Barbara Novakovič: Hortus Conclusus – Garden

Hortus Conclusus is a garden genre, an enclosed space divided into quadrants. The enclosure is simple: a wall or decorative wall or a woven wool fence. It acts as a curtain, like a veil that covers the nakedness of the body (Dominique Clévenot writes about the aesthetics of the veil) or perhaps a theatre curtain, an interspace that both separates and joins two key paradigms of stage art. Architect and architectural theorist Gottfried Semper, in his Theory of Dressing (Bekleidungstheorie), identifies fabric as the primal form of art and states that construction began with draping structures in fabric. Tents are depicted in the stone reliefs of ancient cultures, showing the aberrations of their shapes in response to various weather conditions.

Allegories Trilogy, 2022–2025 

The trilogy Allegories, 2022–2025, consisting of three dance projects and a synthesis performance, is being developed in the period from 2022 to 2025. The subject of the three-part project is allegories – the prism of time in the framework of iconographic paths woven by poetry, literature and fine arts. 

The programme of the Muzeum Institute is conceived as a series of platforms, that is, trilogies, which overlap and supplement its contents over several years: the Dynamics of Space in Art trilogy, 2016–2019 was focused on the phenomena of spatial dynamics as the changing surroundings in which the body resides; the Sleep trilogy, 2019–2021, stemmed from the abundant iconography of depictions from sleep in relation between vigilance and dreams. 

The first part of the trilogy Allegories, the dance performance Allegories of Months – Attributes, 2022, is based on the motif of monthly cycles with attributes that encompass the life of nature (flora) in the context of the tension between tasks and the sensory and emotional impulses to which life gives rise. 

The second part of the trilogy, Allegories – Fragments, is a performance focusing on the physicality and visuality of dance language through the specifics of nature and the rhythm of work, as a rhythm determined by astral forces (Ovid, Verij, Flak …). This triptych was explored in the genre embodiments from historical cycles in literary and visual arts paradigms from Antiquity to the Renaissance. The third part of the trilogy, a dance-theatre performance entitled Hortus Conclusus – Garden, 2024, will traverse the relationships between the external appearance of phenomena and cosmological compositions based on the principles of the natural elements (winds, rivers, moons, Zodiac constellations) and the mathematical systematisation of calendars and encyclopedias. The trilogy Allegories will conclude with the performance, The Offering, 2025, which will reference the liturgy of celebration and the theme of the splendid image of moons and other natural personifications marked by festivals and rituals.

Muzeum 30 Years
As part of Muzeum Theatre’s 30th-anniversary celebration, Muzeum Institute, in collaboration with SLOGI – Slovenian Theatre Institute and Cankarjev dom, is organising a discussion that will follow the première of the performance Hortus Conclusus directed by Barbara Novakovič on 9 September 2024, in Linhart Hall.

Participants will include Blaž Lukan, Tomaž Toporišič, Jana Pavlič, Marijan Rupert and other co-creators of Muzeum Theatre and the publication scheduled for release by SLOGI in the spring of 2025. 
Primož Jesenko will moderate the discussion.

Barbara NOVAKOVIČ (1963, Celje) is a stage director, producer and curator, as well as the founder and director of the Muzeum Institute Ljubljana. She studied art history and the sociology of culture at the Faculty of Arts, University of  Ljubljana, and enrolled at the University of Ljubljana, Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (UL AGRFT), where she graduated in stage acting in 1993. In the same year, she founded the Muzeum Theatre and decided to work as a freelance author and producer. She conceived and directed a number of stage performances and also curated a few innovative international exhibitions. She has produced numerous first creations for the stage by authors stemming from other fields of creation (architecture, visual arts, dance, film, theory). In her projects, she occasionally functions also as a performer or a stage designer.