elisELIS (miss e.) prostoTak

Your work moves fluidly between collage, performance, and installation. How do you decide which medium becomes the “voice” for a specific idea?

I began my artistic visual practice through film photography in high school. then at university i went deeper into fine art photography and video performances. then in 2018 i discovered collage, then moved to performance-happenings, installations, poetry, digital art, experimental theatre, and i keep exploring, and trying new things. just like a feeling- no medium for me is final. it all happens intuitively and based on observations, sometimes logically, sometimes out of curiosity. Mediums are interconnected, one can inspire the other. In the past I wrote a poem that became an inspiration for the performance, or a collage can become an idea for a video.

You describe collage not only as a technique but as a way of thinking. Could you expand on how this “collage logic” manifests in your daily life and creative process?

It’s like multi tasking, multi thinking, multi lingual, polyamory, multiple personalities, my selves. Reading a few books at the same time. everything is layered and exists simultaneously, and I catch it (metaphorically or sometimes literally) and make use of it, either it is an idea, or multiple ideas at the same time, through poetry, through visual languages, through dance, through silences.

Many of your pieces explore the body as both a landscape and a political site. How has your own physical experience shaped this exploration?

Throughout my growing life, I was obsessed with (my) body image: i went through bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, dietings, body dysmorphia, and all other types of eating and body disorders. Drug and alcohol addictions. And conquering all that on my own without help of therapists, so I consider that a valuable and huge achievement. i used collage as therapy sessions with my selves and others. Then performance art became my door into going through fears and understanding its challenges. My hobbies became – psychology, anatomy, people-watching, improvisational dancing. I consider myself healthy psychologically and physically – and in our society it is almost a revolution to stay grounded and free from addictions. So whenever I use (my or someone else’s) body in my art I don’t put any preconceived stereotypical notions into it, for me it becomes a representation of power and beauty.

What role does improvisation play in your performances compared to the more constructed nature of collage?

For me it is important to have some sort of idea which I imagine as a skeleton, and then “the full body” will emerge during the actual performance, so sometimes I don’t even know which course it will take. My art direction happens in a collaged way, thoughts appear while we rehearse, or in a dream, or before the beginning of the performance or during. I am open to spontaneous interactions and various unplanned situations. A collage artwork can become an inspiration for a performance or poem or else. And the other way around.

In works like your analogue collages, you merge human forms with objects or natural elements. What draws you to these hybrid, often surreal combinations?

Experimentations with materials. questions: what if I do that. Not worried about mistakes and fuckups, and actually looking out for them because mistakes lead to new discoveries. Natural elements are a reminder that this world is important and needs care, escaping into nature is one of the best anti anxiety tricks. “happiness is holding a flower in each hand”- Japanese proverb.

You have created performative ikebana works and digital experiments with augmented reality. How do you see technology transforming your approach to embodiment and nature?

Actually I am only in the beginning steps of discovering augmented reality for my ikebana-based project. But it makes so much sense, in a way, it is another form of collage, so it is almost an extension of an existing visual form. My creative practice still consists of mostly organic and natural ways of making things, but digital experimentations and additions are inevitable because they are so intriguing and invisible, almost like mythologies with their goddesses and gods.