Image Snatchers

About

Technoburlesque is a mute comedy of the body that mocks rigidity of social roles. It uncritically appropriates, copies and glues together femininity, masculinity, family relationships, machismo and other degenerated social roles that are unrighteous considered to be normative. When Image Snatchers totally expose themselves — and remove their social dresses layer by layer — they do not find the essence, but realize that the essence is nothingness, and the performed travesties opium that makes living bearable. This amusing play in cross-dressing and their behavior are a result of great sexual and bodily liberation from social bands. Satisfied in eclectic noise of media images they stretch popular snap-shots and bite them to their unheard-of forms that provoke burst of laughter or despair. Image Snatchers don't seek for meaning but pleasure. As pleasure is the hedonistic polish with which they smeared everyday objects and made something exceptional out of them. Technoburlesque is an intersection of (program/cybernetic) code and subjectivity; a laying bare of the physical and emotional body indivisibly bound up with the information matrix of contemporaneity.

"I am riddled with ambivalence. I am both the rule and its exception, the law and its outcast, the doctor and the hysteric, I cannot be one without the other. I do not reject the images that consume me. I become them." (Mady Schutzman)

Technical rider

Collaborators

Creators and performers:
The Feminalz: Crucial Pink, Mad Jakale, Mathilde Buns, Tristan Bargeld, H.P.D. (hormonal perturbator in decay), Cica-San, Rosa Dolores, Rebellious KITCH Controversy, Poppy Hopps, Dee Dee Void, Ariela, GlitterAid, Musée-Cunt, Belinda, Frau Strapatz, Gospod Magdalenca
Guests: Liberty Brokeheart, Aphra Tesla Operating System, Shiva the Godess of Gandja, Maud Otis, Virgin Mary, Freddie Cankar, Mama Mila, Anja Bezlova, RotoGambrinus, Mademoiselle Satisfaire
Costume design: Urška Recer, Matic Hrovat, Tanja Pađan/Kiss the Future
Make-up and hair design: Tina Prpar
Selection of the music and original tracks: Luka Prinčič and The Feminalz
Light design: Janko Oven, Aljaž Zaletel, Urška Vohar, Dan Zrimšek
Video: The Feminalz and Luka Prinčič
Texts: Saša Rakef, Frau Strapatz, Ariela, Dee Dee Void, Gospod Magdalenca and Feminalz
Design: Saša Kerkoš

Support

Produkcija: Emanat
In collaboration: Klub Gromka, Maska, Kino Šiška
Thanks: Projekt Atol
Financially supported: Ministry of Culture RS, City of Ljubljana

Awards

Feminalz is a collective of transgender entities who use choreographic and performative practices as a means of expression performed in their feminist techno-burlesque show Image Snatchers. Since their first performance in 2013 they have been challenging social norms and political correctness with their originally created pieces, staging a sharp political satire by means of contemporary burlesque and cabaret. They use “a fun game of dressing-up” to expose, illuminate and parody those aspects of social madness that at once make the audiences laugh and fill them with horror.
“The techno-burlesque is a silent comedy of the body that parodies the rigidity of social roles,” they say about the show. “It uncritically appropriates, copies and merges femininity, masculinity, family relationships, machismo and other corrupted social roles that are mistakenly considered normative.”
Image Snatchers question ideas of shame, taboos and censorship, placing them in the context of the emerging spaces of queer, the body and (its) representation. By exploring liminal identities and narratives, the Snatchers tenaciously give voice to and create a place for that sort of engaged obscenity which can uncover the perversity of the social norms, to decipher the constructed entrapment, and to liberate by means of embodiment. Their underground performance, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in April this year, is in constant flux and development, each reprise deviating from the previous one. The Image Snatchers — as is the intrinsic nature of all images — are always in the making. They are resident artists at Club Gromka at the Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova Mesto.
8. 3. 2023, City of Women, Women on Women Award

Reviews and media reactions

Because of this and because of an infinite number of other reasons, the fact that the technoburlesque Image Snatchers (still) exists is invaluable, as each time the event proves to be ultimately critical. A refreshing current in the ocean of sameness. Although it usually takes place in an alternative space (in Gromka Theatre at Metelkova) and not where it probably should have, Image Snatchers have developed a specific and unique concept that systematically and with a breadth of vision comments on and enters a critical dialogue with the deteriorated social order, questioning its (limited) meaning, undermining the dominant regimes, and countering the hegemony of collective perceptions. That the role of the theatrical community at the national level is, among other things, to challenge prejudice about sexual diversity, propagate tolerance toward minority issues, raise awareness about subcultures, and open up a safe space for free speech, is rather a fiction than actuality. Image Snatchers are an exception to the rule. They prove the existence of a marginal community, unburdened with mainstream “ethical laws”, which is refused entry into the dominant structures (national theatres included) by these structures themselves and thus prevented to give emancipated voice to minority viewpoints.
Image Snatchers draw from two sources: the topical (social) issues and self-irony. The first ingredient, i.e. responding to the given social circumstances, is that vital substance that, as a matter of fact, keeps the technoburlesque alive. Repeated references to topical events (family law, refugee issues, European Union, etc.), people (Melania Trump), or conflicts (the Catholic Church), are the driving force behind the cabaret acts, which through self-irony, lucid imitation, and self-critique draw up a world of intentionally distorted/caricatured imagery, which nevertheless remains credible, communicative, and sardonic. The series of individual acts, linked together by the queer master of ceremonies, forms a seamless whole, an evening shared by the performers and the audience, who more often than not create an electric alliance, which is the key building block of the event itself. This too testifies to the fact that Image Snatchers are one of the rare (longer lasting) stage productions that understand (and sense) the relation between the stage and the auditorium as a unified biotope, where one cannot exist without the other, where one gives meaning to the other. Regardless of whether the audience is familiar with individual acts, the atmosphere of each event is a result of the audience's reactions. The reciprocal chemistry of this burlesque-theatrical event is the precondition for its optimal communicativeness, it is its added value; and this can be constituted only by an open-minded community, which believes that “this entertaining game of dressing up and its functioning is a result of the larger historical liberation of sexuality and individual bodies from the oppressive shackles imposed by the society”. And that “with its physical and emotional bodies, the technoburlesque transforms the programme code of the society to finally makes space for an open-code approach to its own limitations and stupidity.”
Individual numbers are fixed at their core; however, subtle nuances make them communicative, topical with every repetition. What we are dealing with is a paradox of efficient recycling, where with each repetition the known produces a slightly different vibration, where the aim and the underlying expectation is to seize (quality) enjoyment in repetition. Coming to see the performance is actually a peculiar repetitive ritual (it takes place several times a year), a get-together, and at the same time an artistic experience. Image Snatchers are an entity without shame, without taboo, without censorship. By liberating themselves, they liberate the audience. For this to occur, the before mentioned alliance is needed. Nudity, pornography, homosexuality, perversion of pop culture, feminism, transnationality, queer perspectives on gender, and many other concepts the mainstream of the Slovenian theatre production is anxious to avoid at all costs – this is the thematic modus operandi of Image Snatchers. Their essence, their standpoint.
Dialogi Journal, Technoburlesque Image Snatchers: Paradox of efficient eecycling and necessity of body liberation, Zala Dobovšek

25.05.2014, Tea Hvala: Working on Gender: New Burlesque and Cabaret in Ljubljana, in Performative Gestures Political Moves, City of Women / Red Athena University Press, 2014

The collective Feminalz has been creating the technoburlesque Tatovi Podob for almost a decade and with it has entered the space of Slovenian contemporary performing arts as one of the few that systematically cultivates and develops the genres of burlesque and cabaret. The mosaic of different performative points through appropriation, recycling and pop references (among others) explores the boundaries of burlesque and sovereignly treads the paths of the theater of discomfort, through which humor and dynamics full of action are developed, which, without the pretensions of great art, become key factors in the artistic pursuit of healthy and free society. Their acts (over 60 of them were designed during the period of their existence) in all their fascinating bizarreness, in the long run, destroy the balance of worn-out social norms and return uncompromising and repeated boldness to the space of Slovenian art. /.../
It is the universality of the images that the collective creates in punch line structures and attaches to the current social reality that becomes their greatest rebellious potential, because the fact that they can recycle their critical considerations every time reminds us of the staleness of our space. This is also helped by the more elaborate wheel of atypical burlesque, with which the collective plays with each performance. The author's poetics of the collective as a whole is thus becoming more and more defined and refined, while at the same time it manages to preserve the playfulness, wildness and self-irony that are their key characteristics. The dramaturgical sequence of points in this performance takes us through almost all outposts of modern man's problems. Performers "drink each other's blood" on stage, rap about capitalism, address general apathy and expose consumerism,
they package everything together in a comic and music-dance perfect overall image, in which they skillfully ensure that they never descend to the level of didacticism and moralizing. Thus, at a time when everyone seems to be munching on their own delicacy of preaching, the collective once again succeeds in taking the audience through the cabaret party to the key reminders in a Brechtian way, while letting their interpretation and contextualization take place in the receiver rather than on stage. /.../
20.6.2022, Delo, Ocenjujemo, Gledališče, Feminalz - Tatovi podob, Benjamin Zajc

29.04.2013, Radio Študent, Matjaž Zorec, Pojoči identifikacijski lopovi
22.06.2013, Si Gledal, Katarina Koprivnik, Gledališki kritiki o presežkih iztekajoče se gledališke sezone
27.01.2014, STA, Na 44. tednu slovenske drame predvsem družbeno angažirani, novejši teksti
28.01.2014, Delo, M. Hauc, Manj klasike, več angažmaja
28.01.2014, Dnevnik, Širjenje področja dramatike
28.01.2014, Večer, Skoraj brez dramske klasike
28.01.2014, Žurnal, Manj tradicije, več glasbe
29.01.2014, Primorski dnevnik, Na tednu slovenske drame letos 17 predstav
07.03.2014, Viva, Zora Dorin in Žiga Valetič, Marec v znamenju gledališča
15.03.2014, Narobe (str.43), Tehnoigre spolov in spolnosti
25.05.2014, Tea Hvala: Working on Gender: New Burlesque and Cabaret in Ljubljana, v Performative Gestures Political Moves, City of Women / Red Athena University Press, 2014
29.05.2014, Radio Študent, Tatovi podob / Image Snatchers, Polona Torkar
18.08.2014, Delo, Maja Megla, Intimne zgodbe v družbeno prelomnem času
22.08.2014, Delo, Maja Megla, Dolga stoletja za neometano opečnato fasado
22.08.2014, Mladina, Damjana Kolar, Prepletanje intimnega s političnim
27.08.2014, Dnevnik, Ana Perne, Zareze v življenje
03.09.2014, STA, V Mariboru prva sezona sodobnih uprizoritvenih umetnosti Nagib
04.09.2014, Večer, Petra Zemljič, Nagib se bo raztegnil čez celo sezono
26.09.2014, Umetnost življenja!, Mladina, Petra Tihole
03.04.2015, Mladina, Parada, Tatovi podob
28.09.2016, Balcan can contemporary, Drugo more, Rijeka
28.09.2016, Culturnet.hr, Balcan Can Contemporary Rijeka
28.09.2016, HRT Radio Rijeka, Balcan Can Contemporary: suvremeno kazalište na riječkim daskama i ulicama
28.09.2016, Kulturpunkt.hr, U potrazi za zadovoljenjem
08.01.2016, Mladina, Parada, Tatovi podob, Nada Žgank
27.10.2017, Mladina, Parada, Tatovi podob, Zavod Emanat, Nada Žgank
13.22.2017, MMC RTV, Zavod Bunker praznuje 20 let in vabi na zabavo
22.12.2017, Mladina, Parada, Tatovi podob, Zavod Emanat
27.02.2019, Mladina, Pregled sodobnega slovenskega plesa, Damjana Kolar
27.02.2019, MMC RTV SLO, Gibanica že devetič širi meje sodobno plesne umetnosti
27.02.2019, STA Misli, Začenja se 9. bienale slovenske sodobne plesne umentosti Gibanica
11.03.2019, Radio Študent, Teritorij teatra, Kako postati dober tat, Varja Hrvatin
11.03.2019, Koridor umetnosti, Gibanica 2019, Živa Kadunc
23.04.2019, Radio Študent, Sindikat odklonskih entitet, Varja Hrvatin
Julij 2019, Dialogi 5-6 2019, Zala Dobovšek: Pomembna afirmacija robnih scenskih praks
26.10.2019, Sigledal, Sklepni del 54. Festivala Borštnikovo srečanje
18.10.2019, Dnevnik, Sedem let Tatov podob: Resnica sveta je v njegovi parodiji, Zala Dobovšek
16.11.2019, Neodvisni, Delovanje v napetosti med formo in silo, Jasmina Šepetavc
24.12.2019, Delo, Oder in svet v katerem živimo, Pregled 2019, Nekaj gledaliških utrinkov letošnjega leta
16.09.2020, STA, Hiša kulture Celje v novo sezono s številnimi dogodki
21.08.2020, Tabačka kulturfabriek, MOVE FEST Košice/Technoburlesque | Image Snatchers (SI)
05.09.2020, MMC RTV, S korono smo se zavedli, da je na drugi strani nekaj, kar ni več tako stabilno, kot je bilo, Maja Kač
05.10.2020, Global, Ganz nove perforacije
06.10.2020, voxfeminae.net, Ganz nove perforacije 2020
06.10.2020, r plus, Ganz nove perforacije
09.10.2020, Zagreb portal, Ganz nove perforacije
19.11.2020, Dnevnik, Nataša Živković, plesalka in performerka: Plesalkino telo ni nemo, Maja Šučur
11.11.2020, plesnascena.hr, Ironijski odmak i gorka istina, Nikolina Odobašić
09.12.2020, veza.sigledal.org, Pismo ne samo moji performerki Maji Delak, Jedrt Lapuh Maležič
01.02.2021, Mladina, Tedenski napovednik kulturnih dogodkov, Damjana Kolar
01.02.2021, Radio Študent, Bzzzzzz...um, Aleš Rojc
19.02.2021, MMC RTV, Gledališke dvorane so namesto gledalcev zasedle kamere in mešalne mize
05.03.2021, Mladina, Portret, Maja Delak, Lara Paukovič
07.05.2021, Mladina, Parada
11.5.2021, o-sta, Tehnoburleska Tatovi podob
2.6.2021, Parada plesa, Na Špici, Tatovi podob
13.6.2021, Delo, Prestolnica bo teden dni mavrično obarvana
28.8.2021, Sigledal, Simpozij “malih umetnosti” bo pretresal in afirmiral sodobne uprizoritvene prakse
6.9.2021, mojaobčina.si, Potekal je 26. festival Cankarjada
11.9.2021, Dnevnik, Simpozij »malih umetnosti«: Mala šola nelagodja in užitka, Maja Šučur
20.10.2021, STA, Nova sezona Intimnega odra s tremi premierami in herojskim maratonom
20.10.2021, Si21, Intimni oder 2021
30.5.2022, Večer, Raznovrsten izbor slovenskih in tujih uprizoritev
22.3.2023, Dnevnik, Soočanje z družbo skozi smeh, ples in absurd, Tadeja Lukanc