Natalia Kaliada: “Totalitarism is contagious”

Art is capable of solving more serious issues that the ones it is solving today.

Natalia Kaliada, general director of the Belarus Free Theatre told it in her speech in Prague.

Creativity is a crucial attribute of progress. It is exactly the presence of this attribute that puts progress beyond the law in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. There are two aspects of the problem: on one hand, totalitarism puts creativity to death, on the other – stimulates it by introduction of new mechanisms of prohibition. Evasion of prohibitions and the time factor of accumulation of creative solutions leads to traditional outburst of innovation in post-totalitarian states. But is such an outburst of novelty worth a people’s so long dwelling in the meanness of totalitarism?

The USSR, the totalitarian Colossus, stretched on one sixth of dry land, created an entire system of relationship between an artist and power: from quiet suppression of the names and creation of controlled artistic enclaves to punitive psychiatry and prison terms for DIY publishing of poetry collections. The process of creative potential inhibition provoked an unprecedented outburst of interest to the driven Soviet art after the Colossus’s collapse. This interest stayed on for several years, and then returned to the habitual artistic frames developing evolutionary, without anomalous leaps caused by exemption of totalitarism. Which is not surprising, because in the creativity of the driven Soviet artists an enormous segment of their energy was spent not on creation of a product, but rather on the search of the channels to distribute the information about it.

It is difficult to find any positive sides in the role of totalitarism in the development of art. In Alen Carr’s book “An Easy Way To Give Up Smoking”, the title of the chapter “Positive Sides of Smoking” is followed by a virgin white sheet of paper. Maybe, in the current situation which has emerged in the art-market, the attention should be paid exactly to the experience of search for alternative channels of distribution of information which have been worked out by creators in totalitarian and authoritarian states.

The Belarus Free Theatre actively employs this kind of experience, both in Belarus, which is the last European dictatorship, and while working in democratic states. During our tour to Lund, Sweden, we applied the technology of spectators’ gathering which we use in our country: we sent several hundreds of text messages to telephone subscribers representing student audience announcing the meeting point for the audience to see an underground performance – the show was full-house, the space couldn’t hold all the people wishing to see it. We use the same technology of performing as the countercultural actors in Czechoslovakia actively employed – holding performances in private apartments under the coverage of weddings and birthdays.

Once we were telling about this experience to our friend who is a theatre manages in a European Union state. Having learned about how we gather spectators to shows in Belarus exclaimed delightedly, “It is a perfect application for a grant! A new method of collecting audience to performances!” Yes, it may be a fairly good application for a grant, but the situational difference is that in Belarus we, just like Vaclav Havel, Andrzei Croub, Pavel Cohout used to in Czechoslovakia, use this method of gathering by perforce, only because we have no possibility to use the legal channels for distribution of information. One more friend of ours, Aaron landsman, American actor and director, with the help of this technology produced a show which is performed at various apartments in New York. His work received rave reviews in America, and we got Aaron’s gratitude for the creative idea.

Belarusian situation at the present moment is exceptional. The time will pass, it will change and our country will take a well-deserved place in the European Union. And if Belarusian situation is exceptional, does it make sense to analyze it? The answer is obvious – yes, it does. At least to ensure that democratic states can in due time take preventive measures in their own political sphere, and exclude the possibility of “Belarusian relapse”.

Totalitarism is contagious, and Czech Republic, where our conference is being held is the best witness to it. Yet not so long ago mass-media specialists came to Minsk from Russia, and they, in their master classes for Belarusian journalists, said exactly the following, “Russian democratic route has passed the point of no return, and we must pay attention to the Belarusian situation”. The route proved reversible, and quickly reversible, and to a large extent due to “Belarusian experience”. Russian powers carefully followed the dictatorial novelties the Belarusian head of state offered the global political market.

It was him who was the first to hold a referendum on cancellation of limits of the number of terms of office, having falsified the results. And when the world community remained silent, his example was followed by the authoritarian rulers of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Venezuela… While the Russian powers just prolonged the term of office to six years avoiding the mechanism of referendum.

It was Lukashenko, who was the first to break the rules of “the gas game”, by starting unauthorized gas intake which lead to European States not getting the product they had paid for. And as a result gas blackmail has become one of the main tools of real politik which European Union states are now trying to fight by means of prayers and conjurations.

It was the Belarusian leader who was the first in the last decades who started to behave as he wills, taking no notion of the rules, conventions and norms. And the EU’s reply to that was Xavier Solana’s visit to Minsk and his friendly talk with the Belarusian leader under the quizzical looks of political captives from their cells.

The creativity of the dictate proves its consistence. What do we have to offer against it?

Any kind of power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely. One of the main aims of art is active participation in building barriers on politicians’ way to the authoritarian style. Politicians like to discourse creativity. Their main message to the creators is “You, the innocent lambs, make pure art, for “the beauty will save the world”, while we, the sacrificial sheep, will take upon us all the dirt of political and social processes”. But Boris Groiss, having reconsidered Dostoevsky’s classical expression, formulated it in a new way: “Art will save the world from beauty”. Art is obliged to retrieve its right to analyze the situation, to ask questions, to control, to dominate intellectually.

Dal’s defining dictionary defines creativity as “creation of the new”. Today, when the topic of innovation in art has started to grow fat of well-being and creators have firmly settled in the depths of glossy magazines, the actualization of creativity has become vital more that ever. Creative muscle is the power which allows a creator to balance on the rope over the abyss of tranquilizedness.

The recently created mechanism of control of art – the financial-political – can hardly stimulate creativity. Its mission is to regularize the cultural process by creating socially-safe environment within artistic field. The system of financial inhibitions works independently from state and governmental structure – the only difference is in the power of inhibition. The number of “dangerous” artistic products in the world is decreasing; the field of art is losing its direct mission leaving only one of all its segments – entertainment of the audience.

Today, when offering sharply socially engaged projects for co-production, in different countries we come across one and the same expression: “They won’t give us finance for that”. We know that “they won’t give” it, insistently offering them again and again, hoping to find that clever cultural investor who understands that art has no right to refuse from controlling social and political processes. And our search proves to give positive results.

On February 28, Lund, Sweden, was host to the opening night of the Belarus Free Theatre’s production “Eurepica.Challenge”. We had selected 14 playwrights from 13 European countries and the USA and suggested them expressing their views on the main challenges their countries are facing. This laborious collective work resulted in a 14-parts production in which we were trying to analyze the problems that contemporary Europe is currently facing. The production received rave reviews from the leading Swedish editions, and we hope that there’s a very interesting fate is ahead of this show, because while working on it we have come to realize who deep the informational abyss between the citizens of different European Union states is.

This project was financed by the council of Lund, the town struggling for the title of European Culture Capital – 2014, and European Cultural Foundation. And despite the fact that ECF only covered the release of the collection of plays and the playwrights’ visit to Minsk, this financial support has to a large extent defined the high degree of the project. During the playwrights’ visit, a traditional March street rally dedicated to Independence Day took place in Minsk. The playwrights were able to see with their own eyes how peaceful marchers and journalists were being beaten up, how young people were being arrested. After that visit many of the authors rewrote their plays finding a tougher approach to articulation of the challenges their countries are facing.

Art is capable of solving more serious issues that the ones it is solving today. Actualization of one or another social or political aspect through the prism of art allows to change focus, and enlarge the field of discussion of the problem significantly.

The Belarus Free Theatre is often accused of being politicized. And these accusations usually come from the apologists of “the pure art” who are incapable of telling the analytic theatre from a political rally, and who are to various degree are involved with the political structures. Neither do we declare political views, nor articulate the ideas of one or another political party, but we maintain our principle stand on two statements: firstly, morality must be the foundation of art; secondly, art must not have any taboo topics. In cases when these principles are broken, creativity starts to serve those who will eventually turn it against art and against creators.

And, ultimately, two examples. The permanent partner of the Belarus Free Theatre – London Soho Theatre applied to one of the EU structures for financing of our joint project within the program of “Eastern Partnership”. The reply the theatre got said, “Your Belarusian partners must provide governmentally authenticated documents confirming their legal status on the territory of Belarus”. We can receive international prizes and brilliant reviews in the world press in any quantity, we can perform at the most prestigious venues, but finally this captivating line, “must provide governmentally authenticated documents” , inevitably emerges discrediting your existence in this world.

The other example – a fragment of a talk with another British partner of ours which took place two days ago in Athens. She suggested us filling in the application for a new project which will be looked into in the context of the cultural program for the Olympic Games in London in 2012. While we were discussing the aspects of this projects, Alex said, “But you should realize that International Olympic committee is very much afraid of any political contexts”. At first, we didn’t even think of political background for the project, but now we are thinking it could be a good topic for consideration – sports in the context of politics in the eyes of theatre. I only believe, we should search the finance for if as far as possible from the International Olympic committee.

If we don’t want the word “creativity” to become another mantra used for writing applications for grants we are obliged to fill this word with practical contents. Today, all the mechanisms of creativity should be directed to the search of new meanings of art’s existence; finding approaches to the audience which has left off a habit of actual talk in the field of creativity; returning art to the though polemical mode of existence.

Natalia Kaliada, general director of the Belarus Free Theatre, made her speech in Prague at the international conference Forum for Creative Europe on March 27.