Exactly ten years after first release and its implementation in the practice of artists and large educational institutions, the software tool WHATEVER DANCE TOOLBOX is available from 2020 as a free web application; with the accompanying and revised Manual in Croatian language. The earlier 2011 version of the Manual in English is still available for download.

Whatever Dance Toolbox is a web application, a software tool that in many respects functions like an interactive mirror. It has been developed during years of workshopping and collaboration with numerous users with different competences and interests, locally and abroad. Thanks to the continuing interest and a rich dialogue between the software programmer Daniel Turing, us and the users, WDT is today available as an open code software and as a free, downloadable web application. WDT was designed with the aim of expanding the field of research of movement and dance, as a practical support for learning about, the production of and the analysis of choreographic material as well as the development of creative thinking and working within an interactive environment.

About the tool:

"The Whatever Dance Toolbox presents a unique teaching and learning opportunity for students of movement, both on screen and off. WDT references the 1970s material explorations of pure movement and the video aesthetics of electronic arts pioneers. This distinctive poetic element is wrapped into a simple, user friendly interface which encourages experimentation and play in making choreographic decisions.”
- Scott deLahunta, researcher and organizer of research projects on choreography and technology at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, Motion Bank and Hochschule Mainz University of Applied Science

"How can various technologies, from the more conventional to the very new, be used to archive, share and understand dance movement? How can they become part of new ways of creating dance? What does this tell us about the ways in which technology is part of how we make sense and think? Well-known choreographers and dance collectives including William Forsythe, Siohban Davis, Merce Cunningham, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and BADco. have initiated projects to investigate these questions, and in so doing have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education, research and creation. Their work draws attention to the intimate relationship between the technologies we use and the ways in which we think, perceive, and make sense"
- from the book Transmission in Motion, ed. Maaike Bleeker, Routledge London, 2016 

The web application and new edition of the Manual have been realized in the framework of the Audience Development program of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

These [compositions] are intentionally as difficult as I can make them, because I think we're now surrounded by very serious problems in the society, and we tend to think that the situation is hopeless and that it's just impossible to do something that will make everything turn out properly. So I think that this music, which is almost impossible, gives an instance of the practicality of the impossible.
John Cage

Impossible Dances is a performative artwork that was initially created for the exhibition documenting the work of the US postdramatic theatre collective Goat Island and was premiered in May of 2019 at the Chicago Center for Culture. The work draws on the documentation and scores of the "Impossible Dances" sequence from Goat Island's The Sea & Poison and John Cage's notes to his Freeman Etudes.

In Impossible Dances we have explored the new ways of practising the impossible. The impossible emerges from the performative process of translation from choreography to choreography, from recording to movement, from poetry to performance. The impossible is necessary because, as we're hurtling toward hothouse Earth, nothing is more urgent that the encounter of a myriad of impossibilities.

Direction: Goran Sergej Pristaš
Dramaturgy: Tomislav Medak
Choreography and performance: Nikolina Pristaš, Ana Kreitmeyer, Zrinka Užbinec, Marta Krešić
Video: Goat Island,
Production: Lovro Japundžić

CHICAGO
World Premiere: Friday–Saturday, 24.-25. May 2019, 7pm, and Sunday, 26. May 2019, 2pm
Chicago Cultural Center, Sidney R. Yates Gallery, 4th Floor North
Note: The 24. May performance is preceded by an artist talk at 7 p.m. with Erin Manning with the performance at 8pm.

ZAGREB
Premiere: 01. June 2019 at 19:00
Hala V (Technical Museum Zagreb) – Part of the Platfroma.hr 20 Festival

The project was supported by Zagreb City Council for Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

The work of BADco. is supported by the Foundation Kultura nova.

Time Bombs is a three-part film featuring BADco.'s interventions at three locations characterized by an effort to revitalize disused (industrial) sites with contemporary artistic practice. Under the motto Institutions Need to Be Constructed, throughout 2015 and 2016 BADco. invited a number of contemporary artists and cultural organizers (Slaven Tolj, Nataša Antulov, Platforma 9,81 and others) to do joint one day occupations of Rijeka’s factory Benčić (now Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Zagreb’s Jedinstvo (now POGON - Center for Independent Culture and Youth) and Split's never finished Youth Center. 

Director: Goran Sergej Pristaš
Director of photography: Dinko Rupčić
Film editor: Jelena Modrić
Production: BADco., Kava Film, WHW, Platforma 9.81 and Drugo more

Institutions Need to be Constructed is a hybrid format of a film set, performance and temporary residence placed inside deserted factories or unfinished public buildings - spaces that used to be sites of industrial production and these days may become cultural centers, spaces that through culture celebrated the industrial age in utopistic ways. By reconstructing scenes from three of BADco.'s performances Institutions Need to be Constructed examine the tension between labor and art in our recent history, symptomatically evident in the incomplete state of the three buildings. The first part of the trilogy was realized in September 2015 in former factory Rikard Benčić in Rijeka, the second on 27. February 2016 at the Youth Center in Split in collaboration with Platforma 9,81 and the third installment at POGON – Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth, the former factory Jedinstvo, on 04. March 2016.

The events include discussions on the social and economic aspects of artistic labor, the task of productivity, and valorization of artistic work through non-aesthetic spheres of social production. The discussions include the participation of artists and cultural workers, cultural studies researchers and analysts who reflect on the position of culture in the social system, on new institutional models and problems of institutionalization of contemporary art practices.

Artistic-ecological camping at Jakuševac in Zagreb from 14.09.2013 at 10:00 until 15.09.2013. at 12:00.

We are used to thinking of nature as something "out there", elsewhere from us, removed from culture, unmanaged by man, where every change has a negative connotation. Yet, in the wilderness of man and animal, of capital, and of culture, of economic interests, and of political (self)will, the elsewhere of nature no longer exists, just like a place of man's exclusive domination no longer exists. Between the flea market and the communal waste landfill we often see just one step in the process of wast accumulation. We invite you to join us in temporarily inhabiting the space of that one step and in posing questions about alternative methods of waste management and alternative views of nature.

BADco. invites you to 24-hour camping on the field between the Sava embankment and the river itself, not far from Zagreb's communal waste landfill Prudinec/Jakuševac and the Hrelić flea market.

For a period of 24 hours let's inhabit one of Zagreb's ecologically problematic zones with artists, activists and experts who will jointly carry out a program of performances, exhibit work and open discussion on ecology and the city, waste and its management.

Join the camp with your tent, camper or sleeping bag. Join the discussions, follow the performances and spend the night on location of the artistic-ecological camp.

The project Nature needs to be constructed is dedicated to the recently departed Željko Zorica Šiš, whose performance 12 Chairs will be realized in the camp according to his instructions. The whole event will be framed by a 24-hour performance of BADco.'s production Is There Life on Stage?, and will include artistic interventions and works by media artists Ana Hušman and Davor Sanvinčenti, musicians Alen and Nenad Sinkauz and visual artist Slaven Tolj. Tomislav Tomašević from Green Action, Saša Avirović from the Čakovec communal waste company ČAKOM and Svjetlana Lugar on behalf of the project Mamutica for a clean environment will speak about waste management. On Sunday morning Parkticipacija association for urban agriculture will hold two short workshops on the topic of Food, not waste: Composting at home and planting into recycled pots. The project is supported by 7 sun beds from the eco-artistic project Reciplaya, authors: Darko Fritz, Sanda Hančević, Valerija Jurjević, 2008-11.

The camp is located on the field between the Sava embankment and river Sava, across the road from the Hrelić free market and with a view of Zagreb's communal waste landfill Prudinec/Jakuševac, starting 14. September 10:00 and ending 15. September 12:00.

Organization: BADco. aided by Green Action.

Whatever Dance Toolbox is a set of software tools designed for the analysis and development of dance and movement. Six tools included in the suite can help dancers and choreographers devise, develop and rehearse dance, but can also be used in dance education or by non-dancers to explore movement. The suite is a product of a long-standing collaboration between BADco. and German human-machine interface developer and artist Daniel Turing, and it reflects some of the mutual concerns with the dancer-computer interaction and choreographic thinking.

Using Whatever Dance Toolbox in rehearsal dancers can manipulate the image of movement and work with an ”active mirror” to produce qualities that they cannot produce on their own. Body is placed inside a different relation to its environment, which, in turn, determines and changes its expressiveness. Tools employ visual analysis, tasks and temporally manipulated reproduction of captured images to allow dancers and choreographers to study and complexify their movement and composition. The machine-factor generates an organization of choreographic elements different and alien to what other choreographic methodologies can produce.

Free download and easy setup

Whatever Dance Toolbox comes on a free Ubuntu GNU/Linux LiveCD that you can insert into your computer’s CD/DVD drive and boot into the operating system without having to install it on your computer’s hard drive. All you will need to start working on Whatever Dance Toolbox is a computer with a CD/DVD drive connected by a FireWire cable to a video camera and, preferably, a video projector or a large screen.

Whatever Dance Toolbox can be either downloaded or can be ordered on a CD with a manual written by BADco.

For the latest version of Whatever Dance Toolbox contact: badco@badco.hr

You will need to burn the downloaded file onto a blank CD as an image or create a bootable USB flash drive. You can use either the CD or USB flash drive to boot your computer into the Whatever Dance Toolbox environment.

Detailed introduction and instructions can be found in our Whatever Dance Toolbox – Manual. The electronic version of the Manual can be downloaded here.

Note that the electronic version of the Manual does not include methodological exercises that BADco. has developed and that you can use to develop your own work. As the tool is intuitive, you can develop your own exercises, but should you wish to benefit from our experience you can order the Manual as a book.

Order Whatever Dance Toolbox Manual

Based on the experience of using Whatever Dance Toolbox in our own work and facilitating numerous workshops with the tool, we have developed a set of exercises that can help you in your work. You can order the physical copy of Whatever Dance Toolbox Manual that includes our methodological exercises and a CD with the software suite, please write to badco@badco.hr

The price for the Manual is €30 for individuals and €60 for institutions (packaging and postage not included).

ISBN: 978-953-56603-0-9

Whatever Dance Toolbox – Workshops

If you are interested in organizing a Whatever Dance Toolbox workshop for your students, your dancers, your non-dancers, your scholars, your visual artists, your audiences, we have done a number of Whatever Dance Toolbox workshops tailored to different groups. Please write to us at badco@badco.hr

You can also check out the article by Lise Amy Hansen and Andrew Morrison mentioning Whatever Dance Toolbox: Materializing Movement—Designing for Movement-based Digital Interaction (International Journal of Design, Vol 8, No 1, 2014)

workshop presentation 10.01.2007 18:00 :: MM Centre, Student Centre :: Savska 25 :: Zagreb

performance within the project Dictionary of War, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria

13.-14.10.2006

Dictionary of War is a collaborative platform for creating 100 concepts on the subject of war, to be formed and presented at four two-day events in Graz, Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin, each featuring twenty-five contributions from scientists, artists, theorists and practitioners. The lectures, performances, films, slide shows, readings, concerts proceed in strict alphabetical order. Dictionary of War serves to scrutinize a reality that characteristically obfuscates existing power relations, the more people talk about war and peace.Parallel to the performative implementation of the Dictionary, the concepts will be documented and made available for discussion on the Internet as video recordings. Finally, Merve-Verlag will be publishing an actual book version.

http://www.steirischerherbst.at

Borba, Preobraženska 6
entrance into courtyard from the Flower Square

the space opens 09. December 2005 at 18:00
10. – 14. December 2005 from 12:00 to 22:00

The project …2005… of BADco. realized with the support of Invisible Zagreb, Platforma 9,81, and subtitled shared space, is a complex installation inhabited by projects, modes of work and communication, by collaboration modules characteristic for the work of the group. BADco. is marking its first five years in this way.

In the space of the former printing shop Borba, today owned by TISAK, BADco. members and our collaborators on previous and future projects will open the doors to presentations of research projects, productions, archives, installations, performances, video works, etc. in an attempt to present the complexity of relations within the group, authors’ and collective positions, project development procedures, but also to stir up a discussion on the topics we see as relevant not only to the group’s work, but to a wider artistic context. The six day program will thematize the continuation and functionality of artistic research, performance structures, performative machines and different aspects of communication of failure and crisis within the project, the group, the public.

The six day program includes five productions, six installations, five research presentations, two public discussions, a lecture, a concert, several video works and a DVDtheque with works by BADco. and our collaborators. Besides BADco. members, others taking part in the project are: Simon Bogojević – Narath, Damir Gamulin, Daniel Fischer, Oliver Frljić, Helge Hinteregger, Emil Hrvatin, Ana Hušman, Oliver Imfeld, D. B. Indoš, Aleksandra Janeva, Ivan Marušić Klif, Petar Milat, Goran Petercol, Vedran Peternel, Platforma 9,81, Silvio Vujičić and many more.

An exhibition of posters created for BADco. productions and a DVD-theque with recordings of BADco. productions and works of our collaborators will be available to view daily in the space of the former printer’s.

The interactive video Deleted Messages was created as a navigateable recording of the performance of same title by Croatian collective BADco. in collaboration with video artist Ana Hušman. The performance was recorded with three cameras that were, as the audience members were, mobile in the performing space, plus a fourth camera that acted as a “surveillance” camera and whose image was edited by software for movement intensity tracking developed by German media artist Daniel Fischer. The viewer has the possibility to change the view angle, to switch between different cameras’ views of the performance.

The interactive video Deleted Messages was presented at the international digital performance festival TECHNE06 in Istanbul 17. -22. April 2006.

The Watt+Eau project is a BADco. and Eks-scena collaboration, supported by the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb and the Imaginary Academy in Grožnjan. Started in July 2002, the project gathers together a group of young dancers, choreographers, and dramaturgy students at a ten-day workshop in Grožnjan. Through everyday classes, and even more so through discussions, the creative atmosphere of the relatively isolated small medieval town gave birth to distinctively different artistic concepts and modes of research.

In its second stage the project was relocated to Zagreb (as a part of the Urban Festival in September 2002) with a number of public presentations in various urban localities: the main city square, in the display of a furniture retailer, inside a private apartment with video projections on the outside of the apartment building.

Watt+Eau is not about re-inscribing localities with its presence or about questioning the “authenticity” of city/experience, but rather about researching the relation between public and private, relation to spatiality in thecontext of today’s technoglobalizing world where the idea of a fixed geographiclocation or even fixed identity becomes obsolete, even reactionary, in the new mobile culture.

Participants: Sandra Banić, Selma Banich, Maja Drobac, Iva Hladnik, Ivana Ivković, Ivana Karačonji, Ana Kreitmeyer, Nina Kurtela, Petra Kurtela, Goran Manić, Natalija Manojlović, Silvija Marchig, Ana Markić, Barbara Matijević, Tom Medak, Roberta Milevoj, Iva Pavičić, Željka Sančanin, Maja Sviben, Lana Šarić, Sanja Tropp, Andrija Turčin, Alen Zanjko