‹NOSTALGIJA | HOMESICKNESS | BIRSFELDEN› deals with and questions places as the fundamental tool for shaping identity at various levels. The project is realised as a course along which the audience encounters staged situations and interventions at numerous locations in Birsfelden. The borders between performance and reality become blurred and offer new observations of the district and the people who live there.
The course revolves around the term nostalgia, which describes a pathological state and was coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688. The term nostalgia was a neologism describing the malady ‘homesickness' of Swiss mercenaries in foreign lands. A double Swiss root: as the country provided not only the term for describing this phenomenon but also the first sufferers.
In dialogue and discussion with the citizens of Birsfelden, the artists will deal with the question of home(land) and homesickness. By using different points of view - Nataša Rajković and Ivna Žic both come from Croatia, but while Rajković still lives there, Žic grew up in Switzerland - the culture of nostalgia is made accessible in two ways: As a real place and as a place of remembrance. Public places and municipal locations are put into relation with spaces of everyday life and long gone places.
The project ‹NOSTALGIJA | HOMESICKNESS | BIRSFELDEN› transports Roxy right into the centre of Birsfelden, thus enabling interaction between the artists and the inhabitants of the local community.
In coproduction with Roxy
CHF 15.-
