Zizek

Traum Europa is a 3 part audiovisual performance work about the broad history of Europe running for 25 minutes. It is performed solo by David Cox who plays characters, instruments, and delivers monolog/song accompaniment to the audio mix. Some of the mix comes from the 16mm optical sound component of the archival films being shown, others come from a prerecorded audio/music montage which acts as backing for Cox' live performance.

Traum Europa makes use of a screening venue's main venue HD wall projection screen and adds to this a  smaller suspended portable rear projection screen behind a simple prop setting of a chair and table. The table represents 'Europe'.

On the table is an adjustable document video camera (which moves similar to a table lamp) the view of which is projected onto the smaller rear projection screen behind the table & chair.

The larger house wall screen shows 16mm film made up of archival material related to Europe while the smaller screen shows only what the camera sees of the items on the table. These are props, symbolic objects, photos, maps etc.

The three acts of the event are as follows:

ACT 1)

The Renaissance (10 minutes) 
Themes/Topic
* Planes of Perspective and Power
* Durer, Piero De La Francesca (lines converging on a vanishing point, 
ability to transcode objects using math into new 3D positions on the drawing surface)
* The Sextant - lining up the celestial bodies with landmarks to determine heading
* Homo Universalis - the 'universal subject'
* Automata 

ACT 2) (10 minutes)

The Modern Era
Themes/Topic
* Treaty of Westphalia: From Empires to Nation States - Habsburg, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian into Germany, France, Italy, Spain etc.
* World Wars - abstraction in art, science etc
* Collapse of the Berlin Wall 
* Duchamp, irony as art gesture
* Debord - Kriegspiel - the game of war - about communication rather than territory

ACT 3) (10 minutes)

Contemporary Europe
Themes/Topics
* Battle lines drawn again
* False Universality of the Liberal Plea
* Rightwing takeover
* The new Imperialism in Europe and its discontents
* AI and the new "planes of perspective and Power" 

The various table props will be used to display small objects and props and theses will in turn relate to the subject matter referred to onto the soundtrack. 

David Cox will perform all these three characters and will perform the gestures, dressed as a different figure for each act:

Act 1: The financed artisan trapped by his reliance upon church and state funds.
Wears a generous smock and consults books, notes, writes with a quill.

Props: Quill, Manuscript Paper, Sextant, Perspective drawing tool, telescope, string to  perspective lines, a la Durer.

Act 2: The Pressured Eurocrat, passport man, company man adapting to shattered Europe. Wears a suit & tie. Put upon. Always out of time. Escapes via plane from Germany to England to get a boring but satisfying job in the UK government.

Props: telephone, ashtray, pen, minox spy camera, passport stamp & rubber ink. Models of the ruined city of Berlin, model of train platform. Model of aircraft to 'fly' in front of rear projection of 'sky'.Game of Kriegspiel (Debord) will be started and not finished. Document camera will film these.

Act 3): The Liberal European Subject - a "neutral" figure, representing what Europe today would like to escape into now that fascism has returned. He has no way to know how he is manipulated by history. Jeans, black top, Eurocrat of today.

Dave Cox October 30th 2023

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Based in San Francisco California
Currently playing as - X73 (see X73.zone)
Film Maker - Director of Puppenhead, Otherzone,

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