Inventory of the 90’s

After this year’s first issue revolved around Gestus, the controversial notion of Brecht’s theory, and the next one faced the sublime dimensions of the relationship between the body and the machine (in this issue, we continue THE PLEASURE OF THE AUTOMATON with the theme section THE NEW MEDIA ART AND THEORY FROM THE EAST), we conclude the volume with THE INVENTORY OF THE 90S – a retrospective look at the crucial period in the construction of the new world order. Maska is the first expert magazine in Slovenia that tackles the reflection of a period towards which distance is still impossible to reinstate.

Performing arts have in the nineties experienced a post-political dispersion of aesthetic forms. Nomadism as a strategy is dodging the control of the artistic system (irrespective of the art we are discussing) and by that also the standardised taste, it produces continuous reterritorialisation. If you read carefully the selection of a 100 most important performances of the last decade, selected by 10 editors of worldwide acclaimed performance art magazines, you will notice the heterogeneity of forms on which every selection is based on.

We can talk about reciprocal interweaving of different artistic fields throughout the 20th century. The nineties, with their secularisation and democratisation of new technologies, bring new platforms of creative meeting of different artists. Josette Feral wrote about the theatralisation of performance, we could certainly talk about returning influence of performance on theatre, whether it is Meg Stuart, Faber, La Furo dels Baus, Peljhan, Schleef, Rafaela Sanzio, Berger, Dumb Type or Boris Charmatz. The nineties are a time of creative interference of science and art, which will be continually discussed on Maska’s pages.

The fundamental characteristic of drama theatre in the nineties is the switch of generations. The essays on German, Italian and French theatre of the nineties talk about new generations of directors that took the place of the pillars of high modernism (Stein, Zadek, Peyman, Chereau, Ronconi, Strehler…). The most radical gestures that come from the English theatre are still in written form.

The Slovenian situation is analysed through four levels of discourse: the first level is a statistical analysis of post-independence theatre production. The second level are the essays by Kreft, Pipan and Toporišič, the co-creators of theatrical image of the nineties. The third level are the discussions on aesthetic phenomena. The fourth level are the culturally-political discussions with an emphasis on the research of space problematic in performance art.