Workshop by Darko Dragičević.

"An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality." (John Cage)

Failure is something we are ashamed of, we want to hide it, make it unnoticeable. Success integrates while failure means being rejected by society. But what happens when non-normative bodies come into the picture, opening up new spaces of counterhegemonic opportunity? These new possibilities could mark the shifts of existing configurations by rearranging the hegemonic dominance of the state, institutions and normative politics as alternative ethical views.
Failure as Practice is a Workshop format that results in a series of site-specific interventions that aim to create different, parallel lines of communality by means of resisting the general valorization of success.
The format is open to participants coming from various fields of study: dance, performance, music, visual arts, design, architecture, literature, etc.

Within the Workshop framework Failure as Practice the participants will contemplate on general understanding of failure in various socio-political contexts. A set of analytical and practice based tasks will serve as means of observation and instruments of discourse to further interpret the potentials of global understanding of failure and its transformative powers into the productions of newly-acquired knowledge/s.

During the time of the Workshop we will reflect upon the topics of collectivity, the body/bodies in private and public space/s, collaboration etc. They will be shared through the prism of each of the participant’s cultural and collective memory. In practical terms this will be done with various questionnaires, tasks, scores, games, interventions, writings etc.
Participants will also be working individually, also in pairs. Memorization and repetition will serve as articulation elements by which the transformative powers of fears of failure will be presented as creative processes of the incessant and creative acts based on individual and collective trust. The aim of these tasks is to expand and create through practice the series of contextually elaborated proposals. During these processes the participants will present various performative attempts and try-outs creating a specific language and aesthetics of expression based on movement material, text, object and sound.

Feedback as a form of critical practice will be implemented during the entire course of the Workshop.
The sharings of the processes of the Failure as Practice Workshop will be in the form of performative interventions during which everybody can work with various improvisational attempts and experiments creating a specific language and aesthetics of expression based on movement materials, text, object, sound and sometimes involving the participation of the others.

Schedule:

The project Failure as Practice started in May 2017 as the Workshop series led by performance and visual artist Darko Dragičević. The participants of the Workshop were members of the City Guerilla – a group of young artists and activists. The project took place in Belgrade and was supported by the Goethe-Institut Serbia. In 2019 the book/catalogue under the same title was published by the Goethe-Institut and since then the project Failure as Practice was presented internationally in different Festivals, Universities and other curated platforms such as “STUFF. EXPANDING CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICES” at SKH - Stockholm University of the Arts (March 2023), 8th Bonn International Dance Solo Festival (March 2023), “Art, Politics, Institution, Body”, Lokomotiva Skopje (Dec 2020), CoFestival Ljubljana (Nov 2019), DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts (Oct 2019), Open Spaces Tanzfabrik Summer Festival (July 2019), Goethe-Institut Belgrade (March 2019) and Belgrade City Museum (May 2017).

Darko Dragičević is a performance and visual artist and filmmaker born in Belgrade in 1979 and living in Berlin. He has shown his work internationally since 2003. In terms of an expanded practice of performance, choreography and film, he is involved in interdisciplinary projects and cross-media collaborations.
His recent works include: research project Chlorine Drifters with Stefan Ramirez Perez and Vanja Smiljanić, Failure as Practice presented at 8th Bonn International Dance Solo Festival (Theater im Ballsaal, Brotfabrik Bonn, Kunstmuseum Bonn) and the performance fifty ways to leave a shape with Siri Jøntvedt (Dansens Hus, Oslo).
He teaches at institutions such as SKH - Stockholm University of the Arts, ZZT/HfmT Köln, Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen, Y-Institut/Hochschule der Künste Bern and Tanzquartier Wien. He holds a Master degree in Fine Arts and a BA in Visual Communication from the International College of Arts and Sciences in Milan and a Filmmaking Diploma from the New York Film Academy in New York City.