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Paris 1871 Bonjour Commune

By the end of the 18th century, large-format battle paintings had become obsolete. They were replaced by depictions of historical moments that put all warlike chaos into order and cast the brief moments of anarchy into a form. The revolution is an image machine. The message conveyed is one of fateful necessity and inevitability. Concrete events flow together with their prehistory and their consequences and become a metaphor that pathetically exaggerates political and social constraints. The idea of the significant, all-decisive moment continues to the present day in comic culture as well as in documentary photography.
The uprising and siege of Paris in 1871 became a representation that failed just as much as the revolution that accompanied it. It triumphed only in the images that it made up in order to give meaning to the torn bodies, destroyed visions and forgotten fates in retrospect.


Credits

Idea, realisation: Showcase Beat Le Mot / Music: Miguel Ayala / Einzelkind / Choreography: Showcase Beat Le Mot, Doro Ratzel / Projections: Friedemann Hanewinckel / Stage Machinery: Atia Trofimoff, Christian Wenzel / Graphic Design: Anne Luft / Directing Assistant: Stefan Rüdinger / Production Assistant: Melina Gerstemann / Production Management: Olaf Nachtwey


Paris 1871 Bonjour Commune is a production by Showcase Beat le Mot, Hebbel am Ufer, Steirischer Herbst and Kampnagel Hamburg. Fudned by the mayor of Berlin – Senate Department – Cultural Affairs and  Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur, Sport und Medien.


Review

There are experimental arrangements which initially seem to pretend to rebuild  the historical barricades from coffins. But the stage quickly transforms into a sparking laboratory of thought: no story, just small game guillotines and balls are packed and unpacked from a large cube that lies as mysteriously in the room as a cockades black square. A magic theater unfolds from the spirit of installation, gymnastics and music. It is not actors who deliver texts, but self-made leaflet projectiles. An accordion machine, superimposed written images. And they don't simply narrate either, but only hint at, condense …. Showcase Beat le Mot do not imitate anything here, they construct. Irritation is their means of visualization.… Nothing is accomplished in this modular theater full of perspectives: something still unknown, formless, yet fiercely urgent tries to fight its way into life through many veils throughout the evening - …
(Berliner Zeitung, 8./9.10.2010, Doris Meyerhenrich, „Satt vom Huhn, versöhnt vom Rotwein -Revolutionstheater im HAU 1 mit Showcase Beat le Mot“)


Video – Trailer


Video – full length