Melodrama und Rebellion

 

A three-day symposium about melodrama and rebellion is happening within the framework of the Mexico-Austria tour of the brut production Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas. From 23 to 25 September theoretical and performance contributions will be sounding out the current political potential of melodramatic narratives and forms of action. Melodrama is one of the most important narrative strategies in popular Latin American Telenovelas. As a temporarily established laboratory, melodrama and rebellion serve the investigation of today’s strategies for action and passionate performative forms in the battle for consensus, dissent, and social rights. The question revolves around which political demands can be expressed linguistically, with gestures and embodied. The question running through the symposium: whereby and whereof do the subjects of rebellion act nowadays?

The events will be held in both German and English. During the symposium there are books, newspapers, information sheets, tortillas, nachos, and Zapatista coffee for your heart and mind.

Conceived and moderated by Gin/i Müller & Tom Waibel

With the friendly support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

Programme Melodrama and Rebellion Symposium

23 September


05:30 pm

Gin/i Müller, Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Nils Olger

Die Theatermacher/Los hacedores del teatro (film)

Admission free

Die Theatermacher is a documentary essay about Thomas Bernhard in Mexico and the director Juan José Gurrola. Interviews and archive materials have been assembled into a “simply complicated” portrait of the two theatre makers.

With an introduction by the filmmakers.

8:00 pm

Gin/i Müller, Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Nils Olger and others

Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas (theatre/performance)

€ 14,-/8,-/6,-*

Gin/i Müller will again be showing her successful Austrian-Mexican production Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas on both evenings of the Melodrama und Rebellion Symposium.

 

10:00 pm

Latino-Rebel-Sounds (Party)

Admission free

Latino-Rebel DJs spinning in the Bar brut deluxe following Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas.

 

 

24 September

 

02:00 pm

Melodrama und Genderpolitiken (panel)

Admission free

The performance revival of Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas is just one pit stop along the larger process of melodrama’s performative exploration as a form of articulation in the intractable politics of gender. A next step transforms the melodrama into a field of social tensions, between emotional acceleration and medial distraction, or possibly a theoretical-performative tyre change in the Boxstop Telenovelas’ continuing contemplation.

With Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Therese Kaufmann, Gin/i Müller, Martin Plattner, Hansel Sato, Chris Thaler, Katia Tirado & Tom Waibel

04:00 pm

Melodrama und politische Handlungsmacht (lecture)

Admission free

Starting at 4:00 pm. the second day of the Melodrama and Rebellion Symposium will bring forward the discussion about melodrama and examine current forms of political performance and melodramatic politics in Latin America and Europe in correlation to one another. Considerations about the European genesis of melodramatic political rhetoric will confront contemplation of political activism and melodramatic militancy in Latin America.

Lectures by Tina Leisch & Oliver Marchart

 

05:30 pm

Melodrama und sozialer Widerstand (debate)

Admission free

On the basis of the lectures about political capacity for action in melodrama, the questions of melodrama’s potential for resistance will be explored in a panel discussion.

With Tina Leisch, Oliver Marchart, Jens Kastner & Latin Lobby

08:00 pm

Gin/i Müller, Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Nils Olger u. a.

Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas (theatre/performance)

€ 14,-/8,-/6,-*

Gin/i Müller will again be showing her successful Austrian-Mexican production Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas on both evenings of the Melodrama und Rebellion Symposium.

11:00 pm

Melodrama und Exzess (Party)

Eintritt frei

Transdisziplinäre Party: exzessive Latino-Rhythmen und melodramatische Überraschungen. Slam-Poetry-Performance von Tiosha Bojorquez in der Bar brut deluxe.

 

 

25 September

 

03:00 pm

Melodrama und Gewalt (panel)

Admission free

Everyday life in Mexico at the moment is characterised by the politics of escalation, in which violence has taken possession of public space with outrageous forms and in unimagined intensity. In the face of the never-ending series of murders of women in Ciudad Juárez – which in the meantime has become the most dangerous city in the world – the escalating brutality of the drug wars and the repeated discovery of mass graves of migrants, the question arises as to which political measures can be taken to deal with these issues.

With Katia Tirado, Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Tiosha Bojorquez, and others

04:30 pm

Luís Estrada (Mexiko)

El infierno/The Hell (Film)

Admission free

Benny gets deported from the U.S. to Mexico and finds his hometown in a catastrophic state. Irrational, uncontrolled violence, omnipresent corruption, and economic crises have undermined the place’s morality, and subverted society’s cohesion over the long term. Because of a lack of alternatives Benny gets involved with drug smuggling and experiences a boom like he’s never before seen – money, women, and violence, all in abundance – until he experiences firsthand that crime cannot deliver what it promises.

Director Luís Estrada

07:15 pm

Melodrama und Zapatismo (debate)

Admission free

The transnational effect of the Zapatistas’ resistance, rebellion, and representative power, which like almost no other political practice has influenced current social movements, is due to no small extent to the successful mixture of militant action and melodramatic articulation. The topic of this panel questions as to what makes this mixture so attractive, and how it is realised in the everyday experience of politics.

With Gin/i Müller, Katia Tirado, Tiosha Bojorquez, Jens Kastner & Tom Waibel

 

08:15 pm

Melodrama und Filmgeschichte (keynote address)

Admission free

A dense survey of the significance and use of melodrama in the history of cinema: A simultaneously scorned yet extremely popular genre that runs the gamut from tearjerker to whitewashing of feelings.

Keynote address Elisabeth Streit

08:30 pm

Alberto Cortés (Mexiko)

Corazón del tiempo/Heart of Time (film)

Admission free

A young woman is to be married in the middle of the insurgent Zapatistas region. As the government’s army occupies resisting areas and continues advancing, the marriage is decided upon. However the bride’s heart beats for another: one of the rebels. This creates conflicts both with tradition as well as revolutionary law. This film reflects upon these difficulties in a generation-spanning narrative against the backdrop of the specific political-military empowerment of the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional).

Director Alberto Cortés

10:00 pm

Romantisch-rebellische Musik und Tequila (chill-out)

Admission free