TEXTS

WHY “MARAT / SADE”?

by Javor Gardev

The direct goal of our efforts in the last two years was to establish Triumviratus Art Group without making it part of the local establishment. What this really means apart of the word game? In our assumption, the local cultural context was and unfortunately still is, more or less monopolized by the centralized power presence, i.e. by the domestic power intrigues. Although it may appear more and more free, it actually keeps (as if by itself!) the default formula of this omnipresence. The self-reproducing of the central power in the cultural sphere is actually supported by the economic fear of the agents in the art field not to fall out of the social security net which fear, after all, is understandable. This way though, the liberal attitude in arts cannot install itself here and there is no real move and debate in the sphere of taste. The taste is the inertia of the taste. The taste, in a way, is a “lazy” structure. It is neither being questioned, nor reflected publicly. It appears to be out of any real social agenda. The system, tired of itself and already deprived of any real sense, is reproducing itself in the boredom of more or less simulated activities. Arts are already assumed inferior. As if they became unnecessary. To operate, to be active and not to be desperate under such social assumption one has to follow either very specific strategy of one’s presence in the art field or to submit to the formative rules of inertia. In fact, as we continue to state, every long term policy in the direction of establishing an art formation here is exposed to the very likely possibility to corrupt mentally and to surrender the idea of the leaving art Triumviratus tries to be representative of. This is why the idea of anti-establishment is not a form of somewhat outdated revolutionary pathos but a way to breath freely in a situation full of restrictions, limits and unformulated (but valid!) rules of obey, restriction, local unarticulated hierarchy, invisible orders of ascendancy and so on. We continue to state that the instant effectiveness, the unexpected event, the mobility are very crucial in order not to be cached in the net of inertia and this is why we declare our authentic desire to make a performance which since the very moment of its conceiving is getting under the authentic local risk of being “guillotined” at the end. Everybody here, even not declaring this publicly, seems to be quite tired of populist simulations and predictable events. We lose year after year our critical social reflex and unintentionally prove that the “petit bourgeois” is what we really want to be. The landscape consists of insignificant debates, little troubles, weak social interactions. We have never been even real communists, but always “petit bourgeois - communists”. In times when people actually lose their interest in theatre and become more and more internally exhausted of the large production made for the “people” sake, it is time for them to be stirred. Of course, they can reject the stirring. It seems very likely that it is very late for us here to question our identities through theatre. It is never late though, to check and examine our problematic Europeanism. This weak and traumatic point stuffed with negative mythology and historic prejudice needs diagnose. This asthmatic running after the projected “good life” outside the curtain has made us so nervous and intolerable that we hardly see any real beauty in life anymore. The “good life” is where we are not present. We can’t experience any portion of it because of the pointless enthusiasm of chasing it. Pity, we never had our 1968. Pity, we never smelled those flowers! Probably we should smell them first before plunging into the eternal Heaven of Europe. This time our goal in Triumviratus should be to touch the fire with uncovered hands, we also need to leave the zone of the esthetic security, we need to experience the outdated, old-fashioned, and never personally experienced solidarity. We’d like to treat the wound through irritation, the revolutionary way. The time has come for ourselves to confront the poles of the predicted interest, to question more radically and painfully, to examine the identity prejudice and taboos of ours. Can we do this with one single performance? Of course, we can! The Jacobins are coming back on vogue! God bless our post-identical rage!