Mirror Universe

ABOUT

Tags: Triviality, Everyday life, Many-interacting-worlds-theory, Yugoslavia, AFŽ, Mimic, Gesture, Freedom, Theatre of the Absurd, Nihilism, Unchangeability, Deconstruction, Existentialism

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. […] …it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders.” This is one of Sartre’s most influential phrases in his examination of the concept of freedom. For Sartre, to be free does not mean to achieve something one has set out to do, since success should not be the primary consideration. Man, in every situation he finds himself in, is forced to choose a certain behavior by which he acts, and if he chooses not to act, this is also an attitude, and therefore an action. However, a person cannot change the situation he finds himself at will. There are obstacles, but there is no absolute obstacle: “What is an obstacle for me will not be an obstacle for someone else.”

Mirror Universe is a composition in the spirit of the Theatre of the Absurd – it is an exploration of the hopeless absurdity of human existence. It deconstructs the Klangsprache and deforms, even degenerates, language itself. Thus the language no longer conveys any real coherence; the characters speak past each other in seamingly meaningless monologues, as it were, and go about their activities with iron consistency. The conductor is robbed of his actual role – with some strange “conducting cycles” he indicates the time that does not exist. The musicians don’t need him, nobody needs him, and yet he is there. The end is the beginning, nevertheless we go on.  Clarification is not desired. Space and time are indefinable.

Belma Bešlić-Gál [05/2016]