Milan Manifest

My predispositions (intuition, scale, intensity) are placed within it, while my expectations confront it. What do I carry with me into these spaces? I call it heritage—and break it down into my grandfather’s legacy. His stories, lessons, performances addressed to me. Milan’s condition; an illness that leads to difficulties with movement, is at its origin a private, personal story. In this space, however, his condition and his stories enable me to place my body into a new relationship with word, silence, and memory. A mediator between past and present, between loss and formation, between the private and the collective.

“Work in process”—a label that has always attracted me precisely because it immediately raises the question of the end. In the end: Live and don’t think about death. Deadlines, deadlines … Work, process, don’t produce, don’t finalize. Is it ultimately about the medium of liveness as such, or not?

I want to take time, to look at time itself. The art of time. Of duration and transience. I enter slowly.

This attempt placed the act of stepping into shoes at the center of the event. What fills our shoes? What gives weight to our steps? An exploration of the motif; from the Latin movitus = “that which moves,” from the verb movere = “to move, to set in motion” = a driving force, a mover, or also motivation. (Petja Golec Horvat)

In the second attempt, the Milan Manifesto experiences a need (from the outside) for concise movement actions. Concise stage presences, where—without regard for other scenic elements—it focuses on movement and object. It is forced to confront an obstacle to creation imposed by the established schemes of performative arts. It is forced to confront the history and tradition of making. “We are dealing with something inherently old.” It redefines certain building blocks that are important for constructing a performance. The object, i.e. the shoe, through its presence brings with it certain socio-artistic discourses that we attempt to observe. We assume a performative presence and co-construct time; we do not colonize it—in order to preserve the effect of the object in the space. Movement appears in five images, where we also place strong emphasis on the change in atmosphere in the space, in the audience, that occurs with each shift. These shifts carry the burden of the motif, i.e. the heritage that we performers bring into the space. Each burdening, each image brings a different attempt at reconstructing the playing field that we enter together with the audience, and at mutually observing the reconstruction of its rules. (Filip Klančnik)

#2: POST-ENTRY

Once the playing field is established, entry becomes possible. The artist’s entry into the established field of play. What does she bring with her? Here we create a small ending to the previously familiar flow and enter another phase of momentum. Post-entry. Entry always resonates, but it also builds upon itself. Here we become aware of the surplus of temporal potential—the time we will spend in the café.

#3: MOTIF

With the entry of a second body of the artist in motion, we perceive the predispositions of the body in a performative position. What do they carry with them into the space? — This is heritage. A heritage that is transferred into the space intuitively—without enforced additional contextualization. Relaxed. Playful. Yet grounded. We allow ourselves to play within the contextual field. With the luggage we carry. What weighs us down. What affects us. What gives us movement. In this context, we can introduce the emergence of motif, tradition, heritage as a principle of narrative movement that drives the event—creating movement out of presence. It moves the body. From a passive position it creates an active one. Not mimetic, but performative.

#4: EXIT / DEPARTURE

If in the second attempt we moved through a phase of burdening, of shifting the foot and stepping into shoes that carry history, here we enter a broader (Maribor café) context in which it is possible to step out of this weight. To free oneself from it. The body can therefore assume a weightless position. It explores liberation and desire. Potentiality and capability. The movement material tests the limits of motif and context, entering and then exiting.

#5: POST-EXIT

At the same time, the body does not forget the context created in the space. Bela kava and Cockta™. The waiter continues to contextualize the space even after the exit. The playing fields remain for further play. The audience as well.

#N: SELF-REFLECTIVE CORNER

After the exit, for the final placement of the artist within the format of the work, we need an exit from the theatre, an exit from the workspace, an exit from Maribor. Reflection here offers the final fragment of the manifestation of this work. Through manuscript into the final manifesto. Through the playing field into the self-reflective corner. Here, the word resonates with the embodiment of movement. Further movement, in turn, resonates with its manifestation. Ventilator exists in a cycle, where one rotation connects to the next. Word into movement and movement into word. The word gives movement heritage, motif. Movement gives the word its manifesto. Both merge in interdependence. (Filip Klančnik)