press
SPINOZA, 2016-2017 | Spinoza's Lens, 2016
Dnevnik, 12 October 2016, Pia BrezavščekGrinding the performance/idea on Spinoza
Enacting the life and work of the great "heretic" philosopher of rationalism of 17th Century, Baruch Spinoza - this is a task tackled by a stage director and a versatile artist Barbara Novakovič Kolenc, a founder of Muzeum, an Institute for Art Production, during a period of two years. The first year is dedicated to research that resulted in Spinozas Lens, "a performance with an installation" staged this weekend at the International Centre of Graphic Arts, next year, however, we can expect a stage performance.
The life and work, fragmentary caught by the videoperformative installation, however - remaining faithful to Spinoza - we cannot think separately from each other. Spinoza is, after all, the thinker who has demonstrated that the body and the soul are the attributes of the same and the only Substance -contrary to the tradition of Cartesian dualism of the mind and material dimension that fatally marked the Western culture and its shizm with all that is physical. Therefore, visualizations and the arts of performance in the installation become crucial: according to Spinoza, there are only the affects of the bodies that count: what the body (in this case in its artistic corporeality) actually "does" to the body of the viewer.
The beholder is introduced to the situation at a slow pace - through the first four rooms you are gradually led accompanied by other visitors to attend screenings of short video films. These capture aesthetically bold schematic scenes with some surprising elements, and with slight reminiscences of motives from the Dutch painting of the time of Spinoza. They are accompanied with recorded speech that superscripts the imagery with anecdotal adventures or dense extracts from the works of the philosopher. In video films we can recognize Maruša Majer, an actress, and Mateja Rebolj, a dancer. When we arrive into the fourth and the fifth room, they present themselves in the performative part of the installation.
Novakovič Kolenc has chosen female protagonists, apparently not by a coincidence: a female artist may talk about Spinozas philosophy of body in a more easy and versatile way; in line with traditional conceptions, a woman, contrary to a man, is more committed to the body, or even reduced to the body (the latter being a more misogynous version of it, however unfortunately again supported by some recent events we had witnessed). Maruša Majer incarnates a complex character of Spinoza in a most mature way, and through her persuasive acting rounds up his life story presented via fragments. In doing so, she relies on a huge piece of scenery, a melting piece of ice that exerts a clear material impact on her acting body and intensifies its affect. Sometimes, however, these affects are overrun by intense pathos. It happens where the (otherwise very dramatic) life story is too dramatized, and we witness a classic theatrical representation. In the last room these problems disappear, as the body of a sixty plus old ballerina pushes the boundaries of physical abilities. Not to be mistaken: the body, which is instantly grasped as a highly intelligent body, does not do anything particularly virtuosic - her movements extend the strings that stretch the space, becoming a geometric drawing. A simple agility of the body, which possesses such a precision, really moves. The director could not find a better cast to address the topic in this context.
