FRAGMENTS – An Ode to the Body
Dance performance Fragments – An Ode to the Body, created by Jelena Remetin, has come about as a natural continuation of the eponymous art installation.
The entire cycle – which began in 2018 with the multimedia installation FOR vs AGAINST – tackles a universal story thematizing violence and affecting all individuals, shaping our existence through the experience of suffering, trauma or distress, but also the experience of love and the sublime harmony that characterizes us.
FRAGMENTS – An Ode to the Body is a continuation within the cycle about violence, this time towards one’s own body that forms fragments, either through emotions or organs. It is either positive or negative emotions that feed our body and stimulate inner turmoil, while the show’s author interprets them in an interdisciplinary way across different segments of artistic expression. The layering and fusing of bodies in mutual communication, the alternation of bodies that emerge and disappear in the depths, the contrasting diffused and clearly pronounced volumes imply the richness and complexity of the very emotions that pervade and define us as persons.
The entire work is composed of different formats and dimensions, at once universal and individual. Every emotion is experienced and interpreted on a personal level, but its universality lies in connecting the external stimuli and the physical or cognitive responses to these experienced stimuli.
To that effect, the silent body speaks a universal language.
In the performative section, the author places dancers who directly transmit messages to the audience by interpreting their own communication of emotions with their internal organs. At first, the extremely painful and anxious figuration allows the observer to get lost inside it only to find themselves, and ultimately, to discover something positive and familiar based on the feelings of the experience.
This dance piece is a continuation of the interdisciplinary process of constructing a music score initiated with my previous works, linking audio-visual storytelling with physicality, only this time the audience members are no longer consumers of new technologies, or gallery visitors, but the ones who will explore their own capabilities and the barriers that extend in the real space of their SELF, and will discover the degree to which it is possible to maintain a focus on one’s own organs for the sake of their wellbeing and to communicate with them. With these ‘Fragments’, I aim to generate mindfulness and imagination in a different way, whereby the performer on stage is key to what they will demonstrate, develop and transmit to the audience.
– Jelena Remetin, creator
Author: Jelena Remetin
Performers: Ida Jolić, Branko Banković
Music: Damir Šimunović
Light design: Saša Fistrić
Video: Tvrtko Barišić Vidokk, Ivan Mrđen, Jelena Remetin
Ghaphic design: Vana Bašić
Dancers in the video: Dina Ekštajn, Ida Jolić, Anika Cetina, Filipa Bavčević, Roberta Milevoj, Branko Banković, Jure Radnić
Production: UO YELO, 2023.
In collaboration with Zagrebački plesni centar.
The project is financially supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and Kultura nova Fundation.