21. International Multimedial Art Festival - IMAF 2019

​6th - 8th September 2019 Odžaci & Novi Sad 

Program 21. Međunarodnog festivala multimedijalne umetnosti - IMAF 2019
Programe of the 21st International Multimedial Art Festival - IMAF 2019
 
 
06. 09. 2019. Bivši Dom omladine / Former Youth Center, Knez Mihajlova 16, Odžaci (Srbija / Serbia)
 
15:30h Početak programa IMAF 2019 Odžaci / Start the program IMAF 2019
 
15:30 - Otvaranje festivala / Opening of the festival: Sonja Jankov, likovni kritičar / Art Critic
 
15:35 - Andriy Helytovych (Ukrajina / Ukraine)
 
15:45 - Sonja Jankov (Srbija / Serbia)
 
16:00 - Barbara Friedman (Francuska / France)
 
16:10 - Eva Dabara (Izrael / Israel)
 
16:25 - Sana Ghobbeh (Iran / Iran)
 
17:00 - Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith (Nemačka / Germany)
 
17:30 - Vincenzo Fiore Marrese (Italija / Italy)
 
17:50 - Susanna Pruna (Španija / Spain)
 
18:25 - Dimple B Shah (Indija / India)
 
 
07. 09. 2019. Galerija SULUV / SULUV Gallery (Savez udruženja likovnih umetnika Vojvodine / Association of Fine Artists of Vojvodina), Bul. Mihajla Pupina 9, Novi Sad (Srbija / Serbia)
 
20:00 Početak programa IMAF 2019 Novi Sad / Start the program IMAF 2019 Novi Sad
 
20:05 - Vincenzo Fiore Marrese (Italija / Italy)
 
20:25 - Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith (Nemačka / Germany)

21:00 - Dimple B Shah (Indija / India)

22:00 - Saša Denić-Špena (Srbija / Serbia)
 
22:30 - Sana Ghobbeh (Iran / Iran)
 
 
08. 09. 2019. Galerija SULUV / SULUV Gallery (Savez udruženja likovnih umetnika Vojvodine / Association of Fine Artists of Vojvodina), Bul. Mihajla Pupina 9, Novi Sad (Srbija / Serbia)
 
20:00 Početak programa IMAF 2019 Novi Sad / Start the program IMAF 2019 Novi Sad
 
20:05 - Nenad Bogdanović (Srbija / Serbia)
 
20:35 - Andriy Helytovych (Ukrajina / Ukraine)
 
21:05 - Eva Dabara (Izrael / Israel)
 
21:30 - Susanna Pruna (Španija / Spain)
 
22:20 - Nia Pushkarova (Bugarska / Bulgaria)
 
22:45 - Barbara Friedman (Francuska / France)

IMAF 2019 review:

Metaphor in contemporary performance art

Metaphor is studied most commonly within the discourse of literary studies, or, since recently, political speeches and statements. We also find it abundantly in myths, tales, religious paintings and historic portraits of aristocracy. However, what role does it have in contemporary art which is so often characterised by citing and ready mades? Has metaphor become something obsolete at the time when art so often uses collage as a method to produce meanings?

According to Paul Ricoeur, metaphor is the basic principle by which language functions. For him, metaphor and metonymy are not simply tropes, but general process of language. The relation between sign and signified becomes a fixed convention only after a fluid, changeable, living process during which terms tend to gain more meanings then previously. A single word which used to represent something becomes polysemic at time, it starts referring to something else as well; an idea becomes presented by more terms, or by metaphors when an idea lacks a proper sign/word (such as ideas of feelings, states, existence, power, etc.).

Performance art focuses most usually on such ideas that cannot be presented by a single sign. Furthermore, performance art transcends an artist’s idea by means that no other art uses, including the artist’s direct presence and various media. In such event, visual and audible codes (signs) become metaphors that shift from one discourse to another, that disrupt stable meanings of terms, that make us question meanings of some words, that are referential to reality which is deconstructed, described and re-described by them, that create new language – the language of performance art which is communicated between the artist, audience and participants in the performance. Metaphor, according to Ricoeur, enables semantic impertinences and semantic innovations and that is precisely which performance art does.

In performances by Sana Ghobbeh (Iran), fences which divide cities become central objects and agents, while the artist appears as narrator who in historic manner presents factual and fictional data. In the performance The Ferris Wheel Turns as the Wind Blows, Ghobbeh focuses on the wall that divides the Evin prison and the city Tehran. She presents the history of the area which in the 1920s used to be a beautiful garden and home of Ziaeddin Tabatabaee, a prime minister at the time. Since 1972, the area is used as detention centre for political prisoners. It is cut off from the city by the huge wall which surrounds it and the same time that wall presents the end of city and the stop to its further development in that direction. Instead of focusing on notorious facts about tortures, executions and rapes that took place behind the wall, Ghobbeh creates in situ a model of the wall and five fictional stories that give five images of the wall, as seen by the citizens who have been just beside it at various points in history. Rotating of the Ferris Well enables a specific view on the wall to a little girl; the wall looks differently to people driving a car beside it, or leaning against it, or sitting on the terrace beside it... There seems to be as many images of this wall as there are citizens. Ghobbeh employs similar approach in performance This Wall Grows at Its Root for which she depicts the entrance to the University of Tehran and a later added fence.

Barbara Friedman (France) in performance Refuge connects the tune of Ode to Joy / Anthem of Europe with images of masses of refugees that have been drowning in the Mediterranean sea in an effort to reach Europe. The artist literary receives all the refuges that are drowning in the sea, stuffing wet images of them into her mouth till the moment of choking and irritating the reflex for throwing up. Unlike her, the media is figuratively fed up with such images, while migration politics of European countries are not directly resolving the problem. In her second performance, Crashed Paradajz, she plays with semantics of tomato and its word in Serbian: paradajz which originates from the word paradise. By crushing a tomato, she performs a narrative about crushed ideas of heaven, employing two other metaphors: a fishtail and chicken legs – two extremities used for leaving, departing, running away. Adding again a tone of irony, Friedman uses metaphors to retell old and contemporary events of expulsion, exodus and refugee crisis.

Vincenzo Fiore Marrese (Italy) also plays with meanings of words in his works. The title of his performance Strike may refer both to air strike and anti-war citizens’ strike. He creates sounds, edits them and adds audio report on air strike in Middle East, while at the same time including a local child to play with a drone. In that way, a parallel is drawn between drones-toys and military drones, as well as between play of powers and children’s play. In Body’s Law, Marrese continues to question the relation between power, body and society in his work. He turns to the process of integrating released prisoners into a society – a procedure which is strict and regulated, much closer to prison rules than to an idea of freedom. Marrese shoves off the restrains from his body by creating sound by his movements and creating a body of sound that exceeds his own and gives more free space to his own. His every movement in a way digs up a free space for him to advance further.

Extension of body into space is something which also characterises performances by Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith (Germany). In performances Issue of Decree, part 1 and part 2, she employs reflections, projection and laser beams as connective agencies between her body and the space. They are either emitted from her body or projected upon it, connecting personal space with cultural environment and playing within dialectical relation between placement and displacement, position and movement. Her main concern is the understanding of visual language and of the human body in the world - how and what it can be in a speculated presence. In the second part, she merges her own body with plants, by diving the face (identity) into flowers and crushing leaves by feet. Transported from Dhaka (Bangladesh), the leaves have been travelling with the artist trough different countries and became a geo-iconographic metaphor of different cultures, remaining after the performance in her possession. Apart from that, she projects upon herself slides though which are alternatively appearing images of leaves and of human anatomy. The artist’s body thus became one with the leaves from Dhaka, and her position takes place in different cultural environments at the same time.

Dimple B Shah (India) in her performance The Scent of Unresolved appears as Demiurge, a Creator who carefully places miniature houses in public space, using puddles as lakes, elevated platforms as hills, existing buildings as mountains. Within interior space, she herself becomes an allegorical figure of a house, a metaphor of home and creator who has such a power that it become destructive, as an earthquake or erosion. In performance Antidote - Mending Body and Soul, Shah uses a fictional narrative of a cleansing ritual to connect individually with each volunteering participant. Evoking archetypal figures and ancient procedures, she adds to performance art elements that have endured through various civilisations, those that remind us of our connections with others around us and with all people that had been and will be walking the earth.

Andriy Helytovych (Ukraine) approaches space in two opposite ways. In his untitled performance at the former Youth Centre in Odžaci, his body was using its mass and weight to push boundaries of that particular space, continuously failing in doing so, as Sisyphus. Helytovych approached the elements of that space, such as the walls, the floor, the distance between people, as materials for new experience and potential that enables infinite number of possible experiences. By this process he tried to find the difference between him and the surrounding, defining himself as “not space” and defining the space of the Youth Centre as “not him.” In performance in Novi Sad, Helytovych embraced passive or static performance, mostly standing and looking, or sitting and looking, or performing a minute of silence for the deceased. Being as passive as possible at various points in the gallery, he became very similar to the audience. Apart from that, he became similar to Bartleby, a character from Herman Melville’s novella Bartleby the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street who would, on every demand by his employer, replay with “I would prefer not to”. Gilles Deleuze claims that the whole Bartleby’s existence comes to this formula. That formula is combination of conditional and infinitive mode, it is neither affirmation nor negation. Its ending in “not to,” without precise indication to which it refers, gives it a radical character, according to Deleuze. This formula can be said in any context, at any place, at any time, by anyone; it is de-territorialised. As Melville and Deleuze point out, it portrays entire mankind, all workers and actors in social reality, while Bartleby is only an allegorical figure which points towards it. Helytovych’s positions are metaphors that remind us of Bartleby’s formula, but they go beyond that questioning: where is the boundary between performing and not performing? As the body marks the space in either way, it is up to an artist to decide whether to move or not.

In performance The Spirit Changes Space, Nenad Bogdanović (Serbia) evokes a polysemic meaning of the word space – both as a universe and as given space within which the performance takes place. Creating a frame from quotes about scientific theories of universe and time, mostly by Stephen Hawking, Bogdanović includes audience in blowing away the created frame and destroying it to the point when there is only a question mark left. This sign of punctuation, standing alone in space, without any question preceding it, becomes a metaphoric mirror which reflects our will to knowledge, our disquiets, our insecurity, our inability to understand and control life, universe, or time, or future. Or, in Deleuze’s words, our whole existence comes to this question mark.

Even though texts appear in performance of Vincenzo Fiore Marrese and Nenad Bogdanović, they play a more significant role in performances by Nia Pushkarova, Eva Dabara, Susanna Pruna and Saša Denić-Špena. In Practical Semiotics -BG/Serbian Nia Pushkarova (Bulgaria) measures the weight of words and translated ones. Reading a selection of sentences in Bulgarian, and further translating them into Serbian by smart application, the artist uses sugar cubes as a measure for a sentence. At the end, the words weight 100gr, while translation device (smart phone) hits over 250gr, pointing out the impracticality of such practical tool.

Eva Dabara’s (Israel) interactive performance Crush explores the relationships between random poetic text, visual images, vocal sound and the moving body which confront each other while playing with the double meaning of the word Crush, both falling in love and squashing. Besides employing poetic sentences, choreographed elements and vocal sound, Dabara introduces in her performance an element of chance and combinatory unpredictability. She asks for audience to randomly take a sentence written on a napkin which she later places orderly in carefully arranged red cups, each of which has a word written on it: crisis, gamble, murder, kiss, war, passion, chains, fear, mystery and fragile. This combination of unpredictable (the order in which the participants will bring out the sentences) and known (words written on cups) creates an atmosphere of gambling which results in surprising new meanings. Together with the stylized movements and the vocal sound she produces in between, she thus further constructs and deconstructs the metaphors and narrative. Yet the centrality of the body prevails as she gathers the heart shape arranged cups between her legs in back arch balancing the concept of word-meaning-body-object. Her last act is citing one of her poems in sign language thus adding to an ambiguous, incomprehensible and open ending. In the performance Via de la Rosa, Dabara focuses on silent minimal gestural signs that have meanings which are at the same time symbolic, polysemic, hidden and abrupt. She accumulates them in repetition, moving against the wall of the Youth Center, creating a semantic chain, which might be read as the history of woman or any human being going through 'via dolorosa', and which breaks at the end with the sound of deflating balloon she squeezes until it produces a cry, a metaphor of what the performance was all about, which again remains open for interpretation.

Susanna Pruna (Spain) in her performances includes poetry, but also painting, to which she dedicated her work for twenty years, and installation art. Both Red Line and Guardian Women are poetic and political pieces against politics of power and act, feminine resistance and their voices. Red Line is a metaphor of unclear border between love and violence, a thread which further connects audience within the work. Performance Guardian Women turns to the fact that in history female poets, philosophers, painters, writers, have had to dress with male nicknames to express their thoughts, otherwise, they would remain in the in the shadow. Both fesmale and male visitors join the artist equaly inthe claim that woman sustains life and creates civilization. Combining painting, voice(s) and acting, which is for her a language, as much as visual and written language, Pruna draws attention to the fact that resistance is fought by soft power, and to the fact that having a voice also means having liberty to be active in all discourses – the discourse of art, science, philosophy, medicine, etc.

Saša Denić-Špena (Serbia) in The Suffocation of Freedom covers himself with statements about freedom and invites the audience to take them off, enabling him in such way to see, taste, touch, hear, express his gender orientation. During the entire process, the artist is stands still, voiceless, while the audience who takes the statements off, reads them aloud. As the pasted statements were metaphors of others’ experiences that were disabling him, as a subject, to live his own life, to experience the world in his own way, the audience helped him to create his own identity and his own experience of the world.  

All performances at 21^st IMAF employed metaphors within a semantic creative process, shifting between modus significandi (when signs have fixed meanings) and modus intiligendi (when meanings are attributed to signs, becoming thus changeable). As noted by Ricoeur, metaphors enable new meanings, and performances within the 21^st IMAF did just the same – they gave us new perspectives on (and new experience of) ideas of imprisonment, walls, homes, reintegration, awareness, paradise, love and many others. In the same way a metaphor urges us to think in different ways, by employing unconventional words for desired meanings, performance art make us see things in different way, change our opinions and connect with others.

IMAF thus became the small intercultural community within which ideas, methods and approaches to art have been exchanged, but also a platform for enriching the multimedial language of art, by creating new metaphors and new metaphorical narratives.

References

Deleuze, Gilles, Bartleby ili formula, Herman Melville, Perovođa Bartleby, Novi Sad i Zagreb: Kuda.org i Multimedijalni institut, 2014.

Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Texas Christian Press, 1976

Ricoeur, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978

 

Sonja Jankov

art theorist and multimedia artist 

 

 

IMAF 2019 recenzija:

 

Metafora u savremenom performansu

Metafora se najčešće proučava u okviru studija književnosti, ili, od nedavno, studija političkih govora i izjava. Obilno je nalazimo i u mitovima, pričama, religioznim slikama i istorijskim portretima aristokratije. Međutim, kakvu ulogu ona ima u savremenoj umetnosti koju često karakterišu citiranje i ready made? Da li je metafora postala nešto zastarelo u vreme kada umetnost često koristi kolaž kao metodu za proizvodnju značenja?

Prema Polu Rikeru, metafora je osnovni princip funkcionisanja jezika. Za njega metafora i metonimija nisu samo tropi, već opšti proces jezika. Odnos između znaka i označenog postaje fiksna konvencija tek nakon fluidnog, promenljivog, živog procesa tokom kojeg pojmovi teže da dobiju više značenja nego što su ih imali ranije. Jedna reč koja se nekada odnosila na jedan pojam, postaje polisemična, počinje da se odnosi i na nešto drugo; ideja postaje predstavljena sa više pojmova, ili metafora, u slučaju da ideja nema odgovarajući znak/reč (poput ideja o osećanjima, stanjima, postojanju, moći, itd.).

Umetnost performansa se najčešće fokusira na takve ideje koje se ne mogu predstaviti samo jednim znakom. Štaviše, performans prenosi umetnikovu ideju sredstvima koja nijedna druga umetnost ne koristi, uključujući direktno prisustvo i najrazličitije medije. U takvom kontekstu, vizuelni i zvučni kodovi (znakovi) postaju metafore koje se prebacuju iz jednog diskursa u drugi, koje narušavaju stabilna značenja pojmova, koje nas navode da razmišljamo o značenjima nekih reči, koje su referentne prema stvarnosti koja je u procesu dekonstrukcije, opisana i re-opisana tim metaforama koje stvaraju novi jezik – jezik umetnosti performansa koji se komunicira između umetnika, publike i učesnika. Metafora, prema Rikeru, omogućava semantički 'bezobrazluk' i semantičke inovacije. Upravo to čini i umetnost performansa.

U performansima Sana Ghobbeh (Iran) ograde koje razdvajaju gradove postaju centralni objekti i agenti, dok se umetnica pojavljuje kao narator koji na istoriografski način iznosi faktografske i fiktivne podatke. U performansu Riginšpil se okreće kako vetar duva, Opet se fokusira na zid koji graniči zatvor Evin i grad Teheran. Ona iznosi istoriju tog područja koje je 1920-ih bilo prelep park i dom Zajedina Tabataba, tadašnjeg premijera Irana. Godine 1972, ovo područje je pretvoreno u zatvor za političke zatvorenike. Od tada je odsečeno od grada ogromnim zidom koji ga okružuje, a taj isti zid predstavlja i kraj grada, zaustavljući njegov dalji razvoj u tom pravcu. Umesto da se fokusira na svedočanstva o mučenjima, pogubljenjima i silovanjima koja su se odvila iza zida zatvora, Opet stvara in situ model zida i iznosi pet poetičnih imaginarnih priča o tome kako zid vide građani koji su našli pored njega u različitim tačkama istorije. Rotacija riginšpila omogućava specifičan pogled na zid maloj devojčici; zid drugačije izgleda ljudima koji voze automobil pored njega nego onima koji se oslanjaju na njega, ili sede na terasi pored njega... Čini se da ne postoji samo jedan zid koji razdvaja grad i zatvor, nego da ga ima onoliko koliko i građana, jer ga svako drugačije doživljava. Sana Opet koristi sličan pristup i u performansu Ovaj zid raste iz korena, kojim se fokusira na ulaz u kampus Univerziteta u Teheranu i kasnije dodatnu ogradu.

Barbara Fridman (Francuska) u performansu Utočište povezuje melodiju Ode radosti / himne Evrope sa fotografijama mase izbeglica koje se utapaju u Sredozemnom moru u pokušaju da stignu do Evrope. Umetnica bukvalno prima sve izbeglice koje se dave, slažući mokre fotografije njih u usta do trenutka gušenja i iritiranja refleksa za povraćanje. Za razliku od nje, mediji su figurativno prezasićeni takvim fotografijama, dok migraciona politika evropskih zemalja ne rešava direktno problem i ne prima izbeglice. U svom drugom radu, Crushed paradajz, poigrava se semantikom reči „paradajz“ i njenim homonimom na engleskom jeziku koji znači „raj“. Gnječeći paradajz svojim telom, ona izvodi narativ o smrvljenim idejama o raju, koristeći dve druge metafore: riblji rep i pileće noge – ekstremitete koji se koriste za odlazak, bežanje. Uvodeći ponovo ton ironije, Fridman koristi metafore da ispriča drevne i savremene priče o egzodusu, proterivanjima, potopu i izbegličkoj krizi.

Vinćenco Fjore Mareze (Italija) se takođe poigrava značenjima reči u svojim delima. Naslov njegovog performansa Strike može se čitati kao vazdušni napad ili kao štrajk radnika. Mareze stvara zvukove, obrađuje ih i dodaje im audio snimak izveštaja o vazdušnim udarima na Bliskom Istoku, dok istovremeno uključuje lokalno dete, dajući mu dron da se igra njim. Na taj način se pravi paralela između dronova-igračaka i vojnih bespilotnih letelica, kao i između igranja moći, rata i dečije igre. U Zakonu tela, Mareze nastavlja da u svom radu dovodi u pitanje odnos vlasti, tela i društva. On se okreće procesu integrisanja oslobođenih zatvorenika u društvo – proceduri koja je stroga i regulisana, mnogo bliža zatvorskim pravilima nego ideji slobode. Mareze odstranjuje veze sa svog tela stvarajući zvuk pokretima i stvarajući telo zvuka koje nadilazi njegovo vlastito i daje mu više slobodnog prostora. Svaki njegov pokret na neki način otkopava slobodan prostor, omogućavajući mu da napreduje dalje.

Ekstenziranje tela u prostor je nešto što karakteriše i performanse Dagmar Glausnicer-Smit (Nemačka). U perfrmansima Izdavanje dekreta, prvi i drugi deo, ona koristi refleksije, projekcije i laserske zrake kao vezivne agense između svog tela i prostora. Oni se ili emituju iz njenog tela ili se projektuju na njega, povezujući lični prostor sa kulturnim okruženjem i igrajući se u dijalektičkoj vezi između smeštanja i izmeštenosti, položaja i pokreta. Njen fokus je na razumevanju vizuelnog jezika i ljudskog tela u svetu, propitujući kako i šta ono može biti. U drugom delu, ona spaja svoje telo sa biljkama, uranjajući lice (identitet) u cveće i drobeći lišće nogama. Donešeno iz Dake (Bangladeš), lišće putuje sa umetnicom kroz različite zemlje i postaje geo-ikonografska metafora različitih kultura, ostajući posle performansa u njenom posedu. Pored toga, ona projektuje na sebe slajdove na kojima se naizmenično smenjuju slike lišća i ljudske anatomije. Umetničino telo tako postaje jedno sa listovima iz Dake, a ona biva locirana istovremeno u dva kulturna okruženja.

Dimpl Ša (Indija) se u svom performansu Miris nerazrešenog pojavljuje kao Demijurg, Kreator koji pažljivo postavlja minijaturne kuće u javni prostor, koristeći lokve kao jezera, ivičnjake kao brda, postojeće zgrade kao planine. U enterijeru galerije, umetnica postaje alegorijska figura kuće, metafora doma i Stvaraoca koji ima takvu snagu da može postati destruktivna, kao zemljotres ili erozija. U performansu Protivotrov – oporavak tela i duše, Ša izvodi izmišljeni ritual pročišćenja kako bi se pojedinačno povezala sa svakim posetiocem koji odabere da uzme učešća u performansu. Evocirajući arhetipske figure i drevne postupke, ona dodaje likovne elemente koji potiču iz različitih civilizacija, podsećajući nas na našu povezanost sa drugima koji nas okružuju u sa svim ljudima koji su ikad hodali zemljom.

Andrij Helitovič (Ukrajina) pristupa prostoru na dva suprotna načina. U svom neimenovanom izvođenju u nekadašnjem Domu omladine u Odžacima, njegovo telo je masom i težinom pokušavalo da pomeri granice tog prostora, neprekidno ne uspevajući u tome, kao Sizif. Helitovič je pristupio elementima tog prostora, kao što su zidovi, pod, udaljenost između ljudi, kao materijalima za novo iskustvo i potencijal koji omogućava beskonačan broj mogućih iskustava. Ovim procesom je pokušao da nađe razliku između sebe i okoline, definišući sebe kao „ne-prostor“ i definišući prostor kao „ne-ja“. Helitovič je, nastupajući u Novom Sadu, prigrlio pasivni ili statički performans, uglavnom stojeći i gledajući, ili sedeći i gledajući, i izvodeći minutu ćutanja za mrtve. Budući da je bio pasivan na raznim tačkama galerije, postao je veoma sličan publici. Pored toga, postao je sličan Bartlbiju, liku iz novele Hermana Melvila Pisar Bartlbi ili priča sa Volstrita, koji bi na svaki zahtev svog poslodavca odgovarao „Radije ne bih“. Žil Delez tvrdi da celokupno Bartlbijevo postojanje može da se svede na ove formulu. Ta formula nije ni potvrđivanje niti negacija. Njen završetak „ne bih“, bez preciznih naznaka na šta se odnosi, daje joj radikalan karakter, prema Delezu. Ovu formulu može bilo ko reći u bilo kojem kontekstu, na bilo kojem mestu, u bilo kojem trenutku; deteritorijalizovana je. Kao što Melvil i Delez ističu, ona prikazuje čitavo čovečanstvo, sve radnike i aktere u društvenoj stvarnosti, dok je Bartlbi samo alegorijska figura koja ukazuje na to. Helitovičeve poze su metafore koje nas podsećaju na Bartlbijevu formulu, ali je i nadilaze, postavljajući pitanje: gde je granica između izvođenja i neizvođenja? S obzirom na to da telo obeležava prostor prisustvom u oba slučaja, na umetniku je da odluči da li da se pomera ili ne.

U performansu Duh menja prostor, Nenad Bogdanović (Srbija) evocira različite nivoe prostora, kao univerzuma i kao datog galerijskog prostora u kojem se performans odvija. Stvarajući ram od citata o teorijama univerzuma i vremena, većinom Stevena Hokinga, Bogdanović uključuje publiku da razbije stvoreni ram i uništi ga do tačke kada preostaje samo znak pitanja. Ovaj znak interpunkcije, stojeći sam u prostoru, bez ikakvog pitanja koje mu prethodi, postaje metaforično ogledalo koje odražava našu volju za znanjem, naše strepnje, našu nesigurnost, našu nesposobnost da razumemo i kontrolišemo život, univerzum ili vreme. Ili, po Delezovim rečima, celokupno naše postojanje, koje dolazi pod ovaj znak pitanja.

Iako se tekstovi pojavljuju u performansima Vinćenca Fjora Mareza i Nenada Bogdanovića, oni igraju značajniju ulogu u performansima Nie Puškarove, Eve Dabare, Suzane Prune i Saše Denić-Špene. U Praktičnoj semiotici – bugarski / srpski, Nia Puškarova (Bugarska) meri težinu izgovorenih i prevedenih reči. Čitajući izbor rečenica na bugarskom jeziku i prevodeći ih na srpski jezik putem aplikacije, umetnica koristi kocke šećera kao meru za rečenicu. Na kraju, reči teže 100gr, dok uređaj za prevođenje (android telefon) prelazi 250gr, što ističe nepraktičnost takvog praktičnog alata.

Interaktivni performans Sudar Eve Dabare (Izrael) istražuje odnose između nasumičnog poetskog teksta, vizuelnih materijala, vokalnog zvuka i tela u pokretu – elemenata koji se međusobno suočavaju kroz igru dvostrukog značenja reči Sudar, kao zaljubljivanja i saobraćajne nesreće. Pored upotrebe poetičnih rečenica, koreografskih elemenata i vokalnog zvuka, Dabara u svoj performans unosi element slučajnosti i kombinatornu nepredvidivost. Ona traži od publike da nasumično uzme rečenicu napisanu na salveti koju kasnije uredno stavlja u pažljivo složene crvene čaše na kojima je ispisana po jedna reč: kriza, kockanje, ubistvo, poljubac, rat, strast, lanci, strah, misterija, krhkost. Ova kombinacija nepredvidivog (redosled po kojem će učesnici donositi rečenice) i prethodno utvrđenog (reči napisane na čašama) stvara atmosferu kockanja što rezultira iznenađujućim novim značenjima. Zajedno sa stilizovanim pokretima i vokalnim zvukom koji umetnica proizvodi, Dabara dalje gradi i dekonstruiše metafore i pripovest. Ipak, centralnost tela preovlađuje dok između nogu skuplja čaše poređane u obliku srca, stvarajući ravnotežu između reči, značenja, tela i objekta. Njen poslednji čin je citiranje jedne od njenih pesama na znakovnom jeziku, čime se dodaje dvosmislen, nerazumljiv i otvoren kraj. U performansu Via de la Rosa, Dabara se fokusira na tihe minimalne gestualne znakove koji imaju značenja koja su istovremeno simbolička, polisemična, skrivena i naglo prekinuta. Akumulira ih ponavljanjem, krećući se uz zid Doma omladine u Odžacima, stvarajući semantički lanac koji bi mogao da se čita kao istorija žene ili bilo kog čoveka koji prolazi kroz 'via dolorosa', a koji se na kraju razbija zvukom izduvavajućeg balona, metafore o tome šta je performans bio, a što opet ostaje otvoreno za interpretaciju.

Suzana Pruna (Španija) u svoje performanse uključuje poeziju, instalacije, ali i slikanje, kojem je posvetila dvadeset godina rada. I Crvena linija i Žene čuvari su poetična i politička dela protiv politike moći, vid ženskog otpora i njihovog glasa. Crvena linija je metafora nejasne granice između ljubavi i nasilja, nit koja povezuje publiku u delu. Performans Žene čuvari se okreće činjenici da su u istoriji pesnikinje, filozofkinje, slikarke, naučnice morale imati muške pseudonime kako bi imale slobodu da izrazile svoje misli; u suprotnom bi ostajale u senci. Tokom performansa se publika svih rodova pridružuje umetnici u tvrdnji da žena održava život i stvara civilizaciju. Kombinujući slikarstvo, glas(ove) i glumu, koja je za nju jezik poput vizuelnog i pisanog, Pruna skreće pažnju na to da se otpor gradi mekom moći, kao i na to da imati glas znači imati sloboda da se bude aktivna u svim diskursima – diskursu umetnosti, nauke, filozofije, medicine, i drugim.

Saša Denić-Špena (Srbija) se u Gušenju slobode pojavljuje prektiven izjavama o slobodi i poziva publiku da ih skine, omogućavajući mu na taj način da vidi, okusi, dodirne, čuje, izrazi sebe, dobije izbor. Tokom čitavog procesa, umetnik stoji mirno, bez glasa, dok publika skida izjave i čita ih naglas. Pošto su zalepljene izjave metafore tuđih iskustava koje su mu onemogućavale, kao subjektu, da živi svoj život i neposredno doživljava svet na svoj način, publika mu je pomogla da stvori svoj identitet i svoje sopstveno iskustvo u/o svetu.

Svi performansi na 21. IMAF-u koriste metafore u semantičkom kreativnom procesu, krećući se između modusa significandi (kada znakovi imaju fiksna značenja) i modusa intiligendi (kada se značenja pripisuju znakovima, postajući tako promenljiva). Kao što Riker napominje, metafore omogućavaju nova značenja, a performansi 21. IMAF-a čine upravo to – pružaju nam nove perspektive (i nova iskustva) o ideji zatvora, zidova, doma, reintegracije, svesti, raja, ljubavi i mnogim drugim idejama. Na isti način na koji nas metafora nagoni da razmišljamo na različite načine i upotrebljavamo nekonvencionalne reči da bismo preneli željena značenja, umetnost performansa nas tera da stvari vidimo na drugačiji način, da promenimo neka svoja mišljenja i povežemo se sa drugima.

IMAF tako postaje mala interkulturalna zajednica unutar koje se razmenjuju ideje, metode i pristupi umetnosti, ali i platforma za obogaćivanje multimedijalnog jezika umetnosti stvaranjem novih metafora i novih metaforičnih narativa.

Literatura

Deleuze, Gilles, Bartleby ili formula, Herman Melville, Perovođa Bartleby, Novi Sad i Zagreb: Kuda.org i Multimedijalni institut, 2014.

Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Texas Christian Press, 1976

Ricoeur, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978

  

Sonja Jankov

teoretičarka umetnosti i multimedijalna umetnica

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