Transindividuality and the stage as re(s)publica - Ana Vujanović (RS/DE)

Roberto Esposito faced me – interested in imagining a social configuration, which is neither collectivistic in a totalitarian manner, nor individualistic in atomistic terms – with a striking paradox of today’s society, when he opened his book Communitaswith the following line:

“Nothing seems more appropriate today than thinking community; nothing more necessary, demanded, and heralded by a situation that joins in a unique epochal knot the failure of all communisms with the misery of new individualisms.”

In this talk I would like to discuss Esposito’s in-between community by introducing the notion of the transindividual (Gilbert Simondon, Paolo Virno, Jason Read) as a possible horizon for performing the self and thinking the relationship between the common and the singular. As a point of departure I would take the ontological precariousness of human life and body (Judith Butler, Isabell Lorey), which from the start makes our lives and bodies singular and common.

In terms of methodology, I would continue here my long-term experiment in social dramaturgy, wherein I activate various concepts, tools and knowledge from performing arts in analyzing social processes and configurations. The discussion will be thus focused on several (European) dance and performance works, wherein I will try to identify choreographic strategies in composing that in-between space of transindividuality and ponder them in wider socio-political and everyday life perspectives. The works I would like to talk about are: Doris Uhlich, More than naked (2013), Christine De Smedt, Four choreographic portraits (2011/2012); Ligia Lewis, minor matters (2016), and Xavier Le Roy, Project (2003), which brings a historical perspective to the discussion.