19. November 2020

    Alexi Kukuljevic (Angewandte)

    Merrily We Go to Hell

In an interview concerning her film, Le Camion (The Truck), Marguerite
 Duras formulates the puzzling notion of a path of joyful despair.
This is a joy, she suggests, that comes from giving up, of letting,
 as she herself puts it in the film, the world go to ruin. What does it
mean to speak of an art that lets the world go to ruin? This question
 serves to frame my inquiry into what concerns us with the “contemporary”
 and will serve to initiate us into an art where hell is a place
 of despair and joy, horror and hilarity.