« What have you found, that there’s no time, there’s no time, to analyse, to think things
through, to make sense » these were the words of Thom Yorke in his song Analyse. The acceleration of time, characteristic of the modern era, prevents us from thinking, from pausing to analyse what surrounds us or what we are doing.
During the Trouble festival in Brussels and the New Performance Turku Biennale in Finland, various performers came together to reflect on the practice and craft of performance art in relation to the acceleration of time.
This first episode will provide food for thought on the notion of presentism, the attitude of considering only the present moment, which is characteristic of the digital age, and on notions of queer intimacy in the neo-liberal era. (Suvi Tuominen, Future past in Linnaniemi and Dries Verhoeven, NarcoSexuals).
There will also be reflections on the fall of the nuclear family model and the injunction to procreate (Stefanía Ólafsdóttir, Dear Bio-Daddy) and broader reflections on the time left to the human species, with Chris Korda (Apologize to the Future).
If the diagnosis is, as we know, extremely bleak, how can performance art provide a different take on reality and on the ecocidal and liberticidal issues we face? How can we convey hope and demonstrate resilience and resistance in the face of necro-political governance1? This podcast interweaves reflections and performance extracts, probably leaving us with more questions than answers.
1 Concept of post-colonial theorist Achille Mbembé, including the right to impose social or civil death, the right to enslave others, and several ancient and contemporary forms of political violence.