JOHANNA: One of the minor themes of your performance, Das Beckværk, (The Last European) that we saw yesterday seemed to be this strong criticism against the global... American...?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes?

JOHANNA: And we were wondering was your performance originally made in English... kind of like a ”global” thing?

DAS BECKVÆRK: I don’t think it’s... it’s more European... What was critical?

JOHANNA: Well you were very offensive… anti-American at least...

DAS BECKVÆRK: Did I say something anti-American?

(Laughter.)

JOHANNA: So you are not anti-American?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Erhm... I... I just do the things I do. But I... I think there must be something critical against... because lot of people say something like that here. But I’ve never heard that in Denmark. But it deals a lot with americans and Europeans and war… but there were also some not-nice Iraqis so… was it also anti-Iraqi?

(Laughter.)

JOHANNA: I felt like... in the end where there was this section where you said that the difference between us is that they really believe in something and we just concentrate in thinking ”is this ok...? is this not ok...?”

DAS BECKVÆRK: To make political theatre or films or art is not to stage opinions but more to stage problems and questions and utopias. For me it is more... a big question. But it is very much told from the point of view of a European.

ANNA: It was interesting that you were performing in English and Ole Mads did the same. Was it originally in English?

OLE: That was originally made in English yes.

ANNA: Why?!

(Laughter.)

OLE: Well I write poetry in English and norwegian. When I wrote that text I was working in Berlin.

ANTTI: What was the response in Norway when you performed it in English? Has there been any questions why you perform in English in your... home?

OLE: Yeah... well... the question has been arised...

(Laughter.)

DAS BECKVÆRK: Why do you ask those questions?

KRISTIAN: Because we are nationalists.

(Strong laughter.)

ANTTI: I understand why it was done in English because of the context of the performance. If I had done a thing like that I would have also done it in English.

OLE: Yes I think personally it is an advantage that we can work in different languages. It is working material. I would love to learn finnish and do a finnish piece. And also - I think if I had made it in norwegian I wouldn’t have been invited here!

(Laughter.)

DAS BECKVÆRK: I think that to do a performance… in the “Last European” there is a large body of biographical material, sort of very personal things... when you do it in English, which is not my first language, then it is a bit further away from that body. I cannot point out what it is exactly… There’s something that creates a distance. Working with all too personal things in different language it becomes a little less all too personal. And as one of my aims is to hold both the world stage and the all too personal in one string, then... you need to find ways of getting the material out of that all too personal area.

JOHANNA: These questions about the language come from that we have been talking about the theme of ”who is your audience?” Like, do you see your work as a product you sell to the international festivals or do you do it just for the ”home.” This is of course a black and white position but I think it’s still an important question. Like in your performance, ”Touch the Polar Bear” by Lauris Gundars, that tells about how the latvians were sent to Siberia - in a very poetic way. Lauris Gundars didn’t at first want to bring it here at all because he said it’s for the local people and we really had to talk him over to bring it here.

ELINA: I would like to ask about the audience reaction to ”Polar Bear”... how did the audience react to that play in Latvia?

GUNDARS: We have two main groups there visiting our performance: the old people, 70-80 years old who were in Siberia and came back. In Latvia it’s not a very popular theme to speak about these problems - the human problems of this time. And then, the other group is the children from schools. They are buying our performance as a history lesson: they must know what has happened. And so there is also two different reactions. The old people are looking and sitting without applauding after it’s finished. They are just sitting there. Not going out. It’s in the basement of Occupation Museum, this museum about all this history of First and Second World War and about occupation from Soviet Union, Germany and... this is a special place for us. And the second part is the 50-60 young people, with one or two teachers. They are like a team. They are sending SMS... you can see ten or fifteen light points there in the dark... but slowly slowly slowly... comes the second part of the performance. Then they stay in silence and the applause after the performance - it’s really great! Its spontaneous... really great! The old people come with tears in their eyes, take my hand and go out.

JUKKA: Klaus Beck-Nielsen and Ole Mads were both in their performances alone on the stage. Why do you want to do it all by yourself?

OLE: Its more practical. But... I also have done pieces with other people. We were three people on stage and that was a real fiasco.

(Laughter.)

It has also fallen naturally to me to work alone. I am educated at a little school in
the north of Norway. It’s a film and art school.

DAS BECKVÆRK: For me it’s not a decision. We don’t have any feelings about our theatre society or our film society. We want to stay out of all these contexts and all these small social groups that gather in most cultures and big towns… that think their little circle is all of the world and also... out of the genres if it’s possible. Sometimes there’s lot of people involved but I almost always am the main force or power. But there’s a lot of people in the play tomorrow but  I’m the only one on stage.

KRISTIAN: But is it so that this ensemble-thing in theatre in western parts is coming down? I mean this traditional way to do theatre.

DAS BECKVÆRK: It exists as a romantic ideal. All the state-theatres… every ten years they will declare that now they will have an ensemble but don’t do that. And in the seventies there were these groups… where you seem to have a collective but it is not a collective, it is a master and a group around him. But nowadays in Denmark there are some young people who make the group but it doesn’t often last very long. People are like that nowadays. They marry and they get divorced, they form a group and leave it, they go to do film roles and… move a lot. If you look at the Venice biennial you see that the artist named so-and-so lives in New York, London and Caucasus or… Tokyo, New York and Pretoria, or…

JOHANNA: Andrey, you are a master without a group. You used to work with Formalny Theatre but are now working as an individual. How do you feel about it? You started to look for another possibilities...

ANDREY: I continue working with Formalny Theatre. Our last work we made in France, because we had the possibility there, not in St. Petersburg. But it is with russian actors, russian language and... russian performance, so we’ll try to show it in Russia…

JOHANNA: Funny situation that you have to go Paris to do a Russian performance.

ANDREY: Da da da... Before, we made one in Germany…

DAS BECKVÆRK: I was a lot in the Soviet Union or Russia in the years around 1990 and I saw that theatre had there a great meaning, a political function. But then, when it loses this very clear position - then the market mechanism goes in it and...

ANDREY: In Soviet Union it was necessary because it was one possibility for an idea to go to communication. But now it’s not a problem!

JOHANNA: As you were saying a lot of directors go from St. Petersburg to Moscow because there’s the money...

ANDREY: Yes, of course... but not all. A lot of people go work with mainstream but... My interest is not political theatre… I think politics are politics, history is history. It’s different. I think the area of arts has its own borders. Our famous russian writer Nabokov has talked about this area of arts… I have worked with very visual theatre before but now I think the real underground explosion could be in words. For example now I make... I try to make a performance that Gogol wrote in russian… Ukrainian language could not have been used in his times. We try to tell about this conflict that does not take place only in Ukraine but everywhere in eastern Europe and we try to create our own language… some words from Poland, some from Ukraine, Belorussia, Serbia... we try to make this new pan-slavic language …just for this performance...

DAS BECKVÆRK: It think it will be very difficult to keep politics out of that. I think it’s a myth... and Nabokov was this very old modernist. I believe you can’t have politics there and history there and arts there... and that art is open for all the people... I think - well, in the moment... When I come here and play a performance. I immediately see that audience’s conception of history and politics come in the performance and... I think you can’t have these separate rooms.

JOHANNA:: It seems to me that in Scandinavia where we are like between you and the west... the theatre makers are obligated to think about the reality and say something about it... now that there’s this war in Iraq and everything. But there’s also war in Russia! And during these last ten years or so, when I have been there it seems that the theatre is really stuck in it’s art-world and art is really stuck in its own...

ANDREY: There is a lot of films about Chechenia for example, and also a lot of commercial serials about it. But if you try to do theatre about these issues you will be stopped. You’ll go to prison, at least. So if you want to be fighting the system you have to be something like Che Guevara. In theatre there is of course some kind of fighting but... nothing dangerous.

ANTTI: I think this word “political” means different things to all of us. As I see it all theatre is political. Its impact can be 0% but it is still political. I still see it as a political statement if you produce “Cats” or if you produce anything. It states an opinion: ”I’m doing this for the money”, ”I’m doing this for my family”, ”I’m doing this because I want to do this”... It’s a political statement whatever it is. In that sense I also don’t see there are any specifically political performances. A performance is only namely political if it has a strict agenda - “Free Nelson Mandela” or whatever.

DAS BECKVÆRK: There’s a wave in western Europe. Today everybody at least wants to be political. I don’t know if that really makes it any more political… For instance in Denmark it is very swampy so we don’t have any underground. There’s just sand. If you dig in Denmark… its not possible to go underground.

(Laughter.)

I think it’s the same thing with most of the Europe. There is of course the commercial theaters but then there’s this transnational society of celebrity-artist-productions that move from... like in the art world - from this biennale to Documenta and everything... and there is Theatre Garasjen... you know there’s a connection of people producing their things and sending them around, people flying and looking at performances…

JOHANNA: Global market for art.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes.

ELINA: We had this same sort of discussion at the last festival. There was Alvis Hermanis who said he doesn’t do political theatre and then there was this young swedish director from Teater Tribunalen… I see Alvis Hermanis’ performances very political - for me - but he was the guy who said he doesn’t do political theatre.

JOHANNA: Isn’t it funny that we have this discussion about political theatre every year, every festival.

DAS BECKVÆRK: I think the theme’s good but the problem is that we have only one existing script. Because it would be good if there was some newer sentences in this script.

KRISTIAN: Yes. I’ve been working last year in Tallinn and it’s been my first time working abroad and I think… because in Finland we have this certain tradition of... you might say political theatre and I think it’s a little painful for finnish theatre-makers... the whole word ”political” is a little painful and so - we talked about this political meaning in art with the von Krahli actors… it is very complicated… There I am, pushing my experiences and they are pushing theirs and it’s very... very impossible. I think more important is what is the feeling between the stage and the audience. In that sense I agree with Alvis that emotion in theatre is everything.

JOHANNA: How do you feel about that?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Well... I had some clothes on... there was an instrument. Emotion is not everything. Of course I want to make an emotional impact. Sometimes stronger than other times. But I wont have that as a dogma: “emotion is everything”.

ELINA: Now I want to ask about Poland. Does anybody make political theatre in Poland?

KATARZYNA: In communistic times we had these famous groups that still exist… that dealt with political things, but issues that did not perhaps concern Poland so much. Few days ago there was an opening of a performance… on a big stage in Gdansk: a piece about Lech Walesa. After so many years someone finally touched this problem. Very young people made this performance and I’m very curious what they have come up with. Of course there’s many influences now. The german theatre is on the top and everybody wants to make performances…

ELINA: The German way.

KATARZYNA: Yes. And also this new drama like Sarah Kane… you can find that everywhere.

ELINA: What kind of theatre do you make?

KATARZYNA: We come from fine arts. We make improvisations. My husband, who is the chief of our ensemble, gives us some topics... drawings, situations… he also creates places where we improvise and then he collects ideas. We are from fine arts and it gets all the times more reduced to this visual theatre… we also work a lot with choreography. Place is also very important for us. For instance one performance took place in a ballroom. And this was the idea: how they come in and how they go out. The ideas are different but it’s always about human relationships. Deep emotions. We are based in this little village. We moved there from different cities. We don’t all live there but we have this wonderful place to work there in the mountains. A little village called Mihailovitsa.

JOHANNA: That is very interesting in that local-global-sense... kind of like staying there like monks and then going to the world.

KATARZYNA: We don’t really perform there in the village but sometimes we do these little performances.

DAS BECKVÆRK: We have a place in the outskirts of Copenhagen. It’s really not out of the city or it’s not really in. It’s in one of those in-betweens that all the bigger cities have. And we get some money also from this commune but I think there never comes anybody from that region… the building is local but we have no local impact. Its like an alien lying there.

JUKKA: I’d like to ask a question about being an European - or more specifically about being a European artist or theatre maker. Perhaps the question is that do you feel yourselves as being European or do you just feel that you come from different countries?

DAS BECKVÆRK: I think what we are doing is very much dealing with European identity, the possibility of being European. We traveled to Iraq and introduced democracy there. After that we went to Jordan and then to the US. And I and we felt very European, extremely European. But when I come here and talk about being European I’m not sure if Finland is a part of my unconscious Europe. I think my Europe...

KRISTIAN: Ends in Sweden.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yeah... Sweden and Norway are there... I don't know about Iceland. The British islands, the whole of Europe, even perhaps Turkey more than Finland... No...

(Laughter.)

KRISTIAN: Marius, are you European?

MARIUS: Erhm... I’m from an exotic country.

JOHANNA: Your play was dealing with being a neighbor and a neighbor in Europe also... so is it a theme for you?

MARIUS: Being a neighbor?

JOHANNA: Yes.

KRISTIAN: Are you a secret European?

(Laughter.)

MARIUS: Seven years ago when I wrote the play ”Neighbor” so... then we were not European for sure. I mean I like Europe... privately... If you ask if something has changed for us as artists, coming to EU, I would say that maybe not so much because for Europe we are still ”exotic” as I said and when western Europe audience hears about Lithuania they think it has some special theatre model and they want to see this ”special model” - that is by the way not so special in my opinion. So... I like to come to festivals like this and see many kinds of theatre, political and metaphorical and others... I think in Lithuania we are still on that one model and... you spoke long about this political theatre and Moguchy had his arguments and I think there exists a big difference in western theatre and eastern, because in our theatre, which 50 years existed in this communistic system, there were two possibilities of being political. One was to do propaganda-theatre and the other was to say something against the government in very metaphorical way. And so, today, we still speak in this very metaphorical way and we don’t know how to speak straightly. And maybe other reason that... in our part of the world every artist thinks he creates for eternity and political theatre is thought to be something very short-lived and so artistically not that valuable. I for myself am just discovering that political theatre can be very interesting. When we did ”Madagasgar” and had it in Göteborg we had conversations with the director about the text and there, in the text, was some... I would not say political... things but some historical-political things about the atmosphere in Lithuania between the first and second world war - some scenes with Stalin and blaa blaa blaa and he said ”No! I’m not really interested in that, maybe some swedish theatre would like it but...”

(Laughter.)

ELINA: So they don’t put Stalin on stage in Lithuania?

MARIUS: No.

ELINA: Marlene Dietrich can come, but not Stalin.

(Laughter.)

ELINA: Can you tell about ”Close Cities”

MARIUS: Yes it was a SEARS-project. They collect many artists from Baltic Sea-countries and... and they did debates and I was chosen to go to Copenhagen to do some research. For me it was ok but of course there was this difference in systems that we are brought up in, you know I grew up in a communistic system - so I couldn’t say I very well understood Denmark. But finally - somehow we did it. We found one criminal story and then it was like a skelett for my play that finally takes place in Malmö and Copenhagen.

JOHANNA: So do you feel yourself now as a European writer since you got money from the SEARS-project that gets the money from the EU?

(Laughter.)

MARIUS: No maybe the question is not about the money... where it comes from... for me it’s same money...

JOHANNA: But you wouldn’t have gone to Malmö and Copenhagen...

MARIUS: Well I could have... I had enough money for the trip. But I wouldn’t have been able to do it ten years ago, then I really couldn’t speak here because we would be from such different worlds. And I remember when I came first time to Sweden it was maybe 1992 or 1993 as a picker of strawberries... and I did it for 3 to 4 summers when I was a student and yes, maybe it was for me a completely different world. Different rules. In this little village I was afraid that I would go to wrong places and they would take me to jail or something. In this ten years I have traveled very much and now I can say that I know this world. Not maybe like you but...

JOHANNA: That’s a very interesting experience about a relationship to Western countries. You came here to pick strawberries and...

KRISTIAN: And you’re still picking strawberries. (Laughter.) Maybe you get also some whipped cream on them: swoosh... (More laughter.) For myself, I’m going to a completely different direction because I’m going more and more to the slavic side. First to Tallinn and then Vilnius. Maybe I’ll die there! It might be a good idea to die there in some remote village and...

ELINA: I have only traveled to those capitals like Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn and I think they are more European than Finland. The people in these capitals. The young people are going very fast in those countries, they are...

DAS BECKVÆRK: Towards Europe? Or towards American culture?

ELINA: I don't know what but there’s been happening a lot and there happens a lot in culture - of course, because money is going to those countries. So they seem to be very self-confident, to me. Like... very European... Western-European, middle-European.

JUKKA: So to be European is to be self-confident?

ELINA: No, but... I remember when I first time met Marius and... maybe it was a joke but I never forget this because we were talking about NATO and I said that well we are waiting in Finland when they will announce that we are now a part of NATO. You said: welcome to Europe.

(Laughter.)

MARIUS: For all these countries NATO means different things. For us, Europe... it’s economic, I mean... it’s culture, not safeness. Really people in that part of world they don’t feel safe, still. Especially in Baltic Countries. So for them America is like something they can believe in. After WW2 Americans said they will come every christmas and now it is still the same.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Someone from Latvia told about how they put up this heart of candles in Riga to protest against the war in Iraq. In copenhagen many people were demonstrating in front of the American embassy. And I think that neither of those actions had anything to do with the iraqi people. I think they had something to do only with identity: ”it is important for me to show I’m against them.” It had no political impact. Nothing was changed. To be political, outside of arts also, it’s a problem of forms. There are actions that have become impossible, like walking around a christmas tree or something. A tradition, that has no...

JOHANNA: You mean demonstration is a tradition that does not work?

DAS BECKVAERK: In Denmark it doesn’t work.

JOHANNA: It doesn’t work here either.

DAS BECKVAERK: To put up a heart of candles...

JOHANNA: It looks nice.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes it looks nice and perhaps you felt good with the people you did it with. But the people that were the issue - they knew nothing about it.

MARIUS: But demonstrations work in Belorussia and in other countries that are not democratic...

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes. A demonstration needs to dangerous! To work.

ROLF: I’m not sure it has ever worked in that sense. I think the time when you made big solutions in an instant - it’s gone. We have to take one step at a time. All the small stones you put together... I think it’s important to make demonstrations in Copenhagen and hearts of candles in Riga. Even though it doesn’t change anything I think it is important... to know there is people around the world... even though it doesn’t change anything in the moment, there is resistance.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Don’t you think it is not important to know if the stones had no impact?

ROLF: You can never tell that ”Ah, this is the key stone.” The fact that there is a lot of stones is important and I think that you have to keep on and keep on and keep on... In Göteborg some years ago there was this top meeting of EU and there was big demonstrations, people fighting the police and everything... and this was the first time in Sweden. There were big discussions about it but it didn’t change anything. It was dangerous and... The police wasn’t good. The people throwing the stones wasn’t good. It’s not so easy. I was in a demonstration playing music. I had this idea that music is stronger than stones. But that was before the really big trouble started. I don’t know. I think we have to keep on and keep on and keep on. We have to be patient.

DAS BECKVÆRK: I agree completely that we have to go on, even though we don't know, but if you just say that all the stones are important it also becomes a way of staying in a safe society. Then I could say that perhaps me drinking this cup of tea is important. I never know. You also have to doubt the ways you act because otherwise... this relativism... I think it’s... yack! You have to make decisions and try to find ways that could have more impact.

ROLF: Of course. But I mean... everything is not good... I don't know about this idea of drinking tea is it good or not... if it makes you feel good and helps you have a nice conversation with somebody. Maybe there could come something good with you drinking tea. What I mean it’s not that easy anymore. We cannot change the world just like that. When I was in my twenties in the middle of the 1970’s it was easy. We were good and they were bad. And now there are all these different nuances of gray. You can’t really tell where the gray turns to white and when it turns to black...

DAS BECKVÆRK: You can. If something is more gray than... I can see that this wall is more white than... your jacket.

ROLF: Of course if you take my black trousers and the white wall... you can tell the end-points but you can’t tell where the black...

DAS BECKVÆRK: If you have two jackets you can tell which one is more gray...

ROLF: I think today you can’t say that this is the only way to change society. I think we have to do it in many many ways. When I started to do theatre long time ago we did street theatre against the nuclear power. This guy I was working with said that ”don't believe that people are going to change their opinion because they have seen the performance. We are just one of these drops that makes the hollow in the stone - but that is big enough.”

ELINA: In our country we have the problem that the country is richer than ever but the government doesn’t have the money so - the people doesn’t have the money. It’s just those few people that have it. The demonstrations I have been taking part in are to unite with people, and same time I think that somewhere in Europe there are people standing and we are keeping hands and doing that kind of thing. It’s a same kind of thing when princess Diana died. She had never been in Finland but thousands of people were crying. It was crazy what happened on that day when princess Diana died. It is a little like same thing. Participating to something.

DAS BECKVÆRK: And I think it’s the obligation of all the people living in these very, very safe and rich countries... we have to try to decide... even though - you say - there are all these nuances of gray... we have to try to make the decision that ”could this be more gray than this one.”

ROLF: I think it is as you’ve said important to belong to something. There has started this new ”Off-network” in Austria in june this year. I was in the meeting where we founded this network and we were talking about how do we look at European identity - like we did here just minutes ago - and I said for me coming from Sweden that is so far north it is important to belong to something that is happening in Europe. Then this man from Greece said that it is important for us also because we are so far in the south. Then this guy from Switzerland said that ”well, since we are outside the EU we feel like we are outside Europe...”

(Laughter.)

ROLF: So... who is European anyway? Everybody has some picture about the other one: ”These are the real Europeans”... Who is really European?

MARIUS: Where is Europe? It is also a strange thing that a European goes to Iraq but doesn’t care about for example Belorussia or...

JOHANNA: Do you know the Belorussian situation?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes, yes! And I want to go there! Cause I need some more blood!

MARIUS: No but I mean it’s something like... Strange...

DAS BECKVÆRK: They write a lot in our tiny little Denmark about Belorussia and Ukraine but it is this world focus...

JOHANNA: Yeah, it’s not on TV!

DAS BECKVÆRK: You know the Ukrainians they found the orange thing - and now the Belorussian try to do it with orange. But it doesn’t work, they have to find another color or another brand because then we will look at it at least for twenty minutes... and who cares about the Iraqi people? Nobody? I mean it’s also a choice of the ”big theatre makers” - the really big ones, George and the boys. I think they’re not going to do a big thing about Belorussia... it depends how much oil there is.

JUKKA: I think it’s not the only way to be political to talk about or do things about big issues. I am thinking about the play Kristian did in Krahli theatre... there is this scene where the character quits his job and goes to forest to live with a rabbit. And there’s a scene where he wakes up in the forest and there are all these animals around him making all these different sounds... and he wakes up and the rabbit is there and everybody is very happy for a moment and it’s very naive... but somehow I feel that this scene was very political although it looked a little bit like children theatre or something. I just feel that what is political can come from quite surprising direction. And... I haven’t really been analyzing why it seemed like something political to me to see that beautiful forest scene, but... maybe because it showed me something of an alternative way of life in a beautiful and very emotional way. And then I can see a performance that is very angry and very political and it has a big manifest and everything and still it doesn’t communicate with me. So the political content of a performance can come from a very surprising direction.

KRISTIAN: In that sense ”political” means that you really get the connection with the stage and the audience... and when it happens... you can say it is political...

JUKKA: Somehow in this today's world just the fact that you can get a connection with the audience is a political act because it is quite rare that people nowadays get any sort of connection with one another.

DAS BECKVÆRK: You create society and that’s political. That’s why it isn’t political to stage opinions because you can’t communicate with an opinion. You can only agree or disagree with an opinion. But if you suddenly deal with a political thing and the audience does not know what you think about it and it creates a stir... you create a position where you do not know what to think but you get a sense that this is political.

KRISTIAN: Few years ago I had this idea that maybe it is like... as an audience... I think what I want is the answers - from the artists.

DAS BECKVÆRK: What?

KRISTIAN: Answers. Suggestions for another kinds of planets we could find. But when I see from the stage very heavy critics of these issues we have - we all know that! And the means of art are going rougher and rougher. It’s heavier and... well, they’re shooting people on the stage. They’ll explode the whole theatre. That’s the last line. As an artist I cannot see any light in that direction and I am trying to go to another direction which is, at the moment something very simple and very... in one sense very stupid. But what I have experienced with the actors and with the audience I think people have very well received the warmness that comes from this... just pure joy of listening to a little story. As an artist I think that... do your job. Leave the thinking to the thinkers and politics to politicians. In this sense Nabokov’s idea of art as an island I think there’s lot of treasures to be found.

ROLF: I just met a theatre maker who lives in London... or was it London? It doesn’t make difference, anyway, he lives on this very rough area. And they were talking about what to put on stage and they said that we do not need to put all the problems on stage because people see them every day... so what we do is we put things on stage that make people get power, give them hope, get them strength to keep on fighting. keep on living as human beings. And that is very political.

JUKKA: Everybody makes Dante’s hell because there’s so much conflict and all but nobody makes the Paradise because it’s fucking boring. I think it would be very political to show a happy person on stage... that on stage... somewhere... a human being can be happy. You can be happy.

JOHANNA: One word that Kristian said was important for me: warmth. In our society where everything is rich and nice but we lack warmness. But if a performance or art or another person on the stage can give us warmth that is something very valuable and very much worth doing and it doesn’t matter if it’s political or artistic anymore because then it is... human.

KRISTIAN: As an artist I think it’s meaningful.

DAS BECKVÆRK: I just can’t make any naive things in that sense, in your sense... we try through... perhaps... fragility... to create this warmth.

JOHANNA: You (Das Beckvaerk) mentioned the word ”compassion”. The man on the TV-set in your performance said ”have compassion for me.” We also need to have compassion towards the audience. By the way... What happened to him?

DAS BECKVÆRK: Who? Ken Bigley?

JOHANNA: Yes. Did he die?

DAS BECKVÆRK: He escaped. But then he fell... on the ground, and they took him back and took his head off.

JOHANNA:: And they filmed it.

DAS BECKVÆRK: Yes.

JOHANNA: And you can see it?

DAS BECKVÆRK: It is all there, in the internet. Not the escape of course, they didn’t plan that... but the beheading is there.