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.
- The
Great History of Mankind,
Jean-Claude Carrière, 1989.
- The
Mahabharata.
Adaptation by Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière, 1989.
- The
Contract,
Anonymous on the Net, 2003.
- El
Atropello de Génova, Rafael Poch, 2012.
- Ibid
4
- Ibid
2
- Ibid
2
- To
Have Done with the Judgement of God,
Antonin Artaud, 1947.
- Solutions
Locales pour un Désordre Global,
Coline Serreau, France, 2009.
- Julius Robert Oppenheimer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
- Peter Watkins. http://blogs.macba.cat/peterwatkins
- Peter Watkins. http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm
- Peter Watkins. http://blogs.macba.cat/peterwatkins
- The
Spirit of a World without Spirit,
Michel Foucault, 1979.
- Dimitris Christoulas. You can read the note in full at: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitris_Christoulas
- Ibid
2
- Mantiq
al Tayr, The Language of the Birds or
The
Conference of the Birds,
Farid-ud din Attar, Persia S XI.