Sex on Trains (and Rights of Lefthanders): Reloaded

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27th April 2011

TanzQuartier Wien / Studios 19:00h

http://tqw.at/en/program?

date=27.4.2011

author and performer: Aneta Stojnić as her(cyber)self
cyberformers: Rastko Novaković as Lex Eden (live from London), Nikola Dedić as himself (live from Belgrade)

Sex on Trains: Reloaded is conceptualized as a second part of Sex on Trains and Rights of Lefthanders performance cycles that derives on a verge between cyberformance and documentary theatre, combining the live and mediated performance with author’s intimate confessions.

Unlike the first part of “Sex on Trains and Rights of Lefthanders” that was made as a durational piece and performed in the gallery where the audience was invited to come and go as they please, “Reloaded” was made as a piece for theatrical setting.  If in the first part I mainly worked with the element of reenactment of private life in this part I focused on realness of the event. The audience is invited to interact with performers and intervene in the dramaturgical structure, but if they want to do that – they will have to get “on the stage”.

On the representational level this performance deals with the change of a time-space paradigm in contemporary information era, employing the live chat as a medium of representation. One performer is present simultaneously in a real and virtual space, and the
other(s) are apparently virtual – we don’t get to perceive them outside of the cyberspace i.e. outside of the hypertext. As they communicate via Skype live chat we get performers bodies transformed into (materiality of) text that formulates a specific post-dramatic structure.

On the narrative level it deals with alienation, loneliness, (im)possibility of communication, love, sexuality, flux identities, construction of differences (class, race, social, gender); in other words: politics of private lives – questioning how they function and transform in the cyberspace environment.

On the conceptual level within this performance (cycles) I investigate several important
issues in contemporary performance practice:
1. Change of the ontology of the performer in the cyber-space.
2. Performer’s subjectivity in digital era, it the situation when the performer becomes the
final instance in the global network structure of cyberspace.
3. The production and reproduction of the political in the cyberspace that at the same
time works as a private space (intimate “one to one” relation) ant the ultimate public space
(global network).

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