2 performers appear incognito. 2 is the smallest possible number of people needed to represent a conflict. As soon as 2 people mask themselves in the same way, they become a conspiratorial community in secret agreement. They demonstrate an apparatus that can both take over everything and everyone and turn against everything and everyone. Like a tank. Masking is part of the uniformed group that appears like a tank. Masking was (and often is) a reason to break up demonstrations prematurely. It has an escalating effect, which is repeatedly carried out in the clash between the >Black Bloc< and police officers. Their armour forms fronts and demands confrontation: a seemingly always identical ritual that is celebrated and exaggerated, reinterpreted and questioned in the performance.
"Haut ab! Haut ab! Haut ab! Haut ab! Haut ab!"
‘Every contest governed by restrictive rules bears (by virtue of this very order) the essential characteristics of play, and indeed proves to be a particularly intense, energetic and at the same time quite violent form of play. (…) Yet the limits of what is permitted in play need not be drawn at bloodshed, or even at murder.’ (Johan Huizinga, ‘Homo Ludens’)
SKILLS music release WELCOME TO HELL https://skills2.bandcamp.com/releases
credits:
concept, performance, music: SKILLS (aka Camilla Milena Fehér & Sylvi Kretzschmar)
dramaturgy: Otmar Wagner
set design: Patrizia Ruthensteiner
sound engineering and musical collaboration: Peta Devlin
lighting: Lars Rubarth
video: Sirwan Ali
assistant: Nina Klöckner
production management: ehrliche arbeit - freies Kulturbüro
photos: Sinje Hasheider | Daniela Poschauko
Funded by the Hamburg Cultural Authority, the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna (MA 7) and the Hamburg Cultural Foundation.
