{"id":464,"date":"2023-06-08T12:31:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T12:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/27\/?p=464"},"modified":"2023-06-29T13:47:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T13:47:52","slug":"who-belongs-to-the-freie-szene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/27\/who-belongs-to-the-freie-szene\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Belongs to the \u201cFreie Szene\u201d? Or How Does Contemporaneity Become a Criterion for Exclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alexandra Portmann<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The essay takes the production zwei zu zwei by Sumitra and Anjali Keshava and Ralph and Norwin Tharayil as a starting point to investigate institutional dramaturgy at the Kaserne Basel<\/font>, one of the largest production houses in German speaking Switzerland. Since 2018, the Kaserne<\/font> team aims to critically examine internal structures, conventions and ways of working, as well as to open up the institution to new audiences and, most importantly, to a diverse artistic practice that reflects on the post-migrant reality of Basel. Thus, the essay raises two central issues about the working method of the \u201cFreie Szene\u201d as a production system in the so-called contemporary German-speaking European theatre. The first issue is the canonized narrative that the independent theatre community operates as a successful form of institutional criticism. Second is the consideration of structural discrimination and racism in the field of \u201cFreie Szene\u201d along quality criteria such as contemporariness.

Keywords:<\/strong> institutional dramaturgy, independent theatre, Switzerland, contemporariness as evaluation criteria, institutional criticism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the independent scene? Who belongs to it? How does one become part of it? The choreographer and dancer Sumitra Keshava poses these questions in the performance zwei zu zwei<\/em>, which premiered on June 24, 2021, in the Kaserne Basel<\/em>, one of the largest production houses in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Here, I take this production as a starting point to consider institutional dramaturgy at the Kaserne Basel<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2018, the Kaserne <\/em>team aims to critically examine internal structures, conventions and ways of working, as well as to open up the institution to new audiences and, most importantly, to a diverse artistic practice that reflects on the post-migrant reality of Basel. These questions posed by Keshava raise two central issues about the working method of the \u201cFreie Szene\u201d as a production system in the so-called contemporary<\/em> German-speaking European theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first issue is the canonized narrative that the independent theatre community operates as a successful form of institutional criticism. Second, is the consideration of structural discrimination and racism in the field of \u201cFreie Szene\u201d along quality criteria such as contemporaneity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the German-speaking European countries, there is a unique dual theatre system divided into subsidized municipal and state theatres, and the independent theatre and performing arts community (\u201cFreie Szene\u201d). The \u201cFreie Szene\u201d has its origins in the 1960s and 1970s, when collective artistic practices established new ways of working together in theatre and performance. The method of collaboration was to move outside established institutions and was clearly a gesture of institutional critique (B\u00fcscher 19). But from the 1980s, the independent scene began to institutionalize itself. This is expressed in the introduction of a new funding system (mainly project funding), the establishment of independent production houses and the development of professional networks (for example, the formation of IETM\u2014an international network for contemporary performing art), or co-production networks between production houses and festivals (F\u00fclle 12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the impact of the establishment of new study programs at universities and art schools must be considered. Studies programs such as the practice-oriented theatre studies curriculum at the University of Giessen (established in 1982) are training mainly for the field of the \u201cFreie Szene.\u201d  According to Paul DiMaggio, marketplace independency (for example, through subversion) and establishing strong ties to art practitioners and universities are crucial factors for forming performance art institutions. These are, then, considered to be part of the so-called high-culture sector in the U.S.A. at the beginning of the twentieth century (DiMaggio 43\u201347). Although DiMaggio’s case studies are very different from the subject matter at hand, both temporally and geographically, the two criteria that were mentioned (relationship to the market and education) seem to be helpful in discussing the constitution of the field of art, or even a specific understanding of high culture. On the one hand, it points out the fact that this concept of a practice being considered art is decisively formed along production and educational conventions. On the other hand, these two criteria imply a connection to ideas of aesthetics and premises, which are going to be critically discussed here regarding the question of in- and exclusion mechanisms in the field of the \u201cFreie Szene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annemarie Matzke’s reflections in \u201cDie Freie Szene gibt es nicht\u201d suggest the independent theatre and performance scene differs mainly on a structural level: here, forms of cooperation, decision-making processes and hierarchies are negotiated anew from project to project, while the structures in the municipal theatre are predetermined by a hierarchical structure centered on the director (Regisseur*in)<\/em> and on a higher level the artistic director (Intendant*in)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her PhD thesis, Der neue Geist des Kollektivs<\/em>, Vera Nitsche analyses the theatre debate in Germany during the 1990s, which took mainly place in scientific journals and newspapers and negotiated the changing cultural policy.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Within the debate, the narrative of the juxtaposition of municipal theatres and the independent theatre and performance scene is formed, which also means that the independent scene is presented as a (successful) expression of institutional critique. The new forms of cooperation represented innovation, promising new impulses that contrasted with the usual business of municipal theatre (Nitsche 205\u201306). The opposition of innovation (independent scene) and tradition (municipal theatre) still dominate the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, studies and research show a critical examination of the canonized narrative that leads to an institutional critique. The hierarchical, predominantly male, focus on the director also contrasts with the flexible structures of the independent scene. With such flexibility, however, comes increased precarity of work, equating entrepreneur-like structures with the independent scene, and therefore often framed within a neoliberal paradigm.[2]<\/sup><\/a> Organized as a form of freelance work, it is particularly precarious regarding the social security and disadvantages of females and queers. This is discussed, for example, by Bojana Kunst in Artists at Work. Proximity of Art and Capitalism<\/em> (146\u201353) or Angela McRobbie in Be Creative <\/em>(87\u2013114). The social science studies on employment in the performing arts support these arguments, especially regarding management positions and wage distributions.[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These important studies on economic conditions in the cultural sector, as well as the understanding of labor as something creative, project-bound, and time-limited work, focus primarily on precarious working conditions and power structures in general. However, these power structures must be critically observed from a perspective of race, and one must look within this perspective for unquestioned regulations that are the cause of exclusions in an institutional structure. And this is brought into focus primarily by artists and scholars of color. An important contribution is the anthology Allianzen. <\/em>Kritische Praxis an <\/em>wei\u00dfen Institutionen<\/em>, edited by Julian Warner and Elise Liebsch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this essay, I would like to follow up on the argument that unquestioned regulations and production conventions conserve theatres as primarily white<\/em> institutions. Beyond that, however, I would like to address the clear focus on the aesthetic and epistemological premises, informed by postcolonial and decolonial theory, and thus focus on the quality criteria of contemporaneity. I argue that the criteria of quality in the evaluation of theatre and dance are the basis of structural discrimination and racism. With opaque quality criteria, different artistic practices are implicitly divided into a hierarchical order that distinguishes between art and folklore or socio-culture. David Lloyd speaks of a racialized regime of aesthetics manifested by the theory of Western European aesthetic philosophy since the Enlightenment (Lloyd 7\u20138). Likewise, Walter Mignolo argues that the formation and control of taste, as a central criterion of aesthetic philosophy since the Enlightenment, hierarchizes certain aesthetics over others. (Mignolo 50). Thus, critical engagement with an understanding of theatre and dance informed by aesthetic theory is a central starting point to unpack the racial logic in the field of theatre and performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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