“WHY BE IN ONE PLACE?” – in conversation with Elly Clarke and Vladimir Bjelicic on being #Sergina
Published 25th September 2020

Screenshot 2020-09-28 at 04.25.29

This conversation took place in April, 2020, when the lockdown was still new to us. Compressed from a two hours chat, Victor Sternweiler discusses the practice of #Sergina, a multi-persona drag performance ‘figure,’ that operated and operates online and offline—often simultaneously—way before our present day circumstances reduced this to a mere necessity. While discussing two performances—an online and on-site performance and another online-only performance—the artists elaborate their take on topics such drag, digital presence and parallelity, digital wellbeing, and us (or digital profiles) being dragged around in the web. Furthermore, the conversants also state their views on topics such as the necessity of bodily presence in performances which, five months later, seem to be pre-pandemic in character. Nonetheless, this conversation bears witness to the early-lockdown Zeitgeist which was marked by the urge to reflect upon the inevitable upscaling of online communication.

The performances discussed:

a) How Are You? #Sergina’s Participatory Soap Opera about Wrestling with Wellbeing in the Digital Age - performed at ONCA in Brighton, 8th June 2019. 3 minute documentation Roux Malherbe

b) How Are You? #Sergina’s Digital Participatory Soap Opera about Wrestling with Wellbeing in the Digital Age - performed and livestreamed via Zoom & YouTube on 31st March 2020

c) An Orgy of Algorithms and Other Desires and Distractions at Munich Academy of Fine Arts - 16th November 2016 with YouTube livestream:

View conversation HERE.