We are social animals. Our mutual bonds are our evolutionary and ecological imperative, a way for us to survive and become alive, the core of our worldbuilding. But, the world we are building is unjust, violent and lonely. What in our relationships makes it so?

In her work “Uses of the erotic” Audre Lorde wrote that in order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. In this performance, the focus is on shame as a powerful instrument in numbing this energy. An affect that makes us feel like imposters in aliveness. Internalized violence which serves as our cultural and social coregulation. Means of social isolation and alienation. Shame as punishment. Shame as transgenerational trauma. Shame as tradition.

Beginning in the isolated, freeze state of shame, the author follows pleasure as an directions out of that state and a language through which aliveness speaks to her. Through a series of monologues and bodily movements, the author keeps encountering the choice to become alive or deepen the isolation caused by shame.

Premiered at “Post-Yugoslav legacies and bodies: performance, critique and utopia” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, curated by Slavcho Dimitrov and Biljana Tanurovska - Kjulavkovski