18 May PICTURE BOOK ABOUT MAJA

By Nenad Obradović
E-novine, June, 2012

The picture book about Maja, a feeble echo of our past, offers, through the performance Maja and I and Maja, an incentive for further reflection on the culture of memory but also of the present moment which is dominated by carelessness and indifference. That is how the performance moves from creative and carefree story about Maja towards the topics of hate, homophobia and war crimes, reminding of the Batajnica mass graves with Albanian victims. Thereby this performance becomes an ethically relevant, consistent and inspiring one, suitable for contemplation of personal mischief, big historical breakdowns and exerting manipulative power over individuals. As Pierre Bourdieu puts it:“The power to impose and to inculcate a vision of division, that is, the power to make visible and explicit social division that are implicit, is political power par excellence. It is the power to make groups, to manipulate the objective structure of society”.
The performance Maja and I and Maja, relying on the most painful landmarks in personal memories in the context of collective memory and the reality of today, encompasses the long period of “struggle with memory” in an intense and conceptually consistent manner. Not only does the creative team of the performance demystify the process of growing up in the midst of the hell of today, but also brings forth an intimate story about time we are starting to forget although we keep listening about it. The approach used in this performance, the deconstruction of a myth, releases us from that unnecessary burden.