Ivan Slipčević, Nicole Hewitt, Vida Guzmić: Soundwords
– performative lecture ‘Sleepwalkers’
for the opening of the exibition We’re Not Like Them
4.10.2019
MMSU / Krešimirova 26c, 51000 Rijeka

Sleepwalkers have the form of experimental electronics, live video and spoken word performance. They move between the documentary and fictitious text, travelogue and historiography, focusing on the image of woman – a researcher/programmer/ traveler – contrary to official history where this role was traditionally taken by man. They deal with the
narratives of the first female programmers, imaginary letters and diaries written by forced labourers on the Atlantic Wall in WW2, as well as various “notes from the road”. Atlantic Wall, one of the largest coastal fortifications whose construction began in 1942 as defense against the Allied invasion, was destroyed to a large extent during the 2 two-month Battle
of Normandy in 1944. Sleepwalkers draw from field surveys of the North Sea coastline (Holland, Belgium, France), the research of the first female computer programmers, observations of landscape on from the Atlantic Wall towards the sea and the connection with cosmic motions. The texts are based on the perspective of a woman researcher counterbalancing the male protagonist in his exclusive role of a traveler and researcher.