Program (Pdf)
Oblivion OVNI 2012
This program in the form of an essay
aims to shed light on some of the more disturbing aspects of
contemporary life. Specifically, it looks at experiences involving
conflict with power and at the imminent arrival of an even greater
confrontation. A clash that exceeds the political realm and expands
towards the notion of civilisation itself, and that seems to emanate
from a source within the inner life of human beings.
Bearing this
in mind, we present a series of screenings that look further than the
immediacy of recent events, the logic of action-reaction, and the
persistent notion of the other as intrinsically negative, in order to
take a step back and observe from a distance that allows reflection.
We convey this vision through a programme with a dual core: La Commune by Peter Watkins, and The Mahabharata by
Peter Brook, which we have contextualised with a series of
documentaries and other documents that show contemporary expressions of
the central theme.
La Commune offers a vision of
contemporary conflict that transcends political oblivion. A cinematic
reflection that looks back to a historical milestone – the emergence and
disappearance of the 1871 Paris Commune and, at the same time,
questions our own social reality and its representation in the media,
given that Watkins chose to work with non-actors, people who express the
actual conditions of their lives in Paris in 1999.
We will screen this film in three parts, each followed by a discussion session led by members of Rebond La Commune, the group that was created as a result of the making of this film.
Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata
also deals with conflict but rather than taking a historical approach
it positions itself outside of history, outside of linear time. It plays
out in mythical time, the time of constant return and of the dialectic
tension between the oblivion and remembrance of true human nature. The Mahabharata
presents this conflict on several levels – linked to politics (power),
civilisation, and the survival of life on Earth –, but also as an
expression of the inner struggle that is fought out within every human
being.
Each of the three parts of The Mahabharata will be
preceded by excerpts from a conversation that we recorded with
Jean-Claude Carrière, the screenwriter in charge of the theatrical
adaptation of Brook's The Mahabharata, in which we explore the keys to this work in relation to the notions of conflict and oblivion.
This story is about you
The
programme begins by following the course of the Mahabharata, an immense
poem that flows with the majesty of a great river, which is full of
“inexhaustible riches, defies all analysis, whether structural,
thematic, historical or psychological. Doors are continually opening,
which lead onto other doors. The Mahabharata cannot be held in the
hollow of one’s hand. There are many ramifications. Sometimes seemingly
contradictory, they succeed each other and intertwine, but we never lose
the central theme of a looming threat, to which everything starkly
points. We are living in a time of destruction. The question is, can we
avoid it?” (1)
Against this background, from its very first
lines, the Mahabharata takes us on an inner journey of knowledge and
transformation.
- What is the poem about?
- It is about
you. It is the story of your race. How your ancestors were born. How
they grew. How vast war arose. It is the poetical history of mankind. If
you listen carefully, at the end you will be someone else.(2)
The illusion of power
The story gradually introduces us into a confrontation between the Pandava and the Kaurava.
A confrontation that is a battle for power, although it arises from two
almost opposite conceptions of life. With all their nuances and
ambivalence, we see the Pandava proceed in accordance with their quest to fulfil the dharma, while the Kaurava
seem to be guided only by desire and fear: the desire to possess power
and the fear of losing it. They do not hesitate to use all possible
means to achieve their end, they respect no limits whatsoever. And they
act with the complicity of their parents, a blind king and a queen who
voluntarily blindfolds herself.
Then the two sides play a game of
dice, as a way of representing and temporarily avoiding direct
conflict; but it is also a frame-up. The game is rigged – power play is
always rigged. There can only be one outcome: defeat and the loss of
everything they own, even their freedom. The Pandava face a future of exile and war.
In
the present day, this rigged game takes on shapes and names that often
hide its true purpose: to create a reality that is tailored to the
private interests of a few. This is the case of so-called “free trade”,
for example, which is supposedly a fair game in the sphere of economics.
But the unequal terms of its participants and the non-reciprocal nature
of the rules mean that it is inherently based on a desire for
supremacy. Other examples disguise the obvious corporate and
entrepreneurial nature of some social networks, and of many digital
tools that barely hide their dark underside of control. And so we dwell
in a realm of appearances: we appear to choose, we appear to
communicate, we appear to be safe, thanks to a dense network of social
devices. But inadvertently, when we comply with the daily ritual of
submission to our work, to the educational and health system, to culture
and to entertainment, we are signing a silent contract:
I
accept competition as the foundation of our system, even though I am
aware that it generates frustration and anger for the majority of those
who lose. I agree to be humiliated and exploited in exchange for being
allowed to humiliate and exploit those on a lower rung of the social
pyramid (...)"
I accept that, in the name of peace, the largest
Government expense will be Defence (...) I agree to be served up
negative and terrifying news from around the world every day, so that I
can ascertain the extent to which our situation is normal. (3)
Obviously,
failure to sign “the contract” entails various increasing forms of
exclusion. In view of this situation, protest can easily be channelled
through the realm of appearance and made to give up its transformative
power. But if protest tries to become real it will be stigmatised as
sectarian, aggressive and violent, regardless of the means and ends it
chooses.
Del Poder (“On Power”), the documentary by Zaván,
focuses precisely on this aspect: the moment at which power reveals its
true nature, beyond the fine names that it adopts to protect and
legitimise its actions. This moment of revelation when power shows its
true face comes about when it turns to the violence of repression.
Genoa, 2001, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protest on the
streets. It is not an isolated event, the movement has been gaining
strength, in Seattle in 1999, in Prague in 2000, and it is starting to
represent a possibility for change… The “authorities” shield the city.
They fence in entire neighbourhoods and suspend the Schengen treaty, to
protect the summit of the heads of the world’s eight most powerful
states. According to police trade union sources, they deliberately plan
for a scenario of extreme violence, without ruling out the possibility
that people may be killed (4). Police violence is unleashed, people are
beaten indiscriminately. There are soon casualties, hundreds of them,
some of people in comma. The situation quickly becomes a trap for the
protesters, to such an extent that Amnesty International declares it
“the greatest violation of human rights in Italy’s history since World
War II.” Carlo Guiliani is killed by two shots to the head; the
Commissioner who is tried for his murder is subsequently absolved. Far
from reigning in the police violence, this death seems to stimulate it
and give it its true meaning. The repression continues undiminished
during the days that follow. Del Poder shows us the events
unfolding through a montage of footage, mostly archival material filmed
by the actual activists with non-professional equipment. It offers us a
silent vision; images without sound, as if they were being observed from
a great distance, which paradoxically brings them closer and at the
same time allows us to see beyond the veil of the news-image, leaving
room for equanimity. An equanimity that doesn’t in any way soften the
denunciation, but instead increases its seriousness. What I’ve seen reminds me of depictions of Argentina during the military dictatorship, declared German Member of Parliament Hans-Christian Ströbele. (5)
On
May 27th, 2011, the police tried to evict citizens who were camping at
Plaça Catalunya (Barcelona), exercising their right to gather in a
public space. What ensued was one of the best-documented episodes of
police brutality in recent history. The effective, exemplary and
unyielding response of the protesters also made history.
When the
citizens who had been attacked lodged a complaint against police
violence, the judge decided to close the case without even listening to
the complainants. The shelving of the complaint left citizens as a whole
in an extremely serious state of vulnerability.
Exile
Exile
can take many forms. Some of them don’t even involve physically moving
elsewhere, but they do entail going through a period of which the true
limits are not known.
The Mahabharata presents exile as a
period of extreme hardship, in which death is always present. But so is
the growing awareness of its opposite. To leave one's portion of power,
to be banished from the city and forced to live in nature, also means
embarking on a search for knowledge and a radical questioning of
reality.
A questioning that puts life itself at stake. As in the scene where the Dharma, which has taken on the form of a lake, cross-examines the exiled brothers.
What is quicker than the wind? Thought.
What can cover the earth? Darkness.
Give me an example of grief. Ignorance.
Of poison? Desire.
An example of defeat. Victory.
What is the cause of the world? Love
What is your opposite? Myself.
What is madness? A forgotten way.
And revolt? Why do men revolt? To find beauty, either in life or in death.
And what for each of us is inevitable? Happiness.
And what is the greatest wonder? Each day death strikes, and we live as though we where immortal. (6)
One
of the things at stake is the dualist conception of reality, from its
very roots, because the opposite emerges from the self. The notion or
illusion of alterity emerges from this crease or break. To forget its
origins is a sine qua non condition for the exercise of power: the
possession, illegalisation, and exploitation of the Other. An alterity
that ensnares even those who position themselves on the reverse side of
that illusion.
To resist falling into dualism, or to remember its
origins, also implies recognising the ambivalence of all experience.
Victory is a form of defeat; reality is both real and unreal at the same
time…
Nature and social movements also have their own ambivalence. The
analysis of certain trees and plants that contain both productive and
destructive elements may also enable us to question certain political
tendencies that reduce discourse to a dichotomy between good and evil. (7)
The earth’s complaint
But
there is also another reading of this fixed game that the Mahabharata
spoke of, one that goes beyond the clash for power; a broader reading
that is not about the triumph of one side or the other, but deals
directly with the survival of mankind and life on earth.
I
have heard the earth complain. What did she say? She said: Men have
grown arrogant, every day they give me fresh wounds, there are more and
more of them. They are violent, driven by thoughts of conquest. Foolish
men trample me. I shudder... and I ask myself, what will they do next? (8)
Violence
against nature had never been as intense and as widespread as it is
under global capitalism, which sees nature as pure alterity.
Coline Serreau’s Local Solutions for a Global Disorder focuses on a specific, crucial aspect of this violence – that which intensive agricultural exploitation
(which is fittingly named) exerts upon the earth, farmers, products and
their consumers. It reminds us that its origins are closely linked to
military technology, and particularly to a notion of agriculture as war
and conquest. Traditional farmers from countries like Ukraine, France,
Morocco, Burkina Faso, India and Brazil talk about the female nature of
the earth and about their work, their capacity to generate community and
knowledge. This is compared to a male chauvinist vision that only sees
the earth as a source of exploitation and short-term gain, a mere
physical medium for chemical products such as fertilisers, herbicides,
pesticides…
The earth ends up becoming a genetic testing ground
for experiments that only seek instant profits. And technology plays the
role of a sinister utopia that is able to virtually hide the
increasingly numerous deserts of depleted or simply poisoned lands.
And again, as in the Mahabharata,
we can sense the complicity of a blind king and a blindfolded queen in
the background. In this case, the blindness and partisanship of
governments controlled by blood ties with the big corporations: hundreds
of vegetable species, types of fruit, etc., are excluded from
authorised seed catalogues, and it becomes illegal to grow or sell them.
And at the same time, new genetically modified species are quickly
approved even though their impact on the environment and human health
have barely been tested.
In a process that runs parallel to the
political reality, power goes as far as to make reality illegal, with
the aim of ultimately replacing it. An attitude that seems to flow
directly from the vision that Antonin Artaud described in 1947: One
must by all possible means of activity replace nature wherever it can be
replaced (...) so we shall see at last the reign of all the fake
manufactured products, all of the vile synthetic substitutes in which
beautiful real nature has no part, and must give way finally and
shamefully before all the victorious substitute products. (9)
But
Coline Serreau’s film does not simply present a catastrophic vision. It
allows farmers, philosophers and economists to speak about the new
alternatives they are experimenting with, and to denounce the causes and
strategies behind the current environmental and political crisis. Pierre
Rabhi, Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, Brazil’s landless workers,
Kokopelli and Vandana Shiva in India, Antoniets in Ukraine ... The
interviews show that there are other options, that a possible
alternative is already happening and offering concrete responses to
environmental challenges and, more generally, to the crisis of
civilisation that we are currently in the midst of.(10)
War
In
the dead silence of the morning, at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time, the
Jornada del Muerto was bathed in an intense flash of a light that man
had only seen from the stars. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, who is often
credited as the father of the atomic bomb for his role in the Manhattan
Project, wrote: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people
laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the
lines from the Hindu scripture, the Bhaghavad Gita (in the Mahabharata),
where Vishnu (…) says: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds.” (11)
In 1965 Peter Watkins made The War Game (La Bombe),
a film about the possible effects of a nuclear strike on the United
Kingdom. The heads of the BBC, which had produced the film, were
horrified by its realistic and political force. Watkins' film is a harsh
condemnation of nuclear escalation as a crime against humanity, and of
the ridiculous protective measures with which the government seeks to
reassure the population. The data from the atomic blasts in Japan and
the massive air raids over Germany at the end of World War II offer some
measure, on a small scale, of the magnitude of the disaster.
Immediately after the explosion, the tragedy worsens with police control
and the repression of a population that has been largely abandoned to
their fate. After consulting high-ranking government officials, the BBC
decides to ignore its own internal codes of conduct and block its
broadcast for twenty years. The same thing happens to the Watkins’ next
film, a political allegory that is critical of the political-police
repression in the US during the Nixon government. Punishment Park (1970) barely runs for four days after its New York Premiere and has never been seen on TV in the United States.
Watkins
then continues to make works that are continue to be marginalised by
the media. The combination of a direct and innovative language, his
courage and his radical approach to his subject matter makes Watkins
burst the banks of the “tolerance” that the audiovisual industry
espouses. Finally, in 1999 he embarks on La Commune (Paris 1871),
produced by the Arte television network. Watkins decides to shoot and
edit it in open dissent with what he aptly calls the "Monoform": a kind
of grammar that the television and film industry imposes on its
“products” and justifies with supposedly objective and technical
criteria such as audience figures, visibility, programming... The
Monoform doesn’t just set the default for what audiences are capable of
watching and the content they are interested in, it also predefines
their vision of what they watch. And this vision is highjacked by the
effects of visual over-stimulation arising from a rapid-fire bombardment
of images, sound effects, voices, music, a frenetic series of
ever-changing camera angles and movements... These variations on the
Monoform are all predicated on the traditional belief that the audience
is immature, that it needs predictable forms of presentation in order to
become ‘engaged’ (i.e., manipulated). This is why so many media
professionals rely on the Monoform: its speed, shock editing, and lack
of time/space guarantee that audiences will be unable to reflect on what
is really happening to them. (12)
La Commune is a
radical departure from Monoform. It is shot in black and white, it lasts
almost 6 hours, it is a montage of long, slow shots, it does not have a
musical soundtrack, it uses non-professional actors who address the
camera... The result is nothing like the “fetishist monument” that Arte
would have been happy to accept. Instead, its content, editing and the
collective experience of the shoot make it into a project that
challenges historical oblivion, but also the role of the actual media
and the construction of reality.
Over 200 people participated in
the shoot of La Commune, held at a former factory. Most of them were not
professional actors but ordinary citizens who agreed to participate in
this project about a historic event that most of them barely knew about,
and to position themselves in the film according to their political
affinities and preferences. In this way, history (1871) and contemporary
reality (1999) were in constant dialogue. In itself, the shoot was a
revolutionary experience that profoundly affected many of the
participants. The experience did not only allow them to discover a
forgotten part of their own history – an episode that the French
educational system prefers to gloss over – but also its radical
relevance today. Groups of workers, women and legal and illegal migrants
talk about their current work status, about education, the media... and
at the same time they play out the struggle in the barricades of 1871
Paris, where they are astonished to witness the death of their
ancestors, the forgotten massacre of over forty thousand people.
We
are now moving through a very bleak period in human history - where the
conjunction of postmodernist cynicism (eliminating humanistic and
critical thinking from the education system), sheer greed engendered by
the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human,
economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalization,
massively increased suffering and exploitation of the people of the
so-called Third World, as well as the mind-numbing conformity and
standardization caused by the systematic audiovisualization of the
planet have synergistically created a world where commitment is
considered old fashioned. Where excess and economic exploitation have
become the norm - to be taught even to children. In such a world as
this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and
still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better
world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia - which
WE now need as desperately as dying people need plasma. The notion of a
film showing this commitment was thus born. (13)
La Commune
does not fit into the epic tradition – it also opens up a reflection on
the difficulties of the revolutionary experience: the way the old power
structures tend to be reborn within it, the tendency of alternative
media to reproduce media standards, etc... In The Spirit of a World Without Spirit,
Michel Foucault, paraphrasing a protester, reminds us that political or
economic change is not enough – we must overthrow the whole set of
values that this reality has constructed. But above all, we have to
change ourselves. Our way of being, or relationship with others, with
things, with eternity, with God, etc., must be completely overhauled. It
will only be a true revolution if this radical change in our experience
comes about. (14)
Throughout 2001, from Tunis to Toronto,
from Cairo to Barcelona, the world saw the emergence of decentralised,
autonomous protest movements. If these popular uprisings have taught
us anything, it is that revolutions do not occur as singular events –
with the toppling of a tyrant or the capture of state power – but are
complex processes that share the same objectives. (15) And so we see
the failure of the media, police and cultural barriers that have been
put up to keep people apart. All these protests have something in
common: the desire for freedom and a decent life, the rejection of a
disrealtity that hides and highjacks life.
A few hours before he
died, Dimitris paid the rent for the apartment in which he lived alone.
Then he caught the subway to Syntagma and shot himself. A note in his
pocket said: My name is Dimitris Christoulas, I am a pensioner. I
cannot live under these conditions. I cannot look for food in the
garbage bins. This is why I have decided to end my life (…) I believe
that the futureless young will one day take arms and hang the national
traitors upside down in Syntagma square. (16) April 4, 2012
In
the story of the Mahabharata, the path of war becomes inevitable when
those who wield power decide not to grant the banished people even
enough land to cover the point of a needle. When basic conditions for
living are withheld. When the illusion of power possesses and blinds
those who think they wield it. - Has everything been done to prevent the war? Absolutely everything? - Can it be prevented?
- I can tell you with absolute conviction you won't have the choice between peace and war.
- What will be my choice?
- Between war and another war.
- The other war, where will it take place? On a battlefield or in my heart?
- I don’t see a real difference. (17)
It
is no coincidence that an old Persian story on which Peter Brook based
one of his productions comes to mind here: One day, 30 birds overhear
somebody talking about the Simurgh. Some of them think this mysterious
word means Power itself, others think it is the forgotten Truth, they’re
nor sure... but they feel irresistibly drawn to it, like moths in the
darkness are drawn to the flame of a candle. So they decide to embark on
this long and difficult journey through the darkness, not knowing how
long it will take. They face danger and encounters, they cross through
the valley of doubt and the valley of love, of separation, wonder and
death... Only to finally discover at the end of this pilgrimage that
they themselves are the Simurgh. (Simurgh means 30 birds in Persian)
abu ali
Note
Oblivion,
and everything that this word brings to mind, has been possible thanks
to the inspiration of Jean-Claude Carrière. We also want to express our
special thanks for the collaboration and ideas of Patrick Watkins and
Toni Cots.
(1) The Great History of Mankind, Jean-Claude Carrière, 1989.
(2) The Mahabharata. Adaptation by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière, 1989.
(3) The Contract, Anonymous on the Net, 2003.
(4) El Atropello de Génova, Rafael Poch, 2012.
(5) Ibid 4
(6) Ibid 2
(7) Ibid 2
(8) To Have Done with the Judgement of God, Antonin Artaud, 1947.
(9) Solutions Locales pour un Désordre Global, Coline Serreau, France, 2009.
(10) Julius Robert Oppenheimer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
(11) Peter Watkins. http://blogs.macba.cat/peterwatkins
(12) Peter Watkins. http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm
(13) Peter Watkins. http://blogs.macba.cat/peterwatkins
(14) The Spirit of a World without Spirit, Michel Foucault, 1979.
(15) Dimitris Christoulas. You can read the note in full at: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitris_Christoulas
(16) Ibid 2
(17) Mantiq al Tayr, The Language of the Birds or The Conference of the Birds, Farid-ud din Attar, Persia S XI.
(18) Mantiq al Tayr, El Lenguaje de los pájaros o La conferencia de los pájaros Farid-ud din Attar, Persia S XI.
Oblivion : OVNI 2012
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