INTERMEDIALITY IN PERFORMING ARTS

workshop

"Intermediality in performing arts" is a condensed 2-hour workshop that aims to analyse different kinds of interactions between theatre and other media in the artistic work of Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico. In the context of their work, the concept of intermediality emphasizes, in particular, the aspect of mutual influence and interaction between the medium of dance theatre and the medium of the Internet resulting in a redefinition of both, which in turn leads to a refreshed perception.  The workshop will revolve around concrete artistic tactics, strategies, and practical examples of negotiation between the physical and the virtual, the offline and the online media, deconstructing the possible ways one can make the mechanics of theatre coexist with the mechanics of the Internet in a live performance.

Barbara Matijević will elaborate on Premier Stratagem’s performances that are situated in the space between theatre as a "physical hypermedium" (defined by real space, real bodies, real time-space relationship with the audience, and having the capacity to encompass all other media) and the Internet as a "virtual hypermedium" (that can also accommodate all other media – video, text, sounds etc – but in a non-physical, virtual way). Whether it is through chalk drawings on a giant blackboard, as in [I AM 1984], through videos playing on a laptop screen [FORECASTING], by using internet-sourced DIY machines and objects [I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE], through the body itself becoming hyper-link [OUR DAILY PERFORMANCE], or via a live interaction with a web server [SCREENAGERS], Matijević’s and Chico’s performances propose formally inventive, thoughtful and poetic meditations on the complexity of the relationship between man, new consumer technologies and the media.

Intermediality was introduced in different artistic fields in the 1960s in order to refer to the artistic phenomena appearing when forms of representation and modes of perception characteristic of one particular medium are quoted, reflected, and commented on, or are transformed into another. As a wide concept, "intermediality" addresses combinations and processes of exchange between different media which does not aim so much at the integration of different media as at the figuration of passages, interstices and boundaries, in which the particular achievements of translation and transformation are not only represented but also exposed self-reflexively.

Barbara Matijević studied languages and literature in parallel with dance and acting in Zagreb (Croatia). Her work takes forms of theatre or dance performances, lecture-performances, radio plays, group choreographies, photo exhibitions, and installations. As a dancer and an actress, she has collaborated with choreographers and theatre directors in France, Croatia, Slovenia, and Belgium. In 2008, she started an artistic collaboration with Giuseppe Chico and since then their work has been presented in over 35 countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She has taught at Osijek Art Academy, Zagreb Dance Academy, Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts and Lasalle College in Singapore. She is based in Paris and works internationally.