Artworks
Tiny Kinky Herbal Temple / An Eco-sensual Journey into Your Inner Self
A living art installation and a performance for one person at a time
A bed with a silky bedding grown into a nature. A refuge into another world.
7 minutes journey into your own body,
under your skin, into your forgotten body parts,
into soul’s remembering how once you walked the earth barefoot,
with your skin exposed to elements, plants and a touch of the unknown.
Based on couple of not directly related practices, such as contemporary dance, body work, shamanic journeys, temple arts and herbalism, Branka has developed a 7 minute performance for one person at a time.
In this performance she is using textures of different plants to affect the skin of a participant through diverse types of touches (never skin-to-skin touch, always through an agency of a plant, or a stone or a piece of wood) in a rhythmical and paste changing ways. The composition of the performance is always different, improvised, yet following strict choreographic principles where Branka is engaging participant’s « forgotten body parts », and activating whole body awareness in a gentle way. Branka may as well use fruits to provide a taste experience, or plant based smells to activate a smell sense. The plants can also be used to activate the auditory sense (through waving near ears, crashing, shaking). The only sense that is « taken away » is the vision. By « disabling » the vision, Branka is providing a space for participants to drop into their bodies and focus on senses less used.
This installation is a temple because it is honouring the natural world through agency of plants. This performance honours one’s body as a temple, as well. This project carries in its name word « kinky » with a purpose to create a playful trans-species relation between people and plants. Plants are sometimes used as « torture » bdsm tools (ivy as a choker, nettle as a flogger), to reverse the relationship in which humans are the dominant ones. In this performance, the plants will « tell you what to do and how to surrender ». And besides all of that, « kinky » stands for not being to serious about ourselves and letting the otherness be with us, as equals.