ASTRIT ISMAILI UNIKAT 2017 Performance together with Suwane Jo 60 min. NeuNow Festival, Amsterdam, 2017 UNIKAT is the result of two years investigation on the relations between image and sound. During the process I was interested to extract the vulnerability and the emotionality that comes from the human voice that is produced by singing, breathing and whistling. The performance explores the possibilities of becoming which rise from the personal but produce new and independent trajectories for the audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ktizkwab8&t=5s
NEMESIS 2017 30 min. Amsterdam Art Weekend, Juliette Jongma Gallery, Amsterdam, 2017 NEMESIS is an emo pop experience that explores the vulnerability of the voice in relation to self balance, destruction and sexuality. The songs speak about feminine energy, cosmic space, age, witchcraft, free movement. The songs are executed parallel to actions that often put the body at stake. The tension between the singing and the physicality is a contrast that make the viewer float between contemplation and concentration, humour and shock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldjsfmftsnm
Rapping NEMESIS Lost & Found Program, Waag Society, Amsterdam, 2017 I don t care now what you think I don t care know what you know I don t really wanna stay I don t really wanna go I don t really know I am learning to say no, learning to say no If i stay what will I gain If i go what will I miss Raining, clouds Singing, sinking I became a butterfly I got only one day left This one day is a lifetime Restricted by the politics Free movement impossible Get me checked Check my blood Check my roots Check my teeth Check my balance My ID brahh, but they don t really know that... Excerpt from the lyrics of NEMESIS
NEMESIS 2017 30 min. Performance together with Erman Bolukcu and Laurin Opperman Kunstfabrik A. Flutgraben, Berlin, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jptfdnz5tmc
GREAT AGAIN Lucia Marneanu & Astrit Ismaili 2017 Open Reading of a Skype Transcript 180 min. Great Again is a text generated via Skype by me and Rumanian performer/illustrator Lucia Marneanu. This skype transcript consists of 5 chapters that speak about fear, war, wilderness, love and beyondness through our personal experiences, artistic work and other artists. The first 4 chapters tackle gentrification, the 99 war in Kosovo, transgressive performances and gender by ending with the last chapter that goes into fiction. We closed the writing phase with two open readings, in Cluj by the end of May and in Amsterdam by the beginning of June 2017.
LOVE RESEARCH 2016-2017 Performance and video 30 min. LOVE RESEARCH is a performance made in collaboration with the women from the Combiwel country music dance class. With this project I intended to place a fictional figure (the pregnant boy) to interact with an existing community (the ladies from the country music dance class) creating a clash between fiction and reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqxztubdz7m&t=111s
UNIKAT Performance DasArts, Amsterdam, 2016
UNIKAT Performance Tobacna 001 gallery, Ljubljana, 2016
INNOC NT 2015 Performance, DasArts - Master of Theater, Amsterdam 60 min. Three different processes dive in various topics exploring the energy on the frames of multiplicity. Dreams and gender identity, art and market, dependence and need for one truth are the main topics explored here. The performance space transforms itself into a market place, where the performers body and the artworks are on sale. The action of buying and the direct interaction in the piece makes the audience itself comment on important topics like: religion, nationalism, homosexuality, prostitution, etc. in relation to materialism and the capitalist system.
INNOC NT 2015 Performance, DasArts - Master of Theater, Amsterdam
Drawing produced during INNO NT 2015 Felt pen on paper 21 x 15 cm
Drawings produced during INNO NT 2015 Felt pen on paper each 15 x 21 cm
Drawings produced during INNO NT 2015 Felt pen on paper each 15 x 21 cm
THE DAY I BECAME A POPSTAR 2014 Performance, DasArts - Master of Theater Amsterdam 30 min. This performance investigates in the nature and mechanisms of the pop star concept. Ismaili deconstructs in particular the relationship between image and sound to fathom their interaction. The performance explores the position of the artists in the society and the compromises they have to make in order to be part of the market. Using over identification as a strategy he transforms a pop concert into a ritualistic meditative act. During the performance he constantly reinvents his image by using different specific products like food, giving his face for free as a promotion.
Reinvention of the self Part of the performance, The day I became a Popstar 2014 Photographs Dimension variable
Reinvention of the self Part of the performance, The day I became a Popstar 2014 Photograph Dimension variable
Reinvention of the self Part of the performance, The day I became a Popstar 2014 Photograph Dimension variable
Innocent 2015 from the ongoing series Impossible Bodies Digital photograph, 8,64 x 12,96 x 300 pixels Astrit Ismaili often presents his visions with pictures photoshop processed, but that last vision of turning photos into an image close to classical painting. His approach is not simply that of a transformation trick to enable today s digital technology, he builds these tools to complete a conceptual vision, where he cares for scenario, costumes, gestures, environment, and a coherent story that not openly disclosed, but the interior radiates as intriguing image. Starting from a composition of type fashion, Ismaili ensure that they take a runner and artificial aura of seniority and, by combining so many powerful and provocative manners, appeal to disgust. Shkelzen Maliqi 2010 Deniz 2015 from the ongoing series Impossible Bodies Digital photograph, 8,64 x 12,96 x 300 pixels
Feel my plastic 2015 from the ongoing series Impossible Bodies Digital photograph 8,64 x 12,96 x 300 pixels Urban Fairytale 2011 from the ongoing series Impossible Bodies Digital photograph 8,64 x 12,96 x 300 pixels
Musicvideo E Dehun by Era Istrefi Concept and directed by Astrit Ismaili 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yddx5mb9vig
Keep It Beautiful 2014 Performance Züricher Theater Spektakel, Zurich Keep it Beautiful East or West or West or East, but the most important thing is to be what you want. Do you know what you want? Sometimes you think you think you know, then you realize that that wasn t you. Fuck!!! They took the most beautiful thing you had. YOU. I know they re trying to take it. But at the end, I decide and I am going to keep it beautiful. Astrit Ismaili 2014 Astrit Ismaili is one of the most outstanding artists of his generation, and he is one of the most challenging actors in terms of the cultural and sociopolitical relevance of artistic work in his region. Astrit s artistic endeavor in general can be described as a kind of extended performance. His series of photos, his performances, actions and videos are questioning social conventions, tacitly accepted rules and myths of identity so as to challenge the public, politics, and the institutional context in which his work is presented. Christine Frisinghelli (Founding Editor of Camera Austria International magazine)
CRAVE 2014 Performance at Skena Up International Film and Theater, Prishtina by Sarah Kane, directed by Astrit Ismaili with Arta Gashi, Fikrete Miftari, Florist Bajgora and Edona Vatoci CRAVE was Sarah Kane s fourth play. It premiered at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in August 1998, but was first heard as a reading as part of a programme run by Paines Plough. It was aired under a pseudonym largely so the play could be heard without the attendant baggage of her notorious reputation for graphic staged violence. It has no plot in any conventional sense, nor any physical action; Kane s script denotes the characters by initial letters only, and includes no stage directions of any kind other than indicating where to leave a beat between what are almost invariably single, brief lines. The work resembles a spoken poem and the lines include quotation, oblique reference and occasional lines in other languages. The gender of each character is only identifiable from context within the play. Crave continues the theme of pain in love that Kane had explored with previous plays.
LOVE.STATE.KOSOVO 2013 Perfromance with with Beatrice Fliechlin, Antje Schupp and Labinot Rexhepi 90 min Culturescapes, Kaserne Basel; Teatri Oda, Prishtina; Teatri i Prizrenit, Teatri i Gjilanit, Gjilan; Theater Spektakel Festival, Rote Fabrik, Zurich; Theater Tuchlaube, Aarau; Spielart Festival, Munich The piece LOVE.STATE.KOSOVO deals among other things with childhood expericanes during the Kosovo was of 1999. Astrit wedges himself with arms, legs and back under a table and tells the story of a planned flight of his extended family in a mini car that however failed and led to their return to Prishtina. Astrit is able to create an impression of lightness among the public, walking on a fine line between comeday and seriousness that makes it a little easier to deal with one s own concerment. At some other passage Astrit buckes a curved table around his naked belly serves schnapps to the public, talks to the viewers and presents himself like a communication centaur, half human beling, half tavern table, thus inviting everybody to understand the happening on stage as a common action encompassing the public. In fact in general he is making clear to the public that he likes to start from scratch and he is standing there withour clothes to bring home his point in order to show the human creature, its bare life, without social status or history, just bringing his body, his language and his interaction. Yet he is dissolving this encounter from scratch the very next moment in order not to overtax his audience and his fellow actors. Carena Schlewitt (Artistic driector of the Kaserne Basel / Switzerland)