THE PERFORMING OF THE SELF- A LECTURE BY BOJANA CVEJIC

THE PERFORMING OF THE SELF: AESTHETIC INDIVIDUALISM - A LECTURE BY BOJANA CVEJIC

Bojana Cvejić was a jury member for the Keir Choreographic Award in 2016 and a guest of the public program in 2018. This lecture was part of the Dancehouse program and hosted by Philipa Rothfield.

"Searching for the ways in which one performs oneself in current capitalist society, we repeatedly stumble upon art. The individual that is found in the figure of the artist; the value of autonomy sourced from the unique person and her life; the performative techniques of self-fashioning, self-expression, embodiment and sensorial/affective experience; the artistic-like intensity of experience — all these elements gesture toward the historical authority that the arts, and lately dance in particular, wield in aesthetic matters of self-understanding. Add to that new digital technologies and social media platforms, through which subjects produce their self-image and shape their lives via aesthetic expression. The predictions of the late 1960s to early 1970s that 'everyone is an artist' and that 'in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes', have crystallized. This talk will focus on 'aesthetic individualism', the term I am developing in my research carried out with Ana Vujanović and Marta Popivoda, which draws on truth games and bodily techniques from dance and performance, to examine modes of subjectivation in an experience economy." - Bojana Cvejić

Bojana Cvejić's work spans philosophy, theater and performance education. She is author of several books in performance theory and philosophy (Choreographing Problems, Palgrave 2015, Public Sphere by Performance, with A. Vujanović, books 2012 etc. Drumming&Rain: A Choreographer's Score (co-authored with A. T. De Keersmaeker, Mercatorfonds 2013.). She has collaborated as a dramaturg in a number of choreographies by X. Le Roy, Eszter Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, C. De Smedt). As a co-founding member of TkH/Walking Theory editorial collective and performing arts theory magazine (2000-2017), Cvejić has engaged in theoretical-artistic research projects, currently an investigation of performances of the self and transindividuality together with Ana Vujanović and Marta Popivoda. In 2013, Cvejić curated the exhibition Danse-Guerre at Musée de la danse, Rennes. In 2014, she devised a choreography and lecture program titled Spatial Confessions for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Cvejić is Associated Professor of Dance and Dance Theory in KHIO Oslo and Professor of Philosophy of Art at FMK, Singidunum University in Belgrade. 

Philipa Rothfield is honorary professor of Dance and Philosophy of the Body at University of Southern Denmark in Odense and an honorary senior lecturer in Philosophy and Politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She is an honorary fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, where she is currently teaching dance and philosophy. Rothfield was creative advisor at Dancehouse and co-editor of the Dancehouse Diary. Her recent publications include Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny, Philosophy in Motion (Routledge, 2021) and Practicing with Deleuze (co-authored; Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Recorded at the Melbourne Fitzroy Town Hall in 2018.

This podcast is part of the Dancehouse KCA REPLAY, RELOAD, RE-TUNE Public Program 2018.