Diderot
director / režija: Goran Sergej Pristaš
dramaturgy / dramaturgija: Ivana Sajko
set design / scenograf: Goran Petercol
music / glazba: Helge Hinteregger
performers / izvode: Nikolina Pristaš, Pravdan Devlahović, Aleksandra Janeva / Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak
Diderot’s Nephew or Blood Is Thicker Than Water is a live-art/dance performance in which we attempt to tell the story based on the synopsis for a perfect philosophy play, Socrate’s Death, by Denis Diderot. The synopsis itself was never elaborated into a play by the famous dramatic writer and philosopher. Performance is made in the form of a serious dance mock-heroic in which five performers/choreographers, going through different performative models, set up a multilayered performative, narrative and interpretative system filled by extreme emotional and physical situations. The performance was made in relation to a fixed thematic outline but the working out of the theme rests on personal authorial contributions of the performers. The act of performing is characterized by structured situational improvisation.
A GESTURE, PERHAPS
01. Theatre as Afformance Art is art of non-activity and caesura. Whereas performances still provide a certainty of presentation within an act, afformativity subverts this certainty. Every clarity of action, position and meaning disappears and theatre does not know whether it amounts to anything, or has a meaning. If we agree that European bourgeoisie has irreversibly lost it’s classical gestularity, thus creating a more passionate quest for gestures themselves, when the body of people became choreographed and cut through with nervous cramps and ticks, theatre became a place where this uncertain quest for gesture took place. Opposite from Aristotelian distinction between the poiesis, where means have a purpose outside themselves, and the praxis that is a purpose in itself without means, a gesture is a sphere of pure mediality where means become obvious as such. Theatre in it’s afformative gestularity is not a composition of means through which we fulfil a purpose, nor a superior sphere, where action is own purpose, but pure non-verbal communication of communicability, as if something in your mouth obstructs your speech, as an actor’s improvisation supposedly compensates for her loss of memory or inability to speak. Theatre is the silence of pure gesture. Or a gag – a minimal thing, if you will.
02. When you experience the history as a space of emergence of events speaking about anachronism is no longer satisfying. History is therefore an inventory of plurality of possibilities depending on kairos of a given constellation. Our recommended approach follows a practice that liberates sedimented practices of their historicist weight, and a certain vocabulary defined by Hellenic and early Christian experience becomes a shibboleth of a transitory, minimal, human existence. Whether we talk about Hellenic techniques of subjectivisation of the self (parrhesia) or a tensed Christian awaiting of the second coming of Christ (parousia), the key is to think of the world qua the space of activities simultaneously as the object of knowledge and as well as the grounds where the subject is tested by way of truth, which is the subject himself.
03. Enigma of modernism lies in a strange promise that forces things to be simultaneously completely different and yet remain the same. Modernism differs in it’s self-understanding from the classic age in it’s desire to think the reality of this aporetic relationship of the same and the different, one held exclusively virtual by the ancient Greeks, where an attempt to consider actuality through logics in it’s simultaneity with the other of itself was regarded a symptom of not allowed barbaric oath into the knowledge of the community. The news supposed to be comprehended here consists of a challenge to locate this relationship in a heterogeneous space where none of the aspects of action (theoria, praxis, poiesis) cannot uniformly and finally assert it’s advantage. Homogeneity of logics and continuum has been moved in heterogeneity of hyperbologics and caesurae, that thus become elements of shaping the impossible promise. It is not something monumental or perceptible, but almost nothing, or scholastically speaking, ens minimum. That minimal relationship cannot be a fundamental category, yet is more elementary than the things that can be considered of a theoretically explicit interest. A question of modernisation cannot primarily be the one questioning the modernity’s difference and the truthfulness of this difference from the historical configurations that precede it. The point here is drawing the attention to the potential character of the historical time itself. Modalisation of time means destructing the irreversibility of history, which opens a space to coexisting singularities that cuts into each and every body.
(Petar Milat)
references:Giorgio Agamben: Mezzi senza fine, Hent de Vries: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Michel Foucault: L’hermeneutique du sujet, Rodolphe Gasche: Of Minimal Things, Hans-Thies Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater
Self-sufficiency would be the term to describe the mode in which Diderot’s Nephew presents its performative production. What it is ‘about’ or what it departs from is endlessly deferred or metonymically substituted for. Inasmuch as the event of trial and death of Socrates recurring as a topic as it is the textual regime lost, an open chain of authors (Plato, Diderot et al.) possibly worked on, serve as broken bonds of reference to reverse the causes or intentions of acts to the effects of performed events. Their singular movement-, speech- and gestural forms suggest intricate motivations which cannot be subsumed under one signifying regime or total context, but give way to a complex opaque material surface which engages spectator to derive her own understanding. Thus incomprehensibility between over- and under-determination of “what is performed” in performance renders a case of theatre standing for a contingent parallel model of world: one which operates in itself with no claim to its origin but demanding to be looked at from multiple non-privileged positions. (Bojana Cvejić)
The performance was made while BADco. was on artist-in-residence program at Art Workshop – Lazareti (Dubrovnik), had its premiere on August, 7th, 2001 at the Split Summer Festival was subsequently shown at the Karantena Festival in Dubrovnik. Diderot’s Nephew had its Zagreb premiere in November, 2001.Performance was made in co-production of BADco. with Art Workshop – Lazareti (Dubrovnik), Teatre &TD (Zagreb) and Split Summer Festival.Supported by: Zagreb City Office for Culture.
Diderotov nećak ili krv nije voda je live-art/plesna predstava u kojoj se pokušava ispričati priča temeljena na sinopsisu Denisa Diderota za savršenu filozofsku dramu naslovljenu Sokratova smrt, koju slavni dramski pisac i teoretičar nikad nije pretvorio u dramski tekst. Predstava ima formu ozbiljne plesne lakrdije u kojoj pet izvođača-koreografa u različitim izvedbenim modelima uspostavlja višeslojan izvedbeni, narativni i interpretativni sustav prepun ekstremnih emotivnih i fizičkih situacija. Predstava je rađena prema fiksnom tematskom predlošku, ali sama razrada teme počiva na osobnim autorskim unosima izvođača, a izvedbu karakterizira strukturirana situacijska improvizacija.
GESTA, MOŽDA
01. Teatar kao Afformance Art jest umjetnost ne-djelovanja i cezure. Dok se u performativnom još donekle može biti siguran da se nešto predstavilo u činu, aformativnost znači subvertiranje te iste sigurnosti u predstavljanju. Nestala je svaka izvjesnost činjenja, pozicija, smisla, a teatar možda uopće više ne zna čini li nešto, da li nečime rezultira ili da li nešto znači. Ako se složimo da je evropsko građanstvo krajem 19. stoljeća nepovratno izgubilo svoje klasične načine gestikuliranja što je proizvelo samo još strastveniju potragu za gestama samima, i kada je tijelo mnoštva počelo biti koreografirano i ispresjecano nervoznim grčevima i tikovima, teatar postaje mjestom na kojem se ta ničim garantirana potraga za gestom zbiva. Za razliku od aristotelijanski razlučenih načina djelovanja na poiesis, u kojem sredstva posjeduju vlastitu svrhu izvan sebe i praxis, koji je sam sebi svrha bez sredstava, gesta je sfera čiste medijalnosti u kojoj sredstva kao takva bivaju očitima. Teatar u svojoj aformativnoj gestikulaciji nije stoga niti skup sredstava kojima se želi postići određeni cilj, niti neka superiorna sfera u kojoj je događanje samo sebi svrha, već čisto izvan-jezično komuniciranje komunikabilnosti; kao da vam se nešto nalazi u ustima što vam onemogućava govoriti; kao izvođačeva improvizacija mišljena da kompenzira gubitak memorije ili nesposobnost govora. Teatar je tišina čiste gestikulacije. Ili, ako želite, geg – minimalna stvar.
02. Kada se historiju iskusi kao prostor emergencije događaja pitanje anakroničnosti više ne zadovoljava. Povijest je slijedom inventar pluralnosti mogućnosti koje ovise o kairosu dane konstelacije. Pristup kojeg predlažemo ide za tim da sedimentirane prakse oslobodi njihova historicističkog balasta, pa određeni helenistički i rano kršćanski vokabular jest šiboletom dosljedno tranzitornog, minimalnog, humanog života. Bilo da je riječ o helenističkim tehnikama subjektivacije sebstva (parrhesia) ili o napetoj kršćanskoj budnosti u iščekivanju drugog nadolaska Krista (parousia), riječ je o tome da se svijet kao prostor događajnosti istovremeno misli kao objekt znanja i kao mjesto na kojem se subjekt iskušava u istini koja je on sam.
03. Enigma moderniteta leži u posve čudnovatom obećanju koje iziskuje da stanje stvari istovremeno bude potpuno drukčije i da ono s druge strane u cjelosti ostane isto. Modernizam se u vlastitom samorazumijevanju razlikuje od klasičkog doba utoliko, što želi misliti realnost tog aporetičkog odnosa drukčijeg i istog, koji je antika držala isključivo virtualnim, gdje je pokušaj da se zbiljnost pojmi logički u istovremenosti sa svojim drugim bio simptomom nedopuštenog barbarskog prisezanja u znanje zajednice. Novost koja je bila za pojmiti sastojala se u izazovu da se realnost takvog odnosa ne izvodi više homogenom logikom identiteta, već da se ista locira u heterogeni prostor događaja gdje nijedan od aspekata djelatnosti (theoria, praxis, poiesis) ne može više jednoznačno i konačno potvrditi svoje prvenstvo. Homogenost logike i kontinuiteta izmještena je stoga u heterogenost hiperbologike i cezure, koje postaju elementi osmišljavanja nemogućeg obećanja. To nije ništa monumentalno i perceptibilno već se radi o nečemu što je skoro ništa, ili skolastički, o ens minimum. Ta minimalna stvar odnosa pak nije i ne može biti utemeljujuća kategorija a ipak je elementarnija od svih stvari koje mogu biti od eksplicitnog teoretskog interesa. Pitanje modernizacije tako primarno ne može biti ono koje pita po čemu se to modernitet kao historijska konfiguracija doista ili zapravo razlikuje od povijesnih događanja koja joj prethode, već je stvar da se ukaže na potencijalni karakter povijesnog vremena samog. Modaliziranje vremena ujedno znači i dokidanje ireverzibilnosti povijesti a to otvara prostor koegzistenciji singularnosti koja presjeca svako pojedinačno tijelo.
(Petar Milat)
refernce:Giorgio Agamben: Mezzi senza fine, Hent de Vries: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Michel Foucault: L’hermeneutique du sujet, Rodolphe Gasche: Of Minimal Things, Hans-Thies Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater
Naš je skup najmnogobrojniji i najodabraniji. To vam je škola čovjekoljublja, obnavljanje starinskog gostoprimstva: mi skupljamo sve pjesnike koji propadnu; sve izvikane muzičare, sve pisce koje nitko ne čita, sve izviždane glumice i glumce, gomilu posramljenih bijednika, bezvrijednih guzolizaca na čijem čelu imam čast da se nalazim, kao hrabri harambaša plašljive družine. Nekoliko mladih odrpanaca koji ne znaju na koju stranu da se okrenu, ali koji su pristala izgleda; zlikovci koji se ulaguju gazdi i uspavljuju ga da bi naplatili kod gazdarice ono što ostane poslije njega. Izgledamo veseli, a zapravo smo svi neraspoloženi i vrlo gladni. Ni vukovi nisu tako pregladnjeli, niti su tigrovi svirepiji. Proždrljivi smo kao vukovi kad okopni snijeg poslije duge zime; kidamo kao tigrovi sve što nam padne šaka. Nikad nitko nije vidio zajedno toliko tužnih, pakosnih i gnjevnih životinja. Nitko ne može biti pametan ako nije glup koliko i mi. (Denis Diderot)
Predstava se radila u programu artist-in-residence Art radionice Lazareti, premijerno je izvedena 7. kolovoza 2001.g. na Splitskom ljetu, zatim, 1. i 2. rujna na festivalu Karantena 5 u Dubrovniku, a igrala u redovitom repertoaru Teatra &TD u Zagrebu. Diderotov nećak ili krv nije voda predstava je skupine BAD Co. u koprodukciji Art radionice Lazareti, Dubrovnik, Teatra &TD, Zagreb i Splitskog ljeta. Uz potporu: Gradskog ureda za kulturu grada Zagreba
