I thought about it as response again to your link with the issues of money and stock markets. the madness of it. we need them they need us. have been watching last days the matrix again with the eyes of our project. the machines need humans, and humans need the machine. i would replace the machine with system, market system.
i still can not summarize where we are, it is kind of chaotic but interesting net of ideas. and the net, comes also often in our talks back. so may be this should be our main focus- to create a network of ideas around aggression. the network is the system, it needs us and we need it. and may be this network can be extended to the audience, like they will be part of it. we need them for the performance, they need us ???
so can the audience be involved in our 'game'. you managed very well to make audience 'hot' with your rulet thing. may be we can think a bit in that direction. may be the audience can pull curtain buttons from the network we will build and by that decide the dramaturgy of the scenes. so we create scenes and topics and the line can be chosen by the public. but i want to think further about strategies to involve them into our network. may be they can contribute stories on spot. like there will be a bank of stories, as one of the options of the scenes.
to be continued
TIME IS MONEY
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very nice thoughts!
ReplyDeletei would like to say that.. there is another level that ought to NOT be take for granted...
part of what happens when you witness a piece is that you are observing how the ensemble is making what they are making be 'art' in today's situation now. this has many levels... let's take dance. to what degree is a current piece, working with say bhoto or judson type ideas, or pina bausch expressivism or new weird tactics, etc.
my point is just that there is something in the very action of the ensemble as such that is relevant in live art work. very relevant.
i think we can work with this, self-conciously to a much greater degree then we have explored so far.
we can for instance be on some kind of weird edge with each other of power and 'naturalism' in HOW we do things on stage with each other. in how literally we are then and there organizing the development of the piece.
we can then and there turn the organization of the development of the piece (from scene to scene or idea to idea) inside out. Make it fully transparant one could say, AND at the same time be dealing with aggression/violence, etc. in HOW we are working with each other.
in that way its not 'outside' the themes here, but directly involved with them...
*****
and yes yes
there are many ways that the audience can be involved in our game
but i am not so sure about making them sorta the dictators for the greater part of the event... perhaps at one point sure.. but somehow i feel that this becomes too much about Reality TV.. which is fine, but could easily just serve to comment in a way on that.. but i guess i am just thinking out loud on that... like in a voting power thing..
but rather i wonder about complicating their involvement in the very questions of actually learning about this issue of aggression/violence...
like in doing a sorta therapy thing wiht individuals in the audience about letting the "madness" out...
so the involvement in the network is not so much to duplicate ironically the power structure of reality tv and (fake) democracy (that is offered in facebook, with the like button, etc. etc.) but rather to actually cross the line a bit and actually involve people in their inner and outer 'worlds' of state violence/aggression....
that sorta thing.. if possible...
yes i agree. i also don't want them to be just fake participants. and have a nice game. i don't mean they should become the dictators, but somehow i think of bringing them with 'the system' into the state of madness. there should be some kind of accumulation. the system is not a nice fake democracy, but actually a chaos of which we are part of and as less we communicate with each other about it, as less everybody stays isolated, frightened and alone, like during the stalins rejime, where you don't know where the danger will come from. this is how i feel now, i seat in my room and i am afraid that everything i planed will not work, is not working and my heart is stuck and the worth thing is that i can not blame anybody for this only myself, for being an immigrant, a looser. that does not help to solve the problems. i do not see the way out. as a freelancer i guess one will always have this and better get used to it, but i am too sisy:) the moment i relax i am afraid something bad will happen to me. but now my tension is so high that i can't read anything about stalin, i can't work on the project, because i am afraid. i don't know what to do if i will not get the money from de balie. and i am still hoping that i will get it, but i guess i can't look the truth into the eyes. i am stuck in-between.
Deleteabout how the system needs us and we need the system....
ReplyDeletetheoretically yes: in the positive. that is to say.. theoretically we (the people) could stop it all in one massive strike, for instance.. these were the tactics that were employed in the early days of Anti-Globalization (i.e. attempting to shut down the IMF meetings-- and at first succeeding...)...
the thing is that structurally, the 'system' does not depend on any one person or even i think (and maybe i am too pessimistic i don't know) a multitude...
its not iron-clad.
there are in fact all kinds of fissures and problems that arise (i.e. internal contradictions to use the old-fashioned marxist analysis... such as the recent economic crisis in europe.. the great worries that we were headed to another Great Depression... were not just 'speculative' but based on real math. the basic law of capitalism is that the rate of profit has to exceed the rate of debt owed. and what was happening in europe is that it was looking like this was far from happening. quite the contrary. when the rate of debt exceeds the rate of profit you have a very strong chance of a credit crunch. this means that people -- all kinds, from big money to ordinary people -- start taking their money out of the banks [to protect their value from a breakdown].. when this happens all at once, the whole system shuts down. this was the beginning of the great depression and the worry was that this was happening in europe [no good solution to the problem of huge debt and little profit... so the fear was a credit crunch was imminent].. so a lot of different measures, etc. were taken... Soros and others are still worried, by the way. Soros thinks that the summer were be another period of seeing how what they have done has worked or not...)
other kinds of problems and fissures that arise are things like the Arab Spring...
in other words there is what is called "uneven development" in how global capitalism relates to on the ground politics, realities, changes, etc.
it is not all the same or all smooth the world over..
it is very problematic actually..
and all kinds of possibilities at any given time, in fact...
****
but this is, to my mind, structural..
in some senses its not personal at all...
the big shots at the IMF can be replaced in a second. the traders on the NY stock exchange or the German stock exchange, if they die, or if they all suddenly quit, etc. can simply be replaced.. the system goes on...
as it does (which is problematic and not one thing)
how we -- the people-- relate to change, how we bring it about, how that all happens... is not really fully understood..
as it were..
currently we know that say a Leninist approach will not really work now (a top down Party in control of events).
there is a great deal of talk of Horizontalism today in leftist activist circles as being the 'way' forward...
as it were...
how the 'system' depends on us and how we depend on it..
are actually to my mind, quite complex questions... in general...
there at least three aspects
the hegemony (the on-the-ground players in a power structure, their personalities, links, etc.)
the dominant ideology and its features and history (how global capitalism is reacted, absorbed, etc. in a given place)
the macro-economic situation and how that relates to the local (the ups and downs day by day and how that effects things)
the power, knowledge, etc. of people seeking resistance/progress in a given place. is that generation isolated? is that generation working with other generations? etc. etc.
wish it was simpler..
indeed!
but that being said. the human act of communication, of humour, of shared senses of things, of working together is absolutely great!
and means alot. personally and collectively... just hard to say what it can lead to at any given time. in fact... no guarantees... life in flux..
and why we need stability really!