Performance Territories

About a year ago, when we, the Maska magazine, were devising the first year of the Contemporary Performing Arts Seminar in collaboration with Cankarjev dom, we originated from a deep conviction that its first edition must primarily concentrate on the opening up of various territories and uncover within them numerous places and modes of the verbalization of contemporary performing arts. Thus, the first year of the Seminar has taken place as an uncovering and recognition of authorial and theoretical articulations with the help of which the accessories for teaching the critical and theoretical writing can be formed.

In the current thematic scope, which will be followed by sequel in the next, autumn issue, we thus present a unique “detection” of several selected performance territories dealt with in the lectures or reading materials at the Contemporary Performing Arts Seminar. These contributions show that one’s own territory can be detected precisely through transforming and reflecting on the articulation of its contents by means of new readings of politics (Lehmann, Čufer), the body (Siegmund), beauty and history (Živadinov, Čufer), technology (Zabel), ambientality (Bleeker), and subjectivity (Kunst). As the second, autumn part of this thematic range, we announce dealing with the detection of the theatre medium itself, which, by re-employing several theoretical notions, uncovers the fluid borders of performance territory (Milohnić, Pristaš, Strehovec, Valentini, Orel, etc.).

Contemporary performance territories thus do not reveal themselves as models, but primarily, as oppositional and articulate uses of various contents, enabling the disclosure of the intertwining, nomadic territory in between.