“His theater of alienation intended to motivate the viewer to think. Brecht’s postulate of a thinking comportment converges, strangely enough, with the objective discernment that autonomous artworks presupposes in the viewer, listener, or reader as being adequate to them. His didactic style, however, is intolerant of the ambiguity in which thought originates: It is authoritarian. This may have been Brecht’s response to the ineffectuality of his didactic plays: As a virtuoso of manipulative technique, he wanted to coerce the desired effect just as he once planned to organize his rise to fame.”

Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Brecht is often critcized, that his didactic style is reproducing the power relations, that he was claiming to get rid of with his epic theatre. It is not very consequent, to critize one doctrine and to open a space of free thought in a first step, but then to occupy this free space with another doctrine in a second step. Therefore, Brecht’s aesthetic legacy for today and his emancipative potential certainly exists within the artistic vocabulary that he provides in a first step with his “theater of alienation”:

„True V effects (distancing effects) are of a combative nature. Every art contributes to the greatest art of all, the art of living. The bourgeois theatre’s performances always aim at smoothing over contradictions, at creating false harmony, at idealization. Conditions are reported as if they could not be otherwise…“

Brecht, Appendices to the Short Organum (1960)

“The term of Verfremdungseffekt [V effects] is rooted in the Russian Formalist notion of the device of making strange or “priem ostranenie”, which literary critic Viktor Shklovsky claims is the essence of all art” (Wikipedia). As we can read, Brecht relates the “greatest art of all” to the “art of living”, a term that is also used by his contemporary Marcel Duchamp, when Duchamp is describing his artistic practice:

„I like living, breathing, better than working… My Art [is] that of living: each second, each breath is work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it’s a sort of constant euphoria“.

Marcel Duchamp

Brecht’s influence in the contemporary art world is quite low compared to Duchamp. One of the main reasons – besides the fact that Brecht is a theatre guy – is certainly Brecht’s “authoritarian style”. With his concept of the readymade Duchamp is opening a very anti-hierarchical space of thought. In his time and context he was shuttering certainities, that provided space for most individual and singular reactions by the viewers.

marcel_duchamp_fountain_at_tate_modern_by_david_shankbone, from: wikipedia.de

It is interesting to think about Duchamp’s conceptual notion of the “readymade” with regard to its relation to reality and against the background of Brecht’s notion of the “distancing effect”. Both have in common, that in some way they aim to “make the familiar strange”:

“An ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” (MD, “readymade” in “Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme”)

But while Duchamp is questionizing the status of “traditional Western Art”, Brecht’s writings deal with the “traditional Western Theatre” and its connection to the social and political reality. Brechts indictment of a “false harmony” and “idealization” – that is “smoothing over contradictions” – can give  impulses to reflect about the relation of art and the public, which becomes even more evident, when we do a small detour:

In Chinese philosophy there is long tradition of the notion of „harmony“. At the same time is the classical school of Chinese poems, paintings and writings deeply connected to the notion of an “art of living”.

The sky’s water has fallen, and autumn clouds are thin,
The western wind has blown ten thousand li.
This morning’s scene is good and fine,
Long rain has not harmed the land.
The row of willows begins to show green,
The pear tree on the hill has little red flowers.
A hujia pipe begins to play upstairs,
One goose flies high into the sky.

Du Fu, "Clearing Rain", ca. 758 (Translation: David Hinton)
 First Half of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" by Huang Gongwang (1348-1350, literally: "Living in Happiness Spring Mountains Painting"),
from Wikipedia.org

The French philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien describes in his writings, how in „traditional Chinese thinking“ the entity and complementarity of contradictions is not considered as a problem, but as the principle of life, that primary renders the process possible, that we are all part of. During the centuries Western scholars have been attracted by this concept of a “practical philosophy” (compare f.e. the notes of German philosopher Leibniz in the previous “Public Tranquility”-Post). While Jullien has drawn criticism by Western (and Eastern) scholars, that blame him to distinguish in his texts too acute and spectacular between a “so-called Western and Eastern way of thinking”, i think that many of his observations are quite obvious and relevant. I suppose, that we have to be careful in comparing a specific cultural notion of “harmony”, that does not aim to idealization (since it does not care about transcendence), immediately with the notion of a “false harmony” that Brecht is writing about. So while there might be different cultural notions of “harmony”, each contemporary approach to “harmony” that claims to integrate a multitude of positions and poles has to keep care, that the borders of these two different notions of “harmony” are not starting to get blurry and intransparent. A couple of years ago we had a politically controversial debate in Germany about the notion of “Deutsche Leitkultur”, which can be translated as “German leading culture” or “German core culture”: While many participants and observers of the German debate agreed, that foundational values and convictions are very important for each national (and multi-national) identity,  there was also a lot of legitimate criticsm, since the notion of “culture” or “identity” is never something fix or given, but it is always constructed as well, and can therefore become easily a tool of manipulation, social exclusion and repression. German (post-) dramatist Heiner Müller once said:

„I believe in conflict. I don’t believe in anything else. That is what i try to do with my practice: Making aware of conflicts, of confrontations and contradictions. There is no other way“.

I guess, this is still a big challenge of our times: that we have to live with and that we have to stand the contradictions, that are part of our life. One possible attitude might be to keep the flux in play –

"Herakles 2" (Heiner Müller), the last theater performance that i directed (2008), Performer: Ana Berkenhoff, Photo: Ellen Coenders

“[…] the Nietzschean affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation”

Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities”

– there are different approaches to deal with these contradictions, none of them seems to be perfect, but in each case we have to be very aware, that we can not override them. A „false harmony“ can never be a solution to the contradictions of our times and the urgency of an independent art has exactly here its legitimation. And there has to be a minimum criteria for each open society that cares about and belongs to its people: It don’t has to take itself too seriously. It has to be able to laugh about itself. And it has to stand freedom of thought.