Page 41 - 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. 41
Negotiating the Discursive Circulation of (Mis)Information in the Face of Global Uncertainties 41
themselves as actual individuals, they allegorically embody the banality
of evil and the political unconsciousness. Documents, biography, or dia-
logues written or improvised by the actors supplant the centrality of dra-
ma (Juvan 2014, 556).
Theatre as an Attempt to Erase the Amnesia of Memory
In the productions Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland!, Our Vio-
lence and Your Violence and Curse, Frljić warns that we live within a field
of transcultural business, which persistently subjugates artistic actions
into possibilities of exploitation by the trans-political, globalist lobby. It
is clear to him that theatre today (just as every artistic work in the era of
technical reproduction) cannot escape the socio-economic-technological
supremacy, which determines its aesthetic dimension. Therefore, similar
to Sebald, yet within the poetics of politicisation almost totally opposed,
he fixates on the attempt to erase the general amnesia of memory, which
we are witness to at the beginning of the 21st century.
Using words and actions of the actors—performers onstage, Frljić is
constantly reminding us that we are watching the physical and phenome-
nal bodies of the perfomers, which are what they are, actors, and they re-
main so even in the moment of ‘taking over’ temporary roles. Like Hand-
ke, Frljić also shows that
‘this stage does not represent anything … I don’t see any objects that are pre-
tending to be other objects … The time on the stage does not differ from
the time off the stage’. With a nod to Stanislavski and the tradition of dra-
matic illusionism the speakers conclude: ‘We don’t work, as if ’ (Garner
1994, 153).
But at the same time Frljić is aware that a complete withdrawal from rep-
resentation praxis is impossible, just as impossible or naïve as was Schech-
ner’s and actionist vision that the performative autopoietic feedback loop
enables the surpassing of the logic of textual culture and referential func-
tion.
As Thomas Elsaesser notes what inhabits the fiction of Sebald’s nov-
els are “ruins—the ruins of buildings, bodies, lives” and “a symptom of
something else, since coincidence and chance are just like ruins: although
prevalently ruins of time not space, yet still ruins (of context, order, con-
cept and fate)” (Elsaesser 2014, 30). In a similar way Frljić’s productions
are populated by corpses that testify of the acute crisis of ethics in the
contemporary world. Both Sebald and Frljić use biography as one “of the
ways in our culture to show the desire to redeem life, to save it (or judge
themselves as actual individuals, they allegorically embody the banality
of evil and the political unconsciousness. Documents, biography, or dia-
logues written or improvised by the actors supplant the centrality of dra-
ma (Juvan 2014, 556).
Theatre as an Attempt to Erase the Amnesia of Memory
In the productions Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland!, Our Vio-
lence and Your Violence and Curse, Frljić warns that we live within a field
of transcultural business, which persistently subjugates artistic actions
into possibilities of exploitation by the trans-political, globalist lobby. It
is clear to him that theatre today (just as every artistic work in the era of
technical reproduction) cannot escape the socio-economic-technological
supremacy, which determines its aesthetic dimension. Therefore, similar
to Sebald, yet within the poetics of politicisation almost totally opposed,
he fixates on the attempt to erase the general amnesia of memory, which
we are witness to at the beginning of the 21st century.
Using words and actions of the actors—performers onstage, Frljić is
constantly reminding us that we are watching the physical and phenome-
nal bodies of the perfomers, which are what they are, actors, and they re-
main so even in the moment of ‘taking over’ temporary roles. Like Hand-
ke, Frljić also shows that
‘this stage does not represent anything … I don’t see any objects that are pre-
tending to be other objects … The time on the stage does not differ from
the time off the stage’. With a nod to Stanislavski and the tradition of dra-
matic illusionism the speakers conclude: ‘We don’t work, as if ’ (Garner
1994, 153).
But at the same time Frljić is aware that a complete withdrawal from rep-
resentation praxis is impossible, just as impossible or naïve as was Schech-
ner’s and actionist vision that the performative autopoietic feedback loop
enables the surpassing of the logic of textual culture and referential func-
tion.
As Thomas Elsaesser notes what inhabits the fiction of Sebald’s nov-
els are “ruins—the ruins of buildings, bodies, lives” and “a symptom of
something else, since coincidence and chance are just like ruins: although
prevalently ruins of time not space, yet still ruins (of context, order, con-
cept and fate)” (Elsaesser 2014, 30). In a similar way Frljić’s productions
are populated by corpses that testify of the acute crisis of ethics in the
contemporary world. Both Sebald and Frljić use biography as one “of the
ways in our culture to show the desire to redeem life, to save it (or judge
