15th Extraordinary Congress is a four and a half-hour-long performance – a meeting of seven women, emigrants from the former Yugoslavia. The subjects for the conversation are drawn by the moderator from cards with such phrases as “Tito”, “Ex-Yu nostalgia”, “missing lives
”. The stories of the women are improvised. Thanks to this atypical congress, untold stories, unimportant from the political perspective, which have their roots in specific human experiences, can be expressed. The participants change depending on the city or country where the performance is staged. Each and every time the artist cooperates with different emigrants. The project premiered during London International Theatre Festival in June 2014.The viewers are free to enter and leave at they please throughout the duration of the performance.
Vlatka Horvat
Vlatka Horvat is a Croatia-born artist, working across a range of modes and contexts, such as sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, and text. Her projects often focus on re-arranging or reconfiguring objects, built space and social relations at play in it, by staging the human figure in a precarious relationship with her surroundings. Vlatka studied Theater and Performance Studies in Chicago and holds a practice-based PhD from Roehampton University in London. After 20 years in the US, she currently lives in London. Her work has been presented extensively, e.g. at the 11th Istanbul Biennial, the Kitchen (New York), Disjecta (Portland), STROOM (den Hague), MoMA PS1 (New York), among others. Her work in visual art is represented by Zak| Branicka (Berlin), annex14 (Zurich), and Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York).
Concept: Vlatka Horvat
15th Extraordinary Congress: London was co-commissioned by LIFT and 14-18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions. A House on Fire Project, supported by the Cultural Programme of the European Union and the National Lottery
through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England and presented with Battersea Arts Centre.