Mini symposium of Shadow Casters ‘Performance is an Archive, Archive is a Performance’ within the project Living Heritage: Critical Approaches and Innovative Methods of Safeguarding Performing Arts.

How can we preserve what disappears?
How do we remember performance – not as a record, but as an act?
How do audiences, artists and space together form a breathing archive?

We invite you to the mini-symposium titled “Performance Is an Archive, the Archive Is Performance” as part of the project “Living Heritage: Critical Approaches and Innovative Methods for the Preservation of Performing Arts”, organized by the artistic organization Shadow Casters.

Date: 19 December 2025
Time: 9:30 – 18:00
Venue: DHFA (Društvo hrvatskih filmskih autora i producenata), Boškovićeva 23, Zagreb

Participants:
Boris Bakal – director, performer and performing arts curator
Sandra Uskoković – art historian and researcher
Viktorija Pilon – assistant and conservator-restorer

This mini-symposium brings together artists, theorists and audiences to explore performing arts as acts of memory, affect and ethics. We are not interested in fixing performance, but in its repeatability, evolution and transformation through dialogue with the community.

Through lectures, dialogue and collective reflection, we open the following questions:
Can the memory of a performance be performed, rather than merely recorded?
How is affective memory (feelings, the body, space) translated into heritage?
Can technology be an ally—not an opponent—of living presence?

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Program Description

Moderators: Dr. Sandra Uskoković and Boris Bakal

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Block 1: 10:10 – 11:40h

Participants: Sergej Pristaš (Post-Hoc Dramaturgy) and Boris Senker (TBD)

The first block focuses on exploring traditional and innovative approaches to documenting performing arts, with emphasis on systematizing archiving and preserving the transient, ephemeral nature of performance. A performance does not end at the moment of its staging; it continues through documentation, archival practices, collective memory and subsequent artistic interventions. These processes question authenticity, authorship and the impermanence of performance practices, opening space for new models of post-hoc dramaturgy that transmit and actively reactivate historical material in contemporary contexts.

Key concepts / themes:

• Systematizing archiving and preserving the ephemeral: Recording, organizing and safeguarding performing practices that are transient and often unpredictable in their effects.

• Post-hoc dramaturgy: Performance as a process that continues after its staging through subsequent artistic and theoretical interventions.

• Activation of the archive: Using archival material to create new performances and interpretations in the present, transforming the archive into an active participant in contemporary artistic practices.

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Block 2: 11:45 – 13:20h

Participants: Zvonimir Dobrović and Bruno Isaković (Re-Creating the Political),
Bill Aitchison (The Golden Tour),
Ivana Keser (From Performance “Without Audience” to Public Performance),
Stanko Juzbašić (The Ephemeral in Music)

The second block addresses performance as a site of negotiating identity, power and social hierarchies, and its role in shaping contemporary cultural imaginaries. Emphasis is placed on performance as a medium of social reflection and change, particularly regarding the relationship between performer, audience and community.

Special attention is given to participatory, site-specific and collectively created performances that question social structures and extend into online and hybrid formats. These works explore how digital technologies, representational models and different forms of audience presence open spaces for inclusion, critical thought and new forms of political address through performance.

Key concepts / themes:

• Performance as a space of political negotiation and transformation of social hierarchies.

• The relationship between performance, community and audience, including participatory and site-specific practices.

• The impact of digital and hybrid media on performance, reception and representational models.

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Lunch break: 13:25 – 15:10h

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Block 3: 15:15 – 18:00h

Participants:
Tomislav Pletenac (Writing Trauma – Embodied Memory Without Recollection),
Petar Grimani (The Body as Archive),
Igor Ružić (The Passion of Matija and the Endurance of Ferlin),
Aideen Barry (Somatic Revolutions),
Nika Radić (Something With Performance),
Janez Janša (On Reconstructing Pupilija)

The third block is dedicated to understanding the body as a carrier of memory, archive and experience, and investigates how knowledge, traumas and collective memories are transmitted through bodily practices, gesture and the performative act. Performance is understood as a process of archiving that goes beyond written or audiovisual documentation and creates new forms of living knowledge.

Emphasis is placed on corporeality, embodiment and the potential of performance to activate and transform individual and collective narratives, where methods of recording and mediating artistic actions shape their reception during and after performance.

Key concepts / themes:

• The body as archive and carrier of memory, knowledge and experience.

• Performance as a process of living archiving that transcends documents and classical historical reconstruction.

• Reconstruction of performance as always a new performance, conditioned by the audience’s perception and memory.

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Workshop by Janez Janša: “Between Two Times” – 20 December

The day after the symposium, on 20 December, a workshop by Janez Janša titled “Between Two Times” will be held.

The workshop begins with an overview of some of Janša’s works based on real events, as well as historical performances by other artists. Janša will explore various motivations for engaging with the past, always focusing on what confronting the past can reveal about our current living conditions. Special attention will be given to two traumatic events from recent Slovenian history: the role of Slovenian authorities in arms trafficking during the 1990s Yugoslav wars, and the expulsion of a Roma family from their settlement.

Regarding artistic examples, Janša will examine artistic strategies for approaching works by Western canonical choreographers (as in Fake it!), as well as revolutionary historical performances from Slovenia.

In the second part of the workshop, participants will select a historical event or artwork and present it in a format of their own choosing.

Schedule
20 December 2025
10:00 – 13:00h and 15:00 – 18:00h
Pogon Jedinstvo (Trnjanska struga 34, Zagreb)
Registration: https://forms.gle/UQaR57o6vJMduk9t7

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About Shadow Casters

Shadow Casters are a multi-award-winning and acclaimed artistic and production platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, creativity and reflection on intermedial art. They successfully and seamlessly intertwine film creation, international collaboration, theatre performance, urban intermedial projects, activism, pedagogical work, video art and curatorial practice into a coherent artistic activity.

Project holders: Shadow Casters
Project partners: DHFA (Croatian Film Authors’ Association) + Pogon – Centre for Independent Culture and Youth
Project supported by: City of Zagreb – Office for Culture and Civil Society + Ministry of Culture and Media
Support for the work of Shadow Casters: City of Zagreb – Office for Culture and Civil Society + National Foundation for Civil Society Development + Kultura Nova Foundation + HAVC