It is one of the art world’s greatest scandals. In 2004, a businessman and his wife bought a painting by expressionist painter Mark Rothko for 8.3 million dollars. They had fallen in love with it on sight. Only, as it turns out years later, it wasn’t painted by Rothko, but by a Chinese migrant from Queens. Can a forged painting trigger real feelings? What defines the value of art? What, in fact, is art? On a film set that is constantly changing – from a Chinese restaurant to the White Cube gallery – Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski and the cast of twelve investigate the relationship between original and copy, the real and the virtual, between vitality and representation. ROHTKO is a spectacular theatre production with loud beats and an intimate live film at once.
21 / 22 / 23 June, 7.30 pm
Halle E im MuseumsQuartier
Latvian, English, Chinese, Polish
German and English surtitles
3 hrs 55 mins., 1 interval
Please note
Age recommendation 14+
The performance contains loud sound recordings and strobe effects.
Direction Łukasz Twarkowski Text, Dramaturgy Anka Herbut With Juris Bartkevičs, Kaspars Dumburs, Ērika Eglija-Grāvele, Yan Huang, Andrzej Jakubczyk, Rēzija Kalniņa, Katarzyna Osipuk, Artūrs
Skrastiņš, Mārtiņš Upenieks, Vita Vārpiņa, Toms Veličko, Xiaochen Wang Set design Fabien Lédé
Costume Svenja Gassen Choreography Pawel Sakowicz Music Lubomir Grzelak Video Jakub Lech Light design Eugenijus Sabaliauskas Direction assistance Diāna Kaijaka, Adam Zduńczyk, Mārtiņš Gūtmanis Costume assistance Bastian Stein Playwrighting assistance Linda Šterna Video design assistance Adam Zduńczyk
Live-Camera Arturs Gruzdiņš, Jonatāns Goba Stage management Iveta Boša Production management Ginta Tropa International Production, Distribution Vidas Bizunevicius (NewError) Translation into Latvian Ingmāra Balode Translation into English Anka Herbut, Ingmāra Balode, Linda Šterna Translation into German Isolde Schmitt Translation rehearsals Diāna Kaijaka, Elza Marta Ruža Surtitles Ēriks Saksons
Production Dailes Theatre (Riga, Latvia) In Cooperation with JK Opole Theater (Poland) Supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland) and The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland International production and distribution NewError
executed by the team of the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien
Premiere March 2022, Dailes Theatre (Riga, Latvia)
GLOSSARY
NFT – non-fungible token
NFT – non-fungible token is designed to prove ownership of the immaterial things in virtual reality. When two things have the same function, they are fungible, like for example, money. Two different Euro coins are fungible. Nonfungibility means that you cannot exchange one thing with another, which makes that one thing unique. Through the unique NFTs the digital artists (celebrated in likes so far) can sign and sell their works (memes, gifs, tweets and any kind of digital works which can still be copied by anyone). They retain the copyright and reproduction rights. To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Rothko’s print, but only one person can own the original.
Blockchain
Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems. It is cryptographically secure and decentralized. Blockchain is transparent at the level of data flow, but at the same time allows users to remain anonymous. Blockchain has enabled a proven method of operating a digital currency (cryptocurrency) to appear – independent of central banks and financial institutions.
Provenance
Provenance is a record of ownership of a work of art that traces the history of its ownership, helping to verify its authenticity and value. In the NFTs field provenance appears as a blockchain – it provides tracking and tracing of digital items, their authenticity and source.
Radical care
Radical care is an intentional process of producing relationships between humans and non-humans or artificial intelligence that increases compassion, encourages the sharing of social capital (and any other capital) and level of intersectional awareness. It seeks to empathically demonstrate experiences, needs, and desires in order to build a community based on mutual caring. It aims to raise awareness of the interdependence of all of us, it means to care about those who are not us.
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a state city in south-eastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. It is the second-largest city in the country after the capital Riga. Daugavpils is the birth city of the artist Mark Rothko and houses the Mark Rothko Art Centre. Born in Daugavpils in 1903 Mark Rothko immigrated at the age of 10 to the United States.
Shanzhai
Shanzhai literally means “fake”. It’s a Chinese neologism initially describing forgeries of branded products. But shanzhai adapt very fast to new conditions and exploit their potential to improve. These products are inspired by the original, then depart from it only to mutate into the new originals by themselves. Shanzhai undermined the power of the original, the authority and expertise. It deconstructs creation as an act of making things ex nihilo and inherits a playful, anarchic energy.
FAKE IS REAL
Łukasz Twarkowski in conversation
How did ROHTKO start?
When the Dailes Theatre in Riga gave me free reign to suggest a production, I was in China and immersed in the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s Shanzhai – Deconstruction in Chinese, which addresses the different concepts of original and copy in the East and the West. This book was very helpful to me finding my way in the working environment over there, giving me an understanding of how to live with two utterly different paradigms. Mark Rothko occurred to me because he is Latvian, but that is how he weirdly came to me via China. It also has to do with an exhibition I had seen at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and which had gravely disappointed me. The concept was interesting – presenting Rothko’s works in the historic halls of the museum with very little light, as he would have wanted it –, but it didn’t work, because those halls with their grandiose décor made it impossible to access his works. There were massive queues to see the exhibition, the crowd was excited, utterly elated, but I felt tricked. That is where I first began thinking about the art market: how is it possible to create an event with good marketing, even if in reality there is nothing happening at all?
This experience raises the question of the value we attribute to works of art …
During the casting in Riga, the first thing people would mention when they started speaking about Rothko was their shock at having learnt that it was possible to pay forty or sixty million dollars for his paintings. In Latvia, Rothko is considered the greatest Latvian painter, but the prices for his paintings are by now almost more important than the content of his works. In the
case of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, which make it possible to buy digital art, it’s an even greater shock: How is it possible that the American artist Beeple sells his work for sixty-nine million dollars when it is only a digital file that can easily be copied? Everyone could own the same file, but there is only one original, because that one has a certificate, an NFT. That one is worth sixty-nine million dollars, while the one next to it, which is exactly the same, is not worth anything because it is just a copy.
At first sight that seems absurd, but a closer look reveals that it is not so new at all. Throughout the history of art, the focus has been on the symbolic value – take Duchamp’s urinal. The value that we attach to a work rests on a particular social contract; that is not so very different in the digital age.
How did you link digital art and the book by Byung-Chul Han?
According to Byung-Chul Han, the two Chinese signs that would be translated as ‘original’ in English literally translate as ‘authentic trace’. For the Chinese, the original is only the trace or the reflection of an idea. In the history of Chinese art, it has happened several times that the copy was of greater value, was more expensive, than the original, because it was considered better made or more faithful to the idea behind the work. During my first visit to China, I couldn’t fathom how it was possible to visit ‘ancient’ sites that weren’t ancient at all in reality. They are right in the middle of modern cities and it is immediately apparent that they are not original but simply ‘ancient style’. However, when I asked the Chinese, they answered: ‘It’s exactly like it used to be at the time.’ In Japan, there is a temple that is completely dismantled and rebuilt every
twenty years: the Grand Shrine of Ise. When this became known in the West, the temple was struck of the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The reasoning behind it is twofold, however: firstly, to pass craftsmanship on to the next generation, including that of objects inside, and secondly, in order to prevent the temple being destroyed by the ravages of time, and to keep it as close as possible to its original condition. When Chinese people visit Europe, they do not understand why we keep our Acropolis in ruins, why Notre-Dame is so dirty. For them, a building that is being destroyed by the passage of time no longer has anything in common with the original, meaning with the moment at which the work came closest to the ideas of its creator.
All of this means that Eastern culture had essentially been ready for the arrival of digital art for centuries. We in the West have a sentimental attachment to material things, while they live in a world where the idea is what counts. Yet the digital age and NFTs mean that the material loses its value in favour of the virtual. In the Western world, we have a huge problem with digital art because we are thrown by the lack of a difference between original and copy. If a perfect copy can be made of a file, there is nothing inherent to the work itself that guarantees that the original truly is the original. From the Asian point of view, however, that is not a problem because works have always been like that. It’s logical!
Is the fact that the play is set in a Chinese restaurant instead of a museum or a gallery a reference to all these thoughts?
The Chinese restaurant is connected to the main character, a Chinese migrant, but also has to do with Mr Chow, a historic restaurant where a particular generation of the New York avant-
garde (Basquiat, Warhol) used to meet. That is only alluded to, because it wasn’t opened until after Rothko’s death. Also, this setting was perfect for posing the question of original and replica, because all Chinese restaurants in the world are more or less replicas of each other. You will find the same menus, the same décor and the same lanterns … As if the restaurant wasn’t really attached to its location and was easily duplicated. In this sense, a Chinese restaurant is a no man’s land, an anti-hierarchical space. That made it the ideal meeting point. This is where people at different points of their careers, from different places in the world of art, ranging from prospective artists to museum directors, might meet.
The text was written by Anka Herbut, who is a long-time close collaborator of yours. Could you tell us something about this writer? How do you work together?
I met Anka Herbut during my third play, Farinelli. At the time, I was looking for a dramaturge, and her name was suggested to me. Since then, we have worked together on a lot of projects, in theatre as well as exhibitions, video art, etc. I was immediately drawn to her interdisciplinary approach. She is a dramaturge in the German sense of the word, but she is also a writer and she is equally interested in dance. When we work, we have the same method: we focus on the process. We never start with a finished text, but with a laboratory situation in which we improvise with the actors or explore the work with the camera. There follows a break, during which we work on the text. In the end, we try to find a theatrical hybrid between visual art, film and dance … The text is one of the ingredients of the drama, it is neither more nor less important. […]
The cinema takes up a lot of room on stage: three screens are projecting different kinds of images. Can you say something about your use of video?
Video has been a part of our works for fifteen years and it always takes a different form, but ROHTKO is probably our most cinematographic work for theatre. I have always asked after the image: what is the relationship we can establish with an image, either in film or photography? How is narrative altered once the image enters the stage, because it entails a different view of the world, a different illusion? In some way, it is magical. You capture something at a single moment and this excerpt of reality holds the promise of the infinite scope of the depicted world. On stage, we only have that which is shown here and now, but the filmed image makes a promise of everything that is hidden, everything that is outside of the frame: that it doesn’t end there. In ROHTKO, the cinematic narrative, which lets us believe in much more than that which we see, is contradicted by the fact that we are eyewitnesses to its creation on the stage. This tension also picks up the question of original and copy, of truth and falsehood (‘fake is real’), which is at the core of the play. In addition, the video lets us raise the issue of digital art and pose the question of its value.
Łukasz Twarkowski, bon 1983 in Wrocław, is a creator of multimedia performances combining theatre and visual arts. He places his projects in the context of extending reality through multimedia. A crucial element of Twarkowski’s creative work is investigating the ability and limitations of theatre as a medium and tool of communication. By permanent deconstruction of narratives, questioning the fixed habits of the audience and by meaningful usage of new media, Twarkowski creates a new, original language of stage performance based on multimedia and, more widely, digital technologies. In using these, Twarkowski analyses and observes increasingly complex relations between the Real, the Symbolic and the Imagined. His projects are being programmed at the most important festivals and stages of Europe, among others: Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe (Paris), Ruhrtriennale (Germany), Festival de Otoño de Madrid, Piccolo Teatro di Milano or Southbank Centre (London). Currently, Łukasz Twarkowski is an associated artist of Onassis Stegi (Athens).
PUBLICATION DETAILS Owner, Editor and Publisher Wiener Festwochen GesmbH, Lehárgasse 11/1/6, 1060 Wien P + 43 1 589 22 0, festwochen@festwochen.at | www.festwochen.at General Management Milo Rau, Artemis Vakianis Artistic Direction (responsible for content) Milo Rau (Artistic Director) Text credits The interview was conducted by Raphaëlle Tchamitchian for Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe on 28 September 2023. Picture credit cover © Artūrs Pavlovs Produced by Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH (Bad Vöslau)
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