Postspectacle Practice

Postspectacle practice is an ongoing questioning process that deals with performance and its political connotations. It addresses the changes that are taking place within representational arts in particular and in cultural practices in general. In a time dominated by spectacle, performing arts have to reconsider their role - and their power - in society at large. In this world of generalized spectacle, what’s the point to add another spectacle in the theatre?

Postspectacle Practice extends in 2 different directions:

1.In the theater we propose alternatives to spectacle.
- bringing in the theatre the "outside spectacle". The idea is to produce friction between contexts/conventions/languages like we did with the military performance (a military drill on the dance floor).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dICPoZGObQ
- opposing spectacle - if entertainment dominates the mass media and politics maybe we should bring in the theater serious stuff like political theory, critique and cultural deconstruction.
- hacking the big festivals and big art events, as we did with The Romanian Dance History, trying to reveal the logic operating within art institutions and the way values are confirmed and affirmed, as well as the artists value and prestige.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AupKHQL-UgM

2. Performing on the big stages
The second direction is to use our performing skills and knowledge on the big stages of politics and mass media, as we did in the TV performance 2012 - ‘Ultima Apocalipsă’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6qxqKXoi6Y
Moreover we decided as the third part of the postspectacle trilogy to run for president in Romania. We have, since 2009, already made a few interventions and campaign events. The elections are in 2014 but we need that time to organize, explore political practices and make it into the official realm of power as politics as a legitimate candidate. For the postspectacle practice the most important goal is to gain access to these areas and set up actions which deconstructs rituals and create awareness of these charged contexts and also (with the presidential candidacy) to affirm new subjectivity paths and reaffirm politics as an open field of negotiation.

Postspectacle wants to release the accumulated spectacle. The spectacle locked the creativity, performativity in a far away, safe, distant, inoffensive bubble. Spectacle is a commodity that you can consume, or it can consume you, in theaters, on screens, in politics, etc. Postspectacle is when the bubble is breaking and the reality comes in your face.