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BLOG | Dutch Performing Arts in South Korea Teletubbie Oneness There is something schizophrenic about being in South-Korea. It appears to be self-evident to be in Gwangju, a huge city on the other side of the world. All it takes is to get on a plane and you’re there. This matter of luxury of our times almost makes you forget the other side of the cultural schizophrenia: all of a sudden you find yourself in a world that is completely different from the one we, as Western-Europeans, know. A different language for one, turning the stage of the everyday theatre into a cryptic decorum. The overwhelming display of neon signs reminds us of everything we don’t and will never understand about this country. Semantic challenges keep hunting us in Gwangju. It would have been enough to cross the differences between the producers and programmers on one side and the theatre makers and choreographers on the other. But having people from all over Asia and Europe come together for the opening of the Asian Arts Cultural Centre, in an attempt to set up an exchange between a multitude of cultures, obviously does not simplify the communication. It makes one wonder if there’s a possibility of a Eurasia, as dance critic Kim Namsoo suggests in his preface of the rather large scaled festival brochure. He uses the analogy of whale communication, which allows them to share information over huge distances. There is a natural tendency to understand, to explain, to try to make sense of such a complex situation. So let’s have a look at two whales that may be considered representative but certainly make for an interesting dialogue. There’s the old whale Romeo Castallucci, representing everything European. For some reason this is the first show we see and we are generally impressed and overwhelmed. A white-grey machinery turns the holy theatre space into a ruthless yet poetic production machine of shredded cow-bones. The machines spray, turn and almost dance, covering the stage with the remains of slaughtered cows, a product used in agriculture as a fertiliser. The catharsis is a projected text that connects everything that preceded the performance (the real production of the morbid powder) and the cleaners that by then have started to clean up the remains of the performance. The young whale is Korean Kim Jisun, whose video triptych ‘Climax of the next scene’ shows two separate Teletubbie avatars trying to arrange the items in their virtual space. Kim Jisun started with the idea of looking at the world as if it were in a box. The Teletubbies guide us on a journey through Grand Theft Auto, in which people die and kill without consequences, and to the outer edges of the world of Minecraft, a place where one can virtually fall over the cliff of the end of the world inviting a certain kind of player to venture on a quest to this pixelated ‘glitch’ in the games programming. The babylonian confusion between east and west is a mix of how Europeans see Asia, how Asian think Europeans see Asia and the other way around. The definition of Asia being subject of discussion for the Asians themselves. ’You have to understand that we don’t like each other.’, says Malika from India. ‘We don’t visit the other Asian countries and we don’t invite them. We don’t care about the others.’ This provocative statement did not result in a riot but added to the idea of ‘Oneness is not sameness’ as Chinese You Mi had articulated it earlier. It was Hong Kong based Kee Hong who tried to direct the polite confusion towards practice solutions. His plea for a grass roots approach and the need for an Asian network for production and coproduction further inspired the informal exchanges in the niches of the program: the hallways, the limousine busses and the bars. Strangely or logically it was the Europeans who questioned the Asian focus on Europe. Why not take this unique moment in history to develop ‘Asian’ ways of creating, producing and promoting theatre? Maybe the Japanese Deshima model could serve as a model. In 1700 when Japan went into a period of closing itself off from the world, the foreigners were mainly Portuguese and Dutch. The Portuguese missionaries, trying to convince the native Asians of the European world view, were mercilessly thrown into the volcanic ponds of Beppu. The Dutch traders, more opportunistic than spiritual, were assigned the island Deshima, just of the coasts of southern Japan, which served as a Dutch trading post until 1853. This geographical distance assured a clear mental separation between the two cultures. An exchange was possible but limited. However, geographical distance is an extinct concept. It takes only about 11 hours to travel between Asia and Europe. And there’s the internet. So the question remains if the Eurasian whales will swim in the waters between continents, communicating with each other over impossible distances? Or are we slowly turning into Teletubbies, trying to fertilise the common ground with the bleak dust of processed skeletons? Gert-Jan Stam TAAT