Two performances of VIA Negativa

Both performances are in Croatian and Serbian language with Czech subtitles!

WHAT JOSEPH BEUYS TOLD ME WHILE I WAS LYING DEAD IN HIS LAP / Boris Kadin

Boris Kadin is a versatile and internationally active performance artist and performer from Dubrovnik, who in his solo projects often radicalises the artist’s position. Since 2007 he has been cooperating with Via: Not Like Me, Out. By his eruptive imagination and explosive presence Boris is always “hunting for the real” in his performances. In this performance he is questioning the relationship between the artist and the interpretation of his art work and stages his own relationship to classification, analysis and contemporary art theory. Every interpretation of an art work, whether its interpretation point “fits” or “totally fails”, nevertheless inevitably comprises the artists’ context. Boris Kadin stages an artist that is trapped in the hell of constant rationalisations and interpretations.

GAME WITH TOOTHPICKS / Boris Kadin & Kristian Al Droubi


The main theme of the performance is the perception of an art work and its relationship with the critique. The artist is fatally connected to the response on himself, by means of perceptive reflection his message always returns to him. It is only in this turn that the artist can start thinking himself from a distance. Game With Toothpicks is a performance about comprehending oneself that takes upon its right to deal with its media “exterior” as if being its “interior”. The Knife-Game scene, a part of the performance Not Like Me, is the in the heart of this performance, which in its course also reflects upon the media response of its stagings. The performers adopt two radically different positions in this turn: while Kristian Al Droubi still persists in the game as such and perceives it literally, Boris Kadin steps out of the game and plays only the game about the game and because of the game – turning the performance into a self-referential machine. In spite of all this, the most interesting is their meeting point between the exterior and interior – and the wound that this cris-cross opens every time again.

based on performance NOT LIKE ME (Via Negativa, 2007) created by: Boris Kadin, Kristian Al Droubi and Bojan Jablanovec text by: B. Kadin, B. Jablanovec performed by: B. Kadin and K. Al Droubi music selected and directed by: B. Jablanovec video by: B. Jablanovec