Sensory Scenarios and the Ethics of Intimacy: The Methodology of Working on Ex-position

Sensory Scenarios and the Ethics of Intimacy: The Methodology of Working on Ex-position

One of Shadow Casters’ most renowned performance works — Ex-position (process_city 02) — celebrates 20 years of “walking” through other people’s and one’s own stories, but this time in Split it returned not as a performance (it was staged at MKC in 2009), but as an unveiling of its inner mechanics.
Boris Bakal’s workshop presented the methodology of working on the performance as a case study for the symposium topic “creative methodologies: systems.” Instead of performing, we mapped and practically examined the system that emerged through long-term work with actor-performers on sensory dramaturgy (the suspension of the visual and the redirection of perception toward sound, touch, and smell).
The system included:
(1) reading the location (space as a dramaturgical archive/database),
(2) the initial conversation and the selection/arrangement of “guides,”
(3) protocols for guiding with closed eyes (safety, trust, boundaries),
(4) an adaptive narrative scenario (the story is structured, but changes according to participation and the semantics of the place), and
(5) the final “control room.”

In the background of this participatory process, Kafka’s The Trial and the parable “Before the Law” from the chapter “In the Cathedral” are always present as the dramaturgical matrix of performative decisions, responsibility, and control, but also as a point of departure.

The following also gave presentations, held workshops, or took part in them at the symposium: Višnja Kačić Rogošić, Katja Šimunić, Katarina Kolega, Kim Cuculić, Milan Madjarev, Marta Brkljačić, Petra Kovačić, Petra Jelača, Anica Vlasic-Anic, Vedrana Klepica, Ksenija Radulović, Ana Gospić Županović, Roza Tina Perić, Damir Bartol, Tanja Vrvilo, Maša Rimac Jurinović, Nataša Govedić & Ivan Penović.