Previously Imagined - A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction

Performative presentation “Previously Imagined” uses text and projected images to conjure ‘an absent performance’ - Horvat’s own piece Third Hand, staged in Chicago in 2019, which itself used text to conjure a myriad other absent performances. Using the lens of memory and the power of language to summon images, “Previously Imagined” reworks partially forgotten and playfully misremembered material from the 2019 piece to bring it into a dynamic relation with the present moment, the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of her present encounter with the audience.

“Previously Imagined” formed the final part of the opening session - also curated and convened by Horvat - of Choreographic Devices symposium at the ICA Institute of Contemporary Art London, jointly organised by the ICA and researchers from Goldsmiths University: Murat Adash, Ofri Cnaani, and Edgar Schmitz.

Titled 'Around Apart Under Behind Through Ahead', the opening session represents a continuation of Horvat’s ongoing project A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction, a framework into which invites other artists to respond to her propositions about the intertwined nature of spatial and social relations.

Focused on rethinking built and social space as an inherently choreographic act, Horvat's A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction brings the artist into dialogue with seven invited guests - artists, writers, performance makers - in an event that shifts dynamically between talks, readings, discursive presentations and performative actions. Interrogating the relation between space, objects and human interactions, especially at the point where spatial relations collapse or transform unexpectedly, Horvat’s unruly reflection on the spatial/choreographic in daily life both performs and at the same time elaborates theoretically on the ways in which normative spatial practice might be reordered to create new social, artistic and political possibilities.