Improper Names

On names on film — Dora García & Eugène Green
Wednesday 20.03.2019, 19:00h @ Cinema Europa [Müller Hall]

— Dora García: Second Time Around (Segunda vez) | 94’ | 2018. | Belgium, Norway

Dora García intertwines politics, psychoanalysis and performance into Segunda Vez. This staged award-winning documentary orbits the figure of Oscar Masotta—a pivotal theorist in the Argentinian avant-garde from the 1950s to the 1970s. Masotta’s ideas on Lacanian psychoanalysis, politics and art (happenings and dematerialized art) changed the artistic landscape of that 1960s Buenos Aires preceding the dictatorship and with it the end of the avant-garde. The title, Segunda Vez, originates from a homonymous story written by a contemporary of Masotta’s, Julio Cortázar, which recounts the climate of psychosis and uncertainty caused by the trauma of disappearances in Argentina.

Dora García is Spanish artist and researcher on the parameters and conventions of the presentation of art, questions of time – real or fictional – and the limits between representation and reality. In 2011 she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale, and in the 56th edition of 2015 she presented the performance and installation project “The Sinthome Score”, based on a transcription of Jacques Lacan’s 23rd seminar.

Second Time Around won the Grand Prix at FIDMarseille2018, ex aequo with Albert Serra’s Roi Soleil.
 

— Eugène Green: How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (Como Fernando Pessoa salvou Portugal) | 26’ | 2018. | Portugal, France, Belgium

During the 20’s, at the request of one of his employers, the poet Fernando Pessoa conceives an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca, which panics the authoritarian government of that time.

“That the writer of the XXth century who embodied most completely his imagination to the point of dividing himself into several personalities, each with their own work, sought throughout his life to succeed in business, only represents ostensibly a contradiction. In the case of Pessoa, he earned his living by managing the foreign correspondence of several companies of Baixa in Lisbon, an occupation which bored him but which also left him free time for literary creation. All his attempts at success in practical projects had a quick and pitiful end. Fernando accepted with resignation and even good humor the inefficiency of his efforts to conquer material wealth and a more advantageous place in society. Accomplished astrologer, he saw in the stars that he was to be a great poet, along with the price to pay.” (Eugène Green)

Born in New York, Eugène Green lives in France since 1969, where he has adopted the nationality and language. His published books include essays, poetry, and six novels. Also a filmmaker, he has written and directed seven feature films: Toutes les nuits, Le monde vivant, Le Pont des Arts, La religieuse portugaise, La sapienza, Faire la parole, and Le fils de Joseph and several shorts and documentaries. He won several awards on numerous film festivals around the world, including Locarno, Lisabon, and London.

Ugo Vlaisavljević: Intriguing discreteness of personal name
Thurdsday, 21.03.2019, 19: 00h @ MaMa, Preradovićeva 18, Zagreb

Is there really a personal name? Is it not always a “common name”? Personal names of the natural language as what is least of their own: the “outer” plane of “internal” exchange. What is the reference of the name of the natural language itself, if it has it at all? When common names (nouns) function as personal names? There is no natural language without country. Reference to the country as a property of a natural language. Circulation of personal names in nature as a circle of ethnical distinctiveness. Lacan’s formula of sexuation as a formula for the function of (ethnic) personal name. Female name and male affiliation. The name of the language as the name of the father/nation. An unusual case when toponyms do not name, or a country fall out from a territorial state order (did Goli Otok existed at all?).

Ugo Vlaisavljević is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sarajevo and one of the most prominent philosophers of the whole post-Yugoslav space. He is a member of the editorial office of several journals and an important translator of recent philosophical literature (eg. Deconstruction of monotheism by Jean-Luc Nancy by Faculty of Media and Communication, Beograd).
He is the author of a great number of books and articles, including exceptional studies of (post)Yugoslav ethnopolitics and phenomenology, most notably War as the largest cultural event and Lepoglava and Universities, an Essay of Political Epistemology.
In addition to academic activities, Ugo is one of the most prominent figures in the public life of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a seldom clear, critical and provocative intellectual.

Goran Sergej Pristaš: Exploded Gaze [book launching]
Friday, 22.03.2019, 19:00h @ Academy of Dramatic Arts

After the American presentations in Chicago and at the Stanford University, and before the European promotions in Ljubljana and Copenhagen, we invite you to Zagreb’s book lunching of Exploded Gaze by Goran Sergei Pristaš, a kind of summa dramaturgicaof author’s theoretical and artistic practices. The book was published by the Multimedia Institute, in cooperation with collaborative performance collectiv BADco and the Drugo more.

Words:
> Bojana Kunst, Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen
> Una Bauer, Academy of Dramatic Arts, Zagreb
> Stephen Zepke, Wien
> Goran Sergej Pristaš, Academy of Dramatic Arts, Zagreb

Music:
> Alen & Nenad Sinkauz

Diverse in forms and rich in styles, from personal artistic notes to academic insights, this volume is “recapitulating two decades of reflection from Pristaš’s work in theatre and artworld, Exploded Gaze flashes out as a rare treat of poetics and political and philosophical thought at once. In a virtuoso stroke of style, this volume advances novel terms of viewing, time and production in which the imaginative and critical powers of theatre are reinvented past theatre. Like Jean-Luc Godard, Mladen Stilinović or Anne Boyer, Pristaš reinvigorates the dense thinking from within the matter of art that can alter our worldview if we follow its shrewd implications.” (Bojana Cvejić)

Goran Sergej Pristaš is a dramaturge, founder member of performing arts collective BADco. and Professor of Dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, University of Zagreb. With his projects and collaborations Pristaš participated at Venice Biennale 2011 and 2016, Documenta 12 and numerous festivals, exhibitions and conferences.