Performance announcement: “Civility Exercise” – Marija Iva Gocić and Rob Hesp

Civility Exercise

Performance 

Marija Iva Gocić and Rob Hesp

240’

U10 Art Space, 7.11.2025, 18 – 22h

My mouth gushes. Saliva surges forward to meet the object, the small round edge and bristles feeling their way around my gums, around the soft edges of my cheek and palette. This small formal penetration – this pressing, rubbing, inside my lips. Slow, precise, careful. Entering myself. My mouth fills, with liquid that spreads and swashes, and a kind of foam. I can feel the lightness of the foam, the bubbles in my mouth. They feel lighter than they should, something artificial or processed. Body chemicals don’t react like that. When my mouth is filled with blood later, it is heavier. Thicker. More definite, stringy. I can taste it. I can smell it. And when I open my lips and push it out, it falls into the bucket with a weighty smack, for a while refusing to mix with the other liquids present.

This feels like an apology, a denial – a courtesy, a protestation and attempt at civility. It is not in my nature only to bite, to lie or to bomb.

The exercise moves from feeling sensual and erotic to feeling like some kind of untruth, some kind of attempt to manage or maintain or present. To hide a truth rather than to reveal one.

Maybe the truth is stuck in the gaps between your teeth and soft palette, under your tongue or the round tube of your throat.