Empire (Art & Politics)

In astrophysics, the French word “superamas” designates a galactic super cluster in migration, the largest known structure in the universe; in the southern United States, it is a supermarket chain; on the stage, it is a collective that says “us” to better assert its singularity. A Superamas show is therefore many people on the stage, incomparable energy, lightness and complexity mixed together, pleasure and seduction combined with a pitiless criticism of our media, social and political reality. As they say “An eminently political position is incumbent on artists today: to not leave the monopoly of amusement up to Walt Disney. In other words: “acting like a whore” can be an extremely subversive position. And Superamas' shows really cause critical damage through the implosion of pleasure: they perfectly mime our spectacular shortcomings to better challenge our condition of spectator/actor in an over-mediatized, over-productive world whose obsession with power runs in fourth gear as well as in neutral. The French and Austrian artists who make up Superamas, a migrant and international structure based in Vienna and Paris, play with all supports and all genres: theatre, dance, video, performance, installations, conversations, cocktail parties, the G8 or even schoolboy pranks between friends and a huge pharaonic spectacle. For the last 10 or so years, they have been produced in many theatres and festivals in Europe and have imposed their trilogy Big 1st Episode - Artificial Intelligence / Reality Show, Big 2nd Episode - Show / Business, Big 3rd Episode - Happy / End. Superamas presented Big 3rd Episode and the installation High Art at the Festival d'Avignon 2007.

Superamas' new show is a fable on the establishment and spreading of empires. Going from the recreation of a Napoleonic battle to the short travel film, from a worldly reception to a frenzied samba, from a ceremony with flags to fireworks with the smell of something burning, Empire (Art & Politics) is not exempt from a reflection on the nature of government propaganda or the firepower of American imperialism. In May 1809, right outside Vienna, the emperor Napoleon's armies crossed the Danube with the intention of destroying the forces of the archduke Karl. Over 175,000 soldiers fought in the battles and 40,000 died in two days. The Austrians have celebrated the Aspern victory ever since; French pupils know the battle won in Essling. Each side claims victory, but it was above all the first slaughter of the modern era, a vain combat with a victor that opened the way to industrial wars for cannon fodder. It was also a battle of press releases and triumphant editorials: how is a victory fabricated? Should the legend or the reality be printed? This is how empires are born and now they die. The Superamas' show begins with this paradoxical success that is also a strange defeat, and continues with an entertaining questioning on the empire as though it were one of the fine arts: its creation, its filming, its propaganda, its gossip, as well as its violence, its thirst for power and its unstoppable need to reproduce itself, even today, from summits gathering together the greatest powers to the war in Afghanistan. Empire (Art & Politics) shows all this on the stage, from Napoleonic imagery to George Bush on television: how, trading a military uniform for a three-piece suit, abandoning propaganda for the leisure industry, our politicians are dressed like our merchants, an inescapable sign of the dissemination of imperial ideology. What remains is to present it as a hysterical show and to have it smell like gunpowder.

conception et production: Superamas
avec: Roch Baumert, Alix Eynaudi, Davis Freeman, Magda Loitzenbauer, Ariane Loze, Jamal Mataan, Anna Mendelssohn, Diederik Peeters, Faris-Endris Rahoma, Rachid Sayet et Superamas

coproduction: Buda arts centre (Courtrai), Parc de La Villette (Paris),
Kaaitheater (Bruxelles), Linz 2009 capitale culturelle européenne,
Workspace (Bruxelles)
en collaboration: avec le Choreographic Center Linz (CCL), Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier-programme hors-série, CNEAI, wp zimmer (Anvers)
avec le soutien: de la Ville de Vienne, du ministère fédéral de l'Éducation, des Arts et de la Culture d'Autriche, la DRAC Île-de-France et Le Cru 100% Champagne
avec l'aide: de l'Onda pour les surtitres