Tanja Ostojic
Misplaced Women?
Innsbruck, Performance-Art-Workshops in public space
11.05 to 13.05.2018
Project description
In Innsbruck Tanja Ostojic will be continuing her series of performances and workshops in public space dealing with the theme of Misplaced Women? initiated in 2009. As in many of the artist’s earlier works, the key themes here are migration, the desire for mobility, revealing power relationships, and the vulnerability of mobile, in particular female bodies.
In advance of the performances and public workshops she conducts research into virulent areas relating to the sociopolitical aspects she will be examining. The radical and insistent nature of the project is convincing, as is the necessity to shake up and sensitize people living in a prosperous western society, in times of global crises and the resultant movement of refugees. Tanja Ostojic champions minorities, refugees, and in particular women in a reflective and authentic way.
Misplaced Women? Performance-art-workshop in public space with Tanja Ostojić. The workshop from 11th – 13th May 2018 took place in Die Bäckerei, Kulturbackstube, with Tanja Ostojić, Darija Davidovic, Linda Fulterer, Annamária Nagy, Philippa Denton, and others. Performative interventions were carried out in various public places in Innsbruck on Friday afternoon and Saturday. The results of the workshop were presented to the public from 11 am – 1 pm on Sunday, 13th May 2018 in Die Bäckerei, Kulturbackstube. A discussion took place afterwards.
About the project:
Misplaced Women? is an art project by Tanja Ostojić that consists of performances, performance series, workshops and delegated performances, ongoing since 2009, including contributions by international artists, students and people from diverse backgrounds. Within this project we embody and enact some everyday activities that thematize displacement as it is known to transients, migrants, refugees from war and disaster, and to the itinerant artists travelling the world to earn their living. These performances deal with continuing themes of migration, and relations of power and vulnerability with regard to the mobile and in particular the female body, an aspect that figured prominently in numerous previous works of mine.
About the workshop leader:
Tanja Ostojić (*1972) is a renowned Berlin-based, Yugoslavian-born performance and interdisciplinary artist whose artworks engage with feminism and migration politics. She includes herself as a character in performances and uses diverse media in her artistic research, thereby examining social configurations and power relations. She works predominantly from the migrant woman’s perspective, from within specific social contexts. The approaches of her work are defined by political positioning and the integration of recipients. Since 1994 she has presented her work in numerous exhibitions, festivals and venues around the world. She has given talks, lectures, seminars and workshops at academic conferences and at art universities around Europe and in the Americas.
About the workshop:
The “Misplaced Women?” project involves the unpacking of a suitcase, a plastic bag, a handbag or a similar object in a public place, whereby these objects come to stand for displacement, as a theme that is common in the everyday experiences of transients, migrants, homeless, and refugees from war and disaster. The workshop aims to familiarize the participants with the topics and to stimulate discussion and interventions in a variety of public spaces.
The first part of the workshop includes getting together, informing each other and communicating, whereby the participants will talk to each other about individual experiences and the aims of the project.
During the second part, the participants are encouraged and helped to enact live performances and interventions in the streets and parks of Innsbruck. Public performances will be documented by a professional photographer.
The outcomes of the workshop will be presented to the public on the third day in Die Bäckerei, Kulturbackstube in Innsbruck. All participants of the workshop are invited to play an active part in this presentation and the following discussion.
The documentation, notes and reflections from the workshop will be gathered, edited and published on the Misplaced Women?