Hybrid plague, or both worse

And now, when 2022 has already begun in full force, we will remember the unkind word of the 2021st . The authors of Coolites recall the worst that happened in the cultural field in the past year.

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Colta.ru publishes Alena Karas's polemic text, counting on the continuation of the discussion, to which the editors invites all interested parties.

We, it seems, are forever accustomed to hybrid types of hell. On the one hand, the war is on, but on the other, it does not go. There is a pandemic, but on the other hand - no. There is a theater, but on the other hand ... It is understandable: life itself changes before our eyes - of course, there is, but on the other hand ...

This was the introduction of the theater of the theater 2021 could be completed.

It was recently stood in line for the opera performance in the Golden Mask contest. The busy audience was disciplined and habitually got its phones, QR codes and passports, anticipating the theater's holiday -which is indestructible, of course, but (as it has already been already more than once -for example, in the early 90s ) squeezes a significant part of the audience from its chairs, not wanting to notice this. Moreover, by the end of last year, theaters everywhere began to play the role of segregators and inspired propagandists of new biopolitics and bioethics. First, the Metro-Opera (ahead of all) introduced the 2 G mode , making its performances available only for vaccinated spectators and musicians. The same was gradually done in Paris and Vienna, St. Petersburg and Moscow. It is funny that the largest theatrical event of last year in Moscow -the premiere of War and Peace in the Vakhtangov Theater -was also the first mass congress of guests with QR codes .

I recall an attempt to quietly resist theaters, when the idea of ​​green passes as a mandatory application to tickets was only discussed. No, many said proudly, we will not go to it for nothing! But now not only 3 g -we make , but 2 g is not discussed and seems to be an adequate measure -and this is against the backdrop of daily mass transportation in the subway, where during the peak there are often not only “kuars”, but even masks. I'm not talking about the fact that this measure is excessive - this is not my business, in the end. I do not know how correctly/wrong - I am afraid today, no one knows today. But passports, along with “kuars” and festive excitement, a servile and arrogant gesture - all this is a clear bust for me, which has ceased, in fact, to go to the theater and observing how from one or another - let the media services of a universal scale grow up and very bright. The theater, designed to unite the audience, has become almost the main place of separation of society.

It was as if we were finally citizens of a sovereign state, the purpose of which is the production of a state of emergency without end and without a bottom, where all sorts of differences between people, between their choice, preferences recede.

The genre requires the transition from the general to the particular - and it is difficult to forget about the conflict that occurred with the appointments of both art theater. At first, the Ministry of Culture decided to remove the Moscow Art Theater Sergei Zhenovach from the post - and the head of the department did not consider it necessary to apologize for the voluntarist appointment of the previous leadership: Sergey Zhenovachu, who was so full of two years ago, did not even give words of gratitude to say. Sincerely rejoicing in the appointment of the Moscow Art Theater Konstantin Khabensky, we all look anxiously into the future, where any, no logic of alternated changes are possible. Now even the power is not accused of pure form: some decisions have long been provided by the hybrid cultural governing body - experts, authorities, community.

Then the director of the Moscow Art Theater. Vladimir Kekhman was appointed Gorky - and the cynical figure that he arranged, tapping the portrait of Eduard Boyakov (“See, Tatyana Vasilievna, he has never been - and never was”), became a standard of “hybrid” hell, in which we all ended up and at which there was no bottom.

It is not at all clear whether it is worth protecting something, and if it is still worth it, then what exactly. It was as if we were finally citizens of a sovereign state, the purpose of which is the production of a state of emergency without end and without a bottom, where all sorts of differences between people, between their choice, preferences recede. We are a naked life that Georgio Agamben wrote about in Homo Sacer , and still, who and how they will be appointed theaters, what mode of viewing the performances we will be offered in the next chapter. Those who used to be disgusted to go to the Moscow Art Theater at Boyakov, let them now try to go there under Kekhman. Both are worse: an emergency, leaving us a “naked life”, canceled even a hint of differences between them. Everyone can continue this list of differences in their own way -but for me the “proposed circumstances”, in which the Russian scene in 2021 ended up, in itself are the main anti-theitogs of the departed theater year.