Empire (Art & Politics)
The State as a Work of Art
Walt Disney cannot be allowed sole rights to entertainment. That’s the motto of the Superamas theatre collective. Their theatre is both light and complex. Full of delights and seduction, with an underlying critique of the media, society and politics.
Empire (Art & Politics) starts with a fictionalised reconstruction of a Napoleonic battle. The Battle of Aspern/Essling was fought near Vienna in 1809, and in the view of Superamas it comprises all the contradictions of modernity: victory is claimed by both sides, the French and the Austrians. However, victory is not gained on the battlefield but through public opinion, thanks to propaganda. This is the subject of Empire (Art & Politics): the art that the capitalist West has developed to represent and understand political reality.
You cannot imagine or portray ‘the State’, but Superamas do succeed in exposing it nicely and showing how it is established, how it works and makes propaganda, uses violence, patronises terrorism, satisfies its hunger for power, handles foreigners, reproduces itself and, ultimately, dies.
direction & production Superamas | with Roch Baumert, Alix Eynaudi, Davis Freeman, Magda Loitzenbauer, Ariane Loze, Jamal Mataan, Anna Mendelssohn, Diederik Peeters, Faris-Endris Rahoma, Rachid Sayet & Superamas | co-production Kaaitheater, Parc de la Villette (Paris), WorkSpaceBrussels, Buda Kunstencentrum (Kortrijk), Linz 2009 Cultural Capital of Europe (Austria) | in co-operation with Choreographic Center CCL Linz, Centre chorégraphique National de Montpellier, programme hors-séries, CNEAI (Paris), wp zimmer (Antwerp) | support the City of Vienna, the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts & Culture, the Regional direction of Cultural Affairs of Ile-de-France, the French Ministry of Culture & Communication | sponsored by Le Cru 100% Champagne
