The following text is a contribution by our guest author Anna-Maria Stadler. She attended the presentation of Manifesto of the Now on June 10, 2024 at Salzburger Kunstverein as part of the Sommerszene festival by SZENE Salzburg.

You can find the German original here.

I look around this building as if I were here for the first time. Outside, it was still restless earlier, now it’s easing up before evening falls, it's drying up. I imagine the wind blowing through the hallway when the windows are open. Hot it makes a round, in the corridor that runs like a belt around the entire exhibition space. Several doors branch off from the hallway. I imagine what lies accumulated in the rooms of this building. From the windows, I see green areas, mirrored in the surface of the floor. A window to the process.

We look at each other. Sitting in a circle of chairs, waiting. The conversations die down. No artificial light, but a large window. Although it is evening, it is still light. Some people flip through the accompanying booklet we received earlier. It contains short notes from the participating artists, personal manifestos: Yes to trusting the process. I see lint on the green carpet, where a pause, where a movement was interrupted. Breathing. 

Into the silence, the performer enters. We listen to her breathing, which is louder than ours. We listen to the creaking of the wooden floor under her movements. Accurate Listening. Listening to the stomach noises of the others.

At first, the performer’s movements are like stretching. A warm-up. She raises her arm, slowly. She stretches to one side, then to the other. The movements suddenly like preparations for a fight. It is happening. The arm moves past the body, turns away defensively. This is a courageous act. The leg points into the room.

Today is the first showing of the performance Manifesto of the Now – Acts of (non)Resistance as part of the Sommerszene 2024. INFLUX – the interdisciplinary network founded by Nayana Keshava Bhat – will realize variations in different constellations but similar arrangements on three more dates, once again at the Salzburger Kunstverein and twice at the Salzburg Toihaus.

Yes to my face in the mirror. A small mirror surface above the sink. Our faces, in the room. The movements of the performer in between. The fabric of her pants orange. The light falls on her from outside, falls out from within.

Above the sink, I notice a small speaker. From the speaker, we hear: Yes to you and your family. No to climate change. Yes to the sink. An engagement and disengagement, in alternation. In a process of translation.

In Manifesto of the Now, an exploration of presence takes place in several passages. What is named as a practice of rebellion changes in the translation between the various acts of resistance to permeability. The performer turns slowly to all sides before suddenly disappearing from the room. She leaves the door open. We hear: Music, in the hallway. 

In his Absence, an echo out of the text booklet.

We wait, listen. Here and now. Look into the faces of those who look through the open door. Then the first ones stand up, go out into the hallway, where three people stand, leaning on each other. They support each other, bearing each other's weight. One of them plays a string instrument. I count the strings. The light here even brighter. Again: Breathing.

A manifesto seems to assert something. The actions that line up here, on the other hand, are searching. I look into the face of the performer closest to me. His face shows pain, or fear, or something else. He shoos. Waves in the air, chases away something invisible from the corners, drives it along the walls with his hasty hand movements. He inhales, exhales. The woman, of whom I only see the back, makes a hissing sound.

The performer runs off, we follow him, evade him. He runs along the corridor, stops just before a wall, comes very close, is occupied with inner and outer ghosts. The hissing and rattling from the singer’s mouth. She follows him through the corridor, he runs ahead of her. We follow hesitantly, unintentionally blocking each other’s way, evading, retreating. And it is fleeting. An echo in the corridor. A child begins to cry. A woman carries it outside.

Hissing, so loud that it spirals to the ceiling. A scream. The child’s crying, a discomfort.

Moving on. Shifting weight. We walk through the corridor, lean against the wall, squat on the floor. The performers react to us, navigate around us. A hand slams directly next to me against the wall. Shoos something absent towards the ceiling. I look up at the ceiling. Look along the walls and others who move slowly in the corridor, keeping an eye on the three performers who relate to each other and never stay still. Especially the one who runs several rounds before suddenly stopping. Fear on his face.

We walk through the building. Many doors branch off from the corridor. A painter comes out of one, comes out of her studio, stands among us, looks around, looks at us, and at the hissing one and the running one. She wears a smock, a glass with long brushes in her hand.

We roam through the building. Behind every door, something awaits us. We follow the performers into another room. Wooden floors and high windows. In the middle of the room a piano, prepared. We sit. We do not see everything the performer does, but hear her working on the piano and working the piano, see her puttering around, pulling out threads and pieces, and anchoring others between the strings.

We watch her as if we had come by chance. As if we were guests in this building, curious about what else awaits behind the doors and in the corridors. Listen to every sound. Resistance seems to lie in the concentration on the present. In listening to the breathing, the sucking, the hissing, the screaming. In looking at the half-open mouth. The light on the faces. The shoulders, where they meet. The hand, where it brushes along the wall. The fingers, between the strings of the piano. The resistance, it seems, lies in engaging with this event.

Or, as I read between the pages of the text booklet: Tomorrow has begun in this very moment. And we all are together in it.

works as an author, artist, cultural worker, and teacher. She was part of the doctoral college at the Inter-University Organization "Science and Arts" in Salzburg with a work on paratext in contemporary art. In 2022, her first novel “Maremma” was published by Jung and Jung Verlag and was shortlisted for the Austrian Book Prize Debut. (more information on the writer)

INFLUX – Network for Dance, Theatre & Performance is an open network of artists from various disciplines. Founded & sustained since 2017 by Nayana Keshava Bhat in continual collaboration with various artists, interdisciplinarity plays a key role in INFLUX operations. Based in the city of Salzburg, INFLUX works at developing new formats in performances, artistic research, non-formal learning, collaborative projects with non-artists etc., thereby acting as a framework for artists to share their art with one another and the larger public. (more information on INFLUX)

International, contemporary, powerful, avant-garde, discursive, political: the annual Sommerszene festival is SZENE Salzburg’s centrepiece. For two weeks leading names and newcomers from all around the world visit the city to present their latest dance and theatre pieces. The programme shows landmark artistic figures whose projects reflect our reality through a wide range of individual aesthetics. The festival is devoted principally to projects in the performing arts with a focus on dance, theatre and performance. However, Sommerszene – with its contemporary and interdisciplinary understanding of art – also presents projects from other disciplines such as installations, films and concerts. Alongside high calibre visiting productions, Sommerszene also collaborates closely with local companies to develop site-specific works for the festival, thus transforming public space into a venue for performance. (more information on the Sommerszene)