Julia von Schantz ~ Once upon a Fight
Julia von Schantz' "Once Upon A Fight" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 3, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.
Here you will find the documentation of Julia von Schantz' presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.
Once Upon A Fight
Julia von Schantz' question: If the voice in my head is me, who is the one listening?
Julia's introduction: On a rainy and windy day, two identical characters take the stage. Amidst their everyday arguments, they swap roles; rehearsing what it is to be, exploring the boundaries of selfhood. In the never-ending pursuit of becoming the sole winner, they steer away aimlessly, beginning anew as soon as it ends. Holding a script, a third figure emerges, narrating and guiding the characters’ actions. Somewhere between self-creation and arm wrestling, mundanity of everyday life takes hold.
By blurring the lines between the interior and exterior, the vanished and the haunted, the living and the dead, the singular and the double, identity may split—leaving behind a scattered and interconnected unit that never, fully, came to be.
Bethany's report: The performance begins with two performers, twins, dressed in matching costumes. They narrate the structure of the performance, setting the stage for a cycle of conflict, reconciliation, and reflection. As they speak, they jostle each other, pushing and pulling in ways that are simultaneously irritating and intimate, embodying the unique bond of siblings who cannot leave each other alone. Their dialogue highlights petty frustrations and shared irritations, performed with both humor and tenderness. Lines like, "Can you not talk faster? I don’t have all day!" reveal a loving antagonism that underpins their connection.
The twins act out a series of fights, interruptions, and reconciliations. Their movements mirror their emotional exchanges—pushing, pulling, and returning to one another in a perpetual loop. One twin drops to all fours as the other sits atop them, dramatizing childish irritations about personal habits and shared space. They question each other: "Why do you always say the same stuff as me?" These moments are punctuated by interventions spoken in unison, further blurring the lines between their individual and shared identities. Their fights deepen into performative frustrations, showcasing the impossibility of fully separating from one another. Back-to-back, they move in circular motions, only to return to herding and resisting each other in an ongoing negotiation of their intimate dynamic.
As the performance continues, the soundtrack of low rumbling underscores their unspoken anxieties and insecurities, particularly around how they are perceived by others. They shepherd and control how each speaks about the other in public, provoking each other's vulnerabilities with questions like "Why are you mimicking me?" This tension highlights the challenges of negotiating such close intimacy, amplified by their shared identity as twins.
At times, they look at each other uncertainly, then glance at the audience, as if questioning how to make sense of their bond. Lying on the floor, they seek their own space but remain acutely aware of the other's presence. They recount a shared incident from childhood—a wound in the bath. One twin experienced the injury, but they screamed together, reflecting a shared psyche despite inhabiting different bodies. The twin who wasn’t hurt longed for stitches too, revealing a yearning to mirror the other’s experiences completely.
The performance transitions to a quieter, more reflective tone as rain sounds fill the space. The twins allow each other to be silent, lying together on the floor but maintaining their distinct positions. They curl into fetal positions, one facing one direction, the other in the opposite, as one begins to sing softly.
Inti Guerrero: Inti began by reflecting on the format of the performance and its connection to broader themes of collaboration. He noted that many of the presentations shared during the event had emphasized collaborative processes, and he found it beautiful to see how collaboration was central to the creation of this piece. For him, the performance highlighted how collectivity can lead to something more fruitful, expansive, and intellectually engaging.
Drawing on his experience, Inti connected the performance’s exploration of collectivity to cooperative work happening in Morocco with the DAI. He pointed out that what was presented on stage represented only a minimal aspect of a much larger process, underscoring the depth of collaboration required to reach this point. Inti suggested that it might be valuable to delve further into the process itself, allowing participants to immerse themselves more deeply in the collaborative experience.
He appreciated how the presentations showcased the best of everyone’s skills and intelligence, demonstrating how collaboration can expand individual capacities. However, Inti also observed that the performance went beyond the theme of collaboration, delving into egos and alter egos. He reflected on how some people, himself included, hear more than one voice in their minds, creating a kind of internal cacophony. He saw this multiplicity as an important element in achieving balance and equality within collective processes.
Inti expressed a desire for more references from the global north to complement the work. He noted that there was a certain darkness within the performance that could be further explored—particularly the interior mind, personas, and psyches of different individuals. He suggested that delving into paranoia and psychological complexity could expand the performance’s scope, citing Kafka as a potential source of inspiration.
He concluded with a piece of advice a professor had once shared with him: “We change our lives, so we read books.” Inti suggested revisiting literature that might have been encountered earlier in life, as new perspectives could reveal different meanings. He encouraged the creators to look back at works they might have previously considered, suggesting this exercise could enrich their exploration of the performance’s themes.
Ramon Amaro: Ramon began by sharing a story from his teaching experience many years ago. A first-year student, during the early weeks of the semester, stood by a window in the classroom and began speaking. The student’s poetic reflections on the boundary between himself and the world outside—how his breath mingled with others’, how his movements influenced and were influenced by others—created a vivid and tense monologue. Ramon recalled sitting at his desk, captivated but unsure where the conversation was headed. Finally, he asked, “Are you trying to tell me you’re in love?” The student admitted he had just moved in with his boyfriend and was grappling with how to write an essay about love, beginning with his lived experience rather than intellectualizing it.
This story, Ramon reflected, resonated with the performance’s exploration of interiority and exteriority. The twins, through their dynamic, embodied a shared intimacy that was complicated by their distinct identities. As identical twins, they face an inherent collectivity—one that requires constant negotiation. Ramon noted the added complexity of seeing oneself reflected in another, noticing both the shared characteristics and the deviations. He observed that their performance brought to light what it means to exist in a collective not by choice, but by necessity, and how that shapes the understanding of love and connection.
Ramon highlighted how the performance navigated this collectivity through its doubling and folding of interior and exterior spaces. At moments, it was unclear who was speaking—whether it was one twin, the other, or both simultaneously. This fluid interplay of voices and perspectives blurred the boundaries between self and other, creating a dialogue that was as introspective as it was relational. He was struck by the introduction of the "third" voice or perspective in the performance, noting its importance as a mediating force. At one point, he even joked about expecting a triplet to emerge, underscoring the performance’s exploration of multiplicity.
He reflected on the resolution of the performance, suggesting that rather than calming the conflict, the resolution came in recognizing something greater than the interior or exterior—a shared essence that transcended understanding. He likened this to waiting for a "message from oneself," a process of listening and being present rather than seeking definitive answers. Ramon found this approach novel and compelling, particularly in its ability to capture the difficulty of performing one’s lived reality while simultaneously living it. The performance layered experience upon experience, folding the performative into the personal, and vice versa. He compared it to a kind of "inception," where the performers were acting out their lives while living their performance.
Antonia Majaca: Antonia began by echoing Ramon’s observation, remarking that the performance felt not only like a work in progress but also like an exploration of a mutual feeling in progress. She found it to be a radical questioning of the authenticity of the self, a theme that resonated deeply with her. The performance invoked a series of cultural references for her, though she acknowledged that discussing them all in detail would be too expansive for the moment.
One of the strongest associations she made was with Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona, particularly a scene involving vampirism. She noted that this moment in the film opens up complex ideas of birth, rebirth, and the boundaries between the inside and outside of the self. For Antonia, this scene, and Bergman’s work more broadly, epitomized the themes of duplication and entanglement that the performance also explored. She admired Bergman’s ability to translate these intricate concepts into a visual language, capturing the deep interplay between naturalness and constructed identity.
Antonia also reflected on existentialist thought, which she linked to the performance’s interrogation of identity and selfhood. While she admitted that existentialism was not her area of expertise, she highlighted its relevance in addressing the performance’s themes. She connected this to Bvlgari’s attempts to explore similar questions through theatrical forms, suggesting this as another layer of resonance with the work.
Turning to more contemporary references, Antonia mentioned the theatrical works of Ola Friedrich, who engages deeply with familial relationships and the fragility of self-perception. These works, she suggested, provided a useful lens for understanding the performance’s examination of identity, family, and interdependence. She also drew a connection to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. For Antonia, the text was powerful not because of its perfection, but because of the way Fanon unraveled his own ideas within the writing. She described how Fanon oscillates between moments of clarity and unraveling, a dynamic that mirrors the push and pull she found so fascinating in the performance.
Antonia concluded by emphasizing her appreciation for the performance’s ability to engage with these complex and layered themes. She found its exploration of selfhood, intimacy, and collective identity to be deeply compelling and resonant with broader cultural and theoretical frameworks.
