Historical re-enactment as a vehicle for public memory : a Lithuanian case study

Abstract

Visuomenės ar bendruomenės savo požiūrį į istoriją ir praeitį įprasmina bei įkūnija įvairiais kultūros vaidinimais arba viešaisiais ritualais: proginiais minėjimais, jubiliejais, suvažiavimais, paradais. Jeigu autoritariniams režimams būdingus viešuosius ritualus galima nagrinėti remiantis tradicinėmis teatro formomis, tai šiuolaikinėse demokratinėse visuomenėse vykstantys minėjimai ar pilietiniai ritualai gali būti interpretuojami kaip modernaus ar avangardinio teatro žanrai: partizaninis teatras, gatvės teatras (R. Schechner), nematomas teatras (A. Boal). Šiame straipsnyje analizuojama, kaip proginis istorinio įvykio minėjimas (2009 08 14 Palangoje vykusi Berlyno sienos griūties rekonstrukcija) gali būti naudojamas naujų transnacionalinių tapatybių bei bendruomenių kūrimui ir propagavimui. Straipsnyje taip pat nagrinėjama, kokie inscenizacijos modeliai bei teatro poveikio priemonės pasitelkiamos formuojant tam tikras žiūrovo pozicijas, atsparos taškus, reguliuojančius šventinio įvykio / istorijos įvykio interpretaciją bei kuriant bendros istorinės praeities efektą

On a hot day in August of 2009 in one of the busiest streets in the Lithuanian town Palanga a wall made of foam rubber and guarded by two young men wearing Russian soldiers uniforms appeared. Palanga is a Lithuanian seaside resort and August is the peak of the holiday season, so at this time of year J. Basanavičius Street, named after one of the founding fathers of the Lithuanian nation state, is always full of people rushing to and from the beach. Palanga in August is a place where you go to forget, where holidays and oblivion rule. This was exactly the place chosen to serve as a site for the performative commemoration titled 20 Years Without Borders, meant to celebrate the 48th anniversary of the construction and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, sponsored by the Delegation of the European Commission in Lithuania and the German Embassy and organized by the private agency Happyendless. However, in order to awaken the desired “warm” effect of feeling towards the common experience, the event itself had to be entertaining and popular. The community was being called into being following the formulas of commercialized mass entertainment rather than the logic of the critical public sphere. To rephrase Zygmund Bauman – history in Palanga was presented as a giant theme park, where the tasks of preaching, entertaining and selling were all intertwined. It demonstrated that collective understanding of the past must be absorbed by all senses, and worked upon in the popular imagination. Moreover the performance repeatedly drew attention to how spectators perceive it by creating shifts between the order of presence and representation. The experience or the effect of being unable to command processes and events entirely – of instead being determined by them to a degree – was created.[...]