Trans-Tactical Performance Actions as an Antagonistic Form in Dealing with the Hegemonic Forms of Neoliberal Policies of Power

Abstract

Public space is where the interests of the community and its individuals as entities are articulated. It is fundamental to democratic governments. And as such, there should be reconciliation between the interests and actions of governmental policies and those of the citizen’s public interests as healthy democratic procedures. Unfortunately, this is not the case, since the neo-liberal and quasi-democratic societies still use hegemonic methodologies to implement their policies and ideologies, bypassing harsh criticism of public opinion and critical thought, even in the realm of public space. Such approaches are initiatives for actions in the field of cultural and artistic interventions performed in the spirit of trans-tactics (such as transmediality, transdisciplinarity, transhistoricism, transmemory, transnationalism), opposing the norms of social constraints and distorted values of the domination of capital, as opposed to history, collective memory, quality, and identity as paths to contemporaneity.

This paper deals with the artistic actions carried out by a young group of individuals – Filip Jovanovski (artist), Ivana Vaseva (curator) and Kristina Lelovac (actor). It’s about a trilogy of performative actions: “If Buildings Would Talk”; “The Universal Hall in Flame” and “Dear Republic” which took place between 2015 and 2021. These are contemporary forms of cultural and artistic actions of an interactive character, which can be defined as trans-tactical performance essays. These participatory forms also point to the distorted boundaries of contemporary art in the public space of today where the loss of the boundaries of mediality, discipline, nationality, historicism become the main matrix for action against the policies of power.

Article received: December 23, 2021; Article accepted: February 1, 2022; Published online: April 15, 2022; Original scholarly article