Page 39 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 39
Negotiating the Discursive Circulation of (Mis)Information in the Face of Global Uncertainties 39
In this, they are both rooted in their personal history, which to a large
extent informs the reception of their works. Sebald’s is centered around
the World War 2 as he was born in Germany in 1944; Frljić’s personal
history is rooted in his teenage experience during the war in the former
Yugoslavia, of a refugee from an ethnically mixed Bosnian family, but it
also includes the consequences of the war. Both authors use fragmenta-
tion, in which a part takes the place of the absent whole. Their trauma-
tised, fragmented and interrupted stories endcode a variety of discours-
es in a particular, authentic way, putting forward the fact that we live in a
time of uncertainty, in which our memories and our psychological pres-
ent are full of incomplete fragments as well as traces of memories and
behaviours. The kinesthesis of our movement from contemporaneity to-
wards the future is always interrupted by cuts, by momentary stasis in
which fragments themselves split our spaces of living and they determi-
nately bring us back to the traumatic past only to return once more to
the unsustainable present. Just as Sebald’s books intertwine the frozen
photographic images with the continuosly supple memory, Frljić pictures
the neck-breaking present using intensive fragments, freezing them with
death, with violence.
Theatre as Learning to Watch
On various occasions Oliver Frljić emphasised that in his theatre work he
primarily learned to watch. He’s convinced that to see things in the cor-
rect way is already the first step towards change. At the same time Frljić
understands the contradictory duality of watching, since watching is at
the same time an emancipatory practice and an instrument of social con-
trol, repression and exploitation. Frljić is interested to see how far social
control would go during his (and our) lifetime.
In the article From political theatre in Yugoslav socialism to political
performance in global capitalism: the case of Slovenian Mladinsko Theat-
er Juvan observes that “postdramatic theater moves to performance and
directly treats global political contradictions that appear on the local lev-
el, including the Slovene national state; for example, the question of la-
tent xenophobia and oppression of minorities” (Juvan 2014, 553–4). As
one of the most eclectic examples of such a theatre he mentions Frljić and
his production Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland! which he under-
stands as a part of the political theatre of the 21st century that
In this, they are both rooted in their personal history, which to a large
extent informs the reception of their works. Sebald’s is centered around
the World War 2 as he was born in Germany in 1944; Frljić’s personal
history is rooted in his teenage experience during the war in the former
Yugoslavia, of a refugee from an ethnically mixed Bosnian family, but it
also includes the consequences of the war. Both authors use fragmenta-
tion, in which a part takes the place of the absent whole. Their trauma-
tised, fragmented and interrupted stories endcode a variety of discours-
es in a particular, authentic way, putting forward the fact that we live in a
time of uncertainty, in which our memories and our psychological pres-
ent are full of incomplete fragments as well as traces of memories and
behaviours. The kinesthesis of our movement from contemporaneity to-
wards the future is always interrupted by cuts, by momentary stasis in
which fragments themselves split our spaces of living and they determi-
nately bring us back to the traumatic past only to return once more to
the unsustainable present. Just as Sebald’s books intertwine the frozen
photographic images with the continuosly supple memory, Frljić pictures
the neck-breaking present using intensive fragments, freezing them with
death, with violence.
Theatre as Learning to Watch
On various occasions Oliver Frljić emphasised that in his theatre work he
primarily learned to watch. He’s convinced that to see things in the cor-
rect way is already the first step towards change. At the same time Frljić
understands the contradictory duality of watching, since watching is at
the same time an emancipatory practice and an instrument of social con-
trol, repression and exploitation. Frljić is interested to see how far social
control would go during his (and our) lifetime.
In the article From political theatre in Yugoslav socialism to political
performance in global capitalism: the case of Slovenian Mladinsko Theat-
er Juvan observes that “postdramatic theater moves to performance and
directly treats global political contradictions that appear on the local lev-
el, including the Slovene national state; for example, the question of la-
tent xenophobia and oppression of minorities” (Juvan 2014, 553–4). As
one of the most eclectic examples of such a theatre he mentions Frljić and
his production Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland! which he under-
stands as a part of the political theatre of the 21st century that
