© Gert Jan Van Rooij

Riley Harmon A method for blue logic

19:00-23:00

In 2012, Riley Harmon received an email from a conspiracy theorist. He was confused with a homonym, an actress who would have been created by the government to mislead the media. As an uncertain exploration of this mail he created the film A method for blue logic: in which you lose grip on what is real and what isn’t.

Relentless - Tom Engels invites ...

19:00–19:45

What does it mean to perform today? What do we want to perform? What do we want to stand for? What matters? What brings us to doing what we do? Why do we keep insisting, fighting waves of incompatible thoughts? What do we lend our bodies and minds to? What do we want to be penetrated by? Shall we be relentless? Shall we embody that which never seizes? Lingering questions in a world facing crises – manifold and manywhere.
On the occasion of Batard 2016, Tom Engels publishes relentless, a volume of fierce pieces by Bojana Cvejić, Samlingen (Amanda Apetrea, Nadja Hjorton, Stina Nyberg, Halla Ólafsdóttir and Zoë Poluch), Göksu Kunak, Bryana Fritz, Hana Miletić and a pirate. During three consecutive evenings, Tom Engels invites guest to launch the publication.

© Avener Prado

Silke Huysmans en Hannes Dereere Mining Stories

20:00–21:00 & 22:00–23:00

In the documentary theatre performance Mining Stories, Hannes Dereere and Silke Huysmans bring together different perspectives on one catastrophic event. Their starting point is the recent mining disaster in Brazil (November 2015) nearby the house where Silke grew up as a child. A mud stream, caused by a dam failure, washed away several villages. After this disaster, Silke and Hannes started to collect the stories of different voices who are all related in one way or another to the disaster and brought them together in a sound patchwork. All of them (habitants, scientists, historians, activists, neurologists, fisher men and politicians) tell their version of the story with their particular context and interest. In this performance they take a look at the different kinds of understanding which appear in the encounter of the different voices.

Anne Reijniers & Rob Jacobs – Échangeur

21:00-21:30

In the streets of the metropolis of Kinshasa, young Congolese imagine their version of the colonial past. While archival footage shows how the statue of explorer Stanley is being towed by a crane, a Lumumba imitator is looking for former president Mobutu. A man scrubs manhole covers until the word 'Leopoldville' becomes legible again. A boy with a whitewashed face, tropical helmet and whip, dances with ghosts on a roof. After the Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence, the Belgian colonial monuments were removed from Kinshasa's public squares. Today they stand side by side in the Congolese National Museum. In Échangeur emerges an imaginary city around an empty pedestal, where archival footage, performances and present-day Kinshasa interact.

Talk HUMAN/NON-HUMAN COLLABORATIONS: PEFORMING (WITH) MACHINES with Bryana Fritz, Néstor García Diaz and Jaha Koo

21:00–22:00

To open up a new space for encounters and shared thinking within the festival programme, this year, Batard would like to introduce to you the invited artists in a series of public talks. Each night two artists/collectives will join Maria Rößler for a conversation about concepts and questions that they are concerned with in their artistic research. These talks are a unique opportunity to get to know the international festival artists outside and beyond their performances. They will take place each night of the festival, in the time between two performances. Admission is free.
Maria Rößler lives and works between Amsterdam and Berlin. She studied Theatre and Media Science in Berlin and Dublin. As a producer and dramaturge, she has worked for performing arts productions, festivals and conferences. From 2013 until 2016, she was part of the artistic programme team of Foreign Affairs festival at Berliner Festspiele. Besides, she pursues independent projects including an on-going collaboration with technologist Nathan Fain. Together they developed the performance “Right Is the Might of the Community. A lecture on future democracy“, commissioned by HAU Berlin, which was presented by Batard in 2015.

Lulu Obermayer Tosca

20:00–21:00 & 22:00–23:00
Vissi D'Arte,

Vissi D'Amore, 

Non feci mai male ad anima viva
I lived for art,

I lived for love,

I never harmed a living creature.

In this performance 9 bars of the Aria Vissi D´Arte from the opera Tosca are being isolated from the plot and looped. Performer Lulu Obermayer lends her voice and body to an ontological and existential inquiry which Tosca within the narrative structure of the opera is not allowed to have. A duet between the live body of the performer and the mediated bodies of the speakers is taking place and opens up space for reflection. It raises questions: what does a life for art mean? What does a life for love mean? What are the consequences? Is it even possible? And along the way, isn't it unavoidable to harm someone?