Toleranshuvan Reloaded - En semiotisk och diskursiv analys av ett antagonistisk performanceverk

Abstract

This study consists of a semiotic and discursive analysis of the performance piece Toleranshuvan Reloaded, created by the Swedish theater group Institutet in collaboration with the two Romanian beggars Lăcătus Luca Ioan och Cheresi Marcela. The study presents a summary of the critique awakened by the piece, and by exploring the various theoretical and political frameworks that the critics are operating from within it looks into how this spectrum of differing interpretations can better be understood. Using examples from political commentators and art critics, the aim is to offer an analysis that considers both the political effects of the piece as well as discussing it in terms of artistic aesthetics. The aim is to show that it is both insufficient and problematic to read artistic practice from a perspective that remains blind for what is outside its own discourse. The study further stresses the importance of antagonism and troubling factors in subversive political art and claims that transposing a purely societal reading of existing power relations into the context of the gallery, fails to offer a sufficient toolkit for understanding how such artworks function, and even brings with it a tendency to fix the identity and positionality of the subject, which instead should be allowed to remain fluid, open and indeterminate.