Through my time spent at SODA as a student, researching and working on my artistic processes, searching for key questions, redefining artistic methodologies, delivering presentations and following assessment requests I discovered the joy of multitasking between different bodies of identity. I define it as a saturation of the technological in the political all inside the boarders of my body in order to discover the physicality as a new navigation system (”DOTS” & ”The Work” - 101 presentation, 1st semester/module 101 & 101 ”Showing" , 2nd semester/module 102).
Manoeuvring through hardware (external material – lights, space, time, bodies/audience, actions) and software (my experience) by the principles of choreographic chronographie and parkouring through landmarks I visited many layers of my identity and became a territory that I first named ELEN (2nd semester/module 201).
Landmarks are inscribed in the body through heritage, memories, past project, experiences, knowledge. These landmarks became visible during the extensive process of digging through body databases and noted with the tools of choreographic chronographie.
Choreographic chronographie is the method that I’ve developed during SODA course and it includes an observation of this personal landmarks with an analytical eye, noting them and translating them into the performative space with the tools of choreography: structure, dynamic, rhythm, movement research, vocabulary.
Continuing the research in the 3rd semester, the process developed. Till that time I received lot of feedbacks and talked about my work many times through practical workshops and table discussions. I expanded the territory of ELEN to E.L.E.N. (”E.L.E.N.” - 201 showing, 3rd semester/module 301). This territory had again its hardware and software.
The hardware is overloaded with history, meaning, practices, discourse. A personal archive that became an open archive for participation of the audience and software (ways of knowing, ways of doing) that is needed to activate the hardware.
While in the previous phase of the research we were focusing more on the hardware trying to extend the boarders of ELEN’s bodies, to exhibit the hardware of her bodies and compose the territory of ELEN in witch the public migrates through collective action. In this phase (E.L.E.N.) we directed our attention towards its software, which includes strategies, and methodologies how this territory could be assembled and put into action. The assemblage happens through series of participative tools that invite the audience to take part by guiding them. Their participation changes the score offering an unstable and exciting ground to navigate within. There is an influence, exchange, interaction and resonance happening as a chain reaction. A collective action becomes an engine that activates the piece.
Based on this finding and reflecting on previous ones, at first, A Solo Together: chain reaction emerges (301 ”Research Presentation”, beginning of 4th semester/module 301) as an event performance created and performed together with the public. Through objects that are invested with my personal biography, symbolic and filled with emotions, I displayed certain aspects (particular events) of my life to the audience. These objects are then offered to audience members for translation into action. Based on this action or their reaction I build performative material – a solo that is performed in the end of the piece. The intention was 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.
Later, during the 4th semester I continued to develop this idea of creating a collaborative moment with the audience through a solo performance. I went back to my dance, to my movement. In Croatian the {noun} pokret is understood in relationship to an idea of movement as collective body of political thinking. Movement as an action of a person or activity of a body of persons, a collective spirit that is busy with changing something, as choreography of the community. Living in Eastern Europe as a child, an athlete and artist lot of things needed to be changed and moved…the movement was present all the time. It became the core of me. It became my dance. So, I am not trying to perform a dance but a movement. A collective spirit, a choreography of the community. 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?
At the end of my traveling through this course I presented A SOLO TOGETHER (401 showing, 4th semester, 401 module) as my final performance at MA Solo/Dance/Authorship in December, 2017. The performance thematised the notion of utopian collectivity that I remember from my childhood lived in socialist Yugoslavia thought through the context of the post-socialist world and imagined as an event performance co-created and co-performed together with the audience. By exposing my intimate story to the audience, I invited them to create a collective thought to join together, to gather, to create a common experience being A SOLO TO-GET-(t)HER(e). Gradually, from the beginning to the end of the performance, I was building with the audience an experience through different formats of participation.
The final picture was created through a collective SLET choreography.
I conclude this text with a thought that “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. Taking that into consideration I am using my past as a surface to enable new perspectives. One of these perspectives would be:
"Building a sense of community and creating a common experience with the audience by applying different formats of participation with the intention to question Is it possible to create a thinking space and to revisit the notions of collectivity in a different way in a theatrical environment?"
Finally, I will finish with few more invitations to the audience, to the reader, to anyone who is visiting this page, to you...
“I invite you to take part. It is an open invitation. It is fragile and risky territory that only appears and rehearses itself during the encounter with you - the audience. It is depending and working with the audience to build together the performance architecture. The architecture creates a platform, a playground, for the audience to play. The questions that arise are the one of contemporaneity and “How we take part in that present?”
I invite you to watch the film below and get more insights about my work. It presents video documentation of my artistic research at Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT) in a frame of MA Solo/Dance/Authorship program. It also displays a sort of glossary of my work with thoughts around topics that I deal with in my creative processes.
