With its original and provocative moves, the most talked about Norwegian theater production in recent times could lead to an interesting debate about surveillance, about power and powerlessness, about networks, and about the border between the private and the political. We never had that debate, because the performance triggered an avalanche of accusations, incitement, threats, and eventually the astonishing trial against Laila Bertheussen, cohabitant of former Minister of Justice Tor Mikkel Wara, who was convicted of having staged attacks against herself and others, to lay the blame on the free group that was behind the show. “Ways of Seeing” was the performance everyone thought something about and almost no one had seen. Now, with yesterday’s new premiere at the Black Box Theater yesterday, at least a few more have the opportunity to take in the actual stage art, and not just the claims about it. The main characters, artist Hanan Benammar and actress Sara Baban, are steady in their eyes and soft in their voices. But “Ways of Seeing” appears as a performance seething with anger. The anger is directed at Norwegian social elites, who, as the stage artists see it, use their powerful networks and financial and political resources to keep people like them out and down. It is a highly contested social diagnosis, but the rage is expressed in impeccably democratic forms: in public, in art. The discomfort is a civilized discomfort. On stage, Benammar and Baban, as is well known, pretend to go to the homes of members of the political and economic elite in Norway, sit outside their houses and observe them. Reality and fiction are mixed: Both the actors and the house owners are real people, but it is clearly not true that the women spend days and weeks in the various gardens. This mixture helps make “Ways of Seeing” an unpredictable and unmanageable space. There is something dreamlike about it all. Much has been written about how close they walk to the various houses, and much of it erroneously – the artists have been careful to point out that they always stood on public land. As a spectator, you still often feel that you are getting uncomfortably close. You can see the coffee maker of Fremskrittspartiet’s Kent Andersen through his kitchen window. The short clips are placed in a loop, so that the viewer gets the feeling that the surveillance lasts a long time. It’s not hard to imagine that it can feel awkward to be the subject of the theater troupe’s gaze in this way, to have your home seen through their camera and displayed on stage. During the performance, the story of Benammar’s father, who was part of the Algerian resistance movement and fought against the French colonial power, is also told. An actor brings the deceased father to life, letting him tell about being part of a resource-poor guerrilla who fought against white supremacy. “When we took up arms, we could breathe again,” he says. This story of armed resistance runs like a parallel to the odyssey from garden to garden, where sparkling white villas and dense tuja hedges illustrate how great the difference is in wealth and resources between those who are looked at and those who look. Benammar and Baban do nothing, they just observe and describe. But the story from Algeria helps to give the performance a clear aggressive tone. As Minister of Justice at the time, Tor Mikkel Wara sat at the top of the system, which had the power to decide who could be monitored and who could not, who would leave the country and who would be allowed to stay. What can the artists do against this kind of formal power? What they can do is to turn the lens, to spy back on whoever has the power to spy on them. When it feels invasive, sometimes disgusting – because it does – the viewer is also indirectly reminded of what it must be like for others, who are less protected than these, to be watched. It’s a fascinating move. It is also a move that works on the theater stage and nowhere else. The company could not bring out the same novelty, or create the same ambivalence in the spectator, through a chronicle or a public appeal. “Ways of Seeing” is art with teeth. But is this move sufficiently fascinating to justify the discomfort, which must also be borne by the other people living in the houses, spouses and children? How much can art adjust? The trio behind “Ways of Seeing”, Benammar, Baban and Pia Maria Roll, use a provocative method. Such provocations should precisely create reactions, bring the audience slightly out of balance, create confrontation and debate. A performance like “Ways of Seeing” would have failed if it had only been met with polite applause and pats on the back. But because the reaction, the staged attacks, were so out of all proportion, we never got the exchange we could have.
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“Ways of Seeing” is unpleasant but fascinating – Expression
