October 30th, wednesday morning.
A “performative lecture” took place in IAB’s Studio 2 and it was held by Agata Tomšič, from the italian collective ErosAntEros: as it is said by the panel’s title - "Theatre as a tool to collectively fight climate catastrophe: the example of ErosAntEros’ performance Gaia - Agata Tomšič"- , the main topic was the use of theater as a collective and revolutionary strategy, aiming to resist, fight, and somehow have a better understanding of the climate crisis.
Gaia, the performance that was taken as an exemple, wants to encourage a way of doing theater that can challenge society, says Tomšič, whose words made us reflect on the fact that “This century will determine what is the optimal human population for the planet earth”, and it will necessary happen, for better or for worse.
When it comes to her academic references, it is clear that Walter Benjamin’s concept of dialectical images plays a big role, these images being an instrument for political consciousness that can even ignite subversions by revealing a truth. The philosopher analyzes this concept in relation to history throughout his production and Gaia appropriates it to push the public towards an active vision, eventually and hopefully followed by real life acts in favor of the utopia presented. ErosAntEros, born in 2010, is, in fact, driven by this need to link theater to reality, not in the realist/naturalist art kind of way, but more in the the sense that art must have an impact on what reality is and on how people handle and manage it. Agata spoke about this theoric process in the first part of her speech, then, she showed us some video extracts from Gaia, to explain and illustrate the collective’s creative process, that tends to combine strong sounds, techno shows, the music dimension in general, with text, bodies and lights, giving birth to a futuristic atmosphere where the body gains a new cyborg dimension. Truth is, when we see Gaia, even on the little screen of Studio 2, we can perceive that every one of these listed aspects becomes one: we could call their creative process “compacting”, or even “cooking-like” because the final performance it’s a recipe where every ingredient is mixed and merged to have one harmonic result, both in terms of sight and sound; even what is overlapping is creating a new equilibrium that is constantly evolving on stage, even if we can still perceive the ephemeral nature of what’s being created.
The desire to be freed from normal schemes thanks to dramaturgy is fed by poetic words mixed with scientific datas, something that is recurrent in the works presented during EASTAP, such as “Complex Systems, Protocols for Artistic Creation” by Marcela Mouraand or even in Marco Paolini and his “Fabbrica del mondo”. The images of the mother goddess freed of her shell, her transformation when she becomes like water, the cyborg forms, the black blocks dinosaurs occupy the stage and bring us to a new dimension.
The Gaia project has been traveling Europe and what Agata also cares to state is that, even if governments and collective action doesn't always seem to acknowledge the environmental issues, their work has found raisonnance everywhere they made their workshops with local people, from Italy, France, Montenegro, Macedonia. It is maybe because this creation wants to bring to light something that affects us all, including the ones who stay uninterested and don't seem to care.
The artist's ecosystem is here merged with the public’s ecosystem.
At this point, a small replica of these ateliers proposed by ErosAntEros was set up by Agata to let us experiment the communion of elements of their creative process.
Everybody in the room stood up, and started the classic theater rehearsal exercise that demands to go “mmmmm”, making a continuous noise and vocalizing together, looking for a cohesion in the group before starting with some vowels. Everybody could choose and say the vowel they wanted, the important thing was to find a harmonic balance before starting to read, by turns, the apocalyptic phrases that Agata showed us on the screen. She wanted us to listen to the group and speak when we felt like it, speaking loud and going along with all the elements on stage: music, other people, their voices. A crescendo was created and to stop everything Agata declared us dead, falling on the ground with one of the t-rex masks that she also uses during the performances. The collapsing of our world, the ominous words and music, is paired with costume elements detaching the human body as we know it from what the apocalyptic revolutionary body can become.
Something exploded like we had completed our task, are we the population earth will choose?
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