The starting point for Vlatka Horvat’s performance Third Hand is a collection of scenes, images, and moments that other artists and writers have recounted to her from memory. Responding to this unruly catalogue of vivid fragments, all of which focus on the performing body, Horvat creates a work that is somewhere between collage, animated archive, partial reenactment, and memory palace. Third Hand explores the ways in which performance lingers despite the processes of distortion, displacement, and erasure which take place in memory and over time, and which are amplified through the act of narration.

The human body summoned in Third Hand is a problematic, transforming, and misremembered one—mistaken for animal, ghost, object, or machine; hesitant and determined; exhausted and persisting; ecstatic, working, resting, and playing, as it is made and remade in language and in the moment of performance.

Work in progress developed and performed with Michael Thomas.

Vlatka Horvat works across a wide range of forms, including sculp­ture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, and writing. Her work is presented internationally in a variety of contexts—in museums and galleries, theater and dance festivals, and in public space. Recent exhibitions include: Croatian national Pavilion at the 16^th Architecture Biennale, Museums Sheffield, Renata Fabbri Gallery (Milan), Eastwards Prospectus (Bucharest), Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (upstate NY), Wilfried Lentz Gallery (Rotterdam), CAPRI (Düssel­dorf). Her performances have been commissioned and presented by venues across Europe, North America, and beyond, including HAU – Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), LIFT – London International Festival of Theatre, PACT Zollverein (Essen), Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna), Outpost for Contemporary Art (LA), and many others. Born in what used to be Yugoslavia, Horvat moved to the US as a teenager. After 20 years in the States, she currently lives in London, where she teaches in the Fine Art department at Central St Martins, University of the Arts London.

IN>TIME is Chicago’s triannual winter-long performance festival. The IN>TIME Festival features a season of performances, presentations, and exhibitions at venues throughout the city from local, national, and international artists.

Image: courtesy of the artist