1984. The word – better, the year – is enough to think of George Orwell’s dystopian and predictive novel. Even more in these times, in which it is in fact much cited as it is set in a world in which the continents have been divided between three dictatorial superpowers: Oceania which extends over the entire American continent but also includes part of Africa, Australia and (solinga) Great Britain; East Asia that radiates from China to Japan and the Middle East, India and the Indochinese peninsula; and finally Eurasia which extends from Siberia to embrace Europe and the whole Mediterranean up to the Strait of Gibraltar. With sub-Saharan and central Africa “not assigned” and therefore a battleground.
Geographically, the foreshadowing of Putin’s expansionist dream (and perhaps also of Xi with his Silk Road)? If we add to this that the protagonist works in a ministry that has the function of rewriting history according to the vulgate preferred by political power (the post-truth), one gets a sense of how pertinent and disturbing every reference to the novel is. 1984, therefore, a fatal turning point.
The collective Gob Squad mentions it in the title of his work “1984: Back to No Future”. And to remove any doubt he also quotes the famous Orwellian axiom «Who controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past ”.
On stage for two reruns today and tomorrow at Out Off, brought by Zona K which stages most of the “Post” shows here, it is with the performance of Gob Squad that the review organized by the lively reality begins. theater based in Isola and which will last until May.
Anglo-German art collective, bisexual, binational and bilingual (and they define themselves in this way), founded in 1994 in Nottingham but now based in Berlin, known all over the world, Gob Squad produces multimedia shows that start from personal experiences to get social and political analysis.
So the 1984 they refer to in their show is also that of their / our carefree youth, when the air that breathed was positive and purposeful. It was full of hope and joie de vivre. While the new digital technologies that appeared promised wonders. Or at least so it seems to us today … That’s why they define their show as a “nostalgic journey” and, drawing on the imagery of that decade, they rework and blend everything together, pop music, psychedelic videos, digital images, Andy Warhol, Hollywood and, indeed, Orwell.
Behind this appearance, however, are hidden the same fears of today (and of the dystopian 1984): men who are puppets, cold war, nuclear nightmare, ideological control, with obscene video faces looming over the scene and so much reminiscent of those of Big Brother invented by Orwell. “How free are we?” Ask the Gob Squads. “How much is it possible to determine the future (or is everything already written)?”. Is a new perspective possible or even just a different look at reality without it becoming fake? In short: how true is Orwell’s statement?
And therefore: it makes us reflect the analytical capacity of a writer who, almost a century ago, had only one thing wrong, basically, that date that has become paradigmatic. But otherwise he had got it right in a worrying way.
“1984: Back to No Future” (show in Italian and English), Teatro Out Off, via Mac Mahon 16, 16 (after the show meeting with the collective) and 17 March, 20 euro, zonak.it