Welcome to Digital Davis 2021: The Festival!
Circus and its Others conferences always happen alongside and in dialogue with circus festivals. Our inaugural 2016 conference was held in partnership with the Montréal Completement Cirque festival. For Prague 2018, CaiO’s academic and creative committee collaborated with the Letní Letná festival in aspects of its programming. For the 2021 conference, the committee has created a festival with the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Davis.
During Digital Davis 2021: The Festival, you will encounter contemporary circus performances that are deeply engaged in articulating pressing questions related to our current socio-political landscape. The performances grapple with issues of the self and its relation to the other, human or nonhuman. Alexander Vantournhout and Bauke Lievens’s Aneckxander, Room 100’s C8H11NO2, Jörg and Roman Müller’s OI+IO; and François Bouvier’s I Miss Grandma So Sad are examples of circus creations which defy genre boundaries and display the multiplicities that mark the aesthetics of contemporary circus. The hybridity of these performance and their entanglement with contemporary dance, performance art, visual art, and experimental music speak to the plasticity, creativity, and ingenuity of contemporary circus. The performances will provoke and disorient, but also capture, move, and entertain you.
All of the performances are pre-recorded and are available through the Circus and its Others website. All will go live at 7 pm Pacific time on November 4 and will remain live throughout the conference. A password is being supplied to conference registrants; for any questions or concerns about accessing the performances please visit the Conference Helpdesk on Mural, or email anuva@ucdavis.edu.
Artists involved in all four productions will take part in a live digital talkback on the last day of the conference (Sunday November 7, 9:45 – 11:30 am Pacific), giving participants the chance to discuss their work and engage directly with the makers. And of course, we hope that many of you will find your way to our keynote presentations and panel discussions where renowned and emerging academics and artists discuss the cultural importance of circus performances and practices.
Circus and its Others extends its gratitude to Jeremy Ganter, associate executive director and director of programming; Jenna Bell, assistant director, artist services; and Liz King, executive assistant at the Mondavi Center for their support of this festival.
Roll Up,
Ante Ursic (Ph.D. Performance Studies UC Davis )
Festival Curator
Circus and its Others
Assistant Professor, East Tennessee State University
Artistic and Production Support has been provided by Mondavi Center, UC Davis
OI + IO
Created and performed by Jörg Müller and Roman Müller
Filmed and edited by Philippe Deutsch https://www.deutsch-art.com
Recorded at Fleischmarkthalle Karlsruhe in cooperation with Atoll Festival / Tollhaus Karlsruhe
Supported by
Aargauer Kuratorium, CH
Les Migrateurs, Pole des Arts du Cirque, Strasbourg
FR 5-3-1 Festival Helsinki FI
Theater op de Markt / Dommelhof, Neerpelt BE
Theater Tuchlaube Aarau CH
Maison de Jonglage, La Courneuve, Paris FR
contact@trespace.com
© 2021 Jörg Müller / Roman Müller. All rights reserved
About the production:
We want to preserve and protect our freedom [as artists, creators], yet also to observe and analyze what we do very closely. Slowly, we are approaching an emerging essence, spooling out the fine dramaturgical thread from which our action is woven and made more profound. We don’t want to close the doors to happenstance; we want to make space and room for it to surprise us and guide us. 《oi+io》is an ongoing experiment.
(Excerpt from Müller & Müller's Artistic Statement)
I miss Grandma so sad
(show still in creation; footage of a work in progress. The show will premiere in 2023 in Montreal).
Maker and performer: François Bouvier
Dramaturg: Sebastian Kann
Outside eye: Peter James
Additional voice: Cora Kim
With the financial help of le Conseil des arts du Canada, and le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
With support from: La Tohu; L’Académie Fratellini; La Cascade - Pôle National Cirque; Circuscentrum; LA SERRE - arts vivants; Les Noctambules; The Bank Arts House; Ottawa Dance Directive; and La Chapelle - Scènes Contemporaines.
About the production:
What kind of body emerges at the intersection of climate catastrophe and digital revolution? The stuttering and stumbling body, the non-functioning and the still, the undefined body in experiments——in I miss grandma so sad, we witness this unruly body at work, appearing and disappearing at the margins of the stage. Navigating shifting virtual and sonic landscapes, constantly re-configuring (and being re-configured by) a space densely populated with objects and signs, he is engaged in a relentless process of becoming, going nowhere fast. At once intimate and ironic, mixing humour, cynicism, and sincerity, I miss grandma so sad asks how to bear with the changing status of “nature” and its entanglement with our uncertain collective future. Caught between the spectral echoes of the digital and the obstacles thrown up by an increasingly boisterous worldly materiality, the question is: how to regain our mobile bearings? And how might we re-compose liveable worlds?
Aneckxander
Alexander Vantournhout and Bauke Lievens
With: Alexander Vantournhout
Dramaturgy: Bauke Lievens
Dramaturgic advice: Dries Douibi, Gerald Kurdian
Outside eyes: Geert Belpaeme, Anneleen Keppens, Lore Missine, Lili M. Rampre
Light design: Tim Oelbrandt, Rinus Samyn
Music: Arvo Pärt
Costumes: Nefeli Myrtidi, Anne Vereecke
Photos: Bart Grietens
Coproductions: Kc NOna (Mechelen, BE), PERPLX vzw (Marke, BE), Theater aan zee (Oostende,BE), Subsistances (Lyon, FR), La Brèche (Cherbourg, FR), Malpertuis (Tielt, BE).
Workplaces: STUK (Leuven, BE), Kc NOna (Mechelen, BE), Campo (Gent, BE), Pianofabriek (Brussels, BE), Theater Malpertuis (Tielt, BE), De Grote Post (Oostende, BE), Circuscentrum (Gent, BE), La Brèche Pôle National des Arts du Cirque (Cherbourg, FR), Subsistances (Lyon, FR)
With the support of: Province of West-Vlaanderen, Flemish Government
Collaboration with Bauke Lievens in the framework of the research project Between being and imagining: towards a methodology for artistic research in contemporary circus, financed by the research fund of HoGent/KASK School of Arts, Ghent (BE).
About the production:
ANECKXANDER is a solo in a minimal setting for one acrobatic body, a handful of carefully selected objects and three variations on a piece of piano music by Arvo Pärt. Balancing on the fine line between tragedy and comedy, Alexander/Aneckxander rewrites the autobiography of his own body: from subject to object to matter. The result is a raw self-portrait in which the body both exposes itself to and tries to escape from the prying eyes of those looking at it.
C8H11NO2
Interpretation: ROOM 100 (Jakov Labrović, Antonia Kuzmanić)
Direction: Jakov Labrović
Music and sounds: Davor Gazde
Video: Jakov Labrović
Set design and lights: Jakov Labrović, Antonia Kuzmanić
Costumes: Jakov Labrović, Ivan Labrović
Artistic collaboration: Angela Laurier
Outside eye: Ivan Labrović
Stage assistant: Mario Franić
Production: Positive Force / ROOM 100
Coproduction: Les Migrateurs – associés pour les Arts du Cirque + Le-Maillon – Théâtre de Strasbourg, Scène Européenne, Perforations – Week of live art
Residencies: La Cascade – Maison des Arts du Clown et du Cirque, Les Migrateurs – associés pour les Arts du Cirque + Pole Sud, Scène Conventionnée pour la Danse et la Musique, Akvarij + Split City Puppet Theatre
Support: Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe, Paris’ City Hall, Republic of Croatia Ministry of Culture, Split – Dalmatia County – Department of Education, Culture and Sport, City of Split – Department for Culture and Arts
About the show:
C8H11NO2 is a starkly physical vision of the world of schizophrenia: intense, disturbing, yet intimate and hypnotic – a deeply personal piece inspired by the director’s brother and his 35 years-long battle with the disease.
C8H11NO2 is a dark ambient mixture of contortion, dislocation, butoh, breakdance and electronic music produced by analogue oscillators which opens the door of the schizophrenic world to the viewer’s perspective as a specific kind of extremely elevated, creative consciousness, neither making the condition of the disorder scandalized nor pathetic…
As a dark ambient performance without spectacularity, C8H11NO2 is not a performance that can be easily transferred to the virtual world. When seen alive it is a performance that could overwhelm your senses and emotions. We hope you will have a part of that sensation virtually...