8 believe | 8 called | 8 case | 8 control | 8 democracy | 8 emancipatory | 8 entire | 8 especially | 8 film | 8 goebbels | 8 kind | 8 let |
announced public reading, we introduced other materials into it: dramatisations of meetings, video and other. Milan: A part of the material became the process, and this opened up numerous issues as regards what can be considered as material: is material what we obtain at meetings; what we performed? In the event of repeats at different festivals, the material becomes the context or the changing of it. The project emerged and is still emerging through an exchange – with members of political parties, artists from the non-institutionalised scene, with whom we have been holding conversations while working on the project. Their reactions are a constituent part of the material and it is hard to define to what extent these reactions are a part of the project and to what extent are they merely its product. Maja: The integral version of the texts found on the blog, together with all photographs of the various application forms, has now been published in Scena,11 even though we did not know till the very end what this text on cultural policy would look like. Even though such an “intervention” would be expected from magazines such as TKH – Teorija koja hoda, Maska or Frakcija, I think it is important for the text to be published in a “mainstream” theatre newspaper. Marković’s argument is that the only performance act in this project is the act of joining seven parties in seven days (any analogy with the creation of the world is merely coincidental) and that he is not interested in the visual and sound documentation of the dirty party laundry that was reached with this “act”, because this moves the entire project from the art field towards sensationalist journalism. This is why it is good that the “artistic pragmatism” of Maja Pelević rebelled against the “theoretical puritanism” of Milan Marković. This is how an important work of art emerged, a theoretically based discussion on the possibilities and limitations of artistic subversion as well as a picturesque document on the swamp that we call Serbian political life. (Ivan Medenica, Politika)
The conflicts in the drama form Maja: In the idea of a public reading, this was exactly what was important to us – the public reading – a transfer 11 http://www.pozorje.org.rs/scena/scena1212.pdf
of something into the public sphere and the reading of a dramatic text. We formed the text in a classical play form (with acts, a prologue, an epilogue, intermezzos …), which means that the contents are in conflict with the form. Milan: I thought it was especially interesting when we tried to establish a conflict between two already established and from the very start problematic discourses. We could have invited the audience to a press conference, but I think that with the presentation in the form of a public reading we not only attacked the parliamentary system in Serbia, but also the form of drama and art. I think it is important to create something different from the conservative and closed institutionalised form, such as a public reading of a play, without taking away its performance dimension; it is only the two of us on stage, thus the project remains personal, but with a stage presence that is not private. I was especially motivated by the toying with the expectations of the audience, which was possible in Belgrade, because the event was announced merely as a public reading of a new, contemporary play, and people did not know the contents of the play or the context of the project. The fates of artists have left a strong mark on the artistic interpretations of those works in which the dramatic conflict originated from the conflict between the artist and the system. They Live represents the newest generation of this dramaturgy, in which artists find themselves on both sides and in which the question as to whether the political parties control the artists or vice versa is posed in a serious tone. As we watch the reading performed by Maja Pelević and Milan Marković, we can – at least the ones who are a part of the same milieu – pose the question, who is watching who here, are we watching them or are they watching us? And this is one of the basic questions posed in contemporary theatre. (Dimitrije Vojnov, Scena)
Censorship as an accusation of artistic irrelevance Maja: We arranged to stage the public reading of the play with the artistic director of JDP,12 but with less than a week to go we were called by the director Tamara Vučković, for she had heard that there was “something fishy” about the performance. Once she read the text, she cancelled 12 The public reading of They Live should have taken place in JDP on 17th March 2012. As it was removed from the programme as an afterthought, it took place – as previously mentioned – on 8th April 2012 in Dom Omladine in Belgrade.
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