Joséphine A. Garibaldi & Paul Zmolek (USA)
About the Project
Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek have been making inter-media performance
together as Callous Physical Theatre for over 30 years. Their ongoing artistic process
explores stories of a Sense of Place through collaboration with each other, with community,
with local creatives and with Place itself. As stated in their manifesto:
The work is of Place.
If it is out of Place, it is no longer the work.
Surrender to situation.
Let the work be in the Place it is.
Together, they will explore ‘stories’ of a Sense of Place particular to Gozo through various
mediums such as text, sound, visual and movement of the body to create a performance of
that work through a combination of live, film screening, and installation.
The Opening event and presentation will take place at the Valletta Design Cluster on Wednesday 18th January 2023 at 6 pm.
Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek, transdisciplinary performance installation artists from the U.S., will share their “dialogic devising” approach to exploring a Sense of Place with collaborators throughout the globe. The presentation will include video examples of past projects as they look forward to their project based on Gozo.
Those interested in attending, are asked to register on [email protected]
Q&A With the artists
1) Tell us a bit about yourself.
Making work as Callous Physical Theatre, Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek are dedicated to fostering collaboration across communities, disciplines and cultures regionally, nationally and internationally through a dialogic practice of art-making, research and pedagogy. Garibaldi and Zmolek have devised text, sound, movement and visual poetry, environmental and performance installations, original theatrical and digital works together for over three decades.
2) Tell us a bit about your art practice and what inspires you.
Our work is collaborative, transdisciplinary and polyvocal. We are in pursuit of work that is dialogical, providing a multiplicity of perspectives rather than a singular viewpoint. As such, we strive to create work that operates subcutaneously, beneath the surface and between the lines fluidly spanning across many topics and relevant issues. Our primary area is Performance, inclusive of dance, theatre and studio art. That written, our artistic research is not confined by discipline and is based in text, sound, movement, 2D & 3D visual art, manifesting in real and virtual installations.
Our project is to surrender to Place and to create work that is responsive to Place. Guided by Callous Physical Theatre’s slogan “We go where the work takes us,” artist residencies such as the AiR program offered by Spazju Kreattiv, are essential to our artistic practice. All work emerges through the interaction with place and stories that emerge. As such, each residency is unique and as it is specific to site and community, requires different approaches to making the work.
With past residencies this approach has been artistically exhilarating and incredibly prolific, culminating in environmental and/or performance installations of weavings and other three-dimensional manipulations of found fibers and objects, photo and video essays, sound scores, live and video performance, spoken and written word.
3) What do you hope to achieve with your residency in Malta?
The theme of our project is “Gozo: A Sense of Place”, which will culminate in an intermedia performance installation responding to specific sites in Gozo created by ourselves and local collaborators. With our collaborators we will explore ‘stories’ of a Sense of Place particular to Gozo through various mediums (such as text, sound, visual and movement of the body). Through our guidance and direction, we will create some sort of ‘performance’ of that work through a combination of live, film screening, and installation.
Spazju Kreattiv Artists’ Residency programme is organised in collaboration with the Valletta Design Cluster and the Ministry for Gozo
