SAMPLADELIA IN THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

ARTUPUNKTURA 2023 – SOCIAL PROCESSES, MAPPING NEW VISIONS AND URBAN ECOSYSTEMS
A cosmophonic performance of the synergy of extreme musical sound in public space and an exhibition-action of experimental instruments, an assemblage of urban elements used in the performance. The foundations of Zagreb's experimental performance, sound and poetry.

The House of Extreme Music Theatre by the artistic duo Damir Bartol Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo presents the cosmophonic performance Sampladelia in the Night of the Living Dead. The performance reanimates Matoš's myth of the dead by layering and remediation of texts, images and sounds to a hypertextual delirium, through an artistic collaboration with musicians from the radical post-punk music group Trobecove Krušne Peći: Darko Begić, Ivan Vinski, Mario Barišin and Gordan Dorvak; the musician from the former music group SexA Ivan Bilosnić; Eva Badanjak from the music group Žen, along with the special performer in this exhibition-performance, the poet and singer-songwriter Milan Manojlović Mance.

The two-day interactive installation for displaced performances in city squares includes the exhibition setup on the first day and a cosmophonic performance on the second day, taking place on the same level of the performance sidewalk, a shared space for the community of performers and the active audience participating in the social and artistic event. The performance and spatial points of the square are marked by the installation of Damir Bartol Indoš’s instrumentarium, his new armored shachtophone (manholephone) instruments, bringing the schacht (manhole) covers as close as possible to their underground origins.

The extreme title reveals the post-dramatic practice and the thematic focus of the work, the artistic sampling process as a method of appropriation, variation and editing of material borrowed from different times that infuses pop-culture and the horror genre with current political relevance. However, the performance returns the practice and theme to its absolutely contemporary foundation by actualizing Antun Gustav Matoš with the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth and his myth of the dead from the Parisian story Lonely Nights (1900), while relying on stylistic polyphony, vivisection and violence against the living text and fragments of the brilliant interpretation by stage actress Božena Kraljeva from 1969, with her voice subjected to rhythmic scratching back and forth and live repetition. Damir Bartol Indoš built his artistic vision as a member of the neo-avantgarde theater group Kugla Glumište (1975–1982), one of the most important theatrical, multimedia and interdisciplinary groups in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia. Kugla Glumište created a new conception of theater as an urban ritual and social situation.