Zbornik Radova Akademije Umetnosti (Jan 2020)
Transcultural hybridity in the post-Yugoslav theater
Abstract
The post-Yugoslav macro-region is a dynamic and complex zone, where contemporary tensions between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization are manifested. It contains an idiom of multilingualism, multi-ethnicity, multi-religiosity, and complicated identity and dependability processes. Following the enforced 'existence alongside' under the Yugoslav federation, and its breakup afterwards, productive negotiations, 'existence together' and even co-creation were restored. It is particularly noticeable in theater which involves meeting and interaction. At the beginning of the twenty-first century in the area of former Yugoslavia, the phenomena confirming transcultural close-contact practices within this (hyper)production are becoming more frequent. Indeed, the interpenetration of cultures; networking; the circulation of creative, aesthetic and philosophical ideas growing out of different cultural backgrounds; the physical mobility of artists; the use of modern communication channels; as well as translation lead to the production of new, hybrid qualities. Currently, an increasing number of such forms of public theater expressions may be observed in the region; they arise in consequence of interference of cultures, bonding of a documentary and fiction, they are intermedial, mobile, multilingual, and fluctuate between the zone of art and social life. Experimental stage projects created by Milena Bogavac and Kokan Mladenović (from Serbia) or Jeton Neziraj (from Kosovo) and also performances directed by Borut Šeparović (from Croatia), Jernej Lorenci (from Slovenia), Selma Spahić and Dino Mustafić (from Bosnia and Herzegovina) seem to be a medium particularly predestined for exploration of the problem of identity - hybrid, projected, performative, contextual, adaptative, and made precise in relations to the Otherness. Hence, they challenge official, homogenizing discourses. The term 'hybridity' will mean here a metaphor - a formal structure which constitutes a blend of cultural codes and a combination of diverse models of creative expression. In response to the demand for finding an adequate interpretation key for these processes, the methodological skills shall be enriched by the category of transculturality proposed by Wolfgang Welsch, a German theoretician of postmodernism. This option contains a modern vision of open culture which generates artistic proposals requiring a specific type of reception.
