The Art of Living: The Act of Killing

The performance does not focus on a single topic, rather addresses a range of issues that feminism deals with; from consensual sex and micro sexual violence to the femicide. The actresses take on the roles of the Bukovec sisters. [They] begin a story that starts lightly but ends on a heavy note. The Bukovec sisters wearing shorts and boots act as a kind of narrator, an ancient Greek chorus (but a female one) who use songs to comment ironically on reality. The protagonists don’t have clearly defined personalities, rather, they narrate themselves. The reality of the performance can be framed in several ways. The first frame and perspective we can follow is the rural one. Even though only one part of the play focuses directly on the countryside, the murder took place there, which makes the village present throughout the entire performance. And if not the village itself, then a kind of small-town atmosphere, something that even Ljubljana could represent. So this frame could be understood as something standing in opposition to a large urban metropolis. The second frame is, of course, feminist activism – the desire to educate and raise awareness – but also the feminism of the second wave, full of anger toward men. The last and, in my opinion, the most interesting interpretive frame is art itself. This frame appears in Barbara’s stories about escaping to the city, but also in her return to the countryside. The part about the murder is also presented as a form of art – described as an installation – which seems to express the need to confront patriarchy through art, just as the artists and performers Kukovec admired in London as she mentioned at the beggining of the perfromance. Art, in fact, seems to be a key word in the performance. As the play unfolds, the creators gradually reveal new inscriptions on a cardboard structure hanging from the wall: the art of society, the art of statements, and the art of violence. This is how the artists divided their performance. Interestingly, the final part about the murder is not called art, but the area of the murder […] We now enter the world of the art of violence, sexual and otherwise. Three actresses share their experiences, which many of the girls in the audience have likely encountered as well. These confessions form a transitional layer between the safe space of community and the act of murder. They slowly direct the audience’s attention toward the growing anger toward men and what they are capable of. The personal confessions also touch upon #MeToo issues in theatre – extremely important confessions about abusive directors who believe their position gives them unlimited power. I hope that such voices will continue to be heard more often, both in public debates and in the theatre. Soon after, violence becomes real on stage. Urška Brodar scatters boxes labeled “no,” while two other performers enter armed and begin throwing plush breasts at the audience. The final part, as I mentioned, is no longer an art piece about violence, it becomes a crime scene, a representation of femicide: the intentional killings of women and girls motivated by gender-based reasons. The installation consists of plush, dismembered or deformed bodies covered with foil, accompanied by a performative retelling of a horrific story of the murder of a woman committed by her husband and his lover. This is an incredibly thought-provoking choice. Could it mean that performance art, rather than traditional theatre, is better equipped to speak about violence? Throughout these scenes, one feels the rage and sense of injustice radiating from the artists. Perhaps that is why this part feels so powerful and overshadows the rest of the performance, its honesty and rawness make the audience lose connection with earlier sections, as the core of the performance becomes the issue of femicide.