NOTES
The Metopes of the Parthenon – Romeo Castellucci
Concept and direction, Romeo Castellucci – Music, Scott Gibbons – Riddles, Claudia Castellucci – With: Urs Bihler, Dirk Glodde, Gina Gurtner/Silvia Costa, Zoe Hutmacher, Liliana Kosarenko, Maximilian Reichert – Artistic collaboration, Silvia Costa – Special effects, Giovanna Amoroso and Istvan Zimmermann – Plastikart Studio
La grande halle de la Villette, Paris, France – 22-30/11/2015 – Photo: Christophe RAYNAUD DE LAGE

In collaboration with: Art Basel, MCH Messe Schweiz and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 
With the friendly support of Vereinigung nordwestschweizerischer Spitäler
At the end of the 2014/15 theatre season and during Art Basel, Theater Basel presents, from 16 June onwards, an intervention by internationally renowned artist Romeo Castellucci. ‘The Parthenon Metopes’ is an elaborate game of art and reality that dares to ask mankind’s ultimate questions: where do we come from, where are we going? And what power/force determines our lives? Once again, what Alraune says to the Roman conqueror Varus in Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht proves true when he and his army are caught in the swamps of the Teutoburg Forest – when asked where he was, Varus replies: ‘Lodged fast between nothing and nothing.’ The enigma of life cannot be solved.

It is the moment of sheer horror, the moment between life and death: an accident occurred or rather: an incident. What really happened remains in the dark. A car accident, a violent attack, a suicide attempt, a heart attack – we don’t know. And we shall not find out. We only see the victim lying on the ground. A human in pain. Seconds turn into an eternity before the ambulance eventually arrives, before professional rescue commences. They are bound to fail. “Because theatre, like life, always acts on the assumption of tragedy,” says Romeo Castellucci. Especially when higher powers are involved, as soon becomes clear. The old man had not simply collapsed, the car had not just accidentally driven into the crowd. But this part of the story is not to be told. The only thing we learn is this: a Sphinx has posed a riddle, a riddle about life and death. And this human being, lying on the ground, mortally wounded or mortally ill, might survive if the riddle is answered solved …

Romeo Castellucci’s enigmatic scenic installation brings together philosophical ideas of the ancient world and modern hyperrealism. The audience finds itself in a cold and empty hall and like in an antique frieze, one emergency situation follows the other, six altogether. Every single incident is accompanied by a new riddle, projected onto the wall of the building.

This performance gains its tension and intensity not only from its content, but also from its special form, the combination of highly artificial theatre aesthetics and the very real world of the emergency services. There will be real ambulances, real paramedics from Basel who come to save the victims but these victims are all actors. The paramedics are all people who are more than familiar with those dramatic moments when they wrestle a try to pluck a victims from the jaws of death under the pitiless eyes of a sphinx.

The aesthetic always uses a mask that, at one and the same time, affirms and negates. It is only in the intermittence of revelation that we have access to works of art. Theatre and art do not represent a space in which to live: here, the laws and values of this world are not valid. Theatre and art are not intended to solve problems: they must add new ones. – Romeo Castellucci

According to Romeo Castellucci, the friezes of the Parthenon (Le Metope del Partenone) represent nothing more than ‘battles for life’. To compose his own theatrical ‘friezes’, the Italian director places himself at the scene of a horrific accident, the causes of which are unknown, which leaves its victim suspended between life and death. Only the speed and efficiency of the emergency services can bring them back to life or tip them over to the other side. Six accidents are set to occur in succession, forming six tableaux of a city, six states of pain, six possible friezes. The fiction of each accident, in which the victim is played by an actor, is countered by the intervention of a real medical team, different each time, at the scene of the drama. The audience, who have entered the show as spectators, are then thrown into the voyeurism of mere onlookers, curious about bloodshed.

Each of the six ‘friezes’ becomes ‘like an emergency scene’ where centuries and forms collide, between what Romeo Castellucci considers the artistic peak of Pericles’ century, the friezes of the temple of temples, and the vulgarity of an American television series. Each accident is punctuated by the screening of a series of ‘riddles’ on screen, like echoes of the enigmatic phrases of Go Down, Moses. They make the audience oscillate between the sensation of horror they experience and the intellectual demand to decipher what they cannot help but read. Which then prevails?