Avhandling / Av_handling (Dissertation / Through_action)

For the WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) project, YES! Association / Föreningen JA! extended an invitation to everyone to join on a cyclical trip on the Berlin Ringbahn with Act 5: Zyklische Gesellschaftsreise (2013). A group of over 75 lives travelled collectively and was prompted to engage in the reading of a script by YES! Association / Föreningen JA!. The script was composed of different quotations from texts and aimed at starting a conversation around the desire to make sense of “today” through looking, moving, conversing, and reading aloud.

WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) was a series of events (5 Acts) concerned with the topic of “we”, an inescapable utterance in the formation of collectivities, two letters that involve alignment, affects, bodies, spatial boundaries and political realities.

The form of the play is inspired by THE PEOPLEMOVER – A Demonstration Poem (1968), written by Mary Ellen Solt. THE PEOPLEMOVER is a collage of quotations from a variety of sources, reaching from historical records and political speeches to eyewitness accounts of demonstrations. The text brings up issues of political frustration, mistrust in institutions and the failure of democracy’s fundamental principles. WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is inspired by the plurality of voices and their conflictive demands contained in the poem, as well as provoked by its patriotic belief in the US-American dream.

Which are the demands nowadays, who are the ones that will express them, who are the ones that will be heard the most and why? What are our possibilities for change and how are they shaped by our desires and personal interactions? Is collective work still a political standpoint? A marketing strategy? A failed project or a necessity for our survival?

Zyklische Gesellschaftsreise (2013). Action / cyclical trip, which took place as part of the project WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) at nGbK (neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst), Berlin. nGbK-workgroup WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY): Freja Bäckman, Merja Hannikainen, Annika Högner, Vappu Jalonen, Bogg Johanna Karlsson, and Clara López Menéndez.

Documentation of Zyklische Gesellschaftsreise and part of the script are published in Randy #4, 2013 and re-published in the anthology RANDY: 2010-2013 (2015). Throughout the 5 Acts of WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) a variety of textual material was produced and compiled. The text took the shape of a theater play and is now published as a book (ISBN 978-3-938515-55-6).