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‘Violence without Violence’: Spectacle, War and Lola Arias's MINEFIELD/CAMPO MINADO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2017

CLARE FINBURGH
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Abstract

If spectacles are effects of power, designed to win wars, win elections and win customers, then how can these spectacles be better understood, so that we can better understand how they seek to work on us and others around us? And what part can theatre play in developing this understanding? In this article I explore Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of ‘violence without violence’, as set out in his essay ‘Image and Violence’ (2003). The synthesis of life's variety and disarray into an artwork is a violent act for Nancy. But if this violent act itself explodes the very seams which hold it together, it can enable ruptures or openings that prevent its violence from becoming ideologically oppressive. In this way the image inevitably participates in the ‘violence’ of representation, but simultaneously avoids the ‘violence’ of ideology. By way of an example I analyse the singular ways in which Lola Arias's production MINEFIELD – first staged at the Brighton Festival in 2016 before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre during the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) – disarticulated the spectacles of power, heroism and virtuosity that are often weaponized by leaders and by the dominant media for the purposes of fighting and winning wars.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 163 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2017 

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References

NOTES

1 Mondzain, Marie-José, Le commerce des regards (Paris: Seuil, 2003), p. 151.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 19.

3 Bahrani, Zainab, Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia (New York: Zone Books, 2008)Google Scholar.

4 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ‘Introduction’, in Mirzoeff, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 149 Google Scholar.

5 Carruthers, Susan L., The Media at War (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Robert Fisk, ‘Baghdad: The Day After’, The Independent, 10 April 2003, at www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-baghdad-the-day-after-114688.html, last accessed 21 February 2016. Joe Rosenthal's 1945 photograph of four soldiers planting the US flag on the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean, having just overwhelmed the Japanese enemy, is one of the iconic images of the end of the Second World War. Mirzoeff, Nicholas, Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture (New York and London: Routledge), p. 88.Google Scholar

7 Directed by Jo McInnes, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.

8 Squires, Hayley, Vera Vera Vera (London: Methuen, 2012), p. 19.Google Scholar

9 Directed by Christopher Haydon, premiered at the Traverse during the 2013 Edinburgh Festival, before transferring to the Gate Theatre, London.

10 For a definition and discussion of ‘spectacle warfare’ see Kaldor, Mary, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), p. 123.Google Scholar

11 The title of the play is always presented in capitals.

12 Details are taken from Boyce, David, The Falklands War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Sosa, Cecilia, ‘Queering Kinship: The Performance of Blood and the Attires of Memory’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 21, 2 (2012), pp. 221–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Arias's website provides useful resources on each of her productions. See http://lolaarias.com/bio, accessed 12 December 2016. In the late 2000s Arias collaborated with Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll. They have both clearly been shaped by their mutual interest in the mise en scène of the experiences and memories of performers with whom they work. See Garde, Ulrike and Mumford, Meg, Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)Google Scholar.

15 See interview with Lola Arias by Maddy Costa, ‘Falklands War Veterans in MINEFIELD at the Royal Court’, Run Riot, 26 May 2016, at www.run-riot.com/articles/blogs/falklands-war-veterans-minefield-royal-court-director-lola-arias-talks-maddy-costa#permalink, accessed 8 May 2017, n.p.

16 It received four- or five-star reviews in The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Time Out and The Stage.

17 Arias explains that influences on her were a book by Graciela Esperanza called Partes de guerra (1997), and also Svetlana Alexievich's War's Unwomanly Face (1985). She quotes Alexievich as saying, ‘I don't write about war, but about being human in war. I do not write the history of war, but the history of feelings. I am a historian of the soul.’ Lola Arias, ‘The Minefield of Memory: An Interview with Alejandro Cruz’, LIFT website, at www.liftfestival.com/the-minefield-of-memory-la-nacion, accessed 18 November 2016.

18 Arias, ‘The Minefield of Memory’. For an excellent study of the status of soldiers from former British colonies in the British army, see Ware, Vron, Military Migrants: Fighting for Your Country (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)Google Scholar; and ‘“Johnny Gurkha loves a party”: The Colonial Film Archive and the Racial Imaginary of the Worker–Warrior’, in Grieveson, Lee and McCabe, Colin, eds., Film and the End of Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 119–31Google Scholar.

19 Lola Arias, in Lyn Gardner, ‘Minefield: the Falklands Drama Taking Veterans Back to the Battle’, The Guardian, 26 May 2016, at www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/26/minefield-falklands-theatre-veterans-battle, accessed 10 December 2016.

20 Nancy, Jean-Luc, ‘Violence and Image’, in Nancy, The Ground of the Image (2003), trans. Fort, Jeff (Fordham, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), pp. 15–26 Google Scholar, here p. 15.

21 Ibid, p. 16.

22 Ibid, pp. 17–18.

23 Ibid, p. 21.

24 Ibid, p. 26.

25 Arias, ‘The Minefield of Memory’.

26 Nancy, ‘Violence and Image’, pp. 22–3.

27 Butler, Judith, Frames of War (London: Verso, 2009), p. 100.Google Scholar

28 Nancy, ‘Violence and Image’, p. 26.

29 Ibid, p. 24.

30 Ibid, p. 26.

31 The kukri, with which Sukrim did a traditional Nepali dance during the show, is a Nepalese knife with a curved blade, used both as a domestic tool and in armed combat.

32 This and subsequent quotations from MINEFIELD are taken from my (incomplete) transcription of the live show on 9 June 2016. There is currently no published version of the text.

33 See Nicolas Kent, ‘Reasons to Love . . . Political Theatre, Time Out, 16–22 April 2009, p. 116.

34 Arias, ‘The Minefield of Memory’.

35 Arias, in Gardner, ‘Minefield’.

36 Arias, ‘The Minefield of Memory’.

37 Dominic Cavendish, ‘“The Scars Run Deep”: The Explosive Drama That Reunites Old Enemies on Stage’, The Telegraph, 27 May 2016, at www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/the-scars-run-deep-the-explosive-drama-that-reunites-old-enemies, accessed 10 December 2016.

38 See The Telegraph, 2 April 2012, at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9087855/Argentines-burn-tyres-and-Union-Jack-at-anti-British-protest.html, last accessed 5 April 2017.

39 The techniques of bricolage and assemblage were consolidated in the visual art world with Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau, an immersive mixed-media sculptural installation that he built inside his Hannover home (1923–37). It was composed of a great variety of commercially and industrially manufactured items, including building materials and found objects, between which Schwitters created visual relationships through the use of harmonized colours and other compositional techniques. For him, as for his contemporaries such as the Dadaists and surrealists, all material could be considered art. Arias's production also assembled visual and acoustic compositions from a range of diverse objects.

40 Arias, in Gardner, ‘Minefield’. Elsewhere she explains, ‘I've written a text based on their experiences, which they perform, but there have been times when they've said, “I don't feel represented by that”’. Arias in Cavendish, ‘The Scars Run Deep’.

41 See Martin, Carol, Theatre of the Real (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Garde and Mumford, Theatre of Real People.

42 Nancy, ‘Violence and Image’, p. 21.

43 Ibid, p. 22.

44 Dumont, Agathe, ‘La virtuosite: incorporation du pouvoir en danse contemporaine’, in Vasse, David and Vautrin, Eric, eds., Figurations du pouvoir, special issue of Double jeu: Théâtre/Cinéma, 10 (2013), pp. 101–13, here p. 103Google Scholar.

45 Stewart Pringle, ‘Minefield’, Time Out, 6 June 2016, at www.timeout.com/london/theatre/minefield, accessed 10 December 2016.

46 Schneider, Rebecca, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 60 Google Scholar.

47 Baudrillard, Jean, The Spirit of Terrorism (London and New York: Verso, 2002), p. 30.Google Scholar

48 Mondzain, Le commerce des regards, pp. 11, 146.

49 Nancy, ‘Violence and Image’, p. 17.