An exhibition on dance with several titles – A Living Network of Relations – Collaboration as Practice – Dance in Search of a Scene – offers an archival view of twenty-five years of the dance platform Experimental Free Scene – EkS-scena / ekscena, and is at the same time conceived as a space in which that history continues to unfold. Rather than freezing dance and turning it into a museum object, the exhibition follows the people, relationships, spaces, knowledge and modes of organising through which the independent dance scene emerged, transformed and endured.
The exhibition consists of photographs, video recordings, publications and other traces of programmes that speak not only of the history of contemporary dance, but also address the question of what it takes for a dance scene to happen at all. The display is at once static and dynamic: its physical elements establish the structure of the exhibition, yet that structure changes depending on what is taking place in the space. The static elements can be moved to make room for workshops, performances, conversations, the research of the resident artists working there, lectures and other forms of encounter that will take place here over the course of the exhibition.
In this way the exhibition becomes a space that is shaped anew through encounters with the people who built EkS-scena / ekscena, or who are only now building it.
For audiences who may rarely encounter contemporary dance, the exhibition offers a chance to enter dance by another route, through questions: how do people organise themselves in order to make something together? What emerges when space is shared, when knowledge is passed on, when artists join forces and when a community begins to gather around an idea? This is, ultimately, an exhibition that is constantly in motion, performed by audience and performers alike, and one that reminds us that a scene comes into being among people, because of people. We leave our gaze open towards what is here and what is yet to come, because an archive is never finished.
The exhibition, organised by ekscena and the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (MSU), will be accompanied by a rich performance and discursive programme: lectures by dance artists and protagonists, participatory programmes, residency research, round tables, screenings of video documentation of dance performances, and questions about the future of the dance scene.
Organisers: ekscena, MSU
For the organisers: Nikolina Komljenović, Vesna Meštrić
Exhibition concept: Jasmina Fučkan, Tea Kantoci
Curators of the exhibition and programme: Jasmina Fučkan, Tea Kantoci, Nikolina Komljenović, Ana Škegro
Exhibition design and visual identity: Nives Sertić
Archival material of EkS-scena / ekscena was used for the exhibition.
Acknowledgements: Maja Đurinović, Oliver Gemballa, Maja Marjančić, Jelena Mihelčić, Bruno Pocheron, Iva Nerina Sibila, Ivana Slunjski, Željka Turčinović (HC ITI), and all members and collaborators of EkS-scena / ekscena
The exhibition was realised with the support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
