Transindividuality and the stage as re(s)publica
Roberto Esposito faced me – interested in imagining a social configuration, which is neither collectivistic in a totalitarian manner, nor individualistic in atomistic terms – with a striking paradox of today’s society, when he opened his book Communitas with the following line:
“Nothing seems more appropriate today than thinking community; nothing more necessary, demanded, and heralded by a situation that joins in a unique epochal knot the failure of all communisms with the misery of new individualisms.”
In this talk I would like to discuss Esposito’s in-between community by introducing the notion of the transindividual (Gilbert Simondon, Paolo Virno, Jason Read) as a possible horizon for performing the self and thinking the relationship between the common and the singular. As a point of departure I would take the ontological precariousness of human life and body (Judith Butler, Isabell Lorey), which from the start makes our lives and bodies singular and common.
In terms of methodology, I would continue here my long-term experiment in social dramaturgy, wherein I activate various concepts, tools and knowledge from performing arts in analyzing social processes and configurations. The discussion will be thus focused on several (European) dance and performance works, wherein I will try to identify choreographic strategies in composing that in-between space of transindividuality and ponder them in wider socio-political and everyday life perspectives. The works I would like to talk about are: Doris Uhlich, More than naked (2013), Christine De Smedt, Four choreographic portraits (2011/2012); Ligia Lewis, minor matters (2016), and Xavier Le Roy, Project (2003), which brings a historical perspective to the discussion.
is a freelance cultural worker – researcher, writer, dramaturge, activist – in the fields of contemporary performing arts and culture. She holds Ph.D. in Humanities, Theatre Studies. She was a member of the editorial collective of TkH [Walking Theory], a Belgrade-based theoretical-artistic platform, and editor-in-chief of the TkH Journal for Performing Arts Theory (2000–2017). She has lectured at various universities and educational programs throughout Europe, was a visiting professor at the Performance Studies Department of the University Hamburg, and since 2016 she is a team member and mentor of fourth year students at SNDO – School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam.
She participates in art projects in the fields of performance, theatre, dance, and video/film, as a dramaturge and co-author. She has published a number of articles in journals and collections and authored four books, most recently Public Sphere by Performance, with Bojana Cvejić.
In English
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