ElectroPutere Gallery will broadcast live the performance ACT NORMAL! on its Facebook and Instagram pages this Saturday, November 5, starting at 6:00 p.m.
“Act Normal!” is a performance transmitted online that seeks to subvert those aspects, actions, or attitudes that designate the framework of “normality/norm” of an environment. The way we act determines the way we are taken/perceived/accepted in a certain environment. The activity carried out there is justified only to the extent that it serves an accepted purpose, appropriate to that space, and only if the society (specific to it) considers that type of activity to be by the norms. What exceeds this pre-established framework is considered non-compliant and as such rejected or removed. Often, the same type of activity with a specific gesture can have diametrically opposite effects depending on the terrain on which it is carried out and the norms that govern it.
“Act Normal!” is exactly the evaluation and testing of these limits by transferring some activities and gestures from the everyday space, marked by the ordinary into the artistically defined space, with activities and gestures with a symbolic and therefore extraordinary charge. Located on the border between environments and territories, the performance evaluates and tests the limits of “normal” by trying to transform it into artistic good.
The artistic production will take place in two live sessions broadcast on social media from Mădălina Dan’s home. Through duplication, Mădălina Dan becomes the image of her presence that executes the replica of her activities and gestures, a fact accentuated by the platform on which they are carried out and disseminated. Mihai Iepure-Górski, in turn, becomes the director of a (real) fake live from home that redraws what we consider to be normal (even banal), through a series of seemingly improvised actions and activities, carried out based on precise instructions. As a result, he turns into the unseen manipulator of the strings that provokes the activity and gestures of choreographer Madalina Dan. The point is, how can you challenge someone to act like himself or herself?
ACT NORMAL! will be broadcast live on social media including on December 3.
Mădălina Dan is an artist, performer, and educator, and studied at the Choreography High School in Bucharest. She was a member of “The Oleg Danovski” Ballet Company from 1998 to 2003. In 2008 she received the danceWEB scholarship in Vienna. She was a guest artist at the Herberger Institute, School of Dance (Arizona State University) in 2009 and was an associate artist at the National Dance Centre in Bucharest in 2016. She studied in Berlin at HZT in the frame of the SoDA program. Her works have been shown at Bozar- Bruxelles, Springdance Festival Utrecht, SouthBank Center & Chisenhale Dance Space – London, Fabrik Potsdam, Hebbel am Uffer – Berlin, TanzFabrik-Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien, Dance Theater Workshop – New York and many other places.
Mihai Iepure-Górski was born in Alba-Iulia. He is an Arts Academy graduate that resides in Cluj and works in a variety of mediums, trying his best to avoid falling prey to them. He produces gestures with aesthetic-critical potential for most of the last decade with some degree of success locally and internationally. Recently, he took his future into his own hands, wrote projects, and was active as a curator within the collective group around the Brush Factory in Cluj until its closure in 2022.
The link to the ElectroPutere Gallery Facebook page is available here.
Graphic design: Sebastian Danciu
Partners: Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in the Arts (ICMA), Revista ARTA, Propagarta
Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
