CO-existing

Location: Kino Kultura in Macedonia/Skopje.
Dates: 21.03-03.04. 2016.
Co-initiators/organizers: Aleksandar Georgiev, Elena Risteska, Viktorija Ilioska.
Co-participants: Aleksandar Georgiev, Cicilia Östholm, Elena Risteska, Kliment Poposki, Mads Floor Andersen, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Pontus Pettersson Nefeli Ikonomou, Sabrina železnik, Viktorija Ilioska, Leonina Korneti Pekevska, Iskra Sukarova and Dragana Zarevska.
Co-guests: Darío Barreto Damas, Lisen Ellard, Boban Kuleski.
Co-realization by: Nomad Dance Academy Macedonia, Lokomotiva-Center for new initiatives in art, Ministry of Culture, Project Kino Kultura, Volunteers.
Co- funded by: Ministry of culture of R. Macedonia, Konstnärsnämnden - the Swedish Arts Grants Committee (international exchange grant), Swedish Embassy in Skopje.
Co-donations: Krivogaštani Municipality, NOTAR, Elizabeta Stojanoska.

"about co-being, co-performing, co-rehearsing, co-existing, co-practicing, co-llaborating"

About CO-

CO- existing is initiated and run by Nomad Dance Academy Macedonia. This project involves exchange on artistic and discursive level. CO-existing is a project/laboratory that invites teams of artists, engaged in works which are in progress or research platforms. Even though the artists are invited to participate together, the format allows for each individual to have time, space and facilities for pursuing individual artistic interests. Specific collaborations within the structure are initiated and realized through each partaking artist, by their own force and motivation. 

CO-existing is initiating program for proposing formats of operating in a co-functional world. The proposed space for co-functioning subsequently entails: co-existing, co-performing, co-practicing, co- rehearsing, co-llaborating. 

This first edition of CO-existing consisted of 3 situations: CO-teaching (Laboratory around productions), CO-Fest (Festival for presenting own produced pieces) and Closed Meeting (Closed door meeting for initiating network around alternative production modes). It consisted of thirteen participants, local and International ones, renowned local artists and three CO-guests, all of them functioning in Kino Kultura for two weeks.

The proposal was to offer space for exploring collective thinking for alternative production modes and working with artists coming from different artistic contexts and backgrounds. The initial drive was the needs of each artist towards its own art, in relation to the emerging collectivity and exchanges happening in the realm of cultural production.

Throughout the process, we expanded our personal artistic intuitions but also pathways of doing things together and sharing knowledge in common discursive grounds. We established the daily morning practice of CO-dreaming in relation to our needs for our artistic work or exchange as a platform for giving space for different systems to exist parallel in symbiosis. Proximity to colleagues and shared spaces with other co-participants created opportunity to initiate further collaborations and being part of each other’s processes.

The project has been hosted at Kino Kultura - a stage located in the central part of Skopje, providing platforms for contemporary performing arts and gathering artists from different fields.
Throughout the project we had twenty-four/ seven accessibility to this rehearsal and office space, along with an on-demand technician. CO-existing was the first project to be hold in this space.

The use of theater space for the realization of our CO-DREAMS, allowed the proposals to have sufficient grounding to expand. During these two weeks we held open public presentation of the laboratory outcomes, workshops engaging the local scene, open discussion platforms and high quality artistic works presented in CO-Fest. All of these segments made significant contribution for the development of the local scene and artists as well as contribution to the exchange knowledge between the participants.

Co-curating and co-producing the public festival CO-Fest at Kino Kultura.

Fest Happening is a festival imagined as space where the structure of curating is not by system of choosing art works but by already chosen participants for the laboratory. With this they have a freedom to propose art works which they would like to offer for presenting it to the local audience. It functions through the principle of self-inviting and co-operating for curating a festival.

Once they are invited in the laboratory, they have influence on the whole program and structure since they are invited for co-existing and co-functioning. In that manner the programing for the festival is on the system of self-choosing your artistic work that you would like to present for the local audience and in relation to the other artists work. With such initiation we would like to propose a structures for co-working, co-performing, co-teaching, co- operating in a direction that the CO- is the curator, initiator and educator for the work that is considered as necessity in certain local performance scene.

Cultural work from the position of Choreographer or CO-choreographer:

Through initiating CO-existing program we got engaged in creating a space for artists having the possibility to speak and create in specific circumstances which allows recognition and affirmation of their own systems of functioning. 

“Invite us to invite you” is CO-existing slogan, under which was build the functioning system. Such system would imply formats of democratic functioning and actively inclusive practices in its perpetual format. Such formats open up for diversity of artists to have space and possibility for operating within the cultural policy.

CO-PARTICIPANTS:

CO- GUESTS:

MEDIA:

Facebook

CO- makes an appearance in national Macedonian TV with Macedonian and Swedish artists Aleksandar Georgiev, Elena Risteska, Viktorija Ilioska and Cicilia Östholm

Article 1

Article 2

Documentation by Ana Lazarevska

Text from CO- artistic program report by Nomad Dance Academy Macedonia.