By the Sweat of My Face

By the Sweat of My Face  is a stage choreographic essay about the “possible” state of affairs – a speculative reflection of fears, hopes, fantasies, linked to the relationship between technical development and the world of work. Since its early days, the industrial revolution stirred hopes for the possibility of human liberation from (alienated) work. Machines, automation and technological advancements promised shorter workdays and a fairer distribution of labour. This potential has never been realised. Quite the opposite: today, in the moment when artificial intelligence and automated systems are able to almost completely eliminate human work, we are witnessing accelerated social disintegration, increasing inequality and a growing number of “superfluous” people.

In the fantasies of tight-wing accelerationsm, this process is not perceived as a problem; instead, it is seen as a necessary and even desirable outcome. The acceleration of the market, technology and social inequalities is understood as a process through which the world “cleanses” itself of those who cannot keep up with its pace. Instead of liberation from labour, a cold vision of the future emerges in which survival is a privilege, not a right. Using the antagonism between the actual technical possibilities of collective liberation and political imaginarium that accept collapse, selection and social disintegration as a normal state of affairs, By the Sweat of My Brow wants to confront us with the question of who actually benefits from this acceleration and what price we, as a society, are paying for it.

This time,  Sebastijan Horvat, who has received several directing awards in Slovenian and abroad for his work, and Milan Marković Ramšak, a renowned playwright, dramaturg and screenwriter, will collaborate with the choreographer Lana Petrovski Ternovšek to create a production as a choreographic physical matrix which operates beyond the limits of the drama narrative theatre and seeks its political dimension in stage poetry and affect, liberated from particular psychology and classical stage identification.

Heat. This is what big cities mean to me. You get off the train, leave the station, and you're hit with all its force. The heat of the air, the traffic, and the people. The heat of food and sex. The heat of tall buildings. The heat that flows from the underground and tunnels. In big cities, it's always ten degrees hotter. The heat rises from the sidewalks and falls from the poisoned sky. Buses exhale heat. Heat radiates from the crowds of shoppers and office workers; the entire infrastructure is based on heat, desperately consuming heat, giving birth to new heat. The final thermal death of the universe, which scientists love to talk about, is already on its way, and you can feel it happening around you in every large or medium-sized city. Heat and humidity.

_{Don DeLillo in Nick Land, Meltdown}