Performing Sites for Affective Clones is a live performance and exhibition project by Marko Gutić Mižimakov in collaboration with Lana Hosni, Sonja Pregrad, and Nika Pećarina as well as clones Acurata2 & LanAcurataG8, Svetlana3 & Ona6, and MitchG8 & MarQ8.1 & MitchG8.

The project builds on the interaction between performers and their digital counterparts—kitschy animated figures named “affective clones.” As a way to look into togetherness, various aspects of artistic collaboration and production are processed through play among the performers, their clones, and the audience. The clones are approached as copies, replicas, surrogates, duplicates, and animated figures that simulate living organisms shaped according to how we wish to be seen by others. Yet as creations, they are not exhausted in an exhibition of attractive technological possibilities. Yet as creations, they are not exhausted in an exhibition of attractive technological possibilities. Instead, they address the reality of precarious labor conditions and fatigue. Through cultivating empathy, this ‘cloning’ transforms the need to duplicate ourselves in order to fulfill the requirements capitalism poses on our limited resources. The performance thus emerges through shared affective labor, as a dialogue between bodily gestures, movements, breathwork, and sound manifested by the performers and their quivering, digital embodiments materialized in projections and on flickering screens.

In earlier projects, the performer-clone choreography aimed at permeating the split between the tangible and the intangible. Following these experiences, this performance proposes a specific meditative duration consistent with the processes of creating and dissolving collectivity and negotiating cohabitation in the limited gallery space. The protagonists inscribe themselves in the institutional memory and symbolic status of the gallery through im/material and ephemeral gestures: looking and breathing, re/positioning, the interface of the skin, bodies in touch, pixels, lights, and sound and bodies in touch. The imaginary of these gestures within the institutional context addresses the current saturation with digital environments along with the depletion and loss of available spaces of sociability.

Establishing a social choreography Performing Sites for Affective Clones integrates the present moment through rituals of togetherness. By practicing collectivity through embodiment, the performances expand inhabitable interspaces—spaces where, for a while, we can be (with) others. There, we are able to slow down comradely in tenderness, with libidinal zest, and in mutual support in the face of loss and unavailability. As the artist points out, the affective labor at hand is “performative and not of ‘bare life’”; nevertheless, it is important, since every performance becomes a rehearsal in continuously probing the possibilities of creating simultaneously fictional, real, and indispensable communities, within and outside the white cube. 

The work presented at Gallery Nova continues a series of collaborative projects initiated by Marko Gutić Mižimakov: Affective Clones & Whatever They Want (Ana Jelušić, Ivana Rončević, Ana3 &AnaG8, Ivana2  IvanaG8, and Marko2 & MarkoG8), 2018; From Sad to Moving (Nika Pećarina, MarQ2, and MitchG8), 2019; and Thank You for Being Here with Me (Karen Nhea Nielsen, LilySlava8, and AmpersandG8), 2020.

Thanks: Ana Jelušić and Ivana Rončević, Jasen Vodenica, Dora Fodor, Nicole Hewitt, Curio Kitheca, Vida Guzmić and GMK.

The video work Dečki koji baš i nisu (Boys Who Are Not) (2021) by Marko Gutić Mižimakov and Nika Pećarina was created as part of WHW’s film and discursive program It’s a matter of care, conversation about trees.

This program is organized as a part of the collaborative project Communities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation, initiated by WHW and supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation.

The program is supported by:
City of Zagreb
European Cultural Foundation
Croatian Audiovisual Centre
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia
Kultura nova Foundation