CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL | JUNE 7 – OCEANEN

All artistic and literary manifestations in Germany’s Weimar Republic blurred the line between aesthetics and politics, and nowhere was this more evident than in the performing arts. In the midst of the social and political crises that followed the First World War rose a younger generation of playwrights and directors. They sought a new expression for their art, able to intervene in contemporary issues, from hunger to extreme right-wing violence, from capitalist exploitation of women’s rights. And with their new art, they wanted to change the world. Stefan Jonsson presents, in his lecture, the boldest experiment of all from this period, Erwin Piscator’s Total Theater (1927).

Stefan Jonsson is professor at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, REMESO , at Linköping University. He has recently published the book Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism (Columbia University Press, 2013).

The talk is followed by interventions of David Crouch, Soraya Post, Hans Abrahamsson, Patricia Lorenzoni, Cattis Laska, UKON, Sara Nelson och Joel Lavin.