More Than Activism, Less Than Art: The Heritage of Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno in Contemporary Theatre Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome) One of the goals of engaged I subversive art is to change social anomalies, and to effect political change. However, in the contemporary world, instead of large, global, radical movements or artistic actions, one might rather speak of a collection of micro-changes, especially in elitist art. We should therefore consider the ways in which art prevails over activism, but achieves its ultimate goal just as well: subverting the status quo, undermining normal, legitimate, and accepted models of behaviour, transforming social life and its ethical parameters. Drawing on the legacy of Bertolt Brecht, I will take the activists and directors Christoph Schlingensief and Oliver Frljic´ as examples of contemporary artivism. I would like to start my discussion on “ more than activism, less than art ” , or artivism (a combination of art and activism) 1 , with a famous statement by Theodor W. Adorno: “ It is self-evident that nothing concerning the art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist. ” 2 The concept of art has undergone a significant change at the beginning of the 21 st century — a shift that requires new ways of thinking and writing about contemporary performing arts. Rather than creating anything genuinely “ new ” , globalization has produced conditions that might permit us to rethink performing arts in a larger historical and geographical context. One of the goals of engaged/ subversive art is to change social anomalies, that is, to effect political change, which is almost impossible to achieve today on a global level. Therefore, instead of large, global, radical movements or artistic actions, one might speak of a collection of microartivisms, especially in elitist art. To be specific, we should take into consideration the ways in which art prevails over activism, but achieves its ultimate goal just as well: subverting its status quo, undermining the normal, legitimate, and accepted models of behaviour, transforming social life and its ethical parameters. What kind of results may engaged/ subversive art expect/ achieve in the political/ social arena today? What are its aims and limits? The Legacy of Brecht Adorno was adamant that there is no space for freedom in capitalism with consumption prevailing over the whole system including the arts. 3 The relationship between the performing arts and the new logic of the market enables us to observe the functioning of today ’ s artistic scene from another perspective. Its basic feature is not only the widely criticized commodification of culture, but also a less commonly noticed, and perhaps even more important trend in the opposite direction: the ever-increasing culturalisation of the market economy itself, in which cultural performance is primarily determined by its social efficacy. 4 A short circuit between culture and the market results in the disappearance of the old, modernist, avant-garde logic of provoking and shocking the establishment. Basically, that is Adorno ’ s thesis in most of his writ- Forum Modernes Theater, 29/ 1-2 (2014 [2018]), 37 - 46. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen ings, especially in his Aesthetic Theory. Even when hiding under its modernist guise, art is so inseparable from its character as a commodity that its very effort for change remains superficial and imperceptible, rendering excess acceptable. Today, in order to reproduce itself under the conditions of market competition, the cultural-economic apparatus is increasingly obliged not only to tolerate, but also even directly to encourage ever more shocking effects and products. In postmodernism, even extreme excess loses its shock value and is entirely integrated into the arts market, transforming avant-garde radicalism into nostalgia. 5 Historical misunderstandings between Adorno and Brecht 6 aside, the abovementioned words of Adorno ’ s confirm the dialectical aesthetics of Bertolt Brecht, who maintained that art ought to re-examine the world by which it is surrounded. For Brecht, there was no such thing as the essence of timeless art. Instead, individual societies should create their own artworks to best reflect the particular conditions of their current existence. All his life, Brecht fought to prove that theatrical experience was always weaker than real life, and that it was increasingly difficult for the theatre to reproduce the contemporary world. It was this realization that made him search for new artistic methods. As Fredric Jameson points out, critical approaches to Brecht need to categorize his work carefully, and situate each within the context of the political struggles and social changes in which he lived and worked. 7 Brecht, who was also capable of selfcriticism, stated that his “ non-Aristotelian ” playwriting, and the epic style of acting that went with it, did not represent the only solution to the problem of representation. He maintained that the contemporary world could only be presented to contemporary audiences if it was shown as a world capable of transformation. “ People of the presentday value questions on account of their answers. They are interested in events and situations in face of which they can do something. ” 8 In his short essay, “ Can the Present-day World be Reproduced by Means of Theatre ” that was presented at the fifth Darmstädter Gespräche in 1955, Brecht concluded that the present-day world can be reproduced even in the theatre, but only if it is understood as being capable of change. For a Marxist like Brecht, the mission of art was organically bound up with politics as its integral function, which was to transform society through the theatre audience: “ The modern theatre mustn ’ t be judged by its success in satisfying the audience ’ s habits but by its success in transforming them. ” 9 But did he manage to do that? Perhaps he managed to change the theatre audience, but the audience did not change society. However, on second thoughts, what he managed to do was to change the configuration and the language of contemporary theatre and performance. His thesis on the relationship between theatricality and politics has not only survived to the present, but has also evolved in a number of directions, such as in the work of different theatre directors and companies renowned for their regular criticism of representational (or traditional) theatre and the society that provides such theatre with an alibi. Non-representational theatre allows for reconciliation between aesthetics and ethics in the practices of contemporary performing arts and contributes to the concept of inaesthetics as defined by Alan Badiou: By ‘ inaesthetics ’ I understand a relation of philosophy to art that, maintaining that art is itself a producer of truths, makes no claim to turn art into an object for philosophy. Against aesthetic speculation, inaesthetics describes the strictly intraphilosophical effects produced by the independent existence of some works of art. 10 38 Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome) Therefore, when speaking of the concept of artivism, which could be defined as “ more than activism, less than art ” , one should speak neither of anti-aesthetics, nor of counter-aesthetics, but of inaesthetics, a concept that points to something within aesthetics but at the same time to a deactivation and re-examination of aesthetics. In that sense, Brecht ’ s work in the theatre (his plays and theories) could be crucial for understanding the inaesthetics of artivism. For Brecht, art cannot produce truth, but instead is “ an elucidation [. . .] of the conditions for a courage of truth ” . This courage of truth “ is a therapy against cowardice. Not against cowardice in general, but against cowardice in the face of truth. ” 11 According to Brecht, any theatre that makes a serious attempt to stage new plays risks being “ radically transformed ” . Here Brecht is not thinking about the effect plays have on the audience, but their effect on the theatre and on society. In this sense, Brecht could be seen as a predecessor of what today is considered artivism, since artivists want to change the general political and social conditions by means of art - “ not so much inside the arts system as outside it, that is, change the conditions of reality itself ” . 12 Artivists aspire to change the world and make it a better place, without ceasing to be artists. However, the effort artivists make to combine art and social action is constantly under attack from those who hold traditional views on art and who see activism as artistically inadequate. Many critics say that the social and political activism of artivists is at the expense of artistic quality. Schlingensief ’ s Theatre-Ideas This kind of criticism was often expressed in relation to the work of activist artist Christoph Schlingensief. Often challenged, criticized and even arrested, Schlingensief was first ignored by the establishment and then celebrated as a great artist shortly before his untimely death in 2010. He did not live to receive the Golden Lion that was awarded to the German Pavilion which was entirely dedicated to his work at the Venice Biennial in 2011. But to paraphrase a sentence from Der Spiegel: “ The only good Schlingensief is a dead Schlingensief! ” 13 Schlingensief ’ s anarchism and creativity permitted no objective assessment or definition of his art, because he appeared in every medium, with no prior preparation or a text of the performance, whether in televised talk shows, on the radio, in plays, or performances in terms of action painting. Chaotic, hermetic, and wild, his productions invariably demanded his presence onstage, not only in the capacity of the master of ceremonies, but also in that of the narrator, so that he could explain to the audience all the aspects of the story. He considered working in the theatre “ a kind of social work ” , based on the actors ’ collective experience, improvisation, and mutual relations as well as their relations to the audience who were often put at the heart of the action. One of his notorious performances was his production Ausländer raus - Bitte liebt Österreich (Immigrants out - Please, Love Austria, 2000), made for Wiener Festwochen, in which twelve immigrants were supposed to “ fight ” to be allowed to gain indefinite working and living permits in Austria, while the audience, as in a Big Brother reality-TV show, voted to decide who would win. 14 Eventually the performance revealed the deep roots of xenophobia in Austria. 15 Its subversion and alteration of capitalist media in an experimental performance approximated this performance to what Brian Holmes has defined as “ reverse engineering ” . 16 But as long as Schlingensief was undertaking his “ actions ” inside film and theatre, it looked as though everything was under control. However, under the ever watchful 39 More Than Activism, Less Than Art: The Heritage of Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno in eye of the media, each one of his artivist actions caused huge public scandals, which landed him in prison on more than one occasion. In 1997 at Documenta X in Kassel, he issued a call to all unemployed people. He was arrested in the course of the performance when he held up a poster saying “ Kill Helmut Kohl ” , then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1998 in Baden im Wolfgangsee, he invited the public to jump in the lake to raise the water level so that, potentially, the water would flood the houses of the rich, including that of Helmut Kohl. For the 1998 German federal election he founded Chance 2000, a party for the unemployed, the homeless, prostitutes, and prisoners. In 1999, he sought to collect a million Deutschmarks in five-mark notes, which would then be thrown at those attending the opening of the new Reichstag dome. I consider Schlingensief one of German ’ s most significant contemporary artists, an artist whose entire being and work absorbed and reflected social anomalies of Germany and so-called Western democracies. However, his entire artivist career had been utterly negated until 2004, because many considered him a simple provocateur, perhaps a circus-master, or even a charlatan, until he was embraced by the very same elitist culture he had fought against all his life. The moment when he was diagnosed with cancer marked a turning point in Schlingensief ’ s career, because at that same time he was offered the opportunity to direct Wagner ’ s Parsifal for Bayreuth Festival in 2004, even though he had often ridiculed the festival organizers publicly. It looked as though from that moment onward, Germany ’ s history and current reality had lost all interest for him. His career is therefore one of the most peculiar careers in art over the last twenty years. This is further illustrated by the Bambi Award, Germany ’ s top prize in the field of media, which was posthumously awarded to him in 2010. This paradox of the German public ’ s belated love for Schlingensief does not suggest that something had changed in Germany, or that his critique of German nationalism was finally understood and accepted, but that Schlingensief had been successfully assimilated by his own personal self-depoliticisation in the wake of his illness. Unfortunately, even though Schlingensief is survived by a wealth of material, nothing remains of his artivism. If performance is defined as a piecing together of different elements, material and conceptual ones alike, which exist only in the very act of performing, during an event, a performance, or in representation, this means that the bringing together of these different elements directly produces ideas that Badiou calls theatre-ideas. 17 This implies that theatre-ideas could not be produced by any other means or at any other place. None of the elements used and not even the text of the performance itself, can produce theatre-ideas by themselves. Badiou writes that “ the theatre-ideas come forth only in the (brief) time of its performance, of its representation ” 18 . According to Brecht, “ the theatre becomes a place for philosophers, and for such philosophers as not only wish to explain the world but wish to change it ” . 19 The modern theatre, according to him, does not need to be questioned about its degree of conformity with the conventions of the theatre but about its ability to master the rules that govern great processes of our age: “ not about whether it manages to interest the spectator in buying a ticket - i. e. in the theatre itself - but about whether it manages to interest him in the world ” . 20 Brecht and Schlingensief were interested in a kind of theatre that would be capable of representing political and historical events that shape individual lives. Like Brecht, Schlingensief always worked on the ways of presenting and 40 Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome) elaborating relations between individual destinies and impersonal historical developments. What makes them similar is that they showed society not as static but as in constant motion, developing over time, and subject to change. In this kind of dialectics, the individual appears not just as a psychological subject but as an intersection of social and historical relations that are changeable. Behind their radical thinking and actions there was a deep faith in the possibility for human beings to change. Oliver Frljic´: Transforming the Audience Oliver Frljic´, a Croatian theatre director, always confronts his audience with hidden and disturbing taboos, using the theatre as a performative tool, as he has claimed several times. Frljic´ constantly provokes the postcold war societies, e. g. of the former Yugoslavian republics, Poland, and Germany, with all that is difficult to understand and what is suppressed and falsified from their recent past. He is almost a persona non grata in most of the ex-Yugoslav republics for his radical productions and extreme statements. His appointment as manager of the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka spawned a large public debate in 2014 until he finally left in 2016. He and his collaborators approached the theatre as a “ found object ” , treating it as an alternative theatre space and not as a national theatre. They not only made audacious changes to its repertory, but, by putting various slogans and banners outside of the building, they also tried to communicate even with those members of the public who never go to the theatre. On the first day, over the front of theatre ’ s façade, they installed an enormous billboard stating “ Theatre for the People ” , while for the last season they decided to replace it with a quote from the Croatian constitution, “ Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Speech ” . By means of billboards and a new repertory, Oliver Frljic´ opened a dialogue not only with the city of Rijeka but with the whole Croatian society, which still suffers from many unresolved political and social problems, turning the theatre from a sitespecific into a community-specific theatre. Frljic´ ’ s projects always go beyond the emancipation of the audience, since he is constantly trying to deconstruct society ’ s values, beliefs and traditions. “ What I was trying to do was the performative deconstruction of that institution and its structure; ” he says, “ all norms, all fundamentals were being questioned. ” 21 It is interesting to note that Frljic´ is never concerned with what can be defined as a success. On the contrary, most of his productions give the impression of being unfinished, a kind of mis-performance, a sort of bad amateur theatre, strongly influenced by performance art. The audience has a similar reaction to his productions as it had to Schlingensief ’ s performances: they are disgusted, they protest, or leave the theatre, but they are never indifferent. One of Frljic´ ’ s strategies includes constant and radical changes within the theatre, entailing the permanent questioning and interrogation of existing power structures within the institution. In February of 2017, Frljic´ presented, The Curse (Klatwa) at Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, a new version of a play by Stanis ł aw Wyspia ń ski, written in 1899. Frljic´ ’ s interpretation of the play was critical of the Catholic Church and included a scene in which an actor performs an oral sex act on a statue of Pope John Paul II, which triggered public outrage, was condemned by the Church, and led to protests. In addition, threats of violence were made against the actors and the director, which also affected Frljic´ ’ s leadership of the Malta Festival in Poznan last year. 41 More Than Activism, Less Than Art: The Heritage of Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno in This is not the first time that one of Frljic´ ’ s productions had been censored. Because he is well-known for his productions that ask inconvenient and politically provocative questions, his productions regularly meet with censorship. A few years ago, he was responsible for a production in Rijeka entitled Aleksandra Zec (2014) that dealt with the brutal murder of a Serbian family at the beginning of the war in Croatia in 1991. A few years before that, the production Zoran Đ in đ ic ´ in Belgrade dealt with the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister in 2003. He also created much controversy with his latest production, Our Violence, Your Violence (2016), using as a premise Peter Weiss ’ seminal essayistic novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. Of all of Frljic´ ’ s productions, this one comes closest to debating the role of art in today ’ s society: How much can art contribute to social change of any kind? Can art be an alternative to existing political and economic systems and individual interests? 22 There were also attempts to ban his production of Balkan Macht Frei staged at Munich ’ s Residenztheater, but then it was declared by Nachtkritik to be the fourth best production of 2015. 23 The production originally set out to tell the story of the refugees from the Balkans, but it later developed into a kind of autobiographical story of a Balkan theatre director engaged to work in a German theatre (the program stated that the director had been killed in the meantime, but the theatre management had decided to present the play to the audience anyway). Like most of Frljic´ ’ s productions, Balkan Macht Frei also started with a direct accusation against the audience for their comfortable position and indifference in the face of the suffering of immigrants, who had just begun their mass exodus to Europe. In an extended monologue, the director ’ s alterego, Franz, attacks the audience for enjoying the spectacle on refugees, a speech that already made several people leave the theatre on the opening night. Afterwards Franz/ Frljic´ was subjected to “ torture ” , a scene of “ real water boarding ” to which the spectators started to protest loudly, while some even climbed on to the stage and attempted to stop it. 24 Many reviews after the opening night focussed on the dilemma presented by this scene: Is it ethical to perform torture on stage, or even to watch it, and is this actually theatre or just an act of brutal performance? Some declared the production to be nontheatre because the hyper-realistic scene surpassed the restrictions of theatrical representation and had crossed an ethical demarcation line, which required active resistance by the audience. Frljic´ explained: “ When I want to create a conflict with the audience, my dream is to have antagonism between every audience member. The goal is to divide them as much as possible and thus to reaffirm their uniqueness. The task is not to unite them, not to find a common denominator or a common system of values that we share. ” 25 This leads us back to Brecht, according to whom the most successful theatre will be the one that enters into a risky association between artists and spectators. Its aim is to realise their intellectual as well as emotional abilities, looking for that which may be created in the new context of the performance. This position cannot and may never be neutral. Viewed in this way, artivism comes closest to what can be defined as its “ efficacy ” , which means that the “ real ” essence of art is communicated by its public impact and not by the artworks themselves: the audience ’ s desire to be “ transposed and transformed ” . 26 On many occasions Brecht stressed that “ the audience is a collection of individuals, capable of thinking and reasoning, of making judgments even in the theatre; it treats them as individuals of mental and emotional maturity, and believes it wishes to be so regarded ” . 27 42 Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome) Conclusion Many of Oliver Frljic´ ’ s live collaborative practices are made with the aim of motivating the audience to join in, and to activate the social milieu in which these practices unfold. According to Boris Groys, the tendency toward collaborative, participatory practice is certainly one of the main characteristics of contemporary art. “ Emerging throughout the world are numerous artists ’ groups that pointedly stipulate collective, even anonymous, authorship of their artistic production ” . 28 However, only a few postmodern performance artists have tried to regain common ground with their audience by enticing them out of their passive roles using political or social engagement: “ When the viewer is involved in artistic practice from the outset, every piece of criticism he utters is self-criticism. ” 29 This decision by the artists to give up their exclusive authorship would seem primarily to empower the viewer. “ This sacrifice ultimately benefits the artist, however, for it frees him from the power that the cold eye of the uninvolved viewer exerts over the resulting artwork ” . 30 Perhaps the fear of artivists ’ performances results from the fear that all public performances are potential political acts echoing variations of representative democracy, which according to Jacques Rancière, generate and reformulate public life, even if these changes are very slow or marginal. Performances produce an organized public that is an abstraction. Because the public can be mobilized occasionally in moments of crisis, modern democracies continuously count on this effect. 31 This also brings us back to Victor Turner, according to whom what is interesting about live performances is the blend they offer of “ lowliness and sacredness, of homogeneity and comradeship ” . 32 Theatre audience(s) can represent a passage from the spontaneous or existential communitas to the ideological one that can offer a new model of society. According to Brecht, the rapid social and economic development of our period has altered the audience “ swiftly and radically, demanding and facilitating ever new modes of thought, feeling and behavior. ” 33 The strong urge of contemporary artists to make their art useful could be seen historically as a new position and requires new theoretical reflection. The central goal of such reflection should be to analyse with precision the meaning and political function of art. Only then will this dilemma be settled and will such productions be generally accepted, even if outside of mainstream theatre. According to Richard Schechner, today, politically and socially engaged performance artists, activists and scholars could be defined as a New Third World analogous to the political Third World Movement: 34 they are people who practice collaborative performance research and want to change the world. 35 One of the goals, therefore, should not only be to develop new forms of resistance against the endless changes in society and the economy, but also to take over the inherited forms of artistic struggle and solidarity (primarily from the historical avant-garde), to develop them into new instruments, new forms and new concepts that might bring art into antithesis with society, or with what Adorno called the “ social context of blindness ” , because, according to him, [a]rt must turn against itself, in opposition to its own concept, and thus become uncertain of itself right into its innermost fiber. Yet art is not to be dismissed simply by its abstract negation. By attacking what seemed to be its foundation throughout the whole of its tradition, art has been qualitatively transformed; it itself becomes qualitatively other. Art can no more be reduced to general formula of consolation than to its opposite. The concept of art is located in historically 43 More Than Activism, Less Than Art: The Heritage of Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno in changing constellation of elements; it refuses definition. 36 Notes 1 Artivism is a term recently invented to describe social and political activism by means of art. As well as in traditional media, such as live performance and documentary cinema, artivism can be seen in street art, digital art and on the worldwide web. The American theatre group, Bread and Puppet Theater, which organized and led the biggest antiwar protest in New York in 1981, can be considered to be one of the predecessors of artivism. 2 Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Frankfurt a. M. 1970, translated into English as: Aesthetic Theory, Minnesota 2007, p 1. 3 For example, see Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory and also Theodor W. Adorno, “ Engagement ” (1962) in: Noten zur Literatur, vol. I, Frankfurt a. M. 1974, translated into English as “ Commitment ” , in Notes to Literature, New York 1992; as well as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklarung, Social Studies Association, 1944, translated into English as Dialectic of Enlightenment, London and New York 2010. 4 For example, Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in their seminal work, The New Spirit of Capitalism, (2005) explore how concepts from the world of the arts were integrated and utilized in the “ new spirit of capitalism ” . 5 See Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, London and New York 2009. 6 Adorno was always reserved toward Brecht. The first sign of it can be found in a letter Adorno wrote to Walter Benjamin in 1935; (see Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics, London and New York 2007, pp 110 - 121). Adorno ’ s critique of Brecht developed most fully in his 1962 radio talk and essay “ Engagement ” , also translated as “ Commitment ” (op. cit). According to Adorno, Brecht ended up as an apologist for Stalinist terror and in the falsereconciliations of “ really-existing socialism. ” Adorno made specific criticisms not only of Brecht ’ s political criteria but also of his artistic works, considering them weak and not up to the times in which he lived. For this, see also Gene Ray, “ Dialectical Realism and Radical Commitments: Brecht and Adorno on Representing Capitalism ” , Historical Materialism 18, London, 2010, pp 3 - 24. 7 See Alan Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, Stanford 2005, and Frederic Jameson, Brecht and Method, London and New York 1998. 8 Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, translated by John Willett, New York 1984 [1964], p. 274. 9 Ibid., p. 161. 10 Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, 2005, p. xii. 11 Ibid., p. 6. 12 Boris Groys, “ On Art Activism ” , in: In the Flow, London and New York 2016, pp. 43 - 60, here p. 43. 13 More precisely, the text reads: “ Only Schlingensief without Schlingensief reveals the true Schlingensief ” ; see Georg Diez and Nora Reinhardt, “ Ressurecting Schlingensief at the Biennale ” and “ The Garbage of German History ” , in Spiegel Online, English site, 3 June 2011. 14 The project was also called Please Love Austria-First European Coalition Week, or Foreigners Out-Artists Against Human Rights and it was presented from June 11 to June 17, 2000, in a container placed at Herbertvon-Karajan-Platz adjacent to the Opera. Twelve people identified as refugees who had applied for political asylum in Austria were asked to live in the container for a week. What happened inside the container was aired around the clock on an Internet TV channel. As in the television show “ Big Brother ” , the audience could call in daily and place their vote for the two candidates they would most like to see deported from the country. The last refugee to stay in the container was promised a prize of 30,000 Austrian Schillings and marriage to an Austrian citizen, by means of which the refugee 44 Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome) would attain the status of a legal resident. Biographies of the participants, containing tabloid-style characterizations of each individual ’ s views on sex, money, and family values, were posted on Schlingensief ’ s website. (See Kirsten Weiss, “ Recycling the Image of the Public Sphere in Art ” , http: / / architecture.mit.edu/ thresholds/ issuecontents/ 23/ weiss23/ weiss23.htm Journal #23: “ deviant ” , [accessed 26 February 2018]. 15 See Matthias Lilienthal and Claus Philipp, Schlingensiefs Ausländer raus, Frankfurt a. M. 2000. 16 As an example of reverse engineering, Holmes cites Nike Ground, a performance/ installation by the 0100101110101101.org group, also staged in Vienna, in 2003, which faked the renaming of Karlsplatz as Nikeplatz. Despite at times stormy protests by the public, it all later came down to a kind of symbolic and innocuous action. Holmes asks how we may intensify our responses to ever stronger forms of repression and abuse and how art might develop subversion in a society of strict control. Brian Holmes 2009, p. 28) 17 Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, p. 72. 18 Ibid. 19 Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, p. 80. 20 Ibid., p. 161. 21 “ Whose National Theatre Is It? ” , Oliver Frljic´ in Conversation with Marta Keil and Agata Adamiecka-Sitek, Polish Theatre Journal Online, (1 - 2, 2017), http: / / www.polishtheatrejournal.com/ index.php/ ptj/ article/ view/ 80/ 530 [accessed 18 October 2017]. 22 It seems that the audience “ saved ” Frljic´ ’ s production Our Violence, Your Violence twice from being banned, first in November 2016, during a theatre festival in Sarajevo, where the public gathered in front of the theatre demanding the right to see the show, even if it was officially cancelled; and then a few months later in May 2017, during another theatre festival in Split, when the audience started chanting a popular children ’ s song to silence the protesters who had managed to enter the theatre and attempted to interrupt the performance. 23 Actually, the only production by Frljic´ which was really banned, was his Un-divine Comedy: Remains, (Nie-Boska komedia. Szcz ą tki) that was to take place in the National Stary Theatre in Kraków, on November 2013. Less than two weeks before the opening, the director of the Stary, Jan Klata, suspended work on the production. Many saw it as the most drastic act of censorship since the abolition of the communist system and abolishment of preventive censorship. With The Un-Divine Comedy: Remains Frljic´ tackled the most sensitive issues and taboos in Polish history, such as anti-Semitism, religious mysticism, fascism, repression and censorship 24 Christopher Balme, “ In-Extremis: Theatre Criticism, Ethics and the Public Sphere ” , in: Critical Stages 12, December 2015, online here: http: / / www.critical-stages.org [accessed 31 January 2017]. 25 Oliver Frljic´, “ Whose National Theatre Is It? ” 26 Richard Schechner, “ Points of Contact Between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought ” , in: Between Theatre and Anthropology, Philadelphia [1985], 2010. pp 3 - 35. 27 Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, p. 78. 28 Boris Groys, Introduction to Antiphilosophy, London and New York 2012, p. 200. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Jacques Rancière makes a distinction between direct (impossible, unattained) and representative (existing, derived) democracy, stating that our age has reached only a certain degree of performed democracy. He defines democracy as an unattainable utopia, because he realizes that the entire system - including education - is predicated on segregating the educated elites from the uneducated masses (the proletariat, the minorities), that is, those who participate in decision-making and those who are excluded from the systems of decision-making, which generates an aesthetic difference between them. However, just as equality is not a goal to be attained but an assumption that 45 More Than Activism, Less Than Art: The Heritage of Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno in must be constantly verified and affirmed, so neither is democracy a form of government nor a style of social life; rather, it is a continual, as well as a casual process. Democratic emancipation is a process that affects the entire system of relations, without being able to guarantee an absolute elimination of social inequalities that inhere in every social order rather than in politics. (Rancière also differentiates between politics and what is called a political performance). See Jacques Rancière, On the Shores of Politics, trans. Liz Heron, London and New York 1995; Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London and New York 2004; Rancière, Jacques. Hatred of Democracy, trans. Steve Corcoran, New York 2006, and Rancière The Emancipated Spectator. 32 Victor Turner, “ Liminality and Communitas ” , in: Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New Brunswick and London 2008, pp. 94 - 106, here p. 99. 33 Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 159 - 60. 34 The third world movement emerged at the end of the Second World War, and it took the form of a nonaligned movement at the Bandung Conference in 1955 which was championed by leaders like Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Sukarno, and Nkrumah, who called for independence, economic development, and Cold War nonalignment while basing themselves on the support of millions of followers in more than 100 under-developed nations. 35 Richard Schechner, Performed Imaginaries, p. 20. 36 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p. 2. 46 Aleksandra Jovic´evic´ (Rome)