Second-hand Knowledge

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Ana Vujanović (2009-13)

It is commonplace or even commonsense that the bulk of knowledge that reaches the periphery is second-hand knowledge. And the periphery—that is us, Serbia, Southeast Europe, Yugoslavia, the Balkans. There is no irony here, for these regions are peripheral, provincial, and marginal with respect to the centres of the First World, Europe, the European Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Ottoman Empire. For instance, let us briefly consider some prominent examples from Serbian twentieth-century art.[1] Dadaism reached us through Dragan Aleksić, his studies in Prague and connections with the Dadaists circles there. Eurhythmics and Laban’s method arrived here by way of the gymnastic dance workout and dance practice of Maga Magazinović, who studied with Max Reinhardt and Rudolf Steiner. Early conceptual art arrived mostly with Hungarian magazines, thanks to the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern province. Still later, Tanztheater reached us through the modern ballet of Sonja Vukićević and theatre anthropology of the 1990s through a few local figures who studied with Eugenio Barba at Odin Teatret. And today, we also have our own versions of new British drama and contemporary—especially so-called conceptual—dance as the predominant practices on the contemporary performing arts scene…[2]

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PERFORMANCE AND THE PUBLIC (2011-2013)

Transdisciplinary research project by Bojana Cvejić, Marta Popivoda and Ana Vujanović

 

In the frame of TkH [Walking Theory] residency How To Do Things By Theory at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (2010-2012), we started a research about Performance and the Public. The main focus of Cvejić’s and Vujanović’s theoretical part of research are the concepts of “social choreography” and “social drama”, while Popivoda focuses on mass performances of ideology in former, socialist Yugoslavia.

 

Presentation of the research Performance and the Public at the symposium “Broken Performances: Time and (In)Completion”, March 21-23, 2013, Zagreb:

 

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