Maska - Volume 30, Issue 169-171, 2015

The essay discusses how The Artist Is Present (2010) by Marina Abramović, The Show Must Go On (2001) by Jérome Bel and The Happiest Man (2000) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov relate to the ‘nostalgia for the present’ of European and North American late capitalist societies of the spectacle. The works are firstly explored through the ways in which the artists “stage the present” by manipulating the presence and liveness of both themselves and their spectators, and secondly, how these “stagings of the present” consequently influence one’s perception of duration and the passage of time.

The text discusses the theme of motherhood in visual works by Zvonka T Simčič. The author problematised the (im)possibility of artificial insemination for single women in the utterly innovative performance entitled Doulas “ad utero, ab ovo” (2007), in which she used the image of herself as the pregnant Virgin Mary to present her own experience of insemination, pregnancy and childbirth. In New Allegories [Nove alegorije] (2008, 2009), after her son Adam’s birth, she explored the post-partum period and the role of the single mother as well as the attitude of the state towards single-parent families. In her latest video entitled Silent Power [Tiha moč] (2013), she developed the already highlighted topics further while she also referred to the recently rejected Slovenian Family Code. In her conceptually conceived works, the artist uses – in a performative manner – the symbolism of Christian tradition on the one hand and that of Slovenian folk tradition on the other to lay out her relationship to her own child and the theme of single motherhood. In several works, she presented herself as the Virgin Mary and finally also as Lepa Vida. While the pregnant author carried out the performance Doulas “ad utero, ab ovo” on her own, she has included her son in all her later works featuring the theme of motherhood; hence, this text also problematises the role of the child as the object of artwork.

Through an analysis of a well-publicised intervention into the exhibition Socialdress – Power to the People in October 2013 at the Alkatraz Gallery, which operates within Autonomous Cul¬tural Centre Metelkova City in Ljubljana, the article argues that mainstream artwork cannot stay sheltered from protest (re)ac¬tions solely thanks to the fact that it is part of the hegemony of the art system. Namely, in the context of the movement towards increasingly radical capitalist devastation, a link is established between numerous manifestations of resistance, including the protest against the commodification of popular uprisings’ slogans, which opens up the perspective of understanding art as a phenomenon without the status of difference, which would grant it any kind of privilege.

The F.A.C.K. platform was initiated in spring 2012 in Cesena (Italy). So far, F.A.C.K. has realized four public events in the form of a temporary (from two days to three weeks) occupation of a scarcely or problematically used public space, with a view to experimenting and reflecting on different participatory models in culture and to critically re-examining the dominant social and artistic systems and the role imposed upon the artists therein.

With the term “collateral art”, Janez Janša discusses works created as “side effects”, as a collateral consequence of an action. He uses the term to refer to the side effects that the changing of their names had in the case of the three Slovenian artists Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša. This series of “side effects” is revealing the complicit character of the functioning of art in contemporary society.

The editorial note unfolds the main aims and the particular working conditions of the project that has led to the specific publication. Syros: a bet on the potentiality of cooperation (2013) was organized as a co-writing encounter among performance artists and theorists from all over Europe. During an eight-days long writing residency the participants shared their individual topics of interest regarding contemporary performance as well as their distinct writing practices. Following that process, they also suggested an alternative mode for the creators of this publication, based not on a common topic (as is often the case) but on the “topos”, the place of encounter of its writers, which is seen as a “bet on the potentiality of cooperation” (Laermans).

The article is made up of a series of letters addressed to the other members of the Syros project and composed during a week of co-operation in Greece. These letters, written in concentrated circumstances over a short period of time, aimed to reflect upon another scale of writing – and performing – where the performing is “for life”; where the action is the sort from which there is no turning back. Within this scope, the focus is on moments of decision, and the sorts of spaces and situations – “waiting rooms”, they are referred to here – where a decision is prepared for, or rehearsed. But also rooms that wait for something to happen, for something to “take” place. Writing, here, engages a range of functions: reflecting on and analysing what was done, what did happen, but also acting as a mode of linking, or attending, or waiting upon more contingent possibilities, of what might happen next.

This article explores “thinking” both as a form of doing and as an activity that is performed. It asks how thinking appears in performance (and in writing) through a close reading of Arendt and Heidegger. The implications of the concepts of withdrawal and solitude proposed by the two philosophers are discussed in relation to task-based performance, but also in the context of the specific parameters of the project Syros, which invited a group of thinkers to spend time writing together, to co-operate while working mostly privately. Thinking as a solitary activity is put forward as a precondition for being with others, while the task of writing (or dancing or performing) becomes the very condition for doing thinking.

The article revisits notes, thoughts and texts related to the notion of the “open work”, as these were gathered by its author during the project Syros: a bet on the potentiality of cooperation (Syros, July ’13). It presents a historical review of the way the term has been discussed and practiced in performance contexts, and aims towards a questioning of its use and an attempt to detect effective understandings of it today, arriving at the notion of “differentiation” as discussed by Bojana Cvejić and Ana Vujanović (2005). At the same time, the text constitutes a writing experiment that applies the rules of languages written from right to left to the English language, in order to delve even deeper into possible suggestions of the “open” through a practice-led research approach.

This article discusses institutionalized research in the context of the Performing Arts and the Humanities today. It argues that the term “research” is used frequently for profiling institutions but is rarely reflected upon for providing an understanding of what it is, which contributes to homogenizing and canonizing what (artistic) research means and how it can function in the neoliberal context. As a result, the expression of force and desire of research to search and invent are compromised. Against this background, the article claims that the gap between research as an idea(l), a process and force, and research as an institutional undertaking or as product, should be persevered, in order for research to invent, interrogate and play a role within the political and public sphere it is part of.

This article reflects on, revisits and re-composes the writing practice that I pursued as part of the project "Syros". Fragmented in form, it consists of three different layers of writing that also refer to three temporal stages of the practice: the time before the practice, the time of the practice, and the time after the practice. The practice itself, based on the idea of diary-keeping, was an attempt to explore the temporal aspect of writing, and to share writing as a practice. Other issues that emerge through the text are problems of frameworks and localization, and the question of the relationship of the artist and the work to its context.

This text elaborates structural relationships between Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of thinking (in their What is Philosophy?) and the ways in which writing opens dimensions of the virtual as accounted for by Rotman. In both, virtual agents or ‘I’s mediate how thinking and imagining are understood to proceed. Deleuze and Guattari’s explanation of thinking has incorporated the cut inaugurated by writing – the cut disconnecting expressions and ideas from the situation of enunciation – and this is reflected in an understanding of thought as something a thinker finds her bearings in, rather than something originating from her. Here, as I will show, the theatrical practice of reenactment presents an image of how we find our bearings in thought.

This article explores the terms “collaboration” and “cooperation” as practices, through the examination of the project Syros: A bet on the potentiality of cooperation, which took place in Syros, Greece, in July 2013. In particular, it describes the process of cooperating in practical terms and reflects on the conditions of production created by the project. For this purpose, it focuses on two of its essential components: namely, the structure of the project and the space of encounters it generated. The aim is to contribute to larger discussions on collaborative artistic practices through disclosing and studying the dynamics detected in a specific case study.

This article is an attempt at outlining a para-theatrical phenomenon taking place in Eastern Europe, where two of the leading directors and companies – Eimuntas Nekrošius (in Divine Comedy and Paradise at the Lithuanian Meno Fortas Theatre, turning his vintage style upside down) and Grzegorz Bral (in Songs of Lear at the Polish Song of the Goat Theatre) – dare to make theatre reside in a territory that could be called transcendental, or esoteric, or Divine, depending on the point of view.

Andrzej Wirth is considered one of the theoretical founders of the term “post-dramatic theatre”. With Flucht nach vorn, he now presents his memoirs, compiled in an interview and essay volume, beginning with his work in the 1950s in Poland and Germany, via his time in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s, and finishing with his direction of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, Germany, and his preoccupation with modern performance theatre.

The article reviews the publication Performative Gestures Political Moves that was issued as a result of the symposium that took place in 2010 and organised by the City of Women. This contribution points to the difficulty of naming art “Western” or “Eastern” as well as to the broad meaning of the words “performative” and “political” used for the impetus giving rise to this edition. The author notes that the articles in the publication are very heterogeneous, ranging from presentations, re-historicisations, pieces addressing more obscure topics and analytical texts to artistic works. This polyphony in content, form and ways of presentation, and not only its content, is being read as a political and feminist gesture.

Tea Hvala reviews the latest e-publications by the London-based publishing house KT Press, whose publications include e-books on contemporary feminist art as well as the journal n.paradoxa. She considers Katy Deepwell’s editorial guidelines and discusses in detail the e-book House: From Display to Back to Front (2012) on the British artist Fran Cottell and the e-book Wall Works: Selected Writings and Performances (2013) on Cottell’s contemporary, Silvia Ziranek. After introducing both artists, the reviewer focuses on the content, scope and some formal shortcomings of both publications.

As an actress, Petra Veber Rojnik created a number of unforgettable roles, in both institutional and non-institutional theatre projects. She drew the attention of the theatre public very early on, at the very beginning of her creative path, when she astonished with a series of experimental projects created within the collective of the E.P.I. Centre cultural and production institute and marked by an exploratory élan and a fresh, uncompromising aesthetics.