Performance and the Public/Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved our Collective Body at Metropolis Empire Sofil

As part of the Home Works 6 Platform, Metropolis Empire Sofil is hosting a book and film presentation with Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda.

Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda will present two recent TkH productions that result from their research Performance and the Public conducted in Paris (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers), Belgrade (Magacin u Kraljevića Marka), Amsterdam (Het Veem Theater) and Berlin (Tanzfabrik) in 2011-2012.

The theoretical and political perspectives of this transdisciplinary research stem from the discontinuous experiences of participation in the public sphere in former socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neoliberalism. The point of departure for the book, written by Cvejić and Vujanović, is the recurrent problem of the public: the eclipse of the public sphere throughout the twentieth century as a marker of the crisis of representative democracy.

The authors propose social choreography and social drama, as well as an analysis of contemporary performance of the self, as instruments that reframe the discussion on the public and its discontents. The documentary film directed by Popivoda deals with the question of how ideology performed itself in public space through mass performances.

The author collected and analysed film and video footage from the period of Yugoslavia (1945 – 2000), focusing on state performances as well as counter-demonstrations. Going back through the images, the film traces how communist ideology was gradually exhausted through the changing relations between the people, ideology, and the state.