Branka Zgonjanin

BODY-BOOK is a durational project, which aims to collect different views on the human body and to expose them in a choreographed object-book. The views are collected from different practitioners who use body as a tool or a subject, by means of interviewing and collaborative creation of pages. These practitioners are professionals from different fields, in the first place, performing artists. Other interviewees might be body-work therapists, Yoga practitioners, body-builders, prostitutes, priests, construction workers, but also writers, theoreticians and philosophers. By displaying and juxtaposing all their different opinions, approaches, uses and concepts of body, I hope to create a comprehensive research on how do we think body, how do we use it, treat it, develop it, deconstruct it, free it, frame it, while at the same time we live with it and in it. Eventually I am hoping to (re)construct a knowledge which is produced through all these different practices. The BODY-BOOK is being created since 2010. It is envisioned as a book which will, in a literal sense, gain body, a specific physicality and become an entity of its own. The book's diagonal symbolically measures the same like height of the smallest man currently living on the Earth (54 cm). This symbolic scaling practice is one of the methods used to “physicalise" the book. Other methods include recorded words, statements written down, drawings, body traces, or (conceptual) artefacts which might innervate different human senses. Till now the book contains interviews with: Hisako Horikawa, Jefta van Dinther, Frank Van de Ven, Fransien van der Putt, Robert Steijn, Maria Mavridou and Pablo Fontdevila (Dangerous Mouse). During Come Together#5, in the hallway next to Frascati 1, I will create an installation which consists of couple of pages from the book and of a soundtrack. This installation is an experiment, an exposure of a process in development. Audience can view it, hear it, but also interact with it, by creating new pages which will then become part of the BODY-BOOK. Additionally, I will interview couple of participants and other practitioners during Thursday 5th of March in the same space.

Branka Zgonjanin (1980, Belgrade) is a visual and conceptual artist, performer and choreographer based in Amsterdam. In her works, visual and performing arts meet in her unique technique of "physicalising an image and pictorialising a movement." Zgonjanin's performances are focused on the direct relationship between body and politics, while her choreographic methodology of the "Decentralised Body" facilitates questions of democracy, freedom and self-governance. She employs visual and sensorial phenomena such as synesthesia, kinestesia and proprioception in order to reveal non-antropocentric realities and test the limits of daily human perception. Through collaborations and curation of diverse art and social events, Zgonjanin contributes to building a different kind of artistic, political and economic infrastructure in Amsterdam. Currently, she is investigating a notion of "Transformative Art" practice, which involves performance as a ritual and as a tool for tapping into collective consciousness. Zgonjanin's recent works include: Stolen Pleasures (with VJ Yafit Taranto), VoltageSpa (with sound artist Gert-Jan Prins); Candy (with Metje Blaak); Op-positions; Stereo-politics; and Body That Matter. She also coaches and teaches dance and movement workshops in Amsterdam and abroad. Zgonjanin holds an MA in Choreography from the Theaterschool in Amsterdam (2011), and an MA in Anthropology from Belgrade University (2005).

Concept and choreography: Branka Zgonjanin
Assisting: Leela May Stokholm
Technical support: Adam Beni
Till now the book contains interviews with: Hisako Horikawa, Jefta van Dinther, Frank Van de Ven, Fransien van der Putt, Robert Steijn, Maria Mavridou and Pablo Fontdevila (Dangerous Mouse).

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