Choral Aesthetics and Political Identity. The 1931 Workers' Olympiad in Vienna and Avant-Garde Performance
This class examines the 1931 Second International Workers’ Olympiad in Vienna as a convergence of avant-garde art, socialist ideals, and working-class culture. It explores, particularly through the example of Stephan Hock’s mass performance Idol of Capital and analogous productions in Czechoslovakia, how collective choreography embodied political ideologies and shaped workers’ identities in interwar Central and Eastern Europe. This analysis builds on the performative turn in theatre studies, emphasizing culture and identity as dynamic, event-based processes. It also draws on affect theory, considering gestures, postures, voice, and choreography as crucial “objects” that connect aesthetics and politics. We will focus on the following questions: How can choral aesthetics help reassess workers’ cultural heritage—often dismissed by post-socialist scholars as merely a legacy of socialist dictatorship? How can sports event can be included to performance historiography? How can bodily techniques and emotions, now associated with authoritarian populism, be reinterpreted as tools for radical democratic and anti-fascist identities?
Mgr. Martin Bernátek, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the Department for Theatre and Film Studies at Palacký University Olomouc. In his research and teching, he focues on modern and avant-garde theatre, scenography and performance space. He studied the theory and history of theatre and the theory of interactive media at Masaryk University, Brno (CZ) where he received his Ph.D. degree in 2016. His book Czech theatre photography 1859-2017, written with Anna Hejmová, won the Czech Theater Newspaper Award in 2018.
Selected Publications: Bernátek, M., E. Kubartová. “Teatrologie jako performatika”. In Koubová, Kubartová (eds.). Terény performance. Praha: NAMU, 2022, s. 24‒37; Bernátek, M., A. Hejmová a M. Novozámská. Česká divadelní fotografie: 1859–2017 . Praha: Institut umění – Divadelní ústav, 2018; Bernátek, M. “Theatrical Apparatus and Social Change. The Divadlo práce Project.” In Zoltán, I. a D. Kosiński (edd.). Reclaimed Avant-garde: Spaces and Stages of Avant-garde Theatre in Central-Eastern Europe, 118–133. Warsaw: Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, 2018.
