7 times 7 = 49 minutes

In Covid’s time, the live multi-day tour of the Machine to Improve the World was replaced by a multi-day recording session in the premises of Cirkulacija 2 with the participation of Ryuzo Fukuhara, Borut Savski, Stefan Doepner, Freya Edmondes, Boštjan Leskovšek, and Iva Tratnik. In cross-collaborations, they prepared seven views on the state of the Machine of the Modern State (which is the meaning of the title). The Covid situation did not exist a year ago, when the project was conceived, and the world has already begun to crack at the seams.

The idea of a modern state began about 300 years ago in the then European monarchs’ minds, who were therefore called “enlightened.” The Enlightenment came much later – and humanism is precisely the result of such a model (structure) of the state. It is assumed that the modern state machine regulates itself according to needs and corrects its mistakes. However, history is not linear – in the recent past, there have been quite a few diversions into less humane experiments. Even at this moment, it seems that the situation can tip the complex mechanism of the self-regulating machine into some other stability.

In the six authors’ modularly composed contributions, the mentioned systemic digressions, images of industry, crowds, faces, creations and self-creations of the individual, metaphors of a great leader/savior appear in a mosaic way, scattered and disordered if no active engagement is present.

Aesthetically, it seems that by force of circumstance, we explore the symbolic narrative field of the video – starting from the dance video – live performative points, which are widely understood and so the protagonist is not just a man (dancer) – but that the protagonist is everything that camera’s lens captures.

The modules feature Stefan Doepner’s Organ for Optimizing the World (produced by Kud Obrat 2020) – and many of his moving machines. Butoh dancer Ryuzo Fukuhara is a master of adapting to the moment/situation/sound/image. Borut Savski is an on-duty instrumentalist on a self-produced guitar and a mosaic video machine programmer for interactive chaos control (“you have to move!”). Boštjan Leskovšek is a lover of nature and small devices for producing sounds – he visited a remote Indonesian island with sounds. Freya Edmondes is a guest from England who called her part “worldwide ward” –  the world as a penitentiary. She is able to explode. Iva Tratnik contributed to the isolated individual’s situation of the moment.

Circulation 2 is an art collective, the so-called house of artists, which is, at the same time, a space for conceivement, development and presentation of works of art and situations. The latter means that advocate live art that goes beyond established presentation formats. We were established in 2008, and since then, we have moved three times in Ljubljana. Keywords: interdisciplinarity, internationality, self – production, hyperproduction, and cultural home. We like to put together platforms with diverse participants – we call them Extended Circulation.