Performance Studies

The political theorist Isabell Lorey has appeared as one of the most striking European voices in the recent debate on precarity and precarization in neoliberalism. Her theoretical discourse draws from the referential frameworks of political and biopolitical theory, feminism, gender and postcolonial studies, as well as of recent social and political movements, such as Euromayday, Occupy and 15-M. This invigorating and politically sharp intersection has created a potent critical platform for analyzing representative democracy, biopolitical governmentality, immunization, and precarization, which belong to Lorey's main concerns.
State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious is the translation of Lorey's book Die Regierung der Prekären (2012) and is her first book appearing in English.

/// Keywords: precarity, freedom, security, insecurity, immunity, precarization, precarious

It was around 10 P.M. when I arrived. I found her in one of her temporary apartments. A spacious living and dinning room, almost empty, with wooden floors and big windows, curtains wide open. It was in a small, three story building facing Westerpark, in Amsterdam. She made tea and at first looked willing to talk, but when she sat at the table she briefly glanced at the computer screen and then turned her head and looked towards the glass door of the balcony… I saw her withdrawing into herself like a candle in the dark… She sucked the whole energy of the room. Soon after that thought— or was it a feeling? — had arisen, I saw it leave me, and before it was immersed in the energy flow, the feeling-thought turned back, grabbed me by the hand and took me outside of myself. Now externalized, I was observing that wild woman with clear thoughts, who has been ready to abandon them whenever she was asked the right question. I hovered between her and myself. The screen lightened her profile. It didn’t say much. She was perfectly calm and only her eyes were moving rapidly as if she were reading or dreaming. I was under the impression she had forgotten that I was there, and it was not easy to break the silence in which she apparently felt comfortable. But I promised Mårten Spångberg that I would write 15 pages about post-dance and I knew I couldn’t do it without her. So… well, fuck it.

Keywords: contemporary dance, post-dance, feminist theory, poiesis, cognition, affects, knowledge

Attending Natten was similar to travelling by the night train, in a compartment with a stranger. Travelling the whole night… to Istanbul, let’s say. And during the travel, my co-traveller would sometimes address me. Sometimes, I would reply. In some moments we would talk. Then, since we don’t have much to share, the conversation would fade out… And he would take a nap. I would observe him. I would notice rapid movements of his eyes, and start speculating on his life, his history, his dreams… Gradually, he would become less strange to me. ... As the night is rolling and the time passing is growing bigger and we stop dividing it, he would become more than an accidental anonymous fellow-traveller to me, a kind of “sputnik”, with the connotation of Slavic languages given to that word. Sputnik (sputnjik or saputnik), in Russian, Polish, or Serbo-Croatian adds something to the fellow with whom I travel. (You can call it a (false) promise, but it can well be ontologically new.) She or he is a companion, and could even be a life companion, a life partner, the one who travels with you through life. Travelling together with a sputnik erodes the borders between you and her as autonomous and self-indulgent individuals, not in terms of fusing you in one harmonious being, but in terms of bringing about the life as the third entity in your journey. The entity around which you become sputniks to each other. And about which you start to take care, together.

My interest in "walking theory" initially came from an education in art and humanities, which taught us that art was an intimate activity of the artist-genius who creates directly from his guts, while theory was an abstract speculation, which, if you let it come closer, it can castrate artistic freedom. Paradoxically, all this was promoted in Belgrade in the 1990s, in the context of the civil wars in former Yugoslavia, the international sanctions, the regime of Slobodan Milošević, and the transition from socialism to capitalism. Probably that striking paradox between the devastating and demanding social processes and a romantic vision of art as a transcendental creation made it obvious to me that the mainstream ideology of art was merely to maintain the social status quo by cultivating artists and theorists disinterested in the social-political implications of their work as well as in the social-political background already integrated in it...

Keywords: walking theory, theoretical practice, critical theory, performance studies, performance, teorija koja hoda

Scena savremenog plesa u Srbiji se uspostavlja tokom 2000ih godina. To ne znači da ranije u Srbiji nije postojao ples, pa ni da nije postojao ples koji teži da bude savremen svom trenutku i kontekstu. Međutim, termin "savremeni ples“ ulazi u upotrebu naročito krajem 1990ih i početkom 2000ih godina, isto kada počinje da se formira i onaj kompleksni umetničko-teorijsko-organizacioni sistem koji nazivamo "scenom"...

Krajem 20. i početkom 21. veka u Srbiji dolazi do intenzivnog razvoja savremene dramske književnosti. Taj zamah je istorijski i poetički započet dramama Biljane Srbljanović u drugoj polovini 1990ih, a zatim Milene Marković od 2000. godine, da bi se u prvoj polovini 2000ih godina nastavio kroz masovniju dramsku praksu sa nazivom Nova drama, koja okuplja pisce najnovije generacije.

U ovom tekstu usredsrediću se na one aspekte alternativnog teatra – i, šire, izvođačkih umetnosti – u Beogradu i Srbiji tokom poslednje decenije dvadesetog veka koji se tiču, za njegovo razumevanje možda najvažnijeg, odnosa "etike i estetike". Alternativni teatar je kao vaninstitucionalna praksa bio direktnije eksponiran i aktivnije uključen u tada brojna i radikalna društvena zbivanja, nego instutucionalno pozorište koje je inertnije i po definiciji nastoji da zadrži status quo očuvanjem postojećih društvenih, kulturnih i umetničkih paradigmi. Na to je ukazivalo i nekoliko prominentnih lokalnih teoretičarki, kao što su Milena Dragićević-Šešić, Aleksandra Jovićević i Dubravka Knežević, koje su kritikovale institucionalna pozorišta u devedesetim zbog njihove "lagodne" pozicije i eskapizma.

Različiti oblici umetničkog performansa (hepeninzi, akcije, događaji, body art i performans art u užem smislu) u Srbiji nastajali su u širokom i disperzivnom vremenskom rasponu i vezani za različite umetničke paradigme. U tom okviru možemo posmatrati: zenitističke večernje i dadaističke manifestacije tokom 1920ih godina u Subotici, Novom Sadu i Beogradu, zatim, neoavangardne izvođačke prakse, tj. višemedijske performanse Vladana Radovanovića od sredine 1950ih, pa do neoavangardne scene 1960ih. Ipak, tek tokom 1970ih godina, u okviru konceptualne umetnosti dolazi do snažnoj razvoja umetnosti performansa, pre svega u oblasti vizuelnih umetnosti. U tom periodu, deluje veliki broj umetnika i grupa i nastaje mnoštvo radova, koji se tada i definišu i samodefinišu kao „umetnost performansa“.

U posleratnoj istoriji evropskog avangardnog teatra, Beograd je od 1970ih godina bio smatran kanonskim mestom – između ostalog zbog Bitefa, koji je, počev od 1967. godine bio jedan od najznačajnijih eksperimentalnih prostora međunarodne scene. ... Sredinom 70ih godina, Jugoslavija je bila pozorišna meka, laboratorija kasnomodernističke arhitekture, tačka kristalizacije neortodoksnog marksizma i jedan od internacionalno najumreženijih punktova avangardne umetnosti u Evropi. (Georg Schöllhammer)

U poslednjem istorijskom prikazu koji ovde objavljujem, bavim se avangardnim teatrom i izvođačkim umetnostima u Srbiji 1920ih godina. Iako su prvi avangardni umetnički eksperimenti zabeleženi još 1910ih, brojne i raznovrsne umetničke prakse realizuju se dvadesetih i tridesetih godina pod direktnim uticajem i u saradnji sa futurističkim, dadaističkim i nadrealističkim internacionalnim pokretima, kao i kroz zenitizam, kao svojevrsnu lokalno specifičnu kombinaciju avangardnih tendencija na evrospkoj sceni. Prema Irini Subotić, avangardni pokreti u Srbiji i Jugoslaviji bili su ekspresivne pojave tadašnjeg društveno-političkog trenutka, u kojem se s jedne strane težilo pripadnosti evropskom prostoru, a sa druge suprotstavljanju građanskim institucijama koje su negovale umereni modernizam i često nekritički prihvatale uzore bečkog, minhenskog i kasnije pariskog kulturnog miljea.

This analysis of contemporary dance in Serbia is also an attempt to raise the question: Who has the right to contemporaneity? Namely, as contemporary dance is a new phenomenon in Serbia, there are two harsh theses that I would put forward as starting points. First, as there is no local contemporary dance history, there is no need to follow the diachronic traces of the present scene; and, second, what is currently considered as contemporary dance in Serbia is contemporary Western dance. Yet, that scene seems to be not-quite-Western though it is not-right-Eastern either. Presenting it in its full complexity may help us not only to understand that particular art scene better, but also to recognize how wider streams of power, money, and administrative regulation define contemporary art in today’s global world.

An essay on hierarchization in global circulation of knowledge in art and culture, analyzing why the term 'second-hand knowledge' persistently retains negative connotations while it has been embraced as a poetic term in Yugoslav cultural space with certain ease and even humor. One of the central thesis is that it is the value-laden dichotomy 'firsthand - second-hand knowledge' that geographically draws the center of global knowledge production, whereby mirroring economic and political hierarchization of the global world.

Key words: second-hand knowledge, knowledge production, Yugoslav cultural space, politics of knowledge production, cognitive authority

This paper / article presents a brief discussion on contemporary ‘artists citizens’. It will examine the public life, and the political activity in particular (vita activa), of the critical cultural worker in neoliberal capitalist society. Here, a critical cultural worker – theoretician, artist, curator, journal editor, cultural producer, etc. –means the one who wants and tries to be political. Through discussing her dubious politicality, I aim here to unpack a tension between the work and the politics in today’s society. In addition, assuming that most citizens today are workers themselves I would propose a few thoughts on what the politics today could be and how it could look like once we recognize its classical definition as socially and historically inadequate.

Keywords: cultural worker, labor, politics, politicality, vita activa, precarization, Post-Fordism, knowledge production, complicity, community

Today, dramaturgy is more than ever a vibrant artistic field, on the one hand constantly expanding and on the other, populated with various discourses and practices coming from other social and cultural spheres. Therefore, simultaneously with following how it spilled out of the drama play, theater stage, black box and even the performance in broadest artistic sense, we can follow how present day media, cinema, internet, management of labor, educational system, popular music, life styles, organization of perception and attention, as well as the financial crisis, protests, assemblies and self-organized communities that have appeared in Europe in the recent years have influenced dramaturgy. In this present article – whose scope doesn't allow me to analyze both processes in detail – I will focus on a point where these two streams intersect. There, where dramaturgy in performing arts reverberates with the surrounding context and by the same stroke invites us to think that context by observing performances, I see a tendency on contemporary European dance and performance scene(s) that I name 'landscape dramaturgy'.

When speaking about the proper name in our modern Western society, there is a strong claim that it is an empty designation. From my point of you – which is grounded in performance studies and shed light on the name within the process of performing the self – however, the name can hardly be taken as an empty signifier just because it signifies me arbitrarily. All signifiers are arbitrary. Of course, I could have been named differently than Ana Vujanović, other people can have the same name and I can still change that name and take another one, but in this article I would like to ponder over the fact that it is my name. As such, it signifies me and is therefore not without any substance despite its arbitrary character and my elusive nature, (re)occurring in all my performances of myself. What we tend to overlook in everyday life, while it becomes the main dramaturgical problem of performing the self, is that the sliding of the name’s meaning actually reveals an ongoing struggle of the proper name to stabilize what is changeable and yet has to be fixed in order to be counted on (loved, befriended, trusted, cooperated with): individual person. The main concern of this article is that the name in our culture is thus rather a dialectic designation, whereby suggesting the dialectic of the human agent (the person) it designates.
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This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Performance Research 22:5, 2017, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13528165.2017.1383729