Premiere OUR VIOLENCE AND YOUR VIOLENCEinspired by Peter Weiss' novel The Aesthetics of Resistance
It is with the eyes wide open that the production Our Violence and Your Violence (Naše nasilje i vaše nasilje) looks at Europe naively stunned by the refugee crisis, Europe that readily forgets its colonial past while it equally readily and with bared teeth closes frontiers to thousands of those who are running away from the very consequences of the European and American politics. This production will raise some possibly quite unpleasant issues as: Are we aware of the fact that our prosperity depends on thousands of killed people in the Middle East? Are we buying conscience with our declarative solidarity? Now that we are witnessing one of the biggest world crises after World War II, should we be proud to call ourselves Europeans or should we be ashamed of Europe? Are we ready to bear the consequences of hundreds of years long European arrogant domination? Are we mourning the victims of terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels just as much as those in Baghdad? When was it that we started believing that we are the masters of the truth and that our God is more almighty than theirs? And where in all of this are we, spectators of this performance, while we are crying in the semi-darkness of the auditorium watching fictional scenes, yet remain indifferent faced with real people in refugee camps throughout Europe? The production was created as the international coproduction of several European theatres and festivals, which, next to the Rijeka HNK, consists of HAU Hebbel am Ufer from Berlin (Germany) as the project’s initiator, Wiener Festwochen from Vienna (Austria), Slovensko mladinsko gledališče from Ljubljana (Slovenia), Kunstfest from Weimar (Germany), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Switzerland) and Sarajevo Festival MESS (Bosnia and Herzegovina), with the support of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Germany).
