In the framework of the Via Negativa projects (Starting Point: Anger [Izhodiščna točka: Jeza], More [Še], Would Would Not [Bi ne bi], Viva Verdi, Four Deaths [4 smrti]), Barbara Kukovec manifests the qualities of a systematic deepening and purifying of her analytic approach, which she applies in order to explore the paradox of living presence, existing in front of the audience. Living presence can never exist as presence per se, since such presence always implies presence in relation to some absence, which is to be invoked in front of the audience by life itself. The performance entitled Spotlight on Me contemplates captivity in this double disposition, which no living presence in the arena of the contemporary art scene can evade. Barbara’s performance systematically explores possibilities for eliminating the border between the subject of performance, on the one hand, and the performing of the subject, on the other, by using the power of the theatre sign. One never stands in front of the audience as only herself or himself; one never exists solely here and now. The absolute presence thus constantly evades the performer and can exist only in the function of the utopian referential point of the performance. The performer thus inevitably becomes a victim of her own vivacity, her own presence, her own self.
(Bojan Jablanovec)
