Video, English, 16:9, color,
ca 60 min, 2021

Parliament and the Commune, Performance Brecht-Haus, Berlin 2021

Parliament and The Commune. A Philosophical Performance for Two Voices
and a Turntable

For some philosophical voices, The Commune is the opposite of Parliament. No representation but direct democracy. However, it could be argued that the Paris Commune was the attempt to install a radical Parliament. For a parliament is to be radical if it is to represent. Rather than abolish parliament, we need to radicalise it. In this performance lecture, Dieter Lesage argues for a radical Idea of Parliament, against the antiparliamentarianism of The Invisible Committee, Alain Badiou and others, while Ina Wudtke sings and plays music from the radical- democratic repertoire, in a setting which she designed after a 1966 set design of Bertolt Brecht’s Tage der Commune for a GDR television adaptation by the Berliner Ensemble. The live performance in the Brecht-Haus was recorded on video.

Parliament and the Commune, Performance Brecht-Haus, Berlin 2021