The Final Match
For many people, football is so much more than a game. But now, the impact of the pandemic means that fans will have to tread softly for an indefinite time. This is not so in Janša’s radio play and performance.
In his alternate reality, the European Football Championship, planned for 2020 and postponed to 2021, is taking place this year after all. For the final match, it’s Germany against Sweden. The audience can only experience it in their cars, where they listen to two sportscasters bring the phantom game to life through their descriptions alone.
Talking shop and philosophizing, they set the stage for ingenious plays, chants, and insights into the abysmal world of professional football, reflections on current world political events and even touch upon the utopian and emancipatory potential of the present crisis. It’s the same as always: the ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes—the rest is theory.
Radio play / drive out performance
Director: Janez Janša
Production Maska and steirischer herbst ’20
Premiere 24. 9. 2020
Cast
Crew: Martin Brachvogel, Leonie Bramberger, Alexander E. Fennon, Gabriela Hiti, Mathias Lodd, Mina Palada
Director: Janez Janša
Text: Boštjan Narat
Translation: Ann Catrin Bolton
Sound production: Matevž Kolenc
Sound: Fabio Schurischuster (Die Mischerei)
Production: Tina Dobnik, Maska
Reception in Public
If you have a drive-in performance, why not have a drive-out one?
A talk with artist Janez Janša / Delo / 23 September 2020
“If 20 years ago, on the Trg republike in front of the parliament, I performed the first drive in play in Slovenia, which opened the Manifesta biennial of contemporary art, this time I will do FINAL MATCH as a drive out version. The visitors will be picked up by taxi at their address and taken to the area where they will be able to tune into the special radio signal reserved for commenting the match. It is interesting that taxi drivers participated at the Manifesta opening, too: the then director of Cankarjev dom, the co-producer of the play, Mitja Rotovnik hired 80 taxis for foreign guests who arrived with public transport.”
Alternativa v času paranoje
Delo / 29. 9. 2020
Last week, a performance by Janez Janša marks the opening of Graz’ 53rd festival of contemporary art.
Interview: Janez Janša
Arts of the Working Class / 12. 10. 2020
Arts of the Working Class / 12 October 2020
“Football is in the first place big business, too big to be treated as a game. The rich are always the winners. But yes, there are social differences in art, there is an economically powerful West (or North) and globally poor South not only on a geographical level, but in one and the same artistic community.
