Maska - Volume 29, Issue 165-168, 2014

The compendium of texts Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity takes as its starting point the fact that today's mixed and augmented reality, essentially defined by smart technologies, offers new challenges for both artistic practices and theoretical reflection. The central questions posed by the authors in the book are: what is the position and role of the body in these mixed, technology-supported worlds and which new possibilities for the performing arts have been opened up in consequence? The texts concentrate mainly on the simultaneous presence of physical and virtual bodies (or avatars) in the process of performing and their mutual relations, interaction, cooperation and synthesis.

In the first part of his contribution, the author speaks about the publication of the second (revised) edition of Art and Alternative, published for the first time in 1992 - during a time of fierce repression of the cultural and artistic alternative, or to be more precise, of the remains of the once strong and respected Serbian (especially Belgrade) alternative scene, by the then ultranationalist state authorities in Serbia. This very alternative culture, discussed by Milena D. Šešic in the mentioned book, was one of the most intractable 'pockets of resistance' against the aggressive nationalist politics of the time. The second part of the text presents the new book by Milena D. Šešic, Indian Theatre: Tradition and Activism, which is framed as a 'journal' of a field research carried out on contemporary Indian theatre. In the course of her 'action research', Milena D. Šešic visited several important centres of contemporary Indian theatre and met with many charismatic makers on this diverse scene of which we know so little about in Slovenia.