The jury selected the following applicants to participate to the third programme cycle of Critical Practice (Made in Yugoslavia):
- Alexandra Balona (Portugal)
- Nassia Fourtouni (Greece)
- Aleksandar Georgiev (Macedonia)
- Nina Gojić (Croatia)
- Ana Letunić (Croatia)
- Ellen Söderhult (Sweden)
- Mateusz Szymanówka (Poland)
The names are listed by alphabetical order.
Explanation of the selection process and criteria:
This year, we received 40 complete applications. The jury members—Marijana Cvetković, Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski, Stina Nyberg, Ana Vujanović and Jasmina Založnik—found most of them very good. We also noticed that this year several applications came from the same context, for instance Porto’s independent scene, which then influenced the selection criteria in the second round.
What guided us through the selection process was, firstly, candidates’ clear motivations to apply to the Critical Practice programme. In the first round, their critical writing skills, in terms of articulating theses, developing arguments, acknowledging the materiality of analysed performances and expressing one’s author’s concerns were of crucial importance. Since in more than seven cases we recognised all these qualities in the writing samples, the jury—especially through the interviews—attempted then to infer who could benefit from our programme most and whose participation could be of as big as possible benefit to our programme and the future group of participants. Also, this year more than ever, the context in which the candidate works plays a role, especially in the cases when in the second round there were several candidates from the same or similar context, whose professional surroundings are also similar. In addition, the jury members tried to speculate about the potentially optimal composition of the group, which then decided for or against certain candidates.
Given the abovementioned evaluation process, the criteria that determined our final decisions were defined in terms of:
- the quality of critical writing, which is not reduced to high academic standards but includes clear concerns and an awareness of art’s social position as well,
- participants’ experience and/or realistic expectations of collaborative, non-hierarchical working structures, as well as a proactive approach to the challenges they bring,
- participants’ concerns in their local scenes and social contexts,
- a potentially significant contribution to the professional development of participants in the current state of their formation and career,
- the context and work surrounding the candidate comes from, whereby we tried to gather participants from different contexts who would not that easily find a way to collaborate as the candidates from the same city can,
- a projected structure of the future group of participants, who come from various contexts and with different backgrounds, yet share an interest in critical reflections on and in performing arts; as well as
- a possibility to enhance participants’ collaboration with colleagues coming from other contexts, which should help a sustainable future platform for critical practices at the contemporary international performing arts scenes.
As it was in the previous years, what played only a smaller role in the selection process were working biographies of the candidates and their academic or artistic achievements alone.
