Debates on Division: When Private Becomes Public. Part 5

DEBATES ON DIVISION: WHEN PRIVATE BECOMES PUBLIC

performance and public demonstration

artist: Gluklya (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya)

curator: Anna Bitkina

BOZAR, Studio, March 16, 2019 at 15.00 

as a part of PERMORMATIK19 and Russian Turn

'Debates on Division: When Private Becomes Public’ is an ongoing, interactive performance created by Gluklya and curated by Anna Bitkina that deals with a complexity of current political reality and its implications on the lives of different individuals. Organized in a format of a fictional TV talk show the project serves as a public forum that brings into the spotlight different forms of human fragility and traumas caused by deviation in various political structures. Conducted several times internationally (as a part of Manifesta 10 in St Petersburg (2014), in Amsterdam at SMBA - Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2016), as a part of Creative Time Summit in Washington DC (2016) and in Oslo (2017)) the project formed in a nomadic, discursive and performative platform/network that aims to identify and analyze political order in different geographies. Brussels’s version of ‘Debates on Division’ include elements of criminal-conspiracy drama and deals with the subject of fear, suspicion, and distrust fueled by social segregation, financial insecurity and xenophobia in the context of growing degeneration of the political system in the EU and across the globe.

In the focus of the show several stories that are carefully crafted from the parts of numerous meetings, interviews and conversations with artists, human rights activists and representatives of LGBTQI communities, businessman, politicians, historians, social workers, sociologists, writers, media specialists and policymakers conducted by Gluklya and Anna Bitkina in Brussels since April 2018. The stories that are narrated by local artists and performers evolve around different elements of clothes. Presented as evidence of forensic investigation, the clothes play an intermediary role between the private and the public, exposing the conflict between the inner world of a person and the political system.
To have a sharp articulation of local conditions a group of 5-6 experts that consists of representatives of different professional fields are invited to reflect on each story. They are placed on the stage and have an important role in the performative action. 

‘Debates on Division’ is a speculation on a new format for a public institution aiming to bridge the gap between the government and citizens by facilitating self-organization. The audience is invited to give a vote whether the presented piece of clothes (and a story around it) should enter a collection of the ‘Museum of Utopian Clothes’ (a previous project of Gluklya that she started in 2012) which both honors and respects the position of the individual, and the social and historical value of their lives.

Following the tradition of historical avant-garde that strives to overcome the gap between art and everyday life, the performance bursts out from the theater to outside in a public place and morph into a public demonstration. Costumes, banners and other unpredictable elements imagined and designed by Gluklya in close collaboration with local artists and activists create the visual identity of the movement. Performance participants, jury members and audience marched to the Parliment covered with blankets which served as a central element for the demostration and a direct reference to the amount of homeless people in the European capital. The demonstration was dedicated to György Sándor Kádár, a Hungarian rough sleeper that stays next to the Parlament every night for the last couple of years. As well as many other homeless people that inhabit the Parlament premises at nights. Walking from BOZAR towards the European Parliament the demonstration manifests for the human and non-human rights and urgency for equal and inclusive politics, locally and globally in the pivotal moment before the European elections in May 2019. 

In collaboration with artists and performers Philippine Hoegen, Teresa Cos, Gary Farrelly, Leonie Buysse, Pia Louwerens, among others.

Jury members: Pieter De Buysser, Chille Deman, Annemie Ghekiere, Ella de Burca 

Vidoe documentation of the performance available on request

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