Matjaž Farič: Nezaželeni (The Unwanted)

In 2021, two worlds collided on Ljubljana's Prekmurski trg.
The incident between a group of contemporary dancers and a group of homeless people sounds too unbelievable to be true. Even so, it reflects an everyday reality where conflict plays such an overbearing role it has encroached on society at large. The collision between two worlds as different as contemporary dancers and homeless people constitutes a complex problem impossible to assess by means of generalisations or distinctions between the privileged and the underprivileged, the good and the bad.

A dance troupe organises an artistic event in a square of a medium-sized town during a pandemic in early spring. As the dancers rehearse, homeless people start to gather nearby... The dancers keep dancing, and the homeless people, whose numbers are increasing, watch and comment wryly. Their comments become witty, the quips become hostile and insulting, the remarks become loud and eventually shouts, the abusive speech turns into threats and intimidation. The dancers keep dancing as if unaware of their surroundings, choosing to ignore the possibility of impending danger, even though the behaviour of the homeless persons portends conflict. The homeless begin to enter the choreography. The next moment the music stops, the choreographic sequence is concluded, and the dancers leave the scene.