15 Jan 2015

Reading performance at Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen

'We all suffer from Capitalism, but refuse treatment' emerged out of an original idea to stage Marge Piercy's novel 'Woman on the Edge of Time' from 1976, juxtaposing it with 'Revolt and Crisis – Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come' (eds. Dimitris Dalakoglou & Antonis Vradis) (2011). Doing so facilitates discussion of potential future scenarios in a field where fiction and fact intersect.
'Woman on the Edge of Time' is regarded as a classic Utopian speculative science fiction novel. It merges a story about time travel with treatments of issues concerning economic inequality, social change, co-operation, social movements, and 'repairing' the world.
In December of 2008 the world saw how Greece plummeted into the depths of an unprecedented economic and social crisis whose effects would ripple out and be felt throughout the world. The book Revolt and Crisis analyses the revolt, contextualising it in relation to the state and city in which it arose. The book explores the waves of crises that followed in its wake, and offers theories on future possibilities for revolt in light of the economic crisis.
The book urges us to radically rethink and redefine our tactics for resistance in a rapidly changing landscape where crises and potentialities are engaged in a fierce battle with an uncertain outcome.
This last point is of central significance to We all suffer from Capitalism, but we refuse treatment: poised somewhere between fiction and fact it depicts the perspectives of revolution in a state of constant interchange between past, present, and future, accentuating the dialectic links between them.
Our existing, present-day society is partly described through our main protagonist – Connie, a psychiatric patient – and her memories of her past; partly through her experiences of the present; and partly via her journey through time to a future utopian world.

Duration: 70 min
Actors: Rikke Eberhardt Knudsen, Ulrik Nykjær Jeppesen and Helga Rosenfeldt-Olsen
Supported by The Danish Arts Council