seven kilometres north-east is a new performance from version 1.0’s Kym Vercoe (perfomer) and Sean Bacon (video artist), exploring the discomforting entanglements of place, tourism and atrocity.
The work was triggered by a visit to the famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2008. Completed in 1571, this bridge forms an historical link between east and west, made famous in Nobel-prize winning author Ivo Andrić‘s novel The Bridge over the Drina.
The nearby Vilina Vlas Spa Resort in Višegrad, was recommended in a tourist guidebook, and so Vercoe checked in. The visit was a great success, filled with tourist adventures and slivovitz-fueled conversations with locals. Upon returning home, Vercoe discovered to her horror that certain facts about Višegrad had been omitted from the tourist guidebook. The travelogue shifts, turning to a darker reflection upon how places bear traces of the atrocities that occur within and around them, the unspeakable and unbearable acts that current residents are only too happy to see erased or obscured. Drawing upon journal notes, the writings of Ivo Andrić, tourist guidebooks, correspondence with guidebook editors, and transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, seven kilometres north-east is an evocative and deeply personal political performance.
Devised and performed by Kym Vercoe
Video artist: Sean Bacon
Dramaturgy: Deborah Pollard
Musical Director: Sladjana Hodžić
Lighting Designer: Emma Lockhart-Wilson
Production Manager: Frank Mainoo
Producer: David Williams
Publicist: Sally Blackwood