One, 1997, video (documentation of performance)

The street performance Jedan (One), which was videotaped, was performed by Ivana Jelavia in Split, in front of the local government building. Her intention was to verify the need to develop her inner personal universe, the need to communicate with her fellow human beings, the quality of this communication and the interrelationships between her own and other "inner" universes. The performance opens with the artist drawing a spiral on the ground with a white chalk. From the initial point, the spiral soon expands in ever greater circles, taking up a large part of the sidewalk. The drawing represents the progression of personal development, while in the course of its creation it comes into contact with other people. This brings into play interactivity and communication. Each personal contact changes the artist as well as the passer-by. In order for their contact to be authentic and sincere, a "minor death" is necessary - the forgetting of oneself in order to establish the closest possible relationship with others. On the ground remains a symbolic drawing of her and other signs which are merged into a uniform shape. The project was staged there because the street represents a venue of human congregation and because it intensifies the significance of communication. The artist says that the essential element that most affects the establishment of this, as well as of her other works, is not so much the external circumstances and events, as the power of inner mental processes. The human inner world (the soul and spirit) unfolds continuously, changing its limits, constantly moving along the edge between the micro and the macro universe, between the "I" and "the other". And it is precisely these mental processes, this power, that wants to break out and be embodied.