Bazaar Festival: MOTHERS OF STEEL / Agata Siniarska & Mădălina Dan

An investigation into the phenomenology of tears .
performance length: 60 min
Imagine two entities in the near future, artificial emotionalities, named Fembot A.E. and Omnipresence, that can determine their own state of matter. They are made of steel … Mothers of Steel. Alternating historical facts with future narratives, they travel back and forth in time with the help of human genetics and impersonations from origins to ends, from wires to flesh, from data to memory, from face to interface. First mourning emotional identification with their long gone countries Poland and Romania, they then claim a state of their own. A state where territories and female powers are boundless.

Performance is a part of 2017 Bazaar Festival and it is in English

This project is an investigation into the phenomenology of tears that touches upon many themes - memory, history, death, happiness, fragility, innocence, strength, futuristic ontologies, etc. It puts into question social and cultural mechanisms related to public and private displays of emotions. Contrasting personal statements with iconic scenes of crying in an Eastern European context, it examines how emotions are manifested in different situations, and why we do (or do not) express them publicly. Within narratives concerning our biopolitics – cultural/national/emotional identities - the project approaches today’s post-body/technological paradigms and it is an attempt to entangle the personal with the artificial.

Concept and performance: Mădălina Dan, Agata Siniarska
Dramaturgical assistance: Mila Pavicevic, Siegmar Zacharias
Sound, video, graphic design: Diego Agulló
Production: Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk
Coproduction: Konfrontacje Teatralne (Lublin), Fabrik Potsdam, Motus, producers of the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre, Prague
Premiére: October 8th, 2016 Poznan (Poland)

Mădălina Dan, maker and facilitator, studied at the Choreography Highschool in Bucharest and in the choreography department of the National University of Theatre and Film, where she also received her Masters in playwrighting. She was a member of Oleg Danovski Ballet Company from 1998 till 2003. She was invited artist to the Herberger Institute, School of Dance (Arizona State University) in 2009 and in 2008 she received the danceWEB scholarship in Vienna. She studied at HZT, Berlin in the “Solo/Dance/Authorship” MA program (2014-2016). Along the years, she has been an active member in the contemporary dance community in Romania, at the National Dance Centre in Bucharest, teaching and developing educational and social programs. . In 2015 she received a CNDB award for her contribution brought to the development in contemporary art in Romania. Works by Madalina Dan have been shown at Springdance Festival Utrecht, Tanzquartier Wien, Balkan Dance Platform-Novi Sad, eXplore Dance Festival- Bukarest, Temps d’Images- Cluj, SouthBank Center & Chisenhale Dance Space- London, Fabrik Potsdam, Hebbel am Uffer- Berlin, TanzFabrik Berlin, Dance Theater Workshop- New York, Firkin Crane-Cork, Studio ALTA Prague and others. Latest collaborations together with: Sergiu Matis, Agata Siniarska, Tahni Holt, Mihaela Dancs, Alexandra Pirici.

Agata Siniarska makes works within the formats of performance, events, practices, lectures, videos, and others. Having given a chance to different kinds of theatrical forms, having studied choreography, currently she devises feminist fun studies and cultivates her yearnings for language and writing, cinema and animation in the scope of her practices. She is a founding member of female trouble - a friendship based collective revolving around identity, body, feminisms, pleasure, affirmation and love. Addicted to fiction, she conducts her investigations, fashioning herself as a tool of rhetoric, through the cultural structures inscribed to her. Every action she makes, fueled by the energy of profound theoretical hesitancy, she approaches with passion and intense fascination, acting many times not alone but in the company of many exquisite adventures.
cargocollective.com/agatasiniarska