Ten writers from the Institut for Dramatic Writing reflect on the current refugee movement, in a collaborative writing project, the Balcony Conversations. The authors are »reacting to one another in written form, answering, overwriting, and reformulating. And in doing so, a text emerges – simultaneously a chain reaction, a texture woven in cooperation, Chinese whispers, and letter correspondence – which, from various perspectives, tells of an urgency and longing for communication, the external, the other, the unfamiliar. A process which we test on its potential for the Political.« (Anna Gschnitzer) Schlosspost features the project. In part 2, author Maria Christina Hilber writes about Agents_between the Worlds: searching for an entrance into the dynamic of an mental radicalization process.
Balcony Conversations
Agents
_between the worlds
Who is going to ask them better questions?
The text follows the thoughts of journalist Nicolas Hènin.
A bouquet of questions between realities.
Murmuring. Fizzling. Jingling.
Through the gauze-like layers of the theatrical world, out of the transparent whispering, »quite-speakers« manage to raise their voices out of the consultancy’s murmur. How can fear be taken away from the furious ones? How can terror be taken away from its agents? What drone can be plunged into the divine »Truman Show« of the advocates of rage? And how, yes how can a mental resilience be induced?
Tripping. Running. Diffused Light.
Many agents indeed appear within the vibrato of questions. Two-legged insecure beings stroll uncoordinated but still in perfect timing. They do not serve the uniformed mechanism, the casual dress, but with a firmly posed stick, they negotiate mightiness and amok through their spongy bodies. And much more than this: they hitch a ride on the rumble of a mad worm called elimination. No way out. Indeed, no way out.
They are figures with neither hold nor anchor. They stand on a reflecting surface, like a flat screen, lying horizontally. As soon as they enter this medial tableau, finally they emerge in the flesh, where before only monstrous anticipations were. But what are they?
If they were to still have flesh, then memories would be retained within them: of what came before, before their appearance. And even earlier, the invisible moments away from the »show.« These neuralgic points which let someone become what they were not before. In gestures they developed confidence in.
Asking.
Who were the people-catchers who salivated over them? What were the turning points that led them into the tempting arms of collecting agencies? Through what meaningful invasions did they change their values and offer their lives and above all their bodies to the service of their leaders? Allah? What was possible in 1938 would not have been thinkable in 1930.
Countless flat screen stages. Shiny. Polished.
When they come to fulfill their role and become kamikaze messengers, they drive themselves into it, deeper and deeper into the billowing formation of an enemy’s world. A world which is not able to disengage itself from irritated veins along this shifted system or rules. However they might be called, there is a small amount of peace in their doing, once they »perish in the course of investigation.« If their biological mothers do briefly appear then, they give them back what had gotten lost along the way: roots, relation, and history. At that moment, the stage may expand as it likes as there is always someone paying attention to the right kind of lighting.
The butchery aside (at least the gods are not named Thor or Wotan), some of their own family members are simply not there anymore (?). They might not be missed during the battle, but then at the daily lunch: they might not exist anymore, there in the queue of terror. They withdraw into their houses. They probably even left their own bodies. Dead.
But how is that truly possible?
All those little turning points! It is the private moments of the assassins, when they were not yet hunters. When they were still in a deeper diversity, a living plurality. To eat. To sigh. To laugh. Tied to their mother’s apron. Unrequited lovers. Defiant types. Maybe naïve. Doubters. Entwined, entangled, interdependent properties. How is it this time that complex beings transform into ticking time-bombs? How do you get into the depths of the agent’s psyche, into their unconscious chambers? What would the methods be? What mnemonics create a world of transnational trenches?
Billowing! Billowing! Billowing!
Logically every tree should be filled with an enemy. Every stone can be a potential weapon. Every piece of information from outside, TV, the radio, social media, might immediately become assimilated and integrated into the order of new things. When did that moment happen which made any external fertilization no longer possible? When did the external dissolve? When did it become part of the internal? Inhaled and introduced to the rules of their new cosmos of enemies?
How do figures construct and infect themselves, growing from a little spark? They speak in tongues. Yes, »it« speaks through them, as if »it« were a being, a machine of terror, a commonly constructed psychosis of revenge. Curiously, it is always the women that are promised as gifts. As doings. At best as mothers. Silent, smiling, hymen-sealed female beings, waving down to earth, out of pinkish and yellowish puffy clouds.
How can the other heaven be dragged to earth again?
They talk about a matrix? Their parallel universe on earth is already here. How strong is their belief in it? How many have already emotionally detached but are not able to leave their glowing fellows? These thoughts are directed to the dissidents. We are watching the same movies. It’s the same stage we stand on over and over again.
#exitthroughyourblindspots #buthowcanwereachyou
