Festival Critics
Have you experienced powerful, strange or funny performances during the festival week? Are you longing to hear some very bright people reflect on the festival performances and the programme? Then you definitely need to attend the festival lunch talks! We have asked a number of culture-personalities to take part in talks about the festival performances and the program – in short, these are carefully selected festival critics! Participants: writer Aris Fioretos, writer and manager Nisha Besara, professor Ingrid Elam, journalist Sara Abdollahi, performer, director Liz Aggiss and artist Zafire Vrba.
Photo: Johan Wingborg
Ingrid Elam & Sara Abdollahi
SUNDAY 21/8 12:00-13:00 Kristallfoajén / Stora Teatern
Ingrid Elam is a professor in literary composition at Konstnärliga fakulteten, the University of Gothenburg. She has been Culture Manager for magazines like iDag, Göteborgs-Posten and Dagens Nyheter. Her latest book is called Jag. En fiktion, en essä om jaget i litteraturen (2012).
Photo: Patrick Miller
Sara Abdollahi is a culture journalist, a promoter for the noticed culture platform called Kultwatch and also editor in chief for the magazine Författaren.
Photo: Ian Jones
Lizz Agiss & Zafire Vrba
WEDNESDAY 24/8 12:00-13:00 (IN ENGLISH) Kristallfoajén / Stora Teatern
Professor Emeritus, Dr (Hon) LIZ AGGISS is a performer, director, choreographer, writer and producer of her own work. For the past 40 years Liz Aggiss has been re(de)fining her own brand of British contemporary dance performance, dodging categorization and being classified as unclassifiable. Blurring the boundaries between high art and popular culture, she makes uncompromising, challenging work which has a distinct visual aesthetic, resists the ‘authority’ of formal conventions. From her early days in the 1980’s supporting punk legends The Stranglers with her cabaret troupe The Wild Wigglers, to her classic solo Grotesque Dancer, to her dance/opera duet Falling Apart at the Seams, to her performance lecture Survival Tactics, to her cross art performance The English Channel, to her current black humoured solo Slap and Tickle, Liz Aggiss has been redefining her own brand of British contemporary dance. Her screen dance films, most notably Motion Control, have received numerous awards and commissions from BBC and Channel 4, and have won; Czech Crystal Prague Golden Film Festival: Special Jury Golden Houston: Best Woman Film MediaWaves Hungary: Romanian National Office of Cinematography: Special Jury Prize Napolidanza: DCW L.A. Innovation in the field of Dance Media: Hong Kong Jumping Frames Screen Dance Award. She received the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award 1994, Arts Council Dance Fellowship 2003, is Emeritus Professor at the University of Brighton and Hon. Doc. University of Gothenburg Sweden.
Photo: Topi Laiti
Zafire Vrba is an artist, performer and educator working with safer spaces, trans rights and accessibility. Zafire makes educational TV, run the feminist gallery FAGS and gives workshops on pleasure, drag and self defence. Most of Zafire’s projects involve several countries with a base in Stockholm and Gothenburg. www.zafirevrba.com.
Photo: Emilia Bergmark Jimenez
Nisha Inana Besara & Aris Fioretos
SATURDAY 27/8 12:00-13:00 Kristallfoajén / Stora Teatern
Nisha Inana Besara is a writer and a manager.
Photo: Thomas Florscheultz
Aris Fioretos is a writer. In 1991 he published his first book, a volume of lyrical prose entitled Delandets bok (The Book of Imparting), which has been followed by a series of novels, essays, and scholarly studies. Most recently he published the novel Mary (2015), which was shortlisted for the August Prize and received Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize 2016, and the booklength essay Vatten, gåshud (Water, Gooeseflesh), a declaration of love to the novel and to jellyfish. Fioretos lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm.
All Festival Critics are held in Kristallfoajén at Stora Teatern.
The talks are approximately 1 hour. It is possible to buy lunch from 11:30.
Free entrance.
