THE LAST POSSIBILITY PRO
The society of spectacle casts a deep shadow on a theatre. In a sense, it makes the theatre an accomplice in the crime of manipulation. However only when we combine names with words in bourgeois order and associate the theatre with performances understood as shows, something to watch and admire. If we join it to the representation rather than to the participation. If the theatre is a place where performances, plays and actors are sold as
products and, as a matter of fact, so is the spectator, similarly to people admiring from behind a safety glass Mona Lisa changed into a merchandise.
Such a theatre seems to be in no way different from a shopping gallery. The audience isolated from what is called spectacle admires actors alienated from what they call an art. All of them return home deeply deluded. Not necessarily are they 'dissatisfied' because it is the consumption mechanism that begins working here. This gives the false sense of fulfillment before it opens the black abyss of depression when we realize that what we want to possess is not us and, as a result, is unconquerable and will always prove its soulless indifference and superiority. Paradoxically, the theatre is one of the last places which is able to defuse the society of spectacle and oppose the mechanism of Capitalism that functions on religious rights. It is not because of mass influence but with regard to the exceptional subversive power resulting from a direct human – human contact which gives an opportunity to go beyond the captivating bounds of the lack of participation, provided that this contact is not contaminated with performance and acquires a high artistic quality (both conditions are rare and awkward to fulfill). It allows us to enter something that is kept away from us and is impertinently called 'life'. What is peculiar (and beautiful!) is that various artists attain their goals by means of completely different explorations.
I came across the theories of Giorgio Agamben for the first time thanks to René Pollesch's theatre. When he brought his Hallo Hotel!... spectacle to TR Warsaw in 2006, Agamben was hovering above it like a ghost above waters. One of the themes underlying the discussion in the performance was an included in Homo sacer theory of the expansion of concentration-camp structure on the whole present day. Regardless of the discussed topic, the performance contained typical for Pollesch's language processes; above all, open aversion to the representation.
Actresses appearing in the play, as usually, did not create any roles or characters. At first glance they played the same role for the text as lettuce plays for Vinaigrette sauce, namely, it transports flavor and calories. Actresses transported senses; they could not build any illusion. Therefore, they were surrounded by trash scenery with a stamp of sale rubbish set on. In the remains of shop-windows splendor, among meaningless and looking as if they were taken out of compost trade marks of huge and desirable corporations, women, with samples of adorable bags from Louis Vuitton, launched sentences which were impossible neither to remember nor to understand at first listening. Perhaps they were conceivable but surely impossible to analyze into pieces of sense. Revealing the infinity of foolishness of being attached to the consumption idols (Sacher hotel as an embodiment of both luxury and a place of absolute deprivation and oppression) and destroying our hopeless admiration for alleged order, actresses threw the audience off the common way of thinking, forbade to use patterns and questioned all beliefs. They conducted a strange profanity which was deep-rooted in the sacredness of consumer reality and cooperating with it consumer imagination.
Agamben's latest book Profanations was published in Polish (Profanacje). René Pollesch is producing Ragazzo dell'Europa spectacle in TR Warsaw.
Profanations treats, mostly, about the praise of desecration. It is the process which gives back to people all that they have agreed to give away without knowing that their voluntary agreement would soon turn out to have all signs of enforcement. "What was unavailable and isolated loses its aura and can be brought back to usage as a consequence of profanation". Such a game is very subtle and slight. It is not revolutionary but purely intellectual. Yet, the stake is high: participation. That is why the theatre is an appropriate profanation tool. Indeed, participation is here the principle of an event, starting and final point and the highest aim. (Not always; in fact, only in rare cases but there is no point in discussing it further. Let's assume that theatrical shopping galleries are not interesting). The profanation of Capitalism is the only chance to survive. Agamben said, "Capitalism as a religion tries its best aiming not at redemption or hope but at guilt and despair. Hence its purpose is not to change the world but to destroy it". Pollesch does not run a propaganda theatre and he does not agitate; he even says he is not the opponent of Capitalism. However he considers himself to be its victim and therefore goes into a deep and sharp polemic with it. He knows from Agamben and from his own experience that "the capitalistic religion at its radical stage aims at creating absolute Non-profanation. Moreover, because of its stubbornness, it captures new areas. An example would be pornography which could be seen as an offence territory, but yet, it is a sphere of complete enslavement and manipulation; a separation from participation. Similarly, the theatre, which used to have mission of meeting and participation, became a place of pure and soulless representation and thus separation and inability to be owned by both viewers and actors; a place of usage but not experience. The game became a product; it bowed to the market.
That is how important are texts which Pollesch writes for his plays: "Perhaps actors must become somebody else again! If everybody plays and pretends like they do. Maybe they should rather consider their situation here and think out how to desecrate their neo-liberal biographies instead of performing anything. After all, I cannot always play in museums. All the glamour needs to be profaned. It is the financial face of the art of lying, techniques of remaining on the surface! This face cannot have only exhibition value. It must earn its living". It is one of the manifestos of Pollesch's theatre. Therefore he creates a theatre which is ostentatiously non-theatrical; at least on the surface. He breaks with the representation. Actors lead an odd existence. They do not create any characters, nor do they show themselves. They are turned into transmitters of the text which is actually a burden to them. Despite of that, they must perform it no matter what. Of course, the theatre is not limited to the utterance. It is a place of birth of highly subtle relations among actors, as well as between them and a video-camera which stubbornly records and reveals what goes on backstage. These relations are neither emotional nor psychological. Their nature is very ambiguous but has something similar to this elusive magic which can be obtained only in the theatre. Bringing a video-camera to a dressing-room causes an audience's great dream comes true. An actor is not able to go backstage because, even there, he remains visible. In this way, the actor (his body, voice, thoughts and emotions) becomes an instrument of denial of common convictions and banal senses. It devastates thinking patterns and the norm. Even if the actor himself cannot participate in the world of spectacle, together with the viewer he intensifies the power and ability of profanation. Life contact of human-actor with human-spectator constitutes the ideal starting point for desecration, which means for regaining what became lost, isolated and out of reach. It may be even the only situation in contemporary society that makes profanity possible. It is the theatre where many experts of desecration can be found. Perhaps every theatre has its own masters.
It is a strange feeling when we suddenly discover the theory which justifies our emotions, in fact, very intimate and not willing to surrender to a discourse. The reading of Agamben's book, first that was published in Polish and also his latest work, is a stroke of illumination, as it would be said by the characters of Angels in America. I will not undertake its summary since Agamben's theories are extremely sophisticated and multi-plotted, while I am exploring only one strand here. These theories, however, name precisely my discreet intuition which explained my fascination with the theatre (I think not only mine). In the world which more and more separates us form everything else and persuades us, at the same time, that everything is for us, only the theatre can give pleasure and a full experience of participation because it is ready to desecrate the reality. In Death of a Trainee (Der Tod eines Praktikanten), of which première took place this year in Berlin, Pollesch shows three actresses wearing evening dresses form H&M. They are trying to get to brightened, printed on foil fronts of shops, restaurants and banks. They are bouncing against them, like flies against a window pane, convinced that they will eventually succeed. It turns out, though, that the only way to do it is to tear and destroy the foil. It is the easiest and most expressive picture that shows violent profanation which lets us regain what we have lost.
An actor, devoting his own physicality, intellect and spirituality, becomes a challenge for the viewer. He is not a product (of course, only when he does not permit to treat himself like one and does not consider himself in “everything for sale” category). His humanity and his face are issues that the audience must get along with. He must unite the meeting which is real and much more intensive than the majority of casual meetings without any meaning. This contact allows humanity to be profaned and enables human nature to be brought back to the sphere of possibility of mutual meeting. What follows is a de-alienation of man and restoration of the right importance to his issues and his position in the world.
The theatre possesses another crucial characteristics which constitutes his profane attractiveness. It is a place where magic is established at times. The magic that we long for since the loss of childish illusions, magic possibilities and faith in it and its miraculous influence which without any effort, in magic way, can change the whole world. The theatre can cast the spell, however, not by building scenic illusion because it has lost its sex appeal a long time ago and awoke suspicions in people. The magic in the theatre is born by peculiar condition of an actor who remains human with all his qualities and who, taking the stage, enlarges the power of his influence. He acquires extra mightiness which is given to him by the uniqueness of the place that is exposed to the general sight and estimation. The human-actor becomes somebody more on the stage. He gains specific authority resulting from the social agreement to state that he is someone special. The actor performs the act of profanation on our behalf; he bravely questions (but will he get away with this?) the world's order. We may follow him and take what is ours. This ideal vision of substantial theatre, that is to say, theatre possessing causative power, proves only in very few theatrical models. To make it happen, the actor must realize that his assignment or role does not lie in telling a particular story or showing other people's life and problems, being, at once, as close as possible to described characters and their emotions, thoughts and inner states. This kind of theatre stands in the center of the museum that Agamben describes (and it is hard to deny his view) saying that “musealisation of the world has already happened”. Taking over the function of the temple in Capitalism understood as a religion, it became the place of division. The theatre in which living people meet every evening has the possibility to destroy museum structure of the present day in which the whole art got stuck. It is impossible to overestimate his subversive, or according to Agamben, profanatory power.
In his theatre scripts (he directs only his own plays), Pollesch refers directly to the theory of contemporary philosophers (for instance Foucault, Baudrillard, Agamben). He makes use of the theatre in order to directly try out theoretical issues on living organism and to join theory and life together, no matter how banally it sounds. He orders his actors to look at their own experiences through Agamben's filter. He is very radical at this point. He creates something that no longer belongs to post-dramatic theatre, but is a part of post-theatre in which theatricality in itself is strongly questioned as a mechanism collaborating with a neo-liberal capitalistic lie. At the same time, Pollesch is aware of the unbelievable power of the theatre. Questioning everything, he desecrates as much as possible. And despite of being frequently identified with the primitive agitating theatre, he is not involved in it at all. It is the theatre that provides the ability to profane on an appropriate standard, namely, intellectual one.
The potential of profanation and activities heading for conducting the profanation in Polish theatre are extremely strong as well. Taken from the old romantic school which does not allow an artist to self-satisfaction luxury, they quickly, intuitively found themselves in the new reality where processes of depriving us of access proceeded at a rapid rate. As rapidly arose the depression related to the fact that "Capitalism as a religion tries its best aiming not at redemption or hope but at guilt and despair. Hence its purpose is not to change the world but to destroy it" (Agamben). Whereas the theatre believing in world's ability to change, at least considering people, and having at its disposal a tremendous revolutionary power which is generated by intentional, but not accidental, meeting of living people, could defend the spectator changing him into a participant. In this way Krystian Lupa, Krzysztof Warlikowski and Grzegorz Jarzyna were discovered. Their theatre does not “give performances” but creates conditions for audience to take part in the reality. It is noticeable especially in the strategies of treating the viewer which are introduced in Warlikowski's theatre. Younger producers also build their spectacles on the strong contact with the audience. However, they do not want to answer audience’s needs but have a sharp discussion, or often an argument, and consequently awake the ability to get engaged. Paradoxically, in this matter dishonest intentions, mock engagement and false concern are exceptionally evident.
Agamben's text not only precisely names my private fondness for the theatre or the involvement in it but also explains its advanced selectivity. Absorbing is only the theatre which does not participate in the process of increase in non-profanatory spheres, does not enlarge alienation museum and does not take part in the “pornographisation” of art. The theatre is a place where we can find chance to regain the magic that was irrevocably lost during adolescence, and that is to say, the chance to return to the state of childhood when “everything was possible”. As far as the social conditioning of various branches of art is concerned, none of those branches has as much power as the theatre. This power results from the connection between the meeting now, here and for real (that is why the meeting must really take place) and the possibility to discuss, experience and create disillusioned magic. Additionally, theatre is the amusement which is the best means of restoring the interest and profanation.
Theatre reveals here another asset which enables to desecrate the capitalistic religion. In spite of the fact that the theatrical discourse of words and emotions should be true, it usually runs in sham reality, decorations, imitations and copies. This is its nature. Pollesch, usually co-working with Bert Neumann, organizes his theatrical worlds in decorations that are trash, apparently theatrical and confuse sham brilliance with crap which both turn out to be the same. The great sale, the kingdom of copies and imitations, pirated scans and junky household equipment which are anyway worthless of imitating. And after all, original brand is the greatest sacredness and fetish of the Capitalism as a religion. How easy it is to treat it in demolishing way! It would be enough to make an imitation and sell it ten times cheaper; to produce plenty of imitations in such a way that distinguishing between the original and the imitation would be pointless; to change the religion into its own discredit and not pretend that false bags from LV can be worn only by black women and Russian women. Anybody can profane. And everybody should do it.
Piotr Gruszczyński
Translated by Klaudia Makowska
The article comes from the quaterly Krytyka Polityczna issue no. 13 (2007)