Maja Štefančíková: Forecast

• Performance starts: 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm
• Venue: Swimming pool at the Children’s Village, Na dolinách 866/27, 911 05 Trenčín – Zlatovce
• Curator: Lýdia Pribišová
• Music collaboration: Petra Noskaiová and Petra Torkošová

About the performance

Climate change and increasingly frequent extreme weather events are fundamentally transforming our perception of the environment, safety and the future. Although contemporary technologies enable increasingly precise monitoring and forecasting of atmospheric phenomena, their consequences are having an ever more profound impact on our everyday lives.

Maja Štefančíková’s performative event Forecast draws on real meteorological data and climate events, transforming them into a collective performative score. Through voice, breath, movement and bodily sounds, it explores the relationship between humans and natural processes, as well as the technologies that mediate our understanding of the world around us.

Mobile phones enter the performance as extensions of the human body and senses. The performers record their own breathing, transforming it into wind, while their phones serve as compasses and tools for creating flashes of lightning. The digital mediation of weather is thus translated into a living, embodied and collective experience.

The dramaturgy traces the gradual transformation of an atmospheric situation, from sunny, windless conditions through intensifying winds and a storm to the return of the Sun. This, however, brings no expected catharsis, but instead another unsettling forecast. Collective choral singing, inspired by the medieval composition Dies irae (Day of Wrath), intertwines with the detached language of meteorological reports, creating tension between emotional intensity and the matter-of-fact tone of professional weather broadcasting.

Forecast reflects on the gradual blurring of the boundaries between catastrophic scenarios and reality, in which extraordinary climate events are becoming the norm. It draws on the principle of the oracle: the future is not presented as a predetermined fate, but as an open horizon whose fulfilment remains uncertain. Catastrophe thus ceases to be a closed event and becomes a permanent part of our collective experience.

About the artist

Maja Štefančíková is a visual artist and performer whose work explores relationships between the human and more-than-human worlds, from plants and animals to technologies and atmospheric phenomena. Through voice and movement, she creates performative situations in which bodily and sonic expressions unfold into structured compositions. Her recent work has been presented at micadanses in Paris and the National Gallery in Prague. In 2024, she undertook a residency at the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. She is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, where she heads the Performance Laboratory.

Presented as part of the Aqua Vitae programme, Trenčín – European Capital of Culture 2026.

Credits

Performers: Silvia Bakočková, Samar Ben Romdhane, Cathleen Bodo, Viktória Bogáňová, Martin Bretzina, Diana Dobrucká, Bruno Dunajský, Klára Farkašovská, Adriana Gramann, Nela Halová, Iva Hevesiová, Ivan Hirländer, Ivana Honcová, Monika Horná, Natália Husková, Alena Kasová, Anna Kertészová, Katka Kvanková, Viktoria Mala, Katarína Matulíková, Lenka Miklovičová, Katarína Milučká, Anja Naňová, Mária Petríková, Kristína Pokrivčáková, Michala Poláková, Zuzana Riedlová, Alica Šaling, Andrea Spišáková, Lucia Staroň, Denisa Struňáková, Paula Struňáková, Martina Števuliaková, Viktória Viola Tekeľová, Paulína Tináková, Alžbeta Torkošová, Klára Torkošová, Katka Žuková.

Text editing: Dominika Moravčíková. Editorial revisions: Anita Ráczová and Petra Noskaiová. Translation: Júlia Sherwood. Project management: Veronika Juricová. Technical support: Lea Hašková. Photo: Sonia Ščepánová.