Shadow Casters Project (2001.-2006.)

Shadow Casters is a network of several custom made urban projects united by similar methods, principles and visions in a specific creative exploration of different cities of the world. Each city is a territory to be read and re-mapped (re-semantisized) by an international Shadow Casters crew that joins professionals from various fields – from arts and architecture to music and science – and of different generations, in order to conceive an interactive multifaceted and multi-centered performance voyage/ research. Thus, each city is a Shadow Casters project for itself: a new ground to be explored by a new creative team. Shadow Casters is therefore a network of several projects that are united by similar methods, principles and visions. The production of the Shadow Casters project for a single city is divided in two phases that take place within at least a one-month distance. With the Shadow Casters, the artistic team create a multimedia framework for each audience members individual journey of discovery, through which they are invited to follow the artist’s lead and create their own paths through the city, interweaving subjective experiences with the events planted by the work’s creators and the ever unfolding City that ultimately is the “protagonist” of this work.
Shadow Casters could be seen as a treasure hunt/ city voyage. Receiving information and clues one step at a time, audience members travel by foot, public transportation or the Web, to either unknown or familiar locations, public and private spaces, open air and indoor sites. Throughout the journey, they make a myriad of choices: which of the many clues to follow, whether to participate in a variety of everyday and unusual human interactions or simply to observe them, how long to travel.

The Shadow Casters interlace various media (Web, digital video and audio, urban performing and dance…) and various methods in order to:
– discover new and unknown aspects of the city, its beauty and idiosyncrasies, its multi-layered and multicultural nature, its social, urban and human specifics, arising from the past and embedding itself in the present;
– explore identity problems, decision-making processes and links between society and responsibility, especially in the light of confronting different cultural backgrounds, experiences and habits of the project’s participants;
– read the city as a hyper-space in a time-spatial, historical, political, social, game-like and metaphysical sense;
– bring a large number of diversified audiences to art and performance work and to surpass the limits of the usual “art crowd”, offering the event to citizens from all strata;
– introduce new ways of storytelling and possible approaches to new media communication tools, such as narration in digital media and its possible use within the traditional performance frame.

Short History of the Shadow Casters project:
1998. – conceived by Boris Bakal as an urban hyper-textual treasure-hunt project for New York (Orchestra Stolpnik production)
2001., July – inspired by Paul Austers work, Shadow Casters has its first launch in Zagreb, Croatia, with its first phase as part of the International Urban Festival.
2001., December – first phase in Bologna, Italy, within the International Festival of Urban Arts and New Media – Hunting Season.
2002., April – Graz, Austria (Forum Stadtpark – preparations and video work);
2002., May – Ljubljana, Slovenia (Exodos Festival);
2002., September – Belgrade, Serbia (REX-B92 Kulturni centar and CENPI).
2002., summer – Shadow Casters Zagreb second phase took place, again within the frame of the Urban Festival.
2003., July – Shadow Casters (Eventure) was launched in New York in co-production with Dancing in the Streets association and supported by The Kitchen, ArtsLink, Trust for mutual Understanding and Columbia University.
2006., May and June –  the project was devised and performed in Pisa (Costellazione, Ipse Dixit) as the final event of the EU project dedicated to Galileo Galillei – Sidereus Nuncius.

So far, more then fifty artists and professionals from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, UK and USA participated in the making of Shadow Casters project.

First Shadow Casters team from left to right:
Ana Hušman, Pina Siotto, Irina Karakahayova, William Aitchison, Katarina Pejović, Boris Bakal, Carla Tomassini, Sonja Leboš (left the project after two days), Ranka Mesarić (left the project after one day), Zhana Ivanova, Angelo di Bello (missing Jasen Jakić).