(soft piano music)
Good evening, everyone.
And welcome to the fourth episode
of the School of Resistance,
a live stream format that invites experts
on change around the world
to discuss valuable
alternatives for the future,
and to create a blueprint
for politics of resistance.
The project is a collaboration between
NTGENT IIPM Akademie der Künste Berlina
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
and HowlRound Theater Commons.
This fourth episode is
titled "Why Theatre?"
which is also the title
of the upcoming book,
the fifth part of a series of golden books
that NTGENT publishes with
the Berlin Verbrecher Verlag
and it will be published in October.
My name is Kaatje De Geest
I am co-editor of the "Why Theater" book
together with Milo Rau
and Carmen Hornbostel.
And today we will have a conversation
with two contributors in the book,
Prof. Chantal Mouffe and Nora Chipaumire
whom I will introduce in a
bit more detail in a second.
We're very happy that they
are with us this evening.
Thank you once again.
Thank you for having us.
Apart from Chantal Mouffe
and Nora Chipaumire
we have asked over a hundred activists,
artists and intellectuals worldwide
to reflect on the current state of theater
and performing arts.
Their answers ranging
from utopian manifestos,
invented dialogues, love letters,
and personal memoirs,
compose a global polyphony
of voices and make a strong case
for theater in emergency.
Before I introduce our guests,
we will watch a compilation
of the 106 contributions
from the book, "Why theatre?"
SANDRA: The question why theater
is almost like asking why water?
MARK: Everything around you is theater.
You are theater.
SANDRA: Watering the plants,
listening to classical music,
thinking about what's
going on in the world.
Reading poetry drinking tea with cardamom.
MARK: My mother's warm hand in mine,
no more distance between us,
no more distance between any of us.
It was theater, I still did not know.
SANDRA: The theater is about everyone.
MARK: The gestures that
look like life, but are not.
SANDRA: What kind of show are you putting
on the stage of our planet?
MARK: We create theater for the pleasure
we experienced during rehearsals
sitting there in the dark,
watching the stage.
SANDRA: In the years to come,
we will need to use all our creativity
and joy of experimenting to deal
with the repercussions
that inevitably will come.
MARK: Today it is dance,
theater and tomorrow it
will be something else.
SANDRA: Theater is a powerhouse
which produces the energy
of its own destruction.
MARK: Theater is a dead art form.
SANDRA: The dead are asking why theater.
MARK: The poor, that is what theater is
and why theater could never disappear.
SANDRA: Theater creates futureness.
MARK: It is a step into the void.
SANDRA: Theater is a
rehearsal of the revolution.
MARK: Every time we stage,
we should factor in the possibility
for it to become an actual revolution.
SANDRA: Who is the hated
Prometheus of our time?
Who is the visionary?
MARK: I need someone to think.
SANDRA: It is no coincidence
that the fall of the Berlin wall,
the velvet revolution in Prague
and the revolution that
led to the creation
of Belgium began in the theater.
MARK: It's not about producing art.
It's about implementing it.
SANDRA: Whether you
want to admit it or not,
theater is ideological.
And when I became aware of this,
I just knew that I would do anything
to occupy those theater
spaces with my Roma body.
MARK: Need I say more?
SANDRA: Theater is
political, just like bread.
MARK: Mr. Shakespeare, you are wrong.
The actors are more
important than the stage.
SANDRA: Quixote, Robin Hood, Hamlet,
we must not only portray them.
We must become them.
MARK: The more art, especially
the performing arts, takes
on the role of wanting
to be of benefit to society.
The more it opens itself up
to regulation by state bodies.
On the other hand, who would want art
that believes itself to be completely free
of the gravitational
fields of social conflict.
SANDRA: Questioning the social theater
allows us to question the
system in which we evolve
and which is deployed
even in our own flesh.
MARK: Between fiction and reality
an opportunity for imagination emerges.
SANDRA: The Greeks in their theater looked
at the vast sea the medieval theater
looked at heaven and hell mouth.
And we, all we look at is darkness.
MARK: Since that evening,
my boredom in ordinary
life began in my job
on my travels in my marriage,
even in front of my children.
SANDRA: Doesn't theater become itself
also through disappearance.
MARK: Because here as
watchers and as watched,
we are always breathless of the same air
neutral authors of each silence.
SANDRA: Why not.
MARK: Theater now needs
to be lighter on its feet,
examine its large
administrative structures,
reduce its operational carbon.
Be more flexible in how it moves between
the digital and the life.
SANDRA: Theater is the way to connect
with our ecological being
with what we have always
been natural beings
with the capacity to symbolize.
MARK: How can I trust the choreographer
director dance or theater company
that contributes to global warming?
SANDRA: How to cope with a room
with black walls and artificial
light inhabited by liars.
MARK: The obstinately insist on wanting
to make theater, while
we could do voluntary
social work for so many invisible people.
SANDRA: Will you design sets
for place about refugees
when you could design tools
to cut through the border fences.
MARK: We produce too much
in too little time and too expensive.
SANDRA: I do not want
art to exist as a luxury.
When what it does should be a necessity.
MARK: Precisely because
it is not essential.
SANDRA: No panic.
MARK: Because everyone
knows what theater is
because nobody knows.
SANDRA: Answering why can give
a false sense of security,
a false sense of understanding.
MARK: It is very likely that
the answer I give to this question on
may 26, 2020 will not be
valid on the day you read it.
This is a lesson I have
learned from theater itself.
SANDRA: I think my fear, my
dread to answer the question,
why theater and provide
my essential contribution
to this work is somehow rooted in the need
for originality or in
the need of being loved,
liked excepted applauded.
MARK: Listening to the victim
who whispers remember me in our ear.
SANDRA: Theater actually cries
for all of your attention.
MARK: A book you can
just put aside or a way
theater you cannot.
This is the radical power that theater has
the suspension of freedom.
SANDRA: We want to defend the theater
because we want to defend our freedom.
MARK: I am tired of the metaphors,
the poems, the prayers,
and all the Jesus-said turn
the other cheek bullshit.
SANDRA: Because I'm not religious,
it is the temple in which I reflect.
MARK: Because theater is
the right of presence.
SANDRA: We must preserve the moments
in which we dedicate
ourselves to the mysteries.
MARK: The only salvation
of our ancient dance
around the fire is
that human beings want
to see others take risks,
make something happen that does not exist.
SANDRA: A fantasy that
the world had ended.
And we had to build a new one.
We made memories.
Sometimes we lost control.
MARK: Thinking of the end
of the world in costume.
SANDRA: Chaos becomes order.
MARK: Because it made me
feel like I could breathe.
SANDRA: Because it is an act
of resistance and a freedom,
a sensible experience of beauty
of violence and of the
vulnerability of the living.
MARK: Why friendship?
Why sorrow?
Why war?
Why sensibility?
Why Hieronymus Bosch?
SANDRA: Do atoms dance, do flowers dance,
do birds dance, do clouds
dance, do stars, dance.
MARK: Finally, we will not
stop fighting for beauty.
The pursuit of beauty is
the torture of the soul.
SANDRA: Hearing the previous requiem,
looking at the upcoming madness,
all turning into expression.
MARK: My definition of
theater is fiction coming
to life right in front of you.
SANDRA: In its physical reality
and primitive truthfulness
theater is eternal.
MARK: However, these days the theaters
are empty and dark and the action
takes place on the streets as it should.
SANDRA: If we stripped away everything
that isn't essential to
theater, what would be left?
MARK: One can see how people
decide in times of need.
SANDRA: During this epidemic,
we see many musicians
playing at home dancers,
dancing at home writers,
reading poems aloud
at home as such bringing the territory
of art back to the base of life.
MARK: Let's need each other more
instead of trying to be
saviors of one another.
SANDRA: Sometimes between
collecting the dead,
letting wounds heal and surviving,
we take to the streets and sing our rage.
MARK: Whatever you do, stay together.
SANDRA: I long for a theater
that makes me feel like a stranger
among my people, family and friends.
MARK: There is a fifth glass wall
between the stage and society
waiting to be torn down.
SANDRA: So honey can you imagine
a world without large crowds of people?
MARK: Oh no, Sandra,
how to echo in the elusive
and real experience.
The theater is a little story,
strongly intertwined with history.
SANDRA: How to speak to audiences
from all social
backgrounds while surviving
in the midst of ephemera
trends and fashion.
MARK: Is theater while our civilization
has started to fall apart going to
find a new language and form, or will
it just go down with
all the rest wriggling
and shouting in closed spaces?
SANDRA: Theater does not entertain me.
It angers me to the bone.
MARK: Theaters are fantastic.
It's not just the building.
Once the theater is no longer there,
the building also loses its cool luster,
its power, its inevitability.
SANDRA: Shakespeare had to compete
with popular dog fights
and public torture.
The people were overcome by so much fun.
Yet Shakespeare still loved people
and working together and theater.
MARK: Escalation.
SANDRA: The play we are watching
is about total surrender.
The drama is cosmic and
encompasses all life.
The play has no director,
no script, no final outcome.
MARK: Because you can't forget that scene
towards the end of the evening.
SANDRA: We may have forgotten
what we saw while drinking the first pint
after performance or we
carry images sounds smells
with, for the rest of our life.
MARK: It was there that I thought maybe
the purpose of theater was
to offer the state of
being incomprehensible.
SANDRA: Confusion is a
great responsibility.
MARK: There was no riddle,
no hidden meaning Susan's
Sontag was God, okay.
SANDRA: As a privileged terrain
for the mobilization of effects
and the construction of new subjectivities
theater practices are crucial
in the hegemonic struggle.
MARK: Our Oprah is a village.
SANDRA: In reality artivism
is often nothing more than a powerless
grandchild of two outdated
Western traditions,
the historical avant-garde
and the petty bourgeois
experience of art.
MARK: I'm talking to you about theater,
revealing the gods and demons,
the tight deep within our souls.
SANDRA: Aeschylus was chosen to write
the victory celebration of
the Greeks over the Persians.
He instead produced the most
heartrending lamentation
for the mothers and widows of
the slain Persian warriors.
Why to achieve catharsis.
MARK: The first thing I did
on the 2002 Israeli military
invasion and curfew in the West bank
was to go back to dancing
after years of interruption.
SANDRA: Theater is both
an escape from reality
and a representation of that reality.
MARK: In South Africa in those days,
theater was one of the
first places of breaking
the boundaries that apartheid, enclosed.
SANDRA: The timing is not
great for a celebration,
but like always we are stronger together.
MARK: Even God wasn't content to publish
and spread his thoughts and commandments
by dictating them to profits of all types,
but apparently found
their embodiment through
a son necessary and meaningful.
SANDRA: In our dreams, we are naked
and unprepared curtain up.
MARK: He feels confused about
the question that someone just asked him.
He gets down on his knees in front
of the grave and asks, is
that grandmother, Eva-Britt.
SANDRA: What is the most
important thing in your life?
MARK: Theater.
SANDRA: Okay, why do
you like theater Mark?
MARK: I've seen theater,
but then he laughs and bows.
Those were some quotes
from the contributions in the book.
And now I will happily
introduce our guests
Nora Chipaumire is a choreographer
and performer born in Zimbabwe,
and currently based in New York.
With her work, she has been challenging
and embracing stereotypes of Africa,
the Black performing
body art and aesthetics
for two decades, her work
critiques colonialism,
and complicated notions of
spectator ship and power
and fuses the personal
and political experiences
of growing up in Zimbabwe.
Questioning how status
and power are experienced
and presented through the body.
Nora Chipaumire is a four
time Bessie award winner
and was a proud recipient
of the Trisha McKenzie
Memorial award in 2016,
for her impact on the dance
community in Zimbabwe,
other accolades include
the Guggenheim fellowship
and the Doris Duke artists award.
She is currently a fellow at
Quick Center for the arts at
Fairfield university and
an artist in residence
at the lower Manhattan cultural council.
Chantal Mouffe is a
Belgian political theorist,
especially known for
Agonistic Theory of Democracy.
And professor (indistinct)
at the university of
Westminster in London.
She has held research
positions at Harvard, Cornell,
The New school and
Princeton among many others.
Her most recent book for a left populism
was published by Verso in 2018.
In her theories she defends
what she calls a dissociative
conception of politics.
According to which politics
has to do with conflicts
specifically with those
that are called antagonistic
because they cannot have
a rational solution.
This is why according to Chantal Mouffe
democracy cannot do without conflict.
Conflict is the driving
force of democracy.
Her view on politics and society inspires
other thinkers, but also resonates
with political movements such as Podemos
in Spain and La France Insoumise in France
of which she is a prominent analyst.
So before we start the conversation,
I quickly want to remind
the audience at home
who are watching live, if they want
to engage in the conversation,
you're very welcome to send us questions
either by email,
@schoolofresistance@NTGENT.BE
or by commenting on the
live stream on the Facebook pages,
that's either on NTGENT
or IIPM's Facebook page
or on Twitter via the #schoolofresistance.
So as we are now talking about a book
that has not been published quite yet,
maybe it would be a great idea to start
at the contributions that
you both have written
for the book.
Maybe Nora, we could start with yours.
Your contribution starts off with a date.
So very specific date,
April 16th, 2020 as if it were a letter.
So maybe you could expand on how you took
on this question of "Why theater?"
why you opted for the letter format
and for example, over
the manifesto format,
which you have also been known to write.
Yeah, I like thank you so much.
And hello, everybody,
it's wonderful participate
on this platform, I like participating
in anything that has the potential
for resistance or to think about
what resistance could be so I'm
really quite happy to be with you.
Why the date, that's that's the exact date
I was thinking about how to respond
to this invitation, which I
was more than chuffed about.
And I think something to do
with timelines April 16, 2020,
it was also at 1:37 p.m.
that I started to jot down my thoughts,
something to do with mocking that moment,
especially in these times where it seems
like time seems to ebb and flow in a way
that you can't quite put your finger on.
It seems to be perpetual time, you know,
because nothing apparently happens.
I am, I have been in my apartment
for the longest time since I can remember
living in New York city, so that date,
the marking of the date seems
to me to be kind of an important way
to start and also to kind of market as,
as a letter to myself,
we hardly write letters anymore.
My practice is handwriting first
before I type anything out because
I'm old enough to have
learned how to use pen
and paper, you know, so I, you know,
that feeling of writing almost a letter
to myself and dating it
and then thinking through why
theater could be important,
even that gesture of writing the date
seemed to be, you know,
a theater in, you know,
I come from a culture that is dedicated
to theater in general, like storytelling.
And you'll always say in the beginning,
(laughing)
you always start the
story as in the beginning.
So that date seemed to me to be a way
to say in the beginning.
I don't know if I should go on more
about my contribution I mean,
I go on to ruminate about daydreaming,
about my mothers and grandmothers
and aunties and family,
and thinking about "Why Theater?"
and removing it from a Western thinking
of what theater is
and returning it to a place
where I've experienced things as theater,
which is at home, which is,
receiving guests, cooking with relatives,
those sort of gatherings that I,
I think as a way to decolonize,
the spectacle of theater,
which I think when we say theater,
we all mean those things
that happen in a space
that is dedicated to theater
and not many of us are invited
or have the opportunity
to enter into that space,
which is also equally a business,
which is also about,
you know, the class you belong to,
which is also about an ability to,
to use a certain language
that is deemed as theater.
So yes, I was attempting to write a letter
and that removed from
the space of business
or from commerce into a space that felt
very much like home to me.
And in that sense, you know,
a very optimistic space that, that space,
as long as the annihilation of,
black bodies is a constant thought
in our brains,
that space of theater at home will remain.
And so I'm optimistic about that.
Yeah I also wanted to maybe ask you
about it 'cause in an interview
with (indistinct) last year,
you have stated, and I quote
the words come after the
body is needed to think.
Maybe you could give
some insights in how you
like how the thinking process happens
for you as a choreographer
where the body comes before the words.
Yes, and I would also hasten
to say that that word choreographer
is what people put on me, you know,
I don't quite own that word personally.
I think it also exists outside of myself.
The body has to be present
for things to happen,
and the body itself, the
bone marrow, the cells,
the musculature, places
where thinking happens,
organization happens,
understanding happens,
meaning happens, language
is created and happens.
So without it you have nothing.
Again, the entirety of my work as,
as an artist is to move away
from this space of whiteness,
which kind of
separates the head and the body,
the intellectual work
from the physical work
as if the head was a separate
element from the body.
So yes without the body, for me,
without the ability for the skin
to sense danger without the ability
for the heart to pump blood
to the different parts of your body
so that you can create
gesture nothing happens.
You know, the heart is,
for me the most vital space for sinking,
you know, what does it feel like there?
And every part of the body is then brought
to, has to attend to this whole business
of thinking whether it is the eyes,
the ears, the nose,
the mouth, the kidneys,
everything is brought to attend
to the work of thinking.
So the body is first
without it you have nothing.
Yeah, thanks.
So in your contribution,
Chantal you state,
and I quote, what we are likely to see
in the aftermath of COVID-19
is a renewed struggle
between competing political
projects about the
future of our societies.
I'm convinced that cultural
and artistic practices
could have a significant
role in this struggle.
Could you maybe expand
a bit on this thought
and illustrate how you perceive
the way cultural and artistic practices
could influence these
competing political projects
and this potentially adjust
the future of our society?
Hello everybody.
I am very happy to be here.
Well my contribution is
a bit higher, you know,
because I'm a political theorist.
And of course the kind of reflection
I've been going to plays
on is very political,
but I think it has got
very important political
implications to, in fact what first,
I also want to say that
my reflection is a,
about controlling practice in general.
So I'm not a specialist,
I'm not a practitioner of,
any of them on top of that.
But I think that there is some reflection
that can be done, of course,
at some point I'm going to insist
on what I think is specific to theater,
but what I'm saying now is valid
for all performing, arts
but also, you know, for visual arts,
for every (indistinct) and
political practices in general,
what I'm going to focus,
and this is something
which I've been developing in my work
is if we want to understand
in what sense could
the practices can even impact on politics
or, you know, transforming the world.
We need to have an adequate
theoretical approach because
unfortunately I think many person who work
on, I'm not speaking of actors,
but theorists about artistic
and cultural practices
adopt what is my view (indistinct)
of it is something that can be
an objective is an essential,
I explain what I mean by that, you know,
objective is it means
that the world is dead,
you know, and then we can represent it,
but we are not really
part of the constitution
of the, world and the idea of essentialism
is very similar the idea is that
the (indistinct) particularly
is for the field of subjectivities.
They ask some form of subjectivity
that correspond necessarily
to your position.
For instance, in several of my work,
particularly in (indistinct)
which decides what we
call maxism essentially
the idea that you subjectivity
isn't necessarily linked to your place in
the relation of production.
So if you are the worker,
you've got subjectivities and,
but of course that's not the
only form of (indistinct)
You can also have a feminist
that if you are a woman,
especially the automatically
you've got an IDs.
Well, if you are a
black, this is suddenly,
so that's the confusion, which I think is,
is there's not really a lower standard
Oh, you know, artistic practices
can transform the world
because I think that
what's important and that's
the basis of my approach,
which is called non essential, is to stop.
There is no natural order.
An order that would be there
that we've go to accept as it is.
In fact, every order, in fact,
as well, it is the temporary.
And pre-care use articulation
of contingent practices.
The idea of contingent
is very important here
because it put into question the
idea that is a necessity
and necessarily a law of history
that really leave us, you know, in,
in a certain position and
will lead to another position.
That things in a sense are predetermined.
So everything is contingent.
It depends in fact of practices,
human practices are the
ones who make the world
and those human practices,
they necessarily and
political composition.
There is power in them,
because in a sense,
this perspective that
we develop in hegemony
could be also called constructivist.
You know, there are many
theorist very important
like (indistinct) for instance,
who develop a conflict
theory which is similar
to our view of hegemony the sense that,
you know, the world is
socially constructed,
except that, and I think
it's an important difference.
They don't necessarily give the same whole
that we give to religion of power.
And this is why our approach,
we call hegemony approach.
The world is constructed by human beings,
but there is always, you know,
a dimension of power relation
in those construction.
So the idea is that the
world is a construction
of political hegemonic practices.
What appears as the natural
order, because of course,
you know, we are told
that this is all things.
That's the for instance something
which is very important in
the ideology of neoliberalism.
There is no alternative,
you know, what the,
the world is like that
because the evolution
of the technology, well, our perspective,
put that into question.
What a piece of the natural order
is always some kind of
naturalization of political party.
That appear they are necessary,
but they are not necessarily
things could always been otherwise
that I think is important
in my conception.
Now, I come to what is
more directly related
to cultural and artistic practice
because the first point
is basically background
that which is necessary.
because every of hegemonic
order is a company
that has go together
with the symbolic order.
The symbolic order is
expressing what we can call,
but I'm using a term that is developed
by the Italian Max's common sense.
Common sense is not
something that is natural
every common sense is always
a political construction, common sense
is what at a given moment,
tell us what reality is.
You know, the world is
what we gonna expect,
what is justice?
And what I think is very important
to understand is that
cultural and artistic
practices they play a crucial role
in the creation of this common sense.
It means that the way we see the world
is in part also a consequence of the play
that we see, the dance that we see,
the book that we read, that that creates,
the common sense, the
way in which we are going
to perceive reality.
So important point is the following.
Cultural and artistic
practice they are also
very decisive in the
construction and the maintenance,
the repetition of a common sense,
all in this challenging,
which means that in fact,
they are always political,
there's always a political dimension,
and this is why that's something
I have very often developed.
I don't think that it makes sense
to speak of political, art
is if there was ask, which
is not political for me,
there is a political dimension
in all form of artistic
practices, either way they don't challenge
the world they reproduce
it or challenging.
So this is why I say, instead
of speaking of political art
like, you know, there was
as much not political,
let's speak of critical art.
So what we normally call political art
I think we should call it critical art.
That is an art that challenge
the in hegemonic order.
I want to clear the senses,
but the world does not do
that is also a political,
because in fact it tends
to be the same full
existing all the off day.
that I think for me is very important.
Another point, and after that I will stop.
The question of identity
is of course very related.
The world is always a cultural
of signifying practices,
but identities also they are never giver,
the other I was saying, we
need to put into question
the idea of an essentially.
So, and if my reflection
is very much influenced
by psychoanalysis and something
that's heard is that there
is in fact, no identities.
What we call identities are always form of
identification, but
there always (indistinct)
This is the things in
which we are in his have.
And I think that's
absolutely crucial here.
Those form of identification
they necessarily ever very
important affective component.
There is no form of identification
that is identified with something
is always something which is effective.
And again, I think that cultural artistic
practices are central in
process of identification
because they are
precisely a form that make
us, you know, really
identify with something.
And that is going to form our personality.
I think that theater practices
are in fact have privilege terrain for
for this process of identification.
This is a process which is present
in all form of artistic
and critical practices,
but theater practices
are privileged terrain,
because in fact, they are very important
for mobilization of affects.
And then I think to make reference
to something that Nora was saying,
I think that that's of course also
to fall of all dance, because dance
also is like the theater.
Well, of course we can because dance
as part of theater but we are not going
to enter into those discussions to think,
but you know, those
performing arts are in fact,
very important because
they've got to do with the body,
they are very important for
the mobilization of effect.
And in fact, there are ways in which
one can connect ideas with affects.
There is something that
I really want to insist
because I think for me, it's important
artistic practices, they
are not their object.
You know it's not the
construction of concept.
That's what philosophy,
the artistic practices
they're in fact on the sensation.
And I think that this is really important
to recognize because
they're meet in a sense
to connect ideas with effect,
which is crucial because ideas,
if they don't effect, they are powerless
in it's something that's
been also for instance,
make literally say it's only when
ideas meet affects that they really
become a force and I think that precisely,
artistic part is (indistinct)
it permit this connection
of idea with affect,
and this is what they are so important
in the creation of a
form of identification.
They find that they helped to see
the complexity of the world.
They also do complexity of human emotion.
This is something that, of course
you find that in the
cinema, you'll find that in,
in, in, in novels, but you know,
the artistic power of theater
and that dance performing art
is even stronger because then, you know,
and I think the whole of
the body is very important.
You feel this in time of identification,
they've got a very strong force.
So for me, this is why we need to see that
if we want and of
course, this is something
which demo politics is crucial to create
new form of subjectivities, you know
a form of subjectivity going to
then we come back in a moment
and you have another question,
content (indistinct) well
critical artistic practices.
(indistinct) because they allow for the
creation of new form of subjectivities,
that allow people to
see things differently
and to really become,
accept new form of identification.
So maybe I can kind of conclude,
or if I feel from your,
both of your contributions in the book,
that you're actually quite optimistic
about the future of theater,
the role of performing arts in the future.
Although we are in a state of
crisis regarding life arts,
because of the C word.
So Nora, in your
contribution, for example,
I feel when I first read
it, you seem very convinced
of the fact that theater
will never disappear.
Sounds optimistic, could also be seen
as a more neutral accomplished fact,
but then in your statement
for the rule three, an hour,
where you were supposed
to perform your trilogy
two weeks ago, but which
was canceled also due
to the virus, you relate this idea
of persistence of work and artistic work
to a quotation from the league
of revolutionary black workers.
That was, that existed
in Detroit, in the 1960s.
And I quote, I don't mind working,
but I do mind dying
to not work is to die for those
of us whose work is the
body to not work is to die.
We are necessary, but disposable.
So I was wondering where your
thoughts were on this today.
Are you more hopeful or more pessimistic
in your belief that this
art form will persist?
And could you expand on why you believe
that it would persist?
Yes I was trying to maybe
propose that the work
that we do as artists is no different
from great peekers from mechanics, from,
you know, people who, you know,
physically put together stuff,
people who traditionally would
probably unionized belong to a union
and have representation for labor
for their labor in this way.
And I was, I continued to be really
interested in ways in which those
of us who work with the
creative imagination
could bond together.
And, and, and, and, and even though
we are implicated in this kind of business
of the theater, the
industrialization of theater,
how we can implode it,
how we can arrive into these spaces
as a mullet of cocktail
and, and, and blow it up, you know?
So, so, so, so, so for me,
the work of the
revolutionary black workers
is kind of seminar and
instructive in that way.
I don't belong to a
union I think I should.
I think these are times when artist
such as myself should think together
about all the things that we agreed to
in terms of contracts,
in terms of renumeration.
I mean, you, the, the, the way we work,
the way the work is disseminated.
And so which is why I personally make
this separation between
the Western theater
and that, which I would want to aspire to,
which is a theater of the African
and the theater of the worker,
the theater of the poor,
which is constant and ongoing,
and is a nonstop unless you die,
you know, and, and even as
an animist in that sense,
I may even think that beyond
there could still be a theater.
So am I optimistic about
the survival of theater,
but not in the way it is
currently constructed,
which benefits basically those
who have been to art school
and can speak a certain language.
And I would want to agree with
what Chantal has always
articulating around the,
you know, that it's an ID.
It's like a, it's like
a, you know, theater,
this premises that we enter into,
like a checkpoint you know
at the airport, or some,
some border crossing
that it's forms of identifications
that allow you into it.
And then everything
becomes about, you know,
this construction of this
Identities the mobilizing of affects
or effect I think I wasn't,
I hope I'm not misrepresenting
what I was hearing.
I am keen to see the end of
that type of theater and perhaps,
an effortful emergence of another theater
that really, really considers
that the body is theory,
that there is no separation between
the critical ability of the body to think,
and to theorize itself,
this is not something that happens there.
And then we simply, as
the artists, you know,
make it a sensational, something
that you can understand.
I think there is more to what we do
beyond the sensation, beyond the effect.
And perhaps I come to that
and I will always come to the work
as a black African body I have no choice,
but to articulate that
as my entrance into,
the world, as, something, I cannot undo
what the world has done has marked
on the black African body.
So it is always from that point of view
that I come into these spaces
and hopefully work as a mullet of cocktail
and blow it up from inside.
So in the future,
there will be the
creative imagination union
we hope and ask for a
strike, maybe that will.
Yes I hope all of us could actually agree
to be in a general strike,
which again, part of the conflict
that I think Chantal was talking about
without the conflict
there's, just no anything.
And the general strike
is an agitation towards
that conflict of thinking, you know,
had the African simply accepted
that we were lesser than the white body
we continue to be under all
kinds of financial domination by
the West, but certain at least questions
continue to be asked around that
formulation of power,
you know, and that makes,
really powerful and
urgent, critical theater.
We need to constantly question power
and if we can do it in mass,
as a league all the more better.
So Chantal, you already started talking
about this a little bit, but maybe
we can take a little throwback to 2007.
When the journal art and research
published one of your articles,
which was titled artistic activism
and agonistic spaces you opened
with the following question,
can artistic practices
still play a critical role
in a society where the difference
between art and advertising
have become blurred
and where artists and cultural workers
have become a necessary part
of capitalist production.
So in a way you could state
that the why theater question
that came to now from us.
And it's a similar question
is the same question.
Now we are 13 years later
do you think art has already been able
to live up to those expectations
you envisioned for 13 years ago?
Well, I think that it's important
to remind you of what the context
in which I found this, these,
because I think that things are
in fact better though I will say,
but let's see, because in, yeah, 2007,
at that moment, if I wasn't (indistinct)
precisely a lot of people say, oh, no,
critical art is impossible you know,
because everything is now pirated
every physical gesture
is absolutely neutralize.
And I wasn't agreeing with
that, I was saying, no,
on the point of your (indistinct).
They're always out there
you can never say, okay,
no there is no possibility
do this every, a temporary,
it can be destabilized it
can be, we can intervene.
So from that, this approach already
allow us at that moment, which of course
it was not in that perspective.
very good for artistic practices,
it was in fact the moment
in which the hegemony
of (indistinct) was almost in challenge
it's not completely because there were,
but it was really a moment in which
there was not much, yes.
for instance the ID that
there was no alternative to neoliberal.
globalization members of the (indistinct)
(speaking in foreign language)
this where the general view
but I was thinking even then, no,
it's possible the Bishop go on fighting,
but by the way, I did
not at any expectation
I'm dot puts it.
That is what we should have,
but I will say it's worth
continuing fighting,
because there is still a possibility.
Well I think that today,
things are (indistinct)
point of view much better, of course,
or their point of view as well.
But because in fact, no,
we added the (indistinct)
there is a crisis of the (indistinct)
and this is what I speak of
the return of the political
and in my last book for left populate,
I said that we are populous moment,
populist moment in the
sense in which, you know,
there'll be resolved
that's all only negative.
No, I need, for me,
populous moment, of course,
is there is hyping populism,
but there is also sense (indistinct)
there is also level populism.
So we added the more possibilities,
you know, that we, we don't,
if an emerging decided that
there is no alternative
to neoliberal, globalization,
we see multiplication of practices.
For instance, what I find very interesting
is that a (indistinct) of what is
called a artistic activism
you know, it's very, very important
that there is a multiplication
of artistical practices.
So the situation is more promising
to that point of view.
It doesn't mean, and I
will say that in fact,
the crisis of the COVID-19 is exacerbated
the crisis of neoliberalism, you know,
so yeah, the situation is, is
open for more possibilities,
which doesn't mean, of course,
that necessarily the issue is going
to be something like (indistinct)
was know that the final
crisis of capitalism,
I don't believe that.
I think that that's still a possibility.
And in fact, a full capitalism
to try to renew itself,
we have very much to begin
in to adopt, you know,
form a technological solution
it must some people call it, you know,
and on the other side,
that is also of course,
that then by hyping populism,
to impose a form of
territory nationalism .
So the things is very much open.
I'm not saying that we
definitely are going
to work, but I think that's a
there are more possibilities
for (indistinct)
And we have in fact that
the precisely, you know,
post COVID, we are not
yet completely post COVID
but people are already wondering, okay,
so what the hell going to up and up?
I think there is possibilities.
And this is why I think that
it's moment which is crucial for us,
to stick and cultural practices,
because they can play
a very important role
in of the two (indistinct)
I ate to the transformation of the world
in a way in which we are going
to be able to bring down
neoliberal, agility,
neoliberal this really, you
know, not very strong anymore.
So let's push, in order
to create a process
which call a process of
radicalization of democracy,
and I think, and I'm
really convinced of that.
That could have done artistic practices
and got a very important role to play in
that process so this is yes.
From certain and point of view.
I am optimistic in the possibilities.
Yeah.
So as you were talking about this leftist,
populist and activist movements
that are support in a way,
there's also this talk
about a term like artivism,
so combining activism, and artivism Nora,
maybe in interview with
(indistinct) last year,
you have stated that you actually try
to steer clear from those hip
and new terms like artivism,
and that you are more focused on gathering
and sharing knowledge, insight,
and engagement with your audience.
Maybe you could expand some bit more
on your views on this concept of artivism
and how it differs from your practice
and the way your work aims
to engage and activate.
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's a
Neo liberal kind of spaces,
very capable of constantly producing words
that seem hip and cold,
such as, you know, post black you know,
artivism, you know, yeah,
these are, these are just words.
The fundamental issue of like the,
is a power dynamic that governs bodies.
And unless we address this power dynamic,
very little changes, you know.
And so for me, and kind
of the constituents
that I come from, there
is a lot of from work
to do in helping people
understand what is that power dynamic?
You know, what is that power dynamic?
A lot of people are illiterate
and have not read jijak
or Jerry Dao, or, you know, do not come
from this place of the
academia to be able to
analyze what their situation is.
And I'm talking about a great deal
of the global South, but that
doesn't mean they're stupid.
That doesn't mean they don't understand
that Europe is where all the money is.
And so we should make
stuff that sells in Europe.
Yeah so I'm interested in using
the spaces that I can occupied
that maybe I'm allowed to occupy
the spaces to kind of share knowledge,
how have we got to this point?
Why is it that the black body seems
to have all the exuberant energy that is
consumable as kind of odd practice,
but can not find itself in a position
to produce, present and
develop that artwork.
So why is the market
constantly and still in 2020
looking to Europe and
the West and not looking
to Africa, why aren't the most spaces
and on the continent of Africa
that we could be in residence
and develop our work
work for the African public, you know,
which is equally deserving
of the beauty of,
of the information of the knowledge
of the criticality of the interrogation.
You know, so, yeah, I, I think these,
I think I want to steer away
from just sexy words and just
like, just do the work and
just, just do the work,
go to work and, and,
and allow people to have
ways in which information is
delivered to them.
I don't know if that answers
your question, but yeah, I'm,
I'm, I'm very much untied
this, you know, and,
and I think the best philosophies
are that, which, you know,
people can understand without
having to look it up in
dictionaries, you know, so, you know,
there is work to do there,
the decolonization this
space of knowledge.
Can I say something here,
because I think that Kaatje
yes can I speak?
Yes please.
We don't have more time
for discussion because I think that
there is basic some basic
misunderstanding between what,
you know, I'm saying
and what Nora is saying,
because I don't think that one
should oppose those things.
Like, you know, I'm not.
Well, I mean, I think very much
on importance of thinking politically
starting from specific
conjuncture, you know,
and obviously there are
different conjuncture.
I'm speaking, thinking very much
from the conjuncture what's
happening in Western Europe,
the case of Nora she's
thinking from the case of,
I think it's very important
to have a multiply
much a pluralistic at that level.
And I think that it's
important that each group,
from their experience all they can,
they see what can be done
from where, from there,
where they are, you
know, and for instance,
I don't think that as this
activism is such a complicated
term, you don't need to go
into dictionary to understand,
you know, it's.
That's not what I mean,
I think that's a low blow,
that's not what I mean
if that works for the Western world
and to, you know,
keep creating words.
Of course I understand it, but
it doesn't serve me any too.
Well, I'm not saying
you don't understand it.
I'm saying that well I.
There's no, (muffled speaking)
But I think that you are really presenting
my views in a way, which is distorted.
Actually, I think I'm not
actually distorting your views.
I'm answering the, to the question
artivism I don't care for it.
I think we just have to do the work.
And I don't know I don't know
if you coined the word artivism.
No, no I did not coin the word
and I usually speak it I do,
and I didn't conduct
with either (indistinct)
I think it's quite important to be able
to, and I know for instance,
a very interesting
example for me of artistic
activism is what's happening today
with extension rebellion.
You might not want that movement,
but it's incredible the way in which
they are able to use, you know,
artistic fall to link them
to a political struggle.
It's really interesting, you
know, and I think that it is,
and again, it goes to the
argument I was making,
it gives a full to some form of activism
to take to artistic form
because this take form
as something that's to
the effect that it's
not the kind of a thing,
I mean I appreciate what you're saying,
but I don't think anybody who has actually
seen my work and experiences,
would call it, not political,
not activist and not whatever.
Did I ever suggested that, I mean.
I'm just trying, I'm just,
I actually don't think
we're in disagreement.
I yeah is what I'm trying to say.
Exactly I also see that
we are not in disagreement
because I very much
(indistinct) what you're saying.
But you're the one who
try to present that as.
I'm interested in every day language.
I am not interested in this platforming
of words and putting them on some kind
of special show is what I'm trying to say.
And so perhaps there's
also just a question
of the language, which
we bring to the world,
I think the English language is itself
a space to continue to
wage war, but, you know,
there are certain words that
I'm not taking on for myself.
So I just refuse them and I think
I have the right to refuse them.
And I think that, we are (indistinct)
of resistances I think that a multiplicity
a form of resistances.
And that we need to
celebrate that, I mean,
should not say this is
the form of resistance,
which now we have all.
And I think that's great.
Accept multiplicity a form of resistances
and in fact this is precisely.
That sounds also equally as liberal
as you can get, you know, it's all good.
Okay.
I can see, I can see.
So Kaatje do you want
it to ask me some of it?
We should maybe go to the questions
from the audience cause
I've been getting some
questions from there.
The question that could actually be,
maybe replied to by
both of you, maybe Nora,
you could start,
the question was could the
theater or performing arts today
also play a reconciling role
in the very divided to you as
society and how?
I, I, I don't know.
I mean, I think everything,
everything should be brought to bear on a,
on the constitution or
laws that are unjust,
but it's not the singular role of
the performative arts by itself.
Of course we should agitate
through language through
literature, through you know,
of the voting processes.
The thing that has to go is
the entire infrastructure,
you know, I guess that's
what I'm trying to say.
You know, the entire infrastructure
of capital and that it has been built
on the back of black bodies
and keeping them down.
So what can the black artists do today is
to speak power to the truth,
or to keep unpacking the situation
of how we got to be the, the,
the bodies upon which everything
and all the money on all
the power has been amassed,
where our, you know, where,
where do we get some kind
of equity in this thing?
So, yeah, we do have work to do,
but it's not the sole
provenance of the artist to,
to undo capitalism.
Maybe Chantal you want to also.
Is not the whole of that is tied
to capitalism and in fact,
I was a part once at a
conference and with this,
can art change the world.
And I say, I don't think
that art can change the word on itself,
but art can contribute to change the world
but in, I call them because
that is something which
can be in at the moment.
Well, not so much today,
but at the moment in which I
was, I think in 2007, you know,
do ID that's politics
is completely blocked.
So no, we, no,
art is going to be the one
which are the political,
you know, subject.
And art is going to change the world.
I don't believe that the
art will change the world
and I don't believe that the role of art,
is to change the world,
but they can contribute
to give other perspective
to denounce something
and to create some form of the senses
because, you know, what is it the sense
of my reflection of the ID of the
agonistic democracy is precisely
that democracy is not to try
to reach an absolute
consensus among everybody,
because this is not possible
because they are antagonist
their relation of power.
And in fact, the role of art
is precisely to bring to the fault,
those relation of power that essentially.
So in answer to the question, you know,
I don't think it's the goal
to bring people together.
Art is not to bring people together
art is something which precisely should
show the relation of power,
create the senses,
bring the hegemony that you know,
say that there is no, alternative
they should know definitively.
This is not who I see the whole
of culture of art to bring
people together is to create the senses
and distract the (indistinct)
Yeah, I received two more questions
from the audience that
are kind of similar,
so I might rub them together.
So the question is what is,
or should be the function of theater
in times of the pandemic
where the artistic bodies and the bodies
of the audience are not allowed
to meet in a common space,
or what happens to the performing arts
when it must move to the online sphere,
maybe Nora, you have.
Of course, of course, I sit with this.
So with this conundrum
every day, as you know,
this is my work bodies
are not welcome anymore,
but again, I want to say that I think
there's something about the black bodies
that have never been welcomed,
unless there were simply
objects to be exploited,
to be extracted some kind of, you know,
something being extracted from them.
So this moment kind of heightens
this kind of commerce that is hidden under
the language of, oh,
isn't it great to tour
you're just everywhere.
Everybody is like this
exchanges with the public.
Yeah I mean, on some
level, this is the work,
but it hides a very severe ugly truth
which at the moment, the inability
to socially be intimate, you know,
kind of makes us aware, you know, can,
can the world survive without art,
perhaps it's possible.
I mean, I don't really know.
I'm an artist by conviction,
not to, you know,
this, this, this is who I am.
This is what I was born to do.
I have not done anything else in my life
other than to make things that hopefully
other people, you know, like,
so what does it mean to
be unable to do that?
It is a certain kind of death.
How do we move into the digital platform?
Very reluctantly, you know,
we have to learn new skills
and the pace with which,
you know, things moving.
Don't allow us to really
learn these skills fast enough
to fully represent the ideas
that we have in our bodies.
So of course I am, you know,
participating in this kind of platforms
that all talky, talky
making digital matter,
you know, trying to, you know,
bring that kind of mullet of cocktail
into this platform that is
really just image driven.
It's, you know, it's another kind of work.
It's another kind of work.
So what happens is I think those people
who are tech people,
are going to make these advances
at this time because everything
is dependent on their skills.
I'm grappling right now with trying
to get some tech people to understand
what I mean, because unfortunately,
a lot of this technology is designed
by people who live completely outside
of their bodies and have no connection
to what being inside of a body means.
So they're more interesting
and not interested
in how the thing delivers in their way,
not even to think of new ways to corrupt
in this digital space.
So there's a lot of what to do.
I think if we're going
to be on these digital
platforms for a long time, I hope more
and more people who know something
about a kinesthetic field can,
can work in this medium.
Otherwise it's just a reproduction
or reproduction of
website, stuff of video,
games of dance captures of stuff
that is absolutely, you
know, kind of pathetic.
And we have seen it all before.
I think maybe this is a nice way
to already conclude I'm afraid.
'Cause we have already run
out of time a little bit,
but this inability to gather bodies
is also kind of the, what's
kind of the incentive
for, NTGENT to start
working on this golden book.
And we are very happy that
so many people responded
and the Chantal and Nora responded
to our question of "Why theater?"
and that they in additional so wanted
to be part of this live stream.
I'm very grateful for that.
I think the only thing that's resting
for me now is to just invite
the audience at home for the next episode.
And also of course Nora and Chantal
are very welcome to tune in.
It will happen in three weeks
on the 25th of September at 6:00 p.m.
And the topic will be
beyond Europe building
transnational futures.
T he guests will be (indistinct)
Thank you for tuning in
and have a nice evening.
Thank you, Chantal, thank you Kaatje.
Bye bye.
Bye, bye.
