What has long been obvious in the West has recently been happening in Slovenia, too: informed reviews by experts of artistic works have been pushed out of newspapers. Presumably these are not in the interest of capital, writes Dialogi’s theatre editor Primo` Jesenko in the editorial. In
Slovenia we have an additional problem: due to the small space it is extremely difficult to maintain independence in the writing of reviews, editing of anthologies, or selection of works and artists for festivals, and for the sake of content-based selection to avoid well-known names and courtesies. Primo` Jesenko knows from experience what he is talking about, since he is currently the selector for the Maribor Theatre Festival.
Slovenian theatre director Tomi Jane`i~, together with students from the Novi Sad Academy of Theatre and members of the Serbian National
Theatre ensemble there, has created a seven-hour performance of
Chekhov’s The Seagull. The production was sixteen months in the making, but the process, as Jane`i~ calls the study of the performance, is still going on, and after the premiere it is expected to begin anew: it involves an exceptional understanding of theatre as a living entity and a precious meeting of actors and audience, whose relationships are established in a new and unique way each time. The director is interviewed by Zala Dobov{ek about the performance and his approach to the psychology of acting.
Next in this issue are three brief articles in the field of theatre arts.
Marina Gr`ini} focuses on non-institutional theatre in a state of exception that has been a constant part of society in recent decades. Non-institutional theatre can be conceptualized today only if we delineate a broader framework for the relationships between contemporary art and the neoliberal global capitalist system. Gr`ini} draws on the theoretical support of
Giorgio Agamben to do this, while commenting critically on the presentday activities of the Slovenian artistic groups that are probably best known internationally: Laibach, Irwin, and the three Janez Jan{as.
Aldo Milohni} describes the case of American artist and activist Steve
Kurtz, who was prosecuted for wanting to provide information to the public about genetically modified foods and the interests of capital and the military so that biotechnological research in the country would be subjected to regulation and oversight. Kurtz is an example of a “public amateur”
– an artist, activist or other socially engaged individual who problematizes established patterns in art, science, and politics. Milohni} introduces the distinction between the amateur and the dilettante using the example of the Brecht fragment on proletarian theatre. For Brecht amateurism is a positive concept, denoting a form of theatre which grows out of “a particular point of view and particular intention,” whereas dilettantes are unable to develop their own approaches and usually just imitate (unsuccessfully)
99

professional artists. Based on this Milohni} develops the thesis that
Yugoslav amateur (not dilettantist) artistic and cultural praxes in the second half of the 20 th century (the neo-avant-garde in the late 1960s and early
1970s, alternative culture in the 1980s) were a counterweight to the statesupported professionalism of the cultural elites at the time.
Barbara Orel examines the relationships between the theatre, the creation of memory, and the internet in the Camillo project by Janez Jan{a, who was prompted to examine the theatre as an apparatus of memory by
Giuglio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory, in which the Renaissance polymath forecast the internet in a visionary way. The art of memory is treated in relation to the visual order of the internet, which establishes a new
Panopticon, i.e. a system of omnipresent surveillance and exposure to the omnipresent gaze of the Other. In the 1990s Jan{a treated it from the standpoint of the repressive mechanisms of (totalitarian) control, whereas a decade later he also sees in it an environment of freedom and creative collaboration.
In the literary section we publish a short story by writer Lu~ka Zorko as well as one by first-time author Manka Kremen{ek Kri`man , an excerpt from a novel by Robert Simoni{ek , and poems by Metod ^e{ek .
In Cultural diagnosis Pia Brezav{~ek reviews the Slovenian translation of Louis Adami~’s book The Truth About Los Angeles . Adami~ is the best known Slovene emigrant; his book was originally published in
English in 1927 and consists of five essays in which the author cynically exposes the foundations of the American Christianity industry. Robi [abec presents the third part of the trilogy In the Name of the State , in which investigative reporters Matej [urc and Bla` Zgaga expose the Slovenian weapons scandal. Matic Majcen writes about the book Disintegration in
Frame: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema by film historian and theoretician Pavle Levi. Marko Golja reviews the first feature film by director Matev` Luzar, Good To Go, describing it as a charming story about people’s relationships. Katja ^i~igoj analyzes film aesthetics in the politically resonant Palestinian-Israeli documentary 5
Broken Cameras , while Leonora Flis writes about the new film by Terrence
Malick To the Wonder . Primo` Jesenko reports on the subtle and experimental reading of Strindberg’s Miss Julie shown by English director Katie
Mitchell in the performance by the ensemble of the Schaubühne am
Lehniner Platz theatre in Berlin.
100