Talk

Midterm assessment: PhD fellow Dragana Bulut

Biblioteket, Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo

April 25th 2023, at 6.00pm – 9.00pm

Dragana Bulut presents her doctorial artistic research project: Social Choreographies of Emotion

In this Ph.D. research project, I investigate commodification of emotions through the lens of social choreography. By focusing on the emotions of love and fear I examine how they are choreographed and what are the processes that lie underneath this social choreography. I continue the production of social choreographies that question how our feelings, desires, and fears are produced by the logic of capital and what the means of resistance and alternatives to their commodification could be.

Can social choreography be a tool for re-inventing our affective-intimate sphere? How can choreography render transparent various systems of control that invisibly organize our subjectivities and choreograph our lives? My performances make these questions visible as staged social choreographies that frame a place of social gathering for observation. Choreography here is forged into a tool for mirroring and reflecting upon social changes in the life of our affects. On the condition that social choreography does not only reflect the extant social order but has a capacity to aesthetically (sensorially) shape and instil another one, I explore the political potency of the emotions of fear and love and the temporary community that they give rise to.

The choreographic investigation of these subjects steps into the fields of sociology and psychology as it observes emotions as social-cultural practices and reflects on their recent embeddedness in digital technology. The research is devised as an accumulative layering of theoretical reflection /deconstruction, affective embodiment, and social gatherings. In performances, I develop various methodologies of appropriation of established social formats focusing on their performativity, i.e. on performative destabilization, substitution and sliding through frames. These methodologies are grounded in the tension between the immaterial and material, construct and affect, challenging the space between reality and fiction.

Opponent: Janez Janša

Supervisors: Bojana Cvejić and Florian Malzacher

Program

18.00 – 18.15: Welcome

18.15 – 19.15: PhD fellow Dragana Bulut presents her work and talk about her doctorial project.

19.15-19.30: Break

19.30-20.15: conversation between Janez Janša and Dragana Bulut (moderated by Bojana Cvejić)

20.15-20:45 Questions and response from the audience (moderated by Bojana Cvejić)