GOOD WATER
Dobra voda (Croatian ‘good water’) is one of the coves on the Island of Silba. Some people refer to it in singular, while others prefer the plural Dobre vode. Next to it, there is also the neighbouring cove, Mavrova, which is often somehow mistaken for Dobra voda (or Dobre vode). The place name exists but it is elusive – you can’t be sure how to call the place, or how to find it. Besides space, time can also be confusing: you become aware of the transience observing yourself or those around you, if there are any – the nature appears the same as it had been when you left it last time. Colours, sounds and smells depend on many things, though – it seems – the least on the years that have passed or the years that are to come. We get immersed, we emerge, we roll and imprint, we rustle, under the sun, and – if we are given the chance to do it all over again – we follow the same way. We move in circles, connected, with earth, with water, the good one …
Dobra voda is a new stage, the third episode of the series What comes about? Works in this series deal with exploration of movement as the basis of our cognition of the world and establishing relationships, interpersonal connectedness and the connectedness with the environment we are part of. The series evolves and is redefined through the encounter of various media, various author poetics, and through the encounter of performers and viewers, thus opening the space between participants, the space between events, the space of listening, hesitation and possibilities. The first episode of the series was the performing event What comes about? (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, May 2019), and the second was the performing installation The Touching Performance (Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, September 2019). Both episodes were realised through collaboration of dance artist Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović and visual artist Marina Bauer. Dobra voda is the next step in which musician Didier Douet joined the team.
Installation:
Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
Dobra voda / Good water
dance performance in the drawing room
duration: 45′
dance: Viktoria Bubalo, Zvonimir Kvesić, Ariana Prpić
The work starts from an embodied exploration of the history of one’s own creation and the relationship between individual versus joint experience. Although it is choreographic, this work also has a marked visual aspect. Abstract forms and sound, which results from movement, every so often take on narrative and symbolic connotations which are immediately dissolved into a transforming continuum. The processes of division, differentiation, transformation, migration, have equally shaped and are shaping the individual body of every one of us, from the moment of conception until today, as well as the collective body / the society we are a part of, to which we testify, which we create. Can the body experience which we share be a starting point for the revision of established patterns of work, hierarchy and power?
Didier Douet
Space – Vibration 2: glides
Natural sounds of the environment (the building in which the performance takes place) are developed and made into music through variations within their own music spectrum. It is a “sound way” built on three axes: material, space and movement. The space of the building keeps vibrating even without human presence; its own breathing includes the resonance of the outer events. The sound of empty space and its sonic coincidences calls for the opening of the visitors’ acoustic perception. The sound environment of past times has been brought to present just as the sounds of battle in François Rabelais’ Book IV.
Marina Bauer
Nakupilo se / It piled up
spatial installation
Installation aimed at tactile and kinaesthetic perception – confronts us with discarded objects and remnants of used and consumed materials. A spatial installation created in that way induces visitors to move, simultaneously making it difficult or even impossible for them to move through.
concept and choreography: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
spatial installation: Marina Bauer
sound installation: Didier Douet
dance: Zvonimir Kvesić, Viktoria Bubalo, Ariana Prpić /
Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović
text selection and dramaturgical support: Dubravko Mihanović
production: Multimedijalna koliba in collaboration with the
Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb
The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City of Zagreb.
performances:
23, 24 September 2022, 17,00 – 19,00 h, Galerija Kranjčar Zagreb
29 May 2022, Stara mestna elektrarna Ljubljana
19 November 2021, Multimedijalni kulturni centar Split, 41. Splitski salon
23 May 2021, SC Gallery Zagreb
22 May 2021, SC Gallery Zagreb
18 October 2020, Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb
17 October 2020, Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb, premiere
photographer: Jasenko Rasol