TRACES is a multimedia project which is designed as a performance / installation / exhibition in which the starting point is a long durational multi-media exploration of different fragments and aspects of the body / city / nature / nomad / lover / artist.
Trace is the smallest memory unit of nomadic life. We understand the traces as codes in which the coordinates of travel, cities, streets, desires, images, bodies in nature, events, architecture, metro, love, audio recording, drawing on a napkin, text messages, chats, random events, city maps…are written. Trace is an attempt to subsequently establish a correlation between the codes, to set the coordinates in linear time and space and thus form transits of memory in interaction to each viewer / participant in TRACES.
The authors of TRACES are Boris and Natasha Kadin. The project in made of materials that are (so far) made in Zadar, Belgrade, Athens, Santorini, Split, Dubrovnik, Lopud, Ljubljana, Marseilles, Avignon, New York…The materials consist of photographs, videos, audio files, articles, messages written on paper, text messages, folders, city maps, etc. Given the complexity and diversity of materials collected and created by the authors, we decided as a strategy for presentation to use combination of performances, installations and exhibitions.
The idea that initiated the project has indicated that the project also examines the locations of the urban area of the city, and the interaction of nature and the body of the nomad, nomads and artists, artists and lovers, and thus creates mutual relations of the body and the virtual space, bodies and virtual bodies, and visitors, body memory, body and body …
Multimedia project consists of three parts:
* Performance is used as traces that are located in front of a spectator as a mechanism to create narrative and physical structures within the performances. Each subject or object that is in the disposition of the audience determines the (re)actions of the performers. Two performers are standing 5 days 13 hours a day within the installation TRACES as the subject / object installation. Interaction with the audience takes place in a way that when someone from the audience takes a certain photo, item or paper, that action activates the mechanism of performances, turning objects into subjects of the installation performance. Traces also deal with the relationship between different mediums of artistic communication through interaction with the audience. Traces are the open codes, in which has already entered the memory of the objects that structure the performers, their stories and actions, but each new execution of the course of the performance depends entirely on the actions of the audience that creates a reaction of the artist. Performance Traces is the “dejavu” of the travel coordinates, cities, streets, desires, images, bodies in nature, events, architecture, metro, love, audio, articles, drawings on napkins, text messages, chats, random events, city maps…
* The installation consists of pictures, videos, audios, two bodies and two virtual bodies, and discusses the body / city / nature as an organism that is interconnected. Installation is a simulacrum of relations arising from contact with the audience in a variety of media, especially with bodies and virtual bodies. Part of the installation is the Polaroid show where audience becomes a part of video and Polaroid documentation. These materials become an integral part of each subsequent performance / presentation. * Video and Polaroid’s make the third part of the project- the exhibition.
*The exhibition consists of Polaroid’s, video and audio materials recorded during performances, and web project on http://www.mavena.hr where all the records collected during the course of this project are being displayed. The methodology of the project is nomadic: each new city where the project is running becomes a training ground for new research and the creation of new materials that can then, together with the performers, “move” to a new location to become part of a new story that includes a new memory nomadic memory, new trace.