Von Renate Klett
01.03.2003 / DIE ZEIT
If Disney-World serves to make the rest of the world appear even more real, then the whole world should be put into scene – this could be Rimini Protokoll’s credo based on Baudrillard. Rimini Protokoll is the codename for four city-guerrillas who want to change the world, at least momentarily hidden if possible. They smuggle art, not bombs into reality, and observe the audience observing the explosion of a bomb: the explosion is successful if the fine line between ‘real’ and ‘manipulated’ cannot be seen any more. Take this: An audience of 30 sits in the 10th floor of the Kröpcke Center in Hannover and observes with binoculars the lively square below. Via headphones they hear music, the comment of a store-detective or the instructions of a guard: “The couple at the Kröpcke-clock: Bug!” We, high above watch out with our binoculars for dancing teenies, the thief with the still empty plastic bag and the couple next to the clock-tower – they all participate in the game – only, most of them don’t know it. Spies with hidden microphones, some even have obvious ones linger around on the square and transmit bits and pieces if conversations of passers-by to the control-tower, or interview witnesses who haven’t noticed anything. Business as usual. All of a sudden, there is a football, and we wait what will happen. The ones who start kicking: real or made-up? A young girl jumps up against a wooden fence, falls down, remains on the ground, and nobody cares about her – normal? You listen to a telephone conversation via headphones and try to figure out which of the men at the telephone booths is being observed. It’s a cryptic game of reality and appearance, and everything becomes suspicious under the view sharpened by Rimini Protokoll: the kissing couple, the sleeping bum at the construction fence, the fat lady that drags a child behind her.
This project which turns the city into a stage, the audience into spies of every-day life is called “Probe Hannover” and is presented at the Festival Theaterformen 2002. The after-effect was big: even hours later you perceived reality differently than usual – even yourself.
The Dream of “Deutschland 2”
The rooms in which spying takes place are named ‘Kanther’, ‘Zimmermann’ and ‘Schily’ which indicate obsessions which go beyond playful voyeurism: Dutiful and systematic observation. It may be only a little step from the naive vertical view of tower observer to the professional horizontal area and screen search. You think of Lichtenberg who said “What is called ‘observation’ by enthusiasts is commonly more than half a judgement.” Bernd Ernst, Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi called their theatre/action- Art team Protokoll Rimini mostly because of the sound-effects: Three-times I, three-times O, that sounds good. They are in their thirties and met as students of the Giessen Academy of Dramatic Arts the aesthetic melting pot of the nation. In a way, Protokoll Rimini is the umbrella organisation for their work together. But there is also Hygiene Heute (Ernst / Kaegi), and Haug / Wetzel as well as individual projects.
Rimini Protokoll became famous with a production that didn’t take place, or at least not quite as planned. They wanted to copy a debate of the German parliament in Berlin live in the former parliament building in Bonn for the Festival Theater der Welt: The people were to represent their representatives, the political speech was to be copied and returned into the mouth of the people: a synchronised exercise of democracy.
The president of parliament, Wolfgang Thierse, however saw the honour of parliament threatened and forbade the use of the hall of debate (which is otherwise hired out to companies and carnival-clubs). Finally, the project took place at the Bonn Schauspielhalle (theatre) which naturally lacked the authenticity and aura of the ‘forbidden setting’. Still the project on July 27th 2002 was a political statement from 9 o’clock in the morning till midnight (this is how hard-working our delegates are!). Citizens of Bonn stood the lectern at intervals of five minutes equipped with infra-red headphones to prompt the text which they were to repeat as simultaneously as possible. The representative rushed after winding strings of words which were made up in his name and now re-conquered by him. This ‘illegal copy of democracy’ was an exercise in missed rhetoric for the audience, a mirroring of the mirror, dialectic for the advanced, and for the participants a hellish concentration training. The let foreign words flow through their bodies, often with some reservation, but the speed made it impossible to interfere with interpretations. You had to function and could not explain that the all the hmms and stutters, the grammar faults and open sentences were not your own, but mere copies. There was no cabaretisising as anticipated by politicians, the honour was maintained: ‘Deutschland 2’ was a comprehensive exercise for 200 citizens of Bonn. And it was art! A copy of the actual, manipulation of reality, usage of theatrical ready-mades – the method of the Riminis aims at a sharpened perception and reflection of the world. Earlier projects already pointed out: “It is how it is and yet it is different. Doubts as to where the theatrical projects start arise; where reality stops and theatre begins.” Or “The criteria of authenticity are repealed bit by bit.” They hired four 80-year old ladies from the home for the elderly next door for ‘Crossword Pitstop’ at the Monsunturm, Frankfurt, in 2000. The four allegedly trained for their come-back at the Nürburg Ring and confronted their life-styles with that of motor-racers. The charm lies in the opposites of old – young, female – male, slow – fast, public – hidden.
Two years later the same team shows the counterpart to the old-age-saga: ‘Shooting Bourbaki’. This time, the actors are 13 – 15 – year-old Swiss boys and the theme is ‘boyshooting’, which is practised at the Zurich funfair. The boys speak of their fascination for weapons in the cinema and in real life, a video shows them at shooting exercises, and then they play training: “Legs apart – eyes narrow”. A real world with fictitious inserts is created again: The people are real, so are their needs, what they express, however are stage directions. The method is the same in both cases: Starting from the location of the respective theatre (home for the elderly in Frankfurt; police shooting-range in Lucerne) a piece of live is exposed and at the same time exaggerated. The research targets at a stage presentation and becomes amateur documentary theatre, but the ‘stage boards which mean the world’ can turn back into a forest or even concrete at any time. This happened with projects like Ungunstraum Alles zu seiner Zeit in Schloss und Park Rauischholzhausen or the Ungunstraum performance In der Netzstelle for the Frankfurt electrical company (both by Haug/Dross/Wetzel, 1989).
Europe, an idyll for a guinea-pig
My favourite pieces are the walkable radio-plays by Hygiene heute. System Kirchner in Giessen and Frankfurt (2000), and Canal Kirchner at the Münchner Spiel-art-Festival 2001 are audio-tours which send their participants equipped with a walkman by themselves at an interval of ten minutes on a bizarre city tour. Through the headphones you hear exact instructions, directions, views and pace concerning your path, and everything you see en route is interpreted as part of a gigantic conspiracy. Every letter box, each street lantern and house number becomes ambiguous, everything is suspicious, even Mother and Child in the little chapel. You’re listened to, observed, registered, every corner could be part of the conspiracy, and it’s really spooky in the multi-story car-parkwhen one iron door after the other in the narrow corridor slams shut, and the voice in your ear all of a sudden shouts: ”Run! You’ve got ten seconds!”. The illusionary theatre takes place in the head. It digs its claws into the participant and creeps inside his mind until he becomes a team-mate of this SiFi-detective-story and anticipates an accessory in everyone. The picture of the city changes, becomes deciphered, and the motifs of ‘spider’ or ‘ snail’ are obvious as codes of observation strategies. The Kirchner-pieces are little strokes of genius like trips at full consciousness. The initiated only sees the shadow-world behind the allegedly real one. The disappeared librarian of Dortmund, Bruno Kirchner, has seen through all of this and has become a refugee ever since. He sends tapes to his wife and his daughter. These are the tapes we find in our walkmen, and they are our companions and advisors. Ominous students who are conditioned by ‘Bridge-training’ and ‘Smile.schools’ remember after an intake of Memo-Sinol the childhood they had. “Learning means forgetting” is the motto of their breeders who observe them with their dental-scanners and keep them in good spirits with fake smells. Their ‘Land after the new-formation’ will be easily maintained; you can see the first test-results already on the underground and in the backyards.
Hygiene heute is aspecialist when it comes to artificial worlds – they may consist of acoustics or wrongly adhered particles of reality, sometimes they are even inhabited by animals. 60 guinea-pigs, for instance which divides a Lawneurope amongst each other as a variation of the Wiener Kongress (Europa tanzt, Vienna 2001). In their latest performance, ‘Staat. Ein Terrarium’ (State. A terrarium), they worked with five different peoples of the “bare-backed red forest ant”. Whereas Hygiene heute verifies fiction through their interpretation of the point of view, Haug / Wetzel present
English by Sonja Müller