Image Snatchers Meet The Art of Provocation

For years, the City of Women Festival and Emanat have successfully collaborated in the organisation of various workshops, and one of more notable has to do with the genre of burlesque and cabaret. The first such workshop in 2011 was conducted by Marisa Carnesky, last year we hosted Ursula Martinez; this year this precious collection will be joined by Moira Finucane, another  queen of provocation a “national treasure” of Australia.

You are invited to Klub Gromka where you will be entertained on the last night of the Festival by Image Snatchers and the participants of this year's five-day workshop The Art of Provocation conducted by Moira Finucane. The event will be followed by a DJ programme by Feminalz.

A mute comedy of the body, technoburlesque mocks rigid social roles. It appropriates, copies and sticks together femininity, masculinity, family relations, machismo and other degenerated social roles falsely considered to be normative. When Image Snatchers totally expose themselves – and shake off their social dresses layer-by-layer – they don’t get to the point but rather realize that nothingness is the point whilst the performed travesties of the body are the opium that makes living bearable. This amusing game in cross-dressing and their behaviour can be attributed to the great emancipation of sexuality and bodies of individuals from social bonds. Satisfied in the eclectic noise of media images, they stretch popular snapshots and chew them into forms never seen before that provokes bursts of laughter or despair. Image Snatchers aren’t after meaning but pleasure. Pleasure is the hedonistic polish they have smeared everyday objects with and turned them into something exceptional. Technoburlesque is an intersection of (program/cybernetic) code and subjectivity; a laying bare of the physical and emotional body indivisibly bound up with the information matrix of contemporaneity. (Ida Hiršenfelder)

Authors and performers: Feminalz (Image Snatchers) and the participants of The Art of Provocation workshop conducted by Moira Finucane: Tanja Canning, Maja Delak, Katja Kosi, Slobodan Malić, Vid Merlak, Gal Oblak, Dani Petković, Valentina Plaskan, Luka Prinčič, Slavko Trivković, Noemi Veberič Levovnik, Lana Zdravković; special guests: Moira Finucane and Clare St Clare. Light design: Betty Siemers, Costume design: Urška Recer; Make-up: Tina Prpar (Tinka Pobalinka); Music: Nova deViator and the workshop participants; Texts: Frau Strapatz, Feminalz and the workshop participants.

Co-ordination, executive production and public presentations: Sabina Potočki with the help of City of Women volunteers.

Production and organisation: Emanat, City of Women; In collaboration with: Klub Gromka.