DAGMARA BILON
Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag, 2021
Around 30 minutes, with or without preparation, two performers
Location: busy city bridge
About:
This score is sort of a combination of the Mis(s)placed Women? Score#1 and Score#2 by Tanja Ostojić. Becoming One With a Bag is a metaphor of displacement, objectification and detachment from humanity, in which the viewer on their way to work crosses the busy city bridge and unexpectedly spots legs coming out of a bag, without a face, without an identity. Next to the bag on legs, there is a second person (co-performer) holding a MISPLACED sign (Score #2). (The bridge here is a symbol of a transient place, in-between two different locations, when one migrates from one place to the other, on the bridge is ‘in between’.)
Instruction:
1. Select a busy city bridge.
2. The main action takes place on the pedestrian area toward the middle of the bridge.
3. The performer wears a dress and high heels, walking over the bridge toward the middle, carrying the ‘refuge bag’ on her shoulder. She stops and steps inside the bag until her upper body disappears inside the bag. The second performer zips the bag and positions herself aproximately one meter away.
4. Both of them stand still as a kind of juxtaposed, obscure attraction and provocation at the same time for about half an hour.
Important: The co-performer needs also to look after the person in the bag who can not see its surroundings.
Misplaced, Score #3: Becoming One With a Bag, 2021, Millennium Bridge, London, performed by: Dagmara Bilon & Dyana Gravina. Mis(s)placed Women? Performance Weekend and the Community Gathering in Belgrade, October 17 2021, via Zoom. Live streaming: Robin Harvey.
Note:
It is interesting to find out to whom this action speaks to and how are the people passing by responding. Reflect upon your motivation to perform this score and from which perspective you speak. (For example, as a non-UK citizen, based in London, I travelled recently back home to unite with my family after having been away for two weeks. Two days ahead of my flight, I received an email from the Home Office stating that if I am not able to present my Settled Status at the border, I won’t be able to enter the country. After 20 years of living in the UK, I would have never thought that I had to fear being stopped at the borders… This experience made me think about the people who struggle daily with this issue.)
Crediting and Publishing:
Mis(s)placed Women? project by Tanja Ostojić, live action by Dagmara Bilon, performed by: your names…
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Dagmara Bilon (1981) is a London based performance and interdisciplinary artist, creative producer and activist of Polish/German origin who conducted various community-led art projects engaging young people in the discourse of gender, sexuality and identity. She is active member of the The Purple Ladies collective since its establishment, and the Mis(s)placed Women? community since 2016.
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Edited and first published by Tanja Ostojić in the Mis(s)placed Women? exhibition catalogue, KCB Belgrade 2021
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Please visit the related posts:
Tanja OSTOJIĆ: Score #1: Unpacking a Bag of Your Own, 2009
Tanja OSTOJIĆ: Score #2: Holding the Misplaced Women? Sign, 2012
HOANG TRAN HIEU HANH: Score #4: spread and reflect, 2021
Earlier contributions by Dagmara BILON:
Teresa Albor’s and Dagmara Bilon’s continuous collaboration
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Earlier blog posts for London:
The following artists, activists and researchers developed their new works or performed some of the “Misplaced Women?” scores in the frame of the Tanja Ostojic’s “Misplaced Women?” London Workshop. I would like to invite you to please check out Participants Contributions in text, photos and videos, that I edited partly in collaboration with Danyel Ferrari and published on the project blog:
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Misplaced Women? 