We are pleased to announce that on Saturday, July 29, the international premiere of Still Standing, one of FestivALT’s long-term projects, will take place as part of the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art.
Still Standing is a site-specific living sculpture that explores the body as a memory time-machine in urban spaces. It aims to promote empathy and care towards the remnants of history. Individual bodies, carrying their own social, gender, and political qualities, become the medium for universal storytelling in relation to a site of (non)memory. Parts of the work recall the historical choreography of Israeli choreographer Noa Eshkol and her 1953 work for the 10th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In Still Standing, the artists are recreating parts of Noa’s Eshkol choreography – an Israeli choreographer born in the 1920s in the Degania Bet kibbutz. Her father – Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik (or Skolnik) – was born in Oratov near Kiev. Before emigrating to Palestine in 1914, he received a traditional Jewish education at a university in Vilnius.
In Vilnius, Still Standing takes place on the margins of the former Old Jewish Cemetery in Sznipiszok. The site’s layered history makes it a perplexing or troubling material to work in proximity with. Accompanied by an autonomous online audio recording, Still Standing shares personal stories and facts about the performance site and reflects on how to care for the past.
Performance credits
Concept: Aleksandra Janus, Weronika Pelczyńska
Performance: Monika Szpunar, Weronika Pelczyńska
Voice-over: Irmina Liškauskaitė, Aleksandra Janus
Audio realisation and production: Aleksander Żurowski
Translator: Monika HaberProduction; FestivALT, Krakow
Premiere: 3 October 2020 in the green outdoor site of KL Płaszów – a former concentration camp in Krakow, Poland
