‘The Present’ is a fragment of a larger collaborative performance ‘The Return’, performed on a bridge in Sarajevo in September of 2011, which dealt with the issues of returning home after great trauma and moving on with life.
The performer, in order to liberate herself from fear, slowly walks on one of the arches of the bridge with a big tin pot over her head which prevents her from seeing where she is going. After successfully reaching the top of the arch even with the weight over her head, she ‘frees’ herself from this weight that was ‘on her mind’, and offers the empty pot to the ‘viewer’ as a present, to fill it with whatever they want.
This heavily symbolic little fragment of the performance deals with liberating oneself from the heavy weight on someone's mind (memories, trauma, regrets etc.) and facing and conquering one's fears (walking a possibly dangerous path and successfully reaching the goal).

performer: Elma Selman
video: Ivana Rezek
music by Kevin Macleod

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