Iva Gruić: A decade of Slovenian agent provocateurs (Jutarnji list Zagreb, 22. junij 2010)
The audience of the Eurokaz international Festival of New Theatre has been able to follow, for a number of subsequent years, Via Negativa’s provocations to a silence-bound auditorium. An international collective of performing artists with a seat in Slovenia, Via Negativa operates on the very edge of the theatre boundaries, persistently questioning the relationship between performer and a silent audience. Their works are not performances as such, they are provocative scenes or events, in which they engage the audience and their expectations directly and in turn expect them to react.
Here at Eurokaz we have also been able to uninterruptedly follow their project called »Via Nova«. Provocation is inscribed in the very logic of what they do, and sporadically a wider audience gets to hear of it. A few years ago, for example, a mini-scandal erupted with their production called Viva Verdi: the same stage that held the respected members of the opera ensemble of the Croatian National House became a site for stripped performers who then urinated over it – the word quickly got around that the ensemble of HNK distance themselves categorically from such dishonorable behavior. Such is the effect provoked by Via Negativa, as it nears the centers of the so-called established culture.
A more open audience accepts Via Negativa without any (greater) unease. For example, last Saturday at Eurokaz was dedicated to Via Negativa’s imaginative retrospective entitled “Via Nova Via MCA Zagreb”. Namely the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb collaborated on the project by turning its permanent exhibition into a stage for Via Negativa’s twelve performances. The space, densely packed with contemporary art, created an impact of its own.
The performances are enacted in four cycles, three at a time. In one of them, the actor Marko Mandić sweats in a plastic bag while on the screen the audience can follow scenes from his acting career. The sweat he has ’sweated for art’s sake’ he pours into a glass, placing it as an installation on a high pile of drama texts. In another performance Marko masturbates, because he is interested in the »performance as a process of extracting human ‘essentials’ from the performer’s presence«. In a performance based on the theme of ‘a Croat and a Serb cutting each other’, two performers play with knives. Theoretical questions thus raised and voiced on the stage are met with contrasts and a humorous response in the form of physical action.
Those less inclined towards contemporary performing arts are probably asking themselves what the point in all this is. The intention is not merely to shock, though that too plays a part. More interesting than provocation, however, is the laying bare of everything they touch – from the mechanisms in theatre, interpersonal relationships, expectations we nurture in relation to each other, to the meaning of art … And it is precisely from this skillful exposure, linked closely to self-irony and subtle humor, that every encounter with Via Negative has been exciting in its own right for a full decade now.