Visual performance by Jaka Lah
Pure Performance questions the form as a basic tool of artistic expression – Jaka puts himself and the viewer into the position ob being trapped in form: “I wish that we are clear from the beginning. I don’t care where you come from. I don’t care if you wipe your ass with paper or if you don’t clean up after yourself at all. It doesn’t matter if we like each other, what matters is that there’s no shit between us. This is a pure performance. Each second that drifts between us has to be a pure second.” We find ourselves in an absurd situation ofsilence and indefinite exact laying down of toilet paper into round plane on the ground. But because no thought exists until it is expressed through a form, no thought exists in its pure form, and it can swiftly turn into its own opposition – or in the performance discourse – into plain shit. The way in which Jaka is trying to catch hold of this short circuit between the thought, the uttered and the understood, is a negation.
Conceived by Jaka Lah and Bojan Jablanovec
Performer: Jaka Lah
Text and direction: Bojan Jablanovec
Music: Johann Strauss, An der schönen blauen Donau
Producer: Špela Trošt
Production: Via Negativa, 2009, with the support by Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana
Premiere: 3 October 2009, The Old Power Station Ljubljana
Duration: 60 min