(PROTESTS AT EXPULSION OF EAST GERMAN POET the purpose of "left theatre.
There are two aspects to this. Take a group like Red Ladder, for example, who make serrormances a orelude to aiscussion. They are very clear in their minds exactly and precisely whom they are addressing. Hence there is the possibility of a discussion because a discussion depends on certain things Snaree experience or even immediate shared objectives - held in common.
In this situation we are talking about a working class theatre group and their insertion into the abour movemen a very precise way. That is one thing - that kind of performance, however creative and inventive, is nevertheless not comp lete in itelf, but exists as a prelude to CISCUSSIOn.
A play as a thing in itself is a different matter. If it has any justification at all, it has to operate in a different way and there will be a much greater ambiguHy about wnom it is addressing.
What then happens? If it is about an important issue or a significant experience which is relatively complete in itself then how does it work?
Red Ladder Theatre Group - they make their perforr POET and songwriter Wolf Biermann was re-entering the German Democratic Republic last week while on a concert tour or west Germany.
Biermann moved to the Hamburg in 1953 because he argued that une workers side. desore is tions, was a superior torm or socia system. He has consistently refused to move to the West and only accepted the invitation for inis tour. trom ine mera.
workers union, because he had a re-entry permit. Many leading GDR artists have already cared tor biermanns redomission.
Biermann is not a Trotskyist, but he nas been a consisten er-wine cruc or the GDR bureaucracy and advocate workers democracy. His songs poems also take up solidarity with orner sections of the world revolution as well as dealing with other questions such as me oporession or women ine gon Some years ago he commented: 1 can only lover war ram also meeto reave Now he does not even have that choice.
we print a translation by us of one of Biermann's poems Eight Argu ments for keeping ine Name Avenue" for the Stalin Avenue. JOHN BERGER is probably the most articulate and influential British Marxist art critic and novelist. He is best known for his TV series Ways of Seeing, his novel G, and his book on immigrant labour in Europe, A He now lives in France but was recently in London in connection with the opening of a theatrical version of A Seventh Man which we reviewed last week. CARL GARDNER first asked him what he saw as It seems to me that what it has to do is to present that experience in such a way each individual member of the audience is able to absorb that experience as his or her own, so it then becomes surrounded as it were inside with his or ner own experience At one level that sounds a rather small. minimal result; but perhaps that's not quite true, because if that experience enters him/her sufficiently, that's going to become part of the material by which Enal person begins to juage nis or ner own life and come to decisions about it. If the play pre-empts that possibility of choosing, then it won't enter.
It can only enter in so far as it has a certain ambiguty about it. Decause wnal it has to do is to get alongside the experiences already in that person, and one cannot generalise about those experiences - they are all different. Hence the positive runcuon or une amorgany•One of the criticisms I would have of the play A Seventh Man is that it is more of a liberal lament for immigrant workers es a ore ude to discussion.
GDR from and change.
note.
which has within There is a street in Berlin AnG one in Leninorad toc As well as in many Other great cities That what is past is past!
And the 17 June 53 wnen, armed only with bottles The workers answered back It wasn't only beer which flowed That what is past is past!
And it's also because A deathly silence hangs there, Beneath the lines of trees That what is past is past!
After the great Party congress went outo knock cown a statue That what is past is past!
The stone plaques Fell on our head But the houses Are mere torever [forever being rebuilt!!] than such a part of a process of social I would say several things about that.
First, there isn't any overall solution to Thirdly, if part the problem of immigrant workers without the solution to many others, so one redeeming cannot end on a positive or programmatic However if it sounds like a lament, it a Kind of cosy melancholy, then that is very bad. Of course. lamenting is part of the humar condition and I don't think one can ever make the need for lament disappear. But You've commented that? situation, inflation, The second so confused And it's not for nothing that it's called STALIN AVENUE But heavens, mate, don't you understand Oh yes, that too is why it's called STALIN AVENUE But heavens, mate, don't you understand On the stroke of half past nine in the evening That it's called STALIN AVENUE, this street But heavens, mate, don't you understand More than one person put on his coat Oh yes, that too is why it's called STALIN AVENUE Bur heavens, mate, don't you understand And that too is why this thing's called STALIN AVENUE there is the question of the tone of the lament, and as i say - if it's a cosy melancholy, that's very bad.
the revolution is avenging or, as Walter Benjamin put it, the past, then maybe one of Ene wust tues one nas to actually do is to lament that past, to be really aware of what the past implies in terms of totally unnecessary, brutal suffering. One can only look at that and actually see it in terms of a lament — a dirge. if vou like It seems to me now that a tragic vision is in no way contradictory to a revolutionary one. I think the mistake is to believe that a tragic vision DEC-CHEDE action. It is actually one of the mos -Dowerru sumulans or actor recentl particularly British form of fascism could be on the agenda. Could you elaborate on I'm reluctant to elaborate because to suostandare inal as an argument requires a detailed analysis of which I'm not really capable; but what are the pre-conditions for a possible fascism in general?
One is surely a very unstable economic WILD very high rate med. because that high rate of inflation finally leads to working class action which is incompatible with parliamentary democracy. That would be one DreconCon ane at woule seem 10 90 increasingly the case here.
precondition is that a significant section of the working class are and disoriented ponacal shuaten tnal taey are capable or racist tendencies. It is then under cover of this racism that they can identify themBut heavens, mate, don't you understand That what is past is past!
And Karl Marx, the great thinker What did he do to deserve His worthy name On these stone plaques?
Unders ano. maTe STALIN AVENUE!
We want to build socialism The most beautiful streets Where people live happily Trusting their neighbour And And we 1 SANG We Wil And And АПО And at least a little alleyway, eh!
But heavens. mate. don't you understand That what is past is past!
That the old days are over! nat une oa days alt In the past... 10101 and make a co them. There are increasing signs tha is actually happening But if I talk about fascism in Britain, 1 would emphasise that I think the danger is of a very British variety. I don't think the real danger is represented by the smal rascist partes • Going back to your interests as a writer, have they now moved away from the questions of art and culture?
I do write about art now far less than I usea to. My interest in art was always because it seemed to me that works of art were unique and therefore extremely valuable ways of understanding some thing other than themselves.
It is not to say that I think that art is mere information, or that art can be mechanically explained in terms of what it is sâving. In actual fact my attitude is not far from that of any serious artist, because artists are actually concerned with experience and art is a way of making sense of that experience.
If we are studving art it is a way o studying experience which is so valuable precisely because it is articulated in a way that in living, except in very rare circum stances, it cannot be articulated. Those rare moments are moments of personal crisis or sometimes moments of historica crisis. And in that broader sense I am still interestes In arE • One of the important points you make in Ways of Seeing about the importance of art and culture is that the working class has got to recapture its history in the forn of art, which is the direct result of its surplus-labour and which the bourgeoisie has appropriated. It's only by re-assimilating our indirect history, in the form of cunure, mat we can adequately stand our present, and therefore plan to make changes in the future.
This seemed to me to put revolutionaries in the picture about why we must understana what art represented. Do you still hold to that?
yes, I sull nold to tnal. Amongst oune things art is evidence about the past and now, in the present stage of corporate capitalisin and imperialism. the ruling classes are terrified of the past — because a pincer movement between the past and the positive, alternative future is how they will finally be caught.
A starting point for this raising o consciousness is actually to point out how the past is denied by our society. Yes, that is to say that our society is under the hegemony of the ruling class.
Actually every worker in a sense knows this in a very personal way, through what happened Darens and family, and even what happens now. They have a sense of being excluded history, but in a sense it is more far reaching than that What replaces the past is nostalgia, and this is particularly pronounced in Britain It is part of the disintegration and crisis we are talking about. Nostalgia is the pas made into a commodity and then consuThis denial of the past finds its most direct expression in ideology of consumerism. because the past is shit, and if you take consumerism in its literal sense, that's what it becomes.
The miracle of art is that it is an embodiment of aspects of the past, which is there for us to see not as 'art', but as actually part of what you might call our neulare — our not m ene sense or nanona cultural heritage, but in the sense of our historic heritage. 'But damn it, this thing isn't called KARL MARX AVENUE And we will build ourselves a KARL MARX AVENUE will build ourselves an ENGELS AVENUE! ourselves a BEBEL AVENUE! build ourselves a LIEBKNECHT AVENUE! will build ourselves a LUXEMBURG AVENUE! ourselves a LENIN AVENUE build ourselves a TROTSKY AVENUE! I we will build ourselves a THAELMANN AVENUE! And we will build ourselves a BIERMANN Street!
[well, a little street, which won't cost much
+ 1976 Thousands noted by sacres of remaining of rotting COLOSES Barbaric mas Tournaloto take