In Alphabetical Gardens. Than Hussein Clark

In Alphabetical Gardens

Than Hussein Clark works at the intersection of the roles of the artist, designer, director, screenwriter and set designer. His productions cannot be included in any of these categories alone, but instead seem to explode their borders and redefine their very nature. What is conveyed is not so much a generic idea of interdisciplinarity, but rather that of hybridization, contamination and over identification. In his projects Clark emphasizes the productive values of a given work, be it a film-work or a sculptural object, a two-dimensional or installation work. References to art history, poetry, cinema or literature animate his research, giving it depth and opening it up to a multiplicity of possible readings. The artist’s works are thus capable of formulating new narratives through a process of appropriation that goes beyond the formulas of historicization, and instead addresses cultural interstices and the intimate minor histories of the past.

For the 58th October Salon the artist explores the collapse between fiction and reality as well as dreams and waking life in the present. The first part of the project, In Alphabetical Gardens (2021), is a 16 part audio play produced with The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre and inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1963 novel The Benefactor, in which the protagonist Hippolyte lives according to the dictates of his oneiric activity, merging and confusing waking and dream states, imagination and reality. In Clark’s re-imagining of Sontag’s narrative, the action of the novel is moved from Paris to Belgrade and collaged with other found texts in the manner of Max Ernst’s Fatagaga series. The second part of the project, Aphorism Lobby Cards (A-H), consists of a series of placards drawing on Ernst’s series, the graphics of newspaper headlines and Dada poetry, and the text of Clark’s audio drama.

Broadcast Introduction Text
In Alphabetical Gardens
Than Hussein Clark

The recording you are about to listen to is the first episode of a sixteen-part experimental radio drama entitled In Alphabetical Gardens, which has been produced for the 56th October Salon, The Dreamers, on the invitation of the curators of the exhibition and in partnership with the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and Radio Belgrade. This rado drama is one part of a larger network of objects and material which together form my contribution to this Biennale Exhibition.

The story of this experimental radio drama, which details the experiences of Hippolyte, a Serbian-American man in Belgrade who becomes increasingly preoccupied with his dreams, could be said to have been constructed in two ways. The first followed a speculative proposition—what if Susan Sontag’s first novel, The Benefactor, set in an unknown location and released in 1968, had taken place in Belgrade? For the fictional characters of In Alphabetical Gardens, their lives are shaped not only by the political and historical context in which they find themselves, but by their regular attendance at a weekly social “salon”, held at the home of Marlene Anders, the wealthy and somewhat restless wife of an American ambassador. Hippolyte’s attendance at these events signals the beginning of a certain disturbance, the details of which gradually unfold as we begin in 1980, and move towards the present day. The second was to follow the example of the fantastical works of the Dada artist Max Ernst, which is to say that the text is a collage—of my own writing, of the transcriptions of improvisations undertaken with a cast of 12 actors of The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre, and of other found sources; ranging from the writings of American writer Alfred Chester, to transcripts of military expatriates working in Serbia, to young people’s accounts of hyperinflation in 1993, to public YouTube comments discussing the controversy of Peter Haanke receiving the Nobel Prize.

I was lucky to be able to briefly visit Belgrade in December of 2019, however, in times less precarious, this initial site visit to Belgrade would have been the first of many. In many ways the contours of this project and the text have been informed by this geographical gap enforced by the pandemic—that is to say, the text and its narrative function as a means of speculation to worlds and times very far away from my own. Which is in turn to say: I have never spent so long thinking about a place, sites, and historical context in which I have spent so little time.

As an artist, any invitation or commission to exhibit one’s work publicly is also an invitation to intervene in a certain set of conditions—whether those are discursive, spatial, or thematic. An invitation to participate in an exhibition such as the October Salon, opened to international artists in 2006, is as such an invitation to intervene in a set of conditions of production and display, which quickly move from geographically specific art history and aesthetic concerns to an equally geographically specific intellectual, cultural, and political history. As an American artist born in 1981, trained in western Europe and within the contours of western European art history, if we are to understand the act of exhibiting one’s work as a mode of intervention into various discursive fields—in this case specific to Serbian and Balkan contexts of the eventual works on display—then my participation in the October Salon is a priori structured by sets of oppositions outside of and both constructive of my own artistic position. Those oppositions are, to name just a few, between the centre and the periphery, between East and West, and between post-socialist and post-Fordist forms of life.

With this work, then, upon being invited to participate in this exhibition and therefore to intervene within this specific context, the question quickly became how the work actually might take form, rather than how such a task is impossibly predetermined by my own subjectivity as a queer American artist, whose previous knowledge of both Serbia and the Balkans was limited to my early childhood memories of the Balkan conflict as a news item, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as a test question, and some limited exposure to Eastern European art history made possible by the pioneering work of Roger Conover, at MIT Press. This precedent made proceeding even more tricky. Whether thinking about Foucault’s support of the Iranian Revolution, Genet’s alignment with the Black Panthers and the PLO, or even of Sontag’s own intervention into the cultural life of the Balkans with her production of Waiting For Godot—itself a work connected to a long history of Beckett’s work as staged in Belgrade, not least through our host Radio Belgrade—at each turn, participation and intervention into context that is “not your own” seemed a more and more perilous procedure. That said, perhaps these glitches in transmission, finally when all is said and done, are the only possible means of communicating the reality of my vision when it is invited to encounter a city that is not my own.

Than Hussein Clark
In Alphabetical Gardens
Episode 1: Red Ink/ Blue Ink.
English Version

https://soundcloud.com/curacuracura/than-hussein-clark-in-alphabetical-gardens-episode-1-red-ink-blue-ink

Than Hussein Clark
In Alphabetical Gardens
Episode 1: Red Ink/ Blue Ink.
Serbian Version

https://soundcloud.com/curacuracura/than-hussein-clark-in-alphabetical-gardens-episode-1-red-ink-blue-ink-serbian-version

THAN HUSSEIN CLARK
In Alphabetical Gardens, 2021
Radio drama in 16 episodes
Aphorism Lobby Cards (A-H), 2021
Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Karin Guenther, Hamburg

All photos: The Actor Markus Bernhard Börger Dreaming as Hippolyte, 2021
Courtesy the artist
Introduction text by Costanza Paissan

Produced by The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre and RINSE123 LTD
Executive Producer – Lise Bell
Producer – Katie Della-Valle
Company Stage Managers – Georgia Bird, Kate Aisling Jones
Deputy Stage Manager – Helen King
Sound Design – James Neville
Sound Assistant – Oliver Hyde-Mobbs, Douglas Neville
Dramaturg – Katrina Black
Script Supervision – Kiera Coward-Deyell, Scout Kauffman
Research Assistant – Jelena Dojcinovic
Technical Director – Benjamin Slinger
Studio Assistant – Jordan Derrien
Production Support – Alex Margo Arden
Translators – Milan Markovic, Tijana Parezanovic

In association with CURA., The Oktober Salon, The Cultural Centre of Belgrade and Radio Belgrade

With thanks to Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin, Zorana Djakovic, Katarina Kostandinovic, Jana Gligorijević, Mima Petkovic, Aleksandar Ilic and Vesna Perić

Performed by The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre
Markus Bernhard Börger
Joseph Patrick Connolly
Steff Golding
Lisa Heinrici
Malwina Kajetańczyk
Catherine Luedtke
Valerie McCann
Andy McCredie
Josef Mohamed
Luis Odriozola
Laura Schuller
Alina Montana Weber

Serbian Version
Performed by Bojan Žirović, Tamara Krcunović, Dejan Dedić, Branislav Platiša, Miodrag Milovanov, Petar Mihailović, Vladislava Đorđević, Vesna Stanković, Milica Janketić Manojlović and Vukašin Jovanović
Sound recording – Zoran Uzelac
Directing – Vesna Peric
Speach and accent supervisor – Natasa Suljagic

Episode 1, Red Ink/Blue Ink
Episode 2, Saxophone Politburo
Episode 3, The Dream of the Unconventional Party
Episode 4, James Madison and John Doe
Episode 5, On the Very Edge of an Exquisite Corpse
Episode 6, Abandoned to a Merchant
Episode 7, The Doctrines of the Autogenists
Episode 8, I Become an Actor or on the Proper Narration of DreamsEpisode 9, Rhythm of the Heart
Episode 10, Crime Without Punishment
Episode 11, The House in Dedinje
Episode 12, The Dream of the Mirror
Episode 13, Some Anecdotes Illustrating Proper Self Love
Episode 14, Grief
Episode 15, A Dream Inventory and a Nightmare
Episode 16, Styles of Silence

Than Hussein Clark
In Alphabetical Gardens
Episode 2, Saxophone Politburo

https://soundcloud.com/curacuracura/than-hussein-clark-in-alphabetical-gardens-episode-2-saxophone-politburo

IN ALPHABETICAL GARDENS
EPISODE TWO: SAXOPHONE POLITBURO
[Belgrade, 1982]

Markus Bernhard Börger: Hippolyte
Joseph Connolly: Uros
Laura Schuller: Monique, Little Michael, Eunice
Alina Weber: Marlene Anders
Catherine Luedtke: Father Trissotin, Jovonka Brosz
Luis Odriozola: Dimitri, Man in the Black Bathing Suit, Thomas Jefferson
Lisa Heinrici: Susan Sontag, Comrade Antic
Malwina Kajetańczyk: Maestro, Princess Lubizia, Long Tommy
Valerie McCann: Lucrezia, Miss Violet
Steff Golding: Larsen
Josef Mohamed: Professor Bulgareaux, Genevieve
Than Hussein Clark: Hippolyte’s Father

Markus Bernhard Börger
Markus Bernhard Börger is a German and Berlin based actor. He studied acting at Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and was part of several pieces in and out of school, including A Clockwork Orange, My dear mad mind, (2014) directed by Felix Hafner, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Tropfen auf heiße Steine, (2017) directed by Stefan Schweigert. He took part in Hose Fahrrad Frau (2016) performed at Volkstheater Wien, and later at Burgtheater Wien. From 2017 to 2019 he starred in the soloplay Oh Schimmi directed by Anna Marboe in Schauspielhaus Wien, and Kosmos Bregenz. His artist collective CHILDHOOD:DESTINY staged Der Himmelblaue Herr, (2019) by Fanny Sorgo at Kasemattentheater Luxemburg, and When was the last time you sweat at a dancefloor, (2021) at Bananenfabrik Luxemburg. His previous work with Than Hussein Clark and The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre includes Three Types of Wind in Trieste and This is it—Dawn at Bar Bazhuka at MIT Boston. He recently participated in the film The Vagabonds, set to premier at the Cannes Festival.

Joseph Connolly
Joseph is an British/Irish actor and writer from the Fens, based between East Anglia and London. Recent credits include: MUCK at the Norwich arts Centre; CAMP, at Soho Theatre/Norfolk theatres; Warheads at the Park Theatre; BAIL with Franklyn Films; Meet me in St. Louis, Lewis at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Three Types of Wind in Trieste at the Schwankalle, Bremen.

Luis Garcia
Luis Odriozola (Córdoba, Spain, 1989) is a graduate of the Higher School of Dramatic Art of Cordoba. Between 2013 and 2014, in Poland, he was a member of the international ensemble Dynamika Metamorfozy at the Grotowski Institute and part of the neTTtheatre conpany directed by Pawel Passini. In 2015, Luis began to train in classical, modern and contemporary dance at the Andalusian Center of Dance (CAD) In 2017, he completed his studies in Forum Dança’s Choreographic Creation, Dance Research and Training Program (PEPCC) in Lisbon, Portugal. Luis has had the pleasure of performing in theatrical projects directed by Than Hussein Clark including Yes, Yes, All the News That’s Fit to Print, (2017), at Art Basel, Switzerland. He has also been a part of the film projects Love at the Frankfurt Autoshow, directed by Than Hussein Clark, and Torcicologologistas, at Tiago Rosa-Rosso. As a dancer, he has worked with choreographers including Silvia Real, Francisco Camacho, Mariana Tegner Barros, and Miguel Pereira.

Lisa Heinrici
Lisa Heinrici (born in Cottbus, 1990), is an actress and performance artist. She completed her acting training at the University of the Arts in Berlin in 2015, and subsequently made her debut at the Schauspiel Essen, directed by Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer. Freelance projects followed at Theater festivals, at Ballhaus Ost and a permanent commitment at the Theater in Koblenz. She has worked with collectives including Talking Straight and Das Helmi. In 2015 she co-founded the group virtuelles theater. As a freelance actress she recently worked at Schauspiel Stuttgart NORD and the Theater Discounter, in Berlin. Under the name Baby Marcel, she founded her own musical pop project, in which she tells stories from her social media filter bubble. She has been part of the ensemble of The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre since 2019.

Malwina Kajetanczyk
Malwina Kajetanczyk is an actress, performer, and producer, and was born in Zielona Góra in Poland, in 1988. She is a graduate of The Ludwig Solski State Drama School in Cracow, Wrocław. In 2019 she began studying at the Warsaw Film School, with a specialization Film And TV Production Organization. Since 2012 she has been involved in artistic projects in Poland and internationally, including The Pool’s Edge, or Gstaad Will Never Change, directed by Than Hussein Clark; Swiss Instiute/Contemporary Art, New York,Tableau Vivant, directed by Mike Hentz, at Lala Teaste Festival, Ovendorf- Germany; A Summers Rest “Je T’aime Mont Blanc” with the Villa Design Group at LISTE Art Fair Basel- Swizerland; and Chamber Music for Europe (Nonent for Selms Vaz Dias), directed by Than Hussein Clark for the Brussels Gallery Weekend, Belgium. After studying for two years she worked for The Grotowski Institute in Wrocław as an actress and a researcher. From 2015-2020 she worked at the Mask Theater in Rzeszow, and since 2017 she has been producing and performing in the Rise of Eastern Culture Festival at the European Stadium of Culture in Rzeszów, Poland. Her international performance art projects include Red Rexen Temple. The Show, directed by Ira Nirsha; Tableau Vivant- Żywy Obraz, directed by Mike Hentz; Syreny, which she directed, with choreography by Natalia Wilk; and Hotel Meduza, directed by Ira Nirsha. She produced her first feature documentary movie DAL, in 2020.

Catherine Luedtke
Catherine Luedtke (she/her) is a British actor who works in the United States and Europe. Recent work includes National Theatre/Young Vic/Good Chance The Jungle (Curran Theatre) California Shakespeare Theatre (Macbeth, War of The Roses, Pygmalion). She is a Resident Artist (Actor) at Crowded Fire (Revolt. She Said .Revolt Again.), and an original ensemble member of The Director’s Theatre, Writer’s Theatre in London. Other theatre: Third Cloud From The Left, PlayGround, VDG at M. I. T., Breadbox, Stanford Rep, NCTC. Film: Love at The Frankfurt Auto Show, Axiom, The Snow Walk of Empress Matilda and The Bride of Death. She is a TBA, SFBATCC, and Titan award nominated actor. Education: BFA in Fine Arts, Acting at Studio A.C.T., and Shakespeare at RADA.

Valerie McCann
Valerie McCann is a performing artist, movement director, and embodied practitioner based in London. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Movement Direction and Teaching at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Valerie works collaboratively with artists and ensembles across the US, UK, and Europe. In Los Angeles Valerie was a founding member of ARTEL (American Russian Theatre Ensemble Laboratory). She trained extensively with SITI Company in New York City and collaborated with company members and associates on several new works. Valerie was a member of the international ensemble Dynamika Metamorfozy with NetTheatre at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, PL. She assisted director Samantha Shay/Source Material in the creation of several new works, including the premier of A Thousand Tongues at the 2016 Theatre Olympics. She has a decades long collaborative relationship with the artist Than Hussein Clark and is a member of The Directors Theatre Writers Theatre. Valerie’s recent solo performances are inspired by her teachers Deborah Hay and Mary Overlie.

Josef Mohamed
Josef Mohamed was born in the Tyrol, Austria. He graduated from the Master of Performing Arts Programme at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in 2014. He is now a freelance actor and performer working across theatre, film, TV and radio production. He has been in the cast of over thirty theatre performances with leading institutions including the Swiss National Theatre, Schauspielhaus, Zürich; the Schauspielhaus Vienna, the Schauspielhaus Graz; and the State Theatre in Bolzano, Kampnagel Hamburg. He played parts in various Austrian and German TV-Shows including Tatort, Soko, Shortfilms. The film Why Not You, (2020) opens in cinemas this year. Josef has been working with Than Hussein Clark since 2015, in performances internationally including at LISTE and PARCOURS, Art Basel; VI VII Oslo; Studio Hrdinů, Prague; and the MIT List Visual Arts Centre, Boston. Josef is a member of the London based company The Director’s Theatre Writer’s Theatre.

Laura Schuller
Laura Schuller is an actor based in London and Hamburg. Born 1986 in Luxemburg, she grew up in Hamburg, where she studied literature, theatre, science and Italian, before beginning work as an actor. Productions in Germany include Mädchen in Uniform, (2010) and Neues vom Dauerzustand, (2012), both directed by René Pollesch at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Ein Bodybild (2013), directed by Martin Grünheit for the Theater Marabu in Bonn, and Und auch so Bitterkalt, (2015), directed by Paulina Neukampf for the Staatstheater Hannover. Since 2014 Schuller has been in a close artistic relationship with both the artist Than Hussein Clark and the Collective Villa Design Group, creating original theatre plays within Fine Art Performance Contexts. Productions include The House of Adelaida Ivanova (2014), Edinburgh Arts Festival; The Pool’s Edge (2014), Swiss Institute New York; A Summer’s Rest—Je T’aime Mont Blanc (2015), Passing Peaks Art Basel; The Tragedy Machine (2016), MIT List Visual Arts Center; Yes, Yes, All the News That’s Fit to Print (2017), at Parcours Art Basel; and Meet me in St. Louis, Lewis! (2019), at the Centre Pompidou. She graduated with a masters degree in Acting and Performer Training from Rose Bruford College in 2018.

Steff Golding
Steff works professionally as an actor both in the UK and internationally. She moved to London eight years ago to train in musical theatre at Arts Ed., and is now continuing her studies in Acting at AMAW. Primary credits include NYT’s 60th Anniversary at Shaftesbury Theatre, London, (2016) and performing in one of the first plays released post- lockdown, The Last Harvest, at Soulton Hall (2020). Since 2015 Steff has worked closely with NYT as an actor on various productions, and as an Assistant Director/ Company Manager on their short courses and summer intake courses. Steff is also currently writing her own music, with her most recent credit being backup singer for Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and will begin releasing music later this year.

Alina Weber
Alina Montana Weber is a puppeteer and actress. She studied contemporary puppetry at the HfS Ernst Busch in Berlin and graduated in 2016. Her first production with Than Clark and the TDWT Company was Yes, Yes, All the News That’s Fit to Print, for Art Basel Parcours in 2017, and they have been working together regularly since. Following the 2019/2020 season she is a permanent ensemble member of tjg.Theater junge generation in Dresden. Her website is here: alinaweber.net

Than Hussein Clark
In Alphabetical Gardens
Episode 3 – The Dream of the Unconventional Party

Written and directed by Than Hussein Clark

In association with
CURA., The Oktober Salon, The Cultural Centre of Belgrade and Radio Belgrade

With thanks to Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin, Zorana Djakovic, Katarina Kostandinovic, Jana Gligorijević, Mima Petkovic, Aleksandar Ilic and Vesna Perić