Image Snatchers

Upcoming events

10.06.2023 at 20:00, Ex Teatar Fest, Pančevo, RS

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:
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
MC: Frau Strapatz, Ariela, Dee Dee Void, Gospod Magdalenca
Guests: Liberty Brokeheart, Aphra Tesla Operating System, Shiva the Godess of Gandja, Maud Otis, Virgin Mary, Belinda, Freddie Cankar, Mama Mila, Anja Bezlova
Costumes: Urška Recer, Matic Hrovat, Tanja Pađan/Kiss the Future
Make-up: Tina Prpar (Tinka Pobalinka)
Selection of the music and original tracks: Nova deViator
Light design: Janko Oven, Aljaž Zaletel, Urška Vohar, Dan Zrimšek
Video: Feminalz
Texts: Saša Rakef, Frau Strapatz, Ariela, Dee Dee Void 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

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