Walk-in-progress

Katja Muenker
Berlin

Gehen TransAlpin is a long-term walk including performances which are woven into the landscape as well as into interior spaces. For 2,5 months from July to Middle of September 2012 I will be hiking along the Alps from the region around Udine/Italy to the region of Luzern/Switzerland.
Almost in the sense of John Cage Gehen TransAlpin is a long-term composition instantly emerging from the situation: landscape, trail, daily stage, weather, walking pace, breathing, pulse, rhythms of walking-standing-sitting-lying, pausing, all actions of taking the backpack on/off and clothing on/off, reading the map, viewing direction, sounds, encounters with people and talks are accumulatively growing together.
On my way I will be collecting material with and through the experience of my hiking body. I will be gathering movement, text, interviews, photos, sounds and postcards to later weave that in studio performances into my performance installations.
Within the global tendency of shifting life more and more into virtual spaces and enhanced speed of processes this kind of project almost appears as anti-cyclical. The main recording-‘device‘ will be my living system. In addition I will use low technical support for memorizing and documenting the analogue network of stories of trails, places and humans.
Stazione Topolò will be hosting my project for a few days in its very beginning. After just 3 days of hiking I will be arriving in Topolò to spend some days in the village before performing the first en-route-performance. This performance will connect my interest in walking as a performance practice and the process of my long-term walk with stories of habitants and performers in Topolò. For 3 days I will be available for people of the village to go with me for walks and take me around, to share stories and to talk with me about the relationship to walking in their life’s. The performance itself will be an installation of movement, spoken text, sound and projection which fragmentarily creates a particular way of travelogue.
Freelanced dancer/choreographer/Feldenkrais-Practitioner based in Berlin. After training and practice as physiotherapist studies followed in contemporary dance, (contact) improvisation and instant composition; originally trained with Keriac she also studied with Keith Hennessy, Kathleen Hermesdorf, K.J. Holmes, Stephanie Maher, Lisa Nelson et al.. Many years of experience in various somatic practices, professional training in Feldenkrais method. Artistic work and research leading to various outcomes like performances, installations, walks, lectures and writings.. 2007-2010 Transploration, a self-organized study and research project in contemporary dance and choreography mentored by Ingo Reulecke + Martin Nachbar. Regular teaching in various contexts.

Voicescapes. Voice in the landscape and landscape in the voice

Renato Rinaldi Fornalis

During our research in the Alps region we encountered elderly people living alone in abandoned places, cold, uncomfortable, high-altitude villages where nature is mean and silence enshrouds everything. They’ve been living there forever, it’s their place and it will still be for the rest of their lives. There to live is to break the silence, a daily exercise at those altitudes, where contemporaneity and superimposition do not exist and everything unrolls as a sequence.
But how to break silence if one’s alone? Who to speak to? What to say?
The voices that inhabit this silence are very particular. They sound like mineral voices, that stick to the rock rather than people; their timbre and grain sound encrusted with landscape, but the rhythm and pace are part of the motionless vastness of the surroundings.
On our journey through the Alps we have encountered their voices and we’ll bring them to you adding ours to talk about the landscape.
We’ll talk about voicescape with Pero Zanini during Tutto sommato ancora una montagna | Still a mountain, after all , then the voices will remain as an installation in a small and dark place of Topolò; you’ll have to look for them.

Still a mountain after all

Piero Zanini
Mezzocorona

In the beginning it was a matter of exploring a common place: the Alps.
We went there to listen and see, to challenge a feeling: we inhabit this place but we don’t recognize it in the way it is portrayed or it manifests itself, in talks, images and political decisions. As the exploration proceeded we had to figure out how to describe such an intimate place, that being a common place to many other people it is also lived and imagined in endless ways. Now we can only interrogate its present landscape, humbly trying to understand something more about the way it changes, that is to say how we change too. Following a faint trace, looking for the right pace, once again we attempt to investigate our being in the world.

Postajanja

video documentary on the 2011 edition of Stazione/Postaja
filmed by the young girls of Stazione, edited by Anja Medved

The project Postajanja aims at the creation of a documentary regarding the 2011 edition of Stazione di Topolò-Postaja Topolove. During the past summer the project has evolved around an original idea: portraying the art festival from the point of view of local young boys and girls that attend Stazione and its workshops. They have been in charge of shooting and recording both the events and their backstage, handing over dozens of hours of footage to Slovenian filmmaker Anja Medved, who has taken care of the editing. One of the main concerns of Stazione is in fact to involve local youngsters in the festival, as active participants together with the other international guests. With this intent various music groups have developed inside (and outside) Stazione di Topolò with a certain success. A couple of examples are Les Tambours de Topolò and Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra. Project Postajanja is part of this conception of culture and art. The names of the participants are: Dora Ciccone, Emma Golles, Tanja Marmai, Marija Miorelli, Sofia Miorelli, Elena Rucli, Vida Rucli, Sofia Vogrig.

dial: In_C. Libero arrangiamento ispirato a In C di Terry Riley

for chamber ensemble, electronics and video
free arrangement by Hiroshi Matoba and Michele Spanghero
inspired by In C, by Terry Riley

During these last years Terry Riley’s In C has been a constant presence at Stazione di Topolò, being the score around which the whole TMO Orkestra project has evolved. Due to this familiar link that now bonds In C, the TMO and Topolò I decided to present this piece, here, once again, but in an unusual and revisited version. The confidence that TMO musicians have developed towards In C and its intrinsic freedom have suggested a creative approach to the compositional fragments. So I decided to involve Hiroshi Matoba and Nobuhiko Furuta, two Japanese artists and creators of an audio-visual software conceived for music improvisations based on live loop manipulation. A chamber ensemble, selected among the members of TMO and other guests of Stazione will join in and create a dialogue with Matoba and Furuta’s electro-acoustic samplings; the performance will start from In C and then open up to a broader range of sounds.

Michele Spanghero (Gorizia, 1979) is a sound and visual artist. His current interest is focused on improvised and electronic music (as doublebass player and composer) and sound art installations. He’s conducting a parallel path of visual research on the photographic medium Hiroshi Matoba was born in Japan in 1983. After undergraduate course of product design, now he is studying sound art and programming at the Kyushu University and Adcdu. His interest is focused on making a new sequence system for music. Recently he tried to make a original circular software and hardware sequencer instead of throwing away a traditional liner sequence system.
This system make his original audio and visual performance and installation.
Transmediale award 2009, International festival of electronic art 404, Baca-Ja 2008, Asia Digital Art Award 2008.

ToBe Continued…

48 concerts in 24 hours to beat TB

...Now you can hear all the amazing music that was broadcast over the internet,... Live, whenever you want! I didn’t know a lot of the artists, but every single live show made me realize how we have so much beautiful contemporary music, we are so fortunate to have this, for it is precious! And how many wonderful contemporary composer/performers that we have in this world, in this spaceship that we call Earth. Each one of the 48 concerts is available for streaming on www.stazioneditopolo.it Rhys Chatham

Kathmandu: lessons of darkness

Martino Nicoletti
Glasgow

Things that were there and others that should have been.
This city, the Kathmandu of dust, mud and wood, hoisted up and then taken away, ripens at sunset.
People evaporate yet again in breaths and the whole flat valley once more lies down on its columns of vertebrae.

In the form of an installation, the work presents a visionary catabasis capable to approach the abyssal Himalayan metropolis of Kathmandu: a city, a real place, but, above all, an inviolate recess of the soul.
Photographic images, poetic fragments and a sound ambiance, created by the artist and interpreted by Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, provide a complete fruition of the artwork.

Martino Nicoletti (Perugia 1968), ethnologist and visual artist has for over twenty years been engaged in visual anthropology and art practice in South and South East Asia. He is author of numerous ethnographic essays, travel accounts, artist’s books and short films. He lives in Glasgow.
Martino Nicoletti returns to Topolò with his strongly evocative and poetic work, inhabiting a domestic space with images and sounds gathered during his research.

Anastomosi

Performance Giorgia Minisini e Paulina Rucarba · Sound Design Jean-Baptiste Fave
Berlin · Mexico City · Paris

“Anastomose” is a choreographic research based on the natural phenomenon between two entities that develop as one in relation to inner and outer landscapes. Starting from the basic human condition of each individual to have the need to communicate and interact with their surrounding, we place two bodies in one space. The two dancers are connected by their hair and explore the transformation of this new situation. Anastomose is the dialogue of two bodies sharing one action that develops integration of duality into a solo and unicity into a duo.

Jean-Baptiste Fave is a French visual artist specialized in sound and Video.  He was working with AMIS: Asociation Atelier Mémoires Images et Sons since 2004 giving Workshops of creation and Audiovisual realization. He was working in collaboration with Patrick Fontana, Nathalie Fave, Paulina Rucarba, Mario Ruiz, Lourdes Roth, Laura Vera, Ximena Monroy ( “Agite y Sirva” - Touring Screendance festival in México and France), Giorgia Minisini, among others.

Giorgia Minisini is a free-lance contemporary dancer and performer based in Berlin. Her current interest is focused on real-time movement editing and instant replay of compositional elements. She has been working in the UK, USA, Mexico, France, Denmark, Germany, Italy and South Korea. This year she is regularly traveling to the USA for the Figure Space Project lead by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson.

Paulina Ruiz Carballido (Rucarba) is a Mexican contemporary dancer, choreographer, researcher and multidisciplinary artist specialized in performing arts based in Paris. Interested in the sustainable development of collective intelligence, the poetics of the body and the interaction between the creative and technological spheres. Since 2010 she study an MA in Dance at Université Paris VIII, supported by the grant from the National Fund for the Arts and Culture, México (FONCA 2010-2012 Grant). 

Messenger of forgotten villages

Enrico Viola,
Triest

There were.
There were elders and children.
And animals out to pasture and in the barns.
There was smoke from the fireplaces.
Someone was born, someone was dying.
Young couples were isolating themselves in the woods.
One knew where the sun rises in the longest day of the year,
and where it sets.
And so for the shortest day.
And there were many words,
to name all things,
paths, crossroads and passages,
mountains, crevasses and grasslands,
and all houses, cabins and barns.

A journey through the memory of what has been lost and has fallen into oblivion; I become hemerodromoe once again, with fascination and respect for various names that might not say much.
Frassaneit, Tamar, Vuar, Palcoda, San Vincenzo, Piedigiaf, Pozzis, Stavoli, Moggessa di là e di qua, Morolz, Borgo di Mezzo, Badiuz, Riulade di sopra e di sotto, Borgo Cros, Borgo Costa, Borgo Maieroni, Prabunello, Tanacertegna, Predrobrac.
Microcosms shattered on our mountains, four houses arranged in a cross shape suggesting a square, the possibility of an encounter.
Some are only ruins, some have been restored, some resist.
A stick of incense lit in each one of them, to pay homage.

between thursday July 12th and sunday the 15th, from lake Ciul to Topolò, running

My name is Enrico Viola, "murasaki" for the world of running. I joined the Usmis experience during the 90's, attracted by the "wild scent" this group was bringing into the world of art. I've been enchanted, in an older age, by long distance running in natural environments and I have run many of the toughest national competitions of this kind. Long running excursions awake the dreamy side of each runner; faithful to this dimension I donated in 2011 to Stazione/Postaja a project: Topolovectopolò

Kage (per John Cage)

Alessandro Fogar
Grado

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.
Thomas Campion

Kage (shadow, in Japanese), theoretically relies on such listening concepts which agree on the necessity of giving up with the romantic myth of demiurgic composer, suggesting a new musical aesthetics, no more subjectivist, narrative or strictly consequential. Hyle is performed live: a performers plays with a graphic tablet and a midi mixer, controlling interactive algorithmic compositional processes. As the dew, distilled from the sky, the system will generate sounds by using those present in the environment. Particular importance will be given to the ‘environmental ‘ sound, the one coming from the valleys, which will be picked up by a microphone and hybridized with sounds captured by microphones and radio transmissions. A series of control signals are also derived from the same sounds, providing to self-regulate the system.
Acting on feedback and material recycling, increasing sound resonances, you get new suggestions, always different sound textures.
A series of speakers of varying type and characteristics, will be placed in a clearing. The public is invited to participate to gather nearby, experimenting with different positions and stopping as they like.

We recommend that you come with a blanket or similar to settle comfortably on the grass.
Alessandro Fogar lives in Grado, he sudies electronic music and new multiimedia technologies at the Conservatorio G. Tartini in Trieste, where he has achieved the first level diploma in electronic music.

Homage. 9 postage stamps for solo clarinet

by Angelo di Giorgio

Homage a J.S. Bach
Homage a N. Paganini
Homage a C.M. von Weber
Homage a C. Debussy
Homage a M. de Falla
Homage a R.Strauss
Homage a B. Bartok
Homage a Z. Kodaly
Homage a A. Khatschaturian

Since 2000 we have a very particular post office in Topolò; it does not serve any of the States or Countries that compose the 5 continents, but it only takes into consideration the States of consciousness. Furthermore, you also have to know that not all postal exchange has to occur on paper, as in the case of these musical stamps, specifically composed for our Office by Angelo Di Giorgio, that portray some of the greatest musicians of all times.
The duration of each stamp, performed by a solo clarinet, is about 3 minutes.
Angelo Di Giorgio has graduated in 1982 in clarinet and in 1998 in saxophone.
He plays contemporary music and is also interested in electronic music.
Has won several prizes and national competitions and has attended a seminary on execution praxis at the last Luigi Nono organized by the Venice Biennale. For several years has participated in the Gaudeamus in Amsterdam.

Il margine delle cose

Topolò is situated on the north-east border of Italy, in the south of Europe, and Norway as a country represents the northern border to Europe. We are both periphery.
At school, a long time ago, our teachers told us that if we place a compass point in Oslo and start drawing a circle from our own northern border, the southern radius will pass straight through Colosseum in Rome. In other words; Norwegian children learn that they are the centre of their world - periphery is only a matter of definition!
This is also true in the world of art and music. “Edge” is a word that describes something as far as you can get from the centre, and at the same time represents something that artists all over the world strives hard to achieve. As minorities we are more unique than the masses, and we are proud of it. All roads might lead to Rome, but at least one of those roads has its source in the middle of the mountains of Norway and another, very steep, very curvy and important one, starts right up here by the church in Topolò.
It is the fate of both our people to be surrounded by woods, mountains, weather, mythical creatures, ghosts and a history full of cultural and political hardship.
I have learned that Topolonauts, like myself, have an open ear for the little things, the simple and sometimes rather unexpected. In these poignant surroundings we share the joy of exploring artistic ventures and some existential questions about life. We are stubborn, we are small, and Stazione teaches us to respect and trust each other.
Topolò is the epicentre of periphery. This embassy shall be a symbol for everything that a handful loving people can achieve together on a 1:1 scale. Small is beautiful.

Per Platou, ambassador

Solo concert and Lament

Enrico Malatesta
Cesena

To Topolò I'd like to propose my special cymbals-only solo, titled Lamento (lament). It is a work based on the construction of a chorale dimension to redefine the timbric and spatial capabilities of cymbals. This project involves a variety of techniques that emphasize the harmonic and sparkling features of these instruments, thus creating a complex stratification of sound layers that interact with the surrounding space. Drones and phrases with no attack are employed to take cymbals next to the evocative potential of the human voice.

The SOLO concert is aimed at the creation of multidirectional sound environments, showing a wider and deeper use of percussions. Resonance, building materials, ghost sounds and a careful attention to gesture are all cores of this music action, which takes into account the physical component typical of percussion instruments but uses a dynamic approach close to the pianissimo, often with no "attack". Silence, as a condition, becomes central to this performance, partly improvised, partly pre-composed.

Enrico Malatesta, 1985. Is a percussionist active in the field of contemporary, electro-acoustic and improvised music.
He studied classical percussion at the “Bruno Maderna” Conservatory of high artistic formation in Cesena, delving into both the orchestral and soloist repertoire; his personal activity and research is aimed at the redefinition of the role of the percussionist in different contemporary areas, studying the acoustic dimension and the material quality of percussion instruments.
Besides his ongoing solo live projects, he is also active performing works from the soloist repertoire of the 20th Century, including graphic scores by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Karlhenz Stockhausen, Earl Brown.

Klezmorim

Klezmer music workshop
directed by Davide Casali

Since 1994 the ancient music of Eastern Europe Jews resonates during Stazione, even before their ancient documents were recovered, revealing how a jewish community had flourished in the lower part of the village: three synagogues, a Talmudic school, an ancient cemetery and the music scores of the musicians who had lived here and then emigrated towards Moravia, Galicia, Banato.
To preserve such a rich tradition Davide Casali, an unfailing explorer of this surprising past, presents a Klezmer music workshop, for both professional and aspiring musicians.
It will be a way to explore this music genre, traditionally played during Jewish marriages and feasts; the workshop will end with a final concert in which the Topolovska klezmer Orkestra will open up to other musicians and klezmorim for a great, unique, festive event.

Davide Casali, jewish tradition studious, music festivals organizer, composer and clarinet player, founder of The Original Klezmer Ensemble, with which he has performed in Europe, Japan and the US during important ethnic and klezmer music festivals. He recently founded the web radio www.radioshalom.com . Lives in Triest.

Postajanja

a documentary by the young girls of Stazione/Postaja

The project Postajanja aims at the creation of a documentary regarding the 2011 edition of Stazione di Topolò-Postaja Topolove. During the past summer the project has evolved around an original idea: portraying the art festival from the point of view of local young boys and girls that attend Stazione and its workshops. They have been in charge of shooting and recording both the events and their backstage, handing over dozens of hours of footage to Slovenian filmmaker Anja Medved, who has taken care of the editing.
One of the main concerns of Stazione is in fact to involve local youngsters in the festival, as active participants together with the other international guests.
With this intent various music groups have developed inside (and outside) Stazione di Topolò with a certain success. A couple of examples are Les Tambours de Topolò and Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra.
Project Postajanja is part of this conception of culture and art.

The names of the participants are: Dora Ciccone, Emma Golles, Tanja Marmai, Marija Miorelli, Sofia Miorelli, Elena Rucli, Vida Rucli, Sofia Vogrig.

La Roja

Simon Longo
London

“The videos have been shot in the surroundings of San Leonardo/Podutana, particularly along torrent Roja, which flows down from Altana/Utana, where I spent my childhood.
The sounds have been recorded along that same creek. I have conducted an extensive research on resonances created by water flowing through stones and all the particular rhythmics that are generated by it, which is something that interests me deeply.
In my work I explore psychoacoustics, concepts and theories in neuroscience as compositional methods to produce an effect which suggest a reality beyond reality.
My work poses the question of what is real along with themes such as ecology and nature”.

Simon Longo, aka Dithernoise, è un artista visivo e sonoro con base a Londra.
Il suo lavoro comprende anche installazioni site-specific. Il lavoro di Simon si ispira all’elettronica e all’estetica digitale e organica. Crea arte interdisciplinare con riferimenti alle neuro-scienze e alla sinestesia, esplorando in particolare l’interazione percettiva tra suono e visione.

A listening Topolò (Ascoltando Topolò)

Nicolás Carrasco Díaz,
Santiago

For the Stazione I'll work on the preparation and realization of some scores of mine and by other composers. The scores will be realized (arranged, played, executed, actualized) in open sites in and around Topolò, using recordings made in situ, in the surroundings, in other places (Santiago, Bahía Inglesa and other sites in Chile), and recordings of previous versions of the pieces/scores (plus a few additional and portable [sound] materials: bands of noise, sine tones, radios). The scores, the [sound] materials, the presence of a performer will be added transparently to what is already there, listening for ways to collaborate with it, not just to capturing or observing it: not only a site, a name, an idea for or a [sound/land]scape Topolò; hopefully a working and a place Topolò, a listening Topolò.

NCD was born in 1980. Composer, musician, he started making music in 1993, studied composition from 1999 to 2005 and started playing improvised music in 2004. He has played in Ensamble Majamama, No Hermanos Carrasco &. He lives in Santiago, Chile.

A listening Topolò (Ascoltando Topolò)

Nicolás Carrasco Díaz,
Santiago

DITHERNOISE’s sound performance involves a number of different techniques that might vary depending on the particular performance space and location.
The audiovisual process in all the performances is improvised in real time and the playback is specified for the particular performance space when possible.
Through enhancing primarily the energy spectrum of field recordings and synthesized waveforms the audio performance creates rhythms and patterns that normally remain imperceptible.
DITHERNOISE draws on an imaginary sound-canvas as a result of intuitive artistic gesture.
Within the improvised performance the approach to rhythm is experimental, the performance aim to create a coherent flow or sound mass, atmosphere and rhythms metaphorically linked with fields theories and the idea of an interconnected consciousness.
Cross-­‐modal rhythmical structures are generated by the simultaneous experience of aural and video information associated on the fly according to subjective syneshetic intuition.
The video clips originating from organic sources are remixed in real time along with the ongoing sound performance.
At times a live microphone fed from the performance space is combined with wave-­‐shaping techniques, to allow an exploration of the acoustical space to introduce an element of emergence as part of the unfolding performance.
Simon aka DITERNOISE speculates the possibility to access a direct awareness of reality as it appears before cognition and the formation of constructs and meaning through synestesia.

Simon Longo, aka Dithernoise, is a London based sound and audiovisual artist, his work includes also site-­‐specific installations. Simon’s work is inspired through electronica, dance, techno, ambient, digital and organic aesthetics to create interdisciplinary art with reference to neurosciences, synestesia and primarily exploring the perceptual interaction between sound and vision.
Simon started with producing 12” vinyl and CDs under several artist names and alias in early 90's released primarily under the Italian Label Muzak, Tax Disk and its own UK Label Modern Innovation.
Simon currently work as independent artist and researcher experimenting through the use of time based media.

A proposal for T.

A two part proposal for Topolò
Al Margolis
New York

The first part would be presenting finished works that were recorded in Topolo during my previous stay. I recorded the separate members of the You Know Quintet - Marta Hari, Antonio Della-Marina, Sandro Carta, Michele Spanghero and Veronika Vitzakova.
I subsequently used their recordings to construct tape pieces for each musician. The pieces can work as both stand alone works but also can be performed over by each musician. I propose that each evening there would be one tape piece played to be followed by another piece with live musician. So for example the tape piece for Sandro followed by the tape piece for Marta with Marta performing live. The next evening Veronika's tape piece, followed by Sandro playing his piece live. Five evenings of about 12-15 minutes each.

The second part would be to record and present a short new compositioneach evening.
Each days piece would be based on sounds of Topolo and would include live performance from the pool of artists staying at Topolo during this time.

Al Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music and is co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Has worked under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition.

Archeo

The film opens with Man (Niko Novak), Woman (Medea Novak) and Boy (Tommaso Finzi) literally falling to the ground (or Earth?), one after the other in different spots. They have landed in an unfamiliar world and are trying to survive. The place is threadbare - it's all forests, hills, rivers and sea, without any settlements or even houses, and no occupants except animals. However, the characters' clothes, reminiscent of costume design in films in the vein of Mad Max, tell us that this is not the beginning of the world, but a new beginning for a post-apocalyptic world. When the three characters meet, they display the basic human emotions: fear, hunger, sexual urge, curiosity. They have the natural need to group together (Woman is protective of Boy), and communicate (Man attracts Woman by rhythmically banging two stones together). Described by some commentators as "Slovenia's Tree of Life", Archeo skillfully combines epic wide shots of nature with close-ups of the protagonists (camera by Jure Černec). It also features nods to Kubrick's 2001, including some amusingly ironic ones. Recently winner of Insbruck International Film Fest.

JIYEON KIM / Seoul

Jiyeon Kim started her career as media art project producer, then she moved to the soundmaker/musician field. She mainly uses field recordings with sounds made with handmade analogue sound devices and acoustic objects as her source. Currently she experiments on resonating different materials in various methods with diy microphones, amplifiers, analogue oscillators, which leads her to develop unconventional ways of field recording. Jiyeon is also working as a sound educator, actively programming and running various sound workshops for young people. She aims to inspire participants to engage with their sonic environments in an artistic and social way.

Total gambit

Documentary portrait about Albin Planinc is a film about forgotten genius. Albin Planinc spent more that 25 years in total annonimity, although was more than a decade, from late sixties to late seventies of 20th century, one of best chess players. He did not just beat the best players and participate at most elite tournaments, he was –according to one of famous sisters Polgar, chess master with biggest imagination in the history of chess. Planinc always played on mate, risking everything and winning some anthological games. If we compare chess with art, then Planinc was an artist among chess players.. In front of us there is an adventure of travel into the deep corners of the soul, where imagination and total paralyses are present. Total gambit is not just a film about chess genious Albin Planinc. It is a film about “victims ”, humans that are sent to march in front of human first lines. Their task is to show us the propriate path, even for the cost of their own lifes. (Jan Cvitkovič about his first documentary film)