El Futuro Es Nuestro

‘El Futuro es Nuestro’ is the outcome of Jaša’s residency in Chile, which culminated in a two day participatory action and intervention in a rural school in Maria Pinto. It took the form of collaborative workshops and a collective mural creation that involved over 70 people. 

The workshops invited the primary school children to imagine different extremes, memories of sadness and joy, fear and delight, violent acts and objects of desire, expressing the freedom in their emotions and creativity. In doing so, a monument, a reminder or misfortune will be turned into a monument of hope. Our responsibility is to enhance the necessity of hope going over the present disaster, which the new generation can take over.

Strolling on his way, a man decided to stop.

He wanted to whisper something,

And he did,

To a stone laying next to his feet:

“Did you fall,

Or decided to rest o this earth?”

He paused

“No. She’s resting on me,”

Said a little grey stone.

On-site participatory action and permanent spatial intervention taking place over two days in December 2017 in María Pinto, Chile.

‘El Futuro es Nuestro’ is the first action of a series of interventions under the title BRAIDED’, a project founded in 2016 in New York. The project is supported by Ele Studio, HOP Projects, WE.ARE Institute & Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia Buenos Aires.

Spoken word: Jaša 

Camera / sound / edit: Tobias Belliard

Music: ‘Run run se fue pal norte’ interpreted by the Escuela las Mercedes Orchestra

Poetry: ‘BRAIDED’ by Jaša (2014)

With special thanks to all the children of Escuela las Mercedes, parents, the orchestra, staff and the director, the municipality of María Pinto, the mayor Jessica Mualim and all those who made it happen, Tomas, Andres and Sergio Poblete, Mario Hans, Josefina Speranza, Ignacio Paredes & Sebasitian Rojas Cereceda.

JAŠA (Mrevlje-Pollak) is an artist from Ljubljana. For over 20 yrs, Jaša has been pushing the artistic boundaries with his uncompromising visions. His ‘site-specific installations function as implosions of the real’: rhapsodic interpretations of situation, narrative, sculpture and performance that transform spaces into experiences, driving them toward their poetic and aesthetic potentials, through his alchemistic connection with material and content.⁠

CT20’s International Artist Residencies is a rolling programme of one to three month long immersive residencies, open to UK-based and international creative practitioners across all art forms. The aim of the residencies is for creatives to realise a project, undertake research, and develop and expand their practice in Folkestone.

The residency programme provides opportunities for artists to undertake experimentation and research that will develop and expand their practice. Through the residency, CT20 hopes that artists can use the time to explore new paths within their practice through engaging with artists and creative professionals that are part of the Folkestone and Kent contemporary art landscape. 

CT20 offers high quality live/work accommodation centrally located within the Creative Quarter in Folkestone that can accommodate up to two residencies at any one time. It allows creative practitioners to develop their work in their own space, although CT20 encourages artists to tap into local creative resources and local networks that may shed new light onto and open up the way they normally work. 

‘Lingering Cut’: A Wake-up Call – In this review, Howell reflects on Ljubljana-born artist Jaša’s performance piece as part of his latest body of work, ‘Lingering Cut’, and it’s power to communicate feelings of frustration and confusion in a fractured time.