||dejana sekulić | collaborations | dis-place (2025) | with Milana Zarić, Maja Pelević, and Nikola Zavišić||

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dis-place, an experiment in progress/process (2024-25)

[a situation of a transdisciplinary playground, for four performers]

dis-place is an open transdisciplinary live stage-form, a living performative organism, created and performed by dejana sekulić, Milana Zarić, Maja Pelević, and Nikola Zavišić, under the collective Ensemble Studio 6. Four artist-performers firstly introduce mater each from their own discipline (from sound/music, from text, from light design) and work through collective explorations of interactions of these materials, only to go on to exchnage their roles. Each of the participants displaces themsevels from tehir "common" and places themselves in exploring that of the "other". As the process unfolds, thansitioning from the "common" to the "other" continues in loops, bringing audience ever so deaper in experiencing this vulnerable and exposing process of what does it mean to create. For all parties involved.

Entering the performance space, one is not to expect a conventional concert or a theater piece. This performance is not designed to tell just one story in one specific way or showcase a few isolated pieces of music. Carefully placed within the space, components of sound/music, voice, and visual elements, are set in a situation of interplay between disciplines and the performers. Light and shadows, sounds and whispers, motion and stillness are tools with which the performers are reshaping this performance space, with which the performers are being reshaped. The four performers — two who are primarily musicians (a harpist and a violinist), a writer and dramaturg, and a director and light designer — go through a collective process of creation through observing, thinking and acting firstly from positions of their comfort zones, their own disciplines, and then displacing and placing themselves to do so from the other. This clear idea and a trajectory of exploring one’s views and ways, in order to expand the “individual” for the sake of collective contribution, allowed for a form and genre bending performance situation to arise and culminate in the notion that each spectator can, as they experience the performance unfold, create their own narrative, their own story, whether by focusing on a specific element or by observing the segments as a whole.

dis-place is developed and carried out as part of PRODUCTION 3 project, which is a co-production of Creative Europe programme, Artemrede (Portugal), ArtLink (Serbia), Festival Művészetek Völgye (Hungary), and HÉTFA (Hungary).

Project Timeline

• project "Dis-place", under the collective Ensemble Studio 6, was selected through PRODUCTION3 – CALL FOR ARTISTS
• presentation of the project at the Co-Creation Lab on June 1st 2024 in Budapest (Hungary)
• the project and perofrmnaces are developed over a period of time and continuous exchanges of ideas and their tryouts, allowiing for the work to always grow further. The first creative construction phase had an "intermediary" cullmination in September 2024, with "work-in-progress" showing on September 17th at the ArtLink Festival, in Belgrade (Serbia)
• second creative development phase October 2024-September 2025
• October 2025 - performances in Portugal [ 16-17/10 at Cine-Teatro João d’Oliva Monteiro, Alcobaça and 22/10 in Oeiras]

⊶ Photos/Videos [September, 2024]