when we write, when we express ourselves with the text or talk about it, like it or not we are dealing with the context—with the multiplicity of connotations in which the text is placed and can also transform them /
the conjunction of text and context is inevitable, we can talk about their inseparability, and the distinction is useful (only) for the needs of analysis /
the way the text corresponds to the context or how it co-creates it, distinctly marks every artistic expression /
the quality of the synthesis of text and context is the variable we deal with in this writing /
the context of an artistic act is inseparable from the question of the common (the multiplicity of knowledge, languages, codes, information, affects… and the wealth of the material world)1 /
the artist assumes an attitude towards the dominant distribution regime that destroys the common and is characterized by the renunciation of joy /
may be exempted from this regime; can design a performance that is co-designed by everyone present (joy is a matter of co-design) /
the function of the text depends on its form (which can be explanatory, narrative, didascalic, essayistic, lyrical, fragmentary, abstract… metatextual), and above all on whether and how we develop its performative potential /
in the world of commodity design (where, in the regime of universal integration of everything in the capital matrix, artistic products also belong), the function is subject to beautification, which sometimes obscures it beyond recognition and de facto transforms it into something else, often its opposite2 /
beautification—which is part of theater marketing, and on film is primarily a reflection of the influence of the distribution system—is often not visible at first glance, so it is necessary to say again and again: “this is a function, and this is a context”3 /
the function of text in an artistic act is to contextualize it; when this function is visible and relieved of embellishment (and thus the weight of mimesis), we speak of the performance art and, potentially, something broader /
the alienating effect of the theater text
A key and at first glance invisible dimension of Aristotelianism as a fascinatingly thin (but therefore no less solid) foundation of Western theater is the subordination of the production to the (dramatic) text. This subordination is functionally consolidated in such a way that it enables the administrative separation of creativity (although artistic creation is a production, that is, a producing is inherent in it), which appears as locking creativity in a safe theater box; what is called production in this system is the mimicry name of the distribution mechanism of the field of cultural production4 (the theater field is its part) which is significantly alienated from actual producing (today this alienation most obviously flows into general precarization).
Florence Dupont draws attention to the limits and limitations of the theater field by exposing the fact that theater professionals actively contribute to the constant reproduction of boredom; she makes a groundbreaking intervention in the theatrological and broader perception of the ideology of the Western (globalized) theater system; she does not attack its most current and prominent expression, rather shows that the “post-dramatic” continues the tradition of Aristotelianism in the wider context of what is called modern democracy; “give the theater text an urgency that comes from the outside,”5 she suggests.
Being not an Aristotelian does not mean rejecting the text a priori, but rather taking an approach to the text as something that is not exceptional in itself (already because it is given in a certain language). Performativity can involve operating with exceptionality as, for example, a potential breaking point embedded in the performance, whilst the staging of the text ultimately only reinforces (on an ideological level) its supposed exceptionality. However, performativity is not a guarantee of eventfulness (in the context of theater as a celebration), but it can encourage it, while the staging of the text inhibits it in itself (in the procedurality itself, in the functionalism, in the canon), as it supports and strengthens the hierarchy of distinction between the functions of the participants, even when it wants to bridge it.6
between the spoken and the unspoken
the contrast between the spoken and the unspoken is a reflection of the relationship between the text and the performative (as a liveliness, the body festivity); in the performance art, this contrast can be potentiated to the extreme /
In the performance The Artist is Present,7 Marina Abramović challenges the need to verbalize by completely removing it from the ritualistic facing of two people—a literal gazing/staring face to face, which, unlike the viewing in the theater field, is made possible as an extremely reduced process (as free as possible from the burden of protocol) and as an undeniably two-way process (which cannot be achieved in the theatrical regime—rare attempts of this kind fail simply because they try to put the two-way process into the staging one-directionality, rather as an enrichment than strategical decision, whereby they give it in a mediating/directorial way and not out of body, as performer can do, which means that at most they utilize it) /
the unspoken, during the meeting of two gazes, takes shape and becomes embodied as a potential, as a sensory charge, as a sensation, as an internalized attraction /
even if everything around the center of the performance can be understood as a theater (a structure characterized by the arrangement of selection, promotion, sales, surveillance, the way of entering the space, the position of the audience), so to speak, as a systemic cage (MoMA and alikes), the internalized attraction that arises in its core during the intertwining of the forces of gazes is the key factor that expands the situation into a happening, into something that does not defy alienation, but abolishes it on the fly /
while looking at the artist, we actually looked into ourselves, while we could not pass by the (temporary) community as it is, damaged, hypnotized by institutional power, yet alive on some level—a community of potentially empowered personalities /
the unspoken that wants to tear itself out of the theater field, or Beckett’s absurdity
Samuel Beckett, by introducing metadramatic mute characters to the stage and to the radio—here we highlight Lucky’s muteness in the face of Pozzo’s blindness in the second act of Waiting for Godot8 and the radical gesture of subversion of the radiophonic form through the silent character Dick in the radio play Sketch for the Radio II9—anticipates the premonition of muteness in a specific way, also through novels as Unnameable,10 in the sense of helplessness, futility, the unrealized potential of speaking: muteness as a principally in-advance failure of the (un)spoken, the ever-present absurdity of the babbling stream of consciousness, the atrophy of creative verbal expression despite being filled with meaning—also in the sense of the frequent overhearing of the spoken thought, and ultimately also the absurdity (of function, procedure, code, also of the very mechanism, the physiology) of speaking, which at some point seems superfluous and sounds like a gesture of withdrawal from the “real” into the subconscious.
Beckett’s articulation of this radical withdrawal into volleys of (subconscious) talk, which do not have to fulfill a pre-ordained vision, which are lost within themselves and become different countless times, is a protest against the dictates of operativeness, not least avant-gardism, which is at the service of the Idea as the bearer of authoritarianism, even if it is the idea of equality (ostensibly realized in the ghosts of communism of the 20th and democracy of the 20th and 21st centuries). But no, this is not a protest, and the artistic act is not the subject of (my) interpretation, it is only the appearance of an emotional constellation that I accept as such, it is merely an expression of some emotional constellation in which I participate, I immerse myself in its image-rhythm-transcendence.
The distracted language of Beckett’s characters affirms the off-archic—by this is meant the absence of ἀρχή (this concept in Greek initially means an origin, beginning, first cause, and later power, sovereignty, dominance, rule, the ultimate unimaginable principle; it implies the supposed exceptionality of every command, source of action, fixed principle, method of rule)11—and the achronic (άχρόνος: time that is completely relativized, absent) aspects of reality, which is always also fictitious, composed also from the subconsciousness network.
The decentralized speech of Beckett’s characters recalls the noise/polyphony of voices of the liberating speech (in) a community, the speech that the police order12 has as an object of regulation and tries to neutralize. Beckett plays the noisy/schizophrenic/subconscious on stage to restore the power of self-transformation; he does so by persistently developing a language that eludes all control. With this, he not only calls into question the belief in the civilizational supremacy of the human animal, but also undermines the foundation of the culture industry—the dictate of representation, which, according to Gilles Deleuze, “has a single center, a single and fleeting perspective, and thus a false depth; it conveys everything, but it does not mobilize or move anything”.13
Speechlessness shifts attention from verbal to gestural language, but at the same time, paradoxically, diverts attention from the image and relativizes the state of viewing, which is a key move of subversion or abolishment of the theater format (formatted viewing). The cinematic parallel is Chaplin’s silent film, which play with the hidden side of controlled spectacle.
Let’s remember Deleuze’s proposal, “that schizophrenia is not only a human fact, that it is a possibility of thought that is revealed as such only within the abolition of the image,”14 that is, in the abolition of the sensation of controlled spectacle. The utopia of the performance art—what we experience during it and what we take away from it—is realized in the schizophrenic in-betweenness of the cut, which, between the fragments of the (performed) internal division of its protagonists, moves us away from the perversion of the controlled spectacle.15
to dramatize situation, not situate the drama
why stage (make scenes, interpret) and affirm the imitation of the world, why deny its corporeality?
the play, as well as acting, is an interpretative internalization of conflict (a proto-mediatization), which is not least manifested in the psychological distress of actors, in the psychosomatics of their bodies /
to play or to perform oneself, interpret or co-create the situation, imitate or be?
canonization of the text (through acting into a representation that moves nothing) and neutralization of the context (passivization, denial and dismantling of the common) go together /
the theater field needs text because it cannot withstand the chance (randomness) /
randomness is embedded in the conception of theater as a celebration (ancient Athenian, other non-Western practices, rare modern and contemporary practices); because the theater field maps onto itself the paradigm of the apparatus—in order to nestle itself in the culture industry, which tames socialization, most often by artificializing it with various techniques and reducing it to a procedure, that is, encoding it in a protocol—, there is no room for randomness (coincidence, chance) in that field; this is the reason for the apolitical nature of theatrical attempts to introduce the political—always as a projected declaring (agitation, addressing, as in the so-called documentary theater), never as an experience (as a situation that includes and sensitizes the chance)—into the contrapolitical framework of the field /
literalization ensures elimination of randomness in approach, procedure and performing, since randomness is practically incompatible with linguistic ethnocentrism and the textual adhesion of the coded factors (script, direction, dramaturgy, acting, watching and listening); the separation of these factors is written into the performance in the form of dividers that do not allow risk (mimesis); authentic interactivity is excluded simply because it cannot be codified; where randomness is suppressed, the communal dimension, in which randomness is immanent, is suppressed, too, so within the existing canon of theatricalization we only watch impotent signs and impotently courageous (authorial or mimic) gestures /
eliminated randomness (as a part and result of aristotelianization) or allowed chance (as a result of the decision to perform joy) in the final instance determine the creation as boring or attractive, alienated or potentially communal /
text as fixation (to mimesis) and text as variable raster (rituality, festivity) /
text as a grip (tool) and text as a sign-fragment (attraction) /
reduction as a tendency towards less interpretability, a striving for the physicality (corporeality) of performance /
if the text is the starting point, to invent a departure from the text that embodies its content in situ in the now /
dramatize the situation, not situate the drama /
being (still) based on the text (in the Aristotelian sense) means consolidating the canon /
we are not talking about the abolition of the text, but about the mode of its use: where, how and why, embodied or disembodied, interpretative or inclusive, in the sense of the everybody-for-everyone strategy (this is how I call the performative strategy devised and developed within Kitch’s appearances)16 /
the exclusivity (exclusiveness) of the direction consolidates the closeness of the field /
decentralized directing can encourage the decentralization of the text, not as an aesthetics, but as a dispersion of the creative act—this kind of directing is a matter of conceptualization as a self-decentered doing /
it is not about a prosaic question of text or non-text, nor about a question of the meaningfulness of staging, but rather about a challenging crossroads: do we stand out from the field (which desexualizes expression, poiēsis, rebellion, desire, pleasure, joy) with certain approaches or do we only adhere to its logic (managerial paradigm, aestheticization of rebellion,17 organizational hierarchy, devitalization)18 /
do we, in the very method of organization of the stage or off-stage performance, assert a distribution of the sensible19 that goes beyond the structure of the field, in other words, do we conceptualize an artistic performance with the redistribution of the sensible in mind and with the body within this redistribution /
the text is decentralized only when it is exempted from the field (therefore from matrix), which is visible in some plays of the so-called theater of the absurd…… /
despite the dominance of the (anti)text in his plays, Eugène Ionesco affirms the twist of acting into something else; he relativizes acting and its space and thus shows an intention of leaving the theater field; precisely because of this, the “absurdity” of his texts is written into some beyond(ness), along with their by-the-way look back at the absurdity of the field itself that they honestly laughs at; between the phantom guests and the actual audience of the performance The Chairs20 is thus established (or emphasized to the extreme) the usual emptiness between performers and spectators, characteristic of both the field and the structure in which we live; after seven decades since the premiere and even longer lasting status quo that we live in, the connotations of this void are unchanged /
……or rather, it is decentralized when it is taken out of the field by performers, whereby performers are understood to be all those present in the performance space /
the text can bend and twist out of the grip of representation (the most obvious manifestation of the closeness of the field), which means its dispersion, fragmentation and reduction until abolition, in the function of sensitizing and embodying a concept with-in everyone present; in this context, the distinction between staging and performing is less important—we are talking about the happening /
the use of the text in the happening comes from a lucid consideration, invention, innovation, which ensures an effective leap of the text into the context, whereby “effective” means that this innovation works in favor of performing the joy21 /
the technique of breaking (clipping, mounting) the text, which allows it to leap into the context, cannot be standardized, it must be unique and original, it is akin to video/filmmaking and deejaying techniques of cutting and collaging—placing never completely defined fragments into performance in order to relieve the space of three-dimensionality, relations of civility, composition of style, and the community of its cultures /
this breaking technique comes from the need to break the rule /
the embodiment of metatext
when we talk about text in the theater field, we are actually talking about speech, speaking and also singing (not forgetting other formalizations such as video projection of the text, writing around the room or offering the printed text to the audience); we are talking about a certain transposition of what is written (from paper or screen) to another place, whereby the human voice is a medium that necessarily changes and personifies the text during pronunciation /
magic of voice /
the voice is magical when it is relieved of the consistency dictated by the consensuality of the literary canon as the foundation of the theater (the grammaticality of the utterance and the rule of the regulations of utterance, textocentrism, linguistic fetishism, therefore also ethnocentrism, which is inscribed in what is said, sung, staged, produced, awarded, archived, historicized) /
the magic of the voice—its initiation, formation and spread in space as a sign and manifestation of rituality—is possible when the text, which the voice processes and at the same time invents, is relieved of the necessary punctuation (when we allow ourselves to omit the comma, when we violate the sanctity of its position); breaking the rule shakes the textual ratiō (which feels secure when bounded by convention) and opens up the metatextual παράλογος (the irrational as unconventional in itself); neither fable nor poetics, but an asynchronous poem /
the voice can discover and enhance the magical dimension of a text, or invent it by swirling its fragments /
the text can be transformed from a consensual (always hierarchically based) structure into a melodic (so to speak mathematical) axiom, into fragments of a melody (its core is rhythm, percussiō), which can be related to movement, dance and touch, to any individual and group dynamics based on a certain tempo, synthesis of different tactilities and untying of convention /
with personification, the text is necessarily displaced (from the schematicity of the dramatic text to the body liveliness), and the key question is how we deal with this displacement, whether we perceive it at all—as it is possible to play with it freely /
playing with text is an experiment that constantly gets out of control, promising the emergence of a metatext from an existing source or one’s own design; the performing strategy that enables just that is one aware of itself and does not place itself above the performers (understood as everyone present in space), but rather tends to internalize playing (a play with-in a play), which can lead to an embodiment of metatext /
the embodiment of metatext is a radical leap that we do not achieve in the dramatic stage regime, because we do not want to leave the field, even though we occasionally whine about doing so /
the embodiment of metatext also means decentralization; the story (a narrative) does not hang over us like a backdrop (linguistic conventions, authorial projections of a message), but, to the extent that it is a story at all, it is scattered—this, further, means that we do not identify with its fragments (during the intellectual deciphering of the course of events, roles, characters and the syntax itself), but we (along with all other sensations) primarily sense-feel them (which does not exclude consideration): a text fragment is primarily an attraction that triggers a sensation; the happening effect of internalizing the narrative (or its protofactors) initiates and enables (perhaps paradoxically at first glance) the emergence and development of the disidentification situation; neither actor (who, in a craft sense, is no longer here anyway) nor observer (who is also no longer here, since everyone can participate through more than just observation) do not identify with the character of the (dramatic) figure, which is otherwise dictated by the dramatic text (aimed at following the narrative), but this kind of identification is directly embodied during the confrontation with the fragments of the text, in the mix with all the sensations in the space (“poetry of language is replaced by poetry in space, and it will flourish precisely in the area that is not definitively in the domain of words”)22 /
we are talking about the experiential, generic spectacular side of the performance, we are not interested in the passivity of the dual regime of auditorium and stage, but rather the total, holistic activity in a polymorphic space that is neither an auditorium nor a stage /
the multidirectionality of the generic spectacle, unlike the rigid regime of the controlled spectacle, which presupposes fixed identifications and does not allow randomness, allows us to surrender to the situation, that is to play with the risks and contingencies of disidentification (untying identities to reinvent them); multidirectionality is a reflection of the situational potential of the artistic gesture, which is becoming ours /
deciding whether to only use the text or to invent, implement and embody the metatext also means deciding to close or open the identity barrier /
metatext is dismantled (but not necessarily deconstructed) and reassembled language, a hybrid language of a live montage, which in its harmonic (tonic) essence departs from the human and approaches the universal animality as one of the qualities of the voice (it is the animality of the voice apparatus that is the quality that provokes the artifice and immobility of the text) /
metatext: idea-language /
the metatext introduces a dis-sensual dimension where consensus is expected, dictated by both the literary (fabulative) canon and trendy forms of the neoliberal stage criticality; defamiliarizes the ordinary (makes the ordinary extraordinary), opens entrances and enables entries /
Fernando Belfiore, Mavi Veloso, Nicolás Rosés and Isadora Tomasi, in their performance No volveremos à la normalidad porque la normalidad era el problema,23 sparingly operate with the metatext and—during occasional addressing of those present—flexibly but bindingly clamp it into a movement attraction of sexy bodies (it is a somatic research, the prefix sexy is a reflection of working from yourself-as-you-are when you are an insurgente); performers break through the limitations of physicality, which connects to the extreme to the space, summoning rebellion from the bodies in order to throw it among all the bodies present; dance, acrobatics and techno trance trap sound (an off-choreography, a tie to counterculture) here and now install the South as Latinoeurope, which “here” is only conditionally welcome, they reverse the matrix brutality and take away the power of capital’s misery—they dance into it so passionately that it becomes, so to speak, insignificant /
beyond prohibition
the characteristics of the happening are the polyvalent mobility of the participants, the possibility of a rhizomic linking between all those present and the absence of a gap between the performers and the spectators (which is crucial for the existence of the theater field) /
perhaps the disintegration of the controlled spectacle (the matrix collapse into itself during each of its new metamorphoses, which are presented as updates, but are actually the system’s modus operandi) expands the space for the affirmation of happening (contemplative, imaginative and experimentally festive expression in the common) /
during the escalation of the sanitary prohibition a.k.a plandemic, I performed esc;24 the performance turned into a happening, when a community of (more than a hundred, but sublimely uncountable:) bodies jumped over a ban: during the last song, which was part of the performance, they stepped on stage and danced, thus spontaneously co-creating an event that extended into a party; we are not talking about an external prohibition, which is just an apparition in the ultimate sense, but an internal one, the one that inhibits joy—to skip it is the key condition for the initiation, embodiment and situating of the happening; esc was a song-and-dance escape to myself that helped me-us survive the intro act of the new biopolitical shock25 /
happening is a network-in-play (a network in the musical-mathematical sense and a play in the ludic sense, which does not mean that it does not also have an economic and other backgrounds), and its basic axiom is a body, a singing-dancing body that trusts other dancing-singing bodies in a situation of potential pleasure /
the theater field is not impermeable to situationality, nor is happening to acting, but only in the absence of a boundary between creativity and militancy (militancy in the sense of transgressing the prohibition) can one speak of a creatively liberating space of freedom, where art is written with a lowercase initial, because it does not have a special value that would be utilitarian (colonized), therefore it does not have a status of difference that would allow it any privilege /
it is possible to seemingly exempt oneself from the status of difference (twisting transdisciplinary voices in favor of the controlled spectacle) or to face it and nullify it in practice with creative approaches: to situate oneself beyond the prohibition (from the body to the bodies of the community of equals) /
performing joy in a situation of pleasure
if we are ready and able to unreservedly grasp the theater (as a field) in its unfreedom (apoliticalness), we will perceive the need for art as mimesis—based on textocentrism—as a gigantic departure from artistic experience as enchantment, magic and ritual26 /
only when we accept and internalize the awareness of the narrowness of the field(s), can we be clear about what the text is in the connotative, ideological and functional sense, and above all that a ritual practice (the pleasure in the ritual) is possible where the embeddedness in the context is authentic, where the decision to liberate is made, which always means dehierarchizing and deidentifying, so to speak, an organic departure from mimesis /
moving (away) into the beyond is an enchantment that does not rely on explanation, it is magic, beauty (of artificial), attraction, performing of joy in a situation of pleasure /
not to stare, but to look into each other’s eyes /
the question of disentangling the staring regime and the situation of pleasure is an (intimate) question of ourselves, in the sense of the decision about the placement of the body, the determination of our function in the field and outside (a matter of invention), and above all of our sensible input into the ritual, generic spectacle practice /
pleasure is an opportunist’s nightmare /
pleasure does not subvert the field, the field is irrelevant /
joy is the transcendence of the dancing tribe-in-the-making
Your support is precious <3
Donate monthly 2€ or more
Donate a lump amount
PayPal
…………………
1 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri see in this multiplicity the starting point of liberation—which I see as self-determination (determining what you can become) and self-transformation (abolishing own’s identity while inventing it again and again)—in the conditions of biopolitical production (Commonwealth, HUP, 2009).
2 An example. The telephone has gradually transformed from a device for long-distance voice communication into a means of tracking, monitoring consumer habits, direct marketing, etc. We have reached the point where we are promised a physical invasion into the body of many of the functions that the telephone performs today, in terms of the possibility of implanting micro- and nano-interfaces linked to the corporate data management (that tries to cancel the internet anonymity by implementing various legislative boundaries). In order for such an extensive transformation to be possible, it was necessary to embellish the original function of the phone and make it a pleasant and convenient intimate companion for every individual. During the integration of new functions, first text messaging, photographing, video and sound video recording, and then applications that promise various magic, we are offered “countless” design versions of the device, which are constantly “evolving”, finally so that the computer core of the device itself has become the object of design. With beautification, the original idea of an open communication channel has turned into a highly commercialized fetish that (unskillfully) disguises its role of a mass collecting of the emotional and sensory patterns of the population.
3 Wolfgang F. Haug, Kritika robne estetike [Kritik der Warenästhetik, 1971], Istraživačko-izdavački centar SSO Srbije, 1981, p. 138.
4 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Polity Press, 1993.
5 Florence Dupont, Aristotel ali vampir zahodnega gledališča [Aristote ou le vampire du théâtre occidental, 2007], MGL, 2019, p. 312.
6 I share my view to F. Dupont’s book in the writings: Public Secret: Boredom of (Post)Drama Theater, Amfiteater, 2020, No. 1, pp. 364–368; Spectacular Celebration (Outta Stage), performans, 27.5.2023.
7 Museum of Modern Art, New York, 14.3.–31.5.2010.
8 Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot, 1949.
9 Samuel Beckett, Pochade radiophonique, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1975.
10 Samuel Beckett, L’Innommable, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1953.
11 Jacques Rancière, Nerazumevanje [La Mésentente, 1995], ZRC SAZU, 2005, p. 41, and Hatred of Democracy [La haine de la démocratie, 2005], Verso, 2006, p. 33.
12 veneration of procedure in the closed field is characteristic of disembodied bodies (organes sans corps); their other name is the police—what is called politics in the matrix discourse; this denomination is developed by Jacques Rancière: he describes the police order as the order of the visible and the spoken, which takes care of the (in)visibility of a certain activity and decides whether the word is heard as intelligible speech or as incomprehensible noise / the police is another name for the general renunciation of pleasure (coming from the renunciation of one’s own responsibility or self-determination, which turns into subjugation, self-control, self-repression and self-destruction, while the surface of the social structure wants to leave the impression of the rule of pleasure) /
13 Gilles Deleuze, Razlika in ponavljanje [Différence et répétition, 1968], ZRC SAZU, 2011, p. 114.
14 Razlika in ponavljanje, p. 242.
15 I write about the utopia of performance in The Rupture that Shakes the Institution—The Mute Character in the Utopia of Performance, Amfiteater, 2016, No. 2, pp. 36–52.
16 Kitch, Prisega (The Oath), 2016, and PopParty, 2017. The strategy (that I previously used to call all for everyone) is described through those two examples in my contribution All for Everyone: Thoughts on Collectivity in Performative Context at the 16th International Symposium of Theatre Critics and Theatre Scholars, on the topic Collective Works, organized by Sterijino pozorje, Novi Sad, in 2018.
17 On the example of the documentary film about the Ljubljana version of the Occupy movement, I write about the aestheticization of rebellion in Resistance in Spectacle, Spectacle within Resistance, Kino!, 2014, No. 23/24, pp. 97–116.
18 I write about the devitalization of theater in Telo v devitaliziranem teatru (Body in the Devitalized theater), performans, 16.9.2020, and in After Devitalized Theatre, Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, 2020, No. 22.
19 The notion of the distribution of the sensible was introduced by Rancière.
20 Eugène Ionesco, Les Chaises, 1951.
21 I talk about performing the desire, for example, in the contribution Beyond (Theatre) Institution, towards Self-organization of Production at the conference Theatre Between Politics and Policies: New Challenges, organized by Faculty of Dramatic Arts and The Yugoslav Cinematheque, Belgrade, in 2018. The notion of performing the joy, however, is more in line with the rituality that I am affirming in this writing.
22 Antonin Artaud, Gledališče in njegov dvojnik [Le théâtre et son double, 1964], MGL, 1994, p. 61.
23 Spider Festival, Ljubljana, 18.6.2020.
24 esc—solo performance, based on Matej Kejžar’s initiative, Spider Festival, Ljubljana, Tivoli city park, in the night of 19–20.6.2020.
25 At the time of writing in October 2020, freedom of movement was severely restricted, events were banned, socializing was officially curtailed, there was a curfew, and nightclubs were closed for months.
26 Susan Sontag in Against Interpretation (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966) opens up the consideration of interpretation by emphasizing the contrast between ancient ritual creative practices and the theory of art of ancient philosophers, who propose to imitate reality.