2012 @VIERTE WELT

HARLAN'S CHILDREN | eight days - eighty truths

The starting point of our preoccupation is Thomas Harlan's last text, Veit. In 1964, Veit Harlan called his disowned son Thomas to his deathbed; 46 years later, the seriously ill son dictates his legacy to his dead father. A fictional conversation with one who is no longer present but never disappears. Veit is a final invocation that pronounces the betrayal of the father, which lasted until the death of the son, as at once compelling, necessary, right and unendurable. This father is addressed with an informal YOU. Before dying: the last words, the last possibility to open up, an attempt to tell the truth; the dictation of a legacy, great theatre.

The artistic work of Thomas Harlan, existentially bound to his origins, socialisation and biography, generates in its consequence a radical strategy for a political-artistic confrontation with guilt and responsibility. Using Thomas Harlan as material, we want to make this strategy visible by moving it into our future: what will remain after everything is sold? Who will have been to blame? Is there a relationship between the legacy and the heirs of the National Socialist past on the one hand and a future legacy of the total sell-out of our world today on the other hand, which is legitimised (excused) by the "natural laws" of markets and money flows? What is my relationship to this as an artist? What Thomas Harlan describes in Veit as "... something similar to the truth ..." is to be examined for its theatrical possibilities and questioned for the aesthetic-political consequences for us, the survivors, the heirs. Our work becomes a work against a rash ego, against “efficient", ready-made talk; language and the possession of language are at stake (and thus the essential basis of theatre) here, because such thinking is exhibited in speaking, it follows the call of a cause and no longer celebrates an attitude of its own. Thinking and speaking in all their mobility become the subject: a speaking thinking that is committed to the production of reality and yet can only take place inside an art space.

The project explicitly seeks connections between discourse theatre and archive; Thomas Harlan and his work provide the material, starting point and tools, for a theatrical archive of truths. This archive will be opened over the period of eight days. Eight days, eight themes, eighty truths will be presented in the form of films, conversations, readings, performances and guests. Excerpts from Harlan's work act as performers who appear in this documentary space, in which  fragments act as documents, witnesses and testimonies.

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