Performing arts
- Focus Area: Performing Arts
- Region: Istria
- About Laboratory: Creative Living Laboratory dedicated to Performing Arts and/or Artistic Interventions in Public Space, took place in Pula from 8 to 18 December 2025 and was organised by artists Alen and Nenad Sinkauz in collaboration with Andrea Matošević, Davor Sanvinčenti, Miodrag Gladović and Hrvoje Pelicarić and associations Kulturban and Metamedij from Croatia joined by Michele Sambin as artist mentor from Italy. The laboratory resulted in the audiovisual performance Ho-Ruk! Hop-Jan! that contemplates the compositions of the collective work through a contemporary musical, sound, visual and narrative reinterpretation of the way in which collective work in the textile industry, shipyards and quarries was mediated to the wider public throughout the second half of the 20th century, i.e. during the period of socialist social order. In this expressive artistic performance, the archival film material becomes both the material in which the authors intervene with various film procedures and scenography in which the artists perform powerful experimental music live, joined by the voice and instrumental performance by Michele Sambin, the Italian artist-mentor of strong authorial energy. The starting point of the performance, as well as the central character around which the authors build their reinterpretation of the work collective composition, is the character of the twenty-two-year-old textile worker Smilja Glavaš, the main heroine of the documentary film “From 3 to 22” by Krešo Golik from 1966, shot in the manner of a silent film. The title of the film refers to the period of the day that Smilja – a mother, wife and worker at the Zagreb factory “Jedinstvo” – spends awake in order to complete all her obligations. Golik’s film is one of the best documentaries of the Yugoslav “black wave”, and it won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Jury Award at the prestigious short film festival in Oberhausen. It is through this Golik's "emotionally precise feminist-conscious portrait of a worker and a woman whose existence is drowned out by the noise of machines and the warning sound of an alarm clock" that the multimedia art project "Ho ruk ! Hop Jan! Compositions of the Collective Work" directs the story, especially in its narrative plane, to the position of the worker, as well as the understanding and labeling of work today. The rhythm, or as the authors point out in one place, the "heart and bloodstream" of work, takes shape here. It is simultaneously silent and loud. And, "Ho ruk ! Hop Jan! Compositions of the Collective Work" also looks at the new tourist images around which work, its rhythm and time are shaped today. The premiere of the audio-visual performance "Ho- Ruk ! Hop-Jan! Compositions of the Collective of Labor" was held on 18th of December 2025 at the Istrian National Theater, followed by second performance at the SOCRAT final event - exhibition SHARED GROUND held in Pula on 7th of July 2026.
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Kulturban, an association for culture, promotes cultural events and activities that foster the expansion of theatrical culture, experimental music, and the performing arts, while encouraging dialogue with other forms of expression. The association was founded in 2008 by Alen Sinkauz and Nenad Sinkauz—multi-award-winning composers, musicians, and performers. Based in Pula, Kulturban emerged from its founders' desire to engage more deeply with the place they call home through the medium of culture. One of the association's core objectives is to create opportunities for encounters—spaces where new collaborations can flourish and where different realities can intersect. Operating at local, national, and international levels, the association consistently focuses on developing projects rooted in specific locations and the people who inhabit them. Since 2010, Kulturban has organized *Audioart*, an international festival of experimental and improvised music in Pula. Through this platform, the association facilitates networking among Croatian and international artists, hosts artistic residencies for professional musicians, provides educational programs for all ages—regardless of prior experience—and stages concerts. Complementing the festival is the *Audioart+* program, which offers a series of workshops designed for children, youth, and adults.
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Association Metamedij is a non-profit organization that initiates and encourages artistic and cultural initiatives in the field of new media art and new technologies. It is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary engaged in production and promotion in the sphere of contemporary and innovative artistic practices, with a focus on young people, while questioning the relationship between art and society and contributing to shaping a more humane world. Its main program areas are providing support, training, production conditions and promotion to young authors within the artistic incubator; education of children and young people regarding contemporary art, as well as media and digital literacy along with creative creativity; monitoring of cultural and artistic programs and issues through Kulturistra - the portal for the culture of Region of Istria; and the promotion of contemporary artistic practices, new media and technologies at the Media Mediterranea festival. With the Mi+ open platform for the development of contemporary and innovative art in Istria, the association works in parallel to strengthen cooperation and empower cultural organizations, advocate for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of cultural policy in the area of the development of the non-institutional scene, and conducts activities for the development of residential programs, program cooperation and education for the general public, especially children and young people. Metamedij organises programs and exhibitions in Gallery Novo in Pula where SOCRAT project equipped permanent Laboratory for Contemporary Artistic Practices.
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Musician, painter and director, he conducts research focused on the relationship between image and sound. Since the early 1970s he has directed his interest toward the intersection of various arts: cinema, music, video, painting. Later he would use theatre as a place of synthesis. In an initial phase, marked by the exploration of the cinematographic medium (1968–1975), he created several experimental films with which he took part in international events including: Film Studio, Rome; Knokke Heist, Belgium; La Rochelle and Beaubourg, France. After graduating in electronic music in Venice in 1978, alongside his research with the computer he began his first experiences with videotape, which soon became the primary instrument of his works. His stage creations find space both in theatre and in music, seeking, through the encounter between different fields, new possibilities of stage composition, through a personal form of “total theatre”. Internationally, his works with TAM have been presented in Bourges, Le Printemps; Granada, “International Theatre Festival”; Vienna, “Wiener Fest Wochen”; Hannover, “Klang & Körper”; Paris, “Festival d’Automne”; Zagreb, “Festival Eurocatz”; Jerusalem, “Italian Theatre Festival”, and also in Tunis, Copenhagen, Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw... Among the productions in the field of musical theatre, he staged Repertoire by Mauricio Kagel (1981), Children’s Corner by Claude Debussy for Teatro alla Scala (1986), Ages by Bruno Maderna for RAI Milano (1989). In 1994 he curated the artistic project Meditazioni, whose protagonists were the detainees of the Padua prison. His artistic work has been the subject of numerous university theses written, among others, at La Sapienza University of Rome, the Universities of Ferrara, Venice and Padua.
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Alen Sinkauz and Nenad Sinkauz are composers, musicians, and performers. They both graduated in Musicology and Ethnomusicology in Padua. The Sinakuz brothers compose and shape music for feature-length and short films, musical, dance and theater shows, radio broadcasts, as well as site-specific, and multidisciplinary performances. They collaborate with prominent film and theater directors and visual and video artists in the country and abroad. They won five Golden Arena awards and prizes for original film music at the Croatian Film Days. Their artistic work, especially when playing live, is mostly oriented towards exploring unconventional musical forms, improvised and creative music, but their musical roots comes from the 90’ underground metal and punk scene. Through performance and composition, which are strictly connected in their work, they are interested in a dialogue of acoustic and electronic instruments, hybridity of the connection of musical and theatrical principles in performance as the research landmark for new performing formats. In 2021 they started Kopaton records, label for experimental and creative music as a platform connecting musicians from Croatia and south east Europe. Currently they are involved in the experimental trio Roj Osa.In 2010 they started the International Festival of Experimental and Improvised Music Audioart in Pula (Croatia).Founders of the avant rock band East Rodeo with whom they released three albums and the audiovisual projects Day of the Year, Sicomat and Propulzor. They are co-founders of an impro big band CRI Orchestra which gathers around twenty musicians from Croatia. Founders of the artistic organization P137.