SIAH PGR Seminar Series | A thread without end (2017–), Ana Čavić Event

A thread without end (2017–)

A Case Study into Performing Publications, Towards a Theatre of Publishing

My practice-led research sets out to critically re-evaluate certain artist self-publishing practices situated at the intersection of performance and publishing fields from the perspective of performance theory and practice as belonging to the proposed category of “performing publications”. Performing publications are defined as performance-enabling “texts” that are both generated by and generative of performance, the primary purpose of which is to stage acts of publishing as theatrical events. Most prominent in performance storytelling traditions grouped under the term cantastoria, in which visual aids are used as performing publications, they are by no means confined to these traditions of, crucially, oral rather than literary publishing. The proposed category is intended to capture acts of publishing, historical and contemporary, that have occurred on the stage rather than the page, revealing an enduring tendency towards what I have termed “a theatre of publishing”. At the same time, my research suggest that the category can be used to evidence an alternative history of “performance publishing” that has survived, even thrived, alongside conventional publishing in productive dialectical tension and in dialogue with it.

In this lecture I will present aspects of my sustained practice-led investigation into performing publications through a case study of my ongoing performance storytelling piece titled A thread without end (2017–). A thread without end is an investigation into a type of performance publishing that uses visual aids to stage storytelling performances as theatrical events. Across a series of three storytelling performances, I guide the audience through different forms of analogue and digitally augmented visual aids: an analogue hand-painted large-format paper scroll (Act I), a digitally augmented graphite drawing in the shape of tiled paper map (Act II) and a digitally augmented papercut theatre (Act III). The visual aids, turned performing publications through their staging, are indispensable components in the performance storytelling event in which they are used as both mnemonic and illustrative devices, essentially serving as visually encoded performance-enabling “story maps”. In this lecture I will explore the role the visual aids play in my performance storytelling practice not only as performing publications but also as self-sufficient portable theatres containing all the instructions and ingredients for staging performance storytelling events and, potentially, theatres of publishing.

The central idea behind A thread without end is that certain story content cannot be published other than as a theatrical performance, after which its publishing remains only in the memory of the audience. The hypothesis, however, is that the memorability of the storytelling performance is enhanced by the experiential nature of its theatrical presentation. At the same time, the piece makes strategic use of new digital technologies to further augment and enhance the storytelling performances, transforming them into immersive performance publishing events.

A thread without end is envisioned as a potentially endless piece wherein each successive act develops upon the one that preceded it, and each is a pointed investigation into different, decidedly theatrical, ways of performing and publishing stories. Thoroughly situated in the spatiotemporal reality of the theatrical event, each act is an attempt at staging of an ephemeral form of publishing in which the story content is never told or, indeed, published in the same way twice, thereby challenging traditional notions of publishing and engaging with Michael Bhaskar’s central question of all publishing: ‘Is publishing a tangible moment?’ A thread without end offers an interpretative integrated model of both performance practice and performance analysis that focuses on the notion of theatricality in which the theatrical event is explored as legitimate form of publishing.

Biography

Ana Čavić is a Ljubljana-based interdisciplinary artist, performer, poet and doctoral researcher into performance publishing practices. She works across different fields and media, including works on paper, artists’ publications, performances, digital poetry animation (Rules that order the reading of clouds, 2016), interactive, audio and vibro-haptic, poem objects (I am not listening, 2019) and digitally assisted storytelling performances using visual aids.

She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art (London, UK) in 2008 and has been undertaking PhD research in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art (Winchester, UK), in the period 2018-2022. Her PhD thesis, Towards a Theatre of Publishing? Performing Publications: Publishing the unpublishable traces an alternative history of artists’ publishing staged as events in which publishing takes place on the stage rather than the page.

Most recently, she has been exhibiting and performing A thread without end (2017–), an ongoing series of visual storytelling performances in discreet acts featuring original poetry and elaborate visual aids – a paper scroll, a tiled paper map, a papercut theatre – in various analogue and digitally augmented formats.