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 Hlušička (Maršanić), Ivana Pavlović, Vladimira Šančić, Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović

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:

15 /16 June 2024
Venue: in front of the Meštrović Pavilion (Home of Croatian Artists)

17 June 2023
Venue: SomaHut festival, French Pavilion SCZG

5 and 9 July 2022
Venue: in front of the Meštrović Pavilion ( Home of Croatian Artists),  opening of the 14th Triennial of Croatian Sculpture

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.

The piece won one of the three equally-valuable prizes of the Triennial of Croatian Sculpture 2022. 

photographer: Jasenko Rasol, Lara Varat , Valerija Djanješić