“This Is Not Us, This Is Just Glass” is based on a text by Ivana Sajko that formalizes the reverberations of economic crisis of capitalist society in a sequence of public and private situations. These scenes reveal the matrix of human behaviors, whether they are in complicity or rebellion.

Operating in the field in between visual arts and performance, we explore through this collaboration the notion of performative display of text rather than staging. This implies abandonment of unique, allencompassing overview of the stage, time of consummation and linearity of narration. These elements are sacrificed for the specific in situ dramaturgy of the defunct department store, that offers theatricality and logic of scenes as departments that are visited. Each of the texts/monologues placed in this space—whether they are performed through a graphic layout, spoken by the performer or anonymous voices from the stereo system or combined with either a static or moving image—demands a performance of reading/watching, non-identification, disagreement or critique coming from the audience. The audience is free to move through the space and to start and finish with the performance at any moment; in this way, they organize the performance according to their own will.

The play is displayed as a textual matrix of expected behavior, as in karaoke or TV programs where the text is read from the prompter. These are texts that history, society and capitalism has prepared for us—we just needed to pronounce it. It is not us. It is the text. It is not us, it is just capitalism. It is the thing through which we see everything, as though through a glass.