Tuesday, 25. 9. 2012

Vodnik’s homestead

The spirit of creativity returns to the 300-year-old Vodnik family home, birthplace of the first Slovene writer Valentin Vodnik, with the opening of the Centre for Sonorous Arts.

On the basis of a public tender, the management of the Vodnik homestead was taken over in April 2012 by Hanna's Atelier for Sonorous Arts, while the majority of the building was renovated by the City of Ljubljana.

Sonorous research theatre is an avant-garde theatre form, which exploits the latest technological inventions, knowledge of musical theory and practice, as well as the discovery of the human psyche such that it creates a multimedia and interdisciplinary art form, a unique and unrepeatable theatrical experience.

This is a new, totally indigenous phenomenon, which has been developed and implemented in the Slovenian cultural space and is at this point in time developed to such an extent that our cultural space can actively connect with current developments in the realm of contemporary European avant-garde theatre and, in dialogue with global creators and innovators, continue to contribute to the development and promotion of new artistic research and routes.

Since the Vodnik family home has become famous for nurturing of musical arts in recent decades, sonorous arts are a natural extension and broadening of this field of operations, linking as they do all that resonates and sounds – music, sound, the psychology of sound, film, theatre, architecture, video and audio elements in all these artistic genres.

The Vodnik homestead will play host to sonorous performances, sound installations, video, dance, the composition and transformation of sound on stage, creating a sound image in films. There is to be established a gallery of the latest achievements in the field of audiovisual art and a small shop with sonoric products. An AudioArt café is to open with the chance to listen to ambient sounds for creative stimulating socialising, while a sonoric chamber will be set up to experience the sound of silence and of the sauna for brain centre regeneration and minimalisation of the effects of all-pervasive noise pollution. The homestead will also feature a modern studio space, which will operate as part of an educational centre in the field of audio engineering and sound design with special emphasis on aesthetics and dramaturgy of sound creations. An audio kindergarten will be devoted to the music education of the youngest.

The opening of the Centre for Sonorous Arts on 25 September 2012 took place under the honorary patronage of the President of Slovenia Dr Danilo Türk, while those in attendance were addressed by Mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Janković.