Nicholas Grafia & Mikołaj Sobczak
Situation Report
Video series / Commissioned work
Nicholas Grafia & Mikołaj Sobczak, Situation Report (2021), video series, video still
Dates
27.9.–3.10.2021
Details
In the streets of Graz and online
Location
Graz
Production specifics
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ʼ21
With the kind support of Polish Institute Vienna
Each week of the festival program is accompanied by uniquely performative video reports from the streets and environs of Graz. They are not “coverage” in the traditional sense, but rather artistic and intellectual projects, complementing the festival’s other situations.
During the fourth week of the festival, artist duo Nicholas Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak take their collaborative performance practice to Graz’s public spaces. Utilizing traditional Slavic and Filipino mythologies, they build narratives in which folk beliefs clash with current sociopolitical debates (especially minority politics). Interested in the strange, mysterious, and unsettling aspects of modern life, they often take up taboo subjects and probe different models of masculinities. The duo also play with the intelligibility and comprehensibility of their narratives by using different languages. Their performances are always situated in a particular time and space and on this occasion respond to local contexts in Graz. One of these will be EuroSkills 2021: European Championship for Young Professionals—an event and a contest for what some consider to be systemically relevant occupations.
Mediathek
Retrospective
Retrospective