Living Memory Theater: Performing Heritage in Zagreb and Dubrovnik

Living Memory Theater: Performing Heritage in Zagreb and Dubrovnik

Speakers

The Shadow Casters (Boris Bakal and Sandra Uskokovic)

With a response by Chris Neville.

Shadow Casters is a multi award-winning and critically acclaimed international artistic and production platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, creativity and reflection on inter-media art who have successfully and seamlessly combined international collaborations, theatre/film-making, urban intermedia projects, activism, pedagogical work, video art and curation into a coherent single body of work. We have been the leading partner and co-partner on more the 50 small and large-scale projects in Europa, Asia, Africa and N. America since 2001, generating more than 150 cooperations with professionals from more than 30 countries which have resulted in have more than 50 educational, theater and film projects and events. These projects have stimulated the debate on the nature of and contradictions within the ongoing globalization process and on social, political and cultural issues that have revealed acute problems and issues within local communities. Shadow Casters has been instrumental to considerations of the politics of public space, the consequences of transition processes, the status and forms of intimacy as well as the systematic production of amnesia and discontinuity within its regional context. The main concept guiding Shadow Casters is constantly questioning the identity of the individual, but also the integration of individuals in a collective context.

Biographies

Sandra Uskokovic, a scholar of modern and contemporary Central and Eastern European art, is an assistant professor at the University of Dubrovnik, Croatia. She holds an MA from George Washington University and a PhD from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She has received research fellowships ICCROM, UNESCO and US/ICOMOS and awards from Graham Foundation, Samuel H.Kress Foundation and Getty Trust. Uskokovic has published three books on modern architecture and heritage. Her new book, Art Dialogues in Public Space, will be published in 2017. She also has written and published numerous conference papers and research articles in her home country and abroad. A visiting scholar at universities in Europe, Asia, and North America, her research interests include art criticism, architecture, cultural heritage, modern and contemporary art, urban and cultural theory, and performative arts.

Boris Bakal, a theatre/film director and actor, intermedia artist, and activist Throughout more then thirty years of his career, he authored theatre and film projects, performances, installations and multimedia artworks which have been presented at festivals and exhibitions in over 20 countries worldwide (including Bologna Cultural Capital of Europe 2000, Akcent/Prague, Eurokaz/Zagreb, BITEF/Belgrade, INTERFERENCES/Cluj, MESS/Sarajevo and others). Boris Bakal was visiting lecturer at: New York University, Stony Brook University, SACI Studio Art Centers International (Florence) and Columbia University. He is co-founder of several artistic and activist platforms/associations, e.g. Shadow Casters, Flying University, Orchestra Stolpnik and Croatian Antiwar Campaign. Boris is currently working on various film, intermedia and theatre projects: “Ex-position” (film/postproduction), “Concrete love” (film/production), “Urban Hum” (theatre/production) and “On the Verge of Reason“ (web-serial/production).