UrbanFestival 13
workshop
21.-27.10.
squares in Zagreb
 

Exercising the uninhabitalbe

Selma Banich

But if we at any moment, in the middle of the city, actively reject our domestication, and the imposed social roles, and decide to live guided by our passions, desires, and whims, if we become unique and unpredictable beings… we will, at that moment, be wild.
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces/Espèces d’espaces

“The workshop will explore the physical space of an urban square and its reformulation into a volume of endless spatial utopias. Through a series of simple tasks, we will try to activate space, in this case the space of Zagreb’s squares, reflecting on it from an entirely new perspective; differently than that we are used to employ in everyday life. In order to be able to embody ourselves in the space of the inhabitable, we must try to understand its possibilities beyond the actual, generalized definitions of the purpose, symbols, and forms of representation, exploring what that space may be in relation to that which is presumes to be. We will then approach the individual understanding of its spatial potential and our own attitude towards it liberated from the duty of representing its primary function, meaning, and ideology. The uninhabitable square meter will then have the chance of becoming a freely imagined space of the circle.” S.B.

Selma Banich is an artist, activist and a happy housewife, living and working in ZAGREB. Co-founder and program coordinator of ekscena, a prize-winning platform for education and research in performing arts. Author, artistic collaborator and performer with OOUR, a ZAGREB based collaborative performance group and TRAFIK,

a RIJEKA based theater group, member of the FIRST INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE for DISASTER and CHAOS and performer with EVERY HOUSE HAS A DOOR, a CHICAGO based performance group. when not working in theater, she lives a simple life of an admirer of nature, mankind and web 2.0.