ŠAHTO-KULTURA
ŠAHTO-KULTURA is a monumental performative-exhibition action by the House of Extreme Music Theatre, created and performed by 50 artists under the direction of Damir Bartol Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo, from 7 to 24 September 2024. Opening is on September 7th at 8 pm.
This radical installation will transform the Large Hall of Pogon, home of independent culture and the former Jedinstvo hydraulic pump factory, into an extreme labyrinthine schahtophone chamber, linking performers and audience through wire passages. The exhibition set-up, conceptualized by Damir Gamulin and Antun Sevšek, will also feature a six-channel video installation titled VIRUS OF ŠAHTO-KULTURA by Ivan Marušić Klif.
The ŠAHTO-KULTURA exhibitional installation will host performances including PANIC UNDER THE SUN, EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT THE WEATHER BUT NOT US!, and ISMENA, as well as schahtophone workshops for adults, such as ACCELERATIONISM, the schahtophony workshop for children and youth titled HORSES, and the accelerated workshop SCHAHTO-CULTURE OF OUR LIVES OUR LAND OUR PEOPLE, which is open to everyone.
Opening of ŠAHTO-KULTURA is happening with premiere of the performance PANIC UNDER THE SUN, on Saturday, September 7th, at 8 pm. Second performance is planned for Sunday, September 8th at 8 pm. Play about geographical and inner tectonic disturbances is performed by actor Vilim Matula, artist Siniša Labrović and the six-member Šaht Arkestar, together with Indoša and Vrvilo.
The concept of šahto-kultura stems from the schahtophones, instruments of bruitism designed for synthetic forms of performance and installations, with sound boxes and schahtophonic scores crafted by the artist and performer DB Indoš. These instruments, evolving from Indoš’s sound-stage objects made from spiritually recycled post-industrial waste since the late 1980s, are used as performance devices and stage objects in the multimedia productions of the House of Extreme Music Theatre.
The direct impetus for developing šahto-kultura is the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Pogon Jedinstvo – the home of independent culture – in 2024, with the retro-avant-garde program of the Parainstitute Indoš, the artistic and working space of Damir Bartol Indoš, who has been the first resident artist of Jedinstvo since 1998. The act of embedding šahto-kultura is in dialogue with the gesture of the workers from the main workshop of the Jedinstvo factory, who preserved their machines by burying them in the concrete base within the factory grounds. We are launching the šahto-kultura of internal armouring of Jedinstvo for collective rhizomatic work with a schahtophone database, from activating embedded instruments, exploring and utilizing the audio and video archives, collections of scores, sketches, and texts, to rehearsing new performance policies of presence. The interactive šahto-kultura installation for displaced performances layers and remediates the repository of Parainstitute Indoš’s workshop for instruments and performers, conjuring the production of presence beyond the future.
Throughout September, thirteen labyrinthine situations of šahto-kultura will develop practices of impoverished self-archiving, culminating in the extreme musical Agregreement – ROTULUS HOMO PENDULUM in January 2025, a multimedia labyrinthine performance dedicated to Marko Brecelj, created in artistic collaboration with Zlatko Burić and an expanded Croatian-Danish performance-musical ensemble.
The ŠAHTO-KULTURA program is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the City of Zagreb, and the Kultura Nova Foundation.
