Floor-level projectors encircle a blank stage, a transparent box magically moving, and Matea Bilosnić herself, who strides, matter-of-fact, onto the stage. She lays down, nestling on her elbows, and announces: ‘day one’. The beams of light from the projectors create a starfish shape on the floor, the sound conjures soothing meditation chimes, deep-sea gurgles, night-time owl hoots.
With low hip-hop knee twists, or yoga-like leg sweeps, Bilosnić swivels around the circle to settle on her back and declares she’s ‘never seen such a storm’. By turn she recites weather forecasts and describes actions like ‘entering’, ‘re-entering’, ‘representing’ in poetic cadence. At one point, smoke billows from the wings and the magic box’s internal bulbs blink a furious lighthouse-like warning. Despite this, she confesses that she is the ‘indecisive captain of this ship’.
Wandering through time – ‘day three’ – and from the pragmatic to the personal – ‘I still do not speak to my father’ – Never ALLone’s unwillingness to point in any clear direction means we too are at sea.
Oonagh Duckworth
A strange voice – Matea Bilosnić’s, controlled to mimic a digital personal assistant – addresses the audience. Sometimes it recounts a turbulent boat outing during a storm; other times, it narrates the writing process behind the performance itself. What feels singular in this piece is the exploration of verticality – without ever jumping or seeking precarious elevation.
What begins as a lyrical sequence shifts into a duet with a transparent-box robot. She moves around and atop it, shaping her body to fit its rigid form. Eventually, the robot clears the stage, literally, bumping into lighting spots and ceramic moulds. This creates a vertical frame through which the piece unfolds, the performer and the machine jointly embodying the storm experienced by her father in the story.
As questions of memory and belonging rise, she smashes ceramic casts of her own body, swinging them from high to low – introducing the first true horizontal action: fragments scattering left and right. She exits. The robot remains, condemned to navigate the debris alone, bound to a horizontal fate it cannot escape. The machine evokes body, vessel, natural elements, and companionship – what does it say about our tendency to recreate memory bubbles instead of sparking new connections?