Capitulation Project, 2003
Installation
Artists’ statement :
The New York-based Performance Group staged their piece Commune for the first time in February 1971. The play included a short scene referring to the My Lai massacre. If members of the audience refused to participate actively in what was happening on stage during this scene, the actors interrupted their performance - sometimes for as long as three hours, depending on the audience’s reaction. The group experimented with several variations of the scene.
Starting with photographs of the performance and the notes of Richard Schechner, the theorist of environmental theatre, we came up with a new version of the My Lai sequence. We worked with the statements of soldiers involved in the massacre, criminal investigation reports, and contemporary articles in the press. In the process, we developed a scenario that enabled us to translate the historical documents into a form suitable for the stage.
We aimed at representing an event of war without using any of the film industry’s spectacular devices. What means do we have, as ordinary citizens, to come to terms with an act of terror? We followed the trail of the Performance Group. Their attempt to create a platform for self-criticism within the context of a theatre performance motivated our dramatic intentions. For this we reconstructed the stage set of Commune: a wave, evoking a landscape and also functioning as an agora, and scaffolding around the stage with seating for the audience.
In 1971 the performers were inspired by rituals: they danced and they sang. We did not attempt to recreate this authenticity in our production. Although we do evoke the symbolic level of their representation, we chose to develop our play with the actors on two different levels. Each of the performers takes on a function, for example, as a reporter, but they can also intervene at any time in their own name. Thus, there is a constant back and forth between the actors and the characters they are representing. This method of dramatic framing enabled us to establish an analogy with film.
There is no live performance in Capitulation Project. The scene was filmed in about 30 sequences during two night shoots, with extras as a ‘fake’ audience. The distance from the performance that is created through the process of filming is comparable to our detachment from current political events.
We intentionally moved back a few steps in time. We evoked the massacre by means of a contemporaneous artistic form in order todemonstrate that the grasp of an event of war is tied to its medial transmission.
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
Artists’ statement :
The New York-based Performance Group staged their piece Commune for the first time in February 1971. The play included a short scene referring to the My Lai massacre. If members of the audience refused to participate actively in what was happening on stage during this scene, the actors interrupted their performance - sometimes for as long as three hours, depending on the audience’s reaction. The group experimented with several variations of the scene.
Starting with photographs of the performance and the notes of Richard Schechner, the theorist of environmental theatre, we came up with a new version of the My Lai sequence. We worked with the statements of soldiers involved in the massacre, criminal investigation reports, and contemporary articles in the press. In the process, we developed a scenario that enabled us to translate the historical documents into a form suitable for the stage.
We aimed at representing an event of war without using any of the film industry’s spectacular devices. What means do we have, as ordinary citizens, to come to terms with an act of terror? We followed the trail of the Performance Group. Their attempt to create a platform for self-criticism within the context of a theatre performance motivated our dramatic intentions. For this we reconstructed the stage set of Commune: a wave, evoking a landscape and also functioning as an agora, and scaffolding around the stage with seating for the audience.
In 1971 the performers were inspired by rituals: they danced and they sang. We did not attempt to recreate this authenticity in our production. Although we do evoke the symbolic level of their representation, we chose to develop our play with the actors on two different levels. Each of the performers takes on a function, for example, as a reporter, but they can also intervene at any time in their own name. Thus, there is a constant back and forth between the actors and the characters they are representing. This method of dramatic framing enabled us to establish an analogy with film.
There is no live performance in Capitulation Project. The scene was filmed in about 30 sequences during two night shoots, with extras as a ‘fake’ audience. The distance from the performance that is created through the process of filming is comparable to our detachment from current political events.
We intentionally moved back a few steps in time. We evoked the massacre by means of a contemporaneous artistic form in order todemonstrate that the grasp of an event of war is tied to its medial transmission.
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
Set (wooden stage in form of a wave, wodden screen) and video projection
(16 mm film, black and white, transferred to video; 21’34’’; English speaking
Performers: Steffen Boÿe, Jean-Theo Jost,
Robert Lyons, Julie Randall / and with Birgit
Asshoff, Joachim Bergmann, Arne Friedmann,
Uwe Metzenthin, Eliana Salinos, Sabine Souza
de Avellar Pires, Ilka Willner / Production manager:
Ulrike Mantel / Camera: Stefan Runge
/ Sound: Johanna Herr / Gaffer: Günther
Berghaus / Production Designer: Volker
Rehm / Costumes: Sybille Gänsslen-Zeit /
Make-up: Martin Turansky / Camera assistant:
Sibylle Grunze / Sound assistants: Uli
Scuda, Frederik Haupricht / Costume assistants:
Mahela Rostek, Carola Ruckdeschel /
Construction crew: Niels Müller, Martin Petersmann,
Torsten Schimmer, Uwe Stindt,
Barbara Schaefer
Written, directed and edited by
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
Produced by Fine Arts Unternemen Film AG
Supported by Academy for Film and Television
“Konrad Wolf” / Potsdam-Babelsberg HFF /
Bildhauerwerkstatt Berlin im Kulturwerk des
bbk Berlins Gmbh / das werk novalisstrasse,
Berlin
Set (wooden stage in form of a wave, wodden screen) and video projection
(16 mm film, black and white, transferred to video; 21’34’’; English speaking
Performers: Steffen Boÿe, Jean-Theo Jost,
Robert Lyons, Julie Randall / and with Birgit
Asshoff, Joachim Bergmann, Arne Friedmann,
Uwe Metzenthin, Eliana Salinos, Sabine Souza
de Avellar Pires, Ilka Willner / Production manager:
Ulrike Mantel / Camera: Stefan Runge
/ Sound: Johanna Herr / Gaffer: Günther
Berghaus / Production Designer: Volker
Rehm / Costumes: Sybille Gänsslen-Zeit /
Make-up: Martin Turansky / Camera assistant:
Sibylle Grunze / Sound assistants: Uli
Scuda, Frederik Haupricht / Costume assistants:
Mahela Rostek, Carola Ruckdeschel /
Construction crew: Niels Müller, Martin Petersmann,
Torsten Schimmer, Uwe Stindt,
Barbara Schaefer
Written, directed and edited by
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
Produced by Fine Arts Unternemen Film AG
Supported by Academy for Film and Television
“Konrad Wolf” / Potsdam-Babelsberg HFF /
Bildhauerwerkstatt Berlin im Kulturwerk des
bbk Berlins Gmbh / das werk novalisstrasse,
Berlin
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
Since 1988 Frédéric Moser (b.1966) and Philippe Schwinger (b.1961) have been collaborating, directing first an independent theatre company "l'atelier ici et maintenant" in Lausanne. Between 1993 and 1998 they studied at the Geneva University of Art and Design. They won the Swiss Art Award 3 times in a row (1998-99-2000) as well as the Providentia Young Art Prize. In 2001 they received the 6 month Scholarship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and in 2002 the One Year Studio in Berlin from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. In 2003 they were invited to the first residence program at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. They represented Switzerland at the 26th International Biennal of Contemporary Art of São Paulo in 2004. They participated in the exhibition “History Will Repeat Itself” held at Kunst Werke Berlin, traveling to Dortmund, Warsaw and Hong Kong in 2007. Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Zürich, Cornerhaus Manchester, Mamco Geneva and Bétonsalon Paris. They presently live in Neuchâtel.
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony