Frida Iman Charara & Maria Votti

Frida Iman Charara is an action artist working with installations and immersive performances. She incorporates participatory design and Theater of the Oppressed methods in the (co)production and scenography of her projects. She focuses on topics of migration, politics of space and embedded colonialities.

With feet in architecture and theater soils, Frida Iman co-founded “baucircus” in 2018– a nomadic workshop that travels to communities with the mission of addressing and implementing participatory spatial projects through the connecting powers of crafts. When in action, the workshop becomes a circus with on-stage tickets: an invitation for audience to become actors, a thinking- and coproducing part of an open process.

Frida Iman and Cle from baucircus went to Sloalyckan in 2021 and were invited to re-visit in 2022.
In 2023, baucircus received an invitation from AIO to reflect on the two years and engage with the residents about a new space on the border to Sloalyckan. Frida Iman was joined this time by filmmaker Maria Votti.

Maria Votti is an independent visual artist, active in the realms of screenwriting, poetry and video, currently residing in the valley of Dodoni, Greece. The primary dramaturgical premise underlying her oeuvre is the quest and definition of liberation under oppressive conditions. Each film is an open-ended, experimental process shaped by the input of all individuals involved, thereby rendering the medium of filmmaking more accessible and less akin to a competitive, self-congratulatory exercise. Through techniques such as dialogue, improvisation, loosely scripted narratives and the infusion of mythos into reality, the final product represents an aesthetic paradigm of the decision to foster enduring visuals and remembrance.