Bros — Irene Bakola

To speak of Castellucci’s work is to speak of a theatricality that transcends text. Not only in terms of an arbitrary visual axis, but as a concept applied on a semiotic field. Yes, the density with which Bros’ tableaux vivants emerge interact with textual sources, but the language of the performance (based on staging and physicality) exceeds the limits of textual authority. The act of viewing tightens around the performers until the knot compels the actors to become spectators of their own hallucinatory executions. Any distinction is suffocated and what remains is the pleasure of partaking is the communion of guilt. The time of each performance—utterly compressed in its present—restores Barthes’ mythic time whilst deconstructing the pluralities out of which it sprouts.

Applying Lehmann's ‘repetitive perception’ reveals how the very repetition of these themes through their performance comments on the violent cycles of this parading brotherhood. Even if one were to argue that the structure of the performance is known to the viewer and all variations were to be expected, the semiotic value of the piece is not nullified. Though its model is structured and timed, each performance bends and forms into new shapes. There is no question of repetition in Castellucci’s work. The accumulative speed with which actions are presented is such that Rorschach blots form out of their mass. The stage becomes saturated to the point that it is reduced to zero and the actors pour out of it.

Castellucci, who has throughout his career navigated the obscure semioses of Tragedy, cites Keaton’s Cops as an influence to the work. He even titles the prototype upon which Bros is reconstructed, Buster. As a reworking of Keaton’s text then, Bros observes how comedy without tempo swerves towards tragedy. Ripping through the thematic axes of militarism, machoism, and mortality, the images parade and clash, releasing Castellucci's work to new thematic openings.

Bros
Romeo Castellucci
Athens, 2022