Rodin II, installation with performance

Wednesday 19th March 2008 at 7 pm - Rodin II installation with performance by Muzeum Institute, staged in Slovene national theatre Maribor

"When modelling, think not in terms of surface, but in terms of plasticity. Your mind should imagine each surface as the utmost limit of a volume that pushes the surface from the inside out. Imagine that, somehow, a shape forces itself against you.”
(Auguste Rodin, Testament)

PROJECT RODIN is a theatre piece on the life and work of the sculptor August Rodin, comprised of two units. Rodin II, the second unit of the project Rodin, is based on theatre in gallery, while the elements of the exhibition are once again interiorised into the language of theatre: protagonists, costumes, set. Rodin II continues to develop the life story of Rodin in the form of psychological and physical theatre.

"Rodin II installation with performance by Muzeum Institute is based on the renowned realist sculptor, repositioning the visual art of installation into the domain of performing arts. Visual language is emphasised by the use of technology and upgraded into a composed narrative questioning the existence of an imagined figure from the past in the actual present environment.

His sculpting was a cause of consternation. Compared to contemporary artistic modes, it was an art marked by disproportion, a precious and precise disfigurement governed by the rule of emotion. Rodin's sculptures bear the traces of inner strife, of unresolved tension. In them, Rodin is, in his own words, "fiercely truthful".
The theatre and gallery production Rodin I, Rodin II wishes to redeem these residues of truth by exposing the falsity of the eye. Our eyes are obsessed with surfaces, with smoothness and sobriety. Our vision wishes to dissect life from the outside in, as if in an anatomy theatre and one can no longer find "an inner propulsion", "a life springing from a centre, bursting and flowering from the inside out."

The production Rodin I, Rodin II is ruled by imaginative adherence to historic truth. By historicising the context of Rodin's work it aims to break the perceptual habituation that reduces Rodin's wild plasticity to a mere surface, a patina. By actualising a certain historical context Rodin I, Rodin II exposes our own falsity of perception, peels our eyes, as it were, and gives birth to vision. It does this not so much through attention to biographical detail, but by following the more sinuous outlines of volume, of flesh." (Iva Jevtič)

Production: Muzeum, Ljubljana and Association for Culture and Education Kibla Maribor
Partner: Slovene national theatre Maribor in cooperation with Sonček Association - Sonček Centre Ljubljana and Cerebral Palsy Association of Slovenia
Performers: Mateja Rebolj, k.g., Bara Kolenc, Manca Krnel, Irena Tomažin, Katarina Bulič, Iztok Gubanc, Dalibor Nedić, Nina Nestorović, Robert Vardijan, Dare Pavlin (Sonček Association - Sonček Centre Ljubljana)
Direction, Stage design: Barbara Novakovič Kolenc
Dramaturgy, text: Iva Jevtić
Sound design: Blaž Peršin
Costume design: Barbara Stupica
Light design: Borut Bučinel
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana, Department for Culture