Volkswacht Bodensee - In show stretched over 50 years, Slovenian director shoots for space

And if they die before the half-century run of performances ends? They are replaced by satellite-like devices that the director says will eventually be launched into space.

"If you ask me who will be the audience of these emancipated, auto-poetic devices -- it will be the Sun!" Zivadinov, 65, told AFP after the latest staging in the remote Slovenian town of Vitanje last month.

The first performance in the series took place on April 20, 1995, in the capital Ljubljana; the second was in Star City, a town outside Moscow that has prepared generations of Soviet and Russian cosmonauts. And the last one will be in 2045.

This time, 12 actors, most of them in their sixties, took part, wearing futuristic monochrome coveralls and dancing along a spaceship-like cross-shaped stage made of monitors.

Two so-called "umbots" -- artistic satellite-like devices emitting sounds -- replaced actors who have died since 1995.

- 'Makes you think' -

Hundreds turned up to watch the play, "Love and Sovereignty", a tragedy set in the early 17th century by Croatian playwright Vladimir Stojsavljevic. It deals with power and art and features English playwright William Shakespeare as a character.

"It is an interesting experience, makes you think," Eneja Stemberger, who studies acting in Ljubljana, told AFP after watching the packed show.

Tickets offered for free online quickly ran out, but the organisers allowed even those who came without tickets to watch the show, standing or sitting on the floor.

German art consultant Darius Bork told AFP that he had already seen the play 10 years ago, describing Zivadinov's work as "absolutely fantastic".

Zivadinov became internationally recognised in the 1980s as one of the founders of Slovenia's avant-garde movement Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art), which criticised totalitarian regimes in then-Communist Yugoslavia.

At the end of the century, Zivadinov turned to develop "post-gravity art".

He also helped set up a space research centre in Vitanje, named after the early space travel theorist Herman Potocnik, who went by the pseudonym of Noordung and whose work inspired Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey".

The Center Noordung hosted this year's and the 2015 performance.

The "Noordung: 1995-2025-2045" project's final performance will feature only "umbots" and so be "liberated from human influence", Zivadinov said.

At the end of the project, the "umbots" -- containing digitalised information, including the actors' DNA -- will be propelled into space to "culturise" it, he added, without detailing how he would do that.

"They will all be launched simultaneously, each one into a different direction, deep into space," he said.

O.Schlaepfer--VB