Jaka Šimenc is one of Slovenia's leading lighting designers, known for his long-standing contributions to contemporary dance and theatre. Since 2003, he has worked as an independent artist, collaborating with numerous choreographers, directors, visual artists and performing arts organisations. A long-time collaborator of Iztok Kovač and En–Knap, he served as technical director of En–Knap and the Španski Borci Cultural Centre. Alongside his work as a lighting designer and scenographer, Šimenc develops his own artistic projects, exploring the expressive potential of light, sound and space. He is a co-founder of sonoric theatre and has created a number of works that investigate theatre beyond the presence of performers. He is also actively engaged in the education and training of theatre technicians and designers.
Sixteen Turns is a theatre performance without performers, born out of an initiative by lighting designer Jaka Šimenc, who has collaborated with En–Knap for many years. The performance is a logical extension of developments in theatre at the end of the twentieth century, when stage practice became increasingly visual, pushing the actor and the spoken word into the background and turning theatre more and more into an experience for the eye. The performance examines the expressive potential of these theatrical elements in detail, demonstrating that they can exist independently on stage, without performers.