Document Missing: Performance No. 6 (Daughter), 2017–2022
Premiere of a solo live performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje in the frame of the exhibition “Ecstatic Bodies: Archive of Performance Queer Bodies in Macedonia” as part of “Skopje Pride Weekend 2022”, curated by Slavcho Dimitrov and Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski. Photo: Sonja Stavrova.
Memories are raw spoken material. Memories are messy and impure. How can one reach the origin of memory? How can we return to the experience which is the core of what we later call “memory,” if all we have are materials already processed by the investigator, the historian, the journalist, the writer? How can we dive between the words and extract the essence?
Starting from the seemingly simple question, “Who am I?”, I find my interlocutor in the figure of Rosa Plaveva, a revolutionary woman from the early 20th century who lies forgotten in the archives of the past. “Document Missing: Performance No. 6 (Daughter)” is an attempt to tell a story about power, speech, and punishment, as well as injustice, insult, and trauma inflicted and endured. At the centre of this performance is the life of Nadežda Plaveva Stanojević, daughter of Rosa Plaveva, who during the time of the Informbiro (1948–1956), was imprisoned by UDBA (Yugoslav State Security Administration) and sent to Goli Otok (a notorious political prison located on an island on the Adriatic Sea). Her traumatic experience would later be voiced in the feuilleton “Ibeovci” published in 1990 in the Serbian newspaper “Borba".
“Document Missing: Performance No. 6 (Daughter)” is part of my ongoing research-based project titled “Document Missing” (2014–), which explores suppressed collective memory, particularly concerning women’s strategies and politics of resistance. As the sole protagonist in my performances, I become a flexible and porous entity—a medium through which different identities and voices from the past are brought back to life. Through my texts and actions, I create situations that “may or may not have happened,” fluctuating through time and space, grounded in documents and oral interpretations. I use performance as a method, medium, and metaphor.