Abstract
This chapter reviews two contrasting artistic groups, Fluxus and the Théâtre du Soleil, that employ a nomadic approach as an alternative behaviour. By applying Rosi Braidotti’s analysis of nomadic subjectivity, the chapter reveals how these two groups exhibit specific features favoured by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, such as transnationalism, communal property, becoming minoritarian, originality of approach, and desubjectivation. Although the Théâtre du Soleil is a tightly organized professional group compared with the loosely structured and amateur policies of the Fluxus artistic movement, they both exhibit many nomadic features. They have been experimental in developing new artistic forms and in their original ways of thinking, and both have been egalitarian in welcoming different nationalities and ethnicities into their company.
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Notes
- 1.
Earlier versions of the discussion of Fluxus in this chapter appeared in 2014 as ‘The Spirit of Fluxus as a Nomadic Art Movement’, in Nordic Theatre Studies, and in 2017 as ‘After Dada: Fluxus as a Nomadic Art Movement’ in New Theatre Quarterly.
- 2.
Clive Phillpot (2017) adds, ‘The composition of the group of Fluxus people was exceptional in that it included several Asians, such as Ay-O, Mieko Shiomi, Nam June Paik, and Yoko Ono—as well as the black American Ben Patterson and a significant number of women—and in that it reached from Denmark to Italy, from Czechoslovakia through the United States to Japan. Interest in and knowledge of Asian cultures were generally increasing in the West at the time, and, in this context, are evidenced by Maciunas’ tentative plans in 1961 for a Japanese issue of Fluxus, which would have included articles relating to Zen, to Hakuin, to haiku, and to the Gutai Group, as well as surveys of contemporary experimental Japanese art.’
- 3.
For an elaboration of this point, see Lazzarato, 2010, pp. 100–15, and specifically p. 109.
- 4.
According to Andrew Dickson (2012), ‘salaries are still more or less equal across the company, and far from generous: €1400 a month for new arrivals, €1800 for long-term members, including Mnouchkine herself’.
- 5.
Emine Fisek (2008, p. 206) describes the Sangatte Refugee Centre as ‘founded in August 1999 through the joint efforts of the Red Cross and the French government. Housed in a giant warehouse, the centre functioned as a “transit camp”, providing accommodation for immigrants (mostly Iraqi Kurds, Afghans and Iranians) on their way to Britain. Originally designed to hold 500, by 2001 the centre housed around 1500 refugees. […] many crossed the channel on foot, in containers and otherwise and arrived, illegally, in Britain. When the British government tightened control of Chunnel territory at its end, Sangatte’s identity, composition and future changed. The visibility of the camp mafia (smugglers who allowed refugees entrance into the tunnel in return for several hundred dollars) increased, as did the casualties of this voyage.’
- 6.
Citing an anthropological study by Didier Fassin in 2005, Fisek (2008, p. 206) reports that when Britain tightened its border controls around the Eurotunnel, an increase in violence occurred in Sangatte, caused by the existence of a smugglers’ mafia, resulted in a proliferation of the number of security guards to the extent that it became like an internment camp. In December 2002, the French government closed the camp, leading to the creation of the ‘jungle’ in Calais. ‘In December [2002], then minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, bolted shut the doors of Sangatte. He argued first that the centre had become a magnet for illegal immigration and second, that the uneasy image of a confinement camp did not befit a modern democratic nation […] While some asylum seekers were able to secure safe voyages as well as entry documents to the UK, many others for whom Sangatte had become home (along with those who continued to arrive) were emptied on to the streets of Calais.’
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Wilmer, S.E. (2018). Two Approaches to Nomadism: Fluxus and Théâtre du Soleil. In: Performing Statelessness in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2_8
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