The first performance of the German cycle

“The bridge between being principled and practical is called survival. In theatre, we always use stories to be able to talk about the world, we play roles to be able to speak of human nature, and we pretend that a table is a table. But we were aiming for a reverse principle. Since we cannot speak with any certainty and artistic integrity of anything else than ourselves, our position, our principles and non-principles – all the rest are moralistic discourses or whining excuses and guilt washing – precisely the things that an artist should not possess can emerge between practicality and integrity: detachment, fascism, sexism, narcissism, misanthropy … It is these little perversions which show that we are not exempted, even if we pretend that we are.

In the end, we have to admit to ourselves that we can do no other. Ich kann nicht anders.

And this dual position is more than perverse.

My life is disgusting, I make myself sick, and yet I am so far from changing anything. And even though I am frightened by these sacred spaces, I am unresponsive and stiff as soon as I leave them. In the end, I am not worth anything.”

The authorial poetics of collective Beton Ltd. (Katarina Stegnar, Branko Jordan, Primož Bezjak) is characterized by a search for intimate entries into the global issues – their position is often personal – a search for new, hybrid forms of performing, and a mastery of performing techniques. Ich kann nicht anders is their fifth performance, where the counterpoint between the total intimacy and the echoes of the global events reminds us of a thesis by Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat, that the real revolution is always a revolution of everything, all social interactions, even the most intimate ones.

The world around us is saturated with change, and if there is one constant, it is currently uncertainty. We anticipate changes, but it is not yet clear what they might be. One of the possible strategies to combat the deafening noise of the world is to retreat into one’s own world. Not to surrender, but to defend one’s own intimate territory against the outside world. A retreat into intimacy, where freedom is possible and where utopia is – now.