tarting from the notion of ‘post-democracy’ elaborated by Colin Crouch, which indicates an increasing tendency towards the deterioration of democratic principles and the narrowing of the public sphere, this book explores how, in the Dutch context, this process is influenced by theatre and performance practice, art policy and governmental action. It points out that, within discourses of post-democracy, aspects of depoliticisation are commonly assessed through theatrical concepts such as spectacle, play, game and theatre. At the same time, this work argues by an analysis of three performances, ‘Wijksafari Utrecht’ by Adelheid Roosen, a political protest by Quinsy Gario, and ‘Labyrinth’ by the refugee group ‘We are Here Cooperative’, that there might be a role for theatre in this age of depoliticisation. It proposes to scrutinise, based on the writings of Samuel Weber, a paradox of theatre. Namely, while concepts of theatre are applied to convey disapproval of government and politics, theatre has a possible emancipatory character to dispute the given order. Wigbertson Julian Isenia The Question of Dutch Politics as a Matter of Theatre Theatre and Performance after the 2008 Financial Crisis € 24,95 (D/A) www.tectum-verlag.de Tectum ISBN 978-3-8288-4052-2 Tectum Julian Isenia Wigbertson Julian Isenia has an MA degree in Arts and Culture (University of Amsterdam), as well as bachelor degrees in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Theatre Studies. He received a scholarship from the Bekker-la Bastide fund to pursue his graduate studies. He is currently conducting his PhD research on Gendered and Sexual Citizenship in the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Bonaire in the framework of a Dutch Research Council funded project. The Question of Dutch Politics as a Matter of Theatre S AGENT 8 AGENT New Theses in Performance Research ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank those who have aided me theoretically in writing this MA thesis, especially Professor. Dr. Kati Röttger. Without you, this MA thesis would have never been devised. Dr. Jan Lazardzig and Dr. Sruti Bala for an amazing and inspiring year. You have each, in your distinct way, instigated a passion in me for research and writing. I am indebted to my partner Daniel van Dijck for helping me carry on. My parents and sisters for their moral support. Friederike Ernst for her generous help, and especially Roberto Tweeboom and Paul Brand for the proofreading. I would like to acknowledge the valuable input by Adriano Jose Habed. Special thanks to artists Quinsy Gario and Nicolas Stemann to whom I could always go to without any hesitation and for being an inspiration for this thesis. Even though others have contributed in many ways to this thesis, I am responsible for the omissions, errors and conclusions. My gratitude goes to Stichting Bekker la Fostide, who made the school year financially possible. The University of Amsterdam and the Echo Foundation, who have (unknowingly) forced me to assess critically the world I live in. And lastly to Rennes, Zagreb, Antwerp, Modena, Tokyo, Paris, Dublin, Valence and not to forget Angelica Liddell, and all my colleagues (students and actors) that all made this journey last just long enough. | 5 6 | PREFACE Due to the neoliberal agenda of the Dutch cultural ministry in recent years, the younger generation of theatre makers and scholars in The Netherlands is confronted with a drastically shifting field of cultural politics and harsh consequences for the status of theatre. This problem is aggravated by the lack of a profound analysis of these developments. Against this backdrop, the significance and actuality of the thesis Julian Isenia is presenting here, cannot be underestimated. While being clearly focused on Dutch cases, the topic extends much further, critically resonating the global problem of post-democracy which encompass depoliticisation and the narrowing of the public sphere. For the sake of in-depth analysis, Isenia has chosen for a double agenda that is clearly announced in the title of this book: The Question of Dutch Politics as a Matter of Theatre. Theatre and Performance after the 2008 Financial Crisis indicates the double-bind notion of theatre at stake here, which is explained and implemented in the first chapter. It covers the tension between the Platonian metaphorical use of the notion to indicate a false theatre of politics on the one hand and a notion that – in the course of Hanna Arendt stresses the inherent political impact of theatre constituting public sphere. Delving into the critic on the ongoing deterioration of democracy – coined by Colin Crouch with the term post-democracy – he highlights the antitheatrical attitude lurking behind. He shows to which extend critical approaches to post-democracy are pervaded by (anti)theatrical terms like the “illusory, deceptive, exaggerated, artificial, or affected. (…) [And] the acts and practices of roleplaying, illusion, false appearance, masquerade, façade, and impersonation” (Davis, Postlewait). Making these concepts and terms an integral part of his analysis, the specific merit of the thesis | 7 is the aim to deconstruct the antitheatrical binary inherent in this approach. Or in the words of Isenia: “The aim of this thesis is to change the value of the concept of theatre; to transform a ‘bad’ term into a ‘good’ one and vice versa, and enable a deep understanding of theatre and politics, not as separate entities, but as processes in a conundrum with each other” (p. 7). This more general proposition is concretely linked up with two questions: “How do these symptoms and characteristics of postdemocracy and theatricality define current Dutch politics? Moreover, what are the ramifications of this diagnosis for the question of our democracy, as well as for the worlds of the arts and the theatre in the Netherlands?” (p.8) To dispute these questions, Isenia starts with an analysis of the general election in The Netherlands in 2010 to find out what kind of theatre is currently performed in politics. Concluding a narrowing of the public sphere and a radical trend of the Dutch neoliberal government to restrict certain rights and social services under the disguise of freedom of choice, responsibility, independence and efficiency, he explores how these aspects both influence and are influenced by theatre and performance practice, art policy and governmental action. Analyzing in a second step the current inheritance of these new politics, he delves into the cultural policy agenda. More concretely, departing from a letter to the House of Representatives, from the succeeding Minister of Culture, Jet Bussemaker, Cultuur Verbindt: Een Ruime Blik op Cultuurbeleid (Culture Unites: A Broader Interpretation of Culture Policy) (2014), he concludes that she took her predecessor’s plans further by asserting that not only should art institutions “be flexible and potent” and take (financial) risks, but more importantly that the relationship between the arts and other social domains should be brought forward more coherently. “Artists, the Minister assesses, ‘should take responsibility for the social context in which [their artworks] take place’. This cryptic formulation gets a relatively concrete interpretation when Minister Bussemaker links a specific social problem to the domain of art” (p. 31), making the relationship between culture and three social domains - healthcare, sport and education - explicit by means of examples from the art world that can be used as a benchmark for others. In the following, he presents three performance-cases to explore the consequences of this policy agenda for performance practice and 8 | the question to which extend theatre can re-politicise the public sphere. While the first example, Wijksafari Utrecht by Adelheid Roosen (2013), presents the problem of being benchmarked by the governmental politics to prove art’s instrumentalisation to deal with social problems, the other two cases are chosen to demonstrate to which extend – as the last chapter is headed – performance can become a political affair. The first case in this is a clear example of so called artivism. It highlights the case of Quinsy Gario who performed an intervention into the popular arrival ceremony of Sinterklaas (Sint Nicholas) protesting against the tradition of staging a parade of “Zwarte Pieten”, the blackface ‘helpers’ of the Sint. Together with another activist, he had posed alongside the parade carrying a banner with the text “Zwarte Piet is Racisme” (Black Pete is Racism), for which reason they were arrested violently by the police. While this case “served as a catalyst to re-politicise the discussion around Black Pete” (p. 48), the last example undermined governmental power structures by drawing attention to the refugees’ state of being. It was a participatory theatre project led by the ‘We are Here Cooperative’ under the direction of Nicolas Stemann that staged the production Labyrinth (2015). The ‘We are Here Cooperative’ consists out of approximately 200 refugees that are out of procedure (Wijzijnhier.org) residing in Amsterdam. For all of them, the asylum applications have been refused, and all legal remedies have been exhausted in the Netherlands, in spite of the fact that they could not return to their home country. Together, they wrote a play about their own experience with the Dutch asylum policy and performed it confronting the audience with an uncomfortable and confusing experience. Drawing on theories of Jacques Rancière, Pascal Gielen, Martin Jay, Colin Davis, and – last but not least - Colin Crouch, Julian Isenia offers detailed and careful analyses of the three cases to provide important insights into the vibrant question how theatre could be able to re-politicise post-democratic public spheres. A book that should be recommended for theatre students and makers who are interested in the actual problems of the fields they are aligned with. Kati Röttger Amsterdam 2017 | 9 10 | 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 DUTCH POLITICS AS A MATTER OF THEATRE .................. 13 2 DIAGNOSING A POLITICAL MALAISE ............................. 27 2.1. The 2010 Dutch general election and its aftermaths ......... 27 2.1.1 The Binnenhof deliberations ...................................... 29 2.1.2 The coalition agreement ........................................... 30 2.1.3 The Catshuis deliberations ........................................ 32 2.2 Why post-democracy? ................................................. 35 2.2.1 The Dutch Polder Model and the idea of governmentality ...................................... 35 2.2.2 The trivialisation of politics: is it the media? ................ 37 2.2.3 Active citizenship, participation society and apathy ....... 40 2.3 The theatricalisation of politics. What theatre? ................ 41 3 THE STATE ASSUMING A MORE CEREMONIAL AND THEATRICAL ROLE ...................................................... 45 3.1 The inheritance of the Rutte I cabinet ............................ 45 3.2 Wijksafari Utrecht by Adelheid Roosen ........................... 48 3.2.1 Zina Neemt de Wijk ................................................. 51 3.2.2 Wijksafari en Tepito ................................................. 53 3.3 The instrumentalisation of the arts?............................... 55 3.3.1 Recent developments within citizen initiatives and participatory art ...................................................... 58 | 11 4 RE-POLITICISING THE PUBLIC SPACE ............................ 61 4.1 The Question of Democracy .......................................... 61 4.2 Protest by Quinsy Gario ............................................... 63 4.3 Politics as theatre, theatre as politics ............................. 73 5 THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS AND THE AESTHETICS OF POLITICS ............................. 77 5.1 Labyrinth by We are Here Cooperative and Nicolas Stemann ................................................... 77 5.2 Citizenship, democracy, and humanity ........................... 84 5.2.1 Democracy: a distinction between human rights and the rights of the citizen? .................. 85 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................. 89 WORKS CITED .................................................................. 95 12 | 1 DUTCH POLITICS AS A MATTER OF THEATRE The final step is that we need to stimulate our cultural and creative industries to add value to society. We have to take them beyond the boundaries of the cultural world and help them to connect with other areas of society, such as healthcare, infrastructure and environmental sustainability. This goal is rooted in our growing awareness of how fruitful these crossovers can be, both today and in the future (Rijksoverheid, 2014c)1. In this thesis, I want to engage in an enigmatic and unsettling political development of our time, often delineated as a shift towards post-democracy, since, in my view, to some extent, similar mechanisms prevail in contemporary Dutch politics. The notion of post-democracy broadly encompasses the inclination towards processes of (1) depoliticisation – “a governing strategy [that places] at one remove the political character of decision-making” (Burnham, 2001, p. 128) and the privatisation of public services in the Netherlands. In the case of outsourcing of government tasks, a private party bent on maximising profits but performing a public task, democratic control, transparency and moral accountability are increasingly compromised (Graaf, 2015). (2) The deterioration of democratic principles – by increasingly denying some ethnic and religious minorities full citizenship due to the supposed “threat to the Dutch progressive moral order” (Hurenkamp, Tonkens, & Duyvendak, 2012, p. 130) and (3) the narrowing of the public sphere in neoliberal governments – by labelling certain aspects of life as ______ 1 The translations of non-English texts and quotes are mine when not stated otherwise. | 13 ‘private’ (as racist cultural practices such as ‘Black Pete’2) and thus not admissible to the public domain (Fraser, 1990) and not to be the concern of the state. Political scientist and sociologist Colin Crouch, coined this term in his critically acclaimed book Post-democracy (2004)3 and persuasively articulates this tendency. “Under this model,” Crouch asserts: While elections certainly exist and can change governments, [the] public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professional experts in techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind the spectacle of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in private by [the] interaction between elected governments and elites that overwhelmingly represent business interests (2004, 4 emphases added). Following Crouch, the theatrical concepts of ‘spectacle, ‘playing a part’ and ‘game’4 seem to have in this sense some similarities with the notion of post-democracy. The participation of the citizen is apparently weak, as Crouch describes “the mass of citizens plays a passive (…) part” (Crouch, 2004, p. 4) in the political arena, reminiscent of the perceived passive spectator within the theatre (Rancière, 2009). Also, in the words of Crouch, “behind the spectacle of the electoral game” (Crouch, 2004, p. 4), the government, as an ______ 2 Sinterklaas and Black Pete (Dutch: Black Pete), a holiday tradition in the Netherlands, clearly show that old habits die hard. Opponents of this black-faced helper of Sinterklaas reiterate the offensive caricature of black people, but supporters, in turn, say that Black Pete is not at all offensive, and the celebration is a tradition that needs to be cherished. The United Nations urged the Netherlands to stop this racist portrayal of black people (United Nations, 2014), but the government reaction was that this celebration was a private celebration and not to be the concern of the state. 3 Crouch first introduced this term in an earlier work Coping with PostDemocracy (2000) 4 Concerning the word game, Willmar Sauter explains, “The basic experience of art is playing. Playing has its own rules, and those who participate, subordinate their will to the rules of the game. The game is playing the players, as [Hans-George] Gadamer [in ‘Truth and method’] puts it: something is being played. In the case of art, this playing is also a playing for someone, an observer, a spectator” (Sauter, 2000, p. 5). In this sense, I consider the word game also as a theatrical concept. 14 | actor playing a role on stage (Goffman, 1959)5, gives the impression of representing the best interest of the citizenry, but allegedly mostly serves the interest of “privileged elites in the manner characteristic of pre-democratic times” (Crouch, 2004, p. 6). To be more precise, Crouch borrows theatrical terms and concepts not merely to label politics or the government as inauthentic or artificial, but to denote a shift towards less interest in strong egalitarian policies for the redistribution of power, where democratically advanced societies6 “have gone beyond the idea of rule by the people to challenge the idea of rule at all” (Crouch, 2004, p. 21). Here Crouch deploys the language and terms of theatre and theatricality, as epithets, to explain a phenomenon characterised by ordinary people being increasingly squeezed out of the affairs of state while the economic elite supposedly becomes more and more powerful (Crouch, 2014, pp. 116–117). In the previous quotation, Crouch also uses the idea of the perceived passive and apathetic spectators, as in a theatre, to express the growing incapacity and unwillingness of citizens to address the current so-called post-democratic tendency. The domain of politics becomes increasingly de-politicised. Dwelling on Jacques Rancière’s critique on the perceived passivity of the spectator (Rancière, 2009, pp. 3–6), the question arises: “what makes it possible to pronounce the spectator seated in her place inactive, if not previously posited [a] radical opposition between the active and the passive?” (2009, p. 12). In our case, what makes it possible to pronounce the citizen inactive, if not beforehand assuming that the citizen is passive and more importantly that she/he/they7 needs to be ‘activated’? Furthermore, what allows us to insert the prefix ‘post-’ to the concept of democracy, without questioning the very idea of representative democracy, which is defined by a “power-laden division between ruling and beingruled”? (Green, 2010, p. 53) A beforehand assumption connected to this idea is that there is a kind of a mythical past in which ______ 5 In this specific citation, the notions of ‘front’, where the individual performs before a set of observers, and ‘backstage’, where the individual can polish his or her performance without incurring any judgment by the observers is especially noteworthy. 6 Colin Crouch sees Japan, Western Europe and the United States of America as part of the advanced democratic societies (Crouch 2004, 1). 7 They as a personal pronoun of undetermined gender | 15 representative democracy was ‘authentically’ democratic and people were fully involved in democratic processes. In this thesis, I want to rethink and problematize the very idea of representative democracy without asserting the need to replace citizens or “the audience, previously conceived as a ‘viewer’ or ‘beholder’ (…) [uncritically with] co-producer or participant” (Bishop, 2012, p. 2). Participation encouraged by the state, as Claire Bishop argues, seemed to be perceived as corresponding to collectivism; to a collective control over production and distribution. However, this trend needs to be more thoroughly addressed “in tandem with the dismantling of the welfare state” (2012, p. 5) as a vital element in the post-industrial neoliberal capitalistic policy (2012, p. 14). One might say that within the discourse of Crouch’s postdemocratic writing there seems to be an ‘anti-theatrical prejudice’ in the way terms and concepts of the theatre are appropriated to convey disapproval of government and politics (Barish, 1981). However, rather than eschew derogatory, belittling or disapproving terms derived from theatrical activity from my research (for example ‘spectacle,’ ‘playing a part’ and ‘game’), I want to make these concepts and terms an integral part of my analysis. The aim of this thesis is to change the value of the concept of theatre; to transform a ‘bad’ term into a ‘good’ one and vice versa, and enable a deep understanding of theatre and politics, not as separate entities, but as processes in a conundrum with each other. Theatre, as Barish suggests, due to the ontological prejudice it clings to from the writings of Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche among others8 - a prejudice that seems to be “a condition inseparable from our beings” (Barish, 1981, p. 2) - might “reflect something permanent about the way we think of ourselves and our lives” (Ibid). By scrutinising the ocular (visual) model of democracy and the spectator-citizen, we might find how spectatorship can empower ordinary citizens and “provide them with a sense of solidarity with other ordinary citizens [that are] also consigned to experience politics […] in a spectating capacity” (Green, 2010, p. 28). Still, how do these symptoms and characteristics of postdemocracy and theatricality define current Dutch politics? ______ 8 16 | See Rousseau 1968 and Deleuze 1986, due to the scope of this thesis I will be only discussing Plato. Moreover, what are the ramifications of this diagnosis for the question of our democracy, as well as for the worlds of the arts and the theatre in the Netherlands? Kati Röttger throws more light on this matter in her essay “Theaterwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam in de Eenentwintigste Eeuw” (Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Twenty-First Century), specifically within a Dutch theatre policy context. Röttger starts her delineation with reference to the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted in drastic economic reforms in various aspects of life in the Netherlands. In a far-reaching austerity campaign, the government has expressed a desire to limit its role in subsidising sectors such as art and education, among others. The former policy of public subsidies is labelled ineffective; “it is said that [the state] is financing leftist hobbies: a government bureaucracy that has cuddled the arts to death and led to the culturing of addict institutions” (Röttger, 2014, p. 92). These sectors should instead be more efficient, more resourceful, and creative, and are only denominated in financial terms (2014, Ibid). “This undemocratic act,” Röttger assesses, due to “the rapid pace in which the policy change is implemented” without any dialogue, rightly raises the question, “for whom is such an effective subsidy actually an advantage: for the arts or the [financial] market?” (Ibid my emphasis). Röttger asserts, through an analysis of sociologist Pascal Gielen’s essay Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms, that in this construction the arts are called upon to mimic the corporate world's characteristics, “to strengthen the economic potential of culture and creativity” (2014, Ibid), as well as creatively adapt to the financial market to guarantee infinite economic growth. What is interesting about these two essays, within the context of this thesis, is that both Röttger and Gielen indicate the increasing use of the word creativity in government policies and austerity measures related to the cultural sector, and likewise the designated specific role the arts and theatre should fulfil within society. The government encourages entrepreneurship and philanthropy to dispense with a culture of public subsidy dependency9, where little attention is ______ 9 See for example the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Economic Affairs its policy document ‘Ons Creatieve Vermogen’ (Our Creative Capacity): “Creative industries are being stimulated to gain more insight into market opportunities. (...) However, | 17 apparently given to public outreach. This new strategy of government policy, however, ignores the fact that precisely through the system of government subsidies, the professionalisation of Dutch avant-garde theatre took off in the ‘60s (Röttger, 2014, p. 93). Moreover, as argued by Crouch, by displacing the distribution of power increasingly towards concentrations of private businesses and wealthy elites, a self-referential political class is conceived, which is increasingly more preoccupied with creating lasting relationships with wealthy businesses and funding bodies than with pursuing a political agenda that meets the common interests of ordinary people (Crouch, 2004, pp. 4–5). In this sense, and to return to current Dutch politics, although both authors do not actually employ the term post-democracy in their writings, the essays not only describe specific symptoms of an inclination towards processes of depoliticisation in the Netherlands10, but also offer clear examples of how the concepts of theatre and theatricality are unceasingly intermingled with the question of politics and the gradual limitation of democratic systems respectively. This gradual limitation of democracy is increasingly more visible, as Gielen argues in the role played by mass media (Gielen, 2013, p. 74). The mass media, such as newspapers, TV and radio, which are highly concentrated within a small group of key players in the Netherlands and naturally unchallenged11, do echo not we are still not using these economic opportunities to their full potential. Primary cause: creativity and economy are too two divorced worlds. (…) What we don't not know, we fear. Because of this, there is insufficient dynamics in the chain from initial creation to marketing. In addition, subsidised sectors from the creative industries are unilaterally dependent on the government. They have insufficient access to private money from patrons and sponsors, and entrepreneurship has not been sufficiently developed” (Rijksoverheid, 2009, p. 3). 10 Röttger discusses the limitation of the government’s (financial) role in the culture, education and heritage sector. In contrast, these sectors should position themselves as entrepreneurs. This has major implications for our democracy, she assures, since hardly any time is taken to assess common ways we would want to advance. Gielen, in contrast, uses the words depoliticised and apolitical in his writing when he describes a neoliberal trend to measure, manage and control liberty. 11 The Dutch Media Authority (Commissariaat voor de Media), which regulates and supervises the Dutch Media Act, concluded that the 18 | only politics but also produce a political reality that is suited to their demands. “The [Dutch] mass media,” Gielen explains through an analysis of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, is “the expression of a stylised barbarism, an aesthetics of persuasion that also aestheticizes politics. In the mass media, politics becomes theatricality (…), in which good arguments are always defeated by good looks” (2013, p. 75). This meaning of theatre, employed by Gielen as an adjective to describe a particular quality of Dutch politics, is quite different from the one Röttger applies in her essay. Röttger, in contrast, sees a role for theatre in this age of depoliticisation. Although Röttger never employs the terms depoliticisation or post-democracy, she rightly reiterates the increasingly undemocratic way in which the government acts in the implementation of austerity measures. “In a very un-democratic way, no time is taken to jointly reflect on how people want to address [the budget cuts within] the arts in the Netherlands as a society” (2014, p. 93). At the same time, theatre and theatre studies are increasingly determined by efficiency and participation policies. When is there democratic participation by the arts in shaping the idea of an equivalent human community; and when is participation by the arts within the idiom of entrepreneurship and market logic defined as stimulating the formation of an audience” (2014, p. 98). Theatre and performance studies, she contends, have an important task to respond to these developments in a pragmatic and idealistic manner. Röttger undersigns Alain Badiou’s idea of theatre in his Rhapsody for the Theatre. “Theatre,” she asserts, “is of all the arts that [which is] homologous to politics, in that theatre is the place where a truly emancipated collective subject is performed” (Röttger, 2014, p. 107). As Badiou rhetorically asks, “what does theatre talk about if not the state of the State, the state of society, the state of revolution, the state of consciousness relative to the State, to society, to the revolution, to politics?” (Badiou, 2013, p. 36) Röttger also emphasises, on the basis of Jean-Luc Nancy’s Being Singular Plural, “That theatre — also in the Netherlands’ “regional and national press sectors are highly concentrated with three players dominating the markets. The television sector is also highly concentrated, and three main players, including the public service broadcaster, RTL/HMG and SBS are largely unchallenged in terms of competition from other operators” (Ward, Fueg, & D’Armo, 2004, p. 125). | 19 sense of spectacle — is the art form that allows for the intensification of relations, of concentration and fellowship, which are necessary to offer a new perspective on and the practice of co-existence, of copresence, in a being-singular-plural, to be created” (2014, Ibid). Thus, how theatre can contemplate on the idea of a plural society, without reducing this ‘we’ into a substantial and exclusive individuality. I will expand on this argument in the present book by critically reflecting on the idea of spectatorship in chapter 3 and 4. The preceding discussion implies that two conflicting definitions of theatre underlie the statements cited above. One definition characterises theatre as a political affair, that is, a matter of critically assessing forms and ways of living together in a communal space. I will conceive this interpretation of theatre, for the sake of simplicity, as a positive denomination of theatre. This is the view that Röttger holds. The term political, within this definition is used in its broadest sense, encompassing the interrelationships and the distribution of resources and power in a given society. In contrast, Gielen, as well as Crouch, offers a different definition of theatre, where the word theatre is used as an adjective and a metaphor for something of our contemporary time that masquerades as politics but, in essence, is not. This interpretation of theatre, I will, on the other hand, conceive as a negative denomination of theatre. Within this definition, politics is used in its narrowest sense, encompassing the daily activities of the government, as well as the electoral vote. Erik Swyngedouw wonders in his essay Interrogating PostDemocratization: Reclaiming Egalitarian Political Spaces, “whether the political can still be thought” in a post-democratic context, in which politics is increasingly reduced “to ‘policing’, to managerial consensual governing” (Swyngedouw, 2011, p. 376). The political, deduced from Jacques Rancière’s Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2010) and The Politics of Aesthetics (2006), is understood here as a retroactive event “of eruption (…), opening a procedure that disrupts any given socio-spatial order, one that addresses a wrong in the name of an axiomatic and presumed equality of each and every one” (Swyngedouw, 2011, p. 375). “This wrong”, he asserts, “is a condition in which the presumption of equality is perverted through the contingent socio-spatial institution of an oligarchic police order. The political arises then in the act of performatively staging equality, a procedure that simultaneously makes visible the wrong of the given situation” (2011, p. 375). On the basis of the description above, it 20 | seems fair to suggest that despite the negative connotations of theatre defining our contemporary representative democracy, there seems to be, on the other hand, a potential emancipatory value within theatre and performance, which acts as a possible rupture, disrupting the given order, thus which can interrogate the established and accepted question of democracy. Following this observation, the primary argument of this thesis is that, although ‘Dutch politics as a matter of theatre’ (c.f. Crouch 2004; Gielen 2013) and ‘performance being a political event’ (c.f. Swyngedouw 2011; Badiou 2013; Röttger 2014) are two problematics that differ radically from each other in their use of the notion of theatre, they are perhaps intimately related, or at the very least react to one another. This work sets out to explore the widely neglected post-democratic enigma in a Dutch context, to examine the potential theatre and performance have to reflect upon or slightly irritate the state of affairs. Theatre and performance, as I will argue, can play a major role in their ability to materialise and discursively foster a political arena. This necessity of this book is emphasised by the radical trend of the Dutch neoliberal government to restrict certain rights and social services under the disguise of freedom of choice, responsibility, independence and efficiency. These plans are presented as necessary evils and unavoidable, causing the public not to question or reject these plans and ultimately adopting this discourse. Art and creativity, and specifically in the context of this thesis, theatre, are being drastically instrumentalised within governmental policies with the result that these have become increasingly empty and vague concepts. On top of this, the legitimacy of the cultural connoisseur, specialised in various arts sectors, which can provide a possible critical view, seems to be increasingly undermined. As Jet Bussemaker, Minister of Education, Culture and Science states, “the authority of the traditional expert or culture specialist is decreasing [according to whom, I might add?]; at the same time, the public needs experts to guide [them] in the supply [of cultural manifestations]” (Rijksoverheid, 2015a). Art scholars and critics are thus devalued to be merely salesmen, | 21 contracted out to compile appealing sales brochures12, which may result in an increasing cultural and historical amnesia (Gielen, 2013, p. 40), which then further complicates possible critical advances. Before us lies a pressing question to re-conceptualise the question of theatre and re-weight its potential, especially in light of the growing concern about the future of our democracy. The present work is an attempt firstly to map these trends of depoliticisation and theatricality, and subsequently to describe contemporary theatre projects against the backdrop of these developments. To fully comprehend this line of reasoning, I set out to disclose in Chapter 1 Diagnosing a Political Malaise the Dutch general election of 2010, which revolved heavily around the European debt crisis and the growing national debt. Through a discourse analysis of newspaper articles, economic analysis and forecasts of the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), political election campaigns and government documents, I argue that politics, necessitates a specific performance in order to be prosperous. That is, the voters must have the impression that the politician did everything in their position ‘backstage’ to serve the interests of the people and that the austerity measures were inevitable, even though this might not always be the case. This framework will help me to conceptualise the power dynamics that underlie the social relations between politicians, on the one hand, and citizens, on the other, and how politicians mask and adopt theatrical roles. However, we might ask, what follows when politics becomes increasingly theatrical, and what are the immediate implications of this? Based on this material, further questions concerning the theatricality of Dutch politics will be discussed. In Chapter 2, The State Assuming a More Ceremonial or Theatrical Role, I will analyse the socially engaged location-based theatre production Wijksafari Utrecht ______ 12 22 | As the former Minister of Education, Culture and Science stated, “The changes in the assessment system are also intended to create more widespread support. In the past, when the emphasis was almost exclusively on artistic quality, the assessment of the arts was left to 'the arts and culture experts'. Now, there is often more room for experts in various other fields of study (for example business management, marketing or cultural education) and more attention is paid to the (potential) interest of the public” (Rijksoverheid, 2012a). by theatre director Adelheid Roosen. Wijksafari Utrecht is a theatre project where the stories and lives of several migrants from the Middle East and Sub-Sahara Africa, among others, are blended into a theatrical performance. The spectator gets the opportunity to relate to ‘foreign’ cultures and practices and gets a chance to experience, guided by a local, problem areas in three contested neighbourhoods of Utrecht (Overvecht, Zuilen and Ondiep). The project fabricates a caricature portrayal of these migrant locals to play with the expectations and stereotypes the viewers have of them. However, this project becomes critical when it is used as a benchmark by the government for how the arts can assume an instrumental role to resolve societal problems and thus, as the Minister of Education, Culture and Science asserted, “to take full advantage of the added value of creativity, in all kinds of social and economic ways” (Rijksoverheid 2014; see also Ministerie van Onderwijs 2012). This project, I will argue, despite its noble intentions, can be seen as a possible catalyst of the theatricality of current Dutch politics. That is, following Claire Bishop (2012), the more theatre groups and private organisations adopt the state its obligations, the more politicians can assume a ceremonial or theatrical role. This liberal government defines the individual as selfadministered and self-governing, allowing the welfare state to deteriorate further in so-called democratic, advanced societies. Crouch points out that those societies, as a result of this deterioration, will be experiencing a shift that seems to reverse most of the political achievements made during the twentieth century (Crouch, 2004, p. 4). Moreover, one might ask, what are the ramifications for the functioning of our democracy and the way we can address our problems when the responsibility of the public services is relocated into our hands? Alternatively, when social provision is transposed into the hands of a theatre group? In Chapter 3, The Destabilisation of the Public Space, I will problematize the notion of theatricality. In this chapter, I will illustrate the second case study of this thesis, a protest by the theatre-maker and artist Quinsy Gario. In this chapter as argued by Zihni Özdil, I will illustrate that the “political economy of Dutch exceptionalism has both discursively and institutionally served to exclude black and non-white Dutch people of colour from the public debate, thus marginalising their voice and delegitimizing them as cultural stakeholders” (Özdil, 2014, p. 49). However, this protest by | 23 Gario, by re-claiming the protest as a performance, visualises, however temporarily a public space, which exposes that which is repressed in the hegemony of the social order. On November 12, 2011, Gario and Kno’ledge protested the celebration of Black Pete during the national arrival of Sinterklaas. This event formed part of a large chain of events that re-politicised what it means to be black in the contemporary Netherlands. Earlier written accounts of Gario’s political protest will be used to explore this act. It is important to note that Gario later delineated this event as part of his work of art. This morphing or rephrasing, I would argue, offers an unusual perspective, as it gives the opportunity to review and scrutinise this protest in the context of the arts, specifically within the realm of theatre. To facilitate this step, I will attempt to define this protest on the basis of the descriptions of theatre by William Sauter and by notions of performance and performativity. The questions that this theoretical framework pose are as follows. Can this event solely be perceived as a protest, or also as a (theatre) performance? What connections can be made between a protest and the notion of theatre? This consideration will eventually lead to the question: how can cultural-political intervention, through theatre, broaden the discourse of democratic politics to include multiple spaces of power. The aim of this chapter is not solely to feed into current social debates on racism in the Netherlands, but to illustrate how the voices of minorities are being repressed within the white Dutch hegemonic order and how these minorities through their practices create politics beyond the state and formal electoral politics. In Chapter 4, The Politics of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Politics, I will discuss the performance Labyrinth by the We are Here Cooperative in collaboration with theatre director Nicolas Stemann. In this production, the experiences of refugees are played out and reflected upon within the context of theatre. By employing roleplaying and role-reversal methods, the audience becomes a refugee while the refugee plays the lawyer, the case manager or the IND (the Immigration and Naturalisation Service) officer. The play, as I will argue, exposes structures of power and powerlessness that would otherwise remain obscured. The performance addresses notions of humanity, citizenship and democracy, and revolves around the questions: who has the right to have rights and who has the power to decide this? I will use the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jacques 24 | Rancière to elaborate what role theatre can take in bringing into play demands by the refugees who have not yet been acknowledged as legitimate political subjects in the Netherlands, and how these subjects interrogate, through theatre, the question of our democracy. | 25 26 | 2 DIAGNOSING A POLITICAL MALAISE People may feel vaguely aware that they have little understanding of what is going on in government and politics, and that they may feel bewildered that all they hear about are political personalities, scandals and inflated bits of trivia. But the trail back from there to the logic of a certain kind of fast-moving market is impossible for them to find (Crouch, 2004, p. 48). 2.1. The 2010 Dutch general election and its aftermaths Before starting my line of reasoning, I will describe the Dutch general election of 2010 to contextualise the actual question considered. The Dutch general election, which was brought forward almost a year due to the premature fall of the Balkenende IV cabinet (2007 – 2010), revolved heavily around the European debt crisis and the growing national debt. According to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), austerity measures seemed inevitable, as the public finances were, in the case of unchanged policy, not sustainable in the long-term. “The deficit will rise significantly over the coming decades and will explode the national debt” (CPB, 2010, p. 3). The question recurring throughout the general election was not if there should be cuts, but how much and what. The conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) won the election with 31 of 150 seats in the House of Representatives, followed by the social democratic Labour Party (PvdA) (30 seats) and the national conservative Party for Freedom (PVV) (24 seats). A coalition formation between the VVD, PVV and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) (21 seats) had already failed at a very early stage (NRC, 2010b), and after that a coalition between | 27 the PvdA and the VVD proved to be very complicated and timeconsuming due to insufficient common ground (NRC, 2010a). The turning point in the government formation was the reconsideration of the PVV to support the minority coalition of the centre-right Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD party. This collaboration came as a huge surprise, given the disparity of the parties’ immigration and cultural policies, and that no clear resemblances between the parties were apparent in previous electoral debates to suggest a possible collaboration. While the VVD campaigned for a restriction of immigration law to refit public finances13, and the CDA called for a strong policy to address the rapid changes in demographics and the impact of globalisation on our economy14, they were not nearly as controversial as the PVV. Geert Wilders, the political leader of the PVV, campaigned all year long for a ‘Head Rag’ tax (Dutch: Kopvoddentax) for every Muslim headscarf and an embargo on the Quran (New York Times, 2010). Wilders argued that the rising ‘Islamisation’ in the Netherlands can be an economic disaster: “it corrupts the Dutch education system, (…) drives out Jews and gays and deteriorate the long-fought emancipation of women” (PVV, 2010, p. 6). According to some politicians (NRCnext.nl, 2010; Nu.nl, 2010b), forms of populism, such as embodied in the forms of the PVV, would ultimately threaten the ______ 13 The election campaign programme of the VVD states, “The VVD wants a fair and restrictive immigration policy. The VVD sees opportunities for highly educated and knowledgeable migrants to strengthen our country and our economy. The uncontrolled influx of disadvantaged and lowskilled migrants, however, led to major problems in the neighbourhoods, in schools, in the labour market and the field of crime. The persistent influx of disadvantaged migrants counteracts solving integration problems and must, therefore, be stopped. Thanks to the VVD, necessary steps have been taken since 2002 to apply a stricter, equitable and consistent asylum and immigration policy. The VVD wants to continue this policy, and therefore good monitoring and control of the external European borders are important ". (VVD 2010, 36)”. (VVD, 2010, p. 36) 14 The CDA election campaign programme states, “The Netherlands remains committed to protecting people who are subject to prosecution in a European and international context. However, the widespread support for the admission of foreigners in the Netherlands is under pressure. Only clear choices can maintain this support. The CDA stands for the protection of refugees, but it within a selective migration policy: strictly where it is needed, accessible where necessary” (CDA, 2010). 28 | fate of democracy. Therefore, proper measures should be taken to combat it. Collaboration with the PVV would logically stand in the way (Nu.nl, 2010a). 2.1.1 The Binnenhof deliberations The three-party leaders of the CDA, VVD and the PVV eventually gathered behind closed doors at the Binnenhof (the political centre of the Netherlands) to discuss the coalition agreement. Occasionally they came outside, laughing and talking enthusiastically to colleagues, albeit without making any comprehensive declaration to the media standing outside about the ongoing negotiations (NOS.nl, 2010b). When they did exchange information to the press, vague assurances were given: “there were some questions raised towards a particular party during the deliberation”, “that they talked about it in good spirit”. Also, that they will now “deliberate to answer some of the questions raised” (Ibid). Alternatively, “That the conversations were going well and although these discussions were intense, the political leaders had every reason to be confident that everything will work out all right” (NOS.nl, 2010a). The coalition negotiations were interrupted at one point due to the withdrawal of three dissidents of the CDA party that threatened the parliamentary majority (Nu.nl, 2010c), but after a miraculous and unknown “political development,” the three parties regained confidence in each other and could continue their negotiations (NOS.nl, 2010c). Meanwhile, a demissionary cabinet (or caretaker cabinet), the former Balkenende IV coalition, led by the former party leader of the CDA, conducted a 3.2-billion-euro austerity plan on measures to restore public finances (Rijksoverheid, 2010b)15. Amidst the ongoing coalition negotiations, the demissionary cabinet, with the approval of the States-General of the Netherlands, had implemented, largely unnoticed or uncontested by the media or the coalition opposition, a set of actions with far-reaching consequences (Nu.nl, 2010d), without ever jeopardising its prestige, since they had already resigned, and most of the politicians of the Balkenende IV cabinet had secured a job outside politics (only three ministers of this cabinet returned to politics). Moreover, at the same time, the demissionary cabinet, by way of this procedure, could pave the way ______ 15 See also how the Dutch media have covered this story (Joop.nl, 2010) | 29 for the forthcoming government to start more or less with a clean slate. As the resigned Minister of Finance assured, “The caretaker cabinet (…) [wants to] delegate the state budget ‘clean and tidy’ to the next government” (Joop.nl, 2010). 2.1.2 The coalition agreement 113 days after the election results, Mark Rutte, leader of the VVD and soon to become prime minister, presented a coalition and ‘support agreement’ (Dutch: gedoogakkoord), with the title: ‘Vrijheid en Verantwoordelijkheid’ (Liberty and Responsibility), indicating the neoliberal notions of empowerment and policing. Liberty here meant freedom for private property owners, multinationals and businesses to pursue their endeavours freely without the interference of the government. “This government,” as the coalition agreement emphasises, “believes in a cabinet that only does what it needs to do” (Rijksoverheid, 2010c, p. 3). This statement specifically implies making “space for entrepreneurship” (Ibid), corporations and businesses. However, in contrast to the state, these companies and businesses do not need to be called to account and have no responsibility whatsoever for the diverse and demanding Dutch population. The term responsibility in the title of the coalition agreement implies in a neoliberal state, personal liability, as David Harvey explains, where “the social safety net is reduced to a bare minimum in favour of a system that emphasises personal responsibility” (Harvey, 2005, p. 76). The point made by Harvey is not made unambiguously in the coalition agreement. This sentence in the coalition agreement, however, makes the objectives of the government a little clearer: “the cabinet wants to put the house in order in many sectors and restore the balance between rights and duties” (Rijksoverheid, 2010c, p. 3 my emphasis). This statement implies that The Netherlands, which was always viewed as a progressive country in terms of welfare state policies, seems to be quickly eroding the very fundamentals they were praised for and reversing most of its accomplishments made during the twentieth century. The difference between public-service of basic needs and commercial provision seems to disappear as corporations and businesses outside politics increasingly take responsibilities that used to be in the hands of the state. Although privatisation in social welfare democracies has a longer history (Kamerman & Kahn, 1989) and specifically in the Dutch context (Cox, 2001; Esping-Andersen, 30 | 1996; Pavolini & Ranci, 2008), at this time in history we are noticing the peak of privatisation in the Netherlands at the critical juncture of deterioration of democratic principles and the narrowing of the public space. In front of a canvas displaying a forced perspective, baroque, classical Trompe-l'œil background – a much-used canvas within the history of (Western) modern theatre - Rutte emphasised the strong solidarity between the three parties, while also articulating the breach between them concerning the anti-Muslim campaigning of Wilders. Immediately upon this assertion, Rutte announced an intensification of the integration policy by “limiting the large influx of hopeless immigrants” (Volkskrant, 2010a), which contrasts with the election programme of the CDA (2010), and assured more dedication to the “protection and safety” of Dutch civilians (Volkskrant, 2010a), which makes clear that the interests of the farright voters of the PVV had not been overlooked. As an example of the latter, the new Prime Minister Rutte conveyed that if criminals performed a criminal act they would be made financially accountable for their wrongdoings; he also assured anecdotally that “if you are ever confronted by a burglar in your house, and you give him a few firm punches, you will not be disposed of in chains. The burglar, however, will be” (Volkskrant, 2010a). After the speech had ended, hands were shaken, people in the crowd smiled and nodded, photos were taken, and subsequently, the three politicians went off the stage. Rutte did not question the feasibility of his legal statements during his presentation, nor did the opposition or the press convincingly. Neither did he disclose in which areas his party had to give ground during the coalition negotiations, and, more importantly, for what price. From these observations, one can conclude that this far-reaching agreement necessitated a performance to emphasise elements of character and to engage with the voters emotionally, by making big yet unrealistic electoral promises, without ever disclosing a substantive view. The mobilization and management of images are seen as a primary mode of governance (Glynn, 2008). These descriptions are at the heart of the inclination towards the so-called post-democratic condition. | 31 2.1.3 The Catshuis deliberations After 509 days, the Rutte I cabinet culminated at the formal residence of the Prime Minister, the ‘Catshuis’. Following a deficit of 4.5% of the government budget, calculated again by the CPB (Nu.nl, 2012a), the coalition partners decided to negotiate new austerity measures. During the Catshuis deliberations, no official statements were given to the media for 47 days, and again the outside world could only catch glimpses of the politicians through the media’s telephoto lenses. It seemed that as an outsider, you were able to follow what was going on in the house. Moreover, that the politicians wanted to make it very clear to the public, by standing at crucial moments on strategic points outside the mansion, whether or not the negotiations were proceeding according to plan. One day you could see pictures of heated discussions among the three politicians on the terrace. Another day video fragments of one politician pacing up and down in front of the house, and finally, on the last day, the abrupt departure of Geert Wilders, while talking erratically outside on the telephone in front of the front door, indicating that the talks between the VVD, CDA and PVV had ultimately faltered. After this, two separate press conferences were given; one by the PVV, and another by the VVD alongside the CDA, to indicate that the Catshuis deliberations, despite all efforts, had failed. During the press conference, Rutte’s tone was confessional: We were almost ready. (…) We had a plan of austerity reforms to bring the state finances in order. These reforms would make the Netherlands [economically] stronger and distribute the burden equally. The PVV pulled back at the last moment, based on to the consequences of an agreement we formulated in the formation a halfyear ago. (…) I can only conclude that this party lacked the political will to carry on. For this reason, we are standing here empty-handed (Rijksoverheid, 2012b). Ditto Wilders: In the end, there was a batch of austerity measures, which would have had drastic consequences. All this to achieve a European requirement of the three-percentage deficit in 2013. I do not accept that the elderly have to [economically] bleed in the Netherlands. It is unacceptable and not in the interest of our PVV voters. If less rested on the three-percentage [deficit], if less were cut back, we could have agreed. If I did not believe in this [agreement], I would never have started. That is why I am genuinely disappointed. However, if it is 32 | not possible, then not. [Thus] new elections as soon as possible! (NOS.nl, 2012). Given these descriptions, these events of the Dutch general election of 2010 can be conceived of as a classical theatre play. The dramatic structure followed more or less Gustav Freytag’s 5-act pyramid structure (Freytag, 1863), which forms the dominant Western dramatic flow of storytelling – although with some variations. There was a definitive curve of exposition, where after the election results the important players were introduced to the political arena. The series of events leading to the support agreement at the Binnenhof and the presentation of this support could be seen as part of the rising action. These events build towards the point of greatest interest or climax, namely the Catshuis deliberations following a deficit of 4,5% of the government budget. The complications surged during these deliberations could be seen as the falling action. And lastly, the catastrophe of the tragedy, where the misfortune of the tragic heroes, Rutte and Wilders were brought about by some error of judgement. These acts, in the theoretical framework of Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, come across as if a play was performed to prove that these politicians did everything in their position ‘backstage’ at the Catshuis to serve the interests of (some of) the people, and that they were personally disappointed by the negative outcome. One could say that the politicians publicly employed ‘defensive practices’ to salvage the definition of the situation projected by them (Goffman, 1959, p. 12). In their actions, the three politicians made a moral appeal to the voters, by showing their grief and frustrations, to ensure their projected-self-image (e.g. Would the voters blame me for the failure of the Catshuis negotiations?) remained intact. These performances called for an audience, in this case, the voters, who can witness a pattern of actions being performed in the ‘front’. This front, as Goffman explains, is a setting that circumscribes a geographical location, where, as in a theatre, the audience has to bring themselves to. And the actors must terminate their performance when the audience leaves this place (Goffman, 1959, p. 19). In the case of both the Binnenhof and the Catshuis, the front was an important political building where strategic gatherings of politicians took place, which was more or less publicly accessible and covered by the media. What is also striking at this point is that the performances that were carried out by the politicians at a given point became “a collective | 33 representation and a fact in its own right” (Crouch, 2004, p. 24)16. People did not ask afterwards which deals were brokered ‘backstage’ in the Catshuis, but automatically accepted what was said at the press conference or shown in pictures and video fragments. In other words, the idea of the theatre in this context does not solely ‘represent’ or mirrors reality, but constitutes through language, gesture and symbolic acts a social reality with far-reaching consequences. Here, an oversimplification of politics can be noted, whereby the parties stumble over something trivial after so many weeks of deliberation. Charismatic personalities such as Wilders and Rutte utter a vague and incoherent set of clarifications, which reflects no explicitly articulated concerns, except an unclearly expressed unease by Wilders about the financial situation of the elderly (but how and to what extent?). Alternatively, an intention by Rutte to make the economic climate more favourable (to whom and, again, how?). Also — and Wilders is not exceptional by asserting that the policies are “not in the interest of the PVV voters” — a vague and broad middleclass is addressed to resolve the decline of clarity in the profile of the electorate. This class materialises, in the case of Wilders, in the personages of Henk and Ingrid, the conceited autochthonous white middle-class, hard-working nuclear family, versus Mohammed and Fatima, the allochthonous17 black and brown, presumed lazy, criminal Other that impedes the freedom and economic development of the former18 (see Duyvendak, 2011; Essed, 1994, ______ 16 See also (Nu.nl, 2012a) 17 For a critical analysis of the terms autochtonous/allochthonous in Dutch policy see van der Haar and Yanow 2011. 18 As an example, see a speech by Wilders during a parliamentary session: “The multicultural society is an expensive joke. Thanks to a study of the CPB (...) we know that an average non-Western immigrant family costs the Dutch taxpayer 230,000 euros. That is more than one hundred billion euros in total. (...) Think about what we could do with that money. We had been able to give all the elderly in nursing homes their own room a year ago, with a personal nurse. We could all have stopped working on our 50th. Or give everyone a sailboat for free. We could have bought another country, just for fun. We could swim in the money. But who pays the bill? Who pays that hundred billion? Those are the People who have built the Netherlands, the people who work hard, the people who save money and pay their taxes 34 | 2002; Essed & Goldberg, 2002; Essed & Hoving, 2001; Mepschen, Duyvendak, & Tonkens, 2010; Uitermark, Mepschen, & Duyvendak, 2014; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Arguably, it can be said that politics require a specific performance in order to prosper. Voters should get the impression that politicians will do their utmost to look after the best interests of the country and the voters, even if this means an alliance with a party with conflicting ideals. This holds true in countries with proportional election and strong political culture of coalition building, such as the Netherlands. In other words, politics is theatrical in the sense that it necessitates a place where the politicians can perform a favourable display of themselves. In this way, voters can judge these politicians for their ‘true’ personality and good intentions while ignoring potential flaws in the presented policy or politicians can conceal a substantive political argumentation, and hence making the political arena consistently a theatrical space. However, it is not (only) the acts that politicians perform what makes this theatricality so self-referential, but the increasing depoliticisation and squeezing of the public sphere such theatricality contributes to. 2.2 Why post-democracy? The 2010 Dutch general election, the consequent formation deliberation and the fallout of the Rutte I cabinet are exemplary cases to discuss the issue of the Dutch inclination towards postdemocracy for several reasons: the Dutch Polder and the idea of governmentality, the trivialisation of politics and the growing apathy of the public. 2.2.1 The Dutch Polder Model and the idea of governmentality After the results of the Dutch electoral vote consistently no party is per se excluded from a possible coalition or, in the words of the VVD leader Mark Rutte, “the VVD does not exclude any party” neatly. The ordinary Dutchman who does not get it. Henk and Ingrid pay for Mohammed and Fatima.” | 35 (Nieuws.nl, 2014), thus allowing drastic concessions in the political agreement to be made19. This strategy is emblematic of the Dutch ‘Polder model’. The ‘Polder model’20 is “a notion that signifies successful tripartite cooperation and central-level dialogue between employers’ associations, unions and the government on welfare state reform and other relevant socio-economic matters (Hendriks, 2010, p. 14)”. The consensus model erases the most contentious parts of a possible agreement so that all parties can meet halfway and thus preventing the parties to advocate significant change. This kind of highly artificial agreement, as Rancière sharply states: Means that whatever your personal commitments, interests, and values may be, you perceive the same things [and] you give them the same name. But there is no contest on what appears, on what is given in a situation and as a situation. Consensus means that the only point of contest lies in what has to be done as a response to the given situation (Rancière, 2003, p. 4). In reality, this means that progressive political parties extensively co-operate with conservative parties in the Netherlands. Decisionmaking revolves around a consensual composition in which everyone who is elected takes part and participates in a given and generally accepted division of social order and spatial distribution. While there may be conflicts of interest and opinion, there is a general agreement in guarding the “existence of the neo-liberal political, economic configuration” (Swyngedouw, 2011, p. 372). Besides, successive coalitions follow similar austerity plans as their predecessors21, and earlier enforced policy plans are hardly ever ______ 19 However, during the general election of 2017 most parties including the VVD excluded a possible collaboration with the PVV of Geert Wilders due to his racist comments. See also footnote 26. 20 The ‘Polder model’ is very much in fashion in the Netherlands. The word ‘polder’ refers to man-made lands with elevations below sea level, which are protected by fabricated dykes, and the term ‘Polder model’ is commonly used to imply an artificial consensus-based decision-making in the Netherlands. 21 Many policy plans are implemented over a longer period, the succeeding government is then not willing or able to change them. A good example is the culture budget cuts introduced by the Rutte I cabinet, which was adopted wholescale by the Rutte II cabinet. 36 | revoked, despite countless pledges made during electoral campaigns (see for example, Nu.nl, 2012b). Although this consensus ideal gives the impression of a noble and fair achievement, it is anything but democratic. That is, in this construction, alternative viewpoints are automatically dismissed from the political arena to accommodate the needs of the mass while conserving the current state of affairs. This results in fabricated and arranged deals between conflicting parties by not remaining intransigent on the very issues these parties campaigned for. “Agonistic debate”, as Erik Swyngedouw discuss, “is increasingly replaced by disputes over the mobilization of a series of new governmental technologies, managerial dispositifs and institutional forms, articulated around reflexive risk-calculation (self-assessment), accountancy rules and accountancy based disciplining, quantification and benchmarking of performance (Swyngedouw, 2011, p. 372)”. Substansive arguments are eschewed for the measurement of performance “in terms of success, accomplishment, growth, reputation, or inversely, non-performance, failure, collapse and inadequacy (…) [and] the fulfillment of a goal or the failure to do so (Bala, 2013, p. 15) - a point I will return to below. Also, the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) now seems to have a much larger role than an advisory body. That there had to be budget cuts indicated by the CPB was clear. The only point of contestation among the political parties was what should be cut and how this was to be done. It is interesting to note that the government did not legitimise the necessity of the Catshuis deliberation by referring to a political ideology, but by citing external or seemingly non-political factors indicated by the CPB. Pascal Gielen explains that “[i]n such a framework politicians give the impression of being ‘forced’ to take certain decisions, while relegating their ideological and active freedom of choice to the background” (Gielen, 2011). Moreover, politicians, as political scientist Colin Hay argues, increasingly accept as a fact that economic freedom in a globalized era is of the utmost concern, instead of taking care of the demands of citizens (Hay, 2007). 2.2.2 The trivialisation of politics: is it the media? Second, it seems that contemporary politicians rarely aspire to any complexity of an argument, allowing the political debate to be overly | 37 trivialised: “very brief messages, requiring extremely low concentration spans; the use of words to form high-impact images instead of arguments appealing to the intellect” (Crouch, 2004, p. 26). Little space is available for political and ideational reasoning’s, except perhaps a nationalistic and racist discourse of which Wilders is an exemplary case. The way in which the underlying objective of the coalition agreement of the Rutte I cabinet was presented and the justification for the Catshuis deliberations were unnecessarily simplified. Indicative of this, is the intention uttered by Rutte at the failed Catshuis deliberations to “make the Netherlands [economically] stronger” without thoroughly explaining which policies needs to be implemented, which social programs cut-back and who will benefit from these policies. One could attribute the ills of democracy and the trivialisation of politics to the mass media, namely, how we see and experience politics are mediatised through the various press, radio and TV media. These media outlets, as noted by Crouch, frame political relevant communications, On a certain form of the idea of a marketable product. (…) This prioritises extreme simplification and sensationalization, which in turn degrades the quality of political discussion and reduce the competence of citizens. (…) Political actors themselves are then forced into the same mode if they are to retain some control over how they formulate their own utterances: if they do not adopt the style of rapid, eye-catching banality, journalists will completely rewrite the message (Crouch, 2004, pp. 46–47). “The power of a politically highly relevant group of corporations – those in the media industry”, Crouch continues, “is in fact involved directly in reductions of choice and the debasement of political language and communication which are important components of the poor health of democracy” (Crouch, 2004, p. 46). Arguably, these statements implicate a gradual aestheticisation of politics. This notion of the aestheticisation of politics can directly be attributed to Walter Benjamin in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1969). Here Benjamin links, at a time where Adolf Hitler briefly came to power, cultural mass production with the aestheticisation of politics and fascism. Fascism, Benjamin contends, “attempts to organise the newly proletarianized masses while leaving intact the property relations which they strive to abolish. It sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses – but on no account granting them rights (Benjamin, 1969, p. 41)”. The 38 | extensive attention the Catshuis deliberations received was not possible without the mass media. The coverage, a reproduction of the event itself, can be infinitely reproduced and re-transmitted endlessly and has become the authority of the event in itself. Mass movements and rallies “are more clearly apprehended by the camera than by the eye. (…) [Since] the image formed by the eye cannot be enlarged in the same way as a photograph” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 54). How we see and experience politics is generally only through various printed, radio and TV media. The media makes these events accessible to us. Similar to the days of Walter Benjamin where a connection could be made between the media, the mass and emerging fascism, populist nationalism can, nowadays, according to Gielen, replace fascism (Gielen, 2013, p. 82). As media magnates and famous TV stars in such societies have every opportunity in positions of political power to dictate what is seen and unseen within the visible. In Gielen’s argument, in a time of a growing emphasis on image and the value of media to convey information, the media is decisive in the formation of the post-democratic state we live in. The growing media concentration in the Netherlands, which revolves primarily around several key players, is in fact directly involved in the decrease of marginal voices within the political arena and the perversion of political language and communication, which are pivotal for the question of our democracy. This, however, does not mean that one can speak of a ‘mediacracy’ in the Netherlands, where the media determine the political agenda entirely (see also Kleinnijenhuis 2003)22. The influence of media in contemporary politics and the dangers they bring along do not lead to the reductionist conclusion that media are ‘the’ power in place. They are one important factor among others. ______ 22 Kleinnijenhuis explains that the general public follows to some extent the media, which to a large extent follow Dutch politics. These procedures point to a structural model where knowledge proceeds more easily downwards (from the government to the general public) than upwards (2003, p. 203). Also, the diversity of the media coverage is much lower for people with little political knowledge than for people with considerable political knowledge (2003, p. 204). | 39 2.2.3 Active citizenship, participation society and apathy The 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent budget cuts, although significant and affecting many fields of life such as education, health care, work stability and housing among other fields, however, did not incite any noticeable stir in the Netherlands. According to Jolle Demmers and Sameer Mehendale, since the alliance of the Liberals and the Socialist in the Purple Cabinet in 1994, the seemingly inevitability of the idea of neoliberalism and “the complexity of neoliberal technologies of power — control of the image-world crucial among them”, such as the mass media “and its hugely diverse, case-specific consequences upon the lives and futures of individual citizens, limited not only the forms of possible resistance but even the conceptualization of experience. (…) neoliberalism was not discussed, let alone politicised or contested: its benefits were simply too obvious” (Demmers & Mehendale, 2010, p. 61). The Dutch inclination towards post-democracy has to do with the apathy of the public. During the introduction of austerity measures by the Rutte I cabinet, very few expressions of outrage, protest or bewilderment were uttered, except, perhaps most predominantly, from people working in the art world. On June 10, 2011, the former Dutch State Secretary of Culture of the Rutte I cabinet, Halbe Zijlstra, declared that by January 1, 2013, fewer theatre groups and art institutions would be subsidised by the state and that these groups needed to explore new sources or find new business partners to fund their projects (Rijksoverheid, 2011). Protest marches, petitions, art events, sit-ins and flash mobs were all futile. However, over time, this fate was accepted, and cultural organisations merged, new business partners were sought, more commercial theatre productions initiated and, unfortunately, some theatre institutions abolished23. However, and I will discuss this issue at more length in the second chapter, this example shows a more pressing problem in the Netherlands. Namely, after the early advances in welfare policy in the 1950s and its flourishing in the subsequent decades, people seemed to become disinterested in party politics and membership (van Biezen, Mair, & Poguntke, 2012), complacent and self-congratulated with the inflated self-image of ______ 23 40 | For a more thorough overview see (NRC, 2013a) being a “just and ethical guiding nation, internationally” (Wekker, 2016, pp. 12–13). At the same time, the Dutch government mimics the modus operandi of multinationals by increasingly diminishing its accountability, and thus eroding the very fundamentals that moulded the Dutch self-image through the advances in welfare policies. A trend seems to have developed in the 1980s (Hood, 1995) and has been augmented to monstrous proportions today. Namely, government institutions employ drastic neoliberal administrative reforms to reconstruct the provision of public services, and through this, increasingly assume a ceremonial or theatrical role. In this position, politicians merely represent the role that they generally occupy, but have lesser authority, or are not willing to address current social problems. Education programmes and health services are increasingly restructured and cut back in the name of efficiency and profitability,24 and public services outsourced or transferred to private ownership. Notably, among these companies, theatre projects and artists seem to have been attributed an important role to play, as will be discussed in the following chapter, in the deconcentration (“moving away from the centre”) and externalisation (“using the private sector, either totally or in part”) (Torres & Pina, 2002) of the delivery of public services. Citizens can only exercise their democratic right in elections, once every few years, making it hard for the people to intervene in such cases of distrust. However, to fix the ills of democracy by giving citizens more power and letting them assume new roles in welfare state reforms and decision-making processes (Newman & Tonkens, 2011) means to ignore completely some more profound processes that are presently at work. 2.3 The theatricalisation of politics. What theatre? The foregoing discussion implies a crisis in egalitarian politics and a deterioration of the quality of political debate. Hence, in order to convince the voters of their particular worth and thus diminishing ______ 24 As Christopher Hood explains: “changes in public sector accounting in a number of OECD countries over the 1980s were central to the rise of the “New Public Management” (NPM) and its associated doctrines of public accountability and organizational best practice” (1995: 93). | 41 the feeling of distrust, politicians not only have to launch a campaign of ‘there is no alternative’ to create public support for austerity measures, but above all, they must employ theatrical elements in these campaigns, as an actor who is playing a role before an audience on stage, in order to guide and control the impressions the voters form of him. These parties must present themselves in a certain way, and employ theatrical acts not to lose face (Goffman, 1959, p. 40). As a result, the political arena increasingly becomes a theatrical space where these performances take place. However, we might ask, what follows when politics takes the features of a theatre? The word theatre, as I use it here, in reference to Crouch and Gielen, as discussed in the introduction, refers to the metaphorical concept of theatre, or more accurately, theatricality (suggestive of or relative to the theatre). In this case, the word theatre, when referred to politics (in the narrowest sense, thus the operations of the government and the opposition), is defined in words such as “illusory, deceptive, exaggerated, artificial, or affected. (…) [And] with the acts and practices of role-playing, illusion, false appearance, masquerade, façade, and impersonation” (Davis and Postlewait 2003, 4). This suggests a clear prejudice against the theatrical within the political, governmental debate, where current politics seem to fall short of a healthy and ‘genuine’ democratic environment. “The theatre”, in this sense, as Davis and Postlewait explain, “conceals or masks an inner emptiness, a deficiency or absence of that what it refers” (2003, p. 5). In this particular framework, the daily politics of the state is increasingly devoid of democracy, where the potency of a real public debate is gradually reduced or ignored. Democracy is replaced instead by mere appearance or theatre. In this metaphorical definition also lurks a much older etymological definition of theatre: theatron, or the place from where something is performed and perceived; in this case, the public political places and buildings25 where politicians present themselves. ______ 25 42 | The theatricality of the Dutch politics is further enhanced by the architecture of the House of Representatives Chamber (commissioned in 1981, and finalised in 1991), where all plenary and committee debates are held. The seats of the 150 members are curved in a semi-elliptical form around a small stage, where the president of the House of Representatives, the prime minister and the speaker are situated. This arrangement reminiscent of a Greek/Roman amphitheatre is enhanced by a façade with Furthermore, following Chantal Mouffe (2008, p. 11), I would claim that politics is inescapably aesthetical, considering its ‘mise en scene’, ‘mise en forme’ or staging of human coexistence, the arrangements and regulations of objects and people in a given space or country. This paradox suggests that an evaluation of this theatricality, and thus also of politics, must, and in fact can only, be produced by and from within the rules that regulate it. In other words, to address the depoliticisation of Dutch politics, the very knowledge of theatre needs to be addressed. I will return to this argument in the next chapters since within it lie some of the answers to our present malaise. five openings through which the chairman and the cabinet can enter the stage. Viewers on the press and public gallery can witness almost every day the mind-boggling theatricality of the political events taken place there (often accompanied by applauses and loud scorns. However, as in a modern theatre photos may not be taken in the chamber. Also, it is not really allowed to react, in word or gesture, on what is said by politicians in the plenary hall (Tweedekamer.nl, 2015). | 43 44 | 3 THE STATE ASSUMING A MORE CEREMONIAL AND THEATRICAL ROLE 3.1 The inheritance of the Rutte I cabinet The Minister of Culture, Halbe Zijlstra, introduced in 2010 new austerity measures with insufficient to no regard to safeguarding the rich theatre tradition in the Netherlands. The philosophy behind the old Dutch subsidiary system was that the government would finance cultural institutions in order to provide artworks that, due to commercial marketability, would otherwise not be available in the Dutch and international cultural scene. Furthermore, the old system was put in place to maintain, develop and socially and geographically distribute diverse cultural expressions (Oosterbaan Martinius, 1990). However, the coalition of Rutte I doubted this rationale by stating that the old subsidiary system did not seem to fit anymore in our contemporary society (Rijksoverheid, 2012a), and, moreover, that the old system, where the government acts increasingly as the principal benefactor and where no or little attention is paid to the needs of the public and entrepreneurship, needed to be re-evaluated (ibid). The impression was given that artists were grant dependent or ‘subsidy guzzlers’ (Brabants Dagblad, 2010; Volkskrant, 2010b), like drug addicts, and could not survive without the help of the government. The corporate world and individual patrons need to be increasingly allocated as the new business partner of the art world, an idea that grew stronger in the 90’s (see Hitters 1992). The succeeding Minister of Culture, Jet Bussemaker, took her predecessor’s plans further by asserting that not only should art institutions “be flexible and potent” and take (financial) risks (Rijksoverheid, 2014a), as if they were corporate profit organisations, | 45 but more importantly that the relationship between the arts and other social domains should be brought forward more coherently. Artists, the Minister assesses, “Should take responsibility for the social context in which [their artworks] take place” (Rijksoverheid, 2014a). This cryptic formulation gets a relatively concrete interpretation when Minister Bussemaker links a specific social problem to the domain of art. In a letter to the House of Representatives, Cultuur Verbindt: Een Ruime Blik op Cultuurbeleid (Culture Unites: A Broader Interpretation of Culture Policy) (2014a), Bussemaker makes the relationship between culture and three social domains - healthcare, sport and education - explicit by means of examples in the art world that can be used as a benchmark for others. In her assessment of the conjunction between the arts and healthcare, Bussemaker states: From 2015, municipalities [instead of central government] are being held accountable for the support of residents who currently are, and will be, using counselling, day care and a short stay in the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act (AWBZ). This [policy] has major implications for the role of health care providers, and the role of the municipalities themselves [due to lack of sufficient resources]. I have researched with the aid of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) how municipalities can implement the arts in the exertion of the new health care responsibilities (Rijksoverheid, 2014a, p. emphases added). The minister elaborates elsewhere that artists and cultural organisations, as a result of the ageing population, should see engaging with and work for the elderly as a matter of course, and that the significance of art projects should be more recognised as a vital link for the advancement of the health and social participation of the elderly (Ministerie van OCW et al., 2014). The government maintains a list of such organisations on a website (Rijksoverheid, n.d.), and they are used as ‘best-practice’ for the next structural subsidy system (2017-2020). Right thereafter, Bussemaker launched The Art of Impact program, wherein artists and arts organisations are to be supported with a budget of 7 million euros if their projects have a clear societal impact. The Art of Impact, as the website explains, Assumes the unique ability of artists to interpret social developments and respond and reflect upon these developments. Artists will strengthen the society of today and tomorrow by providing meaning, 46 | offering new and unexpected insights and perspectives or by connecting people (Theartofimpact.nl). The programme focuses on four specific domains. First, art projects that encourage a liveable neighbourhood and city, by focusing on themes such as coexistence, citizenship, housing and urban development. Second, art projects that concentrate on energy and climate issues and centre on themes of sustainable living and entrepreneurship. Third, art projects dealing with care, welfare and sports issues that specifically contemplate themes of healthcare, personal development and meaning of life. Finally, art projects that engage in issues of the (circular) economy, revolving around themes of the business world, the new economy and tourism. The art world is praised here for its creative, dynamic and innovative values, where art can think and contribute to pressing issues in contemporary Dutch society. Bussemaker explains further: “Art, culture, and society need each other, not only because [art] offers us inspiration and contributes to our identity, but also because artists often concretely commit their projects in making the world better, prettier, cleaner” (Theaterkrant.nl, 2014). For some artists, this may come as a relief after repeatedly being labelled elitist and subsidy junkies, allowing the government to legitimise the budget cuts. Yet, another problem appears, coming full circle to where we first touched upon in the previous chapter. Namely, as the state draws back from public spending, theatre groups, especially in participatory and community arts, are increasingly allocated to solve social problems while needing to apply to the corporate world for proper financial support and, for that reason, grow less capable or willing to dispute the current condition. One can indeed say that, by outsourcing government public services to private contractors, the government can better control its finances and downsize the administration. A diminished and more efficient administration can be expected “to contribute to lower fiscal pressure and [provide] a less complex public administration” (Eerstekamer.nl, 2012). One could also say that there is a significant advantage to offering the state’s liabilities to the free market: goods and services can be offered for a low price since many providers are vying for more profit by selling the product at the lowest price (Bomhoff, 2002). However, who should be held accountable for the repercussions of this intervention and monitor the quality and the equal distribution of these public services? What dangers lurk in the fact that voters cannot turn to the Dutch government and criticise | 47 them for the quality of public utilities since these services no longer fall within the state’s remit? More importantly in the context of this thesis, to what extent can art be critical if the government not only allocates it to the private sector, but imposes also the guidelines? I will elaborate further on this point in the final part of this chapter. For now, I will discuss the project Wijksafari Utrecht, which serves as one of the examples of the Art of Impact project. Subsequently, I will problematize the issue of socially engaged art projects and engage with the question: which role can art possibly play in this time of depoliticisation? 3.2 Wijksafari Utrecht by Adelheid Roosen The presented society […] was (literally) a pink coloured society [...] in which everything was peaceful: the audience could just enter the homes of strangers [...]. During the performances, the audience jumped out of the scooter on a boy with a Moroccan appearance that brought them to the next location (Klok, 2014, p. 7). Wijksafari Utrecht is a theatre community art project where the life stories of eight theatre-makers and their eight so-called ‘adoptive parents’ (residents of Utrecht) are told. This project, directed by Adelheid Roosen and performed from June 12 to July 17, 2013, roughly consists of three principal components: two performances and small intermezzos for a total of four hours. At the starting point, the visitors (up to a maximum of 80 at a time) are spread across eight remote locations across three neighbourhoods of Utrecht (Overvecht, Zuilen and Ondiep). These sites, which were previously disclosed a few days earlier via a text message or phone call, were the homes (or sometimes a small shop) of residents originating from Syria, Morocco, Serbia, Hungary and Turkey, among others. The setting of this first part is intimate, where visitors can sit on a bed or a beanbag in the personal space of the locals while being offered something to eat and drink. This part is a joint performance or presentation by one of the locals (the so-called adoptive parent in the project) together with one like-minded artist (a writer or an actor), consisting of a recitation of their personal stories as well as a narration of where their lives intersect. This first part is constructed by an intimate collaboration between the local and the artist who have lived together for two weeks. The artist together with the adoptive parent develops on the basis of specific themes a performance of about forty minutes. 48 | For example, the group that starts with the Turkish-Dutch woman Fatma Alaca-Doğan, who adopted the writer Nazmiye Oral, gather at the fabrics and garnishes shop of Fatma (to increase the intimacy, the local is called by her first name in the performance). The group meets there as Fatma’s house is in mourning after the death of her husband. She recounts the sickbed of her husband, who died a few weeks before the premiere of the show, and the fact that she is taking driving lessons so that she would be able to pick up her 31-year-old disabled son (Mehmet) from the day care centre. At the same time, the group learns that the writer Nazmiye also has a disabled sister who needs much care and attention. During these recitations, Nazmiye’s sister and Fatma’s son are projected onto a white cloth with a video projector. Nazmiye indicates that through her conversations with Fatma, she has learned to cope better with her sister, whose mental disability she has never really wanted to admit. In general, as a spectator, you feel as if you are peeking into the lives of these people. The intimate setting of this first part is intensified due to the real living environments of these locals. The first scenes are later followed by an interval, where people can ride on the back of a scooter driven by a Moroccan boy, travel on an especially designed ‘Wijksafari’ bus (with live saxophone music) or go on foot to the next scenes of the play. During this trip, they can read slogans and quotations that were collected by the creators of Wijksafari during the creative process and afterwards fixed with pink tape on buildings and homes throughout the neighbourhoods. For instance, passersby can see phrases that have been said in the previous scene, such as quotes from Fatma: “I expect everything” and “there are things that do not get discussed, not even with yourself”. The second part of this theatre art project follows immediately and consists of a mixture of casual meetings in different parts of these three neighbourhoods. Visitors meet locals in the comfort of their homes or a mundane place in the vicinity. For example, my second scene was the ‘performance’ of the Moroccan Islamic father Hassan Oumhamed, who adopted the Dutch actor Michiel Blankwaardt. Hassan is unemployed and lives alone in his apartment. The apartment is an empty house in Overvecht with very little furniture and, as affirmed by Michiel, the house symbolises the emptiness Hassan felt the day he came home and found that his | 49 children were gone. After a big fight, his wife ran off with his two kids, and Hassan subsequently lost custody of his children. Michiel, on the other hand, tells a very different story. He was born in Tanzania and adopted as a baby by a Dutch couple. Michiel became a father for the first-time only weeks before the performance. The scene between Hassan and Michiel mainly consists of stories about their constructed families, their origins and their current lives. The stories are recounted superficially, but nevertheless, the audience can sympathise with the characters. At the end of the scene, Hassan reports that he will leave to pray, as it is time for an obligatory (Islamic) prayer. Michel asks if he can join him. For the eyes of the public, they pray together. I cannot help but wonder how the times of the obligatory prayer coincidentally match with the times of the performances. Also, I wonder, when do they really pray if this scene is performed twice in a row? In the last part of the piece, all eight groups that were scattered throughout the neighbourhoods come together on the square ‘De Plantage’ in Ondiep for the big finale. There, the audience is greeted with a concert by a duet of a Moroccan and a Dutch opera singer singing Quando me’n vo (When I go along) from the opera La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini, while a group of nine Moroccan boys, who have just driven the spectators around, manoeuvre a rehearsed choreography around the duet on scooters, (ironically and unintentionally?) simulating the ending of a romantic Disney classic. The dramaturgy of this theatre production seems to be clear. The audience, mostly middle class white Dutch citizens (Klok, 2014, p. 7), get the opportunity to relate (although superficially) to the culture, practices and personal stories of several migrant inhabitants of Utrecht. The spectators get, along with the exotic food and music, a glimpse into a world that they would not normally experience. The performance consists of several real-life stories of the people in these neighbourhoods, which are embellished with some theatrical elements. The project engages with, on the one hand, the notion of the Other, and on the other hand, the immigration and settlement throughout Utrecht (and other big Dutch cities), which is perceived as problematic by some Dutch citizens and right-wing politicians. The word Safari, which refers both to safari tourism and to the web browser (to explore and navigate unscathed terrains), amplifies the feeling of observing ‘wildlife’ in their natural habitat. 50 | 3.2.1 Zina Neemt de Wijk The Wijksafari project evolved from an earlier project, Zina Neemt de Wijk (Zina Occupies the Neighbourhood) (Toneelblog.nl, 2010), where director Roosen used personal stories in a contested neighbourhood in Groningen and evolved these stories into an entertaining theatrical performance. A social worker who regularly works in this problem area also participated in the Groningen project. She explains, “By meeting other people in the neighbourhood, these residents can get to know each other and eventually care for one another. These meetings may create a more cohesive neighbourhood” (Dagblad van het Noorden, 2010). The Wijksafari project, as experienced by me, tries in its own way to explore current problems in these neighbourhoods and stage a potential solution, in this case, a happy multicultural society. A reviewer, Ron Rijghard, also describes the project along these lines: “the safari is as real as life itself. And better, because a magical sense of community and belonging is created: between the residents, the tour guides and the participants themselves” (NRC, 2013b). It seems like this project want the public to reflect on the stereotypes and expectations that we have, as well as on our relationship with the Other. By organising meetings between, for example, non-white Dutch citizens and white Dutch spectators, Roosen tries to show that there is actually no Other. As Roosen explains, she uses adoption as part of her methodology and inspiration for her project Zina Neemt de Wijk: Adoption is a research method that penetrates directly and effectively into the lives of residents and creators. It means living for a while with [another] household; climb a stair that creaks differently, sleep in a bed that smells unfamiliar. Afterwards, it seems that lives have been changed because you have experienced that there is no Other (Female Economy, 2012). However, the director does not reflect on how the dramaturgy of the performance in itself reproduces this Otherness. There is a preconceived dichotomy in the dramaturgy of the safari project. There is a clear them, the Other, the immigrant, the unemployed, the perceived ‘delinquent’ Moroccan boy or the ‘exotic’ Turkish woman, and a clear us, the predominantly white middle-class audience. The perceived ‘Other’ originates from a different social and economic layer and has a different cultural background and religion. The way | 51 the project understands these two groups is peculiar since it proposes to (ironically?) create a harmonious sphere in which both groups are reconciled, and all social problems are ironed out. This frailty conceives a ‘Kumbaya’ (engage in unity and harmony) or a Hakuna Matata (Swahili for no worries)26 effect, where the director Roosen and consequently the viewer becomes lost in a warm-andfuzzy feeling of togetherness and in such a manner mask the intracultural problems that exist in these neighbourhoods. For example, in the Netherlands, Moroccan boys have become a symbol of conspicuous nuisance and criminal group behaviour (De Jong 2007). Also, in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, one speaks about a Moroccan problem (Dutch: Marokkanenproblemen), where a small group of young Moroccan boys seem to terrorise the streets or vandalise cinemas in Amsterdam during the Sugar Feast (Eid alFitr) (NRC, 2003). As a result of this stereotyping, there is an evergrowing xenophobia, which is channelled and fed mostly by the figure of Geert Wilders27. In this performance, however, the typical perceived aggressive looking Moroccan loitering youths (in this case, the lion in the safari?) are portrayed dancing on a scooter while people happen to sing opera on the streets. This idea that there is no Other perpetuates the prevalent idea that race, class and gender are not an issue in the Netherlands (Grosfoguel, 1999; Wekker, 2016) and fails to address racism and discrimination towards specific ethnic and racial groups, at the one hand, and residential and class segregation, on the other hand. This wijksafari project was then further developed in Wijksafari Slotermeer in 2012 and the discussed Wijksafari Utrecht in 2013. In a telephone interview with an employee of the theatre group, I have learned that this Wijksafari concept could be custom-made and requested by ______ 26 Both terms, ‘Kumbaya’ being a black religious song and ‘Hakuna Matata’ a Swahili proverb, have been appropriated in, at the one hand, scouting and summer camps, and on the other hand, Disney Films (Lion King). 27 Geert Wilders campaigns for a clear reduction in the number of Moroccans and Islamists by proclaiming hate speech. His latest controversial act is asking his voters, after a victory in the electoral campaign, if they wanted more or less Moroccans in the country. The crowd shouted in unison, “fewer, fewer, fewer”. Wilders ended with a remarkable quote: “then I will arrange this”. 52 | municipalities (as long as they want to be financially responsible and wish to have an active participation, as it is a challenging and time-consuming process). This concept extends to a nearly franchiselike proportion, with plans to produce a Wijksafari Bijlmer and a follow-up in 2015 of the first successful international Wijksafari en Tepito (Mexico City) in 2014. 3.2.2 Wijksafari en Tepito The Wijksafari en Tepito, a collaboration of Roosen with local actors and artists, is interesting to analyse in more depth alongside the Wijksafari Utrecht, in order to put the bigger Wijksafari project in a broader perspective. The safari in Tepito follows the same concept as the one in Utrecht: eight actors and artists were adopted in the houses of residents, and subsequently, the visitors scatter throughout Tepito on scooters, on foot and in buses to various locations in the neighbourhood. In the end, all eight groups come together in a communal space where the show concludes in a festive manner. This tour must be understood in a wider development of slum tourism in Tepito, which is mainly characterised by voyeurism and altruism (Dürr & Jaffe, 2012, p. 113) and “involves visiting urban areas characterised by poverty, squalor, and violence” (2012, p. 114). Some residents initiated safari trips in Tepito in the early 2000s to alter the negative reputation of a neighbourhood usually known as dangerous and criminal (2012, p. 116). These safari trips feed American and European tourists’ urge to experience the ‘authentic’ and the ‘dangerous’ ‘performed’ before them, but then “when the visitors do [a safari trip], they find out that Tepito is not what they originally had in mind” (Metro, 2014). This older tradition of slum tourism follows the same logic of the Wijksafari project: The Safari trips are used as a means to advance a more favourable image of Tepito or other marginalised neighbourhoods to a global audience. That is the assumption upon which these projects are encouraged, but if these Safari trips are analysed in more detail, one might ask, to what extent are these trips beneficial to the local communities? A critique from a Mexican blogger Jose Ignacio Lanzagorta titled ‘Mi problema con el Safari en Tepito’ (My problem with the Safari in Tepito) scrutinises the Wijksafari Tepito project in more depth and can help to explain the problem of this project in a broader light. The writer notes that the safari in Tepito: Narrates a studied and prefabricated story of a neighbourhood, however, based on real people — and their participation — and the | 53 courage you will need to have to wander through their streets. (…) In the title already lies the penance. The metaphor seems to be clear and speaks directly to the bad reputation of the neighbourhood. (…) If there is no sense of danger and exoticism, there is no safari. If it were not a place that you would otherwise not enter, that is, without a jeep and a professional guide; you would indeed never enter. To what extent, then, could this project serve its purpose to present the ‘other [positive] side’ of this neighbourhood, if the starting point is rooted in the actual commercial exploitation of this neighbourhood? The safari, they say, helps get rid of the unfair stigmatisation of the neighbourhood. Yet, we call it a safari. The safari, they say, serves to prevent forms of violence and crime. However, these objectives could not be logically deduced. Could it be that if the non-residents [tourists and visitors alike] lose their fear, crime will be prevented? (…) The phenomenon seems to anticipate a reduction of harmful isolation between social classes and an increasing curiosity, particularly of the dominant [class] for marginalised spaces. I suppose and dare say that this Wijksafari, which clearly intends to favour gentrification advances, is systematic of the aforementioned tendency of anticipation. Unfortunately, in the [sociological] cases studied so far, it does not seem that these programmes bring about a happy coexistence between social classes, but the spatial displacement of one class by another through different mechanisms of economic court with the aid of state institutions (Ignacio Lanzagorta, 2014). The implementation of the same Dutch concept in a much more problematic and complicated neighbourhood in Mexico raises several significant concerns. For instance, the increasing implementation of the neighbourhood safari project to portray a more favourable image of these neighbourhoods to non-residents by exoticising the Other. A concept, conceived and introduced in the Netherlands is franchised – thus by simplifying, standardising and branding key elements of the performance to be endlessly reproduced in different localities. The core messages remain the same: “to show the other side” of said neighbourhood and “an encounter with the Other” (Penavera, 2015). To the extent that one wonders what’s in for the people residing in these neighbourhoods if the performance is catering to a mainly white middle and upper- 54 | class28 audience (Griffioen, 2014)? The performance in the Netherlands did not create any noticeable public stir, except that some condemned the title of the performance on social media. An exception is a critique by writer Flavia Dzodan who argues that by subsidising and marketing these safari’s, municipalities such as Amsterdam institutionalises the Other, a category that the people “living in the neighbourhoods cannot escape” (Dzodan, 2016). She continues that Existing in these neighbourhoods while these safaris take place means to be subjected to the dominant gaze in ways we cannot control. We become part of the dominant narrative in their terms. Their joy of meeting us comes at the expense of our rights to exist undisturbed, unobserved, un-Othered (ibid). 3.3 The instrumentalisation of the arts? It is not surprising that the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Bussemaker, praises the Safari project for its ability “to unveil the vitality of a [contested] neighbourhood” (Rijksoverheid, 2015b). At first glance, the description of this performance and its success seem to appear harmless. However, when one digs deeper, enigmatic or puzzling constructions and ideas shelter behind this ‘appreciation’. The government reassures in the letter Nieuwe Visie Cultuurbeleid (New Cultural Policy) that the arts have not only important societal values but also economic ones, and that, in light of the recent urban stagnation, “the arts [as in the case of the theatre project Wijksafari Utrecht] can be used to continue to strengthen the upward trend of these neighbourhoods, to make residents more selfreliant and independent, and to socially integrate new residents” (Rijksoverheid, 2011). This project is presented alongside sixty other art projects, as examples of The Art of Impact pilot, which have a “clear” (to what extent?) “social purpose” in the domains of social cohesion, healthcare and active participation in Dutch society (Theartofimpact.nl). What makes this situation more disturbing is that most funding for these particular domains is being massively reformed or annulled due to government budget cuts. For instance, the plan to improve the quality of life and safety in forty problem areas ______ 28 The tickets for the Wijksafari in Bijlmer costed for example 30 euros, which is relatively expensive for a theatre ticket in the Netherlands. | 55 (Vogelaarwijken) in the Netherlands, including Zuilen, Overvecht, and Ondiep (where the Wijksafari in Utrecht took place), which was initiated in 2006, has failed on all fronts and the proposed investment has been discontinued (Volkskrant, 2013). These neighbourhoods were previously labelled by the Cabinet Balkenende IV on the basis of eighteen indicators as one of the problem areas in the Netherlands, which are characterised by an intolerable nuisance, extreme crime rates, long-term unemployment and poverty (Rijksoverheid, 2007). These neighbourhoods have been predominantly addressed in terms of “allochthony rather than socioeconomic problems” and were seen by alt-right media channels with “widespread xenophobic resentment” (Balkenhol, 2011, p. 139). The ‘Wijkenbeleid’ (Neighbourhood Policy) implemented by the government in 2006, was in itself not a harmless endeavour. The policy was a gentrification plan to (1) replace rental houses with individual home ownership to “deviate the risk of poor (and further degrading) large-scale residential areas” (Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, 2013, p. 12), (2) selling social housing, “giving residents more control and responsibility for their living environment” (2013, p. ibidem), (3) improve public space, (4) create vast schools or multifunctional district centres, (5) involve residents in district management and help households with problems (Rijksoverheid, 2010a). The policy, however, did not have a desirable effect, in part due to the economic crisis in 2008. The question that persists is whether structural policies to prevent and improve societal problems are being cut back to foster temporary art projects. Also, can and should we expect measurable effects from art projects to improve societal dilemmas? The commitment to the participating communities during a community/participatory art project, as is the case of the Wijksafari project, is usually too brief and superficial, so no real answers or solutions can be logically proposed. The projects only belittle the social stigma and the intra-cultural problems that prevail in these neighbourhoods, without questioning the underlying political and social structures. This case becomes disquieting when theatre projects are used as a benchmark by the Dutch government (and thus wrongfully accredited) to explore how utility and social 56 | purpose can be used as guidelines for the next subsidy round29, and, in tandem, how theatre projects like these can compensate for previously discontinued government societal programs30. Also, in the context of art projects, the question arises, “Does this [instrumentalization] risk turning [these art projects] into social work rather than art practice (Allain & Harvie, 2013, p. 187)?” This procedure, slowly but relentlessly, assists the state in adopting a more ceremonial role, the result meaning that the state can no longer be designated as the principal culpable for dissatisfaction with public services and provision, which has been successfully handed over. Claire Bishop explains that these art projects denote A laissez-faire model of government dressed up as an appeal to foster a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy [and] social action. It’s a thinly opportunist mask: asking wageless volunteers to pick up where the government cuts back, all the while privatising those services that ensure equality of access to education, welfare and culture (Bishop, 2012, p. 14). In the process of ‘deconcentration’ by shifting responsibilities away from the central government to regional governments and municipalities and ‘externalisation’ by providing public services more and more on a contract basis by for-profit companies (Torres & Pina, 2002), the democratic right of voters to call the elected politicians to account in displeasure, is increasingly being taken away. After all, whom should we oppose? ______ 29 As Bussemaker states “for the grant period 2017-2020 I will facilitate this cooperation. In addition, during the next grant period, I will propose to allow concrete cooperation with other domains in assessing [budget] plans of institutions and funds” (Rijksoverheid, 2014a). 30 Bussemaker, “Now that urban renewal stagnates, art and culture are important means of stepping up the upward line of neighbourhoods, giving self-confidence and a positive self-image to residents, involving current residents in the neighbourhoods, and integrating new residents. Citizens are more and more enabled to take initiatives themselves, with their own responsibility for the liveability and togetherness of a neighbourhood” (Rijksoverheid, 2014a). | 57 3.3.1 Recent developments within citizen initiatives and participatory art Many critics have questioned whether these developments would benefit the realm of the arts and theatre. Frie Leysen, former festival artistic director, poignantly summarises this critique during her acceptance speech for the Erasmus prize, which is awarded to a person who has made an exceptional contribution to culture: Have the arts gone too far in political, economic, diplomatic, flirtatious logic? Aren't we trying too hard to serve political interests by attempting to solve problems that politicians have failed to solve, such as social deprivation, migration and racism? Problems that the arts will not, should not and cannot solve. Not even the modish ‘participatory art’ or the ‘everybody is an artist’! (…) Aren't we justifying ourselves too much with figures and economic arguments instead of with artistic substance? Haven't we reduced ourselves too much to entertainers, who obediently obey the rules of managers, marketers and accountants instead of remaining the sources of disruption and inspiration that we should be? (Leysen, 2014) These processes of the instrumentalization of the arts, thus implementing the arts for an economic or social end, presently go in tandem with an increasing loss of belief in contemporary representative democracy and the slow shift to a DIY-democracy or direct democracy, which may explain the success of populism in Europe promising ‘power to the people’ and ‘end of representationalism’. To substantiate this indictment, I will conclude this chapter with a reflection of Evelien Tonkens. In her book Spanningen tussen Burgerparticipatie en de Lokale Politiek (Tensions between Citizen and Local Politics), Tonkens explains that the majority of citizens are positive towards the notion of democracy. However, there appears to be a growing criticism about its implementation. One solution, which is gaining widespread support, is the development of citizen initiatives, or a DIYdemocracy, where citizens — often with or supported by governments and businesses — take initiatives in managing their neighbourhood or arranging their own care (Tonkens, 2015). This trend, also labelled as associative democracy or self-government through voluntary associations (Hirst, 1994, p. 32), entails some inevitable repercussions, which have significant implications for the future of democracy itself. First, associative democracy is largely based on self-selection. In the case of an associative democracy, people who work together 58 | are kindred spirits; they will most likely only commit to problems they know about with people they know and care about. Where society consists of a plethora of conflicting views, making discussion and decision-making unavoidable (Tonkens, 2015, p. 13), a representative democracy should, in principle, ensure this. Second, since citizens take the initiative for social developments, the government is increasingly shaping into a judicature or controlling power, thus functioning only as a last resort or to act when conflicts are to be resolved (2015, pp. 8–9). This procedure weakens the power now residing in the hands of the state to ensure that everyone should have access to specific goods and services. Moreover, it also encourages wealthy corporations and individuals to decide “which of a number of activities to favour with their own money, but simultaneously to pre-empt the pattern of public spending, which often originally existed precisely in order to assert priorities different from those which would be chosen by the rich” (Crouch, 2004, p. 45). Lastly, sympathisers of associative democracy or DIYdemocracy praise the decrease of bureaucratic procedures itself as a reason to promote self-management of important aspects of society. However, “[the Classical Weberian bureaucracy] was also a beacon of reliability and equal treatment and predictability; it, therefore, protected citizens against arbitrariness and nepotism” (Tonkens, 2015, p. 9). Logically, then, more effort should be exerted to discourage these social initiatives and participatory art projects to restore a critical discourse (from the increasingly theatricalisation of politics) within the political arena. However, this, I imagine, is not so simple or fair. There are numerous examples of citizen initiatives that work more effectively due to the knowledge of local communities. In addition, notwithstanding the faulty outsourcing of the art world, art projects such as Wijksafari Utrecht are artistically challenging projects that compel us to reflect upon our everchanging society. As Claire Bishop argues “models of democracy in art do not have an intrinsic relationship to models of democracy in society (...). At a certain point, art has to hand over to other institutions if social change is to be achieved” (Bishop, 2012, pp. 279– 283). We must problematize and question the relationship between art and democracy a little further. | 59 60 | 4 RE-POLITICISING THE PUBLIC SPACE The goal of theatre is to get as many people as possible to overcome fear by taking action. We create reality wherever we go by living our fantasies (Rubin & Cleaver, 1970, pp. 142–143). 4.1 The Question of Democracy The question of democracy is an old affair. The etymology of the word ‘democracy’ can be traced back to the ancient Greece (8th to 6th century), that is, the word can be deduced from the Greek words dêmos (people) and krátos (force or power). Some even dare to say that the word is actually much older and that it can much accurately be linked to the two-syllable Mycenean word (16th to 11th century) ‘D ā mos,’ meaning ‘a group of powerless people who once held land in common’, or the three-syllable word ‘damokoi,’ meaning ‘an official who acts on behalf of the D ā mos’ (Herodotus, 1954, p. 325). Regardless where the name exactly comes from, and how these past usages and derivations of the word influenced the future, and the fate of democracy, the concept of this word should not be interpreted as a timeless matter. “The language of democracy,” as John Keane points out, “is profoundly historical” (Keane, 2009, p. 10), as the question of democracy keeps evolving over the years, not necessarily linear, it takes on new ideological moves. Nowadays we can generally define the concept of democracy in four different ways. That is ‘democracy as a style of government’, ‘democracy as a way of assembly’, ‘democracy as an assurance of an equal vote’ and lastly ‘democracy as an equation of freedom’. In this chapter, I want to expand on this last more philosophical definition of democracy. More precisely, that the question of democracy as an equation of freedom should not be understood as a fixed construct, but rather like a liquid entity that needs to be | 61 questioned and re-imagined ceaselessly. This implies that ‘true’ democracy or equality for all can never be fully achieved. The complicatedness of democracy adheres to a more utopian and idealistic notion of democracy, where democracy is a mere and simultaneously an indefinite concept that could never be fully accomplished, but nevertheless sets a marker, indicative of the condition of our political lives (or the lack thereof). As Crouch argues “it is always valuable and intensely practical to consider where our conduct stands in relation to an ideal since in that way we can try to improve [the status quo]” (Crouch, 2000, p. 1). Democracy is in that sense a constant urge to improve our daily lives, the promise of (more) liberty and (more) autonomy, and a means for us to foster social change. This ‘us’ is not a singular entity but is made of multiple particulars with contrasting ideas for what this ‘better’ world might look like. I would argue, as the historian, François Furet, that the question of democracy is an endless utopian project that demands us to inquire: What kind of society should we form if we think of ourselves as autonomous individuals? What type of [a] social bond can be established among free and equal men [and women], since liberty and equality are the conditions of our autonomy? How can we conceive a society in which each member is sovereign over [themselves], and which thus must harmonise the sovereignty of each over [themselves] and of all overall? (Furet, 1998, p. 65) What I’m interested in is how subaltern realities (subjects that are politically outside the hegemonic order), through theatre, question the Dutch hegemonic idea of democracy, which is, as argued by Amarpal Dhaliwal in the context of the United States, “crafted through constitutive erasures and exclusions” (Dhaliwal, 1996, p. 56). “The ‘norm’ of democracy”, Dhaliwal contends “is constructed against the ‘deviant’ or ‘abnorm’ of non- or anti-democracy and therefore needs its ‘opposition’ means more than the contention that democracy is a politically constructed and mobilized category produced through its manufactured opposite” (1996, p. 56). In this chapter, I intend on the one hand to re-evaluate and reconceptualise the notions of theatre and performance and of how, by focusing on a specific case study, theatre and performance have the potential to actualize the philosophical meaning of democracy that I discuss above. On the other hand, I will compare this concept with the negative charge and connotation of the perceived theatricality in Dutch politics elaborated in the first part of the book. 62 | Within the relationship between these two definitions of theatre lies a possible paradox. Theatre, it seems, should be removed from politics in order to create the possibility of a genuine and healthy democracy. Yet within the theatre, as I will contend in the next chapters, lies also a potential to query the current post-democratic inclination, which could lead to a possible irritation of this so-called political malaise. First, I will highlight the events of November 12, 2011, and the consequent arrest of the artists and activists Quinsy Gario and Cesare Kno’ledge. 4.2 Protest by Quinsy Gario During the national arrival of Sinterklaas in Dordrecht on November 12, 2011, Quinsy Gario and the artist Cesare Kno’ledge wore T-shirts with the text: ‘Zwarte Piet is Racisme’ (Black Pete is Racist). This event, which led to their violent arrest, happened in order to confront the proponents of this Dutch tradition. Opponents of this black-faced helper of Sinterklaas reiterate the offensive caricature of black people, but supporters, in turn, say that Black Pete is not at all offensive, and the celebration is a Dutch tradition for children that needs to be cherished. According to Gario’s rationale, discussions on the internet about this blackface helper of Sinterklaas would typically escalate into anger and the issuing of death threats, due to the animosity and detachment of the internet. Therefore, Gario opted to relocate this discussion into the streets. At first, Gario and Kno’ledge also carried a banner with the same text ‘Zwarte Piet is Racisme’, but were ordered to remove it by the police (Gario, 2011a). Eventually, they stood nearby the national parade in front of a shop, where they were clearly visible to the passing crowd with their ‘Black Pete is Racist’ T-shirts (ibid). This action, which one could label as ‘picketing’, where a person or group of people stand ‘outside’, in this case, of a national celebration, as a protest or to try to induce others not to ‘participate’, served as a catalyst to repoliticise the discussion around Black Pete. This deed, by asserting the importance of not placing race relations under a simple and meaningless ‘typical Dutch’ rationale, challenged and re-imagined the question of democracy (with a lot of physical and emotional violence, ultimately resulting in arrest). | 63 Fig. 1: blog zwartepietisracisme.tumblr.com (Gario, 2011b). The protest and blog of Gario can be placed in a larger movement of black and brown Dutch citizens “demanding their right to be considered Dutch, as if they’re saying: ‘We are, in fact, Dutch and 64 | we’re here to stay’. (…) They negotiate (…) new forms of being Dutch (...) rather than adapting all the way into blankness [or whiteness] (Jouwe, 2014, pp. 173–74). Astoundingly, however, Gario later delineated the protest and the subsequent violent arrest as part of his work of art: My art project has been successful because it has made itself redundant. A year ago, I was sitting in a cell around this time. (…) I was just arrested for wearing a t-shirt with the text Black Piet Is Racism. As I drove time in my cell by making WC paper art, the arrest of me and three others became world news. One year after the arrest I quit the art project. The Netherlands does not need my art project to recognise genuine Black Piet as racism (Gario, 2011b). This statement seems, at first glance, to reduce the actions, the [physical and emotional] violence and the reforms that Gario aroused to something as banal as a theatre or street performance. Intuitively, I perceived this statement, as a faithful follower of Gario’s anti-racial discrimination movements, as an unpleasant surprise. At first glance, it seemed that the protest lost its validity by displacing it to the realms of the art, and the message it conveyed was suddenly ‘less serious’. However, on closer scrutiny, this morphing or rephrasing offers an unusual perspective, which merits further exploration. Additionally, more descriptions of this event might help conceptualise and provide a better understanding and meaning of this act. The essays by Malik Ajani Critical Reflections on Liberty and the Power of Speech-acts to Empower and Disempower Citizens of Minority Backgrounds (2014) and Anna-Kay Brown Trapped by Narcissism: a Disillusioned Dutch society (2012) gives us a more comprehensive view of the significance of this protest in light of this thesis. Brown wonders in her essay, how it is that a country like the Netherlands, which for many years has been seen as an example of democracy and tolerance, “could be impacted by such a divisive and racist force” (Brown, 2012, p. 22), which was displayed at the events of November 12, 2011? She contends that the Netherlands is trapped by narcissism, “embedded in a denied history as well as a culture of essentialism” (2012, p. Ibid), which then results in the deterioration of the democratic character of civic politics. In the Netherlands, she continues, based on an earlier study by Menno Hurenkamp, Evelien Tonkens and Jan Willem Duyvendak (2012), there seems to be an idea of individualism and a lack of civically engaged attitude, where the citizenry appears to have very low political expectations. Also, | 65 there seems to be a general consensus within the majority of the society, which in turn imposes these values on immigrants. To mend this political malaise, she concludes, the Netherlands should adopt a civic multiculturalism, where a sense of mutual belonging is achieved for everyone, “to make certain that all are accountable and considered to be within the realm of humanity” (Brown, 2012, p. 23), and, I would add, of democracy. Ajani additionally deliberates over the notion of liberty, in which modern democratic states tend to accommodate the interpretation of values often to the disadvantage of their minority citizens (Ajani, 2014, p. 1). He employs the case of Gario as an example of how the Dutch government, even after the United Nation’s High Commission for Human Rights expressed concern31, neglected to respond appropriately to complaints of racial discrimination. A persistent source of concern in these cases is how best to cope with minority groups and cultures, with conflicting values or practices compared to the majority of the population. As Ajani explains, building on the theories of the late John Stuart Mill, “Even in a democracy, there is a risk that the majority will oppress the few, who have just as much right to live a life of happiness and dignity” (2014, p. ibid). He concludes that: [O]ur views of the ‘Other’ are recurrently constructed and shaped by our everyday engagements (speech-acts) with the media, museums, galleries, and public performances and rituals. Speech-acts, particularly when they move through public space, construct reality by shaping majority public opinion, and ultimately feed our social practices and institutions. Here, I would like to suggest that a fundamental understanding to theorise this discourse is the recognition that speech-acts have tremendous power, not just the power to offend others, but to construct reality (2014, p. ibid). ______ 31 66 | “It is a fact that no country is free of racism and the Netherlands is not an exception. But for a country that has long been perceived as having a long tradition of tolerance and openness, the silence around racism and racial discrimination is surprising and worrying, It affects the awareness and sensibilities around cultural traditions and cultural diversity in the Kingdom as exemplified in recent debates around the Black Pete (Zwarte Piet) celebration” (United Nations, 2014). In his argument, Ajani points out the power of (hate) speech to legitimise inequality and to instigate physical and mental violence. He asserts: The construction of public speech, which includes the public imagery of certain groups of citizens, can be used to empower or to disempower them in exercising their liberty. It can be used ideologically to say we are all equal, but some have a slightly lesser status than others, due to their ethnic or religious affiliation (2014, p. 2). This is clearly evident in nationalist and populist hate speech and the emergence of right-wing populist parties, pertaining (however, not exclusively) to the figure of Geert Wilders, which homogenises the populace and form a threat to the democratic institutions by excluding cultural, religious and ethnic representations. However, Ajani does not discuss how the protest of Gario in itself can serve as a means to reverse the tide. I am interested in how the case of Gario can be applied to help us comprehend how the arts, specifically theatre, can re-politicise the public space. To answer this question, I would like to juxtapose the descriptions of the protest, and the subsequent arrest made in the two essays as mentioned above. These descriptions might give us a broader perspective on the events preceding and following the arrest of Gario. Ajani discloses in his essay that: In 2011, the poet Quinsy Gario wore a T-shirt which read ‘Black Pete is racist’ to protest the traditional Dutch St. Nicholas parade, where a white male on a white horse is followed by a servant figure, known as Zwarte Piet in Dutch, or Black Pete, who has a black-painted face, curly hair wig and is said to be of Moorish origin. This centuries-old Dutch custom exhibits St. Nicholas, who arrives from Spain by ship, and is accompanied by a team of his black-face-painted servants, who distribute presents and biscuits to children. For his silent protest of this public performance, Quinsy Gario was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and dragged away by the Dutch police (Ajani, 2014, p. 1). Whereas Brown describes the event as follow: The arrival of the well-celebrated and revered Sinterklaas on November 2132, 2011, was marked by the brutal and cruel beating of ______ 32 I interpret this date as a typo since the correct date should be November 12th. | 67 a black man, Quinsy Gario of Curaçao, who was forcefully dragged and thrown into the streets by the Dutch police for protesting the racist connotations of Black Pete. The man wore a stencilled T-shirt with the words “Zwarte Piet is racism” and, according to Dutch and Antillean newspapers and other media reports, he yelled, “Zwarte Piet is racism” as the group of Black Petes passed by. The beating, videoed by a bystander and posted on YouTube, was both stomachturning and heart-wrenching. It shows the police dragging Gario along the road, with the knees of two policemen pressed into his body. He cries, “It is my right to protest,” while “autochthones” Dutch stand by and watch. After all, it was they who had called the police in disgust at the protest of their beloved tradition (Brown, 2012, p. 12). Fig. 2: blog zwartepietisracisme.tumblr.com Fig. 3: blog zwartepietisracisme.tumblr.com 68 | Fig. 4: blog zwartepietisracisme.tumblr.com Arjani emphasises the passivity of this protest (“for his silent protest of this public performance”) while Brown claims that Gario actively protested, by shouting “Zwarte Piet is racism” at the Black Petes as they passed by. Also, it is interesting to note that Brown in this quote seems to place Gario outside the realms of the nation-state and its subsequent citizenship by naming the island of Curaçao, the birthplace of Quinsy Gario, without disclosing the Dutch legacies of colonialism and slavery on the island and the continuous exlusion of Dutch Caribbean citizens from Dutch citizenship (Jones, 2014). Despite these contradictions, both these accounts describe the events of Gario as a theatre play, or specifically, a theatre performance33. Namely, both describe these events in theatrical terms, explicitly (“[f]or his silent protest of this public performance”) or implicitly (“while ‘autochthones’ Dutch stand by and watch”, as spectators watching a spectacle or performance). The question, then, would be: what constitutes a performance? In her essay The Entangled Vocabulary of Performance, Sruti Bala maps the genealogy and the application of the concept ‘performance’. Performance, she argues in opposition to theatre, specifically refers to ‘performance art’ or ‘live art’, an artistic event that combines visual art and public performance elements, often conducted in spaces that are outside institutional boundaries, or explicitly try to break these boundaries and are interventionist in nature (…). Unlike theatre, performance art can take place in any space, whether marked as an aesthetic space or not, sometimes without viewers being aware that they ______ 33 The national arrival of Sinterklaas, in itself can be seen as a theatrical event (see Bal 2004; Eversmann 2007; Smith 2014). | 69 are witnessing art or without their consciously choosing to go to an art space. Performance art often questions the boundary between art and life, whereas most forms of theatre maintain the fourth wall or the distinction between an aesthetic space and the space of spectatorship outside of it (Bala, 2013, p. 14). In the case of Gario, the protest was unmistakably done outside the institutional boundaries of art and theatre spaces. The viewers were not aware that the protest was an art project. The protest is interventionist in the way it disrupts or interrupts the celebration of a racist caricature. It is important here to likewise define the notions of theatre and theatricality embedded in this particular case study, allowing us to juxtapose this notion of theatre with the previous one discussed in the first part. Here, the term ‘theatre’ or performance indicates a matter of ‘theatrical event’ or activity instead of certain characteristics of daily politics of the government. A theatrical event, as William Sauter (2000) sees it, denotes “the essential or possible characteristics of theatre as an art form and as a cultural phenomenon” (Sauter, 2000, p. 50). Theatricality, in this sense, thus typifies a certain relationship or (lived) experience between at least one performer, on the one hand, and at least one spectator, on the other. The significance of a theatre play, as Sauter further explains, lies in the performer vis-à-vis the spectator: “the meaning of a performance is created by the performers and the spectators together, in a joint act of understanding” (Sauter, 2000, p. 2). If we look purely at the notion of performance, in our case street performance or a public form of protest, we can come to the same conclusion. “Performance (…) indicates expressive behaviour intended for public viewing. It includes, but is not limited to, theatre, which typically keeps actors and spectators in their respective places through presentational conventions supporting a pre-set script. Street performance draws people who comprise a contested reality into what its creators hope will be a changing script” (Cohen-Cruz, 1998, p. 1). The changing and improvisation in a performance script implied in this definition also characterise Gario’s descriptions of what happened on November 12, 2011, that day. We stood [in front of] the V & D and a bookshop (…) when four police officers approached us. [An officer] immediately said to us that we had to leave. We asked why and she replied that they had received police instructions to remove us. We indicated that we had the right to express ourselves. After that, a (…) police officer 70 | standing next to me pushed me on my back. I told him that he did not need to push me and before I knew it, I was on the floor (Gario, 2011a). It is clear that only the starting point of this protest could have been devised beforehand. After having entered into the public sphere, the ramifications of these actions remain unclear. Also, it becomes apparent from this description that the notion of spectatorship in the case of such a protest is reluctantly imposed on the bystanders by force and his body involuntarily exposed to violence. Here, no tickets are purchased to see a handpicked theatre performance, but the spectator is unwillingly confronted with the reality of the performance and the performer. In addition, the body of the ‘performer’ (as he is performatively construing a political identity34) is inevitably susceptible to exposure and violence, as it has been proved in the case of Gario with many bruises, (emotional) pain and social curtailments35 as a result. However, I will argue, only by being visible, that is by standing in the multitude with a polemical and devious text, and thus showing that which was not previously perceivable by the majority of the Dutch society, could this protest be politically effective, and thus performing change. This leads us directly back to the etymological origin of theatre, theatron, or in other words, the place where we all gather to see. As a perceived artwork, or performance, this event seems to disclose a highly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, politicians and policymakers are increasingly borrowing aspects of theatrical imagery (as elaborated in Chapter 1), while at the same time pacifying theatre groups by reallocating the state’s responsibilities into theatre groups’ obligations (as discussed in Chapter 2). On the other hand, there seems to be a potential within theatre and performance to overturn or irritate the state of affairs. This protestcum-performance by Gario induced various lawsuits, public debates ______ 34 I here use loosely the notion of performativity elaborated by Judith Butler, where the reiteration of linguistic and bodily acts as constitutes identity. See for example (Butler, 1999). 35 Logically Gario became a persona non-grata for a large group of nationalists and xenophobes and must often be cautious. A personal anecdote. When I was Skyping with Gario for an interview, he had to move from the living room to the bedroom at his girlfriend’s house since there were some handymen in the house who would recognise Gario and thus potentially jeopardise the life of him and his girlfriend. | 71 and protests whereby the main argument was that a particular ethnic group has felt discriminated against by virtue of Zwarte Piet and needed to politicise urgently what it meant to be ‘black’ in the contemporary Netherlands. Also, this performance or artwork could not be co-opted by the state, as Wijksafari was, to indicate how ‘effective’ the arts can be. The performance was simply too uncompromising. This performance and its aftermath had a counter hegemonic dimension. Hence, this event as a performance, with its aesthetic qualities, has a clear dramaturgical significance: it visualises or creates (as techné), however, temporarily, a public space (Mouffe, 2008), which exposes that which is repressed in the hegemony of the social order. Chantal Mouffe propounds a view of the hegemonic nature (the structure of power) of every social order36. In order for democracy to be vibrant, it has to be agonistic (polemical or combative), that is, the aim of democracy is not consensus. The aim of democracy is to create the conditions for a conflicting consensus where the possibility is provided for a confrontation between different and conflicting interpretations of the shared ethicalpolitical principles. Against the background of this theoretical framework, I propose to revisit the dramaturgical strategy deriving from the protest of Gario, and explore its implications a little further. Specifically, I want to scrutinise the peculiar tension between life and art, protest and theatre, which Gario thematises. A seemingly mundane practice, the act of picketing or protesting, the consequent arrest and the discussions and adjustment of Zwarte Piet; all seem to dissolve and intertwine amidst the world of theatre. Yet, given that this event is not what is commonly intended by the term theatre and performance, the question remains, how can any public form of protest be read as a performance or theatrical piece? This event might be wrongly disqualified if one characterises it in simple terms of what is ‘real and unreal’, ‘authentic or performed’ or what is ‘performance and theatre’. Rather, ‘theatre’ or ‘performance’ should be understood here as a medium that “both represent[s] and produce[s] life, as well as its ability to constitute itself a place from ______ 36 72 | Deduced from Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony (Gramsci, 1995). which to view and observe the real” (Giannachi, 2006, p. 44). However, how and to what extent? A feature that theatre has more than any other medium is its quality of liveness; as Kelleher (2009) explains, “the simple fact that it happens now and that it gathers people, who may well be strangers to each other, around issues of disagreement but also of common concern” (2009, p. 10). He continues: There is potential too in the ways that theatre, (…), speaks ‘for’ us and ‘of’ our worlds, not to mention the worlds of others. The theatre ‘represents’ us, both in the sense of showing us images of ourselves and in the sense of standing in and standing up for us, like a delegate or a substitute or — indeed — a political representative. Theatre represents our lives to us in ways that can persuade us to make judgements on the quality and fidelity of those representations and to make critical judgements too on the lives that are so represented (2009, p. ibid). In his attempt to undermine existing political structures, Gario represented that which is repressed, the idea that Black Pete is a racist figure, and simultaneously and unwittingly set in motion a series of events that would change the celebration of Zwarte Piet forever. Here, the role of the viewer is crucial, and not at all passive. A spectator who has been witness to this event, by reading about it in the newspaper, seeing it on YouTube or talking about it with colleagues, “takes responsibility for that awareness. That person may then choose to do something or stand by. But he may not turn away in ignorance” (Durland, 1998, p. 68). Needless to say, this traditional celebration, through these actions, could never again be celebrated indifferently. Even if some chose to celebrate this racist figure, it becomes a conscious choice; it becomes a political statement. 4.3 Politics as theatre, theatre as politics The two nuances in the definition of theatre are imperative in this thesis, as this discrependancy indicates that the question of theatre automatically contains a duplicity or paradox, which demands more careful theoretical examination. The duplicity of theatre could possibly be traced back to Plato. Plato condemns theatre, specifically dramatic poetry, tragedy and comedy, and excludes poets and artists from the ideal city-state for its enslavement of people before mere mimesis, as the shadows on the walls of the cave (Plato, 1941). In this text, the affirmative relationship between theatre and politics, | 73 or theatricality and democracy, to which Plato ascribes a negative value, becomes evidently clear. Plato states, “a further psychological objection is that dramatic poetry, tragic or comic, by encouraging the sympathetic indulgence of emotions, which we are ashamed to give way to in our own lives, undermines the character. If poetry cannot be defended from this charge, it must be restricted to celebrating the praises of the gods and of good men” (1941, p. 337). Mimesis impairs our judgment, Plato asserts, since it causes us to take pleasure in and praise the representation of men performing acts that we know to be wicked and corrupt and that we would normally find repugnant. In the utopian society, the guardians responsible for the administration and direction of society itself should not be responsive to mental bewitchment (the arts) and thereby foolishly harm the people they are deemed to protect. In addition, Plato condemns mimetic arts, since unsophisticated people would “believe anything said with meter, rhyme, and tune, be it on cobbling or generalship or anything else whatever, is right” (Plato 1941, 601). This natural enchantment of mimetic arts, according to Plato, command the audience instead of just entertaining it. Therefore, mimetic arts, including theatre, should, by all means, be restricted. As Joe Kelleher explains in Theatre and Politics, “The issue [Plato has] is to do not with particular plays or performances that in some specific way resist the political status quo but with theatre as such and the corrupting influence of the sort of pleasures that are to be found there, that is to say, the political dangers of any theatrical entertainment” (Kelleher, 2009, p. 47 emphases added). Samuel Weber confirms this ‘political danger’ in his book Theatricality as Medium (2004), as he discusses a peculiar reason for Plato’s condemnation of theatre. On a closer examination of Plato’s text Laws (360 BC), one can discover the potential Plato ascribes to the theatre for disturbing and reshaping the natural order. As Weber describes: [Plato’s] concern indicates that he recognises a (…) potential in theatre, although he valorises it negatively: the potential of disturbing and transforming the established order, traditional authority, and the hierarchies it entails. It is this potential that leads Plato, through the figure of the Athenian, to forge the word theatrocracy (Weber 2004: 35). Theatrocracy, he continues: 74 | Is associated with the dissolution of universally valid laws and consequently with the destabilisation of the social space that those laws both presuppose and help maintain. The rise of theatrocracy subverts and perverts the unity of the theatron as a social and political site by introducing an irreducible and unpredictable heterogeneity, a multiplicity of perspectives and a cacophony of voices (36). Plato explains that the once passive and silent spectators have found a voice, in the conviction that they comprehend what is good and bad in art, “the old sovereignty of the best, aristocracy, has given way to an evil ‘sovereignty of the audience,’ a theatrocracy (theatrokratia)” (Plato 1973: 1294). The issue of theatrocracy (the rule or power of the audience) in Plato’s opinion, channelled through the character of the Athenian, respects no demarcations or limitations. It questions and scathes “the established system”, “epitomised [in the Athenian’s descriptions of] the organisation of music into fixed genres and types” (Weber, 2004, p. 33). With reference to artists and poets in Plato’s texts, that they should be banned from the ideal city because they can disrupt the social order, a contemporary enigma could be scrutinised and understood. For one thing, aspects of theatre imagery should, as Plato described, be banned from politics (in this respect politics should be understood “as a bundle of forces from which order in the [ideal state] could be fashioned”) (Wolin, 2009, p. 30). For another, the issue of theatre, which is referred to via the notion of theatrocracy, is related to the disintegration of “universally valid laws and consequently with the destabilisation of the social space that those laws both presuppose and help maintain” (Weber, 2004, p. 36). In our case, then, aspects of theatre imagery should be removed from Dutch politics in order to mend the increasing deterioration of citizenship and the erosion of rights and values. For these natural enchantments of mimetic schemes, loosely following Plato, make the spectator believe that what they are representing is real, whereas, actually, it is a copy of a copy in Plato’s view, and as such, it is false. If we engage with mimetic arts then we are merely puppets rather than actual political bodies37. Yet, theatre also has a political dimension, in the way that it can play a part in the manufacturing ______ 37 Political bodies here mean, as I have elaborated elsewhere, ‘Political Animals’ (cf Aristotle) who use language (logos or reason) to dispute their deprivation of human rights and trigger action. | 75 and preservation of a given social order or its dispute. Art, as Quinsy Gario explains, is a “conversation starter”. In electoral politics, on the other hand, he continues it is usually about accustomed facts. If a topic in the political debate ends, then you know that you cannot add anything. The lobbying has already been done in rear rooms. (…) Art can be a plea to go against the grain; it can push a public opinion in such a way that everyone can see partake in. (…) The art and culture infrastructure in the Netherlands is very de-politicised. All my work has to do with touching a raw nerve and at the same time pushing people to think further” (Gario, Suransky, & Jouwe, 2015, pp. 34–35). In the last chapter, I will elaborate further on this issue. 76 | 5 THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS AND THE AESTHETICS OF POLITICS We do not lack communication, on the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 108). 5.1 Labyrinth by We are Here Cooperative and Nicolas Stemann In this last chapter, I will discuss the theatre project Labyrinth by the We are Here Cooperative and theatre director Nicolas Stemann. This project was made, performed and produced by refugees residing in Amsterdam. I will argue that this project undermines existing political and power structures by drawing attention to the refugees’ state of being and precarious condition. These refugees translated their own experiences and concerns into a theatre play. This exposition of life, I will argue, is in its nature rupturable as they may call attention to structures of power and powerlessness that would otherwise remain obscured. Deriving from the Aristotelian concept of ‘Political Animals’, I would imply that these political bodies use language (logos) to discuss their loss of human rights, their deplorable situation, the inactiveness of Dutch citizens and trigger action. I will analyse how this procedure is embedded in a larger project to politicise the question of refugee rights, and, moreover, how theatre projects like these enact new practices of democracy. The We are Here Cooperative is a diverse group of approximately 200 refugees that are out of procedure (Wijzijnhier.org) residing in Amsterdam, whose asylum applications have been refused and for whom all legal remedies have been exhausted in the Netherlands. However, due to several reasons (wars or threatening political situations among others), they cannot | 77 return to their home country. These refugees are forbidden to work since they do not have a legal status or are sans-papier, meaning without (the proper) legal papers. Ironically to operationalise the deportation of ‘illegal’ immigrants or so-called non-citizens, a big deportation-file needs to be built to make them “a deportable migrant” (Kalir & Wissink, 2016; Wissink, 2016). These people are not given a designated place to stay by the municipality or the government, and as a result, these refugees are forced to roam the streets and live in precarity. As a group, the We are Here Cooperative they want to make themselves visible, by showcasing the inhumane situation that they are in, and therefore questioning the out of procedure (Dutch: uitgeprocedeerd) logic in the Netherlands. The group organises several conferences, protests and dinners to collect money and to create more awareness about their situation. As the group states on their website, they need all the support they can get in their struggle: “this gives us a chance to feel human, to breathe, learn, enjoy and express. Feel welcome to meet us and support us in our fight for a normal life” (Wijzijnhier.org). In June 2014, members of this group performed at the Holland Festival in the theatre play Die Schutzbefohlenen, directed by Nicolas Stemann from Thalia Theater (Hamburg). Die Schutzbefohlenen is a play written by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek as a response to the increasingly acute refugee problem in Europe. Based loosely on Aeschylus’ The Supplicants38, the play deals with the inhumane European asylum policy, the political position or the lack thereof of refugees, and the need to give them a voice. In this performance, the refugees re-enact the occupation of a church in Vienna in 2013 that was done in order to draw attention to their plight, the deportation of refugees to their country of ‘death’, and the hundreds of thousands of drowned refugees off the coast of Lampedusa. Labyrinth, performed at Theatre Frascati, focuses on the refugee crisis in the Netherlands. The performance was specially made for the festival Out of State, organised by Theatre Frascati in ______ 38 78 | The Supplicants plays with the conventional arch of the Greek dramatic play. There is no hero, downfall or tragic conclusion. The play thematises unresolved questions of love and sexuality and the formation of the democratic government. Amsterdam, in which the issue of refugees was reflected upon with debates and performances (Frascatitheater.nl). For this project, Stemann partnered again with the We are Here Cooperative. After a series of workshops that Stemann organised with a group of refugees, they then wrote the text of the play based on their experience with the Dutch asylum policy and Stemann did the final direction. The performance begins at the reception hall. Visitors are instructed to give their fingerprints and put their belongings in a plastic bag. Every member of the audience also gets a printed page with the picture and a list of personal information about a man called Mohammed Hassan Abdi. The ‘fictional’ Mohammed is born in the Bay Area (Somalia), which is terrorised by the Islamic terrorist organisation al-Shabaab. At the entrance of the auditorium, each visitor is frisked and placed in one of three groups. Upon entering the theatre, all the seats in the auditorium seem to be reserved by a sign: ‘RESERVED’. The audience is referred to a seat that later proves to be reserved for a refugee or an invisible person and is obliged to stand up again. The refugees play with the assumptions they had when they came to the Netherlands and how they were ‘welcomed’ by officials and members of the community. The audience stands on the side and looks uncomfortable and confused. An actor reads into a microphone a text written on a piece of paper. Actor: Welcome to the labyrinth. Welcome to Europe. Welcome to the Promised Land. You will encounter things you have never seen before. (…) The rules here are different from what you are used to. If you want to succeed, make sure you follow the instructions closely. There is no room for improvisation. Make one mistake, and you will regret this for the rest of your life. You have only one chance. | 79 Make sure you never get out of the procedure. If you have to leave Europe, you are not allowed to come back for 15 years. Your procedure starts now. Welcome to Europe. Welcome to the labyrinth. Live cosy piano music follows, and the audience is finally properly welcomed. Hands are shaken, and everyone is invited to take a seat. The audience appears to be playing one fictional character, Mohammed Hassan Abdi - his biography and personal details were previously distributed on a paper. This man fled through a dangerous route to the Netherlands, and cannot return to his home country because he will otherwise be killed. The 25 men and women from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, in contrast, play officers of the Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst (IND) (the Immigration and Naturalisation Service), the interpreter, the case manager and the lawyer. As an audience member, you are guided through a maze made of bed sheets, office supplies, piles of mattresses and chairs throughout the performance. The decor of Labyrinth is inspired by the interior of the Vluchtgarage in Amsterdam (a building the refugees occupied for a few months). The residents divided the large spaces in the Vluchtgarage into small compartments with bed-sheetwalls so that they could still have some privacy. In the performance, marked cardboard signs specify, for instance, the court, the street, the jail or the IND office, within the different compartments of the maze. These compartments are used to play out different scenes. In one scene, for example, it seems that you are waiting endlessly in a waiting room. The loud sound of a ticking clock enhances this feeling. In another scene, you see a tourist TV commercial with iconic images of famous places around Europe with several catchphrases and a jingle. This original TV commercial, which was made in 2012 by the European Commission to invite tourists to visit Europe, is digitally manipulated in this performance compellingly. The original text, music and images of TV commercial are used. For example, you see the following text: Are you ready? (…) To see the future? Ready to breathe it all in? Or be breathless? Ready to feel big? (…) Ready to take off? Or take the 80 | plunge? Ready to warm up? Or cool down? Ready for relaxing days? (…) Ready to find yourself? (…) Are you ready for something different? Are you ready to make new friends? Ready to fall in love? Are you ready for Europe? Europe, whenever you are ready! (Europa.eu, n.d.) These texts are combined with beautiful and welcoming images of places throughout Europe: Fig. 5: Europe - Whenever You are Ready. European Commission In this performance, the commercial and iconic tourist landmarks of Europe are remixed with horrific images of asylum seekers who carry out deadly journeys. These images pop up unexpectedly during the original commercial so that the original message gets distorted and gets a double layer. For example, after you see a moving image of a woman jumping from a yacht into the ocean with the words “ready to take the plunge?” displayed in the caption, the music changes and you see for 3 seconds a rubber boat containing dozens of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Alternatively, when you see a fragment of two white men playfully running on a beach with the caption: “Ready to cool down?” you see | 81 for a few seconds humanitarian workers trying to give water bottles to dozens of dehydrated asylum seekers in a boat. It causes you to question the original film. Namely, it becomes apparent that only rich tourists who are economically beneficial are being invited to stay in Europe. Moreover, who decides, under what conditions, who is to be considered an appropriate or ‘useful’ visitor, shown in the original commercial, or a bad foreigner, as in the images of refugees in plastic boats? In other scenes, you will hear the personal stories of refugees or visit your own lawsuit where your chances of winning are zero from the outset or share a prison cell with a refugee. The refugees, playing the IND, the case manager and the lawyer, repeatedly interrogate the audience throughout the performance; “is the Netherlands your first European country of arrival?”39 Or “How did you get the money for the expensive journey?” However, the script is already fixed. The actors read the questions from pieces of paper, but also the audience must answer these questions according to the script they are handed in every scene. The phrases that should be said are marked, and wrong answers are immediately punished: “stick to the lines and just answer the questions”, says an actor sternly, pointing at the script. At the end of the show, the three groups, who was walking through the maze separately, come back together. Ultimately, it seems that the audience member, in the role of Mohammed Hassan Abdi, has exhausted all legal remedies and that he/she/they will probably be deported. An angel with a fake blond wig suddenly appears; she presents herself as Mohammed Hassan Abdi’s new lawyer, and sings: Angel: I am going to help you. I am your new lawyer. I am going to help you. Tell me your case. (…) ______ 39 82 | According to the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees, refugees are expected to apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach. So, what we need to do Is prove that you are from Somalia At your embassy in Brussels. A brief scene on the theatre balcony follows. It turns out to be a timeconsuming and aimless journey, where you again need to answer illogical questions whose answers are already fixed. Hereafter the angel appears again. Angel: Hello Mohammed. I have good news for you. The Embassy gave you a document proving that you are actually from Somalia, from the Bay Area. I have sent this to the IND office. Based on this the IND will decide about reopening your case. Other players make cheering noises Angel: That means you will have to go to the IND again for another interview. And if this interview goes well And we are very lucky Then there might be a small chance that they may reopen your case. And that should mean then… Other players in unison: Angel: Then? Then? Then the whole procedure starts all over again. Isn’t this great? Back to the start. Five years after you arrive here, You still don’t know if this time you will succeed. But welcome to the Netherlands! | 83 After this satirical piece, the performance concludes on a more serious note. Actor: Mohammed, who represents all of us, cannot do it on his own. But with your help [addressing the audience], we can change things. With those words, and a small ritual of hand gestures, the labyrinth is lifted so we can finally see the complete stage. Hereafter the refugees sing a self-written song: “We are Here”. After this song, the director, who played the piano during the performance, steps out of his ‘character’ and informs the audience that they can donate some money in the collecting tin for the refugees. This end is similar to the end of the previous performance, Die Schutzbefohlenen, as Suzanne Kooloos writes: When the show draws to a close, the audience is treated to a charity concert. (…) Stemann himself announces that the actors will be collecting money afterwards. Should we take this as the ultimate irony, as a reflection of our efforts to buy off our guilt? Or is this (a desperate) attempt to do something for the refugees?40 This gesture by Stemann indeed feels rather awkward and, as an audience member, you feel obliged to give some money, as I was at the performance at the Holland Festival. However, this gesture of Stemann, I believe, reveals something else: namely, that this performance is necessarily part of a larger movement. The performance gives an insight into the lives and experiences of these refugees; however, it cannot replace efforts to humanise refugee policies or in itself alleviate the precarious situation of these refugees. 5.2 Citizenship, democracy, and humanity The performance Labyrinth, in my opinion, articulates one of the greatest issues of our time, which deserves our great concern. I want to elaborate on the basis of this performance the questions of democracy, citizenship and humanity, and investigate the role of the ______ 40 84 | Elfriede Jelinek, Nicolas Stemann, Thalia Theater, “Die Schutzbefohlenen': Een dynamische regie van Jelineks tekst, maar krijgen de vluchtelingen echt een stem?” (Cuttingedge.nl, 2014). arts in these matters. These notions are currently facing a critical test with the issues of asylum seekers materialised in this performance, which needs a special kind of care and awareness. 5.2.1 Democracy: a distinction between human rights and the rights of the citizen? During this performance, as an audience member, you hear real stories and relive real experiences, played out by refugees. Through a set of four explicit rules (stick to the script, just read the lines that are marked, don’t make any jokes and don’t do any improvisation) and two implicit rules (stay in the group which you are assigned to and follow the instructions), the audience and the refugees play a role-playing game. There is also a consequence if you do not follow the rules: “make one mistake, and you will regret it for the rest of your life”. This role-playing creates an interactive process of defining and re-defining the power hierarchy between participants of the game: those who normally have no rights or voice, on the one hand, and those who mainly can occupy high positions in Dutch society (the IND, the case manager and the lawyer). Also, while the refugees play different roles and occupy several positions in the play, the audience all play Mohammed, so that the last group is interchangeable and homogenised. That the audience play along with the role of Mohammed is a logical requirement in order to propel the performance forward: the performance would not be possible if the audience did not stick to the script. However, as part of the audience, you tend to feel obliged to stick to the script out of respect for the real person who may have experienced this reality. As Simon van den Berg explains in his review of this play: Through the gaps between the bed sheets, you could see other groups in a different phase [of the performance]. However, precisely that fact gives the viewer the feeling that fits seamlessly with his or her situation: as if you have landed in a play about someone else. Of course, Labyrinth is agitprop [hinting at the caricatural portrayal of the characters]: the people from the IND are heartless; translators are incompetent, lawyers overly optimistic. However, you are constantly aware that for the players this is their despondent daily life, and this makes the performance distressing (Theaterkrant.nl). One could say that this performance brings into play demands of the people who have not yet been acknowledged as legitimate political subjects in the Netherlands. Following Hannah Arendt, I would say | 85 that the domain in which the precariousness of these refugees is situated is one that is deprived of the political: “Deprived of a way of life in which speech and only speech made sense and where the central concern of all citizens was to talk with each other” (Arendt, 1958, p. 27). Namely, to be political, to live in a polis, as opposed to slaves and barbarians, meant that everything was settled by means of words and persuasion. Although Arendt does not exclude action (collective actions, or deeds and not just speeches) as part of the political condition, the quandary of these right-less people “is not that they are not equal before the law, but that no law exists for them; not that they are oppressed, but nobody wants to oppress them” (Arendt, 1951, p. 293). Arendt explains that in the inter-war period (between WWI and WWII) European countries were dealing with large groups of fleeing refugees. These refugees were stateless and had no rights; they were “people who had lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human” (Arendt, 1958, p. 299). Arendt proposes a view where these people could only appeal to their rights as human beings, since the right to have rights, thus the right to belong to a political community, is the one true human right. Alternatively, refugees’ lives are now characterised by a high legal framing, precisely due to the post-WWII situation that makes it possible to appeal to such things as human rights (the Geneva convention, for instance) when refugees or minority rights are not respected. In this sense, although the problems connected to the nationstates that Arendt pointed out about the interwar period in Europe are still alive, the situation is not the same. Human rights, one could argue, are currently defined by citizenship; namely, it is only by virtue of your citizenship related to the nation-state that individuals could be said to have any rights at all. That entails choosing where you want to settle and live your life as you choose Alternatively, that your rights depend on the place you were born in. The stateless (and thus rightless) people should, in the current logic of European refugee policy, be happy if they can stay in a tent in a refugee camp and are subjected to total domination without the right to envisage a better and more humane life. Elements of totalitarianism are increasingly creeping into formally liberal and democratic societies. However, how could those removed from politics assert the right to have rights? 86 | Politics, as Rancière argues, should not be interpreted as including the excluded into our society. Politics, he asserts, “is about restaging matters of exclusion as matters of conflict, of opposition between worlds” (Höller & Rancière, 2007, p. 449). Alternatively, to rephrase this sentence, politics is about the issue of contesting political exclusion by enacting equality. It is about who has the power to decide who discusses matters of injustice rather than mouthing his or her private pain. As Rancière explains, following Aristotle, humans, in contrast to animals, can articulate their concerns among people who are able to hear it, while animals only have the ability to express their displeasure or happiness. What is considered to be human speech verbalising inequality and what is deemed to be an animal voice uttering pain is a political issue from the outset. Rancière disagrees with Arendt, in the sense that Arendt insists in her rhetoric that human rights must be attached either to being human (mere life) or to being a citizen of a political community (bios politikos). By making the distinction between human with mere life (zoë) and the citizen with the good life (bios politikos), Arendt understands this differentiation to be ontologically given, when in fact, politics is about the debate how and where that distinction is drawn. According to Rancière the human of Human Rights needs only to exist as a representation or name, according to which it “has a positive content that is the dismissal of any difference between those who live in such or such sphere of existence, between those who are or are not qualified for political life” (Rancière, 2004, p. 304). And the political is conceived in ‘staging’ this dissensus in which those who are considered to lack speech make themselves heard as a ‘political animal’. Jacques Rancière contemplates that art in itself is not political because of the ways it conveys messages and feelings on issues of the state or social problems. Art is political, according to Rancière, in the way that it distributes the senses, which means literally make it possible to apprehend by the senses. On the one hand, the performance makes people comprehend the precarious situation of the refugees by visualising the bureaucracy of the Dutch refugee policy. The performance invites the audience to decipher the faulty lines within this policy, and on the other hand, it discloses a yet inconceivable reality by making the reality of the refugees sensorial. However, this performance, perhaps discloses something peculiarly within the refugee problem in the Netherlands, concerning | 87 humanity and struggles to recover the social link frequently take precedence over political concerns. Namely, the fact that the director collects money at the end of the performance not only proves that many resources are needed from the community, but also points to a gap in structural solutions that are not currently being put forward by the government. 88 | CONCLUSIONS While the Western democratic system is still presenting itself as a model for the rest of the world, it is facing all sorts of internal challenges (Höller & Rancière, 2007, p. 22). In this thesis, I have pointed to a perceived political malaise; that of an inclination towards post-democracy, in which the government, against a backdrop of rising global capitalism, increasingly neglects the concerns of ordinary citizens and the exclusions of certain migrants (non-citizens). This notion, considered within theoretical frameworks – most notably that of Crouch –, is often associated with theatrical concepts, such as controlled ‘spectacle’ wherein citizens ‘play’ an apathetic and passive ‘part’. Paraphrasing Crouch, policy formations and state regulations are increasingly detached from a concrete partisan identity while election programmes of political parties are becoming increasingly alike. New elections will eventually follow, and voters may penalise the ruling government in place, but the difference in administration between the new and old coalitions is less and less significant. In addition, neoliberal politics, which has the upper hand in the electoral vote, seem to envisage a small government, which provides for independent citizens who do not seek assistance from the state for every problem. As Crouch notes “the more that the state withdraws from providing for the lives of ordinary people, making them apathetic about politics, the more easily can corporate interests use it more or less unobserved as their private milk-cow. Failure to recognise this is the fundamental naiveté of neoliberal thought” (Crouch, 2004, p. 19). The government not only cuts back on arts and culture expenditure and dictates more than ever which direction theatre | 89 projects have to take but also pacifies the political arena through supposedly impartial procedures. The growing use of market-like mechanisms and the increase in public-private alliances of various kinds have blurred the boundaries between public services and commercial provision. As a result of the deconcentration and externalisation of the delivery of public services, the government, as if it was a company, can concentrate on the sole task of developing brand images (Klein, 2010). As is the case with a successful company, the sole task of the government, “liberated from any substantive tasks, is just to associate brand names with attractive images, concepts, celebrity figures” (Crouch, 2004, p. 37). Because of these associations, politicians are voted for in the same fashion as branded products are bought, that is, “almost irrespective of their actual quality” (ibid). The more theatre groups and private organisations adopt the state’s obligations; the more politicians can assume this ceremonial role, making the political arena a mere theatrical space. Due to this game of images and theatrics, politicians merely represent the role that they normally occupy, but in reality, have little authority to address current social problems. Moreover, everyone is characterised by the state as an artist41, and everyone is encouraged to be creative and to help by ‘participating’42. This urge to creativity and participation that is imposed on ‘the entrepreneurial individual’ means, however, nothing more than to participate in and maintain the consumer ______ 41 Jet Bussemaker: “Culture is necessary for the formation of our identity, for the development of people and for the development of creativity” (Bussemaker 2013: 1). Also, one can question the idea of the artist assuming him or herself, a precarious being with no actual legal benefits or protection. As Crouch notes, “The growing casualisation of the workforce, including such developments as temporary labour contracts, franchising and the imposition of self-employed status on people who are de facto employees. These changes are a response to what has become the overwhelming demand of firms: flexibility” (Crouch, 2004, p. 36). 42 There is according to the government a social trend, where people increasingly organise a variety of aspects of their life on their own, and the government only plays a facilitating role. According to the Prime Minister, the government only anticipates this trend. However, no real documents or research is provided in order to demonstrate how this trend is manifested or even to reflect upon what effects this trend would have. See this line of reasoning in (Rijksoverheid, 2014b) 90 | society (Röttger, 2014, p. 97). The entrepreneurial and creative individual is presently more flexible, dynamic and mobile than ever, and is continually in a problem-solving mode to positively respond to each new civic challenge thrown at them43. Creativity in this position, as Gielen puts it, is commonly understood as ‘problemsolving’, which is quite different from causing trouble, or rather “problematizing issues” (Gielen, 2013, p. 38). The new ‘creative’ citizen understands himself as an entrepreneur: not simply as a citizen who has civil rights and duties, but a creative entrepreneur, who is “obliged to constantly obtain and defend those rights and obligations” (2013, pp. 38–39). By doing this, creativity and thus all the creative and entrepreneurial individuals who together form the society is increasingly colonised by a neoliberal and capitalistic mentality and gradually gets depoliticised. This aestheticisation can be developed further using the concept of the post-democratic state. Namely, the post-democratic state, which is embedded in a capitalist society, treats its own existence as though it is a work of art. The financial market has to be artistically reinvented to guarantee infinite economic growth (Gielen, 2013, pp. 30–31) and to keep the consumer society functioning (Röttger, 2014, p. 97). It is a culture devoted to its aesthetic imagination. However, any examination of the aestheticisation of politics must establish, as Martin Jay sees it in his essay The Aesthetic Ideology as Ideology; or What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?, “the normative notion of the aesthetic it presupposes” (Jay, 1992, p. 43). For if we do not define “what is meant by this notoriously ambiguous term, it is impossible to understand why its extension to the realm of the political is seen as problematic” (Ibid). As discussed above, politics here is described as theatrical, that is, “illusory, deceptive, exaggerated, artificial, or affected. (…) [And] with the acts and practices of role-playing, ______ 43 Bussemaker: “I see culture as part of a social agenda. The existence of artists and cultural institutions is not so much in the sector itself but in connection with society. I, therefore, choose a policy that gives priority to the social value of culture and the importance of creativity. Social issues such as the area of care, corporate social responsibility, energy and food supply, shrinkage or ageing are becoming increasingly complex. To address these issues, the importance of creativity and innovation grows” (Rijksoverheid, 2013). | 91 illusion, false appearance, masquerade, façade, and impersonation” (Davis and Postlewait 2003, 4). This understanding of the aestheticisation of politics, which reduces an active and critical mass into passive spectators who cannot deliberate rationally, means “the victory of the spectacle over the public sphere” (Jay, 1992, p. 45). Theatre should, therefore, be banned from the political arena “in order to allow a more rational discourse to fill the public space now threatened with extinction by images and simulacra of reality” (Ibid). Here the notion of theatre, due to the theatricality of Dutch politics, in which we see not only actual theatre projects instrumentalized to compensate for the increasing withdrawal of the government, but also the increasing utilisation of aspects of theatre imagery in order to simplify and sensationalise political debate, becomes vague and empty. The recurring question in this book is: how can we re-conceptualise the question of theatre and re-weight its potential in order to overturn or slightly irritate this state of depoliticisation? To answer this question, I would like to return to the Platonic paradox of theatre. Plato’s rejection of the mimetic arts could also be read as a call for a new art form, namely the dialogue. As Colin Davis (2010) explains, the dialogue, the art form Plato was advocating, is a kind of theatre that seeks rational reflection and debate instead of appealing to the emotions, desires or fears. Through this reinventing of Greek drama, Plato calls on the audience to engage actively in the search for truth, to a deeper understanding of what the world entails. Both the protest by Quinsy Gario and the performance Labyrinth, I would argue, attempt to question existing political structures by drawing attention to the existence and precarious position of these subject through performance and thereby uncovering underlying processes that would otherwise remain obscured. Looking back, I would like to clarify that my choice of the protest of Quinsy Gario or the performance Labyrinth does not necessarily mean an argument for solely political theatre, narrowly defined as “concerned with the state or taking sides in politics” (Kirby, 1975, p. 129), nor theatre projects that would frame themselves as activist art, bearing the activist groups who produce art or events to direct “societal formation within the broader framework of contemporary anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, and 92 | alternative-globalization struggles” (1975, Ibid). However, I certainly do not want to exclude them. The particular event of Gario and the performance of the We are Here Cooperative has been selected in this thesis because they offer a very precise and concise theoretical framework for introducing my argument: that all theatre projects are political. As Chantal Mouffe claims, “It is not useful to make a distinction between political and non-political art. 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