1. The Second Coming. Or: Abandon all hope, you who enter.
This speech is part of a debate tour called the "Resistance Now!" tour. After the publication of the two open letters I told you about - one for the Slovak National Theater, the other against the FPÖ - I felt the need to connect with other artists. In other words, to find out specifically what attacks they have to contend with. Because the helplessness of all of us has to do with exactly one thing: that we do not combine our struggles, that we each fight them for ourselves, in heroic solitude, so to speak. But, simply put, we need an International of Struggles. The theme of the ITI World Conference is "Embrace and Connect", and that is exactly what I am calling for here: In order to fight nationalism, we need to connect globally, we need global alliances.
As we all know, talking about art means talking about money. I remember that in 2019 - that was before I moved to Vienna and was still Artistic Director of the NTGent, about an hour's drive from here, as close as Bratislava is to Vienna - we demonstrated against the budget cuts of the Flemish government, which was then (and still is, by the way) determined by the right-wing conservative party NVA. The strike, accompanied by numerous appeals, had no effect. When we wrote our artistic program for the coming five years during Covid, we did so within the framework of an already reduced cultural budget. Metaphorically speaking, the process of allocating subsidies was like distributing food after a natural disaster: the institutions and independent companies were thrown together into a pool, which in turn had far too little money at its disposal.
First come, first serve: in familiar neoliberal fashion, the actual problem - namely a far too low amount of subsidies - had been translated into a competitive conflict. As we speak, a similar process is taking place in the Netherlands and in Germany, and as you all know, cuts in culture are nothing other than the beginning of its censorship. I remember the 1980s, when the neoliberal doctrine emerged: back then, merging cultural players seemed like a good idea. In Germany, for example, multi-genre houses were founded, a process that accelerated after the reunification of Western and Eastern Germany. After some time, however, a limit became apparent: further streamlining of artistic institutions led to the destruction of art itself - its fundamental opportunity for experimentation.
From the noughties onwards, many global structures were therefore established or reestablished. An international touring network emerged, a lively independent scene, what the late Hans-Thies Lehmann called "post-dramatic theater": a theater that was committed to experimentation, international exchange, the search for a global form - a kind of second modernism, of which I myself and my so-called "global realism" are a child. When neoliberalism reared its head again towards the end of the 10s, shortly before Covid, I thought: Why again? During the Flemish budget cuts I was talking about, an independent study was commissioned that looked at the ratio of investment to return in all sectors - the cultural sector came out on top with 8 euros profit for 1 euro investment. And I don't need to tell you what happens to 1 euro invested in the army.
So when the budget cuts came again, I understood that this time it wasn't about money, but about politics. It was about the transformation of society, about the breaking of relationships - between the independent scene and the big houses, between the genres, the continents, the different artistic backgrounds. Last week, the “Resistance Now!” Tour made a stop in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden: the country's most important independent company, "Konträr", had just had its funding withdrawn. As in Flanders a few years ago or currently in the Netherlands, nobody wasted a single thought that this could have something to do with saving money - or some other rational economic reason. "They want us to disappear," Freja Hallberg, the director, told me. Because, as I said, culture is the most productive sector in Europe.
In short, we are in an age in which certain liberal illusions are coming to an end - or, like independent theater, are simply disappearing. In Eastern Europe the so-called clear-cutting is almost complete, here in the West there is the usual Atlantic delay, but by the end of the decade the work will be done here too by the NVA in Belgium, the "Party of Freedom" in the Netherlands and what they are all called. My Hungarian friend Kornel Mundruzco staged the last play of his theater company - "Parallax" - in Vienna last spring because it was no longer possible in Budapest. President Orban did not ban his work as it was done in the days of communism - he simply withdrew all financial support. We live in a time when we don't fight an idea by criticizing it, but by depriving it of financial support.
Lua Casella and I belong to the same generation, and I think most of those present here also belong to our, the so-called middle generation, which in sociology is called "Generation X": the "golden generation" of neoliberalism. To stay with Europe: The often mocked generation of "boomers" that preceded us, brought down communism in the East and fought for civil rights in the West. My mother, born in 1950 and therefore a typical boomer, was unable to vote for three years of her life, as women's suffrage was not introduced in my home country, Switzerland, until 1971. The legalization of homosexuality, abortion, etc. took place in the same years. So I'm talking about very recent events here, but for me, who was born in 1977, they seem far away and are part of the natural history of liberal democracy.
When I started doing theater in the late 90s, in my early 20s, in Germany, then in Europe and later all over the world, Fukuyama's theory of the end of history seemed to be confirmed. Liberal democracy, the social market economy and certain associated ideals - such as the idea of transnational cooperation, the free movement of people, decolonization, the idea of a polyphonic world theater in general, institutionalized at major festivals - triumphed. It was the time when we all began to think in terms of "projects": the future was open. Form was everything, and everything political was done. Because politics smelled of the past, in short: politics smelled of the "boomer" generation, the generation of our parents. I would even say that politics in Europe back then smelled at worst of lack of freedom and at best of school.
More philosophically, you could say that in those years, when the revolutions of 1989 were still close at hand, Europe was proud to finally realize the universal utopia of the Enlightenment, the idea of Europe as a continent of democracy and participation for all. And what was really impressive: Europe's guilt as a double perpetrator continent - namely colonialism and the Holocaust - was seriously dealt with in those years, both socially and artistically. To quote Hegel, these were dialectical years: what was done was also criticized at the same time - especially the institutions - and it was not theater that was made, but meta-theatre. Some European idées fixes were laid to rest: the idea of the sanctity of the canon, the idea of artistic genius, the idea of improving the world through art and so on. Everything was deconstructed, the text, the author, the tragic, the language, the genres, the drama. It was a wonderful process of liberation.
I don't know exactly when all this began to crumble. Post-drama became drama again, global culture imperceptibly turned back into national cultures, enriched with a few pinches of exoticism. Surely you know the story of the frog sitting in a water pot: he doesn't notice how hot it gets because the temperature only rises degree by degree – and in the end he dies without noticing. As for me personally, I mistook the first signs of a new nationalism as echoes of a past that was already doomed to die: like a drunken patron being thrown out of a nightclub, shouting and complaining. It took me almost 10 years to understand that history was actually going backwards. And that we would probably lose the battle.
"Abandon all hope, you who enter": When Dante, guided by Virgil, enters the underworld at the beginning of the "Divina Commedia", this famous motto is emblazoned above the gate. As you know, Dante had not booked this horror trip to the zombies of the underworld. He had lost his way in the forest - and therefore any path that led outside was the right one, even if it led to the realm of the dead. And so I ask you too: abandon all hope. Because this battle we are waging is political in a way that could not be more political. The believers here know what “The Second Coming” of the Messiah means: the apocalypse, the end of the world as we knew it. And “The Second Coming” of Neoliberalism (and Nationalism) means the same for culture: it's not about a project more or less, it's about the way we want to live.