PARKING PACKING
urban performance

Renata Salecl

Brain drain - an urban Sisyphus’ myth.
Nowadays we keep traveling, we are constantly being transported, or we are transferring suitcases, bags of all kinds, stacking and transporting them and constantly repeating the same cycle and the same routines. With all these activities it often seems as if we are rotating in a circle, or even remaining in the same spot despite all the action… With all our desires to travel somewhere else, to resettle or find new objects to take with us, to discover a new life, it is hard to admit that all this activity is only a mask for the fact that nothing has actually changed. The constant activity is the new myth of Sisyphus. The brain drain is in fact an escape within the brains.

Rok Vevar

Parking Packing

Modern life is subjected to certain actions, patterns, and repeated gestures that one can think of within the framework (concept) of choreography. The problem is that their scenarios are not entirely evident and clear. One could say that the modern organization of life is full of hidden, non-transparent choreographies. Through the sentiment of modern and contemporary dance paradigms we could find an entertaining way of saying that these organizations do not tolerate dance, but merely the one and ideal choreographic matrix which in the pragmatics of urban life often turns out to be overburdened with dancers. "Parking Packing" tries to provide a minimal framework for this “everyday urban choreography” so that it would become visible and legible. It provides a fragile figural outline that directs the spectator’s gaze so that it can convert the specular into spectacular. It is a kind of a choreographic readymade that exposes the everyday "choreographic object", gives it its title and signature. It does not take long to realize that we have all already performed in similar choreographies.

"Parking Packing" is the second work that the choreographer Mateja Bucar has positioned into an urban space. "Green Light" (2010, / http://www.dum-club.si/zelenaluc/) was a series of multiple choreographic actions, dance figures and miniature compositions that took place at various traffic lights. The actions were always determined by two main parameters: the compositional conception of contemporary dance (modern dance) and the parameters of space and time. Both parameters have clearly visible signalization, the instance of dictate at their locations, i.e. a choreographer in the classical sense.
The choreographer’s work takes place through two types of signals: the traffic lights are responsible for the temporal order, while the metronomic road markings (zebra crossings) represent the choreographic plan, both of which might be more characteristic of the Baroque period or the minimalist dance in the late 1970s. If we take into account the “Cageian” aesthetic landscape within this artistic enterprise, we realize that the urban sound is also a part of the "Green light" project. "Parking Packing" develops the concept of the "readymade" choreography and the field of contemporary dance thoughts in the extended understanding of choreography, in which "choreography" spreads from an exclusive domain of dance into something that has the characteristic of everyday life. With this it also opens the question of personal freedom in the choreographic infrastructure of the modern world.