On July 6 the Impulse Theater Biennale 2013 celebrated a roaring close to the festival in the double Chez Icke in Bochum and Düsseldorf.

The roughly 60 events in this year’s festival were well received by a broad audience, with attendance topping at over 7000 spectators. The theater productions were attended to 80 percent capacity. And that’s not including the program of live criticism, concerts, discussions, etc. that took place at Gesine Danckwart’s “Chez Icke,” a festival center that created a link, both real and virtual, between all four of the Impulse cities.

One of the most important new developments of this festival was the shift away from the competitive character in favor of a thematically curated festival, which placed the works in relation to one another. Under the title “Under the Influence” there were 14 productions to be seen, including, for the first time, premieres, co-productions, and commissioned works created especially for the festival. By taking such artistic risks, the Impulse Theater Biennial is underscoring its conception of itself as a lobbyist and platform for the independent theater, and is taking account of the changes in the independent scene over the last few years – also as a sign of our support for independent artistic works in these difficult times for cultural politics.

In particular, the commissioned work by the Berlin-based Israeli visual artist, Yael Bartana, “Two Minutes of Standstill,” caused quite a sensation. On June 28 at 11 a.m., she invited all the inhabitants of Cologne to symbolically interrupt their everyday lives for two minutes and – borrowing from the Israeli holiday that commemorates the victims and resistance fighters of the Holocaust – not only to reflect on the past, but also on the present and the future. Cologne’s governing mayor Jürgen Roters took the project under his wing, which had many local, but also national and international supporters. In addition, the action was promoted by Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH (RNV), which stopped all local public transportation in the metropolitan region of Rhein-Neckar for a memorable moment. The 1. FC Köln interrupted training, and the University of Cologne also called for standstill.
The project, which was sponsored by the Academy of the Arts of the World, was hotly debated and raised a certain amount of controversy – the question of how and under what conditions one can actively commemorate has surely not yet been conclusively answered, nor has the project been fully appraised.

Within the framework of the festival, and at its invitation, July 6 also marked the inauguration of a video archive of independent theater. At the initial discussion, participants included various artists and scholars of theater studies, but also the Goethe Institut, the Bundesverband Freier Theater, and the mime centrum. As a result, a working group has been formed that will be coordinated by the Bundesverband Freier Theater as well as the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

But this new initiative is not the only way that Impulse is realizing its function as a platform for independent theater between the festivals. A collection of texts on the independent scene has been established at the website www.festivalimpulse.de as the publication in progress, and this project will be continued.

And the next Impulse festival is coming in June 2015!

Avi Feldmann on the tradition of the Yom HaShoah in Israel

A conversation with YAEL BARTANA about “Two Minutes of Standstill”

“Two Minutes of Standstill” aims to interrupt the daily life of the city of Cologne for two minutes. What is the idea behind this collective performance?

I was thinking about what it would mean to lend the ritual of the Yom HaShoa – the Israeli memorial day for the victims and heroes of the Holocaust – to Germany. Every year on this day sirens in public spaces sound all over Israel, and the whole country comes to a halt to observe two minutes of silence.
I have been exploring state and social rituals for many years in order to understand how they form national identity. The first work I made about this was Trembling Time (2001), a video about the Yom haZikaron, the Israeli Soldiers Memorial Day, which functions in practically the same way as the Holocaust Memorial Day. These rituals are national ceremonies and anchored in state law. In Trembling Time I tried to come to a more distant and at the same time more personal interpretation of this very emotionally charged ritual.
What does it mean for an individual – for me as a citizen of the state of Israel – to be raised with such collective rituals? How can one stay an individual and self-responsible within this situation?

So do collective commemorations make sense for you at all? Or is it something that can only be done individually anyhow?

Well, the purpose is to create a narrative of a nation, an identity for the state – that is not unique to Israel. I am not against that but I want to question and to analyze it.

The regulations on how to commemorate are quite defined, there is only a small established path on which one can move. It means that commemoration becomes a pre-formulated routine – instead of being lived and lived up to.

I strongly feel that Germany needs to create alternative moments of commemoration which, for example, also include newcomers – a ritual that refers to the present day and future and not only to the history. Thousands of younger Israelis have moved to Germany in the last years. And many of them – like me – live in mixed relationships. That makes it even more obvious. We have to deal with our history together. So rather than talking about guilt, it is more about being aware of what is happening around us. We ought to commemorate the past but to recognize the present. By this we can recognize the chain of effects caused by the Second World War in the Middle East as well as in Europe up till today – for example that in today’s Germany there can exist a terrorist movement like the NSU that sees itself clearly in the tradition of the Third Reich.
In this regard the performance seeks to make the act of commemoration available to other cultures, not to minimize the significance of the Holocaust. It also wants to give thought and respect to the tragedies still taking place today. This is how we can give the past meaning in the present.

Isn’t there a danger of relativizing the crimes and horrors committed by Germany during the NS-regime when you connect them this way with other events such as the murders of the NSU?

It seems that for some people in Germany drawing a line between the NS to the NSU is politically incorrect. Just as it seems to be impossible to commemorate Jews, Roma, homosexuals together as victims of National Socialism. Maybe it’s true, and each group needs its own memorial. And of course this will continue to be an important discussion: How to commemorate without relativizing. But also without exclusion. After all, it is not about numbers. The NSU is an active fascist movement in today’s Germany. So we are talking about an ideology that still is alive.

The case of the NSU points right to the core of the problem: How could they act for so long without being identified as a right-wing terror cell? That would not have happened in the case of left-extremist or Islamist terror… Apparently the generally strong sensitivity towards German history did not help in this case – or even made us more blind. We can recognize right-extremist terror easily if it comes in a conventional form that we know and learned about. But we don’t recognize it or don’t want to recognize it when it appears in a different way.

We only commemorate but did not learn to understand the threats of the present.

But isn’t there also a danger of instrumentalizing the Holocaust with this work?

In Israel today, there are many interesting options available for those uninspired by the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies. Artists, intellectuals, journalists and musicians take the stage to share personal thoughts and views on the Holocaust. The performance in Cologne is not an act of utilizing the holocaust but rather an act that puts a focus also on alternative rituals.

Isn’t there a contradiction? On one hand the rituals that exist became an empty and shallow duty to fulfill. On the other hand you are proposing another ritual.

But it is not a ritual. It takes the form of a ritual but in fact it is a performance in public space. It is not an existing German holiday. If one day it became a national holiday that would be of course quite an achievement. Because it would be a holiday started by the people. But for now it is a performance, an experiment – a call for attention.

The Yom haShoa is a very early experience in your life – long before you can contextualize or understand it intellectually. First you understand it with your body, it is inscribed into you.

Yes, it is a very physical and emotional experience and for a child also a bit embarrassing. It becomes a sensual memory of the body. As a kid you don’t understand why you have to stand still and keep silent but you definitely experience it very strongly.
And it is a clearly performative moment – and as such it has to be public. Many people go on the balconies when the sirens sound. You could do it in your home, but that does not count. It has to be visible.

For Impulse of course that is an important aspect. After all, “Two Minutes of Standstill” is part of a theater biennial. It is a collective, performative moment – and it reaches back to the roots of theatre as ritual. And it is a serious moment. Its performativity is not a mimicry, not a theatrical “as if”. It is a statement.
But while in Israel participating is the expected thing to, in Cologne it is quite an individual and probably not easy decision. It is an active contribution: standing still as an action.

It is an act of interruption, which is not ordered by the state. But at the same time it is important that it is linked to the ritual in Israel. The Holocaust does not belong to one side – it is a shared history. We have to commemorate it together to be able to really deal with the present and the future. We have to think of new generations, this is our task. So how can we do that? This action is a proposal to actively think about that.

How has your experience been so far with realizing “Two Minutes of Standstill” in Cologne?

Since the early stage of the project we have been searching for partners. We have had conversations with many organizations working around the same issues of history and memory, but most of them are extremely careful about joining the project. It seems that everybody wants to keep his/her own way to commemorate and to deal with that history. But we are happy that more and more people are getting engaged.

So what do you expect of these two minutes? What do you aim for?

People have to find out themselves what it means for them, they have to have their own experiences. I cannot tell people what to think and feel. I am creating a situation. Maybe to some it means nothing and for others it will mean a lot. The responsibility is in the hands of each individual.

Interview: Florian Malzacher

This year Impulse is presenting a total of 14 outstanding productions by artists in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Premieres and Co-productions

Five of a total of fourteen productions have their origins in the first Open Call that Impulse initiated: two as co-produced premieres (“Something for the Fans” by Damian Rebgetz and “Revolution Vacuum” by Tamer Yiğit/Branka Prlić), one co-produced adaptation (Bernadette La Hengst’s “Bedingungsloses Grundeinsingen” with the citizens of Bochum) and two more as touring productions (“Der (kommende) Aufstand nach Friedrich Schiller)” by andcompany&Co. and “Schützen” by Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt/Matthias Meppelink).
In addition to this, there is the commissioned work “Two Minutes of Standstill” by Yael Bartana, as well as the newly conceived Impulse version of Gesine Danckwart’s “Chez Icke.”
With this new working method, Impulse is taking account of the changes in the independent scene over the last few years–and also signaling support for artistic work in difficult cultural-political times.

A wide variety of artistic signatures

The wide range of how contemporary theater defines itself can be seen in the variety of works at this year’s festival. While deufert&plischke, with their “Entropic Institute Mülheim” and “Alles” by Showcase Beat Le Mot explode ordinary time limits and the restricted narratives of a normal evening at the theater, Yael Bartana’s “Two Minutes of Standstill” in fact only lasts two minutes.
Hofmann&Lindholm, with their silhouette theater “Nebenschauplätze Nr. 1: Das 20. Jahrhundert,” and andcompany&Co., with their wild battle of associations, use a variety of artistic means to bring the past into the present. With “Graz Alexanderplatz“ by the Austrian Theater im Bahnhof and with „Schubladen“ by She She Pop they look for cultural influences in individual biographies – while Bernadette La Hengst (“Bedingungsloses Grundeinsingen”) and the Swiss Theater HORA with “Disabled Theater,” directed by Jérôme Bel, focus on different facets of society and politics in the present.
Conspicuously, many of the productions in the festival have music as a central component. In Christian Garcia’s “Teenage Lobotomy” it becomes the protagonist and reflects the role that it plays for our pop-cultural identity. In Gesine Danckwart’s staging of the bar “Chez Icke” as well, it pushes its way into the center when the cantina becomes the stage. Futhermore, this work stands for Impulse’s broadly conceived take on theater and for the wide variety of artistic signatures in the festival. “Chez Icke” is both a notable staging invited as a guest performance, and at the same time the festival’s center. And it links the Impulse cities together, both in reality and virtually.

Chez Icke Schauspielhaus