Here you can find documents collected during my entire artistic process at MA SODA/HZT available as written artifact of activities (dates and topics, descriptions, inspirations, notes, reflections, observations, quotes, videos). Considering that the observations and experience are the basis for the method of choreographic chronographie* that I use in my work, by noting them and translating them into performative space these documents become part of my choreography.
*see definition in the introduction chapter
This documentation is followed by an archive chapter where you can access detailed photo documentation.
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January 2016, SODA audition presentation
“The starting point”
An excerpt form the documentation that I presented in the process of application to SODA program:
Short description of the research:
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April, 2016 Orientation week
- meeting the students and staff
- program introduction
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April, 2016 Lecture by Andre Lepecki:
”Futures of Disappearance: actions at the edges of existence”
”…what remains in insistence is existence…”
”…the art work is constantly producing problematic that we need to solve…”
NOTES:
- Dance in the 90’ – stillness
- Dance in 2000 – objects / where is the subject?
- Today – darkness
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May 2016, Diagnostic, Sophia New
”How you received or perceived feedback to your work?“
My experience of getting feedback is through:
- newspaper articles
- open rehearsals for general public and professionals
- after performance talks
- teach back (exchange, share and apply each others methodologies in the process)
- process documentation
- collective work (changing roles with my collaborators during the process)
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May 2016, Channel 4, Britta Wirthmuller
“How do we train, for what and why?”
Methodology of my training:
When I enter the space to rehearse, I immediately start to move. After some time, when I feel the body is warm...I'm starting to follow some parameters like - listening (how my body feels today), placing my body in comfortable positions or I just let it go! Allowing the impulse to lead me. Through experiencing my body every day I'm defining my practice believing that:
“There is a dance to be recognized in every single moment”.
During the workshop we shared different body practices and approaches by exchanging and re-teaching exercises to each other. We were mapping the process creating written landscapes. Also, we had the opportunity to bring new questions in the space of research. These are my questions:
- can we train enough?
- when does something start to be an art?
NOTES:
- create landscapes from/with documented materials on the floor or on the wall
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May 2016, Channel 4, Visual Impact, Michiel Keuper
NOTES:
Dance is there in the moment. Visuals, costumes and props are about constructing things. Objects have their own memory, a connotation of something. They create images and transform them.
How objects can be used? For what they are or in opposition to each other and the environment? Everything that is placed on the set has to have a reason. Everything contributes to the spatial composition.
The body is transformed via intervention.
- everything that I put or bring on stage must have a reason, it is part of the same composition
- it is about constructing things
- use tape to map the space
- integrate personal objects in the work
- research on relation between object and body
- use monochrome costume
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May 2016, Performance writing, Ric Allsopp
”…form is not more that extension of content…”
”…as we move or speak we leave traces…”
NOTES:
I am integrating traces in the work as samples to make structure continuing my next work based on it. In the same way as music producers re-produce and use samples from other artists to create new composition, I sampled pieces of my own work and other peoples art, to use it as strategy to create new art piece.
Strategies of performance writing:
- mapping the process
- writing as an activity
- inspirations, references, hints…
- audio text as description
- treat text as choreography
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May 2016, Diagnostic, Sophia New & Siegmar Zacharias
Questions that we were dealing with during the workshop:
Which parameters do I set for my practice?
What is difference between bad habit and a practice?
What is the relation between practice and work?
What happen when you ad meaning to physical material?
NOTES:
- thinking and making is a practice
- practice is setting parameters
- discover it or use the existing one
- develop a glossary of your work
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June 2016, Module 101: Presentation 1 - “The Dots”
Body practice “The Dots”
During 2015, I have been working (with 2 other artists - Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld and Tamara Curić) on a movement research, a body practice that we call “The dots”. This is how we define it:
”It is a way of moving body trough one or multiple “dots” that are placed inside of our body in different body parts. It is a simple way to refresh the way we move after so many years of being performers. It is a way to move without being preoccupied with the shapes, but fallowing small tasks, which bring us to different shapes. It starts by moving one “dot”, but aims for multitasking and avoiding usual organization in terms of rhythm, dynamic or direction. It is a tool to return to the dance as a powerful way to engage in a dialog with those who are witnessing it. In which bodies on stage practice a micro political climate of its own.”
Based on this physicality and method in 2016 (through SODA course) I started to develop a multi stage project, which involves long term study of correlation between physical movement of dancer captured by both video and depth cameras. This research enables me to find out in which way it is possible to translate movement into music or sound using the equipment. In this stage I work with sound designer Willem Milicevic and video designer Vice Rossini. Together we are refining basic concept, also we are planning to introduce micro sensors and force capacitor for dancers to wear. During this stage we plan to fine tune responsiveness of the equipment with choreographic vocabulary.
Equipment:
Process includes motion capturing via depth camera (Kinect xbox 360) which is converted to MIDI data in Ableton Live software, using Max for Live patch, and video analysis of firewire camera signal using moovmi Max/MSP Jitter patch which generates midi data based on 4x4 grid. All this data is sent further to various plug-ins and instruments for exploration.
Currently we are developing a sensor system using Arduino microcomputer and various sensor and force resistors. We hope that this mixture of techniques will help us to find the best language for translating movement to sound/music.
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June 2016, Task based study, Sophia New
“What are the strategies and methods that I am using?”
(at this stage of research) the strategies I apply to my work are:
- Video/mediation – presentation of documentation
- Archiving
- Multiplication – image of body
- Adaptation – use of another’s voice (audio recorded)
- Scaling – from small intimate to enlarged space, from I phone to computer screen to video projection
- Usage of space as installation for chronology
- Description – in video material as subtitling
- Parkour – journey in space for audience
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July 2016, Module 101: Presentation 2 - ”The Work”
At this stage of research, I wanted to tryout some of the strategies that had been detected through the Task based study in June 2016 as my working methods .
Working further on my physicality I upgraded the body practice of Dots and discovered dance engineering (definition will appear later in the research). I tried to produce dance engineered choreography with the material placed “on the wall”. Taping out the “imaginary” silhouettes of my body (as artifacts from the past) with blue tape on the wall and placing my real body (of today) in it. I produced chronological choreography. The aim was to play with still and live images from my past and present.
As “parkour” is an integral part of my performances the space was marked with numbers on the floor. Before they entered the space, the audience was given instructions. Following the instructions ( numbers on the floor) they were “migrating” through the space and through the architecture of the performance.
For this presentation we integrated the technological equipment into the performative space for the first time to demonstrate the advances in the process trough live performance. Two specific installations where used. The first that corresponds to the term “point of view”. Commonly used in technology terminology. It refers to a controlled point of view that the public is exposed to through everyday use of mobile phones, TV, video or photo camera, the net etc. This was done as a projection of a mirrored live feed of the performer mapped onto a door in the performative space. The second installation referred to the multiplication theme and was performed as an interactive piece within the performance. The kinect sensor mapped important points/dots on the performers body feeding their coordinates into software that generates graphic animations and applies changes to camera feed. In this way the body is multiplied as a silhouette onto the projection at the same time it is the controller of the content and effects being applied to it. The controller parameters control colors of the silhouette and the generative lines.
Credits:
Author/performer: Larisa Navojec
Video artist and programmer: Ivan Lušičić-Lik
Light designer: Larisa Navojec
Tutor: Boyan Manchev
Photo credit: private archive
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October 2016, Module 101: Presentation 3 - “The Showing”
Framing statement 1 - PROTOCOL
This presentation is composed of several scenes - chapters. In every scene/chapter I experimented with specific strategies and methods I apply in my work that had been detected and articulated through my first semester on SODA. The work continues and builds on the past presentations and will continue to do so in the future till the end of my SODA process. Through each presentation I try out different ways or approaches that interests me, on which I continue my research.
This time the piece speaks about different aspects of my work:
about references and how they reflect on my work, about interacting with the public to achieve “parkour”, about the body practice method of dance engineering, how I connect dance and technology and how I can create choreography with the public. The intention is to inform the viewer about the context, questions, process, wishes and aspirations.
The framing statement is incorporated in the piece itself. I tried giving it a new form; playing with it, approach it as it were a choreography material. Its purpose is to become a part of the piece and to support the format of the presentation.
“What interests me is the guideline that guides the audience but is not imposed. If the predefined set of rules no longer exists the audience then needs to be presented with a new system.” - my notes for the public
Framing statement 2 - REFRENCE
I am opening this presentation with the reference to Erwin Wurm’s work. The reason is that I find similarities and lines he uses in his work that triggers my imagination and inspiration. Dilemmas, questions posed, the way he’s thinking or approaches the process, are consistent with my principles or understanding of how and what I do or want to do. I was using protocols that are usually part of his exhibitions, integrating them in the context of my work and the theater space. That has provided a research space, a creative environment, opened different possibilities and stimulate the creation. The questions that I was dealing with are simple “What his work is about?” and “Where do I find similarities with my work?”
His work stretches the limits of the human body. It enables the audience to reinvent themselves as abstract art installations that are migrating through space moving the boundaries of their own bodies. Also, I compare it to the way I approach the body applying my body practice and the technology to transform and extend it. He creates work that is accessible to the general public. This kind of approach is applied in my artistic work as strategy for the audience in order to understand better, watch more precisely and follow more easily the performance. It has a ‘do it yourself’ approach by which I provide interaction with the public. Giving them the experience in which they will not be only passive viewers but create choreography as active participants in the piece.
I brought the artifacts of my previous performances in the space (mainly props and objects) as traces of my earlier processes. In the same way as music producers re-produce and use samples from other artists to create new composition, I sampled pieces of my own work, to use it as strategy to create a new piece (notes from May 2016, Performance writing workshop with Ric Allsopp).
Considering I suggested that my “Workbook” is toolkit that a user reads and uses to be able to understand and observe the work with a set of guidelines that he may or may not follow, I wanted to try how the “cards with the written tasks” which the audience receive before entering the space will function. They are used to “parkour” the public as this is an integral part of my performances.
“Maybe I’ll put it on the wall. On the wall or not that is the question. I want someone to tell me what to do. And than I’ll do it my way anyway. But I don’t usually get an answer…but I am used to it. We are actually two people. One who is trusting and one who isn’t. And that’s a good thing.” - Erwin Wurm
Framing statement 3 – BODY PRACTICE
Through previous research and work on the materials I have come to call my body practice - dance engineering. Around this term I build methods and strategies that I apply in my performance. These factors have become a part of my choreographic vocabulary. The body is the central part of dance engineering which is conceived as a set of instructions that in the process of multitasking create new choreographies and vocabularies. The idea of multitasking is more tasks or more things that are happening at the same time at different levels in almost a digital way. In my body I mathematically lay points as parameters with which I achieve precision. I am interested in their distribution in the body, playing with their relationship in order to develop certain physicality, and breaking the usual pattern in order to continuously stimulate and provoke the body to new ways of moving. This kind of approach affects my understanding of the composition and creation of form, not only as a performer but also as a choreographer.
Currently I am gathering all these structures, methods and protocols. My intention is to make it available as a sort of data base of my choreography. This will be interpreted in tutorial texts and videos as a part of my “Workbook” whose content will be integrated in my last SODA presentation in December 2017. I plan to make a dance engineered choreography that transfers skill to the user through the “Workbook”.
The Dots:
- It is a way I move trough one or multiple “dots” that are placed inside of my body in different body parts
- It is a simple way to refresh my movement after so many years of being a performer
- It is a way to move without being preoccupied with the shapes, but fallowing small tasks, which brings me to different shapes
- It starts by moving one “dot”, but aims for multitasking and avoiding usual organization in terms of rhythm, dynamic or direction
- It is my tool to return to the dance as a powerful way to engage in a dialog with those who are witnessing it
Framing statement 4 – CHOREOGRAPHIC INSTALLATION
I like to place my work in a very structured and designed performance space, which I call the choreographic installation. The space and the requirements dictate how I will build my installation. Entering the given space I map out the possibilities and its characteristics resulting in an intervention that corresponds with the choreography. Always trying to design it in a way that the audience is being guided through it. Trying to make a continuous action, which guides and directs the audience through the performance architecture making them perform a sort of “parkour”. The audience of course follows (or refuses) the directions. In that way they create the atmosphere and become an active participant in the performance. In my work I often use Tape. The precision, technique, projection, doubling, framing of the body, structure and form that I am using requires very strict and clear designed surrounding. The Tape allows it!
TAPE ART
“I like to use Tape. Tape can be installed quickly adjusting the space with a very simple action. It is relatively easy to handle, and can be applied to various surfaces. It can be removed easily without leaving any mark. Materials for tape can vary. Tape can be applied anywhere.” - me about Tape Art
Framing statement 5 - TECHNOLOGY
Technology is a part of my work. It is used not for it’s own sake but as an extension of the body. Taking that into consideration I’m seeking new ways to stimulate change on existing conventions and memories in my body. In that way I set new challenges and rules for myself. Through these new technologies, and new parameters that are applied, I give myself tasks that enable me to re-evaluate my body in movement. A dialogue between the technology and myself appears in the sub process of experimenting and creating new choreography.
For this presentation I experimented with three modes of technology using the tablet and the phone interpreted through two audio and video software programs.
First mode - a video presented on a tablet screen, produced and rehearsed in a way it partially transforms my body.
Second mode - multiplication. A projection gives me the ability to multiply my body and project it onto a wall. Via video feedback the bodies are past temporal copies of myself each with a slightly higher delay. Multiplication is also achieved with multiple same smaller screens inside the overall projection which in conjunction with video feedback creates spatial as well as temporal multiplication.
Third mode - the sound camera is an extension of my body both movement and vision. As a sort of a third eye that can be heard. I hold the camera. The image is then sent wirelessly to a computer software specifically programmed for this purpose inside of Vuo, a node based programming editor. The program analyses the image, it takes information from the image such as lightness and overall approximate hue of the image. Those parameters are mathematical real numbers that can be fed into a audio wave generator inside of Vuo and presented as an audible frequency that is then sent to Ableton Live program where effects are added. That way I am able to make different sounds triggered by my movement.
Framing statement 5 – FEEDBACK
Feedback was very often a part of my previous works. I was using different methods of tryouts to get information’s and reaction from the audience to improve my work or just to have extra materials for my process documentation. I find feedback important to question the value of the work as its potential. Using this approach you are receiving information’s and reflections from the audience but also can discuss, explain and articulate better to yourself “What is your work about?”
At the beginning of my artistic career, the only feedback that I received were newspaper articles published after the premiered performances. Later, I started to ‘open process’ of rehearsals and include artists in the early phase of it, to exchange and build my materials. Today I use different methods of feedback that have become an integral part of my performances:
- Discussion after the performance
- Sheering practices with professionals true TT ( teach back) method
- Documentation of the process ( recordings, written analysis, protocols, new models )
- Changing roles through collective work
- Allowing the audience to take part in the process
“The public have possibility to give feedback based on materials that they saw or experienced. That way, I could collect things that I usually wouldn’t be able to perceive and involve the audience as an imaginary partner. Finally make my art work better.” - me about feedback
Credits:
Author/performer: Larisa Navojec
Video artist and programmer: Ivan Lušičić-Lik
Sound designer and engineer: Hrvoje Jelinčić/DJ hrwo E
Tutor: Boyan Manchev
Photo credit: Hrvoje Jelinčić
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November 2016, Task based study ”Writing and Moving”, Sophia New & Daniela Han
Writing as a structure for composition:
- Remembering or forgetting
- Writing as a form of organizing things
- Distilling through writing
- Notes/copy-paste/reading to writing
- Documentation or archive
- Writing as a movement
- Walking-writing
- Handwriting to drawing
NOTES/CLAIMS/QUESTIONS:
Where is the text coming from in the body?
From somatic practice - technique, organic, bodily metaphors, impulse...
It is captured in bodily memory.
Art requires truth not sincerity!
As a part of Task based study we visited Hamburger Bahnhof Museum. Exploring the exhibition I found interesting works, formats and strategies that I consider important for my further research:
- Body as a territory - from the exhibition ”Capital, dept, territory, utopia”
“Be it a city or a country, a kitchen or a body, a territory is a political area. Defined by its boundaries, it can grow, shrink or disappear altogether.”
- Chronographia – exhibition of G. Karamustafa ”Notation of chronology”
- Observing how people make social choreography by moving through space while watching the exhibition
REFLECTIONS:
”Everything is choreography. There is a lot happening around us. Make choreography from materials around you.” - me about social choreography
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November 2016, Task based study, Sophia New
“How do you compose?”
I don't have general way of composing. Regarding to this research I work based on following methods:
- Deconstruction of usual theater conventions (space, performance procedures, time)
- Creating conditions for freedom of movement
- Chronological approach
- Technology and triggers - external for body to produce randomness
- Public parkour
- Sound, audio or music as inspiration
- Clear tasks to the audience
What are the tools that you use?
- Relation to environment/space
- Deconstruction and set up
- Improvisation in set structure
- Reference
- Body memory
- Archiving
How do you make decision?
- Intuition – the decision is already there before you are aware of it
- Making through doing
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November 2016, Intensive 2, Eva Meyer Keller
This was a very interesting workshop format. It created a dynamic group that produced a lot of material (physical and verbal) . We were creating 5-minute solo performances and implementing feedback in our artistic practice, making it as important as the performance itself. I find very important to use feedback as a tool and to find ways to incorporate it in the creation.
The structure of the workshop:
- Introduction – E. M. Keller’s work
- Working with objects
- Making 5 min pieces
- Giving feedback to each other
NOTES:
- Eva Meyer Keller - possible house mentor for my 301
- try to work with making short pieces of choreography
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December 2016, Time to meet, Rosalind Crisp and Deborah Hay
“Time to meet - Lecture / Talk between Crisp and Hay”
The subject: practicing dancing and practicing making dance.
The talk was moderated by Susan Foster. Here I display some parts of the conversation:
How you create the dancing?
Rosalind: “There is so many things in my practice that I forget about. My methods are temporary. The body is entering elsewhere every day.”
Deborah: “…is by reconfiguring three dimensions. Body in billions of cells that we are. Every day changing body.”
How to be affective to whole body all the time or just to some parts?
Deborah: “Use language in seductive way. When you work with dancers they have to be excited. I ask them to enlarge their bodies. From what I am doing to how I do it. Use your studio, space, other bodies, time, and audience as your resource.”
Rosalind: “I find body as infinite. It is an environment what gives rise to the movement and the movement will happen. If the movement comes after the fact than it is great, stop practicing and do what ever you want. Don’t look for the piece. It will escape.”
Deborah: “The experience is different every time you do the dance. Engage the audience; try to suck them in, to get their attention (breath, sweet, wrinkles).Program notes should not write about what they going to see, but how they could do that.”
Rosalind: “Seeing that keeps you awake not satisfied. It is a 3-way deal between choreographer, dancer and audience. Practitioners are always a good audience. My behavior is choreographed, my whole body is! Solo practice is a crucial for being a choreographer. The feedback of your body is a teacher of your practice.”
Click the link bellow to watch the full version:
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February 2017, Intensive 3, Janine Durning
“Non stop action of talking-moving-writing”
NOTES:
During the seminar we where practicing a non-stop action of talking, moving and writing producing text, movement and drawings in different time frames from 5 to 15 min. This procedure produced lot of interesting materials and open up discussions on several questions:
- What are the minimal conditions you need to be creative?
- How do we build structure?
- What are “exercises that tune our mind?”
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April 2017, Module 201: Presentation 4 - “E.L.E.N.”
“E.L.E.N.”
The framing statement:
Through her time spent at SODA E.L.E.N. discovered the joy of multitasking between different bodies of identity. Multitasking is a saturation of the technological in the political all inside the boarders of her body in order to discover the physicality as a new navigation system. Maneuvering through hardware and software by the principles of choreographic chronographie, parkouring and multiplication of events, E.L.E.N. visited many layers of her identity and became a territory.
During this rehearsal she wants to extend the boarders of her bodies. She wants to exhibit the hardware and software of her bodies. These bodies compose the territory of E.L.E.N. In this territory the public migrates through collective action.
E.L.E.N. is composed of different strategies and tactics in regards to the composition of this territory. She started from observing the logic inherited to the fixed and conventional space of theatre. (For example, the audience enters the space and takes their places behind the secure spot marked by the fourth wall.)
What does it take to transform the theatre space into an exhibition space?
Although this type of choreographic work needs an extended time period (durational framework), this presentation is trying to hint and envision this framework within its given limitations. The question is how we can move and reside in space together and observe the area of that space, as they appear using different working strategies.
This framing statement consists of areas and strategies that I’ve used in order to navigate through the performative territory. All of these segments (documents, objects, body practice) coexists in the same performative space and are open for interaction. The overall composition of the territory takes place “center stage” and it is co-dependent on the participations of the audience.
Area of naming:
The process of naming takes place in theatre / performing space, marked by clear theatrical conventions and, in this case, it is used as a strategy to deconstruct these “usual” parameters and rules. It is not about the deconstruction of these conventions, but it is about to deploying them in different context.
The aim is to destabilize the position of the observer and challenge the conventional order of things. The alterations and appropriation of these conventions happen first on the level of naming. The journey through E.L.E.N. starts from the open discussion – a recognizable format that the audience is used to experience at the end of the performance. This discussion then transforms into the song – a naming of E.L.E.N.
The naming of the presentation as a rehearsal is on the one hand a strategy to accentuate the process of “making of the territory” instead of presenting it as already found and established, on the other hand is the way to emphasize the actual labor of “making of” the territory as a constitutive part of the composition.
Area of documentation, notes and memories:
The material that examines E.L.E.N.’s hardware; the past projects, experiences, knowledge, political and social repercussion of growing up in a socialist country has been developed and systematized through an extensive research process; using the method of the interview, notes, diary writings, memories. These texts are then either translated through the medium of choreography (What could this heritage triggered in the body today?), stage through the theatrical apparatus (radio play) or simply exposed in the space by the means of technology.
Area of objects and space:
The objects that are used in space also belong to the hardware (remains of the past projects; such as tape, mattress, ribbon, cards, costume). All of these objects belong to different layers of this hardware and are very different in terms of the aesthetics and its functions. The objects represent organized and fixed landmarks that are set in space. The choreography is activated only once landmarks are re-created again by the audience members. Although the audience members are given a list of rules and guidelines, they could also refuse participation. If they decide so, the choreography that is supposed to take place in relation to the specific landmarks is suspended or is totally deleted from the score.
Area of dance engineering:
Navigating through these different landmarks happens through the structure improvisation using fixed parameters.
Through the studies I’ve discovered and developed a series of protocols naming them dance engineering. Around this notion I developed methods and strategies that I apply in the practice. These factors have become a part of my choreographic vocabulary. The body is the central part of dance engineering, which is conceived as a set of instructions that in the process of multitasking create new approaches to choreography.
In my body I geometrically lay points as parameters that create different relations, way of distribution of these parameters – a map. This map is filled with an overload of points. By playing with their relations it allows a performer to certain physicality, and break usual patterns in order to continuously stimulate and provoke the body in order to produce new ways of moving and navigating.
Area of sound and technology:
The tape that is used to mark the space represents a tangible counterpoint to the technology. The emphasis in both cases, the tape and the technology, is not on the aesthetics or the imaginary, but on the ways how they are applied and merged with the body practice.
The concept for the projections was derived from the context of each identity of E.L.E.N. and the design was made uniform to connect the different chapters. Projection mapping combined with POV perspective visuals disturb and deconstruct the space in chapters one by one and finally all together make a visual cacophony that emphasizes the final scene. Projections in the final scene are sound responsive so as to invite the public to participate further.
The sound, music and technology is being used to complete the performative territory both for the performer and for the audience members. It’s a surplus of the aesthetics that is established once the parameters of the territory are created by its participants.
Area of collective play:
At the beginning of the journey E.L.E.N. asks the public series of simple questions in order to observe and analyze the parameters of the starting situation and to be able to orientate further into the territory. This territory transforms itself through audience participation into the collective. Usually the audience enters performance spaces, which already have a predefined set of rules that everyone is accustomed to and in a way has already been manipulated.
The starting questions disperse the audience within the performative space into smaller groups - points that mark the indications of the navigation map that is to be constructed. The audience also receives the set of guidelines that they may or may not follow. The aim is to provoke a continuous action, which guides and directs the audience through the performance architecture making them perform a sort of parkour. This collective play is open to risk of the moment of the performance. Every new tryout is a new rehearsal of this open structure.
Credits:
Author/performer: Larisa Navojec
Dramaturge: Mila Pavičević
Video artist: Ivan Lušičić-Lik
Sound designer and engineer: Hrvoje Jelinčić/DJ hrwo E
Light designer: Ivan Lušičić-Lik
Mentor: Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
Tutor: Sophia New
Photo credit: Hrvoje Jelinčić
The piece was performed @ Platforma HR in April 2017. SODA students (2016-2018) visited Zagreb, together with prof. Rhys Martin and Sophia New, performed their works in Pogon Jedinstvo and held a collaborative workshop "Daignostic" in TALA Dance center.
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October 2017, Module 301: Research Presentation 5 - “A Solo Together : chain reaction”
“A Solo Together: chain reaction”
This presentation is in its research phase. My intention is to make an event performance that is created and performed together with the audience.
It's happening in 2 spaces. First, starting with the “warm up” area in the foyer of st.8. Through “me” hosting the event the audience gets some information’s and inputs for the performance that will follow. With the variety of contents (an exhibition of personal artifacts, presentation of 8-minute film that is documenting my artistic process, catering and DJ session), I am trying to create comfortable environment (conditions) for the audience to enter my performance.
NOTES (based on my research 'how to be a collective'):
- It is very important to think about the environment - what is the staring point for the audience? Which informations they receive? What do you want them to know? And how you introduce the procedures?
- Gaining trust - by exposing yourself, being available and honest, sharing the responsibility, by giving space and time to audience members, by offering a choice/possibility to take part or not, by guiding not by manipulation ...
- Joint actions - activate the audience by asking them to join you through creating choreography together, creating soundscapes or making interventions in space...
- Experience - sharing my experience, building your experience, creating our experience
Second, as we change spaces and move to st. 8 the event transforms into an interactive performance. Through objects that are invested with my personal biography, symbolic and filled with emotions, I display certain aspects (particular events*) of my life to the audience.
*me as a child growing up in a socialist time, me as a gymnast, me as a mother, me as a student, me as an artist, me as a human being...
These objects are then offered to audience members for translation into action (through sound making samples that are recorded and later become soundscape for my performance and through performing 1' solos that I transform into a final Solo Together).
Based on this action or their reaction I build performative material – A SOLO that is performed in the end of the piece. The intention is to show how this material transforms and create a collaborative moment, a dialog. The audience produces choreographic input, influencing my work, resonating in me and become part of my performance choreography. In turn they construct through my biography something that reflects a part of themselves.
TOGETHER we perform A SOLO that reflects in all of us creating a whole.
Here I go back to the title of this research presentation A Solo Together and its meaning:
“A SOLO is never SOLO. There are always other 'bodies' in space (sound, lights, audience, your artistic team, props, costumes, context...) that affect you becoming a part of your SOLO. You depend on them, make decision in relation to them, starting from the process to the moment of performance. This is why I believe that A SOLO is a beautiful collective moment in which you're never alone - but together. The theater environment gives us this opportunity even more.”
During the process I had several sessions with different artists that helped me to research on the topic of collaboration and the collective (of course through their experience being artists, collaborators or members of a collectives) . We searched for a format of collaboration in which you voluntarily, willingly and equally engage, make decisions, take part, take risks, have trust. We discussed about different forms of the collective.
My understanding of collectivity comes from my biographical pathway growing up in a socialist Yugoslavia. What I remember was the presence of the feeling of community, sharing, and collectivity in which individualism is not emphasized. It was not important to stand out as an individual, but it was important to participate or do something together.
“It is not about moving. It is about moving things together!” - me about collective
Credits:
Author/performer: Larisa Navojec
Dramaturge: Pavlica Bajsic Brazzoduro
Sound designer and engineer: Hrvoje Jelinčić/DJ hrwo E
Light designer: Larisa Navojec
Mentor: Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
House mentor: Eva Meyer Keller
Tutors: Rhys Martin
Photo credit: Hrvoje Jelinčić
Special thanks to Jasna L. Vinovrski, Gisela Muller, Pauline Payen, Agata Siniarska, Jan Rozman, Maque Pereyra, Janine Iten, Alejandro Karasik, Felix Ofosu Dompreh and Liadain Herriott.
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December 2017, Module 401: Presentation 6 - “A SOLO TOGETHER”
a solo together
a solo to get there
a solo to get her
a solo to gather
a solo
together
A Solo Together thematize the notion of utopian collectivity that I remember from my childhood lived in socialist Yugoslavia. This is thought through the context of the post-socialist world and imagined as an event performance co-created and co-performed together with the audience. It feeds back into a notion of community, or the remembrance of it, which no longer exists and values it in the same way. The dramaturgy is very fragmentary: it's a collection of individual moments where the performance deals with details such as personal artifacts, political situation, acoustic exportations or staged memory. All those elements work like pieces of puzzles which expand into different contextual and associative spaces to create the whole, final picture. By exposing my intimate story to the audience, I invite them to create a collective thought to join together, to gather, to create a common experience being A SOLO TO-GET-(t)HER(e).
Central research question(s):
- How can a solo acts as a medium for bringing together diverse range of political and social experiences in order to make them accessible within the context of contemporary performance?
- How can I make my experience produce experience in others?
- What happens if we think about political movement as a dance?
- How is the community moved? Or what/who moves it?
- How can we become choreography?
- How much of the way I move comes from my socialist background?
- Can we expose that multiplicity of different inputs within the theatrical environment in order to create a thinking space or to revisit the notions of collectivity in a different way?
- What can a solo do for me in relationship to question of Yugo-nostalgic collectivity and living with within contemporary post-socialist system?
- How can I look at the notion of solo as a medium of multiple experiences in relation to my own performance personality?
Project aims and outcomes:
Based on previous research and presentations within the frame of MA SODA my intention is to experiment on collectiveness by testing the boundaries between the performer and the participants. I am posing the question of shared responsibility in the performative space by erasing the boundaries or by changing the roles between them.
Following the history of my own body, I’m trying to offer a playground for the participation of many and simultaneously follow my personal chronographie. My personal experience is the foundation of my work. I see the body as a performative territory, which I constantly revisit through observing, noting, mapping, reflecting. So, instead of constantly reproducing “new,” I am revisiting this past as a surface to enable new perspectives. The outcome is to share and extend the boarders of our bodies through interaction with others.
In this presentation, by displaying autobiographical traces and re-combining them, I will try to open a possibility for the public to engage individually and subjectively with the material. My aim is to build a sense of community with the audience creating a common experience by applying different formats of participation:
- warm up area in a foyer for a public to ”talk and mingle” with traditional Croatian food and drinks;
- an interactive key board with chronological information’s about topics that I am dealing with in the performance as Work Youth actions, Pioneers in Yugoslavia, Universiade 87', The Relay of Youth, Day of Youth, Slet, my history as a gymnast, the Yugoslavian war;
- starting the performance by holding hands with the audience, talking to them, doing a little warm up;
- asking them to help me in several scenes;
- performing a Slet choreography together with them
Research methodology, strategies, tactics etc.:
- dance engineering as body practice and navigation system
- multitasking
- overload of inputs that represents a potential playground of experimentation and improvisation for the performer
- personal chronographie – body memory and archive
- different modalities of collaboration and participation
- deconstruction of the “usual” theatre conventions
- open composition that allows the author to create new layers with each new try out
- parkour (public, objects and sound) as choreographic tool
Credits:
Author/performer: Larisa Navojec
Dramaturge: Pavlica Bajsic Brazzoduro
Video artist: Aleksandar Rapaić
Sound designer and engineer: Hrvoje Jelinčić/DJ hrwo E
Light designer: Sanja Gergorić
Hostess: Pauline Payen
Artistic advisor: Jasna L. Vinovrski
Mentor: Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
Tutors: Rhys Martin and Ric Allsopp
Photo credit: Hrvoje Jelinčić
Production: HZT, Uferstudios
Supported by Zagreb City office for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and TALA dance center, Zagreb.
Special thanks to all of my SODA peers and friends for advices, patience, positive energy , to Max, Nikola and Benjamin for technical support, to my amazing audience for taking part and to all HZT/SODA team.
“ Participatory art is an approach to making art in which the audience is engaged directly in the creative process, allowing them to become co-authors, editors, and observers of the work. Therefore, this type of art is incomplete without the viewer’s physical interaction.”