What does it mean to be a human spectator? If a circus performance typically blends humans and objects (as apparatus, scenography, sets, equipment), what dynamic do these entities have, when present on stage, and how do they incite audience response? Who is the performance ultimately for? 

These questions and more arise when encountering Marija Baranauskaitė’s Sofa Project, a concept in which the artist performs for sofas and only marginally engaging human audiences. We could call it boundary pushing, although the artist successfully stays within boundaries—of daily life, of recognisable objects, of the comfortable companionship we all have with our sofas. What the project pushes, nonetheless, is a conversation on a (perhaps unavoidable) shift from an anthropocentric, human-centred type of performance, towards one that considers objects, environments, spaces, and things less for their service and function and more for their agency. Naturally, our normative modalities for designing spectatorship are being shaken, and it’s worth wondering whether we can imagine and design a space within (performing) arts, in which our human aesthetic pleasure is not served as a priority. We wanted to hear from Marija on all these and more. 

DYNAMO: Tell us a bit about yourself and your artistic practice.