NO83 [How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare]

From the moment we decide to purchase a canvas and then stretch it, the error has begun.  
Joseph Beuys

This play, which reaches us from distant Estonia, is as funny and energetic as it is stupefyingly insolent.  How does one explain paintings to a dead hare ?  The question may seem absurd to anyone who has never posed for a painter.  More to the point, how can one talk about a theatrical event that is titled « how to explain paintings to a dead hare » ? A very wise historian reminds us half way through the play that Tiit Ojasoo and Elle-Liis Semper, co-founders in 2004 of the N099 theater in Tallinn, borrowed from one of Joseph Beuys’ most famous happenings.  November 26th, 1965, in Dusseldorf, Beuys slathered his head in honey and gold powder and then ran around Alfred Schmela’s gallery for three hours, going from one painting to another, clutching a dead hare to his chest and murmuring inaudible absurdities.  This guided visit of the gallery was captured on hidden cameras and microphones and transmitted live to an audience that the artist had kept at a distance behind a glass window and door.  Right.  The 60’s were decidedly a very weird decade.  But what does all of this have to do with Estonia ? And with us ?  It is nigh time to tell you that the present Estonian Minister of Culture’s name can be translated as « hare ».  Of course the artistic team here will repeat to whomever wishes to listen, and with a big smile, that any resemblance with people dead or alive, is a pure coincidence.  But the fact is that this 16th opus, which is N083 (the theater company gives a number to each work, starting at N099 and counting down), questions the relations between state institutions, or political figures and art in general and more specifically, contemporary art.  But this is only a beginning.  If politicians sometimes appear too confident in what we call communication, haven’t artists themselves pushed their critical vision so far that the destination of art (if there still is one), has become problematic, if not completely incomprehensible ?  How can one then justify the fact that a community of citizens (taxpayers ?) subsidizes works that seem to defy any possible community ?  After all, why should one bother to explain paintings to a hare – that moreover, happens to be dead ?  For the performing arts, these are vital questions.  N083 asks these questions with powerful and incisive precision that should leave traces in our memories – because the least we can say is that this half-crazed theater troupe from Tallinn, is far from being off topic !