Transitions Central Europe: Inventory of Powerlessness

HUNGARY / THE NETHERLANDS

In "The Inventory of Powerlessness" isn’t just another workshop. Part of the long-running international research project of the same name started by the Hungarian director Edit Kaldor in 2012, the workshop has already been staged in a number of European cities. Situated in the borderlands between theatre-documentary and activism, it has set out to make a difference.

Dozens of participants, amateur actors covering a range of ages, nationalities, faiths, levels of education and economic backgrounds, share their personal experiences of social exclusion and powerlessness. Using a computer and the appropriate software, their testimonies are recorded, cross-referenced and encoded to produce something truly unprecedented: a chart of the impasse in which our global society finds itself today.

The "Inventory of Powerlessness" proposed a different approach to the issue of powerlessness. Taking power out of the equation, the project sets out to examine its absence with a profound and undiminishing curiosity. Exploring the various manifestations of powerlessness, it constructs a possible alternative to our current power structures.

People of different ages and social backgrounds meet and interact on the basis of their personal experience of powerlessness. The encoding, comparing and contrasting of these individual experiences brings to light new prospects and penetrating interventions on both the personal and institutional level.

Participants in the workshop at the Onassis Stegi will be asked to work both individually and in groups as they share their personal experiences of powerlessness. Edit Kaldor, her collaborators and the workshop participants will ultimately co-draft a map of powerlessness in Athens—a map which both reveals the specific social, economic and political structures which articulate Athenian life and critiques these structures along with the underlying roots of powerlessness. The process seeks to raise questions relating to awareness, solidarity and identity on an individual and collective level.

In several cities including Amsterdam, Poznań, Berlin and Prague, the workshop has culminated in a performance in which members of the audience have spontaneously taken part.

Participants from all these cities including Athens, will be invited to take part in Edit Kaldor’s next theatrical project, the network performance Web of Trust, which focuses on the next step: taking action to eliminate injustice. The performance will be presented at the Onassis Stegi in May 2016 in the context of the 3rd Fast Forward Festival.