The Intimacy of Otherness (2023-25) is a transmedia, multisensory performance lecture by Jatun Risba that recounts their radical self-healing journey from Multiple Sclerosis (2012–2019). In this 50-minute presentation, the artist will share the first two acts of a three-part work exploring the transformative power of storytelling and performance in reframing the “impossible” healing from an officially incurable disease as an “I’m possible” reality.
The performance lecture unfolds through a script narrated by a multitude of AI-generated voices representing diverse genders, ages, and ethnicities. These voices recount Risba’s path to holistic health, accompanied by cinematic projections of past art interventions, performances, and video works that contextualize the story. The second act transitions to narration by the artist’s cloned voice and incorporates two musical inserts. This segment expands beyond the artist’s lived experience, addressing broader societal crises, including neoliberal malaise, the absent father effect, and the devastating consequences of patriarchy and ecocide.
Through this work, Risba embodies and unveils some of the qualities needed to overcome personal and collective challenges, inviting audiences to reflect on their own transformational capacities. The presentation advocates for the creation of uncensored art spaces and co-production structures that amplify silenced, nonconforming, intersectional voices. Such spaces are vital for the sharing and preservation of grassroots regimes of truth rooted in embodied feminist, queer, and xeno practices of artistic research. Ultimately, The Intimacy of Otherness highlights the medicinal power of art as a life-giving force for trans-individual self-empowerment and growth.
Jatun Risba (they) is a transmedia artist from Slovenia whose work engages with ecofeminist and posthumanist discourses through performance art, ecoart, relational practices, and acts of détournement, abjection, and intervention. Bridging ritual and disobedience, their practice cultivates reciprocity between species by awakening sensory awareness through the application of Vajrayana Buddhist principles and subversive uses of technology. At its core, their work reimagines Art as a site for healing, transformation, and expanded modes of being. Their research unfolds along two primary trajectories: Arts for Health and Art as Nourishment for the Bodymind.
Jatun’s work has been presented internationally at Galerija O.K. (Rijeka), Crow’s Nest (Baltimore), Studio Alta (Prague), Opens (Singapore), the Prague Biennale Re-connect Art festival (2023-25), Meta.morf Trondheim Biennale (2022), Bangkok Biennial (2020), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan), and Y Gallery, Kersnikova Institute, and Cirkulacija2 (Ljubljana). They have delivered talks and workshops at DRHA 2024 (Munich), Akademia Sztuk Pięknych (Wroclaw), the University of the Underground, Goethe University Frankfurt, Strasbourg University, and the Moving Image Research Lab (Montreal).
They are the founder and co-facilitator of Be-coming Tree, a global Live Art platform fostering ecological connection through collective performance (becomingtree.live). Risba has received the a-n Artist Bursary (2019), an ERSTE Foundation Fellowship (2020), and the Social Art Award (2021). Their writings and interviews have appeared in Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Body, Space & Technology (BST), ecoartspace.org, and other publications.
Jatun holds a BA (Hons) from NABA (Milan) and a PG Cert in Art & Science from UAL, London. More at: jatunrisba.com.
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