Neforma #128
Put work aside for a moment… Every year on May 1st, Labour Day is celebrated in most countries around the world, with the exception of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, which each observe their own versions of the holiday under different names and on different dates. Interesting, isn’t it? The holiday originally commemorates the bloody demonstrations in Chicago in 1886, known as the Haymarket affair. Following the successes of the Canadian labour movement, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions demanded greater workers’ rights, above all the legal establishment of the eight-hour workday. In support of labour organizations pressing for the regulation to come into force on May 1st that year, masses of workers gathered in Chicago and launched a general strike. On May 4th, workers assembled at Haymarket Square, where, after an initially peaceful gathering, a bomb exploded in front of a police unit, killing eight police officers. The police responded by opening fire, killing dozens of people.
In 1929, the German Social Democratic Party banned the annual workers’ demonstrations in Berlin. Despite this, the German Communist Party, then the strongest political force in Berlin, called for May Day demonstrations anyway. The result was thirty-two deaths and at least eighty serious injuries caused by police violence. This incident, remembered in German as “Blutmai” (“Bloody May”), deepened the divide between the two major left-wing parties, the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their resulting inability to act together was partly responsible for the rise of the Nazi Party in 1933.
An important holiday charged with anti-capitalist meaning — one that, like International Women’s Day on March 8th, should resonate every day of the year. Not only on the day when we light bonfires and briefly set work aside. For dignified working conditions, fair pay, and respect for labour everywhere — including in the world of art!
You are warmly invited to spend your Saturday evening in May with us at Neforma #128, where the following artists will be navigating a music-and-dance improvisation together: Eva Mulej Vrabič, Filip Štepec, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, and Nina Virant.
Eva Mulej Vrabič is a composer, vocalist, and performer working at the intersection of electroacoustic, ambient, and experimental music. Her expression is rooted in an intimate practice of exploring the voice and imitating the sounds of nature. Through layering hypnotic vocals and acoustic instruments, using found objects, analogue synthesis, and field recordings, she creates immersive compositions that blur the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, inviting us into hyperreal sonic landscapes.
Nina Virant is a vocalist, composer, performer, vocal pedagogue, and artistic director of the original music project VIRA. Through her multifaceted artistic practice, she has long worked with one foot rooted in her home environment and the other in the Netherlands, where she graduated in 2019 as a vocalist from the Jazz Conservatory in Amsterdam. In 2022, she expanded, refreshed, and further developed her original project Ansambel za preužitek into what became VIRA. Together with an extended ensemble of outstanding musicians — jazz vocalist Veronika Kumar and jazz drummer Gard Nilssen — she presented her debut original work niei at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in 2023, released by the DruGod label. In Amsterdam, she also collaborates with theatre director Ilaria Forciniti and is part of the theatre collective NIM Theatre.
Filip Štepec holds a degree in dramatic acting. Before enrolling at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana, he was involved in contemporary dance under the mentorship of the cultural association Qulenium. He regularly participated in the Opus 1 young dance creators competition and other contemporary dance festivals for youth such as Transgeneracije and the Živa Festival. He is currently a graduate student in the Movement Arts programme at AGRFT.
Carolina Alessandra Valentini is a contemporary dancer from the Venetian islands. She first appeared on stage at the age of eleven, collaborating with choreographer Sarah Michelson at the Venice Biennale. She graduated in contemporary dance from Codarts Rotterdam University of the Arts, where she performed a diverse repertoire and worked with renowned teachers and choreographers during her studies. She subsequently worked between Italy and the Netherlands, performing in national theatres and at international festivals with various choreographers and productions, while also developing her own artistic practice. Since 2021, she has been a member of En–Knap Group in Ljubljana, where she performs a wide-ranging choreographic repertoire.
Neforma, a series of performance improvisations, brings together two media — or rather, creators from two artistic disciplines: musicians who engage with sound in distinctive ways, and performers whose primary instrument is their body. It cultivates and enables the development of improvisation as both a practice and a stage event. It is study- and process-oriented, embracing mistakes, slips, and stage catastrophes, fully aware that these are often the most valuable case studies.
If we do not want Neforma itself to become a fixed form, we must give participating artists the opportunity to propose and test their own conceptual parameters. Alongside dancers and musicians, Neforma also invites writers to reflect on improvisation. The idea is to present people who have a distinctive approach to the stage and to art in general. By bringing them into the territory of the live event, we believe this can open up creative experiences for all participants of Neforma, including the audience itself. Neforma invites artists both as guests and as hosts. They may choose to alter the protocols, propose different ways of engaging with the audience, and even redefine the location and format of their improvisation.
Colophon
Production: Zavod Sploh