conta
The performance employs a minimal gesture: word of mouth. The artist approaches one person at a time and whispers into their ear a verse from one of her poems in Neapolitan, entrusting them with precious yet intentionally obscure words — fragments of a single text. This sibylline act embodies the poem’s meaning: the enchantment and transitory nature of oral transmission rooted in Campanian folk culture, and the transformative power of that cultural word-of-mouth which shapes the collective imagination.
Damini Yadav: The Space Between Your Feet and the Ground
A ritual performance that explores the disconnection between humans and the earth, using this gap as a space for potential reconnection with the planet. Through natural materials such as spices, flowers, and stones, it invokes a humble and profound dialogue with the invisible forces of the earth. Spices, once symbols of colonial exploitation, become tools of healing and reconnection. The performance is entirely guided by intuition and invites the audience to participate within the sacred space thus created.
EXHIBITORS PERFORMANCE
Tao Han: Wrestling With Angels
presented by: ARTRA PROJECTS, Milano
The performance Wrestling With Angels enacts the artist’s entire personal experience of painting, presenting to the audience a non-visual experience within a five-minute period of force and reaction, resistance and contradiction. Gold serves as a metaphor for Tao Han’s so-called traditional and dogmatic system, and the seemingly destructive act is also a satire on materialism. The focus is on the process of transforming the painting’s form, turning the work into a reflection on the intimate relationship between artist and creation, which by the end of the process become one and the same.
Aldo Runfola: Ssuperrationall, Ssupernnaturall
presented by: GAZE – OFF & FRANCO MARINOTTI, Lugano (CH) – Barcellona (ES)
This performative action questions the artist’s current state of health: is he healthy, ill, suffering, or recovering — and from what ailment? Implicitly, Aldo Runfola also seeks to test the intellectual tradition that views the artist or philosopher as a critic and clinician of society, capable of diagnosing its possible pathologies and measuring its degree of malaise — all in view of, if not full recovery, at least a better state of health.
Sara Lovari: A World of words
presented by: SILVIAROSSI | ARTGALLERY, Bibbiena (AR)
Sara Lovari presents a performance that gives meaning to a minimal gesture, free from the filter of technology. The artist invites the audience to draw a letter of the alphabet from a bag, asking in return for a word that begins with that letter. It is a simple, almost childlike act that becomes an act of resistance: a way to place at the center once again our ability to name, imagine, and construct meaning without delegating it to an algorithm. An intimate encounter, in which each collected word becomes a trace, a memory, a relationship.
TIMING
OCTOBER, 30th
5.30 – 9.00pm AFAD BRATISLAVA
Tomáš Brichta, Questions and Answers
Julia Pabst, Just Dance
Michaela Prablesková, Give Me Your Phone And I Will Tell You Who You Are
OCTOBER, 31st
1.00pm
Tao Han, Wrestling With Angels
1.00 – 2.30pm AFAD BRATISLAVA
Tomáš Brichta, Questions and Answers
Julia Pabst, Just Dance
Michaela Prablesková, Give Me Your Phone And I Will Tell You Who You Are
6.30pm
Aldo Runfola, Ssuperrationall, Ssupernnaturall
7.00pm
Sara Lovari, A World of words
NOVEMBER, 1st
12.00 – 2.00pm – NABA
Damini Yadav, The Space Between Your Feet and the Ground
Filippo Paci, Il conformista
Sidonie Pellegrino, Voce ca conta
Penelope Andronico, SUDORE
6.30pm
Aldo Runfola, Ssuperrationall, Ssupernnaturall
NOVEMBER, 2nd
1.00pm
Aldo Runfola, Ssuperrationall, Ssupernnaturall
2.00pm
Sara Lovari, A World of words