The Manege of the Uprising takes its cue from issues I encountered during my work at the KVS (2001–2013). There, we developed a theatrical aesthetic based on urbanity (Linda Boudry et al. 2003, Eric Corijn). We strove for a dramaturgy of the city that establishes connections between the urban context as a source of artistic material, the artist’s identity, their artistic practice and the diverse urban audiences. We saw theatre as an antidote to neoliberalism and the problems arising from the division of Brussels into cultural communities; as a medium that breaks down barriers, overcomes divisions and connects people.
From around 2008–2009, I began to have increasing doubts about our policy. Neoliberalism and the accompanying narcissistic view of humanity and the world (Isolde Charim, Frank Vande Veire) seemed to have taken such a firm hold of the cultural sector that, whilst production and co-production continued, playing together was no longer possible (Geert Opsomer). In that context, I began to wonder whether existing institutions could still provide a suitable framework for emancipatory art. Moreover, new forms of resistance were emerging, including Occupy, a grassroots democratic movement that refused to align itself with any existing political structure. This raised the question of whether an aesthetic based on urbanity was still relevant.
Together with master’s students and two colleague-professors from the Department of Dramatic Arts at RITCS (Johan Dehollander and Geert Opsomer), I set up an artistic lab, a transit zone (Geert Opsomer), to investigate the question of art and resistance today. As research material, I chose Pantagleize by Michel de Ghelderode (1929). This text is a satire on bourgeois society and on the political and artistic avant-garde of the interwar period, including communism and anarchism. In the transit zone, the text was transformed from the work on the floor into a performance in the sense of Erika Fischer-Lichte.
I began my research on the assumption that contemporary artistic resistance might take the form of a Žižekian ‘aesthetics of over-identification’. For Žižek, aesthetic over-identification is the artistic counterpart of a political revolution, but Pantagleize II led to different conclusions. It is no longer the political revolution that is relevant today, nor the social revolution of the anarchists, but rather the idea of post-anarchist insurrection (Saul Newman and Matthijs van de Sande). It turned out that this insurrection can best be realised in open communities like those of Occupy.
As a structure, the transit zone seems to suit such communities well. It is a temporary, autonomous zone where people can experiment with new identities and political forms. It is not merely a matter of distancing oneself from institutions and established social relations, but also from the self-images associated with them. Through a game of moves and countermoves (Daniel Sibony), the artist can create a (relatively) new identity that turns against the old one and, with it, against the regimes of power and truth that were internalised alongside that identity (Michel Foucault). This is made possible by processes such as the creation of an inner space (Kees Vuyk), sublimation (Simon Critchley), self-reflection and the recycling of the past (Flemish theatre of the 1990s).
The transit zone has taught me that theatre must go underground and abandon all conventional criteria regarding what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ theatre if it is to retain an emancipatory function today. This is also evident from the new offshoots of the transit-zone that emerged following the The Manege of the Uprising in 2013 and 2017, namely the non-profit organisations Transfo Collect (Brussels) and Jong Gewei (Ghent). Through staging and performing, they create a climate of conviviality (Ivan Illich) that leads to the empowerment and politicisation of young people from urban culture. An important element of this is play and (re)learning to play, given that there is an intrinsic link between play and democracy (Kees Vuyk). Through play, transit-zone members cultivate an attitude of égalité and solidarity, which they also disseminate through the partnerships they form with other cultural and social actors. In doing so, they challenge existing forms of representative democracy and propose relatively new, more direct forms of democracy in their place.