1. THE STATE (published 6.10.2025)
Review of the beginning of the theatre season in Ljubljana, including a review of “The State,” by Marko Crnkovič (translation below):
“Krmelj’s The State is, of course, another world. Today’s world. I was both inspired and apalled — as one is by everything that is happening in today’s world and that the performance manages to intellectually and plastically articulate. Essayistic, documentary, journalistic theatre. Without psychologizing and fatal characters in times of war, totalitarianism, and the permanence of digital surveillance. In every way, Jan Krmelj is the most intelligent and dazzlingly literate Slovenian author of the moment.”
LINK
****
2. NAFTA (OIL), Miniteater, 2025
link
(translation below)
JAKA BOMBAČ: Documentary as a Philosophical-Poetic Manifesto (6.3.2025)
“The central mode of contemporary art of the 21st century may therefore no longer be immediacy (and the “authenticity” associated with it), which in the digital age loses any subversive force, but rather processuality, which disperses the identity of the event or the person into bundles, while producing formal codes for recognizing their mutually reciprocal references. In this, NAFTA is exceptional.”
This is no longer just the age of information, but also the age of identification. Information, conceived as point units of personal identity, turns us back toward ourselves, since algorithms know far too well who we are — or rather, who we could be. As a virtual spatiality, we are reduced to a collection of psychological attributes, and the more we identify with them, the more stable the economy. Our data are mined (just like oil); they become the collateral for free residence on the global network (just as vassals in feudalism had to give four fifths of their grain to their lords in order to have access to milling devices).
The documentary performance NAFTA, by director Jan Krmelj (who is also the composer), follows the stories of five people, activists, gathered in the collective R.MUTT, who continually erased the traces of their lives and artistic works. In addition to many other artistic manifestations, members of this collective between 2019 and 2023 streamed a subversive online podcast O.I.L, which became better known to a broader audience by its last episode, in which the recording studio flooded during the live broadcast. At some point all members of the collective were, in one way or another, intertwined with the oil industry — one is, for example, the daughter of an oil magnate, another the daughter of a harmed worker, a third has experience in business with the oil industry. Although both their individual stories and the collective’s stories are moving and full of interesting biographical detail, NAFTA grips us particularly at a formal level, where through various performative and discursive procedures it reexamines the terms used in the works of the R.MUTT collective — particularly the terms repetition and biographical or documentary.
The performance places us in the role of viewers of the recording of one of the episodes of the podcast O.I.L, thereby introducing a strange defamiliarizing effect, since we are accustomed to watching podcasts through a screen; besides, we know that there is generally no audience in the spaces where podcasts are recorded (dramaturg Jernej Potočan). And although we are directly “on set,” we are present only through “archives of archives” (not via crafted dramatic characters, but via persons whose identities contain virtual lacunae), because the performers portray the collective’s members based on information they obtained during a recent viewing of the exhibition transparency (installed with the permission of absent artists), in which fragments of their biographies and artistic practices were temporarily gathered. The name of the collective — interestingly enough — refers to a “scandal” from 1929, in which Duchamp’s urinal was signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt” and published in a newspaper, which led to a broader debate about authenticity and reproduction of the artwork. The performance NAFTA is placed in a similarly problematic field: when a work displayed in a museum tries to be relocated into a performative context. Only this time the work is not a ready artifact (the urinal), but biographical data that erase themselves in the course of the performance. How should the creators act so that, inadvertently, they do not affirm precisely that which they try to resist — the fixation on the spectacle of revolution and the identity of revolutionaries?
In both parts of the piece we are introduced via a voice that in a calm and deep tone poetically invites us to various perceptual acts: in the first part to imagine ourselves sitting in a hall and listening to that voice, which, by our listening to it, is already part of us; in the second part to notice the differences that appear in the repetition of the voice and also in a different arrangement of props on stage. The poetic prologue, which in the second part is doubled or repeated, is effective, because by problematizing itself it also problematizes the use of repetition in the performance more generally: from repetition of life stories to repetition of events and ultimately of documentary facts, from which we as viewers are supposed to adopt a critical distance. Documentary-ness in the performance is not naively realistic and therefore not moralistic, but rather philosophically-poetic: reality is not presupposed, only a key for its interpretation and reinterpretation is offered to us.
How should the creators act so that, inadvertently, they do not affirm precisely that which they try to resist — the fixation on the spectacle of revolution and the identity of revolutionaries?
Well used, too, is the live video stream, which not only creates interesting and sometimes illustrative visual effects, but—through its good introduction and contextualization of what is happening on stage—adds an important sensory layer. The camera is simultaneously prop and means, since it is an inherent part of the very event of the O.I.L podcast recording (one of the collective members is the cameraman/videographer), and at the same time in the performance that we watch it produces montage effects. The life stories of the collective are thus woven into the virtual, since the narratives of individual members are interwoven with background projections, so that even the most direct address over time dissolves into layers of optical effects and becomes a barely intelligible visual play of perspectives, layers, and strata. Miniatures of different spaces (e.g. the room where they recorded the last episode of the podcast; parking lots full of cars that one of the protagonists recalls from childhood; a water pool into which oil flows and into which old cars from the parking lot are dumped) which in live performance are animated by performers (Jernej Gašperin, Diana Kolenc, Mojka Končar, Gašper Lovrec, Lucija Ostan Vejrup), mix with portrait shots which, with well used optical effects (e.g. doubling and optical curvature of the image), are variously multiplied and layered, constantly undermining our spectator perspective.
NAFTA successfully challenges the so-called prejudice about the objective world, according to which a documentary is supposed to reveal the objective reality of a phenomenon or event. Although one of its important aims is to acquaint us with the subversive message of the collective and its members, it does not offer us clear images, but rather permeates us with informational lacunae, which each time revive and fade depending on our participation and attention — similar to how files in a pirated program are not downloaded from start to finish, but in fragments, depending on the ratio between “seeds” and “leechers.”
In both the first and second parts, after the introductory address, we watch mini-documentaries in which the researcher (Filip Mramor) investigates the circumstances of the exhibition’s creation as well as the circumstances of recording the last podcast of O.I.L. While traveling to the Venetian island of Lido, where the podcast recording was to take place, he reflects that “it seems to me as though traces of their footsteps are visible everywhere.” This is also the key to the “understanding” of the performance: the goal is not to gather all the data and from it derive some moral message or a plan for more engaged political action, but rather to marvel at and follow, with a certain formal precision, the thread of data that simultaneously clarifies itself and disappears. Of course, this requires a certain trust.
At the beginning of the second part, the poetic voice redirects our attention to a black body bag, into which the camera soon zooms. The performers pour from the bag an abundance of sand of different kinds and plastic figurines onto a large table, which in the first part had served as a prop for the podcast recording. Their action is accompanied by a speech that, in a poetic-philosophical manner, reveals the internal interconnectedness of the oil industry and data capitalism. On the table emerges a landscape resembling a desert or a post-apocalyptic city, over the details of which the camera randomly roams. The history of geological changes is mapped across the history of biographical events; not only have people metaphorically become new oil (layers of sand in the desert as layers of memory in our personal archives), but in late capitalism the data economy has in fact functionally fused with oil. Although it is not entirely clear to us how to break out of this, we can at least imagine how we might act in a post-technological world if we wish to preserve psychological and political autonomy.
The information ontology that we have fallen into in recent years is merely a repetition of the attempt to reduce the human being to atoms in mechanistic physics, or to feelings, impressions, and stimuli in a psychology permeated by mechanism. But perhaps we are less static collections of information, feelings, and psychological traits than dynamic processes; archives that, as they are opened, simultaneously empty themselves.
The central mode of contemporary art of the 21st century may therefore no longer be immediacy (and the “authenticity” associated with it), which in the digital age loses any subversive force, but rather processuality, which disperses the identity of the event or the person into bundles, while producing formal codes for recognizing their mutually reciprocal references. In this, NAFTA is exceptional.
3. OIL review by Nika Šoštaršič for seestage (13.3.2025)
https://seestage.org/reviews/oil-mini-teater-jan-krmelj/
“Director Jan Krmelj and dramaturg Jernej Potočan constructed the performance through hybrid forms of staging. By weaving together lectures, sound installations, podcasts, documentary theatre, and the animation of a miniature world of objects, they continuously questioned how objectivity can be conveyed – or whether it is even possible. The illusion of reality, which the documentary format supposedly represents, remains ever-present in the air. The performance thus raises the question: “What is documentary theatre, and where are its boundaries?” Where exactly is the line between fiction and reality, and where does documentary storytelling fit into this narrative? By layering multiple levels of reality, it also explores the theme of manipulation – something that is impossible to fully escape, even in everyday life. The ground beneath us can shake at any moment, no matter how firmly we believe we have built the strongest foundations. At the same time, the performance opens up questions relevant to the era of internet dominance. We live in a world of data capitalism. After the death of our biological bodies, our virtual selves will still exist. Have we, as humanity, finally achieved infinity? Have we found a way to prevent our own transience, our ability to slip away and die without leaving a digital trace? And if so – can we still call ourselves human?”
4. RAPTURE by Rrose Selavy / RUPTURE by Lucy Kirkwood (2023)
by Benjamin Zajc
published: https://www.delo.si/kultura/ocene/ocenjujemo-rose-selavy-razpoka-rezija-jan-krmelj
On the main stage of the Ljubljana City Theatre, director and writer of the younger generation Jan Krmelj has staged the play RUPTURE (2022) by contemporary British author Lucy Kirkwood, translated by Vesna Hauschild. The work is a pseudo-documentary text that reconstructs the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a British couple. The author supposedly based her research on publicly available data, CCTV footage, and leaked audio recordings that appeared on the Reddit platform. The play’s very title already initiates a game of so-called deepfake storytelling: in the opening notes, the author states that the text must not be marketed under her real name or the play’s actual title. The world premiere at London’s Royal Court Theatre was therefore presented as David Davidson’s This Is Not What I Am.
The Slovenian creative team, however, attributes the text to Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego, thereby inserting it symbolically into a discourse on the interweaving of the real and the fictitious, illusion and fact. The couple is portrayed by Diana Kolenc and Jernej Gašperin, while Boris Kerč plays the role of the stage manager overseeing the onstage events, and Ajda Smrekar embodies the persona of the author, enriching the staged scenes with additional “real” facts. The entire concept of acting interpretation is built upon constructing a fictional story through signs and elements characteristic of media that we usually perceive as objective and truthful—documentary film, television news, and similar.
Set designer Jin Lapelj situates the psychological thriller in an improvised eavesdropping-investigation studio in a garage, evoking associations both with the author’s quasi-secret research into the case and with the clandestine “rehearsals” of the play’s supposed premiere, said to have occurred secretly to protect the involved individuals. The space is filled with objects appropriate for such an environment, yet also connects to domestic elements that enable a dramatic reconstruction of the lovers’ apartment (a bed, dining table, etc.). To intensify the constant sense of surveillance experienced by the couple, the team introduces live cameras that capture close-ups during the performance, occasionally intercut with footage supposedly found by the author in her research (video by Dorian Šilec Petek). Costumes by Brina Vidic follow this documentary aesthetic: Kerč and Smrekar wear stereotypical “work uniforms” of investigative journalists and camera operators, while Kolenc and Gašperin are costumed according to their dramatic characters, approaching the visual style of a “real” couple. The visually cohesive staging thus creates the impression that we are witnessing the making of a docu-fiction film, built upon a meticulously constructed suspense—partly inscribed in the story itself, and sustained and even heightened throughout the entire performance (dramaturg Petra Pogorevc).
The preservation of this embedded suspense relies most strongly on the refined adaptation of the text, jointly signed by all members of the creative team. Crucial here is the removal of scenes and lines too tightly bound to the original premiere context. In the play, the author writes herself into a key final scene (a conflict with the theatre’s director who sides with the state), which recontextualizes her entire investigative process. By omitting this meta-theatrical intrusion—the author’s appearance on stage and her clash with the actress portraying her—the team skillfully maintains the primary layer of documentary authenticity, while signaling their commitment to an unmanipulated depiction of the core story, thereby creating a perfect deepfake.
In this way, the creative team avoids artificially re-enacting the author’s own crises during the writing process and instead focuses on the critical findings that her inquiry purportedly achieved. Through this precise awareness of which textual elements function outside their original spatial and institutional framework, the performance becomes a carefully engineered deepfake—one that deftly provokes doubt while demonstrating, on a conceptual level, how swiftly an effective fake story can be constructed. More importantly, it examines the moment when we begin to question such fabricated narratives, even when they appear in formats we consider inherently reliable, legitimate, and above all, documentary.
Although the central theme of the play concerns false information, Zanos (titled The Fissure in English) also unfolds—through the story of two people who decided to live differently—a brutal landscape of the real world, where the boundary between conspiracy theories and concrete actions grows ever more blurred. By dissecting the system’s response to rebellious individuals unwilling to comply unquestioningly with its demands, the play (and consequently its Slovenian staging) poses the question: what are we willing to do to preserve our intimate safety—and what is the system willing to do to ensure we never truly attain it?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5 stars)
***
5. RUPTURE review by Andrej Čanji for seestage
“This artistic imagination is demonstrably based on a frightening plausibility and that is what makes this piece provocative – it questions the relationship between conspiracy theories and critical thinking. /…/ By sacrificing any sense of excitement during the performance, Krmelj is actually criticising the existing order. By eliminating all factors of classical theatricality and not even trying to create any kind of humorous interlude (though the text contains moments of potential humour and irony), the director almost provokes the audience. Although it is a lie, nothing that happens in this play seems improbable or impossible. On the contrary, the death of the Quilters is so believable and logical that we can play a bit with the conclusion – the only thing that makes it strange is that it is not true.”
https://seestage.org/reviews/rupture-city-theatre-ljubljana/
6. AFFABULAZIONE by Pier Paolo Pasolini
review by Evelin Bizjak (translation below)
https://veza.sigledal.org/kritika/zamiki-med-resnicnostjo-in-njeno-upodobitvijo-r
“The awareness that cinematography is a visual language of pure artistic abstraction — which, in the absence of speech, is pre-pragmatic and pre-morphological, that is, pre-linguistic — also marks Krmelj’s direction. In line with Pasolini’s understanding of the filmic language, it manifests as a form of resistance against formalism typical of average and mediocre neo-capitalist production. The video transmission includes a precise mise-en-scène orchestration of the actors’ stage movements, projecting them with a delay from various angles and cuts, thereby adding a silent and slightly time-shifted perspective to the perception of the live stage action. The effect created by the enlarged projection of the film onto the back wall often captures the viewer’s attention, indirectly thematizing the contemporary preoccupation with the mediated representation of reality — such an intervention of media hybridization opens the question of what, in the vitality of the body in space, remains inherently theatrical. Thus, theatre enters into dialogue with itself, with its own potency and reach, as it often seems that in the staging the stage image becomes complementary to the cinematic one — at least for moments when this enlarged image dominates and absorbs the spectator’s attention with its close-ups.
The actors also contribute to this question, as through movements and monologues they perform the delays between reality and its depiction. If theatre mostly relies on the power of the word, the camera, focused on the eyes, gazes, and bodily expression, emphasizes other modes of communication.”