Hunt for the Real

VN performing strategies

According to Alain Badiou, one of the fundamental characteristics of the 20th century is its passion for the real. This is why art “wants to show its process, to make its materiality visible (and) to propose artistic gestures that were previously impossible, or to present as art what was previously only its excrescence (…) The passion for the real is necessarily also a suspicion. Nothing can confirm that the real is truly real, except a system of fiction, where it will play the role of the real.”(Alain Badiou, The 20th Century) The Hunt for the Real is an extended version of the performance Erasing the Audience, which we conceived in 2009 and which also featured Dr Blaž Lukan as a lecturer, as the author of the essay of the same name. In The Hunt for the Real, VN artistic director Bojan Jablanovec takes the place of the lecturer and uses Lukan’s analysis as a narrative for a journey through the performance strategies of the performances from the Seven Deadly Sins cycle and their remakes from the Via Nova cycle. What is analysed is realised and what is realised is analysed. Each performance effect is doubled by a reflection of its effect.

Hunt for the Real

2010 • Via Nova
Lecture performance • 120 min

Concept, direction, lecture — Bojan Jablanovec
Performers — Katarina Stegnar, Gregor Zorc, Boris Kadin, Kristian Al Droubi, Uroš Kaurin, Jaka Lah, Barbara Kukovec (the cast varies)
Producer — Špela Trošt
Production — Via Negativa

The performance text is a compilation of excerpts from Blaž Lukan’s essay Erasing the Audience (published in the book The No, Via Negativa 2002 – 2008) and texts from the performances Starting Point Anger (2002), All That You Came For (2009, More (2003), Incasso (2004), Buyer With an Eye (2009), Would Would Not (2005), Viva Verdi (2006), Not Like Me (2007), Four Deaths (2007) and Out (2008).