I started this writing platform almost exactly 10 years ago, when I first arrived in Berlin. Back then, the idea was to write about theatre here, as a way of coming to know it, and at the same time to develop myself into a "critic". The reason I wanted to do that is because I identified that criticism is a worthwhile activity: it's the difference between really knowing something, to go deep into life, and simply experiencing it and letting it wash over you as you strategically pick your way through different available privelages. Historically, it's been the difference between fascism and democracy, at least according to a scholar like Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively (and critically) about the ideologies of Nazism and other totalitarian regimes in the 20th century.
Furthermore, today, it's dying.
In today's cultures that are driven by profit and fame - what good is there in reflection? All the competitive mechanisms teach us to move faster, more streamlined, more efficient. To pause and think is calamatous, and it's the same for actually paying attention, which can stop you from seizing opportunities. As a cultural worker in a world rewarding surfaces, reflection is often seen as a luxury - you need to endlessly and aggressively self-promote, even at the expense of your colleagues, just to survive.
The screenshot of the moment the dream came true.
No wonder then, that over the years many have been a bit arrested when I have confronted them with critique, and are all the more confused so when that critique is also reflected upon myself. "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones", is the idiom - and so, at this moment of pausing to reflect on attracting 50,000 or something readers over a 10-year period, it's a good moment to stop and take stock.
First, 50,000 is not a big number, and I did an awful lot of work to achieve what others can do with a single, entertaining cat video. I write on approximately 25 shows a year on this platform, over 10 years it's about 250 pieces of long-form criticism. On average, this is about 200 readers per article. Take out the bots and random internet traffic, and the real readership is probably much lower than this. Remove people who don't actaully pay attention to the words or wider argument, and I'm probably only writing for a handful of people each time.
Yet, there is every chance this is more than enough. As criticism is such a loathed and poorly-understood practice, you're only trying to reach a few people anyway, who can act as agents for it in different ways. Popularity is not the goal (although sometimes I think a more widespread respect for the practice would help me to write). Rather, we are trying to build culture, and that normally takes time, patience, and care - resources that are in scant supply today. Making and re-making different arguments in relation to this in critical writing is an important part of that development.
50,000 is not a big number. Still, I celebrate it, purely because I understand that what this writing platform tries to achieve may not be possible. While this alone doesn't make its existence worth fighting for, from my experience, anything that is worth achieving in culture was hard in the beginning (sometimes very hard). The rewards come in the end - often too late for the instigator, but not too late for their successors.
Thanks to people who have read over the years, especially those who have entered into dialogue with me - it has made me richer.
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Note: Current publication is done with the understanding that colleagues and communities from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv among others in Ukraine are currently under attack in an attempt to erase Ukrainian culture and identity. No artist should be forced to rehearse how to pick up the gun.
