Diona Kusari

Biography

Diona Kusari is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and researcher, cultural and arts mediator based in Kosovo. She creates performances, video and sound art, installations, short films, digital art and participatory events. Her work is concerned with illustrating the 'unseen' in terms of ideology and faith, folk practices, public expression of vulnerability, and challenging the apparent dichotomies and delineation of private space (the individual) and public space (the state, society). She's part of the Potpuri Collective, which focuses on experimental research, self-organised and decentralised knowledge production. She is also part of the first collective which creates and runs cultural and arts mediation programs for cultural institutions in Kosovo. 

Artistic project

"Probability, bias and faith or exercises in quantum entanglement" is a multidisciplinary project consisting of a series of performative acts. It explores conditioned responses, selective memory, automatised behaviors, bias and predictability. The project concerns itself with an idea that the artist has been developing and testing in the past three years, the hypothesis that all of our actions in public space are conditioned and that we are unaware to some degree of these conditioned responses. The project consists of several stages in which the artist uses performance, scripting, body as subject, mobilising community, personal memorabilia, and small-scale interventions in public space. The stages are laid out according to certain oppositional concepts as follows: (a) exploring mobility (texture, form, speed, frequency) and moving with the objects out in public vs. bringing the home (objects and actions) into public, (b) endurance performance with stillness and meditation in public space, (c) elevators and hidden cameras vs. anonymity through coverage, masks and veiling, (d) mapping noise pollutants in public space vs. exploring what type of sounds are allowed in public space through sound and voice-based live-act interventions, (e) easter-eggs in life and side-quests - adding prompts and scripts to public space) (f) publicising a treasure hunt map/RPG participatory public game. 

Format: time-based performance, sound-installation, script, indefinite public game and participatory practice, endurance act, intervention

Size of audience: from 100 to 200 people

Specific location: main square, abandoned site, residential building, park

Timing / duration: a set of actions to be carried out through three months (three of them time-based performances, two are ongoing open-ended interventions in public space)