NEDA KOVINIC | SILLY FRIENDS
video installation and performance at the opening
the performance is performed by Joana Knežević, Katarina Bućić, Simonida Žarković, and Nevena Radulović
The hybrid performance that combines dance, acting and singing was developed through collaboration between artists Neda Kovinić and Joana Knežević, Katarina Bućić (assistant professor of the Belgrade Dance Institute), Simonida Žarković, and Nevena Radulović and will be performed at ULUS Gallery on November 18th, 2022. at 7 p.m.
The performance was awarded at the 31st Nadežda Petrović Memorial in Čačak with the Gallery Award.
The performance of Silly Friend produces and nurtures relationships and meanings that oppose permanent crises, alienation and destruction through the collectivity of performative practice, relationships of care, trust and compassion; through a landscape and procedural approach to dramaturgy and interdisciplinarity (dance, narrative, singing and painting elements).
Four female performers dance, speak and sing in the space of the gallery, inside an installation of objects and records that raise questions about the definition of women, about female friendship, about imperfection and the crazy as a form of resistance to capitalist society.
Separate actions take place simultaneously, in different places, so that no one has a complete vision of the whole and each observer builds a personal, unique “collage” of performance. Multiple perspectives are united by a common affect. Affect appears as a gesture that the performers build and carry through the space and share with the audience. The title of the performance foregrounds the quality of the relationship between the artist and collaborator, which is both the method and the content of this work. Friends are collaborators in performance, who entrust themselves, their skills, knowledge and feelings both to each other and to the audience.
Silly [1] in the title of the paper points to irrational, witty, imperfect and not-necessarily-productive as principles of resistance to the porno-capitalist society, which encourages and recognizes only super-productive units.
[1] Nina Power (Nine Power) talks about crazy and sweet bodies when she describes the possible actors of feminist pornography, which would not be super functional well-oiled machines (as in mainstream pornography which is inherently misogynistic and violent), but crazy, sweet, imperfect . Nina Power, Pornography as a Privileged Mode of Work (46.) One-dimensional woman. 0 Books, 2009.
