ARTIVISM
OBJECTIVE
The launch of the Artivism Platform at Dance Festival Malta 2025 builds on the festival’s mission to use dance as a universal language to connect deeply, break barriers, and inspire action. This platform introduces artivist initiatives that spark meaningful conversations, amplify vital messages, and leave a lasting impact. By merging artistic expression with activism, the Artivism Platform unites audiences and participants in the shared goal of driving social change.
MISSION
To celebrate the launch of the Artivism Platform, Dance Festival Malta proudly presents Connecting Silent Voices. This project focuses on the marginalization and exploitation of women in the sex industry, a subject often overlooked and stigmatized. Through art, the project raises awareness, fosters community action, and promotes visibility, debate, and inclusion.
Connecting Silent Voices is supported by Perform Europe and led by the BILOURA Intercultural Arts Collective from Italy. The project is an international collaboration involving WomanUp from Bulgaria, Artpolis from Kosovo, and Dance Beyond Borders from Malta. Together, these organizations use artistic expression to challenge societal norms, spark dialogue, and inspire change.
By bringing this project to Dance Festival Malta, the Artivism Platform underscores the power of dance to address urgent social issues and create a space for reflection and action.
Supported by Perform Europe, this is an artistic collaboration led by BILOURA Intercultural Arts Collective from Italy together with WomanUp from Bulgaria, Artpolis from Kosovo and Dance Beyond Borders from Malta.
SILENT
VOICES
22 July – Valletta Campus Theatre
SYNOPSIS
SILENT VOICES is a reflection on the female body's portrayal as an object of trade, pleasure, and pain. Addressing the global issue of female sexual exploitation, the performance delves into the deeply entrenched patriarchal culture and its close ties to economic exploitation of the vulnerable. Through dance, visual art and soundscapes, the poetic performance addresses a complex topic with delicacy and shines a spotlight on the lives behind and beyond exploitation. The dramaturgy of the performance leads the spectator into an intimate space, where political themes are transcribed in the personal, dancing on the bodies of the performers, resonating in the space like a mood, peeking through a gap in the wall. SILENT VOICES is an invitation to watch, to listen, to get closer to some of the most marginalized women in the world.
The collaborative creation process involved artists from both European and Asian backgrounds, incorporating testimonies from women across Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. This intercultural approach allows for a multifaceted exploration of the theme without providing definitive answers, but rather sharing insights gleaned from five years of research into the complex phenomenon of sexual exploitation within sex industry.
ABOUT
BILOURA is an intercultural and transdisciplinary performing arts collective, composed by artists of various professional backgrounds that has been working since 2013 with a g-local strategy between Italy and the world. It leads an artistic path of innovation of scenic languages and artivism and its performances, workshops, projects and various other activities are presented within the international circuits of performing arts.
BILOURA creates artistic projects through collective processes, emphasising the richness of cultural diversity in order to overcome barriers, labels and metaphysical prisons. It has its own poetics and its own research horizon - Cross Culture Performing Arts - oriented to go beyond differences and physical and cultural borders, addressing what unifies the human being.
BILOURA deals with issues of political, social and environmental relevance within thematic projects, seeking for each of them an appropriate and peculiar artistic language, also capable of communicating with a contemporary audience beyond differences in language and cultural origin.
The artistic work of BILOURA wants to encourage the encounter with oneself and the other within the variety of cultural expressions. It is an artistic and political action for a less fearful and divided global society.
Highlights:
Winner of Perform Europe 2024 with the tour project CONNECTING SILENT VOICES. Winner of Green Pilot Tour 2024 of Europe Jazz Network with the performance SINKING ISLANDS. 2 -month artistic residency SEEKING W in collaboration with Paradance Platform Yogyakarta, Indonesia 2023. 3-month production residency at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea to create the performance SILENT VOICES, 2022. Winner of the “Special Mention Award for a Performance by International Artist” at Bangkok Theatre Festival with the performance AMARSIAMORSI in Thailand, 2018.
CREDITS
LOCALLY COORDINATED BY
Dance Beyond Borders
A PERFORMANCE BY
BILOURA Intercultural Arts Collective
PERFORMERS
Yunjung Kim (KOR), Silvia Ribero (ITA), Julienne Schembri (MLT)
ARTISTIC DIRECTION
Angie Rottensteiner (AUT), Chiara Bosco (ITA)
VISUALS
Yooseung Jung (KOR), Francesca Centonze (ITA), Valentina Corrado (ITA)
DRAMATURGY
Chiara Bosco
COMPOSITION & SOUND DESIGN
Angie Rottenteiner
LIGHT DESIGN
Alice Colla (ITA)
PRODUCTION
Asia Culture Center (KOR)
ORIGINAL CREATION
Chiara Bosco, Yooseung Jung, Yunjung Kim, Jin Young Park, Silvia Ribero, Angie Rottensteiner
RESEARCH AND INTERVIEWS
Women’s Human Right Support Center Gwangju
Jeonbuk Center For Human Rights of Women Jeonju
Stand Up Against Sex-Trafficking of Minors Seoul
Women’s Center of Equality & Peace Seoul
National Solidarity against Sexual Exploitation of Women
Footprint – Support for Migrant Women in Vienna
LEFÖ IBF – Anti-Trafficking of Women in Vienna
Tampep Onlus – Anti-Trafficking in Turin
SUPPORTED BY
This presentation is happening with the support of Perform Europe as part of the Silent Voices project
ABOUT
PERFORM EUROPE
Perform Europe, supported by the European Union, is a funding scheme for the European performing arts sector. It facilitates international networking and supports inclusive, diverse, and eco-friendly touring projects across the 40 Creative Europe countries. Perform Europe emphasises practices rooted in sustainability and inclusivity, aiming to transform the performing arts sector and ensure a
balanced distribution across the continent.
Perform Europe is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by a consortium of six organisations: IETM – International network for contemporary performing arts, European Festivals Association (EFA), Circostrada, European Dance Development Network, Pearle * - Live Performance Europe and IDEA Consult.
