Under the hayrack, 2017, installation + performance – hayrack (wood), book, table, voice
Work was represented in two different forms. On the first day, I made a performance in which I was read various Slovenian stories in the Slovene language while sitting under the hayrack. The hayrack is one of the most recognizable Slovenian national objects. However, I see it as a very strong symbolic item, kind of a statue or a monument, which is attached to our national history, collective memory, and language. Many stories, novels, and poems were written about hayracks, they either speak directly about them or just describe events, somehow connected to them, for instance as a hiding place for soldiers on the run, a love relationship scene, as a children playground. After the performance, my body was gone and the only objects left were the hayrack, the table and the book I was reading and recordings of it. With these elements left I try to keep those stories and my language materialized and make them closer to the spectator.
I ask myself what happens when the moment of the spectator’s misunderstanding is exceeded and a discussion is opened on a different level. With this verbal ‘non-sense’ I try to make the audience to think beyond the language heard and the objects seen. Work is intended to stimulate the spectator’s reactions and possible interest, leading him to different reflections and make new sense out of them.
