Amfiteater, letn. 13, št. 1, 2025
UDK 7.037:792 
       7.037:791 
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2025-1/240-260
Abstract
As avant-gardes decisively emerged after World War I, art that was rooted in disruptive 
gestures found explicit expression across diverse artistic products and actions. Avant-
garde art increasingly aligned with revolutionary movements, tending to become an 
integral part of social change. However, as can be shown, avant-garde groups and trends 
rarely pursued any teleology of revolutionary politics. Instead, they primarily aimed to 
create conceptual subversions within established social orders and mindsets. Through 
experiences of disappointment and euphoric breakthroughs, avant-gardes developed a 
transcultural understanding of art and its societal role. The ultimate “success” of later 
avant-gardes (in the 1960s and 1970s) was manifested on both sides of the Iron Curtain. At 
this time, theatre and cinema expanded subversions of the “system” into actual art forms, 
employing signifiers of discontinuity and radically rejecting conventional codes for public 
messages. The world that became “subverted” was the same in Paris, Prague, Belgrade 
and Ljubljana. It can be argued that, under so-called real socialism, avant-gardes aligned 
with movements aiming to reorient the path of emancipation towards a modernist project 
uniting autonomous art with social freedom. Numerous cases of “experimental” theatres, 
films, poetry and philosophies of liberation in Yugoslavia, as in other “peripheral” countries 
under real socialism, exemplify this approach.
Keywords: art, subversion, society, theatre, liberation
Darko Štrajn earned his degree in philosophy and sociology from the Faculty of Arts at 
the University of Ljubljana, where he later obtained a doctorate in Fichte’s philosophy. 
Alongside his work at the Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana, he lectures on film 
theory at the School of Arts at the University of Nova Gorica and on the epistemology of 
the humanities at the Faculty of Humanities (AMEU – ISH) in Ljubljana. His research spans 
topics such as philosophy, aesthetics, film studies, politics, education and social change. 
He is the author of six books, numerous book chapters and hundreds of other publications. 
His book From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema (2017) was published in English and 
his latest book, Either Existence or Subject?, was published in Slovenian language in 2022.
darko.strajn@guest.arnes.si
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The Legacy of Avant-Gardes in Social, Cultural 
and Political Contexts
Darko Štrajn  
Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana
 
Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming 
society. Theatre can help us build our future, instead of just waiting for it (Boal 16).
Introduction
The present has become a key category for art, which in modernism increasingly 
shook off normative frameworks. Such art became only indirectly decorative and 
increasingly directly political. This applies at least to that part of art which the current 
theory considers to be more relevant. Of course, in diverse areas of art, transformations 
and inventions manifest themselves in a range of specific ways. Especially in the field 
of performative arts, among which theatre has a representative role both in “classical” 
avant-garde productions and in those from the pivotal years before and after the 
emblematic year 1968, events were marked both aesthetically and sociopolitically in a 
very transformative way. As Alain Badiou claimed, the new approach to the concept of 
time was already evident from the emergence of Rimbaud’s poetry: “ Art is no longer 
essentially a production of eternity” (The Century 134). Badiou focused specifically 
on theatre in the cited book, claiming “the twentieth century is the century of the 
theatre as art”, adding: “Now, it can be argued (and this is an important symptom) 
that the twentieth century is the century of the theatre as art. It is the twentieth 
century that invented the notion of the mise en scène. It transformed the thinking of 
representation into an art in its own right. The theatre director is something like a 
thinker of representation as such, who carries out a very complex investigation into 
the relationships between text, acting, space and public” (40).
When the avant-garde decisively expanded after World War I, this relationship, more 
an attitude or mindset than a defined concept, became a fully conscious orientation, 
which was explicitly articulated in various avant-garde manifestos, statements and, of 
course, in artistic works and actions. There is no firm and universally accepted definition 
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of the term avant-garde. However, the common thread in diverse interpretations 
is the examination of the relationship between art and processes of social change. 
Peter Bürger (1984) condensed various definitions into the observation that avant-
gardes brought about a rupture by opposing institutionalised art, which – from the 
perspective of artistic movements in bourgeois society – hinders the connection 
between art and life. Avant-garde art increasingly sided with revolutionary movements 
and positioned itself as an integral part of social change. However, avant-garde groups 
and trends – as can be demonstrated – did not produce a teleology of revolutionary 
politics. More often, they tried to create breaks and discontinuities within established 
social orders and mentalities. Avant-gardes, throughout their paths of experiencing 
disappointments and euphoric breakthroughs, creating subversive effects in relation 
to the political system as well as to prevailing morality and ideology, developed 
a transcultural understanding of art and its role in society. The almost definitive 
“success” of the late avant-gardes, also called neo-avant-gardes (in the 1960s and 
1970s), occurred on both sides of the then Iron Curtain. Disruptive courses of action 
are archived in virtually all areas of art. Theatre and film, however, were particularly 
emphasised at that time, expanding the subversion of the “system” as actual art forms 
that were created on the use of discontinuities and surprising new arrangements 
based on radical transformations of conventional public communication coding. The 
world that was thus “subverted” was diverse yet, at the same time, the same in Paris, 
Prague, Belgrade or Ljubljana.
In the confusion caused by the pre-emptive naming of the period around the 
beginning of the 1980s as postmodernism, there arose ideas that a new era could 
be produced by assembling previous artefacts, combining decorative elements of 
various architectures, merging genres, crossing disciplinary boundaries, by using 
media and so on. In short, the modernist focus on the present was supposed to give 
way to a “return” of temporality, which was to be composed of arbitrarily selected 
fragments of the past. Given that postmodernism supposedly coincided with the rise 
of neoliberal ideology, the absorptive power of the concept of the free market proved 
itself. “ Artists, gallery owners, critics, and public wallow together in the ‘anything 
goes,’ and the epoch is one of slackening. But this realism of the ‘anything goes’ is in 
fact that of money; in the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful 
to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield” (Lyotard 76). 
Moreover, it allegedly all started with two sentences at the beginning of Lyotard’s most 
notorious book, The Postmodern Condition, originally published in 1979: “The object 
of this study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I 
have decided to use the word postmodern to describe that condition” (xxiii). As we 
know, after the publication of this statement, many antagonistic discussions followed 
in various fields, particularly in the field of aesthetics. It should be noted that Lyotard 
is not talking about the notion but about the word postmodernism. Lyotard soon 
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distanced himself from the scattered and widespread uses of the word in an essay that 
answers the question of what postmodernism is. This essay was published, among 
other things, as an appendix to the English translation of The Postmodern Condition 
published by the University of Minnesota Press. In addition to the finding from this 
essay, Lyotard also wrote the following sentence: “ A work can become modern only if 
it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end 
but in the nascent state, and this state is constant” (79). Lyotard, therefore, provoked, 
so to speak, mass reactions with his formulation of postmodernism. Of course, a huge 
flow of simplified appropriations of his description of the “condition in the most 
developed societies” followed in the form of linear chronology.   
The essay appended to The Postmodern Condition reflects some of the effects of one of 
the author’s most concise yet most influential books. In the main text, Lyotard writes 
emphatically about knowledge and thus about science and transformations in their 
social and economic-political context. In reaction to the immense wave of controversial 
discussions about the word postmodernism, however, he focuses primarily on art and 
aesthetics. It looked as if he wanted to correct the impression of the original text and 
charge the sphere of art and its theoretical reflective interpretations with the task of 
producing a decisive self-understanding of society in its transformations, which in 
(Lyotard’s) future appear as interactions of the forms of capitalist society and emerging 
groundbreaking new technologies. In all this, art, precisely because of its inevitable 
political nature, is in an ambivalent relationship with time: time does not determine 
art, but art determines time. Thus, Lyotard’s problematisation of the chronology can 
be understood as an affirmation of modernism through its chronological end. Many 
have understood this point in such a way that postmodernism means a new level of 
modernism, its new affirmation through Hegelian sublation (Aufhebung). However, 
this created a structural shift that concerns precisely the driving force of the avant-
gardes, their potential as a social agency. If modernism is the historical framework of 
the avant-garde, then the agencies operating within it work to change the perspective: 
postmodernism retroactively establishes the effect of the avant-gardes upon their 
“constant” self-renewal.
The Trace of the Aura
Contemporary artistic events are reflected in theories in such a way that they cannot 
be interpreted without referencing past avant-garde and neo-avant-garde phenomena. 
Given the inherent dialectics of artistic form, during the period of postmodernism – 
regardless of the controversies surrounding this term – adaptations of avant-garde 
inventions emerged, combining either with classical theatrical techniques or with 
other media. Consequently, theory and criticism are also faced with recognising 
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variations of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde components in art that do not claim the 
attribute of avant-gardism. An extensive cultural and research space of reflection has 
been established through Lyotard’s designation of an era that was not so prominently 
new compared to how much it defined a change in understanding artistic invention. 
This virtual space has enabled the restitution of the political nature of art by constantly 
questioning its functioning in the face of the effects of reification in the currents of 
fetishised market freedom. Among many possible examples, let us take the artistic 
breakthroughs of the 1960s and 1970s, which, in interaction with protest movements 
and emancipatory ideas, achieved long-term political effects. The artefacts themselves 
and all kinds of evidence of events have become objects of a process of symbolising 
social effects within the space of postmodernism. Artefacts and simultaneously 
symbols on the market acquire a price regardless of their content, regardless of 
the meanings of gestures and declarations, thereby neutralising their original 
subversiveness. However, they remain paradigmatic, open to reinterpretation and 
revitalisation in repetitions that are legitimised by the framework of postmodernism: 
repetition, namely, questions the context. The concepts of modernism and avant-garde 
should not simply be equated but rather considered as intertwined categories whose 
movement unfolds through differences and indistinguishability. “ A possible treatment 
of the two concepts of the avant-garde and the modern extends from a tendency to 
neutralise their difference (modern is avant-garde and vice versa) to the proposition 
to interpret them in a classification as incompatible and exclusive (the avant-garde 
arose against modernism)” (Müller-Funk 22). This kind of binary opposition has 
been inscribed in the never-ending debate about groundbreaking artistic works 
and activities in the 1960s and 1970s as either the culmination of modernism or the 
beginnings of postmodernism.
Amid this thicket of concepts and diverse artistic practices, theatre held a special 
role, which applies both to the avant-gardes of the 1920s and to those at the peaks 
of modernism in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, what were such inventions as 
Meyerhold’s biomechanical theatre or Brecht’s epic theatre in the 1920s became 
performances in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1920s, theatre – very explicitly in the 
mentioned two cases – positioned itself against the institution of theatre as it had 
settled in bourgeois society. Meyerhold aimed for a revolution in theatre and radically 
altered the role of the actor and director in his productions, thus calling for a break in 
the continuity of the so-called rhetorical theatre: “Since the theatre has the power to 
stimulate the emotions as well as the intellect, it follows that it is wrong for a play as a work 
of art to limit itself to sheer rhetoric, employing raisonneurs and indulging in dialogues 
borrowed from the so-called ‘conversational theatre’. We reject such a theatre as a mere 
debating chamber” (Braun 217). Brecht more explicitly emphasised the sociohistorical 
context. “It is understood that the radical transformation of the theatre can’t be the result 
of some artistic whim. It has simply to correspond to the whole radical transformation 
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of the mentality of our time” (Brecht 23). To this, Walter Benjamin, the great thinker of 
historical discontinuity, added: “The stage is still elevated. But it no longer rises from an 
immeasurable depth: it has become a public platform” (Understanding Brecht 22). The 
specificity of theatre within that time becomes even clearer in the realm of Benjamin’s 
concept of aura, which uniquely names the irreversible transformation of art brought 
about by reproduction as the key agent of industrial society. If the disappearance of the 
aura affects all arts in terms of the relationship between the original and the copy and 
the uniqueness of the encounter with the artwork, theatre retains a “trace of the aura” 
precisely because each repetition differs from previous performances, even if only in 
the smallest details. “[…] man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing 
its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on 
the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of 
the actor” (Benjamin, The Work of Art 231).
In a society of mass culture – according to Benjamin, in a society of technical 
reproduction – theatre became a component of the expansive multiplicity of 
interactions between social realities and arts, between art genres, between different 
media, between theories and, ultimately, between artistic ideas and political events. 
In such plurality, it is not advisable to seek the origins of various mutual influences 
between art genres. Singular artistic events emerge as products of reflection, media 
interactions and theoretically grounded actions. Thus, in the neo-avant-garde period, 
theatre developed its performances even more than in the period before World War 
II, both based on its traditions and in the search for new foundational concepts in the 
hybridisations of its artistic form in relation to other arts. The most reproducible and 
most mass-oriented of all arts, namely film, reaffirmed its role as an agent in the avant-
garde from its beginnings. Deleuze’s concept of the time-image was complemented 
particularly with the advent of the French New Wave in the 1960s. In his analysis 
of Godard’s film Pierrot the Fool (Pierrot le Fou, 1965), Jean-Louis Leutrat referred 
to Barthes’s comment on Schumann’s music: “In the end there are only intermezzi, 
whatever interrupts is itself interrupted, and so on …” He then continued:
This describes excellently a certain cinema of Jean-Luc Godard. From filled-in gaps 
to immediately dissolved plenitudes, the splits and divisions seem only to expand or 
multiply as each film draws its form and force from the fractures and digressions that 
might just as easily engulf it. Continuity of meaning is subverted, spatial and temporal 
coordinates are altered, and logical links are disjointed . (181)
Thus, the New Wave cinema
1
 introduced a change in film form and, as has often been 
the case in various art genres, this meant that the form adapted to the “content” of 
1 In contemporary film studies this concept increasingly encompasses not only the original French film revolution but 
also all other national variations such as the British Free Cinema, the Young German Film, the Yugoslav Black Wave, the 
Czechoslovak film miracle, etc.
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the new spirit of the time as well as the changed social circumstances and the actions 
of social actors. At that time, among other things, these actions were about political 
movements that aimed to abolish capitalism. Although the realisation of this goal failed, 
the cultural revolution succeeded, which included changes in the forms of everyday 
life, the position of social minorities, the sexual revolution with an emphasised role of 
feminism and, ultimately, also artistic production.
The so-called experimental theatres of the 1960s were based on a logic similar to 
what Leutrat defined in the case of Godard’s film. The various radical happenings and 
performances of the 1960s and 1970s more or less abandoned the narrative form of 
theatre. In a new echo of the avant-garde declarations of the 1920s, they established 
a connection between “art and life”. Although it would be difficult to define a common 
characteristic of the entire range of concepts, currents and movements in the theatre 
scene of that time, it can still be said that these theatres emphasised the signifier of 
the body. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of anthological examples that could be 
mentioned. For the sake of clarity regarding what I am talking about, let us remember 
The Living Theatre, the performance Dionysus in 69, Viennese Actionism, Boal’s Theatre 
of the Oppressed and so on. The theme of the body, which during this period became 
the subject of various humanistic theories, was most notably illustrated in the practices 
of theatrical avant-gardes by the Benjaminian “trace of the aura”, thereby manifesting 
the irreducible difference between theatre and film. The physical body of the actor 
simultaneously served as an important “instrument” for establishing contact with the 
audience and as an instrument for dismantling the bourgeois institution that separated 
spectators from actors. What theory developed regarding the function, meanings, roles, 
sexual attributes, ideology and liberation of the body, theatre applied to its practice: 
“First, the body is prepared for performance, worked up to it by formal or informal 
regimes. Second, the preparation of the performing body is undertaken within a context 
of assumptions about ‘body’ in society and thus has a relationship – conscious or not, 
critical or not – with what are perceived to be dominant norms” (Shepherd 11). Many 
theatres did not shy away from performative reinterpretations of classical works, 
starting with ancient dramas or even directly with the mythologies of antiquity and the 
traditions of diverse cultures. The deconstructions of characters from past tragedies, 
the dramatisations of poetry, and the inclusion of other media in performances that 
originated from radical experiments linked to the prolonged revolution marked by the 
year 1968 were eventually appropriated by even the most institutionalised theatres. 
Theatrical actions outside and inside theatrical spaces or in reconfigured spaces 
produced an excess of political engagement. This was most explicitly manifested in 
parodic gestures, in provocations against the prevailing taste, in the use of disruptive 
techniques to break narrative fragments, or in the complete absence of narrative. With 
all of this, theatre, as part of protest demonstrations or parallel to them, engaged in 
social struggles. In that context, theatre achieved effects that no other art form could, 
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precisely because of the mentioned “trace of the aura”. Even though avant-garde theatre 
is far from being the entirety that is considered the art of theatre and, although in 
terms of audience size, it certainly lags behind traditional theatres and commercial 
theatres, it was, in each of its new manifestations, the one that redefined the boundaries 
of theatrical art, reshaped the work of dramaturgy, actors, directors, etc., while also, 
willingly or unwillingly, defining itself in its temporal transience. It, too, fell victim to its 
own destruction of the prevailing perception of time. The artistic activities of the 1960s 
and 1970s cannot be fully understood if we do not include in the conceptual framework 
Deleuze’s notions of deterritorialisation, reterritorialisation and, of course, nomadism.
All Spaces Are Peripheral
The period most marked by memories of student protests, particularly against the 
Vietnam War and simultaneously against the repressive system in its global binary 
of capitalism and real socialism, brought about a significant shift within the domain 
of the colonial notion of the metropolis or centre. Protests resulted neither in the 
collapse of capitalism and its complementary real socialism nor in a reduction of the 
dominance of economic, military and financial oligarchies. Instead, they resulted in 
a new geography of art. There was an even greater emancipation of the periphery 
than during the early rise of the avant-garde. Avant-garde artistic practices emerged 
not only in the urban centres of the West but also in most countries of the so-called 
Eastern Europe: most notably in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and even in the 
Soviet Union. A special instance is the countries of Central and South America. 
Avant-garde artists made Yugoslavia a kind of anti-centre of artistic movements, as 
evidenced by the fact that the country hosted several major and minor international 
festivals, among which the Genre Experimental Film Festival (GEFF) in Zagreb and 
the Belgrade International Theatre Festival (BITEF) stood out.
2
 The openness of 
national borders and the relatively high tolerance for artistic freedom within the 
self-management system also extended to the openness towards contemporary 
social-intellectual movements. Thus, from 1968 to 1974, the so-called Korčula 
Summer School was organised on the island of Korčula by the Zagreb philosophical 
journal Praxis, gathering several leading figures of Western Marxism,
3
 more or less 
2 On a fundamental level, artistic manifestations such as BITEF – thoroughly catalogued and described on widely accessible 
platforms (even on Wikipedia) – were factually recognised in metropolises (centres). Their initiators and organisers, such 
as Mira Trailović and Jovan Ćirilov, were awarded across Europe and collaborated with numerous important European 
institutions (e.g., Festival d’ Avignon, etc.). BITEF itself received a special award in 2000 for its “past work” from an 
institution under the auspices of the European Commission.
3 During the rise of far-right movements and political parties, the slur cultural Marxism emerged, first popularised in 2011 
by the Norwegian mass murderer and neo-Nazi Anders Breivik. Cultural Marxism is associated with the concept of Western 
Marxism, which refers to a range of philosophical and political trends that, based on Marx’s philosophy, opposed Stalinism 
– beginning as early as in the Weimar Republic in the works of Korsch, Lukács, and the philosophers of the Frankfurt 
School. The peak of these intellectual Marxist currents was the philosophy and praxis of the New Left.
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aligned with the concept of the New Left. In art, Yugoslavia’s openness also allowed 
for politically charged performances, though this does not mean that the League of 
Communists did not closely monitor them. Through its organs and loyal intellectuals, 
it publicly criticised them, yet by the late 1960s, there were almost no direct bans or 
legal prosecutions. However, certain performances by avant-garde theatres provoked 
intense reactions, blending moral panic with perceptions of political deviations 
based on judgements of “quasi-art”.
4
 Of course, even in the so-called free world at 
that time, artistic actions provoked harsh reactions and even police repression. 
Many “experimental” performances were, sometimes explicitly and sometimes in the 
interpretations of critics and theorists, grounded in broader artistic movements, such 
as Situationism and, somewhat later, Conceptualism. They reflected epistemological 
shifts in philosophy, from existentialism to poststructuralism. All of this, along 
with references to “classic” avant-gardes, led to a disruption of the very concept of 
theatre. “[In dramatic texts], the elements of drama are disappearing, and the text 
becomes disposable and directs the other aspects of theatrical performance. Meaning 
is lost or remains extremely open, which leads to fragmentation and arbitrariness 
of interpretation” (Troha 129). In Yugoslavia at that time, the signifying interactions 
between student unrest and various intellectual movements were as evident as 
elsewhere in the world. Performances such as Raša Todosijević’s happening Decision 
as Art (1973), the performances of Marina Abramović, the emergence of the Pupilija 
Ferkeverk Theatre in its various versions in Ljubljana (1968 to 1975), and many 
other events continuously introduced new inventions in unconventional spaces. 
In the history of Slovenian performance art, there are numerous examples where 
established theatrical institutions opened to new tendencies towards the late 1960s. 
Particularly in the Small Stage of the main Slovenian theatre house (today’s SNT 
Drama Ljubljana), works by avant-garde authors (e.g., Arrabal, Handke, Jovanović and 
others) were staged. European theatre groups often stopped in Ljubljana on their way 
from the BITEF in Belgrade, and so on. If we talk about the circuits of ideas and mutual 
influences with social movements, the example of the Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre 
stands out in Slovenia.
Just as radical practices, which the secret police identified as Trotskyist, anarcho-liberal 
or even Maoist, emerged within the second phase of the student movement, it can also 
be said that PFT [Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre] realised a radical artistic practice that 
was similarly intrinsic to the contemporary OHO group. If PFT is critically noted for 
introducing into the theatrical space ludism, or playfulness, as the basis of artistic work, 
the same can be said for the second phase of the student movement. Here, too, there was 
a noticeable creative playfulness, most prominently expressed at the literary marathon 
[at the Faculty of Arts] in November 1970. (Kreačič 327; my trans.)
4 I wrote more extensively about these aspects of the relationship between art and politics in the article “The politics and 
aesthetics of democratic socialism in Yugoslav modernity. The case of Yugoslav modernism and its impact: some examples 
of breakthrough art in the context of self-management”. See Štrajn.
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We can say that the Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre was the most representative of the 
numerous theatre movements in Slovenia at the time, including those that either 
continued or newly emerged in the 1970s. The artistic form, if it can be called that, 
illustrated the “end” of traditional theatre by staging the “most scandalous” among 
their performances, Pupilija, papa Pupilo pa Pupilčki (Pupilija, Papa Pupilo and the 
Pupilceks) at the student housing restaurant (in 1969), which was based on parodic 
fragments on the theme of consumer society. It is understood that the performance 
had no narrative line; the scenes followed each other in an unstructured manner, 
leaving the audience to create connections for themselves, as the performance did not 
suggest any unambiguous ones. On the stage, surrounded by a predominantly young 
audience, a series of group physical movements took place, which could be perceived 
as a political metaphor for the disciplining of individuals. The political context of 
socialism was portrayed through the lens of society as a sphere of traditionalism and 
moralism. This was symptomatically evident in the reactions of the media at the time 
to some scenes featuring partially or completely naked bodies. 
The political dimension of Pupilija Ferkeverk Theatre thus transcended earlier 
dissident confrontations with authority, its repressiveness, ideological limitations 
and censorship. Through the theatrical form of parody, it addressed lifestyles and 
everyday life. Its political effect was not limited to “critiquing” socialist authority 
but, alongside political theatres in the West, also targeted broader social and 
economic trends, particularly consumerism. This was, therefore, a form of indirect 
political engagement that aimed at ways of life and aligned itself with marginalised 
social groups. In the Slovenian context itself, the theatre – through the act of 
slaughtering a chicken on stage in the performance Pupilija, Papa Pupilo and the 
Pupilceks – signalled the growing distance of an increasingly urban society from 
rural normality. In retrospect, an analysis of the workings of experimental theatre 
reveals the complexity of the culture and politics of the time. A relatively repressive 
society is depicted in its historical trajectory, including agencies and actors, among 
which the government and its policies are just one component in the continuity of 
domination. The manifestations of the performance, which could be understood as 
allegories, metaphors and metonymies reflecting this society, demonstrate a stance of 
inarticulate subjectivity in the discontinuities of the performance. In the gaps of these 
discontinuities, subjective freedom is realised as resistance, mockery, transgression of 
the ruling morality and, ultimately, as a subversion of the system, whose intended static 
nature is depicted in the process of potential disintegration. It is precisely through 
staging in discontinuities, in the dismantling of established meanings with gestures 
of mockery  and resistance and highlighting the view from the social margins and the 
core of the plurality of mass culture that several such theatres, like Pupilija Ferkeverk, 
manifest a political effect. This is an effect of indirect politics (cf. Bartholomew, 2014). 
Of course, traditional theatre can also function similarly. “The theatre alone points 
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out the comical appearance of what power is in the present and thus opens it to 
derision. In every tragedy, we see the dark melancholy of power. In every comedy, 
we see the farcical semblant” (Badiou, The Pornographic Age 3). In a critical time of 
social anomie, however, the change in the form of the theatrical event, in fragments 
of the aura, revitalises, among other things, its political effectiveness. Conceptualist 
performances, which were based on a focused exposure of the subjective position 
from which the intervention into the field of the other’s gaze takes place, achieved a 
similar effect in a slightly different way.
The avant-garde experiments of the pivotal period of the 1960s and 1970s were 
driven by the movement of deterritorialisation within the multiplicity of mass culture, 
which inherently triggered processes of reterritorialisation. This means that impulses 
from one location had a transformative effect on another location, which in turn 
triggered reverse effects. A simple example: during that period, action performances, 
for instance, sent messages about the absurdity of the Vietnam War to very culturally 
diverse areas of national organisations around the world. American avant-garde 
theatre arguably began as early as the 1940s with the founding of The Living Theatre, 
which, among other things, “imported” the staging of Brecht’s and Pirandello’s works. 
A notable manifestation was undoubtedly Dionysus in 69, an adaptation of Euripides’ 
The Bacchae. Certainly, from the 1960s in the United States, the theatre movements 
of Guerrilla Theatre remain unforgettable – originating from the work of the San 
Francisco Mime Troupe. The most prominent representative of this movement was 
The Bread and Puppet Theatre, which also pioneered forms that merged art and 
protest into street theatre. 
The concept of centre and periphery maintained its significance for conservative and 
regressive ideologies and for the colonial perspective. Without adding much more 
to what I have written about in the past, not to mention the enormous number of 
discussions of the pivotal period in the extensive postmodern literature, I can assert 
that much more happened during this period than was pessimistically imagined 
at the time when various radical socioartistic events gradually diminished. How 
much the neo-avant-garde achievements became objects of market reification or – 
as Herbert Marcuse expressed the problem at the time – absorption into the system 
of repressive tolerance is a question that, with its constant relevance, has remained 
an impetus for the evocation of unique neo-avant-garde events. Such effects as the 
relative successes in the fields of sexual politics or the relative shifts in attitudes 
towards ideologies such as racism, homophobia, etc., were significant. Sadly, this is 
evidenced by the fact that even the small achievements of emancipatory movements 
have increasingly become objects of conservative counter-revolution in the time 
after the first decade of the 21
st
 century. 
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Conclusion
How can one adapt Shakespeare’s drama in a way that would be engaging for today’s 
audience, who have been raised within the frameworks of the “distracted perception” 
(cf. Benjamin, The Work of Art) of mass culture? Such questions arise for every theatre, 
no matter how conservative or devoted to sublime art it may be. The explanation 
for such questioning, which often refers to the empty formula “times are changing”, 
is clearly inadequate. What matters is what has happened in these changing times 
across all areas of historical processes, from wars to the effects of natural sciences and 
technology, without excluding the trajectories of artistic activities from this multiplicity 
of movements. When we zoom in on time, the period of the avant-garde and neo-avant-
garde proves to be decisive in mapping the field in which art is navigating – both the art 
we perceive as mainstream and the art that questions existing social relations. Even if it 
seemed to the actors themselves that avant-garde interventions in all forms and across 
all fields of art were ephemeral and unsuccessful in their marginalised activity, it is now 
evident that their transience, uniqueness, singularity, extreme gestures, disruptions and 
“scandalousness” gradually established a distinction from the mainstream, which, in 
contrast, gradually normalised and absorbed the components and attributes of avant-
garde actions. The paradox in this process, regarding the political intent of the avant-
garde, lies in the fact that through appropriation into the mainstream, the subversive 
note was neutralised, meaning that the success of radical artistic forms in their market 
placement lost their most fundamental emancipatory targets. In light of the calls for a 
“return to the aesthetic”, which appeared with the advent of postmodernity, in complex 
polemics with the proponents of this call, Fredric Jameson pointed to its unspoken goal: 
“The dialectical twist here lies in the way in which the historic mission of the postmodern 
is said to consist in discrediting the more noxious aspects and developments of the 
modern itself (as that is conventionally understood)” (114). Criticisms of radical art 
for either abandoning or dismantling aesthetics stem from the fact that it transformed 
the understanding of aesthetics within the framework of the inherent interdependence 
of mass culture and established bourgeois culture. This does not mean that it stepped 
out of the field of aesthetics but instead placed it in relation to its social positioning. 
Benjamin (Work of Art) referred to this as the politicisation of art. The discourses of 
the “return to the aesthetic”, though not in every signifying chain but in the mentioned 
figures, are symptomatic as products of a process in which avant-garde art of the past 
became a matter of market exchanges and, at the same time, of targeted discreditations 
and banalisations in the interest of the counter-revolution. 
Avant-garde theatre, in its diverse manifestations – from Brechtian theatre, for 
instance, to happenings and street theatres in the 1960s and 1970s – did not produce 
a rigidly coded form that would be as repeatable, even if open to reinterpretation and 
adaptation, as classical theatre. Today, we speak less and less of avant-garde theatre, 
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but this does not mean that radical explorations in theatrical art have ceased. The avant-
garde approaches discussed here – such as de-narrativisation, the use of elements 
from the Theatre of the Absurd, multimedia tools, etc. – are essentially fragments of 
an archive that new performances revive and recontextualise. Such radicalisations 
may occur at the level of form. However, they are more often employed in attempts 
to theatrically re-enact social and political events, as seen recently, for instance, in 
portrayals of the fates of immigrants. At the same time, there is no doubt that the entire 
avant-garde tradition has also enabled innovations within institutionalised theatres, 
which postmodern audiences accept. This means that avant-gardes have sparked 
movements that have influenced the evolution of theatre audiences themselves.
Eppur si muove! While it is entirely comprehensible that the neo-avant-garde of the mid-
20
th
 century is now a matter of archives, catalogues and retrospectives, it is evident that 
its artistic forms have persisted. Performance art and the use of the hybridisation of 
artistic genres have especially accelerated, as has the dynamic of deterritorialisation 
driven by the nomadism of inventions and, not least, the use of digital technologies. 
Above all, the strengthening of the politicisation of art is entirely evident.
5
 The invention 
of new artistic forms, the use of already tested or new approaches to theatrical 
productions with the aim of activating the audience and so on, continue and have 
almost become a standard occurrence even in established theatre houses. Disruptive 
artistic actions that take place in public spaces, sometimes even at the cost of conflicts 
with the authorities, have already become characteristic of urban environments. 
All this activity has its background and is nourished by theories and concepts. The 
current, conditionally speaking, avant-garde art operates as a laboratory from which 
artistic interventions with political effects also emerge. An illustrative example was the 
Belgrade non-governmental organisation Teorija koja hoda (Walking Theory), founded 
in 2000. Its activities took place through workshops, lecture “schools,” performances 
and a “cartel” that mimics the scheme of a corporate company, etc.
An organisation is a body or institution that enters the system of social struggles for 
influence, power, hegemony, centring or relocation, i.e. transfiguring the system of 
performing arts through theoretical assumptions, intentional conflicts and unexpected 
potentialities of materialistically oriented poststructuralism, cultural studies, techno 
theory and critical biopolitics (Šuvaković 268–269).
Long before this, a “retro-garde” activity emerged in Slovenia, centred around the 
principle of collective collaboration with the musical and performance group Laibach 
under the banner of NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst). This movement encompassed 
5 At the most representative art events, such as the Venice Biennale, documenta in Kassel, etc., exhibitions of paintings 
and sculptures are mixed with video and live performances, including more radical political messages that relate to global 
phenomena of discrimination and social injustices as well as singular instances of repression (e.g., against Indigenous 
people, Palestinians, etc.). The dilemma for artists in all this is that we can talk about the aestheticisation of the 
consequences of injustices, the suffering of individuals and entire ethnic groups, but the impact on the public is not like 
that of the 1960s and 1970s.
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not only music but also visual arts and theatre. As is well known, the emergence of 
this artistic collective significantly influenced political events before the dissolution 
of Yugoslavia, after which it continued its activities on a global scale. Much later, in the 
independent Republic of Slovenia, the alliance between art and social movements was 
evident in the realm of inventions within the context of protest manifestations. The 
justification for the Golden Bird Award for inventive art, which in 2013 was awarded 
to an anonymous collective for the project Zombie, reveals that the events recorded in 
history as the First Pan-Slovenian Uprising saw art realised as political action.
Prime Minister Janez Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) – the embodiment 
of the “operation of the apparatus” – described the participants of the First Pan-
Slovenian Uprising against the overt neoliberal intervention in the Slovenian state 
and society as “zombies” on 21 December 2012. The “protestival” that followed on 
22 December 2012 demonstrated that mass public protests against ruling oligarchies 
in Slovenia were simultaneously cultural and artistic events. This became even more 
evident during the continuation of the uprising on 11 January 2013. “Zombies” were an 
indispensable component of the events in 2013, especially on Culture Day, 8 February 
2013, when the populist political party, with its visibly diminished support, suffered 
a significant defeat. The parody of the Prime Minister’s insult in the form of a street 
play by “nameless” directors and actors was a unique Slovenian artistic achievement 
among other social actions during the financial crisis. The Zombie project clearly 
showed that, unlike many former emancipatory politicisations of art, today’s focus 
is no longer on the artistic production of utopias but instead on the next step after 
exiting the aesthetic regime: the broader social capitalisation of ghettoised artistic 
production and the integration of art into collective action against the perpetuation 
of society’s expropriation. This issue of contemporary art, which seeks to reach the 
public through artistically pointed political stances, was also reflected in the speech 
by Zdenka Badovinac (former director of Slovenia’s Museum of Modern Art), chair of 
the committee for awarding the prestigious Slovenian national Prešeren Awards to 
artists, during the 2025 awards ceremony: 
Capital and politics have hijacked the language of art: they promote themselves through 
provocation, uncritical imagination and a non-binding freedom of spirit. What, then, is 
left for art? Provocation rarely shocks any more. Art is becoming increasingly inclusive, 
opening up space for the greatest possible participation in its processes. In this way it 
plays a part in creating our social fabric. (Badovinac)
From this point on, the most inventive art is a component of a broader social coalition 
aimed at establishing a different paradigm of sociality. In the Second Slovenian 
Uprising (2020–2022), the so-called cycling protests that took place for more than 
a hundred consecutive weeks, the Zombie project continued and contributed to the 
performative effects and iconography of the protest.
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Disruptiveness, fragmentation, subversiveness and so on – often in the form of 
discontinuity as a legacy of the avant-garde from the modernist era – remain key 
characteristics of art that aligns with emancipatory social aspirations. Questions 
about how to achieve the goal of unsettling the public, decentralising mass perception 
through innovative uses of new technologies and so forth remain constantly open. Each 
successful artistic action is a unique response, a singular gesture and a transcultural 
signifier for decoding forms of domination. Therefore, an artistic intervention must 
occur unexpectedly, unpredictably, in the manner of aesthetic guerrilla tactics and as 
an event. The example of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, 
which proved to be highly controversial for its thematic focus on history – particularly 
the French Revolution – and its portrayal of mythologically grounded exuberance, will 
remain unparalleled. The event itself is typically expected to be a parade of kitsch 
and extravagance. However, in Paris in 2024, the meaningfully rich performance on 
the river Seine added an extraordinary component to the event. The fact that such 
content – highlighting the achievements of historical emancipatory struggles, the 
celebration of the politics of difference and recognition, etc. – was elevated to the 
highest level of visibility within the core of the spectacle. Even if packaged with the 
kitsch of fireworks and other attractions, it represented a unique culmination of 
previous artistic emancipatory gestures. The LGBTQ movement, with its characteristic 
costuming, illustrated the connection between “art and life” following this spectacle 
– a connection that, throughout the history of the avant-garde, has often needed to 
be rearticulated despite sometimes sounding naively optimistic. The search for and 
attempts at artistic actions are sometimes obscured and narrowed down to the 
sphere of intimacy, and at other times, as we have seen, involving spectacularity, thus 
continuing from one performance to the next, with no end in sight.
254

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Amfiteater, letn. 13, št. 1, 2025
UDK 7.037:792 
       7.037:791 
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2025-1/240-260
Povzetek
Ko so se avantgarde odločilno razmahnile po prvi svetovni vojni, je umetnost, ki temelji na 
disruptivni gesti, pridobila eksplicitne artikulacije v raznolikih umetniških izdelkih in dejanjih. 
Avantgardna umetnost se je vse pogosteje postavljala na stran revolucionarnih gibanj in 
težila k temu, da bi bila sestavni del družbenih sprememb. Vendar pa so avantgardne 
skupine in trendi – kot je mogoče dokazati – redko delali na kakršni koli teleologiji 
revolucionarne politike. Največkrat so si prizadevali ustvariti konceptualne subverzije 
znotraj ustaljenih družbenih redov in miselnosti. Avantgarde so na svoji poti doživljanja 
razočaranj in evforičnih prebojev uveljavljale transkulturno razumevanje umetnosti in 
njene vloge v družbi. Tako rekoč dokončni »uspeh« kasnejših avantgard (šestdesetih in 
sedemdesetih let) se je zgodil na obeh straneh železne zavese. Tedanji teater in film 
sta razširila subverzije »sistema« v dejanske umetniške forme, ki so temeljile na rabah 
označevalcev diskontinuitet in na radikalni odpovedi običajnim kodam sporočil občinstvu. 
Svet, ki so ga »subvertirali«, je bil isti v Parizu ali Pragi ali Beogradu ali Ljubljani. Lahko 
trdimo, da so se avantgarde v tako imenovanem realnem socializmu vpisale v gibanja, 
ki so poskušala preusmeriti pot emancipacije v končni modernistični projekt interakcije 
med avtonomno umetnostjo in družbeno svobodo. Številne primere »eksperimentalnih« 
gledališč, filmov, poezije itd., skupaj s filozofijami osvoboditve v Jugoslaviji, med drugimi 
»obrobnimi« državami realnega socializma, lahko uvrstimo med primere na tem prizorišču.
Ključne besede: umetnost, subverzija, družba, gledališče, osvoboditev
Darko Štrajn je diplomiral iz filozofije in sociologije na Filozofski fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani, 
kjer je doktoriral iz Fichtejeve filozofije. Ob delu na Pedagoškem inštitutu v Ljubljani 
predava teorijo filma na Visoki šoli za umetnost Univerze v Novi Gorici in epistemologijo 
humanistike na Fakulteti za humanistični študij (AMEU – ISH) v Ljubljani. Njegove raziskave 
zajemajo teme, kot so filozofija, estetika, filmske študije, politika, izobraževanje in 
družbene spremembe. Je avtor šestih knjig in številnih knjižnih poglavij ter na stotine 
drugih publikacij. Njegova knjiga From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema (2017) je 
izšla v angleščini. Njegova zadnja knjiga pod naslovom Ali eksistenca ali subjekt? (Either 
Existence or Subject) pa je izšla leta 2022.
darko.strajn@guest.arnes.si
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Zapuščina avantgard v družbenih, kulturnih in 
političnih kontekstih
Darko Štrajn  
Pedagoški inštitut, Ljubljana
Avantgarde so ves čas na svojih poteh doživljanja razočaranj in evforičnih prebojev, 
ustvarjanja subverzivnih učinkov glede na politični sistem, vladajočo moralo in 
ideologijo, razvijale transkulturno razumevanje umetnosti in njene vloge v družbi. 
Tako rekoč dokončni »uspeh« poznih avantgard, poimenovanih tudi neoavantgarde 
(šestdesetih in sedemdesetih let), se je zgodil na obeh straneh takratne železne 
zavese. Disruptivni poteki dejavnosti so arhivirani tako rekoč na vseh področjih 
umetnosti. Gledališče in film pa sta takrat še posebej poudarjeno razširila subverzije 
»sistema« kot dejanske umetniške oblike, ki so temeljile na rabah diskontinuitet 
in presenetljivih novih form na podlagi radikalnih preobrazb običajnih kodiranj 
sporočil javnosti. Svet, ki je bil tako »subvertiran«, je bil sicer raznolik, a hkrati isti 
v Parizu ali Pragi ali Beogradu ali Ljubljani. Dogajanja v sodobni umetnosti pa se 
odražajo v teorijah tako, da jih ni mogoče interpretirati, ne da bi navajali reference na 
avantgardne in neoavantgardne pojave v preteklosti. Obsežni kulturni in raziskovalni 
prostor refleksije se je vzpostavil s pomočjo Lyotardove označbe dobe, ki je bila manj 
nova v primerjavi z njeno opredelitvijo spremembe razumevanja umetniške invencije. 
Ta virtualni prostor je omogočil restitucijo političnosti umetnosti tako, da je nenehno 
postavljal pod vprašaj njeno delovanje v soočenju z učinki reifikacije v strujanjih 
fetišizirane svobode trga. Med mnogimi možnimi primeri navajam umetniške preboje 
šestdesetih in sedemdesetih let 20. stoletja, ki so v interakciji s protestnimi gibanji 
in emancipatoričnimi idejami dosegli dolgoročne politične učinke. Sami artefakti 
in vsakovrstne evidence dogodkov so v prostoru postmodernizma postali objekti 
procesa simbolizacije družbenih učinkov. Artefakti in hkrati simboli na trgu dobijo 
ceno ne glede na svojo vsebino, ne glede na pomene gest in deklaracij, s čimer je njihova 
izvirna subverzivnost nevtralizirana. Vendar pa ostane paradigmatska, odprta za 
reinterpretacijo in za oživljanje v ponovitvah, ki jih legitimira okvir postmodernizma: 
ponovitev namreč postavi pod vprašaj kontekst. Pojmov modernizma in avantgard 
pa ne gre preprosto izenačevati, ampak ju je treba upoštevati kot prepletajoči se 
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kategoriji, katerih gibanje se odvija skozi razlike in nerazločljivosti. Tako imenovana 
eksperimentalna gledališča šestdesetih let so temeljila na taki logiki, kakršno je Leutrat 
opredelil v primeru Godardovega filma Nori Pierrot (Pierrot le fou - 1965). Različno 
radikalni hepeningi in performansi šestdesetih in sedemdesetih let so se bolj ali manj 
odrekli narativni formi gledališča in v novem odmevu na avantgardne deklaracije 
dvajsetih let vzpostavljali povezavo »umetnosti in življenja«. Čeprav bi težko 
opredelili skupno značilnost celotne množice konceptov, struj in gibanj v takratnem 
gledališkem dogajanju, pa je vendarle mogoče reči, da so ta gledališča plasirala 
označevalec telesa. Antoloških primerov, ki bi jih lahko našteli, je na desetine, če ne na 
stotine. Zaradi jasnosti, o čem govorim, naj spomnim na performans Dyonisus in 69, 
dunajski akcionizem, Boalovo gledališče zatiranih, Living Theater itn. Tematika telesa, 
ki je v tem času postala predmet vrste humanističnih teorij, je v praksah gledaliških 
avantgard še najbolj ponazorila benjaminovsko »sled avre« in s tem manifestirala 
ireduktibilno razliko med gledališčem in filmom. Fizično telo igralca je pomemben 
»instrument« vzpostavljanja stika z gledalci in s tem instrument rušenja buržoazne 
institucije, ki je ločila gledalce in igralce. Kar je o funkciji, pomenih, vlogah, spolnih 
atributih, ideologiji in osvoboditvi telesa razvila teorija, je gledališče apliciralo na 
svojo prakso. Če se je zdelo tudi samim akterjem, da so bile avantgardne intervencije v 
vseh oblikah in na vseh področjih umetnosti v njihovem marginaliziranem delovanju 
efemerne in neuspešne, pa je zdaj vidno, da so prav s svojo hipnostjo, enkratnostjo, 
singularnostjo, ekstremnimi gestami, prekinitvami in »škandaloznostjo« sčasoma 
vzpostavile razliko z mainstreamom, ki je nasprotno normaliziral in absorbiral 
sestavine in atribute avantgardnih delovanj. Paradoks v tem procesu z ozirom na 
politično intenco avantgard pa je v tem, da se je skozi apropriacijo v mainstreamu 
nevtralizirala subverzivna nota, kar pomeni, da je uspeh radikalnih umetniških form 
v plasiranju na trg izgubil najbolj temeljne emancipacijske težnje. Disruptivnost, 
fragmentarnost, subverzivnost ipd., najpogosteje v formi diskontinuiranosti kot 
dediščina avantgard iz časa modernizma, ostajajo ključne lastnosti umetnosti, ki se 
navezuje na emancipativne družbene težnje. Vprašanja, kako doseči namen, namreč 
senzibilizirati javnost, decentralizirati množično percepcijo z izvirnimi vključevanji 
novih tehnologij ipd., so nenehno odprta. Vsaka uspešna umetniška akcija je enkraten 
odgovor, singularna gesta in transkulturni označevalec dekodiranja form dominacije. 
Zato je pomembno, da se umetniška intervencija pripeti nepričakovano, nepredvidljivo, 
na način estetske gverile in kot dogodek. Iskanja in poskusi umetniških akcij, včasih 
obskurnih, zoženih na tako rekoč sfero intimnosti, drugič pa tudi spektakularnosti, se 
torej nadaljujejo iz performansa v performans brez perspektive konca.
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