Dark Utopia

Abstract

In 'Dark Utopia, Or Sleeping Through Marten Spångberg's Natten' Jonas Rutgeerts explores the utopian potential of Marten Spångberg's performance Natten (2016). Contrary to traditional utopian artworks, Spångberg's piece does not depict a specific image of a brighter future, or a set of instructions that we should follow in order to make the world a better place. On the contrary, the piece blatantly refuses to give the spectator any concrete directions. It does not produce a beacon of light that guides us, but celebrates darkens, unfolding like a dreamscape in which different atmospheres continuously blend together. Natten produces an undulating movement that sets the audience adrift. However, in this article I will argue that the utopian potential of this piece should be connected to these unbecoming moments when the audience gets lost. Here the spectator is able to lift the present out of its temporal chackels and to explore the potential of spending time together. Drawing form the work of Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze I connect this experience to the conceptualization of an 'immanent utopia'. That is, a utopia that is no longer geared towards an abstract future, but allows us to focus on the particularity of the present and to explore the utopian potential that is engrained into this present.

Notes

1 The focus on the poietical potential of dance marks a shift in Spångberg’ work. In his earlier work, the Swedish choreographer often turned to ‘structural cynicism’ with the aim to ‘detect circumstances, structures and go around them’ (2016c: 86). Ever since La Substance, but in English (2014) Spångberg became more interested in the poetic quality of dance. Additional to La Substance and Natten, the pieces Gerhard Richter, Une pièce pour le théâtre (2017) and The Internet (2016) also testify to this interest in poietics.

2 In a footnote that accompanies the passage, Deleuze and Guattari explicitly refer to Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope (1954–9). In this canonical trilogy on utopian thinking Bloch makes the distinction between concrete and abstract utopias, favouring the first because of their relation to concrete historical situations. Deleuze and Guattari base their distinction between transcendent and immanent utopia on this dichotomy.

3 The symposium took place in Barcelona in 2012 and was organized by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, the Foundation Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona.