Snježana Premuš: PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS – POIESIS OF SELF

Photo: Marcandrea

28. 10. 2016, 8am – 10.00am Lab (closed group)
4.11.2016, 8pm, premiere
5.11.2016, 9pm
6.11.2016, 8pm

The Greek word poíesis, which had been gradually migrating into the literary field , only to end up as a label for the art of poetry, signified handicraft in the classical era of Greek antiquity: a manufacturing that implied certain skill, dexterity, or technē. At a time when we are fighting for the extension of the concepts of choreography and dance work, a play with its original work connotation seems to make sense. The self in the sum of relations-images, which are nothing more than our body, “a body as an image offered to other bodies” (Jean-Luc Nancy: Corpus). In his book The Radicality of Love, Srećko Horvat claims that love has to be reinvented outside of the field of commodification, which he understands to be a prerequisite for revolution. One could argue that our modern daily life is subject to a suspension of the body, full of immunitary strategies, self-protections and anti-virus programs: our prosthesis of capitalism, roaming around the world through our biographies, has to be de-suspended, transformed – into body. Our percepts need to be reactivated. Sure, the poíesis of the self has no intention of saving the world, but it does not want to avoid its true problems.

The performance Poíesis of self is a follow up phase of a long-term process, initiated by Snježana Premuš with Physical manifestations in the period 2012–2015. In a series of presentations of study processes led by the choreographer with dancers of very different backgrounds, with whom she was testing BMC methods (body-mind centering), audience of different profiles, professions and disciplines were invited to participate to establish together how the physical creation of the perception images is expressive and what kind of senses it creates, how it reads,  figures, what may remain invisible to the eye. It quickly became apparent that physical work is not just a matter of the dancer, but also the viewer, and that it is perhaps the body of the viewer that could be renamed  “the athletics of the viewers’ percepts” (by analogy with the “athletics of the eye”, as the position of the viewer was once articulated by Eda Čufer). Dance critic, historian and contemporary dance archivist Rok Vevar has also participated in these presentations between 2012 and 2015, and Snježana Premuš decided to continue working with him. In 2016, they decided to lock themselves in the studio during their joint meetings and start sharing their practices with each other.

The performance Poíesis of self, which arose from these meetings, is structured in a series of situations, in which the non-invasive activity of the audience and performers is subject to experiential possibilities of converting the body into language and vice versa in places where a body is always already a language, and a language is a resource of the body. What may seem complicated is in reality very simple: entering the metaphysical in a way is always subject to the material, physical. There is no mystique to it; in his sense, thing are usually always conditioned by the concrete, utterly concrete. The performance applies a mixture of different artistic means and elements (objects, bodies, images and linguistic means), and a range of very simple kinetic elements and actions in space. In a way, it communicates to the audience the results of several months’ process, at the same time waiving the option to only be absorbed from afar.

Concept and direction: Snježana Premuš
Co-creators and performers: Snježana Premuš in Rok Vevar
Text: Rok Vevar in Snježana Premuš
Set and light design: Miha Horvat / Sonda
Sound installation: Boštjan Perovšek
Photography: Marcandrea
Public relations and production: Ksenija Kaučič
Production: Zavod Federacija Ljubljana
Coproduction: Bunker, Ljubljana
Supported by Municipality of Ljubljana
Residency 2016: Tanzfabrik Berlin

Ticket prices: 10 eur, 7 eur (students, seniors, groups – 5 people or more)
Reservations are mandatory.
Information and reservations: ksenija.kaucic@gmail.com.