Trained as a classical painter, Ivan Svagusa’s artistic path has taken him through comics, music, graffiti – and now to interdisciplinary collaboration. For Circus Without Circus he worked with Joren De Cooman in Copenhagen and Elise Bjerkelund Reine in Reims.
You describe yourself as an academically trained painter. What was that training like?
I trained in painting at my high school, and then at the Fine Arts Academy of the university in Split.We mainly worked on life drawing and painting, and then we had lectures on anatomy, restoration, perspective. But drawing was the main thing you focused on – and you had to be able to draw anything, with any technique. Even with huge paintings you worked first on drawing and composition, because that’s what formed the basis and gave strength to your work. Composition is something that’s stayed really important in my drawings.
So there wasn’t much interdisciplinary work there?
No – conceptual art or installation work were the closest we got to another discipline, or to performance art. It was more of a classical kind of work, but I don’t see that as a problem. I think if anything the Fine arts Academy of Split should be more work-focused, because they push students too early into conceptual art without even understand drawing and painting. I really believe in hard work and in having a skill.
And outside of the training, I was interested in everything – music, film, comic books. I was also really into graffiti from an early age. Even as a small kid, going around with my mother, I would see it in the streets and think, What’s this? When I was 16, I started to do it myself.
After the academy, I had more time – because it’s hard to get a job when you’ve just trained in painting. You graduate and suddenly it feels like a senseless, meaningless thing to do – to be an artist in Split. Nothing really made sense, so the attitude was let’s just try it anyway. So I went with that and just drew, played around, played music.
And since I was a teenager I was really influenced by the punk doctrine – or let’s say the DIY way of doing things. I mean, I was into art, I was into the art world. I was going to exhibition openings, meeting lot of artists, curators, all of that.
But I really didn’t like that world. I really loved the art. I still do. But I didn’t like the world. I didn’t like the… let’s say the upturned noses you found there. I thought art was not about that.
Graffiti was like a freer form of visual art. I really liked the idea of getting out of the gallery – and of giving your work to the city. Anyone can see it: somebody’s grandma, the mayor of the town, a cleaning lady, kids, taxi drivers. Will they stop to look? Will they think about it or not? I was often surprised meeting people who knew pieces I’d done, or who’d say they looked at one every day on the way to work. And of course the next morning or a few days later what you do can disappear, or somebody can draw a moustache on it. You put your effort, time, skills and money into it, and you risk being fined because the work is illegal. But in the city, it is like a free form of visual arts – a wild form. It’s like a wild animal, a fox – she’s just there in the city doing her own thing.
Your first residency was with Joren De Cooman. Had you worked with a movement artist before?
When I first found out about Circus Without Circus I was working on the concept for a graphic novel or comic book with a friend who’s a contemporary dancer. I think I have been planning it for at least 10 years.
For a long time I’d been making soundtracks for the comic books I was drawing, and publishing them as a CD with a little book. I’d present them live and play the soundtrack live, or I’d do some kind of little performance or read a poem or something like that. So I was always thinking I needed to take it further and do something with theatre or dance.
Then when I saw the call for Circus Without Circus it was like, This is for me. Also because of the format: where you have to work all day every day and you don’t have time for doing your usual stuff.
And in the end Circus Without Circus was really intense, but I wanted it to be, because it was just two weeks. Joren and I did some Zoom meetings beforehand to brainstorm ideas, and then when we met in Copenhagen, and had this really nice space at Metropolis, I was like a hungry dog. It was like: I’ll do everything.
I guess with that sort of collaboration it’s intense, and there’s also nowhere to hide. How was it at the start, in terms of finding ways to work together?
In our Zoom conversations we’d already worked out some ideas for things to try. We did some site-specific experiments, and some of them really worked. We managed to get people involved in this game we played in the park, this game of push and pull with ropes. They were really into it, but somehow it led us nowhere. It was like, We captured them, we got them in our game. But it’s just a game, you know? We don’t want to play a game.
So instead we went back to the studio and started to warmup together. Joren would run his warmup and I’d draw it. Then slowly we experimented more and more with drawing and movement – taking the brush and using it to capture the traces of our movements. Doing the warmups started out without any ambition, but it led us to something. And I ended up with a really huge number of drawings. All through the two weeks I was constantly drawing, drawing, drawing – as fast as I could.
The volume of work really hit me when looking through the pictures from the residency…
I just left it all at Metropolis. I was joking with them that they could sell it to a contemporary art museum!
When we did our final presentation it was in a gallery space and we were surrounded by our drawings, and by all the experiments we’d done together – all of them about capturing movement and drawing while being dependent on one another. We stuck to that as a kind of rule in the residency: that we would lean on each other, and depend on each other.
What did you take away from the residency?
It taught me some new skills with drawing, like learning to use my whole body when I’m doing larger works.
We’d spend a lot of mornings talking, and Joren taught me a lot about body movement, and how important it is not to rush. I have some physical limitations due to a disability, and I can’t do everything most people can do. And what I can do is different on the third day from the fourth or the fifth – it changes.
Joren taught me to just do what I was comfortable with – and that there are no mistakes. He’d say, There are no mistakes. You’re not a circus artist, but if you’re going to do it, then do it with some kind of calmness and presence. So, what can you do?
While he was teaching me about body movement I was teaching him drawing. We crossed over into each other’s worlds a little. Of course, he is comfortable in his media. And I have mine. But it’s a different thing when you go into another artist’s universe.
Your second residency was with Elise Bjerkelund Reine. Did you feel more confident coming into that one after your experience with Joren?
You could say I had more confidence, but I also knew that it’d be something completely different. Joren works with planks of wood, ropes, acrobatics, and the audience. He has his own style of doing contemporary circus. I knew Elise was a trapeze artist and that was a totally different thing, even if it’s all part of circus.
So we did our brainstorming meetings on Zoom and we decided to work in the circular space in Reims. I was interested in it as a challenge in terms of composition – having the audience in the round.
And how was it to work there?
Well, when we got to Reims we found that the circular space, which was also a pretty small one, wasn’t available, and we had to move instead into this huge theatre space with raked audience seating going up super high.
I was really nervous, and slightly angry. Like, What am I gonna do now? It’s a completely different space. I haven’t thought about it at all. Just the two of us on this big stage, and the audience towering over us. I had this feeling the space would eat us.
So from the beginning the main concern was how to take over the space. For me that came back to composition: you have this huge space, these blank surfaces, like giant sheets of paper. But we also needed to do composition for the whole theatre: not just for the stage, for the audience as well. So we looked at how to get into the audience and really take over the space.
During the first few days I was asking myself how to do this. We were going into the space every day, doing our warmups. I started to draw Elise, and like with Joren did some layering, drawing over other drawings and getting these almost abstract forms that came from many movements, many figures, layered on top of one another. Then, as we were doing that some ideas started to slip through.
The height of the space was really great; we had these huge tall curtains behind us. I was looking at Elise on stage, this small figure, and these enormous black curtains behind her, and I realised it would be cool if I could draw onto those, and on top of Elise to capture her movement.
So we started worked with a projector and digital drawing, and I began to feel a little bit more secure. I think it connected back to graffiti and street art. Space is something really important for me. With graffiti, the neighbourhood, the town, the wall is different every time. And it was the same with this: it’s not the same if you’re doing your performance in the small space or in the big space, the round space or the regular theatre, and so you have to adapt what you do. Like when you pour water into a glass and it takes the shape that’s around it.
When I started making these big white drawings on the curtains and onto Elise it was like, Okay, now we’re doing something. The space isn’t going to eat us.
Looking back on it, the problems we had switching spaces led us to different solutions. Again, I think it’s all about doing the work. You can ask yourself what you’re going to do, and think about that, but then do something at the same time – jump into it.
In the end, our final presentation lasted 40 minutes. We did 20 minutes and then we switched places. Elise takes up the painting, and I do these movements with the rope, a kind of dance with it. Elise taught me how to do it and not be superficial with the movement, how to be more present. It showed me I could be comfortable performing on stage, in front of a big audience – even confident doing it. I really loved it.
What’s next for you after the Circus Without Circus experience?
I want to go back to my old idea of presenting a graphic novel along with some theatre or contemporary dance. I can’t do it with my friend because we never have time, so I think I’m going to have to do it by myself somehow. I won’t be dancing, but I’ll do something, I don’t know what.
In Copenhagen with Joren I met one of the other Circus Without Circus artists, Petra Najman, who’s also Croatian. We really got along, and now we’re working on something together, an interdisciplinary site-specific project called Crow without a nest, with picture book, trapeze, acro dance, music, etc, as well as a few other projects together. I also met some collaborators and friends of hers, and I’m doing some stuff with them as well. So right now I have at least three projects combining what I do with contemporary circus!
Interview by John Ellingsworth