Events
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14.6.2008 | HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1), Berlin

No Haus like Bau at HAU

Performance by Pil & Galia Kollectiv

Russian Constructivist theater of the 1920s portrayed "industrial man" as part of a bio-mechanical symbiosis with the factory. For the 5th Berlin Biennale, the Pil & Galia Kollectiv stages a new theatrical piece, a post-Fordist constructivist stage play titled No Haus Like Bau, which asks what becomes of this overidentification with the system in the wake of industrial manufacture: what would it mean in relation to the flexible ideology of late capitalism? With the boundaries between work and leisure diffused by the employment model of a post-Fordist creative industry, the critique of the mechanization of labor becomes ineffectual. Incorporating a stage set based on flatpack furniture inspired by Soviet theater design and featuring eight amateur actors, with a live score by Steven Kado, the performance explores the instrumentalization of creativity within immaterial labor and its reliance on the laborer’s virtuosity, a perpetual performance of one’s own personality. Through the performance, the externalization of the self, promoted by interior design, is appropriated to form a provisional aesthetic for a new politics.

The Pil & Galia Kollectiv, originally from Israel, is based in London.