by Jovana Trifuljesko, Bojana Jovanović, Maja Petrović, Ana Simona Zelenović, Dunja Belić

The IMPORT/EXPORT project can be described as a long nomadic journey that connects different cities and spaces through the ways in which we experience them. It all began in Livorno in 2023, a port city where the stages were shipyards and industrial ruins. There, the performances carried traces of memory and environment, questioning how bodies and places remember change and how they endure over time.

A year later, the project arrived in Berlin. At Flutgraben e.V., a space that still carries the legacy of the Berlin Wall, performances entered into direct dialogue with the city’s history. Themes ranged from ecology, freedom, motherhood, and representation to the right to the city and gentrification, revealing how space and community are always on the edge of survival. The atmosphere was both intense and tender, with each movement reflecting a careful negotiation between the weight of the past and the urgency of the present.

In 2025, the project evolves in Belgrade, embedding itself into the very infrastructure of the city. Here, labor, displacement, and control come to the forefront as forces that shape both social relations and the material conditions of everyday life. Performance in Belgrade becomes a way to trace how these forces leave marks on bodies and spaces—sometimes visible, sometimes hidden.

Labor, displacement, and control also shape today’s power structures. The traditional relationship between employer and worker is no longer the sole framework for labor. Digital life demands constant attention, while data collection runs parallel to the need for self-management. Displacement refers to both physical movement and to a more subtle disconnection from one’s environment, due to rising costs and bureaucratic barriers. Control weaves these elements together through algorithms, biometric gates, archives, and seemingly neutral rules that in fact determine who gets noticed, who encounters obstacles, and who is excluded altogether. This is a pressing reality: as of April 2025*, the number of people globally who have had to leave their homes has reached 123 million, raising new ethical questions and making the issue of migration inescapable.

In her work 4EVER CONNECTED, Anastasija Pavić merges human and digital presence, turning personal identity into a work environment of endless scrolling. A digital anime assistant demands the user’s attention, emotions, and physical response, revealing the hidden exhaustion of constant connectivity. Alma Gačanin’s Autonomous Agent explores emotional labor, showing how obedience, care, and productivity shape both body and psyche. Eclissi Urbane / Urban Eclipses by Marie Novelle Tattanelli and Laura Sgherri examines the relationship between humans and their environment through spatial transformation, tracking how we perceive and remember it.

Movement and absence are central in Aleksander Zain’s ACTA DISTANTIAE, where walking becomes a form of testimony. The traces of displacement outline the space, as physical endurance and introspection intertwine to create a field of memory and tension. White Sheet, Salvando las distancias, and Festival by Darius Bogdanowicz evoke the responsibility of art in times of crisis, opening spaces for collective imagination. In There and Back by Tiina Lehtimäki, pushing a sofa through the city with one’s own strength becomes an encounter with shared space and cohabitation, where passersby become part of a journey defined by presence, absence, and chance. In Amerkána, Sharon Estacio uses language and narrative to open up the issue of displacement, creating a temporary community that vanishes just as quickly—reminding us of the losses that occur when memory and dialogue are interrupted. The work offers a place for rest, conversation, and reflection, as participants contribute to an ever-growing constellation of concepts and stories.

The theme of control runs throughout the works—at times overt, at times elusive. In Tijana Petrović’s, Katarina Čvorović’s, Ana Stojković’s and Ivanja Todorović’s performance Control Out of Control, the roles of border police turn into rituals, showing how rules shape people—but also how people shape the rules. Dear Lucy by Rilaben and Tina Salvadori Paz explores control through archives and fossils, extending it through time, memory, and intimate histories. Dragana Žarevac, in Am I Talking to a Wall?, confronts silence, giving form to persistence and the need to speak even when there is no reply. Eclissi Urbane / Urban Eclipses also negotiates with control through the relationship between documentation and ephemeral traces, creating a space where perception itself is directed and unsettled.

The EXPORT program deepens these processes through collective practices and workshops that combine artistic expression with the exploration of the body, space, and social contexts. In her workshop Restroy, Maja Simišić invites participants to deconstruct traditions, rituals, or everyday patterns and reassemble them into something familiar yet different—a collective act of destruction and creation that blends play, experimentation, and reflection. Marina Marković, in her workshop There Is No Reality Besides Corporeality, investigates corporeality through five tasks within clearly defined frameworks, showing how the body is shaped under constraints, repetition, and duration, while also carrying traces of history, gender, and discipline, leaving room for personal responses.

Performance within the EXPORT program is also understood as an act of transgression and resistance. In her lecture, Ivana Ranisavljević speaks of performance as a space for crossing boundaries, exposing taboos, and confronting social norms, connecting it to the contemporary social and political context in Serbia. Similarly, Ana Simona Zelenović’s lecture traces the history of performance in Serbia as a practice of resistance and transformation, from the late 1960s to contemporary experimental formats, highlighting the role of alternative spaces and student cultural centers.

Festival, featuring the performative reading by Darius Bogdanowicz, intertwines performance, literature, and documentary photography, combining personal experiences with global migration crises, making art tangible in bodies and spaces, and allowing participants to open possibilities for new, temporary communities. All of these programs demonstrate how performance functions as a space for experimentation, liberation, and collective experience, offering participants ways to reflect on their body, power, freedom, and position in society.

In these encounters—both planned and accidental—it becomes clear how movement, displacement, and control are more than just themes; they enter the realm of lived experience. IMPORT/EXPORT does not aim to solve these global issues, but it shows how art can make them visible and tangible—within bodies, within space—and through that visibility, open the possibility for new communities, however temporary.

* UNHCR. Global Trends Report. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2025. Cited in Euronews. “More than 123 Million People Forcibly Displaced by End of 2024, UNHCR Says.” June 12, 2025. https://www.euronews.com/2025/06/12/more-than-123-million-people-forcibly-displaced-by-end-of-2024-unhcr-says.

by Jovana Trifuljesko, Bojana Jovanović, Maja Petrović, Ana Simona Zelenović, Dunja Belić

The IMPORT/EXPORT project can be described as a long nomadic journey that connects different cities and spaces through the ways in which we experience them. It all began in Livorno in 2023, a port city where the stages were shipyards and industrial ruins. There, the performances carried traces of memory and environment, questioning how bodies and places remember change and how they endure over time.

A year later, the project arrived in Berlin. At Flutgraben e.V., a space that still carries the legacy of the Berlin Wall, performances entered into direct dialogue with the city’s history. Themes ranged from ecology, freedom, motherhood, and representation to the right to the city and gentrification, revealing how space and community are always on the edge of survival. The atmosphere was both intense and tender, with each movement reflecting a careful negotiation between the weight of the past and the urgency of the present.

In 2025, the project evolves in Belgrade, embedding itself into the very infrastructure of the city. Here, labor, displacement, and control come to the forefront as forces that shape both social relations and the material conditions of everyday life. Performance in Belgrade becomes a way to trace how these forces leave marks on bodies and spaces—sometimes visible, sometimes hidden.

Labor, displacement, and control also shape today’s power structures. The traditional relationship between employer and worker is no longer the sole framework for labor. Digital life demands constant attention, while data collection runs parallel to the need for self-management. Displacement refers to both physical movement and to a more subtle disconnection from one’s environment, due to rising costs and bureaucratic barriers. Control weaves these elements together through algorithms, biometric gates, archives, and seemingly neutral rules that in fact determine who gets noticed, who encounters obstacles, and who is excluded altogether. This is a pressing reality: as of April 2025*, the number of people globally who have had to leave their homes has reached 123 million, raising new ethical questions and making the issue of migration inescapable.

In her work 4EVER CONNECTED, Anastasija Pavić merges human and digital presence, turning personal identity into a work environment of endless scrolling. A digital anime assistant demands the user’s attention, emotions, and physical response, revealing the hidden exhaustion of constant connectivity. Alma Gačanin’s Autonomous Agent explores emotional labor, showing how obedience, care, and productivity shape both body and psyche. Eclissi Urbane / Urban Eclipses by Marie Novelle Tattanelli and Laura Sgherri examines the relationship between humans and their environment through spatial transformation, tracking how we perceive and remember it.

Movement and absence are central in Aleksander Zain’s ACTA DISTANTIAE, where walking becomes a form of testimony. The traces of displacement outline the space, as physical endurance and introspection intertwine to create a field of memory and tension. White Sheet, Salvando las distancias, and Festival by Darius Bogdanowicz evoke the responsibility of art in times of crisis, opening spaces for collective imagination. In There and Back by Tiina Lehtimäki, pushing a sofa through the city with one’s own strength becomes an encounter with shared space and cohabitation, where passersby become part of a journey defined by presence, absence, and chance. In Amerkána, Sharon Estacio uses language and narrative to open up the issue of displacement, creating a temporary community that vanishes just as quickly—reminding us of the losses that occur when memory and dialogue are interrupted. The work offers a place for rest, conversation, and reflection, as participants contribute to an ever-growing constellation of concepts and stories.

The theme of control runs throughout the works—at times overt, at times elusive. In Tijana Petrović’s, Katarina Čvorović’s, Ana Stojković’s and Ivanja Todorović’s performance Control Out of Control, the roles of border police turn into rituals, showing how rules shape people—but also how people shape the rules. Dear Lucy by Rilaben and Tina Salvadori Paz explores control through archives and fossils, extending it through time, memory, and intimate histories. Dragana Žarevac, in Am I Talking to a Wall?, confronts silence, giving form to persistence and the need to speak even when there is no reply. Eclissi Urbane / Urban Eclipses also negotiates with control through the relationship between documentation and ephemeral traces, creating a space where perception itself is directed and unsettled.

The EXPORT program deepens these processes through collective practices and workshops that combine artistic expression with the exploration of the body, space, and social contexts. In her workshop Restroy, Maja Simišić invites participants to deconstruct traditions, rituals, or everyday patterns and reassemble them into something familiar yet different—a collective act of destruction and creation that blends play, experimentation, and reflection. Marina Marković, in her workshop There Is No Reality Besides Corporeality, investigates corporeality through five tasks within clearly defined frameworks, showing how the body is shaped under constraints, repetition, and duration, while also carrying traces of history, gender, and discipline, leaving room for personal responses.

Performance within the EXPORT program is also understood as an act of transgression and resistance. In her lecture, Ivana Ranisavljević speaks of performance as a space for crossing boundaries, exposing taboos, and confronting social norms, connecting it to the contemporary social and political context in Serbia. Similarly, Ana Simona Zelenović’s lecture traces the history of performance in Serbia as a practice of resistance and transformation, from the late 1960s to contemporary experimental formats, highlighting the role of alternative spaces and student cultural centers.

Festival, featuring the performative reading by Darius Bogdanowicz, intertwines performance, literature, and documentary photography, combining personal experiences with global migration crises, making art tangible in bodies and spaces, and allowing participants to open possibilities for new, temporary communities. All of these programs demonstrate how performance functions as a space for experimentation, liberation, and collective experience, offering participants ways to reflect on their body, power, freedom, and position in society.

In these encounters—both planned and accidental—it becomes clear how movement, displacement, and control are more than just themes; they enter the realm of lived experience. IMPORT/EXPORT does not aim to solve these global issues, but it shows how art can make them visible and tangible—within bodies, within space—and through that visibility, open the possibility for new communities, however temporary.

* UNHCR. Global Trends Report. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2025. Cited in Euronews. “More than 123 Million People Forcibly Displaced by End of 2024, UNHCR Says.” June 12, 2025. https://www.euronews.com/2025/06/12/more-than-123-million-people-forcibly-displaced-by-end-of-2024-unhcr-says.