Due to high interest among the audience at the first two performances and the fact that the number of questions asked exceeded the time available for answering them, MONTAЖ$TROJ, PRiredba Studio, and the space of creation URANIA invite you to the event ALONE TOGETHER on Sunday, December 11, at 7 p.m. This time, unlike at the first two performances, you – our audience – are invited to interact instead of experts.
How many hours do you spend on your smartphone every day? Do you write/receive many text messages? Are you always available but often feel lonely?
Whether you are single or with a partner, MONTAЖ$TROJ dares you to participate in this important project. Read out the messages received from your partner, lover, friend – as they read out yours. Everyone is welcome, regardless of their age, gender, sex, professional or sexual orientation…
We challenge you to share your texts with us and the audience and thereby co-create the event ALONE TOGETHER.
If that turns out to be too much for you, Ana Prolić and Borut Šeparović will read their messages to the point of exhaustion. 2 phones. 2 screens. 1 camera. 360 degrees. She reads his messages sent to her. He reads hers.
Let’s perceive, together, how alone we are. Let’s swap places, shift perspectives.
You can apply at info@montazstroj.hr
The first two performances, held on December 4 and 5 in the space of creation URANIA, consisted of the docu-formance ALONE TOGETHER. In front of a vested audience and guest experts, the “protagonists” Ana Prolić and Borut Šeparović read out the text messages they had sent to each other’s phones, opening up numerous questions about loneliness, a phenomenon with consequences that are becoming a social, health, and political issue. Does technology bring them together or does it really bring them apart? Does communicating over a screen deepen understanding or misunderstanding? Can they truly share feelings that way? Do they feel like the other is always there? Does this mode of communication protect them from closeness? Do they feel lonelier? Do they see each other? Do they hear each other? Do they recognize each other? The participants tried to answer these and many other questions.
After the interaction, which had a therapeutic, participatory, and educational character, writer, columnist and psychotherapist Milana Vlaović Kovaček emphasized the importance of the role that the audience had for the process: “In addition to everything we managed to say from a sociological and psychological point of view, what really mattered was the reaction from the audience; which makes it clear that the performance opened a crucial, hushed-up topic of social significance that will continue to be explored in the future, alone and together, wider, deeper, and further”. Domagoj Bebić, associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, optimistically concluded that this project opened his eyes, showed him to what extent people actually want to actively be mutually inclusive, noting that he believed that this important topic would continue to be deliberated thanks to projects like this. Journalist and editor Ivana Antunović Jović believes that our society needs this project to realize why loneliness is on the rise and understand this unnatural environment if, as it is said, loneliness is a natural reaction to a person’s unnatural environment. Leo Rafolt, full professor of performance studies, theater theory, and transcultural studies at the Academy of Art and Culture of the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek said, among other things: “A seemingly simple performative of reading text messages exposes the discomfort of media-mediated communication. Performing their re-embodiment could be an attempt to return humanness to communication, as in a utopian attempt to turn people away from technology in favor of a digital deficit and an analog surplus of connectedness. If we try to reconnect on a human level instead of relying on technology to make those connections for us, we might start creating better human relationships.” Psychologist and psychotherapist Ana Perović thinks that this project reminds us that it is high time for a collective dialogue about these issues and poses the questions: “In a world of ubiquitous networking, have we forgotten how to be on our own? Can we truly be with others without spending time with ourselves? Or have we begun to settle for more superficial interactions in which we can dose our mode of exposure? To what extent are we together, yet alone?”
