SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER 1983-1987

THE FOUNDING ACT

The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater was founded today, October 13, pursuant to his founding act.

The theatre has no stage. The aim of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is to revive the dramatic arts. Revival is a call for unity, which is why the Scipion Nasice Sister Theater fits into any theatrical institution.

Its activities are limited to a period of four years. The self-abolition of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is scheduled for 1987.

The retro-production of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is determined by its four-year activity and program organization, which is divided into manifestative external and creative internal parts.

The external part embraces acts of appearance, resurrection and self-destruction. Appearance, whose function is to propagate the idea, will begin in November 1983 with the first Sisters letter and will last four years. The act of resurrection will be performed in October, 1984. The act of self- destruction will announce the end of the activities of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater. It will be documented by the letter of self-destruction in 1987.

The creative internal part will be carried out in three stages.

Stage 1. UNDERGROUND: the first performance of THE FIRST RETROGARDE EVENT of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is scheduled for the period from October 1983 to October 1985.

Stage 2. EXORCISM: the first performance of THE SECOND RETROGARDE EVENT of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is scheduled for the period from October 1984 to September 1985.

Stage 3. RETRO-CLASSICS: the first performance of THE THIRD RETROGARDE EVENT of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is scheduled for the period from September 1985 to September 1986.

The period between September 1986 and May 1987 will be dedicated to the process of self-abolition of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater, which will end with a spectacle of self-destruction.

Document F6, 1983

UNDERGROUND

October 1983 – October 1984

THE FIRST SISTERS LETTER

Theater does not exist between the Spectator and the Actor.

Theater is not an empty space.

Theater is a State.

Every theatre is a hierarchical, national, economic and ideological organization. In defining particular ideological and artistic standpoints, the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater renounces communication rituals. All the standpoints of Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater are defined by the mode of its Existence, that is, by the Contents and the Form of its Aesthetic vision.

The formal tendency of the State is stability and power, while in terms of content every state is basically disorganized. The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater proclaims this relation as the fundamental, all-embracing and eternal aesthetic issue. The outer, manifest part of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater presents an image of a solid and geometrically utopian Existence, whereas its creative inner part is an image of the conflict between Emotions and Style in their inevitable and all-renewing sacredness. The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is apolitical. The only truly Aesthetic vision of the State is the vision of the impossible State. The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater regards the utopian instinct as an innate, but not acquired, value which exists in man in the form of a desire for a unity with the Cosmic, Aesthetic and Moral element. That is why the creation of the Style of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater cannot originate in the Actor, Space or Staging, but only in Culture and Civilization, renewed and recurrently traumatized in the retro-production of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater.

The style of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is not an authentic one. Retro is a method. While revitalizing the arts, the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater is also renewing their Styles. Herewith it does not deny that an authentic Style is possible; however, it declares the avant-garde the last authentic Style of contemporary Civilization ending in the defeat of Revolutions.

Document E6, 1983

RETROGARDE EVENT

HINKEMANN

Retrogarde is art from art.

In retrogardism the subject of cognizance is unified and eternal. Historical documents, a sum total of all expressions of individual subjects, are also the expression of a unified subject of cognizance. Thus a retrogardist does not quote documents which he combines, neither does he sign his own works. The idea of artistic theft is ontologically negated in retrogardism; "everyone who thinks the thoughts of Natalia Goncharova is Natalia Goncharova."

Document C5, 1983

The opening performance of the Retrogarde event Hinkemann was in January 1984, in a private apartment on Titova cesta 56 in Ljubljana. Thirty-seven selected spectators were directed to the scene of the event by a PRIEST, an ARMY OFFICER and a SISTER.

RESURRECTION

On the night between the 23rd and the 24th of October the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater performed the retrogarde event of Resurrection. With this action, the Scipion Nasice Sisters summon all Slovene theatre institutions to a collective renewal of the dramatic arts.

Dramatists! Directors! Actors! Stage designers! Costume designers!

RENEWAL IS THE SUMMONS!

Document D7, 1984

The retrogarde canvas "Resurrection of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater" is dedicated to the event of the same name, which the Scipion Nasice Sisters staged on the night of the 23rd of October. That night – the Sisters announced, in four cities, their idea of uniting all Slovene theatres – The Slovene National Theater, the Ljubljana Municipal Theater, The Slovene Youth Theater, the Slovene National Theater in Maribor, the Slovene People's Theater in Celje and the Primorsko Drama Theater – into a united national theater. The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater has no stage. Its members are active members of all Slovene theater institutions. This is how the Theater implements its four-year plan of renewal through the activities of its members and with this canvas summons all those involved in the theater to give their allegiance to the idea of the union by participating in the retrogarde manifestations of the groups LAIBACH, IRWIN and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater.

Document B6, 1984

IRWIN – Resurrection of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater

EXORCISM

October 1984 – September 1985

THE SECOND SISTERS LETTER

The dreadful image in which art is dying as a reflection of ideologies and programs, is abandoned to the glory of the impossible schizo-reversal. The retro-art of the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater shatters the mirror of the atmosphere of time and swears upon the desperate revolutionary spirit of the prophet.

The retro-hero rises in view of the of the victim's and executioner's destiny. With the simultaneity of faith and doubt, in the feverish eroticism of emotion, shaped in the mind, he begins the passionate schizo ritual of renewal. Blood runs from old wounds. He sacralises the duplicity into extra-temporal drama. The paradoxical non-dialecticity and extra-temporality is unmasked as a collective method of Ideologies, Religion and Art.

The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater exorcises Religion and Ideology into a mirror image of Art, and as such abolishes it.

Document C6, 1984

RETROGARDE EVENT

MARIJA NABLOCKA

The opening performance of the retrogarde event Marija Nablocka took place in May 1985, in a bourgeois house on Mestni Trg 17 in Ljubljana.

One-minute drama – EXPRESSION

The PAINTER wanted to jump into the river. He succumbed to the Fear that he had started to excessively resemble the world which he had been depicting so genuinely all these years.

SISTER stopped him with a shout:

SISTER: The world exists, it would make no sense to repeat it!

PAINTER: You think my thoughts. My unexpressed thoughts, which shall catch the world in an ecstasy of Inwardness..., oh, how roughly I am breaking apart, and in front of which the world shall fall into pieces in Horror. You understand me! My name is BERTHOLD BRECHT.

The painter calmed himself in the Expression of his dreams, but only for a short moment, just before his thoughts disintegrated in Horror.

Document E3, 1985

One-minute drama – SYMBOL

SISTER was waiting for Speech to awaken in the POET.

SISTER: The word must cede its place to the language of signs. A poem should be read once and then burnt!

POET: You must be thinking of the blaze of the Star which had in spirit and body sundered into a Cross? Leave me alone! I do not seek my way into History. I have History in me! My name is ANTONIN ARTAUD!

SISTER got frightened. She realized that she was the one who needed his help. Then she watched him silent in his own Name.

Document A5, 1985

RETRO-CLASSICS

September 1985 – October 1986

RETROGARDE EVENT

BAPTISM BELOW TRIGLAV

The opening performance of the Retrogarde event Baptism Below Triglav was held in February 1986 in the Great Hall of the Congress and Cultural Center "Cankarjev Dom" in Ljubljana.

THE THIRD SISTERS LETTER

The Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater addresses its audience:

- RETROGARDE EVENT BAPTISM BELOW TRIGLAV is a theatrical spectacle

- which is not based on a dramatic text,

- but expresses itself with the language of the fine arts attractions

- contained in sixty-two paintings

- whose contents are manifested through the prevailing activity of the form.

- "BAPTISM AT THE SAVICA" by France Preseren and "BAPTISM AT THE SAVICA" by Dominik Smole determine only the mythical basis of the performance;

- its dramatic charge

- which is implied in the fatal theme of baptism

- in baptizing Crtomir and Bogomila

- in baptizing nations

- in baptizing epochs

- which are as sublimely as possible reflected in the history of art, the constant fellow-traveller and eye-witness to all rebaptism.

- RETROGARDE EVENT BAPTISM BELOW TRIGLAV is a story of the baptism of a nation, portrayed as seen by the artist's eyes;

- historic retro-quotations are its language and

- artists are its protagonists,

- because the history of baptizing is a sacred place in which existences vanish,

- changing the image of the world

- in whose function the same tragic destinies of individuals are permanently recurring

- poetic forms change

- but the poets' destinies remain the same

- Preseren and Smole are historical figures,

- whereas Crtomir is only their mythical reflection, embodied in a different manner,

- who lives and dies in the same tragic flaw

- within the borders of two possibilities

- either seeking the impossible

- or the elusive ethos of life.

- Crtomir in the BAPTISM BELOW TRIGLAV,

- Bogomila and the Cardinal,

- Poets and Hunters,

- in the mirror reflection of Art

- do not express their fates through words

- because their stories are too common

- repeatable

- and already for this reason so frighteningly true

- in the ever-changing images of History and Art.

Document B4, 1986

CARDINAL, BEFORE THE HUNT, BATTLES, THE FIRST CONVERSION

HALLOWED FOREST, BAPTISM, IRWIN, THE SECOND CONVERSION

CRTOMIR, WIENERBLUT, LAIBACH, SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER

One-minute drama – BAPTISM BELOW TRIGLAV

(Bogomila, Cardinal)

BOGOMILA: I met him when he was roaming the city cafes. He came towards me with a monstrous frozen laugh on his face, and so deformed, like a rigid, horrifying mask, he began to speak to me:

CRTOMIR: The call must be made possible. The call must ring, must be heard. The force which drives man's soul on the free path up and forwards is purposeless.

CARDINAL: A black hand lies over him. The black hand of the spirit of Religion and Ideology. Necessity has attracted him into its service and he performs it, without being aware of it.

BOGOMILA: Can't he be stopped?

CARDINAL: He is a prisoner of Form. He is trapped in the spirit of Art.

Document C4, 1985

THE ACT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

September 1986 – May 1987

ARTISTIC EVENT

YOUTH DAY

In 1983, the SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER composed a program founded solely on unknowns. The only item of this program which could be foreseen proceeded from certified political experience, that the unknown, which is simulated as the known, is always constructive, as it can be controlled and directed into the desired consequences. The SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER was simultaneously developed as an idea about a THEATER an idea about a STATE. In 1987, the idea about the STATE in the SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER achieved the level of state creativity. THE ARTISTIC EVENT OF YOUTH DAY, which was dedicated to the celebration of YUGOSLAV youth, is the last theatrical project of the SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER. With this project, the observation of the relation between the THEATER and the STATE and the THEATER as a STATE has achieved its climax. That is why the ARTISTIC EVENT OF YOUTH DAY is also an ACT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE SCIPION NASICE SISTERS THEATER as a STATE institution and STATE.

Document B2, 1987



THE ARTISTIC EVENT OF YOUTH DAY was also abolished by the SOCIALIST FEDERATIVE REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA.

Document D2, 1987