10.13125/2039-6597/5730
Il teatro e il lavoro non solo mostrano molte somiglianze fra loro ma da tempo si influenzano a vicenda. Il seguente articolo si propone di indagare come il teatro tedesco contemporaneo, in particolare il lavoro del collettivo Rimini Protokoll, affronti la rappresentazione del lavoro in spettacoli performativi e interattivi. Concentrandosi prima sull'approccio generale del gruppo a questo tema e poi sulla performance Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle si mostrerà come, sfruttando le affinità tra lavoro e teatro ma anche ricorrendo ironicamente a tradizioni teatrali diverse, il teatro di Rimini Protokoll si propone di contrastare l'alienazione e la de-personalizzazione provocate dai meccanismi che regolano il lavoro post-capitalista sia per riabilitare il lavoro - anche quello teatrale - come dimensione realmente produttiva dell'uomo che per sollecitare una riflessione sulla condizione dell'homo laborans (post)moderno.
application/pdf
2039-6597
5730
26
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-29727
Alessandra Goggio
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Between
society
All the world’s a mega construction site: <em>Rimini Protokoll’s Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle</em>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
13
Essays
2023-11-30
2023-04-08
2023-11-30
2023-12-01
89-107
1
Alessandra Goggio
2023/11/30
10.13125/2039-6597/5730
89
Università degli Studi di Bergamo
2039-6597
26
society
107
urn:nbn:it:unica-29727
All the world’s a mega construction site: <em>Rimini Protokoll’s Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle</em>
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/5730/5735
13
               All the world’s a mega
                   construction site:
                   Rimini Protokoll’s
           Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle

                             Alessandra Goggio

Abstract
      Theatre and work not only show many similarities but have since a long
time influenced one another. The following paper aims to investigate how
contemporary German theatre – specifically the work of the theatre collective
Rimini Protokoll – deals with the representation of work in performative and
interactive plays. Focusing first on the general approach of the group on this
subject and then on the performance Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle it will
be shown how, by exploiting affinities between work and theatre and also
ironically recurring to different theatre traditions, Rimini Protokoll’s theatre
aims to counteract the alienation and de-personalisation brought about by
the mechanisms that regulates post-capitalist labour in order both to rehabil-
itate work – also theatrical work – as a truly productive dimension of man-
kind and to urge a reflection on condition of the (post)modern homo laborans.

Keywords
     work; theatre; performance; production; mega construction site; society




Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5730
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site




               All the world’s a mega
         construction site: Rimini Protokoll’s
           Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle

                                 Alessandra Goggio



                  Introduction: Work and/on the stage
      Apparently distant from each other, work and theatre, understood as
fields and modes of human activity, are, however, much more akin than it
may appear at a first glance. Theatrical praxis, in the specific sense of stag-
ing a performance, requires the bodily presence not only of people who by
acting – with the exception of the sui generis case of amateur theatre – are in
fact carrying out a paid job, but also of many other figures, from the direc-
tor to those involved in the ideal and physical conception of the stage, who
likewise exercise a specific profession; it is no coincidence that, speaking of
these people, we usually call them ‘theatre workers’. One might even go so
far as to recognise affinities between going to the theatre as a spectator and
going to work: even a theatre performance, although often falling within
those recreational activities that take place in so-called ‘free’ time (as in free
from work), requires compliance with schedules (in particular the starting
time), a precise spatial organisation (the seating is established in advance,
most of the times without any possibility of choice) and known rules of
behaviour. Further similarities also emerge when one looks at the structure
of the individual performances, which often involves a pause, but also at a
theatre billboard as a whole, which at times foresees actual shifts, e.g. with
the repetition of the same performance in the morning or in the afternoon
and then in the evening, as well as a precise scheduling of activities and
resting days. Although often overshadowed by the gratifying and playful1


     1
        The intrinsic link between theatre and ‘play’, understood as an experience
that is not only ludic but also “educational” as in Schiller’s definition – to which
we will return later – , is very well evident in those languages that, in order to


90
                                       Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



principle of mimesis, which since Aristotle’s Poetics directly or ex negati-
vo – i.e. by work of subtraction and deconstruction – has represented one
of the pillars of dramatic art2, many are the aspects that the world of theatre
and that of work have in common, even on a purely practical level3.
      But there is more: even from a diachronic perspective one can identi-
fy, in the evolution of these two fields, parallel and coinciding moments of
radical change, often even characterised by a profound, reciprocal interac-
tion. In order to prove the accuracy of the assumption by which «periods
of major aesthetic representation of work coincide not by chance with up-
heavals in the history of production»4 (Brogi et al. 2013: 11), one may take
into consideration – though limiting ourselves to German-language dra-
maturgy for reasons of space – the birth of the ‘bürgerliches Trauerspiel’
(bourgeois tragedy), which in the second half of the 18th century indeed
accompanied the emergence of a very early bourgeois and therefore en-
trepreneurial ethos and was at the same time complemented by Lessing’s
project of a National Theatre in Hamburg, the first German theatre institu-
tion with a modern and truly professional organisation; one may then re-
call the predominance of theatre during the period of Naturalism – a time
when Germany reached, albeit decades later, comparing to other European
nations, complete industrialisation, therefore bringing the ever more im-
posing “problem” of the proletariat to the surface (and, at the same time, to
the stage) – but also later on, during the 1920s, Brecht’s attempt to unmask
the hidden mechanisms of capitalism through his epic theatre5; finally, it is
no coincidence that the first convincing heteronomous representation of a
‘Gastarbeiter’ came to life on a theatre stage, in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
play Katzelmacher (1968).


indicate the theatre performance as well as the activity of acting, use the word
‘play’/’to play’: e.g. in German ‘das Spiel’/’spielen’.
    2
        «In general, two causes seem likely to have given rise to the art of poetry,
both of them natural. Imitation comes naturally to human beings from childhood
(and in this they differ from other animals, i.e. in having a strong propensity to
imitation and in learning their earliest lessons through imitation); so does the
universal pleasure in imitations. What happens in practice is evidence of this:
we take delight in viewing the most accurate possible images of objects which in
themselves cause distress when we see them (e.g. the shapes of the lowest species
of animal, and corpses)» (Aristotle 1996: 6-7).
    3
        On the substantial aporia that innervates theatre understood both as ‘play’
and work see Haunschild 2009.
    4
        Unless otherwise indicated, the translation is always mine.
    5
        Fischer-Lichte 1999.


                                                                                     91
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



      Such interrelationship between the world of theatre and that of work
becomes even more glaring the closer one gets to the present. On the one
hand, vocabulary itself indicates the advent, starting in the last decades
of the 20th century, of major and yet again similar changes in both fields:
we have indeed reached a ‘post’ phase, whereas the prefix ‘post’ is used
to signal an overcoming as well as an overturning of the fundamental
assumptions that for centuries have been underlying these two realities.
Therefore, we now speak of postdramatic theatre6 and of post-Fordism and
post-capitalism. On the other hand, it is possible to observe an undenia-
ble tendency towards mutual osmosis, which encompasses both an «inte-
gration of artistic (i.e. playful, creative) elements in fields of the economy
traditionally distant from art», such as, for example, the increasingly fre-
quent team building activities among co-workers, and an ever-increasing
interference «of economic and commercial practices within cultural pro-
duction» (Haunschild 2009: 153), which is in turn echoed by an intense
“theatricalization” of the working world, to be understood as its rep-
resentation on the stage.
      Within this framework, the German-language theatre of the last thirty
years or so has not failed to bring to the stage, often also exploiting the
affinities highlighted above, protagonists, places, and devices of the con-
temporary working world, primarily underlining its insecurity and pre-
cariousness7. The vast panorama of plays that handle the subject ranges
from ‘classics’ such as Top Dogs (1996) by Urs Widmer and various pièce
by Roland Schimmelpfennig (Push up 1-3, 2001; Das Reich der Tiere, 2007;
Der goldene Drache, 2009), through Moritz Rinke’s Republik Vineta (2000),
Dea Loher’s Der dritte Sektor (2001), Kathrin Röggla’s junk space (2004) and
wir schlafen nicht (2004)8, to works such as Marius von Mayenburg’s Stück
Plastik (2015). This list, which could include numerous other examples, be-
comes much longer when alongside the aforementioned plays, which are
more or less still pertinent to a traditional theatrical practice, which sees the
staging in the theatre as its ultimate goal, one also takes into account those
performances, actions, interactive and multimedia/digital installations that
are nowadays exceptionally widespread in contemporary German (and


     6
       Lehmann 2006.
     7
       Pewny 2011.
    8
       This text, albeit published under the label “novel”, can also be considered
a play due to its structure – it is, in fact, a fictional transcript based on real inter-
views of the author with protagonists of the so-called new economy.


92
                                      Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



not only German) theatre and that, thanks to their intrinsic performativity,
are able to make some of the mechanisms underlying the contemporary
working world not only representable and thus visible on the stage, but
even tangible for the their ‘audience’. When thinking of such performative
theatre, one name comes inevitably to mind: that of Rimini Protokoll, a the-
atre collective formed by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi und Daniel Wetzel.
In their plays the representation, or rather: the performative re-enactment
of work (also theatrical work) constitutes undeniably a common thread, so
that their ‘theatre’ proves particularly interesting for an analysis aimed at
exploring contemporary and innovative ways of representing work on the
stage. In the following, therefore, we will firstly investigate the role that the
working world takes on within the general aesthetic and theatrical praxis
of Rimini Protokoll (2) and then delve more into the topic through the exam-
ination of a single case study, namely the performance Gesellschaftsmodell
Großbaustelle (Society under Construction, 2017) (3).

            2. The theatre ‘work’ of Rimini Protokoll
      After having met at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft (In-
stitute for Applied Theatre Science) at the University of Gießen9, Haug,
Kaegi and Wetzel initiated the Rimini Protokoll project in 2000. The cho-
sen name, deriving from a now-forgotten memorandum on the use of fos-
sil combustion sources presented in the early 2000s by Colin Campbell,
founder of the ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas)10, not
only reveals right from the start an entirely postmodern and parodic taste
by comparing the group’s work with much more well-known, but as a
matter of fact useless, protocols, such as the infamous Kyoto Protocol, but
also functions as «a label, a brand» (Fiorentino 2014) which identifies rath-
er a new way of doing theatre than the three founding members of the
collective11. The theatrical work of Rimini Protokoll namely distinguishes
itself from that of other contemporary theatre groups not only by being

     9
        The only academic institute of theatre studies in Germany with an explic-
itly practical vocation.
     10
        Bardi 2005.
     11
        Indeed, not all of Rimini Protokoll’s works are based on the collaboration
and cooperation of all founders: script and direction – which despite everything
remain a pillar of this apparently unconventional theatrical practice (cf. Shin
2009: 129) – can often be by only one or two of them and/or in cooperation with
other external authors or groups.


                                                                                    93
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



participative12 or, better still: ‘participa(c)tive’, but also by its dialectical re-
lationship with the (German) theatre tradition: while incorporating the les-
sons of Brecht’s epic theatre, that of the documentary theatre of the Sixties
as well as that of post-dramatic theatre à la Heiner Müller by preserving
some of their fundamental traits13 – such as the epicity of the action, the use
of factual and research materials and the fragmentary structure – , it also
detaches itself from them by seemingly recovering – though programmati-
cally denying them – some aspects of the theatre of identification. In short,
the work of Rimini Protokoll, which can’t be summarised in a few lines14,
doesn’t respond to a classical notion of theatre but articulates itself rather
in performances, site-specific installations, interventions; it deprecates a
‘magical’ theatre of pure fictional mimesis and empathy, but at the same
time plays on the biographical and personal substrate of the figures it brings
onto the stage and requires – by its creators’ own admission – both ‘actors’
and ‘spectators’ to play a very precise role and to identify with it (Käppeler
2018); it does not want to «enlighten» the public (Rimini Protokoll 2012:
160), yet its performances are often referred to as «‘enlightening’ in the
best sense of the word» (Krumbholz 2017). Therefore, the theatre of Rimini
Protokoll could be regarded as a contradiction in terms, a theatrical aporia
that, conversely, brings other aporias to the stage, particularly those of our
contemporary society.
      Amongst these, one that particularly fascinates the collective, perhaps
also because of those osmotic-symbiotic relationships presented earlier, is
undoubtedly that embodied by the world of contemporary work and eco-
nomic production with its constantly growing reification of the subject,
which, on the other hand, is being counterbalanced by a de-materialisation
and digital virtualization of the production processes of objects and ser-
vices (Lazzarato 1998: 39-40). A distinctive feature of many of the group’s
performances is indeed the desire to undertake a «discursive exploration»
(Roselt 2015: 76) of the working world. Such exploration takes place on the
stage mainly thanks to the epic-discursive contribution offered by the so-
called «experts of the everyday», i.e. «people who have none or, at most,
trifling experience in the theatrical field, but who, nevertheless, by virtue
of their profession or their biography are experts in the subject with which


     12
       Pedullà 2021.
     13
       Bronzini 2022.
    14
       For more on the eclectic aesthetics of Rimini Protokoll, see Dreysse - Malz-
acher 2007 and Birgfeld et al. 2015.


94
                                    Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



the play deals» (Dreysse 2011: 134) and are hence called upon to share
their expertise with the public. Through monologues directed at the audi-
ence, reminiscent of the monodrama tradition15, the “experts” describe not
only the peculiarities of their profession, but also its influences and effects
on their private lives as well as on society as a whole and vice versa. The
spectrum of professions and related personnel that have found their way
onto the stage over the years is extremely broad: it ranges from the MPs
and parliamentary clerks of Deutschland 2 (2002) to pilots, stewards, and
ground workers of the former Belgian national airline Sabena, who retrace
the national and individual consequences of the company’s bankruptcy in
Sabenation. Go home & follow the news (2004); from the caregivers of Qual-
itätskontrolle (2013), who actually work in shifts on stage, as the protagonist
of the pièce is a paralysed woman in constant need of assistance, to the
interpreters who, as shown in Breaking News (2008), make the almost im-
mediate passage of news from one end of the world to the other possible;
from the workers in the automotive industry in Volksrepublik Volkswagen
(2014) to the actors, make-up artists, costume designers and theatre techni-
cians who, although not physically present, are evoked in Black Box (2020),
a post-pandemic homage to the art (and craft) of theatre. Furthermore, the
“experts of the everyday” sometimes even turn into experts of the theatre
art: this is what happens, for example, in Call Cutta (2005), in which some
Indian call centre operators go from being mere tools of the companies to
which they are subcontracted as if they were objects to becoming ‘direc-
tors’, who with a simple telephone call are able to give precise instructions
to the ‘audience’, which is thus remote-controlled in its movements on the
open stage of the city of Berlin.
      The use of such “experts” is nonetheless not the only way Rimini Pro-
tokoll employs to investigate and re-enact the world of work in its plays: the
process of de-objectification of the workers – which in cases like Call Cutta
is also accompanied by significant ethical implications as well as postcolo-
nial claims – is at times counterbalanced by a forced alienation and reifica-
tion of the individual, who from being an acting subject becomes a cog in
a mechanism – for example in Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle, where the
smoke extraction system of the new Berlin airport is recreated by asking
the audience to wave large cardboard panels. Finally, work is also repre-
sented in his spatiality: sometimes both the “experts of the everyday” and
the public are asked to move on a stage that recreates a work environment;


    15
         Birgfeld 2015.


                                                                                  95
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



in some cases, even a real workplace can become the setting for a guid-
ed performance-visit, e.g. the Beethovenhalle restoration site in Bonn in
Bauprobe Beethoven (2020).
         The working world is hence undoubtedly the protagonist of a large
part of the projects or, better, ‘works’ of the collective: work, understood
as a dimension of development, (self)realisation and assertion of personal
identity, but also as a realm of de-personalisation and precariousness of the
subject, is brought onto the stage through its discursive-performative and
physical personification in the “experts of the everyday”. However, thanks
also to the participa(c)tive structure of the plays, these are never reduced
to victims of circumstances or mere objects exposed to the voyeuristic gaze
of the spectators (Dreysse 2011: 136), thus experiencing a re-evaluation of
their professional and above all human role. This re-evaluation is in fact
made possible by the medium of theatre itself, which becomes a public
forum for self-affirmation and self-determination involving all the partic-
ipants in the performance: ‘doing’ theatre – in the sense of actively taking
part in theatrical practice – becomes work in the deepest and most positive
sense of the term, that is, a concrete attempt to (re)define the human with
all its intrinsic contradictions.

                      3. How to (re)build mankind:
                    Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle
     A performance in which all the above-mentioned strategies of per-
formative representation of work – theatrical and otherwise – come to-
gether with the aim of emulating the organisation and functioning of a
precise work setting, i.e. a so-called “mega construction site”, is the afore-
mentioned Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle, conceived and directed by Ste-
fan Kaegi16. The performance is part of the series Staat 1-4: together with
other three plays, dealing respectively with the world of secret services
(1: Top Secret International, 2016), the total control and digitisation of citi-
zens’ data (3: Träumende Kollektive. Tastende Schafe, 2017) and the realm of
global economy as epitomized by the Davos Forum (4: Weltzustand Davos,
2018), Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle was envisioned as a ‘tool’ to urge
the public – which has to be considered here in the etymological sense of
the term as an active part of the state organisation – to reflect on «the na-


     16
        A recording of a staging of the play (Vimeo 2018) as well as excerpts of the
script in English (E-Flux 2019) can be found online.


96
                                       Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



ture of those powers whose separation used to structure the mechanisms
of state control in the past» and «how these […] are still able to regulate
the critical impulses to transformation to which societies are nowadays
exposed» (“Staat 1-4”).
       As one can guess from the title, the stage setting – which occupies
the whole theatre building with no distinction whatsoever between actual
stage and audience – is structured, both figuratively and concretely, as a
mega construction site, such as those deputed to the realization of pub-
lic projects, which are often condemned to suffer delays, unforeseen trials
and sometimes even to fail altogether, thus causing huge losses of pub-
lic money. Precisely the reality of such mega construction sites with their
own rules and functioning, which are unknown to the majority of people,
is suggested by Rimini Protokoll as a ‘model’, i.e. as a plastic representation
of contemporary society, dominated at all levels by ruthless mechanisms
of competition and prevarication which, although they couldn’t have de-
veloped without a truly democratic system, now undermine it at its very
foundation. In the performance, however, these mechanisms are simultane-
ously transformed into collaborative practices that do not lead to failure but
rather to the construction of something that can be genuinely called public
as it is has been realised by the public community, so that the term ‘Modell’
takes on a different meaning, that of a positive ‘exemplum’. Gesellschafts-
modell Großbaustelle can therefore also be interpreted as a contemporary
‘Produktionsstück’ which, in the wake of Heiner Müllers oeuvre17, intends
to ‘show’ the operating conditions of the construction site as a (real and
at the same time also utopian) mirror of society, albeit not only by means
of mimetic representation but also by concretely (re-)enacting them on the
stage through the labour – not only theatrical – of the “experts of the every-
day” and even of the audience itself, so that in the end «the representation
of the world […] is replaced by its production» (Scherer 2018: 15).
       That’s why the performance, just like the division of labour within
a real mega construction site, foresees that the action – which can also be
read as ‘Aktion’ in the Beuysian sense of the word – takes place simultane-
ously at nine “stations”, each of which concretises an essential aspect of the
organisation of the mega construction site-system and is supervised by its


    17
       Echoed in the choice of the construction site as a setting as well as in the
structure of the play are also some of Heiner Müller’s reflections on the need to
renew theatre in the face of an increasingly scientific reality, in particular those
contained in Sechs Punkte zur Oper (Müller 1997: 117-8).


                                                                                     97
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



own “expert of everyday life”, ranging from the illegal labourer to a real
estate finance expert18. Moreover, the nine stations are so arranged as to
recreate the structure of a real construction site, consequently allowing the
interaction of one with the other; in the middle of the scene stands a huge
crane, a metonymic instrument of panoptic control and direction of those
«hidden choreographies» (Rimini Protokoll 2018: 37) that regulate the con-
struction site’s functioning, thus embodying, as is typical in contemporary
theatre focused on the working and production world, that invisible ene-
my that is the capitalist and particularly post-Fordist system (Schroeder
2014: 35). The capital, which in fact replaces the state, hence symbolically
controls not only the “experts” who embody the microcosm of a mega con-
struction site, but also the public that actively participates in the perfor-
mance: the ‘spectators’ are in fact divided into nine groups, each of which
begins its journey – and consequently the play – at a specific station, where
they are not only invited to carefully listen to the professional and personal
story of the respective expert, but also engaged in activities that repro-
duce, concretely or allegorically, the work field that is being “discursively
explored”. Besides being transformed, as mentioned before, into a human
smoke extraction system, participants are also asked to carry construction
material – which will then be arranged by an another group – from one
side of the stage space to the other, or to wear protective boxing helmets
and simulate a fight19, hence evoking the no-holds-barred and sometimes

     18
        The following nine professionals act as “experts”: Sonja-Verena Breiden-
bach, real estate investment expert; Alfredo Di Mauro, engineer and building
technology planner; Dieter Läpple, professor emeritus of urban development;
Fang-Yun Lo, Chinese dancer who, in the play, takes on the role of a Wandar-
beiterin (migrant worker); Jürgen Mintgens, construction lawyer; Marius Cipri-
an Popescu, Romanian labourer; Reiner Pospischil, pest control expert; Andreas
Riegel, anti-corruption control manager at public and private institutions.
     19
        In the performance, the German term used to indicate the fight is ‘Kampf’,
thus creating a clear reference to Marx’s Capital, where the idea of ‘Kampf’, in ad-
dition to being fundamental in the perspective of the famous battle of the work-
ing class against the capitalist entrepreneurs, also encapsulates the struggle of
“free scientific inquiry” against economic private interests, which, in this case,
can also be read as the battle of contemporary theatre against its prevailing econ-
omisation: « In the domain of political economy, free scientific inquiry meets
not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the
material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent,
mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest»
(Marx 2010: 10).


98
                                      Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



even beyond-legal battles that characterise tendering procedures of large
public works; or even they are encouraged to bet on future trends in the
real estate market around an imaginary roulette table.
      Guided by the commands of the “experts”, who actually also become
stage-directors of the micro-site they are in charge of, the audience mem-
bers perform small tasks that require a physical effort and are at the same
time urged to follow what is being told to them: on the one hand, they are
induced into a situation of passivity while, on the other, their attention
is focused, through the exploitation of the epic medium of biographical
narration, on learning notions and pieces of information that are often hid-
den but actually reveal the true essence of those constructive – and also
destructive – relationships that regulate the functioning of a mega con-
struction site. The ‘audience-workers’ are thus consciously subjected to a
condition that is in itself aporistic, which highlights the profound alien-
ation caused by modern work and, concurrently, the “immateriality” of
those jobs resulting from the transformations of the post-Fordist era (Laz-
zarato 1998: 39). Such circumstance is not accidental but rather envisions a
specific ‘Wirkungseffekt’ that, in the words of Rimini Protokoll themselves,
is intended to be of «overload and stress» (Leibold 2018) and should act as
an impulse for critical reflection.
      The idea of alienation and passivity of the ‘working’ audience – pup-
pets of the capital, which, not coincidentally, is embodied, as already men-
tioned, by a tall crane that stands in the centre of the stage and symbolically
pulls all the strings – is also evoked by other aspects of the performance:
not only do the individual groups move within the various stations as well
as from one to the next in an absolutely precise and orderly manner without
ever giving the idea of wanting to evade the tasks entrusted to them20, but
the whole play actually follows the principle of shift work, as emphasized
by the siren that signals the moment when it is time to move on to the next
station and make room to the next group, that is to say, the following shift.
Thus, the structure of the performance not only echoes the Expressionist
‘Stationendrama’, thereby extending its meaning as a «dramatic staging
of a multiple subjectivity» (Oehm 1993: 131), but also the functioning of
an assembly line, where each group is called upon to fulfil its role, while


    20
        This aspect, which has also been emphasised by some critics (Käppeler
2018; Leibold 2018), emerges especially thanks to the overhead view of the com-
plete stage space provided by the recording of the performance; see, for instance,
at minute 22:40 (Vimeo 2018).


                                                                                    99
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



remaining in the dark as to that played by their ‘comrades’ as well as even
to the final product that is being collaboratively created.
     However, since all nine groups work simultaneously, all kinds of
traditional hierarchies between the different professions are overridden,
hence giving equal right of expression to the labourer as to the big capital
investor (Käppeler 2018); at the same time, by being embedded into the
typical theatre situation, which «forms a whole made up of evident and
hidden communicative processes» (Lehmann 2006: 17), the participants
become both «involuntary promoter[s]» (Marx - Engels 1988: 222) and
conscious subject of the mechanisms that regulate the so-called structure.
This paradoxical situation is also reinforced – and, as will be seen, ironi-
cally eluded – in the finale of the performance, which sees all the groups
reunited in a ‘Vollversammlung’, a sort of popular assembly where the
“experts of the everyday” offer concrete proposals on how to improve
the functioning of the mega construction site as well as the condition of
the individual workers and also of society as a whole, exhorting those in-
volved in its building and shaping to find points of mediation and concili-
ation between the various positions and interests at stake. It is only at this
point that the final product of the labour of the participants is revealed:
beside creating, as a matter of fact, the play itself, they also materially
contributed to the construction of a brick and wooden shack, which could
be metaphorically interpreted as the ‘home’ of a possible new model of
collaborative society.
     Beyond this – one might say: utopian – perspective, the finale can also
be read as the point of crystallisation of a Leitmotiv that accompanies the
entire play and that, although in a very different sense, finds its roots in
Schiller’s Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man. Indeed, it is undeni-
able that the overall structure of the play reflects that Zerstückelung («split-
ting up») of man caused by the advent of modern society, as underlined in
the famous 6th letter:


         Then […] enjoyment was separated from labour, the means from the
      end, the effort from the reward. Man himself eternally chained down
      to a little fragment of the whole, only forms a kind of fragment; having
      nothing in his ears but the monotonous sound of the perpetually
      revolving wheel, he never develops the harmony of his being; and
      instead of imprinting the seal of humanity on his being, he ends by
      being nothing more than the living impress of the craft to which he
      devotes himself, of the science that he cultivates. (Schiller 1910: 222)




100
                                      Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



      Such alienation of the individuum brought about by the (proto-)in-
dustrial division of labour is however counteracted at another level: since
Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle also enacts a personification of labour, the
unique and personal biographies of the “experts” do not remain a mere
«living impress of the craft to which [they] devotes [themselves]» but rath-
er become a form of participatory – as it is shared with the public – denun-
ciation of the instrumentalising power of the capital21. Furthermore, the
shifting of the groups through different workstations and tasks effectively
removes – in the sense of a performative ‘Aufhebung’ – any kind of frag-
mentation of work and therefore seems to enable a symbolical recompo-
sition of the lost unity of mankind. The fact that such recomposition takes
place through a theatre performance where, as seen, the boundaries be-
tween the reification of the subject that originates because of modern work
and the claim of a creative force, both aesthetic and social, inherent in it, are
extremely labile as well as consciously overstepped, also seems to allude
at the “reunifying” function of the instinct of play as postulated yet again
by Schiller in his Letters: «The sensuous instinct wishes to be determined,
it wishes to receive an object; the formal instinct wishes to determine itself,
it wishes to produce an object. Therefore the instinct of play will endeavor
to receive as it would itself have produced, and to produce as it aspires to
receive» (ibid.: 248). In the simultaneous active and passive participation
of the audience in the realisation of the performance, which has to be un-
derstood as a play in both senses, that is, as a theatrical representation and
also as a playful emulation of work situations that are in reality anything
but pleasant, the famous Schillerian dictum «man only plays when in the
full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he
plays» (ibid.: 252) is thus realised, as long as “play” is intended as a working
activity that contributes to the self-affirmation of the subject as an individ-
ual and as an equal member of the human community.
      This playful-human aspect, which appears, at least at first glance, to
confer dignity back to the workers as subjects (and not as objects), is also
enhanced by the closing act of the performance, when another form of



    21
       This is particularly evident in the case of Alfredo Di Mauro, who recounts
how he became the scapegoat for the failure of the new Berlin airport project:
since he was in charge of the smoke extraction system, its – alleged, according to
Di Mauro himself – malfunctioning eventually led him to be the one blamed for
the huge delays in the opening of the airport, even if other problems were to be
addressed.


                                                                                   101
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



artistic expression is added, namely dance22, as the participants are asked
to imagine, in the wake of the already mentioned utopian sentiment that
permeates the whole situation, the end of a working day at the construc-
tion site as a party with dancing and music: to crown their performative
simulation of such a day, they are namely invited to dance to the rhythm of
a music that blends techno beats with oriental melodies23, whilst imitating
typical gestures of manual labour such as shovelling, using a jackhammer
and painting. This dance hence unites, as a sort of ironic Gioca jouer24, play
and manual activity, leading the participants to develop a ‘Haltung’ that
is not so much ‘kritisch’ but rather ‘emotional’, which acts as a liberating
catharsis.
      Yet at the same time this closing act also ironically (in the Romantic
sense of the word) questions the formative – as Schiller would say – value
of such an experience. Indeed, as already pointed out, Rimini Protokoll’s
theatre does not in any way want to set itself up as a «moral institution»
or endow the stage with its own «jurisdiction» (Schiller 1962: 92), for the
spectators are neither to be thought as dwelling in a «state of minority» nor
the theatre is to be seen a «healing institution», but rather as a «museum
in which things and people seem to be elevated above frenetic causality»
(Rimini Protokoll 2012: 160). Thus, as an interactive museum of modern
labour under the aegis of post-capitalism, the performance reveals its
true purpose: through participation in this choral but despite all autistic25
dance, the participants in the performance should perceive on their own
skin – since, as Kaegi himself emphasises, «what one experiences through
the senses, one remembers differently» (Leibold 2018) – the glaring con-
trast between the dimension of divertissement with which labour is cloaked


      22
        Here, too, it is possible to discern a further reference to Schiller, namely to
his reflections on dance in Kallias, or, On the Beautiful, where a «well performed
English dance» is depicted as the «the most suitable emblem of the asserted
self-freedom and the spared freedom of the other» (Schiller 1992: 56), as well as
to those in the poem Der Tanz, which, in the second version of 1800, revives the
main themes of the Letters (cfr. Ring 2022: 66-91).
     23
        Ending the working day by dancing is, in fact, a traditional custom of Chi-
nese workers who move from the countryside to the cities to find employment.
     24
        Italian song and group dance by Claudio Cecchetto, where the lyrics con-
sist of simple actions, such as to eat, to sleep and so on, that are to be carried out
while dancing to the rhythm of the music.
     25
        Note that the “autism” of mega construction sites is highlighted within
the performance itself as one of their greatest problems.


102
                                       Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



in this final act and the contradicting principles and mechanism that of-
ten lead to painful consequences for the workers themselves, as earlier
demonstrated by the accounts of the “experts of the everyday”26, inherent
in the mega construction site-system and, in general, in the condition of
the (post)modern homo laborans. Through a distancing effect that ironical-
ly – and aporistically – takes place through emulative identification, the
participants/workers/dancers are, however, in no way led either to become
the subject of an aesthetic education or to experience Mitleid, but rather
feel once more a cunning distress, thanks to which they are urged not only
to observe «almost like an alien» (Bayraktar 2019) their own everyday life,
but also to reconsider critically both the tendency towards the fusion of
materiality and immateriality, reification and subjectivation of the individ-
ual, productive labour and creative play, which increasingly characterises
contemporary reality and in fact represents nothing other than a new form
of control by the capital (Lazzarato 1998: 41-43); moreover, they are invited
to reasses their own possible role in the construction of a new social order,
that is, their own role as ‘construction workers’ of society – as also stressed
by the projection of the image of an anthill at the end of the performance27.
      In conclusion, it is therefore possible to read Gesellschaftsmodell
Großbaustelle, as well as other works by Rimini Protokoll, as a ‘Theater-ar-
beit’ in the very sense of the word, i.e. not only as an exemplification of a
particular theatrical practice, but as a performance that, through the blend-
ing of theatre and work, sheds light on the aporias inherent in both and, by
extension, on the functioning – understood as a process itself of work and
production – of our society. By transforming work into a play, a ‘game’ but
also an act of acting, in which the audience takes part as a puppet moved by
invisible strings, and at the same time making clear, through the support of
the “experts”, how these strings do indeed correspond to precise rules of
the organisation of work and post-Fordist production, Gesellschaftsmodell


    26
        One should note, moreover, the contrast between the act of identifica-
tion and mimetic performance typical of classical dramaturgy, as embodied by
the final dance, and the epicism of the speeches of the “experts”, which act as a
«demonstration» in Brecht’s sense (Brecht 1966).
     27
        To what extent this effect, understood not so much as a moral Wirkung but
rather as an ‘Aktion’ – in the political sense of the term – , can really be produced
in an audience that comes from a left-wing culture and tends at times to feel al-
ready ‘enlightened’ on the issues at stake is difficult to say and would require an
empirical analysis of the reception of the spectacle itself, which cannot be carried
out here.


                                                                                    103
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



Großbaustelle only apparently leads to a synthesis of pleasure and work,
of emotion and rationality; rather it creates a series of short circuits that
circumvent the offer of a pre-packaged and harmonic solution and that
instead of aesthetically educate the public, aim to diseducate it in order to
«free [it] from the typical consumer [and classic spectator, A.G.] attitude»
(Leibold 2018) and make him once again a real worker, i.e. the real produc-
er of himself, of society and of meaning as well.



                                      Works Cited
Aristotle, Περὶ ποιητικῆς (4th cent. BCE), Engl. transl. Poetics, Ed. Malcom
    Heath, London, Penguin, 1996.
Birgfeld, Johannes, “Black Tie. Ein Monodrama oder: Deliterarisierung des
    Theaters?”, Rimini Protokoll Close-Up: Lektüren, Eds. Johannes Birgfeld -
    Ulrike Garde - Meg Mumford, Hannover, Wehrhahn, 2015: 36-56.
Birgfeld, Johannes - Garde, Ulrike - Mumford, Meg (eds.), Rimini Protokoll
    Close-Up: Lektüren, Hannover, Wehrhahn, 2015.
Brecht, Bertolt, Die Straßenszene (1938), Engl. transl. “The Street Scene”,
    Brecht on Theatre, Ed. John Willet, New York, Hill and Wang, 1966:
    121-9.
Brogi, Susanna - Freier, Carolin - Freier-Otten, Ulf - Hartosch, Katja, “Arbeit
    und ihre Repräsentation”, Repräsentationen von Arbeit. Transdisziplinäre
    Analysen und künstlerische Produktionen, Eds. Susanna Brogi - Carolin
    Freier - Ulf Freier-Otten - Katja Hartosch, Bielefeld, transcript, 2013:
    9-31.
Bronzini, Benedetta, “Il Lehrstück contemporaneo come performance im-
    mersiva: l’esempio berlinese di Rimini-Protokoll e Interrobang”, Between,
    XII/23 (2022): 117-35.
Dreysse, Miriam, “Realität und Theater – Das Politische bei Rimini Proto-
    koll”, Politisch Theater machen. Neue Artikulationsformen des Politischen in
    den darstellenden Künsten, Eds. Jan Deck - Angelika Sieburg, Bielefeld,
    transcript, 2011: 131-45.
Dreysse, Miriam - Malzacher, Florian (eds.), Experten des Alltags. Das Thea-
    ter von Rimini Protokoll, Berlin, Alexander Verlag, 2007.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kurze Geschichte des deutschen Theaters, Tübingen/Ba-
    sel, Francke, 1999.
Haunschild, Axel, “Ist Theaterspielen Arbeit?”, Ökonomie im Theater der
    Gegenwart. Ästhetik, Produktion, Institution, Eds. Franziska Schößler -
    Christine Bähr, Bielefeld, transcript, 2009: 141-56.


104
                                    Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



Käppeler, Christine, “Kurz vorm Aufstand. Interview”, der Freitag,
    23/06/2018, https://www.freitag.de/autoren/christine-kaeppeler/kur-
    z-vorm-aufstand, online (last accessed 25.03.2023).
Lazzarato, Maurizio, “Immaterielle Arbeit. Gesellschaftliche Tätigkeit un-
    ter den Bedingungen des Postfordismus”, Umherschweifende Produzen-
    ten. Immaterielle Arbeit und Subversion, Eds. Toni Negri - Maurizio Laz-
    zarato - Paolo Virno, Berlin, ID Verlag, 1998: 39-52.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatisches Theater (1999), Engl. transl. Postdra-
    matic Theatre, Ed. Karen Jürs-Munby, London/New York, Routledge,
    2006.
Leibold, Christoph, “Unter der Maske des Managers. Helgard Haug und
    Stefan Kaegi im Gespräch mit Christoph Leibold”, Theater der Zeit, 3
    (2018),     https://tdz.de/artikel/183420c2-5134-4762-8fca-98fbbfcbcbc0,
    online (last accessed 25.03.2023).
Marx, Karl, Das Kapital. Erstes Buch (1867), Engl. transl. Capital. Volume 1,
    London, Lawrence & Wishart, 2010.
Marx, Karl - Engels, Friedrich, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848),
    Engl. transl. “Communist Manifesto”, Economic and Philosophic Manu-
    scripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto, New York, Prometheus,
    1988: 203-43.
Müller, Heiner, “Sechs Punkte zur Oper” (1970), Theater-Arbeit, Berlin, Rot-
    buch, 1997: 117-8.
Oehm, Heidemarie, Subjektivität und Gattungsform im Expressionismus,
    München, Fink, 1993.
Pedullà, Carmen, Il teatro partecipativo. Paradigmi ed esperienze, Corazzano,
    Titivillus, 2021.
Pewny, Katharina, Das Drama des Prekären. Über die Wiederkehr der Ethik in
    Theater und Performance, Bielefeld, transcript, 2011.
Rimini Protokoll, ABCD, Ed. Johannes Birgfeld, Berlin, Theater der Zeit,
    2012.
Rimini Protokoll, Staat 1-4, Programmheft, HKW und Neues Museum,
    Berlin, 2018.
Ring, Weijie, Tanz in der Literatur. Zum kulturgeschichtlichen und ästhetischen
    Wandel in der Sattelzeit (1750-1850), Berlin/Boston, de Gruyter, 2022.
Roselt, Jens, “Rimini Protokoll and Bürgerbühne Theatre: Institutions,
    Challenges and Continuities”, Performance Paradigm, 11 (2015): 76-87.
Scherer, Bernd, “Staat 1-4. Theater als Forum der Gegenwart”, Staat 1-4,
    Programmheft, HKW und Neues Museum, Berlin, 2018: 6-26.
Schiller, Friedrich, “Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich
    wirken?” (1784), Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe, 43 Bde. In 55 Teilbänd-



                                                                                 105
Alessandra Goggio, All the world’s a mega construction site



    en, Bd. 20, Philosophische Schriften. Erster Teil, Ed. Benno von Wiese,
    Weimar/Stuttgart, Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1962: 87-100.
Schiller, Friedrich, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe
    von Briefen (1795), Engl. transl. “Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education
    of Man”, Literary and Philosophical Essays. French, German and Italian,
    New York, Collier, 1910 (The Harvard classics, 32): 207-95.
Schiller, Friedrich, Kallias oder über die Schönheit (1793), Engl. transl. “Kal-
    lias, or, On the Beautiful”, Fidelio, 4 (1992): 53-56.
Schroeder, Stefan, “Kein Weberaufstand. Arbeitswelten im Drama des 21.
    Jahrhunderts”, Kritische Ausgabe, 27 (2014): 35-38.
Shin, Na-Young, “»Wenn wir den Narzissmus verspürten, unendlich wer-
    den zu wollen, müssten wir das Medium wechseln!« Ein Gespräch mit
    Helgard Haug und Daniel Wetzel von Rimini Protokoll”, Ökonomie im
    Theater der Gegenwart. Ästhetik, Produktion, Institution, Eds. Franziska
    Schößler - Christine Bähr, Bielefeld, transcript, 2009: 127-37.




                                        Sitography
“Staat 1-4”, Rimini Protokoll, https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/
    project/staat-1-4 (last accessed 18.03.2023).
Bardi, Ugo, “The Rimini Conference on Oil Depletion: a lost Opportuni-
    ty”, ASPO Italia, 07/11/2005, https://www.aspoitalia.it/index.php/ar-
    ticoli/archivio-articoli-inglese/65-the-rimini-conference-on-oil-deple-
    tion-a-lost-opportunity, web (last accessed 24.03.2023).
Bayraktar, Mesut, “Theater des Unbehagens statt Reality-Show”, stil-bruch,
    19/08/2019, https://blogs.taz.de/stilbruch/2019/08/19/theater-des-un-
    behagens-statt-reality-show/, web (last accessed 24.03.2023).
E-Flux, “Society under Construction”, https://www.e-flux.com/architectu-
    re/overgrowth/282655/society-under-construction/, web (last accessed
    31/03/2023).
Fiorentino, Francesco, “Abecedario dei Rimini Protokoll”, alfabeta2,
    15/03/2014, https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/text/abeceda-
    rio-dei-rimini-protokoll, web (last accessed 25.03.2023).
Krumbholz, Martin. “Anders als die Ameisen”, Nachtkritik, 12/05/2017,
    https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_con-
    tent&view=article&id=13988:gesellschaftsmodell-grossbaustelle-staat-
    2-rimini-protokoll-duesseldorf&catid=89&Itemid=62, web (last acces-
    sed 25.03.2023).



106
                                     Between, vol. XIII, n. 26 (novembre/November 2023)



Vimeo, “Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle”, 2019, https://vimeo.
   com/274536717?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&ow-
   ner=11403293, web (last accessed 31/03/2023).



                                The Author
      Alessandra Goggio

       Researcher (RTDa) in Modern German Literature at the University of
Bergamo. Her research interests include contemporary German literature,
the theory of the literary field and its representation in literary fiction, and
the relations between literature and other media. She is author (with C.M.
Buglioni, M. Castellari and M. Paleari) of the textbook German Literature.
Eras, genres and intersections (2 vols., 2019) and of the monograph Der Ver-
leger als literarische Figur. Narrative Konstruktionen in der deutschsprachigen
Gegenwartsliteratur (2021).

     Email: alessandramaria.goggio@unibg.it



                                The Article
     Date sent: 31/03/2023
     Date accepted: 31/07/2023
     Date published: 30/10/2023



                        How to cite this article
     Gioggio, Alessandra, “All the world’s a mega construction site: Rimini
Protokoll’s Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle”, Representations of Work in Lite-
rature and Visual Culture, Eds. R. Calzoni - V. Serra, Between, XIII.26 (2023):
89-107, http://www.Between-journal.it/




                                                                                  107
