PERFORMING THE SELF (currently running)

Transdisciplinary research project (2015-...) by Bojana Cvejić, Marta Popivoda and Ana Vujanović

 

After the twentieth century has been cast as the century of the self, the question arises of how the contemporary expressions of the self in the public and private domains of social life could be best accounted for. According to a prominent thesis of diverse approaches in social sciences throughout the twentieth century, the self is constructed through performances and technologies that rest on the metaphors of theatricality and choreography. Thus the notable analytical models of the self being constructed through performance include body techniques and habitus (Marcel Mauss, Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu); act and gesture (Michael Bahktin), social roles and performance of the self (Erving Goffman), technologies of the self (Michel Foucault), man as actor (Richard Sennett), and performing identity (Judith Butler). The project investigates the contemporary practices of the self in search of a model that best describes and interprets their current form, basing itself on the contemporary theories of performance, dance and theater.

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TAKE IT OR MAKE IT (2016-2017)

Artistic experiment on social choreography of democracies by Ana Vujanović

 

I set an experimental artistic process based on the premise of working together, in a group, on the issue of the democracy as a real-existing organization of social situation. The experiment takes as its point of departure the cinematic score by experimental filmmaker Heinz Emigholz for his movie Schenec-Tady I (1973).

Emigholz_score

Heinz Emingholz: score plan

Firstly, five performers interpret that score individually, creating artistic materials separated from each other and then they get together and negotiate how to create the group situation democratically, starting from the five solos.
This experiment can result in a presentation, performance or stay in a laboratory framework.
Every time the process is different, as well as its results, since the types, forms and principles of democracy which are examined and physically probed depend on the artists involved and their social contexts and concerns.
For that reason I’m especially interested in the contexts with fragile democracy, where we can see it weak and under the question.

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