The point of departure for this new voyage towards Mont Analogue is the THEATRE
OF THOUGHT. We have been experiencing the terrible attraction of the unthinkable,
which rather than securing a safe ground for theoretical reflection has opened
onto a series of contradictions and collapses. The most difficult to get over
perhaps is the relationship between theatre and event, two terms that seem
inseparable but which, in their reciprocal attraction and repulsion, lead into an
abyss, into the vortex that swirls between language and thought. In a
constellation with four cardinal points, theatre/event/language/thought, every
movement of the unquiet mind directs us towards the infinite, where what is at
stake is a question of reality and its relation to representation.
Theatre of Thought, an index in three phases:
The first phase, THEATRE OF THOUGHT I, is our attempt to think the
unthinkable by bringing certain evidence to light, which – as always – we offer to
artists, curators and theoreticians so as to provoke a response. This material will
be published in the philosophy journal Critique and Humanism 30, at the end of
November 2009. The second phase, BLACK HOLES, is a performative stage in
the itinerary of MA/Theatre of Thought, where reactions conceived in response to
the first phase will be brought into encounter with each other. This encounter will
take place at Xing’s space RAUM in Bologna, Italy on 19th of November 2009.
BLACK HOLES is envisaged as an event-flux that will attempt to come to terms
with the ‘trans-’ states of creation (translations, transcriptions, transliterations,
transfigurations), and with the paradox of representation as a language in-
between. The events (performances, dialogues, screenings, dinner) are
expressions of a thought orbiting an absent thing, and are constructed on more
than one level. Each is a configuration emerging from various layers like the
remnants of script still to be deciphered. All of this material will be the basis for a
third phase, THEATRE OF THOUGHT II: DEVIATION & CONTRADICTION, re–
lapsing into the space of the printed page where, in time, we will reflect on the
theoretical consequences of the paradigm shift proposed in this second voyage.
We will land in Cannon magazine sometime next year hopefully all safe and in a
healthy condition.
We don’t know more than this, everything is to become. We invite you to take the
editorial as a map, to inspire you, to confuse you, to lose yourself in, and to find
something in the trajectories of this new expedition.
Bon Voyage!
Piersandra Di Matteo - Snejanka Mihaylova