Yosi Wanunu
The Personal is not Political, the Political is Political!

The Personal is not Political, the Political is Political Delusions of grandeur, a political resumé! I participated in a hunger strike with Mother Therese. I shared a prison cell with Nelson Mandela. I joined the Sudanese pirates in the Arab Sea. I was the last surviving Tamil rebel in Sri-Lanka. I shot Ronald Reagan. I was the first person to dig a hole in the Berlin Wall. I was part of the firing squad that shot Nicolae Ceausescu. I brought peace to the Middle East. I managed to unionise the foreign workers in Dubai. I rode a motorbike with Che Guevara. I wrote Obama’s speech: Yes, we can. I convinced the Hutus and the Tutsis to talk. I saved the extinct population of the White-Rhino. I made the globe warmer. I localised globalisation. I’m responsible for Greece’s debts. I worked for 50 cents a month in a Chinese factory. I apologised to the Aboriginal people of Australia. I supplied Silvio Berlusconi with entertainment. I read bible stories to Angela Merkel. I helped Tony Blair find the third way. I read George HW Bush's lips. My face was the first face in facebook. Myself and Al Gore invented the Internet. I was Warren Buffett’s secret financial adviser. I’m next in line to replace Fidel Castro. I was the campaign manager of Hugo Chavez. I was the only prisoner to escape Guantanamo Bay. I danced on the roofs of Cairo. I never stopped dancing since then. (PS: I’m the world's worst political dancer). The Personal is not Political, the Political is Political. (Dealing with the "BIG" issues in today’s performance.) There are many who would claim that performance is "inherently" political; I disagree with the unequivocal nature of this claim. But I believe that much of performance art engages ethical judgements that can be appropriated for a political purpose by its audience. On the one hand, anything can be politicised. On the other hand, one has to make a distinction as to what, at any moment, is worth being politicised and what is not, and for whom. That, finally, is determined not by political theorising but by moral judgements. Despite Foucault’s concentration on "micropolitics," which fits nicely with so many monological varieties of theatricalised gestures of resistance, to describe something as politically efficacious in critical or positive terms necessarily refers to systems of laws and policies to be made or unmade, or, within civil society, ethical norms to be debated. My argument may seem to focus more on the performance of politics than the politics of performance, but without an understanding of one, the practice of the other will be more likely to fail in its aims. For people who have lived in totalitarian regimes the phrase "the personal is the political"has no liberating overtones: it means quite the opposite. The antirealist avant-garde is not going to reach a broad audience if it fixates on deconstructing performative forms as the primary political act. What is more, if it could reach a broad audience its own integrity would be questioned. The antirealist avant-garde conceives of itself as the cutting edge of political life. But democratic political change cannot take place without the support of a broad audience. Therefore, the antirealist avant-garde, in order to make any real political impact, and not remain in a perpetual self-reifying marginal status, must have some impact upon a mediating form that will translate some of the political impact of the avant-garde’s questionings to a larger constituency. And that form tends to be what it invidiously labels "realist." What we honorifically call "the political" can and does have a broad meaning. Just as with the person who acts out of pure rage for injustice to be acknowledged, without thought of how it is to be redressed, or how she is to gain control over her life except through this momentary expression of rage, so too the monological theatricalised effects of strategic action are going to have impact, but it will be of no use unless they can at some point be transformed into dialogical communicative action, and speak beyond the rhetorical boundaries of their own performers and acolytes. This Coaching Project is addressed to any performance artist who is interested in re-questioning political performance and is currently working with political issues and themes. Yosi Wanunu is director, he studied history of art, theatre and film in Israel, Europe and the US. Before moving to Vienna in 1997 he lived and worked in NYC at the BCBC, the Ohio Theatre, La Mama ETC, at Here and at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre of Richard Foreman, a.o. He is co-founder and artistic director of the label toxic dreams, and created more then 30 own works with the collective since 1998. The last works are a series on politics and theatre: "The Art of War", "Toxic Davos" and "The 100 % Environmentally Friendly Show". Additionally he works with other independent performers and collectives in Europe.