The Storks of Ludbreg
Performers: Damir Bartol Indos & Tanja Vrvilo (schachtophones), Helge Hinteregger (throat music)
Beginn: 21h
The Storks of Ludberg is one of four Schachtophonias created by Damir Bartol Indos for a theatrical tetralogy co-authored with Tanja Vrvilo on the four unsuccessful Zagreb assassins during the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1912 to 1914. The Ludbreg partiture appropriates a case of “an American assassin” produced by Croatian-American newspaper media of the time with a worker Stjepan Dojcic who emigrated from Ludbreg to Kenosha in 1909 and returned in 1912 to commit the assassination of Ban of Croatia. On August 18, 1913 he came from Ludbreg by train with his friend Rosa Kranjcec and made an attempt to assassin Ban Skerletz at Zagreb Cathedral after the Mass conducted on the occasion of the Emperor Franz Joseph I birthday.
Ludbreg was once abundant in pastures, sprinkled with ponds and stagnant rainwater. It used to be the place where many storks lived. They first nested in the chimney of the school, and when the nest was destroyed due to burning wood for heating, they would move to the bank chimney, and gradually to other higher buildings. In fact, after each return from the south in spring, the storks had to re-build their nests in Ludbreg. One time they even built the nest on the pole for distribution of electric power in the middle of Ludbreg. Unfortunately, the storks could not stay there for long either, because they stayed in the way during the installation of lines. Today, I no longer live in Ludbreg and I neither know where the storks from Ludbreg have moved to, nor if they are still around at all, but I am certain about the fact that the Podravina town of Ludbreg has never had more beautiful ornaments.
Stage installation is based on Indos’ sound instruments Schachtophones: a spring musical machines which secret is in collective assemblage of horizontally and vertically strained springs of different length and thickness attached to the inside of the schacht structure for vibration of hands and springs. On the backside of the schacht covers is a sound partiture – a graphic score for the Schachtophonia.
Croatia House; Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia.