Wetware [Jan Rozman]

Intriguing Slovenian choreographer, performer, and dancer Jan Rozman will take the stage at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Sušak (HKD) on Thursday, September 17, with Wetware — a witty and precise work that explores the relationship between the body, technology, and society through a combination of stand-up, choreography, and contemporary theory. Blending stand-up comedy, Elon Musk, and Byung-Chul Han’s theories of psychopolitics, Jan Rozman, like many men going through a crisis, embarks on a journey of self-discovery. In his new work, he asks: What is it about me that makes me never feel like I am enough? Will he manage to stop the buzzing he feels in his own body in time, or will the next screen activation once again trigger an unstoppable descent into the black hole of thinking about the impossibility of bodily autonomy? Through a choreographic intervention presented in a stand-up format, Wetware questions bodily autonomy within contemporary systems of surveillance and control. The smart devices we use every day track our movements, voices, gazes, and touches. The algorithms behind them have become better at predicting our desires than we are ourselves, while simultaneously feeding our fears. Psychopolitical systems of reward and control are reflected in the performer’s somatic processes, tissues, organs, and body. In Wetware, a title that describes the biological computer using outdated hardware and software terminology, Rozman explores the relationship between “I can”…