Piran2025 final bid book is online

For more than a year now, Agata Tomšič and Davide Sacco have been involved in the candidacy of Piran-Pirano 4 Istria 2025 as European Capital of Culture 2025, with a project that aims to create an International Centre for Contemporary Performing Arts in Istria with their artistic direction.

This is the joint candidacy of the four municipalities on the Slovenian coast – Piran, Izola, Koper and Ankaran – which is now in the finals. A shared and participatory process involving 10 cities in Croatian Istria, Muggia, Trieste and the Veneto Region, for a total of 57 projects with 512 international partners from 41 countries.

Here is the second application dossier of Piran2025.
On page 40 you can find the presentation of our project IICPAC – Istrian International Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, in which we have involved the international theatre institutions and artists we love most.

Istrian International Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, directed by Agata Tomšič and Davide Sacco / ErosAntEros, will produce and programme multidisciplinary, multilingual, multicultural performances, workshops, masterclasses, and participatory projects. Located in the former salt warehouse Monfort in Piran (SI), the Centre will make contemporary performing arts the new salt of this territory with an international programme of activities oriented towards Europe.

The Centre will combine development (of the audience and the territory), education (of professionals and spectators), production and programming (of international and local artists) in projects deeply based on multilingualism. Between 2023 and 2025 the IICPAC will produce three big, site-specific, participatory performances by ErosAntEros in three different industrial heritage settings on the Slovenian coast: two theatre classics that will be rewritten drawing on local history and the personal stories of its citizens. A third great collective work produced will be the result of the meeting of these (hi)stories with the work of five dramaturgs of different nationalities. Misterija buff by Vladimir Majakovskij will be transformed into a piece about climate change and the rising seas that threaten to make the cities of the Istrian coast disappear. Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe by Bertolt Brecht will be turned into a piece about the history of the huge fish-canning industry that strongly marked this region and the lives of its inhabitants from the late 19th century until today. And in 2025 a completely new piece of theatre, created by five dramaturgs from different countries with the precise intention of confronting the deep traumas that have shocked the cultural identities of this territory and its inhabitants over the centuries, to lead towards a sense of belonging to a united and supportive european citizenship. A one-year-long participatory process for each of the three performances will give people the chance to get in contact with each other through the collective exercise of artistic creation.

lead PI2025 / ErosAntEros

partners Academy of Performing Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg (Ludwigsburg, DE); Bitef Festival – Bitef Theatre (Beograd, RS); Virgilio Sieni Company (Florence, IT); Department of the Arts – Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Bologna, IT); Croatian National Theatre – HNK Drama (Zagreb, HR); CSS Teatro stabile di innovazione del Friuli Venezia Giulia (Udine, IT); Laibach (Lubiana, SI); IIPM – International Institute of Political Murder (Zurich, CH); MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis à Bobigny (Paris, FR); MESS International Theatre Festival (Sarajevo, BA); Mini Teater (Lubiana, SI); Odin Teatret – Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Holstebro, DK); OTSE Officine Theatrikes Salento Ellada (Lecce, IT); PiNA (SI); Presence Groupe (Budapest, HU); Ravenna Teatro – Teatro delle Albe (Ravenna, IT); RTV Slovenija (Lubiana, Koper, SI); Santarcangelo Festival (Santarcangelo di Romagna, IT); Schaubühne (Berlin, DE); Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (Cesena, IT); Teatro Stabile Sloveno – Slovensko Stalno Gledališče (Trieste, IT); Structure production (Paris, FR); Tempo Reale – Centre for Music Production, Research and Education (Florence, IT); Théâtre National du Luxembourg (Luxembourg, LU); Théâtre National de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, FR); Théâtre National Wallonie (Bruxelles, BE); Trafó – House of Contemporary Arts (Budapest, HU); Via Negativa (Lubiana, SI); Fondazione Teatro Verdi (Trieste, IT).

related artists Csaba Antal (HU); Eugenio Barba / Odin Teatret (DK); Ivica Buljan (HR); Claudia Castellucci (IT); Romeo Castellucci (IT); Francesco Giomi (IT); Chiara Guidi (IT); Bojan Jablanovec (SI); Laibach (SI); Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari / Teatro delle Albe (IT); Fabrice Murgia / Cie Artara (BE); Stanislas Nordey (FR); Thomas Ostermeier (DE); Pascal Rambert (FR); Milo Rau (CH); Davide Sacco and Agata Tomšič / ErosAntEros (IT-SI); Virgilio Sieni (IT) and many more.

The Slovenian city that will be awarded ECOC 2025 will be announced on 18 December 2020.