‹they live› presents the political experiences of two Belgrade theatre makers during a political project in Serbia. In February 2012, Maja Pelević (*1981) and Milan Marković (*1978) became members of seven Serbian political parties with different ideologies and ambitions. They became members of the respective cultural councils soon after joining. The two artists presented their party colleagues a dossier with their thoughts on the party's cultural and marketing strategy. The text was well received by all the parties. However, it went unnoticed that the written document was in fact put together using most of the ‹Knowledge and Propaganda› speech, which Joseph Goebbels made to his comrades back in 1928.
The public reading of ‹they live - in search of text zero› was supposed to take place on 17 March 2012 at the ‹Yugoslav Drama Theatre› in Belgrade, but was cancelled at short notice once the management had read through the documents. Three weeks later the first public reading was held at a considerably smaller venue, the ‹Dom Omladine›. «Politics has taken over the performing arts and contributed to the fact that there is hardly any money available for culture projects. Theatres are facing bankruptcy and the independent scene lacks any financial backing - this is the reason why we turn political parties into our stage for performing arts.»
We 20.11., 21.15 h, Discussion with the audience, Kaserne Basel
Authors & actors: Milan Marković and Maja Pelević
Producer & tour manager: Tina Dobnik
Technicians: Igor Remeta
Postprocessing: Maska Ljubljana
