Since the horrific and on-going 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there has been a lot of stage work in Germany about the events and what it all means. These works tend to be complicated in the politics of their production: performers, normally Ukrainian, find themselves interacting with new and unfamiliar institutions, in contexts they never expected to be in for reasons they are not necessarily in control or even aware of, and having to undertake cultural work even as half of their attention is on the front line or various attacks on civilian populations.
If not all work I have seen has been successful, the fault often lies not with artists - who are trying to articulate through the difficult circumstances they have been given. Rather: it's a problem of the amount and nature of the support. Inside Ukraine, the current role of culture seems split between "necessary to keep it on life support" and "well, those resources should really be dealing with more urgent needs". Outside Ukraine, the gestures from have been charitable and often conditional: "you will do this, in this way, and for this outcome". Artistic control, autonomy... those key ingredients for making art, are frequently missing from those frames, and the result is some hollow works that, even if they have the premise of being Ukrainian-led, often seem defined for the artists to an extent that this principle becomes meaningless, or sometimes abandoned completely.
Add to the terror of invasion, then, the new terror for the artist of tresspassing those conditions, of articulating something rude or shocking, of the urgent need for self-expression in this moment lying in contrast with the need to please conscious and unconscious masters, in a kind of invisible disciplining. Absent of real solidarity, these situations are, and have regularly been, exploitative, an outcome born of interpersonal micro-attacks. Without acting for meaningful change and more understanding, they will continue to be.
Threads is the first work I have seen that directly addresses the taboos of expressing anger in telling your own story. I rock up to the meeting point and the artist are there to meet me in the back garden of Bard College's "The Factory" in Pankow, hopping off the bike and walking with them around the corner to the performance space. Threads bills itself as an immersive and meditative experience, and the piece opens with an invitation for the audience to find space for themselves in the room where they feel comfortable. We are invited to "check in" with ourselves in a process that mirrors post-traumatic therapy techniques of mindfulness: "How do you feel physically? Inhale. Exhale." We touch fingers with a person beside us, preparing ourselves for a journey in which we are not alone.
The first direct gesture performers Liza Mamon and Alex Basovska make is to unfurl a ball of red twine, explaining that each participant should hold the thread while throwing the ball to someone on the other side of the room. After some gymnastics, we are left with a tangled web of red lines, which we place on the floor. The artists make a small movement vignette, mirroring each other's gestures to Mamon's voiced poetry:
My body remembers
what I would crave
to be forgotten
and undertakes to
wake up every morning
and shield my inner self from the space.
Each performer acts as an external 'other' to their collaborator, in a process of self-reflection and questions without answers.
The piece proceeds with this motif, Mamon's voice supported and sometimes overtaken by ambient effects from Mykola Lebed. The performers explore the space, changing proximity and pace in abstract relation with the textual excepts.
These excerpts are carefully-placed, and their calm delivery belies their undertones that speak of violence. These bytes reflect on identity and adjustment in stark terms, which stay soft but dark.
I prepare myself to be an embodiment of statistics they are familiar with. I know I will fill the blind spots of their knowledge with my silhouette (...) I fear to be visible and invisible at the same time.This dwelling on experience of displacement and anger take on a concrete and material form, speaking about the conditions of status, housing, and money, embodied by the performers. They have a faint educational quality, but there's a frustration behind them, informed by countless micro-agressions from addressing the concerns of an audience that just doesn't, and will never, understand.
Above all, you can't be certain of what I have felt all these years while my country is on fire.
Well, my body is on fire too.
And you watch me, being on fire.
Looking around the room at these points, it's amazing how easily you can identify who is from Ukraine and who is not. The ones who are not are look away, either physically or internally, their defense mechanisms activated, and the ones who are - such as the 'touching partner' beside me, who did not bother trying to stop the tears from falling - simply cannot.
The first part of the piece culminates in a horrific line that distills the experience of perpetual threat from all sides into a sharp point, as the performers pause and stare into each other's eyes:
My identity is stolen by russians and dissolved in your empathy.
And herein lies the problem facing so many from Ukraine, and the desperate need for support of self-determination in the form of cultural autonomy. Ukraine can be historically categorised as an entity perpetually caught between two great forces, and here, the outcome of its recent manifestation is laid bare. Both the aggression from east, and cynical, false engagment from west leave Ukrainian identities empty, delapidated, without a meaning inscribed onto itself. The statement hits like a shock, spectacularly collapsing NATO and its eastern neighbour into one destructive force of erasure.
Yet there is a special anger in Threads reserved for that eastern neighbour, one born of the pain of suffering and disorientation. The next part - delivered without the presence of the performers, carefully articulates the "hate" , culminating in a sort of twisted self-reflection, something like 'what have I become?':
I never hated anyone in my life, and generally, I am a very softhearted person, I want to be sympathetic, and pleasing, to humanise, reconcile, talk and compromise.
But a compromise with anything russian is a death drive for me.
The pyschology of this is startlingly honest - as though the anger of the artist is directed at themself, and twisted into a circular frustration: there is no solving the crisis now, we can just dwell on the damage that is being done. The cost, in psychological, spiritual, and existential terms, is clear, with no going back.
Yet go back to reality we do, at least to some degree. The artists gently guide us through a defusing normal for a trauma process. The questions lacking answers linger in the space like whispered harmonies, the two bodies vanishing and are replaced with our own, as we drift into the dark night, carrying a piece of our red thread as an accomplice for the next journey.
Threads
Performers: Liza Mamon Alex Basovska
Music (live): Mykola Lebed
Visuals and design: Anna Zvyagintseva
Photos: Anya Zvyagintseva
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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.
