Horizontal viewpoints / Getting to the sea
At the second half of DTA art residence in Napoli, I was drawn to experience different spaces and perspectives of an outside environment and at the same time witnessing how these new perspectives and views influenced and informed my daily practice and viewpoints.
As part of an organic creative process, after spending hours in dance studio, I've immersed myself into colours and shapes of beautiful city of Napoli allowing myself to arrive, ground myself and get inspired by environment, architecture, beautiful coffee aroma, gelato, and streets full of people. Staying mainly in Vomero area for the whole first week of artistic residence, my natural desire to explore and search for new spaces and pathways began to activate in the remaining time. At first, I discovered it in the form of limited views to the sky or narrow street spaces created by the opposite raws of houses on a short distance, both inviting to be filled with some imaginative or real movement. These were the views I could get while staying on top of the hill of Vomero area.
In need to catch pieces of the sky view, I couldn't ignore limitations of the highlighted verticality of architecture lines and narrowness of space despite the satisfaction of views to the sky. Lacking horizontal dimension encouraged me to seek further for more satisfying wider views hoping to get to the sea view where horizontal lines prevail.
Walking downhill in search of wider horizontal views was an inevitable breaking through the highlighted verticality and limiting space which at one point reminded me of a hierarchical structure of a group dynamics lacking creative horizontal exchange.
During the time of artistic residence, horizontality of exchange was strongly present as my individual need and a compass of both groups I was a part of.
Being inspired by the heritage of Overlie's and her successors' principles of the ‘’Viewpoints practice of horizontalism, a non-hierarchical organisation of the performance elements as well as group organization which emphasized collaboration and a shared agency of creation amongst performers in working through the individual body and its surrounding material environment’’ , we were navigating through authentic artistic sharing and equal take of responsibility for the evolving creative processes.
By the end of the second week, we had public performances at the Korper Theatre situated by the sea which logically was the headed goal from the very beginning, although my need to get to the sea was on a very intuitive level at first as I had no idea where the theatre was situated. By the end of the second week, at last I got to the sea!
One of the questions we explored during residence time was: What does it mean to share and be together?
The answers were:
- listening - giving space - engaging - being gentle - to touch
A horizontal distribution of viewpoints beautifully spoke of sharing, connection, and equal exchange in creating some other views resembling horizon, the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet and embrace.
By Sanela Janković Marušić
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