"Restricted"

The performance “Restricted” is a solo contemporary circus project, created and performed by Elli Skourogianni, a circus artist and architect striving to bring awareness, influence and ideally change people’s mindsets regarding materiality. With strong involvement of the community of each visiting place, the artist strives to grow the project further than the performance to a series of interfering and interacting actions in the area including exhibitions, workshops and talks around the project as it grows in scale. The idea came during the latest Covid19 lockdowns and “Restricted” took off with the support from Kuenstlerstadt Kalbe in the form of a grant and a two week residency in September 2022. After that creation period, the first “pilot” performances of the project happened during BRUCCA! Festival 2022. The gathered material is under process and from September 2023 the project will reach more destinations and further develop to its exhibition and workshop sides too as Elli will be the associate artist of La Voliere in France. 

Triggered by how much our lives are dominated and trapped within the materiality and consumerism of the modern world where there is never a limit. We always want and “need” more than what we already have. This huge rise of dependence on materiality has an immense and direct impact on the environment but still, we never stop wanting more.. Do you ever wonder how much is enough? Enough for what though? Are we maybe just creating our own prisons made out of our own things? Do those things that we used to own, now own us? Those are issues and questions around the material culture and urban modern way of living that this project strives to firstly bring awareness to through the performance.

The performance is a movement dialogue between the artist, her surroundings and the materiality of the community where the show is created and performed each time. The main circus disciplines used in this piece are contortion and hand balance with complementary floor acrobatics and juggling (there will also be aerials added in the coming future). A videodance is created by Elli after each of the project’s stops. The one created from the “pilot” presentation of the project will be premiering this July in Greece. Accompanying the video dance, a series of drawings, sketches and documentations that arrive from the creation process of the project, strongly linked with the surrounding community are part of the exhibition. 

Stay tunned for further updates, links and news on the development of the project.