Archived: Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann in Jerusalem Director: Jernej Lorenci

Performances: 17.10. and 18.10. at 7 p.m.

Duration: 3 hours and 30 minutes

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BANALITY OF EVIL

If we start to observe the basic elements of a presumed court process more closely outside the usual thematization of its content and focus primarily on its form and structure, ie on the constitutive elements of which it consists, and then on the internal forces that serve to create fundamental power relations or status distinction. power among the actors, then without a doubt we enter the space of performance. The German philosopher Hannah Arendt was aware of such unequivocal theatricalizations of the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, at a time when she was reporting from the trial itself, and in which she came up with the thesis of the banality of evil, which she later marked in space of philosophy, but also much wider than that. It is precisely this fact that in a way opens a very wide range for different interpretations of this syntagm, by which Arendt, observing the strictly bureaucratic nature of his subject, from the thesis of the radicalism of evil very quickly reached its banality, assessing that the very gap of evil it necessarily lacks depth, which leaves it on a clearly visible, but also so difficult to comprehend surface of ordinaryness.

But Arendt and her thought for Jernej Lorenci and his team of authors are only the starting point in the research with which they inevitably connect, as in the end with Arendt's philosophical settings, both historical facts, sociological and philosophical records, personal insights of the performer and recognizable elements of popular culture, all in an attempt to rationalize, then contextualize evil and its real consequences. In this sense, this play makes a broad gesture with the help of various media, from Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah, through Jaspers ’lectures pooled in The Question of Guilt, or Curzio Malaparte’s novel Skin, to Stanley Kramer’s feature film The Trial in Nuremberg.

These diverse views on the thematization of evil by recognizing and establishing the elements of trial as a theatrical act, with their internal dynamics, focus attention primarily on the individual. The square of personal space, the individual body, the individual experience, the individual statement, the uniqueness of the experience. With this concentrated focus on the individual, it is actually only possible to move away from the totalitarian system, which enables an issue that is undoubtedly fundamental, and which demands responsibility for what has been done. Namely, only after they manage to bypass the levers that enable totalitarianism, such as obedience or fear, it is possible to tell an individual that he is not superfluous, that he is important, that his statement is unique, and his lived experience is recognized as valuable. Only at that moment is it possible to get out of the space of the institutionalization of evil, whereby it becomes part of real personal responsibility. In this sense, the body as a square of skin, in the way it is established in this play, can become a living witness again. As, analogously, only at that moment can the person who reduced that body to a square of skin really be held accountable.

Each reconstruction process necessarily seeks its own context in which it can be further explored and explained. Otherwise, every evil as well as every good is in fact equally banal and flat. Only in the moment when we are ready to recognize whose all fears do we really carry within us can we try to deal with the most difficult, our own fear. This show strives for just that; by questioning the elements that make up a historical event with such devastating consequences as the Holocaust, as well as all the layers of meaning attached to it over time, she relentlessly cuts into a deep notch completely untouched by evil in the way Hannah Arendt describes it, in exploring personal sorrows. fears and truths, far from any supposed banality.

Tomislav Zajec