Pekinpah Association

Pekinpah - Iskra - 06.jpg — ISKRA, Non-Aligned Design: 1946-1990 exhibition

Simultaneously an organisational vehicle for dancers, designers, architects, and musicians, the Pekinpah Association is a rather singular production house. Established in 2007 and based in Ljubljana, its activities span contemporary dance production, the publishing and presentation of theoretical and practical reflections on design, and the management of the musical band Silence. The association produces performances and exhibitions, organises lectures and congresses, and publishes research into new media and information practices.

Eminently international in all of these respects, Pekinpah regularly performs, lectures, and collaborates abroad. Among its many activities is the Spider Festival, Festival of Radical Bodies.

Dance

Pekinpah has been producing and presenting choreographic and performing arts work at prestigious venues across Europe and beyond for over a decade, with a commitment to questioning the obvious and challenging the conventional. The association works extensively with internationally acclaimed choreographers Matej Kejžar and Leja Jurišić, whose work it produces and manages, and has previously collaborated with Mala Kline, alongside producing the work of other artists. In Slovenia, it frequently collaborates with the Bunker Institute, mounting most of its productions at Stara Elektrarna, the Španski borci Culture Centre, or elsewhere.

Venues and festivals abroad that have hosted Pekinpah's productions or artists include Festival Tanzhafen (Linz, AT), Festival d'Avignon (FR), Théâtre National (BE), XS 2016 Festival (BE), Shoonya Centre for Art and Somatic Practices (Bangalore, IN), SEAD (AT), Teatro Renascença (Porto Alegre, BR), SOTA Theatre (SG) and Ganz Novi Festival (Zagreb, HR). The association's artists are also frequently invited for international co-productions, working alongside renowned individuals and companies.

Spider Festival

The first SPIDER project was initiated by Matej Kejžar, Michaël Pomero (FR), and Antigone Gyra (GR) in 2012, weaving a web of mobility among around 40 artists from different countries, cultures, and artistic fields and milieus – dancers, choreographers, musicians, writers, visual artists. Under the auspices of SPIDER, Pekinpah organised international artistic events in Athens, Zagreb, Lyon, Berlin, Brussels and Ljubljana – where SPIDER has since become an annual festival.

Design and publishing

One of the reasons for establishing the association was to promote and carry out activities regarding design theory, which was (and still is) rarely dealt with in Slovenia. With only a handful of studies on theory of design having been previously published in Slovenian language, Pekinpah's publishing endeavours in this vein have significantly altered the field.

Petra Černe Oven, PhD, and Barbara Predan, PhD, are the main force behind Pekinpah's design endeavours. They curate the publishing programme and have either edited or contributed to a number of works, often featuring renowned authors from abroad. The publications are frequently also published (at least partly) in English, with a good number of them co-published by the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO).

Highlights of the publications include Back to Design: an Anthological Survey of Design Theory in Slovenia (2007, published with Litera Publishing House); Sustainable Alternatives in Design: It's High Time We Start Losing Time (2009, featuring texts by Dieter Rams, Ezio Manzini, Jonathan Chapman, Clive Dilnot, Per Mollerup and Victor Margolin); ISKRA: Non-aligned Design 1946–1990 (2009, accompanied by the same-titled exhibition on industrial design by the Slovene company Iskra); On Information Design (2010, featuring Yuri Engelhardt, Rob Waller, Jorge Frascara, Karel van der Waarde, Malcolm Garrett and Karen Schriver).

In 2017, Predan and Černe Oven were featured in the compendium called Information Design: Research and Practice, published by Routledge. Pekinpah is a part of the CODEC, the Contemporary Design Collaborative, an initiative to build a network of design professionals in the CEE region.

Pekinpah - Iskra - 05.jpg — ISKRA, Non-Aligned Design: 1946-1990 exhibition

Events

In collaboration with MAO, Pekinpah has organised several series of lectures (about sustainable alternatives in design, visual communications theory, etc.) hosting international lecturers (for example, in 2017 Vik Burian & Jose Scalipne from Typetogether). In 2009, MAO and Pekinpah conceived an overview exhibition on the development of design at the Slovene company Iskra. The project marked the 30th anniversary of the launch of Iskra's internationally recognised telephone, the ETA 80, by the distinguished Slovene designer Davorin Savnik.

Together with the Jožef Stefan Institute, Pekinpah also organised the 5th Italian Business Forum and collaborated at the Slovenia Design Showroom Milano 2017 (curated and edited by Barbara Predan). Predan and Černe Oven are frequently invited to lecture or present workshops around the world.

Music

Pekinpah Association is home to the renowned musical duet Silence, led by Primož Hladnik (music and arrangements) and Boris Benko (music, lyrics and vocals). Having published a number of very well-received albums, they frequently collaborate with Laibach and regularly collaborate with acclaimed theatre (Tomaž Pandur (1963–2016), Matjaž Pograjc, Aleksandar Popovski and Primož Ekart) and film (Damjan Kozole) directors.

In 2015, Laibach and Silence become the first Western alternative acts to perform in North Korea.

External links

Pekinpah Association website

Gallery

Clive Dilnot's lecture on Sustainable alternatives in design, 2008

Dieter Rams's lecture on Sustainable alternatives in design, 2008

ISKRA, Non-Aligned Design: 1946-1990 exhibition

Spider project (Athens) poster, 2010

Karel van der Waarde's lecture on visual communication design, 2010

Silence

Pekinpah Association

Contents