Dejan Kaludjerović in collaboration with Marija Balubdžić, Bojan Djordjev, and Tanja Šljivar
Conversations: I don’t know that word … yet

Opera Performance / Commissioned work

Dates
9.–12.9.2021

Details
9.9.
Expressions and Other Curiosities
Teaser (as part of the festival opening)
Europaplatz
8020 Graz

10.9., 19:00
11.9., 14:00, 19:00
Conversations: I don’t know that word … yet
Opera Performance
Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv
Karmeliterplatz 3
8010 Graz

12.9., 19:00
Norbert Artner Park (guest performance Klagenfurt Festival)
9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee

Location
Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv
Graz

Production specifics
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ʼ21
With the kind support of Klagenfurt Festival

In his first ever opera production, artist Dejan Kaludjerović teams ups with composer and musician Marija Balubdžić, theater director Bojan Djordjev, and author and librettist Tanja Šljivar to ask how children interpret today’s complex political reality.

Since 2013, Dejan Kaludjerović has been developing the Conversations series, having interviewed, so far, forty-nine children in seven countries for a total duration of approximately twenty-two hours. Each time, a series of about fifty questions is asked on political issues such as social exclusion and inclusion, foreigners, language, isolation, war, money, poverty, work, and so on. Each Conversation, shown in site-specific sound installations, turns into a litmus test for the society where it was created. In this new version of his ongoing project, the witty, hilarious, poignant, and insightful answers of children are taken as material for an opera, performed by four adult performers of different musical backgrounds. Their voices are mixed with samples from the original interviews, turning them into beats, chords, and soundscapes, the music ranging from pop and house to hymnic, burlesque, full-scale “operatic” and back.

Performance: Zoja Borovčanin, Lisa Cristelli, Christoph Gerhardus, Sebastian Hiti
​Conception and visual creation: Dejan Kaludjerović
Directed by Bojan Djordjev
Music: Marija Balubdžić
Libretto: Tanja Šljivar, based on Dejan Kaludjerović’s scripts originating from his interviews with children from Baku, Belgrade, Graz, Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Tehran, Vienna, and Vladikavkaz, used in the work Conversations he has been producing since 2013
Costumes: Vesna Kracanović
Sound: audiotope studios (Andreas Kapfer and Stefan Könighofer)

Mediathek

Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective