Meta-morphic punk

Abstract

Abstract The article takes a renewed interest in the artistic practices of the 1980s in Slovenia, aiming to build bridges between individual actors of the 1980s alternative scene in Ljubljana and to account for certain actors, who have been up to now lacking in interpretations of this period, and related phenomena ought nevertheless to be included in this narrative. By analysing new cultural phenomena, the article shows that one of the crucial vectors is a revision of the conception, perception and use of the public. Punk, as a catalyst for new social, cultural and artistic phenomena, is here understood as an ideological rather than aesthetic position. The contribution thus analyses the spectrum of tactics and strategies that enabled a specific cultural interregnum to inhabit the dissolving context of late-Yugoslav socialism. The conceptual framework given here perverts the traditional theatrical dichotomy between performers and audience, as performance suddenly includes everyone: urban space is transformed into performative materiality and theatrical semiotics. Space understood in this way, in which a multiplication of bodies can be perceived, can be thought of as a space of a different type of politics and can be sensitivized anew. To actualize punk’s starting points within the horizon of a new policy, what is needed is a spectrum of differences, i.e. regimes of corporeality, with which choreographic and dance practices are manifested as a proactive partner in an opening up of the public.