Research: Bojan Đorđev and Stipe Kostanić
Adaptation and Direction: Bojan Đorđev
Performance: Miloš Đurović, Stipe Kostanić and Ana Mandić
Stage Design: Siniša Ilić
Stage Movement: Selma Banich
Costume Design: Maja Mirković
Production: Dragana Jovović
Stage Speech: Dijana Marojević Diklić
Graphic Design: Katarina Popović
Technical Realisation: Nenad Piperin
Co-Producer: Centre for Cultural Decontamination
The performance was realised with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, the Culture Programme of the European Union through Create to Connect Project and the Heartefact Fund.
Running time: 60 minutes
The performance This Is Not Red, But Blood! was created as an exploration into the possibility of translating the Yugoslav communist, revolutionary and Partisan poetry into a performative gesture. It establishes connections between revolutionary poetry and performance art as an artistic practice that is closely linked to the moment of performance, the eternal present time. The performers recite poems by Vasko Popa, Karel Destovnik Kajuh, Oton Župančič and other authors, depicting the horrors of battles, devotion and courage, as well as the revolutionary enthusiasm after the liberation and belief in creating a better world. Their task is a search for embodiment and social situation of Partisan poetry which - in spite of prejudices and clichés about Social-Realism, propaganda and anti-communist disdain - still remains a powerful artistic expression, inextricably linked to the revolutionary and avant-garde ideas about creating a new, better world.
Intangible, created to be performed – non-existent without the social and collective moment – Yugoslav revolutionary poetry emerged during the National Liberation War, guerrilla warfare, as one of numerous art forms (prints, comic strips, plays, even choreographies as an equal form of struggle).
The poetry keeps an account of the toil and struggle on the one hand, but it also lays down the plans for the new world, an encouragement to never stop going forward, to create the possible out of the impossible, from a capitulated and occupied country – a free one. Besides Yugoslav revolutionary poetry, the red thread of the play and of dealing with the Partisan art is the study How to Think Partisan Art by Miklavž Komelj.
The name of the performance is a paraphrase of Jean-Luc Godard’s reply to a journalist of Cahiers du cinema, who commented that there is a lot of blood in his film Pierrot le fou. Godard laconically answered: ‘Not blood, but red.’ The paraphrase This Is Not Red, But Blood! has been taken for the name of the play from the interview of the same name of Ana Vujanović with Marina Gržinić about her video art published in the TkH magazine, as a re-politisation of the attitude of the author who systematically worked on the question что делать? in the film art.
The title refers more precisely to the relationship between art and struggle, because the Partisan poetry – figuratively speaking ‘red’, emerges through struggle – figuratively speaking ‘blood’ – as struggle itself, not instead of it. As the director said the title could be clarified by adding the third element: ‘This is either red, or blood, but either way it is communism.’
Walking Theory – TkH is an independent, extra-academic, institutionally non-aligned platform for the performance of theoretical-artistic activism. TkH editorial collective gathers theoreticians, producers and artists from the field of performance art, visual arts and film: Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić, Bojan Đorđev, Dragana Jovović, Jelena Knežević, Katarina Popović, Marta Popivoda and Siniša Ilić. The TkH projects have included research and critical educational projects, publishing (TkH magazine for theory of performing arts), art productions in the fields of performing and visual arts and film.
The recent projects include:
Đorđev, The Discrete Charm of Marxism, Amsterdam/Geneva 2014;
Ferčec/Đorđev/Dimitrijević, Protok Žudnje (The Traffic of Desire), Belgrade 2013/Zagreb 2014;
Sajko/Ilić/Đorđev, To nismo mi, to je samo staklo (This Is Not Us, This Is Just Glass), Belgrade 2012;
Vujanović/Asentić, On Trial Together, Novi Sad 2012/New York, Athens, Belgrade 2014