The Touching Performance
2nd episode in the series of performance meetings titled as What comes about?
Authors: Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović and Marina Bauer
Performers and co-creators: Viktoria Bubalo, Iva Hladnik, Sven Jakir, Zvonimir Kvesić, Tea Maršanić, Ivana Pavlović and Vladimira Šančić
What comes about? is the title of a series of performance meetings in which performers and viewers together shape the material in the space and time of the performance. The Touching Performance is the second episode of this project in lasting creation. On this occasion the Academy of Fine Arts located in Jabukovac has been chosen as the meeting point, where one can experience the touching of the city and the forest, of the constructed and the grown, of the systematized and the wild.
touch m 1 (with reality / people) contact, connection, link, taction, closeness, socializing, mingling 2 (hands on the forehead) touching, contact, caressing, (the sense of touch) taction
The Touching Performance invites to a joint movement which does not believe in the clear distinction between practice and performance, between those who perform, that which is exposed and those who observe. We are all simultaneous participants and witnesses to the event and we share the responsibility for the experienced and seen, starting from the experience of touch and movement as the way of learning about the world and establishing relations.
The Touching Performance leads the participants through six stages – “Dock”, “Starting Guides”, “Islands for the Barefoot”, “Choreography through Touch”, “With Closed Eyes”, and “Shape Yourself” – inviting them in different ways to move and listen, outside-in, or inside-out.
Marina Bauer is a visual artist who deals with exploring tactility and kinesthetic experience of sculpture and space in her work. Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović is a dance artist who has been exploring the somatic movement for the last fifteen years through various approaches and practices and her author work is greatly inspired by somatic experience. The meeting of these two artists, within the Start’19 Sculpture Network project, has opened a number of interesting questions and a desire for their elaboration through further collaboration. It brings a joint, inter-media examination of the movement and touch as the basis for learning and establishing mutual connectedness, as well as with the environment that we make part of, thus affirming an interest for ecology, sharing responsibility and collective choreography.
Performances: 21/22 and 28/29 September 2019, from 12:00 to 14:00 hours
Venue: the courtyard of the Teachers’ Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Jabukovac 10.
The project has been supported by the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. It has been realized in collaboration with the Teachers’ Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
We would like to thank the following people for their help and support in the realization: Josipa Bubaš, Ana Jelušić, Lana Hosni, Ivana Ognjanovac, Hana Lukas-Midžić and all the participants of the 1st performance meeting at the Museum of Contemporary Art, whose participation and experiences have contributed to the development of this project; Igor Čabraja, Barbara Bourek, Jelena Kovačev, Lovre Matijević, Toni Vidan, Dubravko Mihanović, and the audience that creates this work with us.
Photographer: Jasenko Rasol
