BADco.: A POUND OF HYSTERIA, ACCELERATION

Photo: Dinko Rupčić

“I believe cinema allows us to withdraw as we sit in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar people, but when we sit down to watch television with the family … that’s when things get tense.” Rainer Werner Fassbinder

While discussing the disintegration of the Soviet Union in a televised interview, Heiner Müller and Alexander Kluge return to Brecht’s sentence “Petroleum resists five acts”. That sentence sums up the problem that faces epic theater. How can dramatic material depict historical processes with all their inner contradictions, progressions and setbacks that transcend characters and their relationships? The same question – what dramatic material is an adequate means of representation of the organizing principles of today’s reality – is the speculative problem of A Pound of Hysteria, Acceleration… BADco.’s new performance attempts to find the answer in the historical dialogue of two artists, the playwright Heiner Müller and the film director Alexander Kluge. At the end of the eighties two artists speculate about politics and social upheaval, yet today that speculation resounds as a document of our own present.

Choreography and performance: Pravdan Devlahović, Ana Kreitmeyer/Darija Doždor, Nikolina Pristaš, Zrinka Užbinec
Concept and dramaturgy: Tomislav Medak
Recasting of dramatic material: Goran Sergej Pristaš
Dramaturgy: Ivana Ivković
Production: Lovro Rumiha
Software for algorithmic video editing ALVES: Daniel Turing
Costume design: Silvio Vujičić
Light design: Alan Vukelić
Sound design: Jasmin Dasović
Set design: Miljenko Sekulić Sarma
Props: Ana Ogrizović
Music: Alban Berg, Wozzeck
Translation: Tomislav Medak

The production includes a conversation between Alexander Kluge and Heiner Müller titled The Poet as a Catapult for Metaphors. We thank Alexander Kluge for the permission to use it. The production is inspired by the works of Douglas Sirk, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pina Bausch, Michael Heinrich, Timothy Mitchell, Nanni Balestrini and the Midnight Notes collective.

Supported by: Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia

The production is a part of TIMeSCAPES – Images and performances of time in late capitalism – a partner project of BADco. (Zagreb), Maska (Ljubljana), Science Communications Research (Vienna), Walking Theory (Belgrade) and Film-protufilm (Zagreb). With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.