Barbara Matijević : Forecasting (2011)

In the performance 'FORECASTING', YouTube videos become fantastic extensions of the performer's body, offering an imaginative leap into the changes that technological evolution could cause in our thoughts, cognitive processes, mental and physical habits, but also in the way we understand our bodies. Since its premiere in 2011, the play 'FORECASTING' has toured in around 35 countries across Europe, Asia, South and North America, including at many prestigious festivals such as Festival d'Avignon, Festival d'Automne, Venice Biennale, TanzQuartier Wien, Euro-scene Leipzig, Red Brick Museum and others. In 2016, she won the Special Jury Award for the best performance at the MESS Festival in Sarajevo, and in 2023, the Creator and Performer Award at the TÁNC Nemzektozi Kortárs festival in Veszprem, Hungary.

'Forecasting' is based on a collection of amateur videos downloaded from the most popular online video sharing service - YouTube. The performer manipulates a laptop on whose screen are a series of YouTube videos, all of which respect the 1:1 scale, i.e. correspond to the real sizes of people and objects. From this seemingly simple criterion, a surprising series of spatial and temporal shifts emerge. The screen becomes a place of intersection between the performer's body and the two-dimensional world of images belonging to other people, in other places. The result is a dizzying hybrid experience, a zone of indeterminacy that fluctuates depending on the nature of the videos themselves - ranging from the banality of everyday situations, actions and objects, to the possibility of their transformation into new means of self-narration.