From Despair to Friendship

Abstract

In Paradise Now (1968-2018), Belgian choreographer Michiel Vandevelde explores, together with a group of young performers, the legacy of 1968’s counter-culture. What has changed in fifty years? Is protest still possible in today’s political landscape? Vandevelde does so by returning to a performance that is emblematic for the sixties’ counter-culture, the Living Theatre’s Paradise Now. This article analyzes the dramaturgical structure used to explore the possibility of change, namely the reuse of historical material, to reflect on the current posthistorical condition as well as to attempt to bring back an anarchic dynamics to the present. With Berardi and Agamben, a dark potentiality is proposed as a synthesis of posthistory and anarchy.

Keywords:

• Michiel Vandevelde
• posthistory
• anarchy
• 1968
• choreography
• hopelessness
• Paradise Now

Notes

1 The slogan hope dies: action begins points towards the interesting question of action that does not originate from the expectation of success, but rather from the desire not to make things worse. Can we call that change?

2 To view the film see Topp (1969).