퍼포먼스, 자결행동의 공연 - 슐링엔지에프의 작업에 나타난 포스트모던 퍼포먼스의 상황

Abstract

This study is about characteristics and political structure of the post-modern performance which captures new possibilities in theatre with our times: empowerment through autonomous theatrical situation. The term ‘empowerment’, used in modern sociology, means self-determination in politics. We have here important issues: we just need to point out the difference between ‘Poitics’ and ‘the Political’. The every action and exercise of empowerment with performance is related to the phenomena of the latter. This study illustrates what performance can do to exercise our right of self-determination in two case studies, <Hamlet> and <Please love Austria>, directed by Christoph Schlingensief. Both were also a big sensation by the turn of the 21st century. The performance broke into real-life world. In <Hamlet> the performing teams worked with skin-heads to help them start a new life. They were sent to study about political culture and debated the issue of far-right tendency in Europe. <Hamlet> was a working with the product of their joint research, that is. In that sense, the performance is a process-centric performance. The original for Shakespeare's <Hamlet> was only a means to an end. For <Please love Austria> Schlingensief installed a container in the center of Vienna. It was the remains of concentration camps. It hosted 12 refugees. The performance went like the popular reality shows Survivor and Big Brother. The people voted everyday to decide who was sent away from the container. They gathered before the container and heated discussion on racism, far-right politic. It depended on their actions and decisions. <Please love Austria> was only audience-driven performance. <Hamlet> as a process-centric performance and <Please love Austria> as an audience-driven performance, they both thoroughly led by thinking and acting of participant or participant observer. The key thing here is self-determination on how they should think and act. It operated in two ways: 1) pushing the boundaries between art and reality, 2) sorting out the confusing theatrical situation. So, for example, the skin-heads must decide during performances and practice schedules what to do to attain new life. The spectators had to distinguish the code and the fact that have emerged on account of many causal factors: is it real or staged? Does it means exactly what they see? Or is that not what the performance wanted to say? Such questions and answers or verdicts the participant found were factor that creates the situation of empowerment in the performance by Schlingensief. <Hamlet> and <Please love Austria> deluged with such elements became a meaningful experiment and showed how political theatre can turn into the interesting performance of ‘the Political’ for our time.