SODA WORKS 2018

Through my time spent at SODA as a student, researching and working on my artist processes, searching for key questions,
redefining artistic methodologies, delivering presentations and following assessment requests, I discovered the joy of
multitasking between different bodies of identity. I define it as a saturation of the technological in the political all inside the
borders of my body, in order to discover the physicality as a new navigation system (”DOTS” & ”The Work” - 101 presentation,
1st semester/module 101 & 101 ”Showing” , 2nd semester/module 102).
Manoeuvring through hardware (external material – lights, space, time, bodies/audience, actions) and software (my experience)
by the principles of choreographic chronographie and parkouring through landmarks, I visited many layers of my
identity and became a territory that I first named ELEN (2nd semester/module 201).
Landmarks are inscribed in the body through heritage, memories, past project, experiences, and knowledge. These landmarks
became visible during the extensive process of digging through body databases and noted with the tools of choreographic
chronographie.
Choreographic chronographie is the method that I’ve developed during SODA course and it includes an observation of this
personal landmarks with an analytical eye, noting them and translating them into the performative space with the tools of
choreography: structure, dynamic, rhythm, movement research, vocabulary.
Continuing the research in the 3rd semester, the process developed. Till that time I received lot of feedback and talked
about my work many times through practical workshops and table discussions. I expanded the territory of ELEN to E.L.E.N.
(”E.L.E.N.” - 201 showing, 3rd semester/module 301). This territory had again its hardware and software.
The hardware is overloaded with history, meaning, practices,discourse. A personal archive that became an open archive for
participation of the audience and software (ways of knowing, ways of doing) needed to activate the hardware.
While in the previous phase of the research we were focusing more on the hardware, trying to extend the boarders of
ELEN’s bodies, to exhibit the hardware of her bodies and compose the territory of ELEN in which the public migrates
through collective action, in this phase- E.L.E.N. , we directed our attention towards its software. This includes strategies,
and methodologies of how this territory could be assembled and put into action. The assemblage happens through series of
participative tools that invite the audience to take part through guiding them. Their participation changes the score, offering
an unstable and exciting ground to navigate within. There is an influence, exchange, interaction and resonance happening as
a chain reaction. Collective action becomes the engine that activates the piece.
Based on this finding and reflecting on previous ones, at first, A Solo Together: chain reaction emerges (301 ”Research
Presentation”, beginning of 4th semester/module 301) was an event performance, created and performed together with
the public. Through objects that are invested with my biography, symbolic and filled with emotion, I displayed certain aspects
(particular events) of my life to the audience. These objects are then offered to audience members for translation into action.
Based on this action or their reaction I build the performative material – a solo that is performed in the end of the piece.
The intention was to show how this material transforms to create a collaborative moment, a dialog. The audience produces
choreographic input, influencing my work, resonating in me and become part of the performance choreography. In turn they
construct through my biography something that reflects part of themselves.
Later, during the 4th semester, I continued to develop this idea of creating a collaborative moment with the audience
through solo performance. I went back to my dance, to my own movement. In Croatian the {noun} pokret is understood in
relationship to an idea of movement as collective body of political thinking. Movement as an action of a person or activity of
a body of persons, a collective spirit that is busy with changing something, a choreography of community. Living in Eastern
Europe as a child, an athlete and artist lot of things needed to be changed and moved... Movement was present all the time.
It became the core of me. It became my dance.
At the end of my traveling through this course, I presented A SOLO TOGETHER (401 showing, 4th semester, 401 module)
as my final performance as part of the MA Solo/Dance/Authorship presentations, in December, 2017. The performance
thematised the notionof utopian collectivity that I remember from my childhood, lived in socialist Yugoslavia and thought
through the context of the post-socialist world. Imagined as an event performance co-created and co-performed together
with the audience. By exposing my intimate story to the audience, I invited them to create a collective thought to join together,
to gather, to create a common experience being A SOLO TO-GET-(t)HER(e). Gradually, from the beginning to the end of
the performance, I was building with the audience an experience through different formats of participation.
I conclude this text with a thought that “my personal experience is the foundation of my work”. I see the body as a performative
territory, which I constantly revisit through observing, noting, mapping, reflecting. Taking that into consideration, I am
using my past as a surface to enable new perspectives. One of these perspectives would be:
ONGER WANTS TO RESPOND TO THE
“Building a sense of community and creating a common experience with the audience by applying different formats of participation,
with the intention to question “Is it possible to create a thinking space to revisit notions of collectivity in a different
ways within a theatrical environment?”