Ema Kugler: LONTANO or What Would Robert Wilson Do If………..???

Author: Ema Kugler
Title: LONTANO or What Would Robert Wilson Do If………..???
Year of creation: October 30, 2007, Old Post Office, Ljubljana
Owner: Ema Kugler
Work Data: Performance-manifesto, performer: theatre actress Romana Šalehar
Duration: 20 minutes
Photo documentation: Nada Milosavljević

Description of work:
The multimedia artist Ema Kugler has applied in 2007 with the project Lontano to the Annual call for performing arts of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City Municipality of Ljubljana. The approved subsidy was so low that the artist could not carry out the project with it. On the other hand, she did not want to settle for a work-in-progress i.e. an improvised form. She has therefore decided to perform a manifesto in the deserted spaces of the Old Post Office on October 30, 2007 – the actress Romana Šalehar has performed the public reading of the text written for the performance. The building of the Old Post Office was torn down the following day to be replaced by a parking lot.
In 2008, the project Lontano was sufficiently subsidised and subsequently realised within the planned frame.

Text of the performance (pdf)

Ema Kugler (1955)
The artist who proves through her work that the total artwork is the ultimate artistic expression. In her works, the tension between life and death is staged to the level of almost tangible presence. We feel this tension with all our senses in her performances staged in enormous empty cold industrial halls, factories, quarries or at screenings in total darkness, filled with sounds and/or images that escape any genre definition. Experiencing her events leaves us with sensual impressions that appear in our minds as images in the true sense of the word. They emerge as phantoms long after we may even remember the place and time when they have inhabited us – our dreams or daydreaming time. Ema Kugler is the master of phantoms.
(From the speech in the occasion of Ema Kugler’s reception of Prešeren Fund Award for experimental film Le Grand Macabre and the performance Introitus in 2008)

More at: CV (pdf), Filmography (Film Fund RS)