Tatiana Kocmur: Flesh

Since 2022, Kocmur has been exploring, through an artistic perspective, historical and current issues of physical and sexual violence, as well as concepts of pain and the use of language (or non-language) in the articulation of pain. The author refers to the insights of Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain - The Making and Unmaking of the World, which states that "physical pain - unlike any other state of consciousness - has no referential content. It is not of something or for anything. Precisely because it assumes no object, it resists objectification in language more than any other phenomenon."

The pain we experience has no form and is therefore very difficult to eliminate. The healing process is initiated when the victim is able to accept and speak about the transformed image of his/her own body/self. The victim can only talk about his/her internal events when the pain has been transformed into an objectified state. Only then is it (at least partially) eliminated. After The Following Body, which attempted to show the bodily process of coping with the violent intrusion into human existence, Kocmur will now continue by first collecting interviews with victims of sexual violence, which will become the audio and visual material for her new work Flesh. Like the female performers of the late 1960s and early 1970s who used painful rituals to depict social tensions, political corruption and inhumane phenomena, Kocmur chooses to interpret difficult themes through bodily exertion.

This is why the work Flesh also includes the extremely interesting phenomenon of "choreomania," a social phenomenon that emerged in Germany in the 14th century and then spread to other Central European countries. It is a kind of epidemic of dancing, where a group of people start dancing for some reason until they faint. The mystique of choreomania is that there are many records but little serious research, and diagnoses are based on conjecture. However, the suggestion that such an extreme ritual of dancing helped to reduce stress and forget poverty is disturbing. There is a therapeutic aspect to this event, where a set of irregular movements (dancing), reflecting an inner pain, de facto articulates it and ultimately acts, at least momentarily, as a salvation.

Concept • Tatiana Kocmur
Co-authors and performers • Ivana Kocmur, Tatiana Kocmur, Eva Mulej, Liza Šimenc
Voices • Ivana Kocmur, Tatiana Kocmur, Eva Mulej, Liza Šimenc
Sound • Eva Mulej
Video and editing • Tatiana Kocmur
Masks • Jaka Grm
Props • Jaka Grm, Ivana Kocmur
Object • Daniel Leber
Text • Anja Guid
Design • Tatiana Kocmur
Production • Pekinpah Society
Co-production • Puppet Theatre Maribor
Supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.

Tatiana Kocmur (1992) lives and works in Ljubljana. In 2015, she graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In 2020, she completed her postgraduate studies in painting with a master's thesis, Body installation - between performance and object. Since 2013, he has been exhibiting and performing at various exhibition venues around Slovenia. She presented herself in Skopje, Milan, Bologna and Berlin. Her artistic practice moves between painting and live art, she also works as a producer of contemporary art (producer of Circulation 2, co-initiator of the platform for the production, exhibition and research of performative art TRANSLACIJA/TRASLACIÓN). Her practice is characterized by collaboration with artists from various fields. The works created during close cooperation are a reflection of common interests and carry within them the specificity of the interweaving of artistic approaches that differ from each other - in themes, method of execution and use of materials and media. The common denominator is an interest in live art and/or creating events that involve the bodies of the artists. In 2021, she received a working scholarship from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. In 2022, she participated in the 5th triennial of young artists in the Contemporary Art Gallery of Celje. Her video works are included in the DIVA archive (SCCA).