The New Man
in
Rijeka
Croatia
at the
6th of September 2012
20 pm
at this venue:
Nakon šoka proživljenog Prvim Svjetskim ratom te konačnim slomom buržoaskog koncepta umjetnosti, mnogi su umjetnici tražili nove funkcije svoje umjetnosti, nove odnose prema životu i zajednici. Taj modernistički impuls proizlazi iz iskustava fašizma i represije staljinizma. Predstava The New Man (Novi čovjek) grupe LIGNA istražuje četiri različita faktora od kojih je četvrti presjek prva tri. Bertolt Brecht razvija tzv. poučne komade, odnosno Lehrstücke u kojima gestikulacije, društveni statusi pa i društvo u cjelini igraju važnu ulogu. Plesač Rudolf von Laban predlaže Bewegungschöre, odnosno zborove kretanja, u kojima vibracije kolektiva raspršuju samu moć. Redatelj Wsewolod Meyerhold u Sovjetskom Savezu eksperimentira s biomehaničkim vježbama za glumce kako bi im obnovio tijela i na taj način postigao novu vrstu subjektivnosti, te konačno komičar Charlie Chaplin koji nailazi na sve te utopijske vizije i njihova obećanja.
The New Man je predstava bez glumaca i pozornice. Nema se što vidjeti osim aktivnosti posjetitelja, koji slušaju radio dramu koja se bavi s već spomenuta četiri estetska faktora i predlaže gestikulacije i pokrete prema različitim nacrtima novoga čovjeka. No publika ne sluša istovremeno istu stvar, već je podjeljena u grupe u kojima svaka grupa petnaest minuta sluša jedan od četiri faktora. Nakon petnaest minuta program se mijenja i uloga prelazi na drugu grupu. Na kraju svaka grupa odsluša i testira sve faktore. Igraju istu predstavu četiri puta, ali u različitim ulogama i istovremeno su i glumci i promatrači. The New Man traži da se gestikulacije i pokreti pretvore u javnu, kolektivnu stvar.
The New Man je predstava u trećem licu koja iskorištava dekonstrukciju gestikulacije te iznova propituje estetske paradigme Brechtova Lehrstücka. Nada, da će sve društvene institucije, koje su trenutno raštrkane, pronaći svoje mjesto, živi između različitih pozicija predstave.
Doing is better than feeling. Bertolt Brecht
After the shock of the First World War and the final breakdown of the bourgeois concept of art, very different artists looked for a new function for their art, searching for a new relation to life and society. This modernist impulse is buried under the experience of facism and the repression of stalinism. LIGNA’s performance The New Manexplores three different positions - with a fourth which cuts across the others.
The poet Bertolt Brecht develops the Lehrstueck for a state without classes, where the gestures, social postions and by that the society as a whole come into play. The dancer Rudolf von Laban proposes Bewegungschoere, choirs of movement, in which the collective vibrations disperse power itself. The director Wsewolod Meyerhold experiments in the young Sowjet Union with biomechanical exercises for his actors to renew their bodies and by that shape a new kind of subjectivity. Finally the comedian Charlie Chaplin stumbles across all of these utopian visions and their promises.
The New Man is a performance without actors and stage. There is nothing to see except for the activity of the visitors. They are listening to a radio play, that not only deals with the four aesthetic positions mentioned above, but proposes gestures and movements according to the different blueprints of the new man. But the audience is not listening to the same things at the same time. It is is split up into four groups. For fifteen minutes each group is listening to one of these positions, then their program is changing and their role is transferred to another group. In the end every group of listeners will have tested and quoted every attitude. They play the same play four times with different roles, being actors and viewers at the same time. The New Man calls for turning the production of gestures and movements into a public, collective affair.
The New Man is a play in the third person, exploiting the iterability of the gesture and thus reconsidering the aesthetical paradigms of Brecht’s Lehrstueck. The hope that all social institutions could come into play, which is scattered under present circumstances, is kept alive in a dispersed way between the different positions of the play.
