The Only Possible City

Meg Stuart exposed. A human face in a space of hyper-human representation. Real world exposed in a place of representation. Stuart looks at us head-on, unobtrusively, at the determination of the speaker, but his gaze falters to the point of guessing a question: Are we looking at Stuart or is Stuart looking at us?

We look at Meg Stuart. And in her face we don’t just see the simple depiction of an appearance, of what is in front of her head or of what surrounds it; in other words, her face is not understood in a plastic, aesthetic or psychological sense. It shows an otherness. More than showing something human that is fleeting, it reveals itself constantly.

Meg Stuart looks at us. And in this gesture there is an imposition, giving an order and asking for mercy, as Emmanuel Lévinas tells us: “the face of the Other recalls the obligations of the ‘I’.” We must be responsible for those who look at us, there, in the middle of the darkness.

The face of Meg Stuart, a female entity within this chapel once inhabited solely by women in seclusion, brings us to the counterpoint of the speed of a city and of an experienced, traveled and free body. In this place of refuge, mystery and silence, we see a face, we see a human being, we see a woman, we see a dancer and a choreographer. Meg Stuart’s face is not a representation. It occupies space.

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