Performance and The Public
Open day #1

What is public space, and do we have one, or several, today? Is it only that which we produce, but can't own? Who governs the public space today? Who are "we" who address the public space as "our" concern? Are we as citizens, especially artists and intellectuals, politically challenged or even dispossessed to the extent that we cannot conceive of the public as the site of action today?
 
With these questions, Ana Vujanovic, Bojana Cvejic and Marta Popivoda, from the collective Walking Theory (Teorija koja Hoda) from Belgrade, have begun a two-year long theoretical-artistic research about performance and the public, within their project "How to do things by theory" in les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in Paris. They focus on contemporary forms of social choreography and social drama, "artivism", biopolitical technologies of self-performance in public, etc. Their research involves examining and fabricating heterogeneous artifacts of artistic and everyday practices: movements, images, laws, habits, discourses… Their perspectives are informed by two different contexts, socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neo-liberal capitalism.
 
On July 1st, 2011, Walking Theory in collaboration with hetveem theater and les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers organize an Open day as part of the first phase of their research, featuring a few artists, scholars and activists as guests and collaborators in discussion, lecture, and video-presentation.

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PROGRAM

16.00 - 18.00
The Word of Host; Bojana Mladenovic  //  Performance and the Public: Mapping Out  A Research; introduction by Ana, Marta, Bojana  //  Can We Only Perform the Public Now?; lecture by Ana Vujanovic and Bojana Cvejic  //  Yugoslavia: How Ideas Moved Our Collective Body  // Marta Popivoda's selection from video archives. Screening with Discussion
 
18.00 - 19.00
Dinner
 
19.00 - 22.00
Aernout Mik: Communitas; Running Commentary with Bojana Kunst  //  Private – Public: Undoing the Binary; sharp thoughts with Igor Dobricic (proponent) and Sigrid Merx (opponent)  //  A Response; Joe Kelleher  //  Netherlands: When the State Expels Art from the Public. A Debate