The State at Play? Notions of State(less)ness in Contemporary Interventionist Performances

Abstract

In events such as the war in Syria, the genocide and persecution of Christians in Iraq, or the heavily reported drowning of many refugees[1] near Lampedusa—making the island’s name a catchphrase for the failures of European immigration policy—different public actors demand new perspectives on our political landscape and its constitution. At the same time, they are challenging political constructions of identity as well as categories such as ethnicity, nationality and gender. The presence of refugees all over Europe challenges current social structures by making demands on political decision-making, but also may accomplish a long-term remodelling of terms such as “community” and “utopia,” and imageries of the State and the European Union. Normative categorizations of the bodies of human beings take place not only within the asylum seeking process and in detention centres, but also within the theatre sphere, where many theatre makers themselves determine to become all sorts of agents for refugees.[2] With regard to current social movements in Germany dealing with the essential need for a long-term cultural integration of refugees, I want to examine the performative and dramaturgical strategies of the Centre for Political Beauty, which gives interventionist performances that provoke a wider discourse on ethics and political interventions.