Milo Rau opens a theater fesitival in Serbia, speech dedicated against lithium mining/German car industy and Olaf Scholz personally
Swiss director Milo Rau officially opened the 58th Bitef tonight, and in his address to the audience in Madlenijanum, he also spoke about the fight against lithium mining in Serbia.
This year’s festival, which is held under the slogan “Beauty will change the world”, began with the dance performance “Softening” by the Dance On Ensemble from Berlin, and Swiss director Milo Rau declared Bitef open before this performance.
His play “Antigone in the Amazon”, which is on Bitef next week, deals with the struggle of the Brazilian Farmers’ Movement - against modern mining companies. In his address, the director also spoke about the importance of the fight against lithium mining in Serbia.
"When I was at Bitef for the first time, exactly 10 years ago, in 2014, I drove through the former Yugoslavia in a small Volkswagen. This morning, when I arrived here, I heard that someone else arrived in Serbia this summer in a Volkswagen - it was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He came to promote the mining of lithium for the needs of the German automobile industry, not far from here, in the Jadra valley. Solz called on Serbs to make sacrifices for Europe, for so-called ‘sustainable’ energy. ‘Europe’ means, of course – Volkswagen. Displacement of 20,000 families and poisoning of fertile soil for future generations. Yes, that’s what ‘sustainable’ means – sustainable in death,” said the director.
He added that he came to Belgrade “with a Greek tragedy”.
"This time I didn’t come to Belgrade in a Volkswagen, I came with a Greek tragedy: the piece Antigone in the Amazon, about the struggle of the Brazilian Movement of Landless Farmers (MST) against modern mining companies - about the struggle of Antigone, the Theban princess, against her uncle Creon, the Greek Olaf Scholz . The Amazon is 10,000 kilometers from here, but we live in a globalized world: the same tragedy, the same wasteland is everywhere. “Like in a teenage monster movie, the same company, Rio Tinto, is mining lithium in Serbia and bauxite in the Amazon - minerals needed for a ‘sustainable’ future for Volkswagen,” he said.
He said that he thinks - and that this is the message of Antigone - that it is better to defend our country.
“Antigone’s fight is everywhere and her explicit NO to land grabbing is equally needed in Serbia as in Brazil. ‘Beauty will save the world’, a quote from Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, is the theme of this year’s Bitef. Chancellor Scholz, Volkswagen, Rio Tinto: they don’t want to save the world, they want to save their power and their bank accounts. In all countries, whether it’s Europe or Brazil, the very people who use the words nation and homeland the most - nationalists - will sell the beauty of their country to international investors. Yes, there is something terrible, monstrous, something horrible about us humans. Something that sometimes makes me feel the urge to sit up and scream. So please: let us all be like Antigone. Let’s all be like Dostoyevsky’s Idiot: let’s be naive, say NO to the deadly ideology of our time. We are fighting for Beauty, for the Beauty of life, for the Beauty of nature - our true homeland,” concluded the director.
The audience greeted the Swiss director’s speech with loud applause and shouts.
