Maska at Old Power Station
“We need to start feeling as if time belongs to us, so that we can once again take control of time in our lives.” (Maska: The Performing Arts Journal, 229-230, p. 71)
Maska is opening its new annual programme with two quite disparate months that, each in its own way, respond to two crucial needs: the need for longer research and work processes, without the pressure of immediate results; and the need for the sustainability of production that is conceptually grounded in the accompanying programme, continuously brought into new cycles and curatorial constellations, and used to address new audiences. The two needs are linked through the central category of time – expanded, decelerated, and reappropriated.
- January and February 2026
Old Power Station – Elektro Ljubljana enters 2026 with a new, experimental programming and management model, developed and piloted by a consortium of five organisations: Bunker, Maska, Emanat, City of Women, and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.
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Within this context, the notion of time does not only refer to the prevailing working conditions in the independent scene, but is instead included in the conceptual core of Lara Ostan Vejrup’s residency and in the theme of accessibility, the two central guidelines for our work in the Old Power Station in January and February – on the levels of language, space, and time. How we spend our time and where we direct our attention is a political question. As Angela Alves notes in Maska: “In a world which measures health in terms of speed, productivity, and constant availability, allowing ourselves to follow a different rhythm is an act of resistance” (Maska 229–230, p. 71).
This is the framework for the programme’s conceptual inclusion of crip time, an expression used in disability studies to describe a non-linear experience of time that is centred on bodily needs, rest, and flexible rhythm. It challenges the ableist schedule-bound norm, acknowledges the variety of energy needs and envisions a future for persons with disability.
In January, the Old Power Station will be the venue of Lara Ostan Verjup’s residency, i.e. her research project Grayscale. Together with various experts, the artist will explore deceleration through the lens of infrastructure: roads as spatial and time dispositifs which produce rather than measure time. The public presentation of the related research process will take place at the end of January, while the residency will intermittently continue into February. Related to the residency is the January online workshop Four Strategies for Decentring Sight in Audio Description for Dance, which will focus on how to capture dance and its notational, perceptual, and experiential dimensions into audio description and thus expand its accessibility.
In February, Maska will compress the programme into two repeat performances from Tjaša Črnigoj’s cycle Sex Education II. The performances Fight and Ability will be once again made available to the public. Ability will include an audio description and will thus also be part of the conceptual framework of the programme Cripping Performance: Accessibility as Care, which is conceptually based in Maska’s latest issue, Cripping Performance (edited by Pia Brezavšček and Saša Asentić). Cripping Performance recognises accessibility as an aesthetic, political, and ethical issue in contemporary performative practices.
