What does it mean to expose the body? To place it in a situation where we begin to pay attention to it. That body can be our own body, but also the bodies of others. And that situation can be a thoughtfully composed scene, but also a banal episode. Does every exhibition of the body have its own curator? Does the site of the body on display automatically become a gallery?
Try to imagine that you are standing at a pedestrian crossing and waiting for permission to cross to the other side of the road. A dozen other bodies are waiting with you. Some of them are tempted to step into the traffic earlier, tense, and restless, others passively follow the prescribed choreography. The light turns green, spectators in cars stop and stare at the white stripes. The show begins. The bodies walk from one side to the other, sometimes they touch, bump into each other accidentally or purposefully, some of them meet with the eyes. One body laboriously pulls leg after leg, as if it has no desire to reach the world on the other side, another body runs to have the prescribed trajectory behind it as soon as possible. Each of the bodies is exposed to the same situation and yet experiences it completely differently. Why? And what happens if we place dancing bodies among these ordinary bodies, which, by parasitizing the everyday, transform the urban routine into a real performative event? Will an ordinary body exposed to a dancing body suddenly behave differently?
And now imagine the same scene, but place it in a completely different context, in a different place.
The performative example study Expose yourself to the body by Juraj Korec and Michaela H. Pašteková is a steppingstone for the exploration of the dancing body in the gallery space without necessary movement. It is the first of a series of artistic research on the topic Body in a gallery produced by Skrzprst, o.z. in cooperation with Yuri Korec & Co.
Concept and choreography: Juraj Korec and Michaela H. Pašteková
Choreography and performance: Miriam Budzáková, Jakub Cerulík, Alexandra Mireková, Anja Naňová
Production: Martin Krištof / Skrzprst, o.z.
Partners:
Platform for contemporary dance PlaST
Gallery Umelka Bratislava, 18.6.2023 at 4 pm
The project was supported from public funds by the Art Council Fund (Fond na podporu umenia).