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Ways of Seeing in the
Neoliberal State
A Controversial Play
and Its Contexts
Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad

Ways of Seeing in the Neoliberal State
Ways of Seeing
in the Neoliberal State
A Controversial Play and Its Contexts
University of Bergen
Bergen, Norway
ISBN 978-3-030-85983-1 ISBN 978-3-030-85984-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85984-8
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

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It is at the same time true that the world is what we see and that,
nonetheless, we must learn to see it (Maurice Merleau-Ponty).1
1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible [1964], Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1968, 4.
Acknowledgments
The kernel of this book dates from a paper that I gave at “The Ethics
of Surveillance” seminar in Paris in late November 2019. I would like
to extend my gratitude to our gracious hosts at the Centre Universi-
taire de Norvège à Paris, Johs. Hjellbrekke and Kirstin Skjelstad, for their
incomparable hospitality. I would also like to thank the participants for
their knowledgeable feedback and generous contributions to the work-
shop as a whole, in no particular order: Clare Birchall, Emmeline Taylor,
Henrik Gustafsson, Anders Lysne, Tonje Sørensen, Kristine Jørgensen,
Tuva Mossin, Astrid Gynnild, and Øyvind Vågnes. I first saw the play
Ways of Seeing at the Bergen International Festival in late May 2019,
and I knew right away that it would be a research project. Too rich
and multilayered to be dealt with in an article format, the play seemed
quite a suitable project for Palgrave’s Pivot series. I would like to thank
commissioning editor Eileen Srebernik for her excellent stewardship of
the process. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers of the
manuscript, for their generous and astute suggestions. In early June 2020,
Pia Roll and Hanan Benammar sat down with me for a whole Oslo after-
noon to be interviewed about Ways of Seeing; my warmest appreciations
to both for taking time to discuss the play so exhaustively with me. I
wrote the bulk of this book between November 2020 and April 2021. I
would like to thank the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Department of
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
information science and media studies for providing me with a sabbatical

to make that possible. No part of this work has been previously published.
Bergen Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad

April 2021
Contents
1 Introduction: The Public Confronts Other Ways

of Seeing 1
2 New Ways of Seeing: The Judicial 23
3 Censorship and Free Speech: The Aesthetic 51
4 Neoliberalism and Rojava: The Political 79
Epilogue 109
Index 111
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Public Confronts Other

Ways of Seeing
Abstract The introductory chapter provides relevant background infor-

mation for the case of Ways of Seeing and presents the overall research
questions to be pursued in the book. Approaching the play as a work of
sousveillance—surveillance from below—the chapter argues that its chief
ambition is to expose hegemonic practices of looking, practices that are
intimately tied to the rise of neoliberalism, xenophobia, and right-wing
nationalism. For the artists behind the play, this development is inter-
laced with the escalation of surveillance as a form of control targeting
immigrants in particular. The acts of sousveillance shown in the play are
a reversal of the mainstream gaze in which the disempowered minori-
ties directly engage those who wield power over them. Featured in
this part is a detailed narrative of the case from the play’s opening in
November 2018 to the trial in September 2020. Careful attention is also
given to the massively controversial public reception of Ways of Seeing,
one significant argument being that key social institutions such as the
media, the government, and the judicial system were unable to recog-
nize the fictional-aesthetic character of the play. The chapter furthermore
contextualizes the play with reference to the tradition of postdramatic
performance art. Last but not least, it engages with Walter Benjamin’s
reflections on the artwork’s position within its material conditions of
production as well as with Nicholas Mirzoeff’s notion of the right to look
in order to unpack some of the theoretical resonances of the play.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
A. S. Grønstad, Ways of Seeing in the Neoliberal State,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85984-8_1
2 A. S. GRØNSTAD
Keywords Sousveillance · Racism · Experimental geography · Activism ·

The right to look · The postdramatic · Vandalism · Laila Bertheussen
How could a small, independent theater in Oslo trigger the ousting of the
country’s minister of justice, as well as being the root cause of a substan-
tial court case spanning several months and featuring fifty witnesses?
While remarkable in themselves, these events constitute merely a point
of departure for the current book, which offers an in-depth examina-
tion of the complex issues that the play Ways of Seeing raises around the
subjects of surveillance, neoliberalism, xenophobia, and the rise of right-
wing nationalism. In three individual but interconnected chapters, Ways
of Seeing in the Neoliberal State asks both what practices of looking are
emerging in western democracies, and what alternative modes of looking
might facilitate an exposure of such practices and gesture toward ethically
healthier forms of government. Perceived as a deeply controversial work,
Ways of Seeing was the target of suppressive political measures, and so
the book also considers questions of aesthetic transgression, censorship,
and artistic freedom. What the play foregrounds are, first, the aesthetics
of sousveillance (of which more below), second, the visualization of the
material infrastructure of racism and right-wing populism, and third, the
promotion of an alternative mode of political governance—grounded in
feminism and ecological awareness—through the example of the Rojava
experiment.
In December 2018, a woman named Laila Anita Bertheussen reported
three theater workers to the police for violation of privacy. A few months
later, in March 2019, the Oslo police issued similar charges against the
same individuals, as well as the manager of the Black Box Theatre.1 At
the center of these events was the aforementioned play, whose opening on
November 21, 2018 immediately caused a degree of turbulence among
the public and in the media rarely if ever seen in the art sphere in Norway.
The play quickly acquired notoriety for containing footage of the resi-
dences of a number of influential politicians and financial contributors—in
short, the nation’s economic and political elite. The public reception of
1 Those accused were the actors Hanan Benammar and Sara Baban, as well as the play’s
director, Pia Maria Roll. After the original charges were dismissed, the District Attorney
demanded in February 2019 that the investigation be reopened.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE PUBLIC CONFRONTS OTHER WAYS OF SEEING 3
Ways of Seeing was immersed in drama, complete with baroque twists and
turns that at times seemed to surpass those of a conventional fictional
narrative. The pinnacle of all the brouhaha came on March 28, 2019,
when the National Police Security Service (NPSS) charged Bertheussen
with several counts of vandalism against her own home. By that time,
almost four months after the play premiered, the public had been made
to believe that the defacement of the property was a corollary of the
play’s use of the house front as an integral part of its scenographic design.
“Outing” the home of Bertheussen in the context of a critique of racism,
most people assumed, was an incitement to do violence against it. The
occupant of this particular address was Tor Mikkel Wara, a well-known
politician from the Progress Party who at the time was Minister of Justice
and Immigration in Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s conservative govern-
ment. He is also Bertheussen’s life partner, and on the same day that she
was accused of the crime, he resigned from his post (the 5th Minister of
Justice in this particular government to do so). In the fall of 2019, the
NPSS confirmed that their charges had been forwarded to the National
Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Bertheussen stands accused of violation
of article 115 of the Penal Code—assault on the country’s democratic
institutions. Her case went to trial in September 2020, and on January
15, 2021, she was sentenced to 20 months in prison for attack on the
country’s democratic institutions.
Founded in 1985, The Black Box Theatre programs and co-produces
contemporary and experimental work by domestic as well as international
companies. Its two stages combined have a capacity of 280 seats. After
it opened in late November 2018, Ways of Seeing was on for about a
week and a half. So how did such a small institution become the cata-
lyst for so much political and legal turmoil? What was the source of its
powers of provocation? To what extent could the reception of the play be
considered an extension of the work itself? How do the multiple acts of
surveillance in which the play is embroiled connect with larger social issues
such as immigration, neo-fascism, censorship, free speech, and neoliber-
alism? What, exactly, are those ways of seeing that the play addresses?
These are some of the questions with which the current book engages.
At the core of Ways of Seeing is the subject of surveillance and the
establishment’s expanded authority to spy on its citizens, particularly with
regard to the Eggemoen Aviation and Technology Park near the city of
Hønefoss in South-Eastern Norway, a site about which the mainstream
media have been conspicuously silent. Curiously, only the people who
4 A. S. GRØNSTAD
have seen the play—a very low number—will know this. Everybody else
assumes that the work deals with a much different kind of surveillance,
namely, the clandestine photographing of private residences, by many
felt to be morally problematic and even—if you were a politician on the
right—illegitimate. Generic as they might be, however, the facades gesture
toward a particular demographic. Their dwellers belong to a given socio-
economic group, a group defined by capital and privilege who enjoy a
sheltered existence far away from the city’s multiracial reality. In addition
to the then Justice Minister Wara’s house, those filmed were the homes
of, among others, Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a prominent Progress Party
politician, Jens Stoltenberg, former Prime Minister from the Labor Party
(2005–2013) and current Secretary General of NATO, Jan Haudemann-
Andersen, a major investor in the Oslo Stock Exchange, Øystein Spetalen,
a billionaire and investor, and Stein-Erik Hagen, a businessman who is the
second richest person in the land. When spliced together in the projected
footage shown on the Black Box stage, these domiciles make manifest a
cartography of wealth and political influence, or more importantly, the
effect of the former on the latter.
In the literature on surveillance there is a technical term for this kind
of mapping: sousveillance, or alternatively counter-surveillance. Absent
from the public discourse about the play and its alleged indiscretions,
the concept sheds light on the larger meaning of Ways of Seeing.2
From Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon (and Michel Foucault’s influential
re-reading of this structure)—an ocular technology for monitoring the
self and implanting conformity—to modern methods of biometric classi-
fication and digital tracking devices, surveillance creates a way of seeing
that is always also about control and behavior modification. Its interven-
tionist gaze is not neutral and tends to reinscribe differences tied to race,
gender, sexuality, class, and age. Above all, surveillance manages relations
of power. Nowadays, it has become exceedingly difficult to escape this
gaze. As one of the field’s foremost theorists has observed, living in an
2 In an article for the major daily newspaper Aftenposten in the fall of 2020, I
introduce the term “sousveillance” as an interpretive frame for the play. See Asbjørn
Grønstad, “Har vi forstått hva ‘Ways of Seeing’ egentlig handler om?,” Aftenposten,
September 25, 2020, https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/JJ1Aq6/har-vi-
forstaatt-hva-ways-of-seeing-egentlig-handler-om, accessed April 19, 2021.
information society ineludibly means living in a surveillance society.3 Prac-

tices of surveillance saturate most spheres of life, to the extent that they
usher in a new modality of being in the world. Civilian society, since the
Edward Snowden case in particular, has grown more vigilant with regard
to state surveillance, and the topic was instrumental in the play’s incu-
bation phase. As there has been little curiosity or concern about facilities
like Eggemoen on part of the mainstream media, it was left to the artists
to scrutinize the operation of asymmetrical power structures that remain
largely invisible and covert.
Etymologically, the word surveillance means “to look from above,”
whereas sousveillance, inversely, means “to look from below.” Coined
by the Canadian engineer and academic Steve Mann, the latter idea
signifies acts of resistance to state or corporate surveillance.4 Often an
instrument of political activism, counter-surveillance has been defined
as “intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technolo-
gies to challenge institutional power asymmetries.”5 Some scholars in
the field distinguish between acts of opposition and acts of resistance;
where the former work to influence policy through organizations such
as the American Civil Liberties Union, the latter denote more impro-
vised approaches designed to evade or undercut the epistemic imbalance
of systemic surveillance. When artists get involved in acts of sousveil-
lance, it typically falls under the second category. Comprising a diversity
of procedures, artistic sousveillance draws inspiration both from Situa-
tionism, the Theater of the Absurd, the Civil Rights Movement, the
Women’s Movement, and the Environmental Movement. It spans prac-
tices such as those of the Surveillance Camera Players, whose videotaped
plays in public places feature participation from unsuspecting civilians,
Trevor Paglen’s photographing of secret military installations, Zach Blas’s
face masks, and digital obfuscation programs such as FaceCloak or Track-
MeNot, to name just a small selection. One of the most paradigmatic
cases of sousveillance is George Holliday’s video capture of Rodney King
being senselessly beaten by LAPD officers in March 1991. Filming the
3 David Lyon, Surveillance Studies: An Overview, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007.

4 Steve Mann, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman, “Sousveillance: Inventing and
Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments,”
Surveillance and Society, 1. 3 (2003): 331–355.
5 Torin Monahan, “Counter-Surveillance as Political Intervention,” Social Semiotics, 16.
4 (2006): 515–534; 515.
6 A. S. GRØNSTAD
incident from his adjacent balcony, Holliday sent the footage to local
news station KTLA, after which it was picked up by other broadcasters
and seen across the world. The spring 1992 acquittal of the four offi-
cers involved induced widespread riots across Los Angeles, leaving 63
dead and thousands injured or incarcerated. Holliday’s footage provides
the blueprint for what in the 2010s sadly became almost its own genre
within visual culture, the bystander video documenting police brutality
against African-Americans. The murder of Oscar Grant by BART police
in Oakland in 2009, the killing of Eric Garner by New York police in July
2014, and the slaying of Alton Sterling by officers in Baton Rouge in July
2016 constitute only a small fraction of such projects of sousveillance.6
Such bystander videos are at the same time a reminder of the racialized
history of surveillance. As Simone Browne has suggested in an important
study,
rather than seeing surveillance as something inaugurated by new tech-

nologies, such as automated facial recognition or unmanned autonomous
vehicles (or drones), to see it as ongoing is to insist that we factor
in how racism and antiblackness undergird and sustain the intersecting
surveillances of our present order.7
If surveillance originates in racism, and there is certainly evidence

throughout the histories of biometric classification to corroborate this,
then anti-surveillance measures like those mentioned above could be
conceived as aestheticizations of resistance. Historically, surveillance has
tended to target groups that imperil the status quo; immigrants, crimi-
nals, prostitutes, the mentally ill, the poor, and the ethnically other. The
monitoring of slaves on the plantations, the pseudo-science of phrenology,
and the contemporary over-policing of black bodies in the United States
are all surveillance practices whose common denominator is racist poli-
tics. The solicitation on behalf of the islamophobe activist Hege Storhaug
of photographs of Norway’s muslim population (a case I will return to in
Chapter 2) is a project with a certain family resemblance to such historical
6 Consult the website WITNESS Media Lab for more further data, https://blog.wit
ness.org/2015/07/bystander-videos-of-police-misconduct-in-the-u-s/, accessed April 20,
2021.
7 Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Durham: Duke
University Press, 2015, 8–9.
practices. It is in the context of sousveillance as resistance to standard-

ized forms of institutional surveillance that a work such as Ways of Seeing
should be comprehended.
The commotion around the play regrettably served to obfuscate the
deeper meaning of the acts of sousveillance, and in Chapter 2: New
Ways of Seeing: The Juridical, I discuss the strategies that enable the
play to challenge culturally hegemonic ways of seeing. By literally inhab-
iting a specific, socioeconomically marked zone, Roll and her colleagues
stage a symbolic intervention that encapsulates a certain aesthetic practice
that Walter Benjamin describes in his essay “The Author as Producer,”
first given as a paper at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris on
April 27, 1934. In this text, Benjamin distinguishes between works that
come to occupy a political position from those that merely convey some
kind of political message.8 Rather than posing the familiar Marxist ques-
tion about the artwork’s “attitude” to the “relations of production of its
time,” Benjamin urges us to ask what the work’s position in these rela-
tions might be.9 Reframed in this way, the question involves the function
of the work within particular material relations of production, and for
Benjamin analyzing the precise nature of this function entails a consid-
eration of the concept of technique. This he understands as the quality
that makes the work “accessible to an immediately social, and therefore
materialist, analysis.”10 I take it that, in this context, technique is that
which overcomes the form-content partition, which Benjamin dismisses,
and which also determines the work’s mode of operation within a specific
political environment.
The idea of occupying a position—revitalized in recent progressive and
anti-austerity movements such as Occupy Wall Street and its numerous
tributaries around the world (Occupy Toronto, Occupy LA, etc.)—has
been taken up again by, among others, the American artist and geogra-
pher Trevor Paglen, who has pointed out that the creation of cultural
artifacts and texts is also at the same time a resoundingly spatial practice
because aesthetic works directly contribute to the invention of new spaces
of experience. “[T]he task of transformative cultural production,” he
8 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” [1934], Understanding Brecht, trans.

Anna Bostock, introd. Stanley Mitchell, London: Verso, 1998.
9 Ibid., 87.
10 Ibid.
8 A. S. GRØNSTAD
writes, is “to reconfigure the relations and apparatus of cultural produc-

tion.”11 The kind of “field work” undertaken by the Ways of Seeing crew
shares some of the attributes of the occupy movements—for instance
nonviolence and using one’s body to claim a particular site—but it also
powerfully performs what Nicholas Mirzoeff calls the right to look. In his
book of the same name, Mirzoeff equates that right with “a right to the
real” as well as a right to “autonomy” and to “a political subjectivity and
collectivity.”12 The subjectivity he has in mind is an emancipated one,
empowered to reconstitute, if need be, the material and expressive infras-
tructures of the political position of which it forms a part. In a startling
formulation, Mirzoeff claims that “[t]he opposite of the right to look is
not censorship, then, but ‘visuality’.”13 Dating the origin of the term to
1840, when the Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle used
it to describe a heroic kind of military leadership, Mirzoeff traces the
history of the concept from the systemic acts of surveillance pertaining
to the slave plantation through to ever more sophisticated methods for
visualization of the battlefield. On this account, the “complex of visual-
ity” denotes a discursive act consisting of three operations—classification,
separation, and aestheticization.14 The first, classification, is similar to
what Michel Foucault terms “the nomination of the visible,” and is closely
linked to the spatial organization of labor, slavery being the historical
model.15 Separation designates the social segregation of groups in order
to discourage the galvanization of political participation. Aestheticization,
finally, is the process of the naturalization of the former operations. The
right to look is a historically and culturally variable stance that refuses
the authority of visuality, finding expression for example in anticolonial
11 Trevor Paglen, “Experimental Geography: From Cultural Production to the Produc-

tion of Space,” in Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography,
and Urbanism, eds. Nato Thompson, Brooklyn: Melville House, 2009. Henri Lefebvre’s
classic study The Production of Space (1974; English trans., 1991) is one of the sources
that inform Paglen’s insights in this regard.
12 Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality, Durham: Duke
University Press, 2011, 1.
13 Ibid., 2.
14 Ibid., 3.
15 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,
London: Tavistock, 1970, 132.
and anti-fascist movements. Mirzoeff also notes that each of these oper-
ations—which comprise the complex of visuality—has engendered their
own countermeasure. The abuses of classification are countered by educa-
tion, the evils of separation are offet by democracy, and the effects of
aestheticization are undone by an emphasis on sustainability and corporeal
affect.
I would like to suggest that it makes sense to consider Ways of Seeing ’s
act of counter-surveillance in the context of the theories of Benjamin,
Paglen, and Mirzoeff. Two of the actors in the play, the French-Algerian
Hanan Benammar and the Kurdish-born Sara Baban, who both took part
in the photographing of the houses, are immigrants who play themselves.
Benammar hails from France, the daughter of an Algerian resistance
fighter. Baban’s family had to flee Iraq when her father, a bureaucrat
under Saddam Hussein’s regime, opposed the dictator’s persecution of
Kurds. Baban also tells the audience that she has visited Rojava, the self-
governed, multiethnic, and socialist province in northeastern Syria that
was under attack from Turkey in October 2019. In the play, Benam-
mar’s deceased father Halim, who returns as a ghost, is played by Ali
Djabbery, an immigrant from Iran. Turning their camera toward the
residences of some of the most influential figures in the political-financial-
military complex—in other words, the complex of visuality—Benammar
and Baban place their own bodies close to the homes of those in part
responsible for the facilitation of racism and xenophobia in their chosen
country. With Benjamin, one might say that they divulge not just a polit-
ical attitude; they also occupy a position in the socio-political relations in
which they are themselves enmeshed. With Paglen, one might say that
their work enacts a form of experimental geography, staking claim to an
experiential space that was not there before. Finally, with Mirzoeff one
might say they exercise their right to look in the face of a prevailing and
seemingly impenetrable complex of visuality.
In juridical terms, the recording of the houses is uncomplicated. To
produce footage of someone’s house from a distance is not a violation
of any law, nor is exhibiting it in the context of an art performance. To
identify real persons as well as their political affiliations in the context
of an artistic work is likewise permissible. Yet there is no denying the
deliberately confrontational gaze of the women’s camera. They watch the
watchers, and by doing that they subvert what one might call an officially
sanctioned politics of surveillance. This gesture is at once aesthetic and
critical. In Chapter 3: Censorship and Free Speech: The Aesthetic, I
10 A. S. GRØNSTAD
explore the nature of the play’s powers of provocation and suggest that it
may be understood in the context of what Kieran Cashell calls an “oppo-
sitional practice.”16 Geared toward destabilizing social rather than legal
structures, such practices enlist art as a means of expression through which
to convey political or cultural critique. With regard to Ways of Seeing,
Cashell’s terms are particularly helpful in that they provide a conceptual
frame for the play’s espousal of sousveillance as a formal method.
The success of Ways of Seeing in upsetting the public unsurprisingly
caused a backlash that brought Norway to the attention of Freemuse,
the autonomous international organization for the protection of artistic
expression. Issues relating to censorship and the curtailment of aesthetic
forms of communication are thus, in this case, intimately connected with
the process of transgression (as they often are). In Chapter 3, I also
consider the paradox of calling for a defunding of the Black Box Theatre
while at the same time promoting a kind of free speech that is quite
permissive of racist inflections. The critics who reviewed the play during
its first week were able to define, to a large extent, the initial public recep-
tion of Ways of Seeing. Per Christian Selmer-Andersen’s rancid piece in the
major daily Aftenposten, historically a conservative publication, dismissed
the play as radical, leftist proselytizing, although, to be fair, it admitted
that its topic was treated with some subtlety. More detrimental to the
accuracy with which Ways of Seeing was presented in the media, though,
was Selmer-Andersen’s disproportionate emphasis on the inclusion of
Justice Minister Wara’s house (the title of his review is “When Leftist
Performance Artists Hide in the Thuja Hedge”). Some of the terms and
phrases he uses became keywords in the controversy that ensued, for
example “guerilla theater,” “lie in the bushes,” “stealth filming,” and
“threat,” not forgetting his perhaps slightly inflated comparison of the
actors’ activities to those of the Rote Armé Fraktion (RAF).
The day after the newspaper ran Selmer-Andersen’s review,
Bertheussen showed up at the Black Box Theatre, where she proceeded
to record the performance. It is not unlikely although difficult to ascer-
tain that she was triggered by the critic’s words, which spread like wildfire
throughout the domestic media and among the political echelons, in
the process creating a largely fictitious narrative about the nature and
content of the play. The day after Bertheussen’s appearance, the Progress
16 Kieran, Cashell, Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art, London:

I. B. Tauris, 2009.
Party’s Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a high-profile politician, wrote on

his Facebook page that the Black Box Theatre “legitimates its hatred
against Norwegians through an absurd, state-sponsored performance.”17
Wara’s property was vandalized, leading everyone to assume that it was
a direct consequence of the visibility bestowed upon the house in Ways
of Seeing. Soon proposals were launched from the Right to curtail state
funding of the theater. Prime minister Erna Solberg attacked the play in
public, claiming that it had negatively impacted the working conditions
of national politicians. While this happened before the National Police
Security Service charged Bertheussen with sabotage and defacement of
her own property in March 2019, Solberg has (at the time of writing)
yet to apologize for her at best inappropriate indictment of the artists.
As the public reception of this play has demonstrated, performing acts of
sousveillance may come at a cost.18
The task of surveying the affluent spaces of political influencers
produces a clear, topographical outline of the entanglements of conser-
vative politics and capital, but in order to go beyond the surface structure
of Black Box’s observations, we need the explanatory power of another
crucial concept. Adding context and interpretive depth to the aesthetics
of sousveillance at work in Ways of Seeing is the concept of neoliber-
alism, which is foregrounded in Chapter 4: Neoliberalism and Rojava:
The Political. A guiding premise for the analysis in this section is the
way in which neoliberalism over the last decades has mutated from the
domain of economics to become what Wendy Brown sees as “a normative
order of reason.”19 Neoliberal rationality, she argues, has infected “every
human domain,” remodeling all conduct as “economic conduct.”20 The
neoliberalization of political culture, the educational system, the media,
17 Steinar Solås Suvatne, “Teaterstykke filmet hjemmet til Tybring-Gjedde. Skuespilleren

har mottatt grove trusler,” Dagbladet, November 28, 2018, https://www.dagbladet.no/
nyheter/teaterstykke-filmet-hjemmet-til-tybring-gjedde-skuespilleren-har-mottatt-grove-tru
sler/70500779, accessed November 20, 2019.
18 See Jessica Lake, “Red Road (2006) and the Emerging Narratives of ‘Sub-Veillance,’”
Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 24. 2 (2010): 231–240; and Steve
Mann, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman, “Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable
Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments,” Surveillance and
Society, 1. 3 (2003): 331–355.
19 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, Brooklyn:
Zone Books, 2015, 9.
20 Ibid., 10.
12 A. S. GRØNSTAD
and even language itself is gradually eroding democratic values, which, I

would like to suggest, is one of the key issues that Ways of Seeing raises.
When the optimization of value championed by the modern corporate
company comes to colonize the life worlds of both governments and indi-
viduals, turning them into assets to be managed, the ramifications may
be increased inequality, financial volatility, the withering away of public
welfare, rampant commodification, and the demise of the idea of the
social. The argument in this chapter is ultimately that Ways of Seeing chal-
lenges not only the financial enablers of right-wing politics but perhaps
more pressingly the neoliberal modes of governance that generate them
in the first place.
The rejuvenated ways of seeing that the play empowers manifest what
in ancient Greece was known as isegoria, equal speech (an expressive cate-
gory distinct from the notion of free speech), understood as the claim
to be heard in public meetings. What sets Black Box apart from other
critiques of neoliberalism is that the play engenders a form of speech that
is not content merely with disclosing its injurious effects but that also
pauses to focus on healthier modes of political governance. A recurring
subject in Ways of Seeing is the stateless democracy of Rojava in Northern
Syria, a place that Sara Baban’s character visits and talks about at length in
the play. Since its inception in December 2018, The Democratic Feder-
ation of North Syria (DFNS) pursues a participatory model for political
organization rooted in feminist and ecological principles.21 Arguing that
the references to Rojava are crucial in understanding the ethics of the
play, I explore the political philosophy of the Rojava experiment through
an engagement with the work of the theoretician and political prisoner
Abdullah Öcalan as well as the American eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin,
who is a major influence on the former.
In the book’s Epilogue: Seeing Ethically, I tie together the separate
thematic strands of the preceding chapters to elucidate the particular form
of ethics embedded in the aesthetic structure of the play. In a reading that
considers Ways of Seeing as a timely update of John Berger’s epochal work
of the same name (1972), and as one that also continues with the launch
in September 2020 of the Ways of Seeing TV , the epilogue contrasts the
play’s way of seeing with postcapitalist ways of seeing. Drawing on Hagi
21 Self-autonomy was declared in 2012, and the forerunner to the DFNS, The
Democratic Federation of Rojava, was established in March 2016.
Kenaan’s work on the ethics of visuality, I read the play’s aesthetic practice
as a mode for voicing political dissent in a neoliberal environment.
With the surfeit of expressive possibilities available for social and polit-
ical critique in our contemporary media ecology, one question that should
be asked is why theater became the primary vehicle for addressing the
most urgent and uncomfortable issues in Norwegian society post-July
22. During the 1990s and noughties, cinema was arguably a flagship
art form when it came to dealing with culturally controversial subject
matter, as evidenced by films like Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone,
1994), Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999), The Piano Teacher (Michael
Haneke, 2001), Irreversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002), Capturing the Fried-
mans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003), and Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009), to
name just a tiny fraction of works that delved into distressing thematic
territories. In the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, as the next chapter
will show, painting and photography were often in the legal limelight.
With the soaring influence of newer media like computer games and VR,
one could imagine politically unpleasant topics to emerge out of such
expressive channels. And yet a piece of performance art came to stand out
as the galvanizing force for discussions deemed too precarious to have in
the years after July 22.22 Why was that?
While in Friedrich Schiller’s time theater could exert “a more
profound” influence than both law and morality, instilling as it suppos-
edly does “[m]ore correct notions, more refined precepts [and] purer
emotions,”23 in the early twenty-first century it exists alongside a diverse
assortment of apparatuses of visibility. Commanding a somewhat less
22 It should be noted that the national public discourse, in approaching the ten-year
commemoration of the 2011 massacre, has shifted toward a greater sense of acknowl-
edgment of the reluctance to politicize the tragedy that characterized the first few
years after the event, a reluctance shared even by the Labor Party itself as the victim
of the atrocities. The general perception in 2021 appears to be that the media and
the center-to-left parties have been wrong in not confronting the political ideologies
that directly motivated the terrorism of July 22. See for instance Frode Bjerkstrand,
“De som overlevde 22. juli-terroren tar hanskene av. Det er på tide,” Bt.no, April 6,
2021, https://www.bt.no/btmeninger/kommentar/i/x32XjR/de-som-overlevde-22-juli-
terroren-tar-hanskene-av-det-er-paa-tide, accessed April 7, 2021. Bjerkestrand’s text is a
comment on the publication of the book Aldri tie, aldri glemme, written by the Labor
Youth Party.
23 Friedrich Schiller, “Theater Considered as a Moral Institution,” [1784], trans. John
Sigerson and John Chambless, The Schiller Institute, 2002–2005, https://archive.schilleri
nstitute.com/transl/schil_theatremoral.html, accessed March 22, 2021.
14 A. S. GRØNSTAD
central position in the public sphere than earlier in its history, theater
might, on the other hand, be less susceptible to the pressures of commod-
ification that suffuse more recent media such as cinema, television, and
videogames. Its parameters of the sayable may therefore be wider. A
second reason could have to do with the crucial presence of minority
voices in the ensemble, the effect of which is to actualize alternative ways
of seeing—points of view that are more closely aligned with a postcolo-
nial perception of Norwegian culture. This is a point that should not be
underestimated. Hanan Benammar’s character’s soliloquy at the start of
the play represents a pivotal moment in the reckoning with the polit-
ical stratifications of July 22 in a larger European context. A third reason
involves the nature of the artistic approach that made Ways of Seeing
famous in the first place. The amount of outrage its acts of sousveillance
caused ensured it received far more exposure than most aesthetic artifacts.
While in truth its method was a mix of ethnography and investigative jour-
nalism, in the end, it served the play well that it was falsely construed as
a violation of privacy.
This study treats Ways of Seeing as a work of visual culture, a conceptual
enframing supported by a host of pungent markers: the rather overt allu-
sion to John Berger’s groundbreaking program and book, the adoption
of the techniques of sousveillance—strongly associated as they are with
video, film, and media—as well as the wholesale inclusion of recorded
footage as part of the play’s overall aesthetic. But Ways of Seeing is
also performance art, and while in the next chapter I shall address the
work’s affinity with a recent tradition of participatory and interactive
poetics, some contextualization of the play’s position vis-à-vis the broader
field of contemporary theater seems apposite. Although Pia Roll has
stated in interviews that her work is not necessarily post-theatrical and
that Aristotelian structure is still important to her, Ways of Seeing could
assuredly be considered in terms of postdramatic aesthetics.24 Describing
her practice, Roll figures that her projects amount to “negotiations with
theatre as form,” arguing that the documentary approach is just one
of several different “techniques” drawn upon. In her methodology, the
documentary impulse should be seen in conjunction with the fictional,
the therapeutic, and the activist. A breakthrough moment of sorts, she
24 Fritt Ord, “En forestilling som aldri tar slutt: Backstage med Ways of Seeing,” Fritt
Ord, October 6, 2020, https://frittord.no/nb/arrangementer/en-forestilling-som-aldri-
tar-slutt-backstage-med-ways-of-seeing, accessed October 7, 2020.
submits, came when she realized that she could actually venture outside
the theater for material. A reflection of this awareness, presumably, is her
work’s gravitation toward contemporary concerns, as well as the frequent
use of characters playing themselves. She also emphasizes the vital role her
artistic practice plays in generating new insight; all her plays, she concedes,
could have been entitled Ways of Seeing.
It was with the publication of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic
Theatre in 1999 that the formal and stylistic evolution within theater that
started in the 1960s toward performance and relational poetics crystal-
lized in a canonic concept. The circumstances of this evolution are too
convoluted, both in historical and theoretical terms, to recount compre-
hensively here, but I will try to map their principal features succinctly
and to the degree that they are relevant for a richer understanding of
the aesthetics of Ways of Seeing. The notion of the postdramatic as it
gets presented by Lehmann denotes an innovative form of theater—with
antecedents in the work of Erwin Piscator, Antonin Artaud, and the early
twentieth-century avant-garde movements—that relaxes the prominence
of plot linearity and narrative unity and accentuates gesture and corpo-
real choreography. Lehmann’s work has to some extent been taken as a
rejoinder to Peter Szondi’s landmark study Theory of the Modern Drama
(1956), in which the author addresses the crisis in modern drama that
unfolded from the clash between Aristotelian principles of composition
and the then contemporary drama’s need to engage with social issues.
Analyzing playwrights from Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton
Chekov to Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill, Szondi—like many critics
of his generation—considers drama as literature. For Lehmann, on the
other hand, theater means performance. The cornucopia of performance-
related practices from the 1960s onward—happenings, live art, Fluxus
shows, Situationism—consolidated the shift from literature-based theater
to Performance art, but the postdramatic also materialized in the work of
a broad and eclectic range of institutions, writers and artists, from Berlin’s
Hebbel-Theater, Amsterdam’s Mickery Theater, and Glasgow’s Tramway
to practitioners such as Peter Brook, Meredith Monk, Pina Bausch,
and Jan Fabre to Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Anatoli Vassiliev, Jan
Lauwers, Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp, and The Wooster Group. Palpable
in Lehmann’s re-interpretation of theater as performance is a perspica-
cious sense of medium specificity, perhaps sparked by the profusion of
new visual media in the last decades. Acknowledging that theater does
not generate “a tangible object which may enter into circulation as a
16 A. S. GRØNSTAD
marketable commodity,” Lehmann instead underscores the emphatically

embodied experience of the performance situation:
Theatre is the site not only of ‘heavy’ bodies but also of a real gathering, a
place where a unique intersection of aesthetically organized and everyday
real life takes place. In contrast to other arts, which produce an object
and/or are communicated through media, here the aesthetic act itself (the
performing) as well as the act of reception (the theatre going) take place
as a real doing in the here and now. Theatre means the collectively spent
and used up lifetime in the collectively breathed air of that space in which
the performing and the spectating take place.25
While it may be difficult to argue that theater continues to be a mass

medium, it is still one in which a mass of people gathers.
Postdramatic theater functions as an umbrella term for a heterogeneity
of performative practices. With its origin “in times of extremity,” early
performance-oriented art such as Dadaism and Futurism could be seen
as a reaction to the failure of more conventional forms to provide “emo-
tive responses to fascism.”26 The genre also shares aesthetic DNA with
process-focused approaches such as investigative theater, documentary
theater, ethnodrama, and verbatim theater, the latter of which has pedi-
grees that go back to the 1920s Soviet agitprop theater known as the
“Blue Blouses,” as well as Piscator’s use of contemporary political docu-
ments in his In Spite of Everything (1925). Ways of Seeing is connected
to these forms both in sensibility and poetics, as it is to the more recent
“emergency narratives” dealing with various states of precarity; recession,
migration, terrorism, populism, to name some.27
If postdramatic theater is defined by the ways in which it re-modulates
the time-honored components of the medium—conflict, causality, plot,
catharsis, illusion, imitation, fiction—differently from literary, text-based
drama, then Ways of Seeing clearly falls within the scope of this aesthetic.
As I will return to in Chapter 4, the play espouses a kind of montage
25 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre [1999], trans. Karen Jürs-Munby,

London: Routledge, 2006, 16–17.
26 Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle, “Introduction,” in Acts of Transgression: Contempo-
rary Live Art in South Africa, eds. Jay Pather and Catherine Boulle, Johannesburg: Wits
University Press, 2019, 1–16; 2.
27 See for instance Sam Haddow, Precarious Spectatorship: Theatre and Image in an
Age of Emergencies, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.
that illustrates Lehmann’s point that postdrama replaces dramaturgy with

“collage.”28 Having actors portray a version of themselves, abandoning
the conventions of classical narrative, encompassing shards of the outside
world as an integral part of the mise-en-scène, employing technologies of
visual reproduction, eschewing any sense of plot resolution, and blurring
the line between fiction and reality—these are all compositional choices
made by the play. In what follows, I would like to suggest that Ways of
Seeing also helps to push postdramatic performance art in a progressive
direction, in the process amending some of the criticism or reservations
that have been voiced against it. More specifically, various skeptics have
decried the formalism of postdramatic theater, while others have noted
its neglect of feminist perspectives. To this list, one might add the relative
paucity of ethnic and cultural minorities and of minority issues in this
field.
The concept of postdramatic theater has been faulted for promoting
“apoliticism and elitist escapism.”29 Part of the problem some have with
postdrama is that its attention to formal matters comes at the expense of
contextual understanding. As the editors of a recent volume argue, “to
say that postdramatic theatre moves toward form and away from drama
signals a shift toward theatrical form and away from drama’s particular
dialectic of form and content.”30 The study of aesthetic form, from the
work of the New Critics in the 1930s and onward, has been linked to
the method of close reading and to traits such as hermetic textualism,
indifference to historical and material context, structural unity, rejection
of authorial intent and affective response, autonomy, and textual purity.
It is also rather unquestionable that formalist approaches, at least in their
early incarnations, were not particularly sensitive to problems of gender,
race, and class. A performance like Ways of Seeing negates all of the
above descriptors, yet its aesthetic affordances are neither more nor less
active than in a more purely formalist work. As I have argued at length
elsewhere, the renewal of form is critically important for artworks’ epis-
temic and ethical contribution—a repetition of tried and tested formulas
28 Ibid., 26–27.
29 Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, and Brandon Woolf, “Introduction: Form and
Postdramatic Theatre,” in Postdramatic Theatre and Form, eds. Michael Shane Boyle,
Matt Cornish, and Brandon Woolf, London: Bloomsbury, 2019, 8.
30 Ibid., 3.
18 A. S. GRØNSTAD
rarely yields new insights—so an abandonment of formal experimenta-

tion is hardly the best option for artists who intend to convey events
and ideas in the world in ever more accurate ways.31 But does formally
adventurous art necessarily have to be solipsistic, rigid, and closed off
from societal concerns? Such as view comes across as unreasonable and
ill-attuned to developments both in the art sphere and in criticism and
theory since the age of New Criticism. For one thing, the rise of rela-
tional and participatory art provides a telling example of a space in which
formal innovation and social engagement intersect. Secondly, formalist-
oriented theory has come a long way since the days of Cleanth Brooks
and Monroe Beardsley. Poststructuralism is no doubt partly to blame for
postdramatic theater’s reputation as apolitical. Liz Tomin, for example,
attributes the long reigning view that properly radical theater should not
hold any “ideological steer” to the influence of poststructuralist reason.32
But the re-formulation of formalism in the work of, say, Lauren Berlant,
Sianne Ngai, and Caroline Levine presupposes a much more expansive
concept of form than that found in earlier approaches.33 Relations of
power, the materiality of social environments, the historical contingencies
of aesthetic mediations—these are all phenomena absorbed in contempo-
rary refractions of formalist thought. On the one hand, form is “integral
rather than incidental to theatre,” as Boyle, Cornish and Woolf put it.34
“Instead of sealing theatre off from society,” they suggest, “form is what
theatre and society share.”35 On the other hand, across the last century
or so theater has also waxed more political, enquiring stridently into “the
fundamental organization of society.”36 Moreover, there are also critics
31 Asbjørn Grønstad, Film and the Ethical Imagination, London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2016, 68.
32 Liz Tomlin, Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship: Provocations for
Change, London: Methuen, 2019, 18.
33 See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011; Sianne
Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2012; and Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
34 Boyle, Cornish, and Woolf, 15.
35 Ibid.
36 Michael Patterson’s, Strategies of Political Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008, 1.
who maintain that postdramatic theater is more appropriate than tradi-

tional theater for covering political and social topics.37 In many ways,
Ways of Seeing encapsulates both these tendencies, a formal audacious-
ness (after all, it was a compositional device that caught the attention of
the public) and an unflinching commitment to the political. As a style of
postdramatic theater, Ways of Seeing enacts what one might term a socially
sensitive formalism.
Another suspected oversight in the arguments swirling around post-
dramatic theater is feminism.38 With inspiration from the texts of Hélène
Cixous, in particular her “The Laugh of the Medusa” and the idea
of “insurgent writing,” Cara Berger reflects upon the possibilities of
coalescing the formalism of postdrama and feminism. With references to
Pina Bausch and the Wooster Group, Berger conjures up “an oblique
postdramatic feminism” defined by valuing “affect and sensation over
narration, function over representation” and by potentially being able to
engender “new subjectivities over empowering already known or familiar
identities.”39 Berger also recognizes that postdramatic art and feminist
politics are united in their joint awareness that one of the effects of neolib-
eralism is the diffusion of political and social power.40 In the case of
Ways of Seeing, the postdramatic elements are enveloped by a comprehen-
sively feminist sensibility. Not only are the play’s main writers and actors
women, but the thematic weight placed on Rojava as a singular experi-
ment in jineology ensures that the work is worthy of the characterization
as one of our most significant contributions to a feminist aesthetics. With
regard to the strategy of sousveillance, furthermore, it is by no means
extraneous to the meaning of the gesture that the bodies of the marginal-
ized positioned so close to the insular world of the economically and
politically privileged are gendered bodies.
37 Jerome Carroll, Karen Jürs-Munby, and Steve Giles, “Introduction: Postdramatic

Theatre and the Political,” in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspec-
tives on Contemporary Performance, eds. Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll, and Steve
Giles, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 3.
38 Cara Berger, “‘Knowledge and Taste Go Together:’ Postdramatic Theatre, Écriture
Féminine, and Feminist Politics,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 30. 2 (2016):
39–60.
39 Cara Berger, “Feminism in Postdramatic Theatre: An Oblique Approach,” Contem-
porary Theatre Review, 29. 4 (2019): 423–438.
40 Ibid., 433.
20 A. S. GRØNSTAD
They are also, finally, racialized bodies. If the White optics of Western
Modernism to a certain extent has persisted in postdramatic theater, Ways
of Seeing breaks free from this tradition in its consistent commitment to
a postcolonial ethics. Hanan’s allusion to the Algerian War of Indepen-
dence comes at the very beginning of the play and provides a frame for
the narrative to come. NATO’s bombing of Syria and the topicalization
of Rojava are other postcolonial references in the play, and its emphasis on
the immigrant experience aligns Ways of Seeing with the work of someone
like British filmmaker John Akomfrah. His The Nine Muses (2010), for
instance, examines the cultural encounter of the African diaspora with
the conditions of postwar Europe. In a certain sense, Ways of Seeing
marries aspects of postdramatic practice with those of postcolonial theater.
Writing about the social function of theater in Nigeria, Awam Amkpa
holds that performance art furnishes communities with a meaningful site
upon which to negotiate questions of identity and cultural belonging. A
fertile ground for activism and struggles over decolonization, Nigerian
theater is nourished by hybridity and what Amkpa calls postcolonial desire,
understood as “the act of imagining, living, and negotiating a social reality
based on democracy, cultural pluralism and social justice.”41 Rejecting
any notion of identity as something unchanging and essentialist, this kind
of desire also labors to counter oppression, to comprehend “the residual
and active narrative of colonial modernity” and to repudiate “colonial
epistemology.”42 Only now, the chief oppressor is not so much European
nation-states as global, neoliberal corporations. In Amkpa’s recounting,
theatrical practices are key in mediating this desire:
The singing and dancing, masquerades and folk-tales, the rituals and festi-
vals that peppered family and communal life in West Africa all contributed
to a theatre of engagement. As practiced in auditoria, market places,
community halls, schools, streets, and in religious and secular ceremonies,
theatre came to mean a symbolic interpretation of social reality that
facilitated communication, socialization, and community.43
While performance art may thus constitute a space of empowerment and

epistemological renewal, it can also, in different geographical contexts, be
41 Awam Amkpa, Theatre and Postcolonial Desires, Florence: Routledge, 2003, 10.
42 Ibid., 9.
43 Ibid., 5.
subject to less benign interpositions. As theorized by among others Helen

Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, postcolonial theater more so than litera-
ture has the power to “critique political structures,” but it also “run[s]
a greater risk of political intervention in [its] activities in the forms of
censorship and imprisonment.”44 Although operating in a Scandinavian
context, a particular variant of postcolonial desire is also what energizes
Ways of Seeing, which more than anything is a play that opposes those
residual colonial narratives and their entanglement with neoliberalism.
Out of this desire, new epistemes and new ways of seeing emerge.
44 Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics,
New York: Routledge, 1996, 3.
CHAPTER 2
New Ways of Seeing: The Judicial
Abstract This chapter first considers some of the intellectual and inter-
pretive frames that help make sense of the strategies employed by the
play to challenge culturally authoritative ways of seeing. Discussed in
this section are, among other things, the play’s reference to John Berg-
er’s Ways of Seeing (1972), Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005), and Trevor
Paglen’s concept of experimental geography. The chapter also explores the
possibility that Ways of Seeing unintentionally becomes a kind of inter-
active performance art, in which the artists are what Claire Bishop has
termed “producers of situations.” Central to this chapter is the imbrica-
tion of art and law. Examined are the ways in which the play embodies a
legal aesthetics, in the process laying claim to a new epistemological space
and a new expressive form that is poetico-judicial at its core. In a consid-
eration of a range of previous cases where the domains of art and law
have coalesced (among others, Lars Norén’s Seven Three, Anna Odell’s
Unknown Woman 2009-349701, Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, and Chris
Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary), the chapter charts the numerous similar-
ities between the case of Ways of Seeing and the tradition of shocking
artworks that have ended up in court. If the trial was the play’s second
act, then the launch of Ways of Seeing TV in September 2020 was its
third. This chapter also includes a sustained engagement with the way
in which this project enabled the artists to comment on the trial as it
was ongoing and to reflect aesthetically on their work’s journey into the
judicial domain.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2021
A. S. Grønstad, Ways of Seeing in the Neoliberal State,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85984-8_2
24 A. S. GRØNSTAD
Keywords John Berger · White privilege · Participatory art · Legal

aesthetics · Art controversies · Abject art · Ways of Seeing TV
It has been half a century since John Berger reminded us of the situated
nature of the act of looking as well as the material and historical condi-
tions of the image. Within the space of the first three or four pages of his
slender book, which was based on the BBC television series that originally
aired in January 1972, Berger makes a series of evocative observations
that—however obvious they might seem to us now—openly challenge
the tenets of conventional art history at the time. First, he points out the
chronological-evolutionary primacy of seeing. Before we learn to speak,
we can use our eyes. Second, Berger draws attention to the troublesome
gap that lies between seeing and knowing. The image yields knowledge,
true, but the status and even the content of this knowledge are indetermi-
nate. For one thing, it might be difficult to ascertain the kind of relation
that pertains to the image and the reality beyond it. Also, the image could
be misleading or even untruthful. Sometimes we simply fail to recognize
what it really is that we are looking at.1 Third, our pre-existing beliefs,
thoughts, and emotions influence how we come to read and understand
an image.2 Berger also submits that the image is actually “a sight which
has been recreated or reproduced.”3 That was four. Lastly, he invokes
the titular phrase when he states that “[e]very image embodies a way
of seeing,” although he is quick to note the dialectical dimension that
impinges upon the process of looking, because the subject who sees, too,
will mobilize her own way of seeing in the encounter with the image.4
In the chapters to follow, Berger covers topics such as the technolog-
ical reproducibility of the image, the genre of the nude and art history’s
representation of women, oil painting and the commodification of art,
landscape painting, collections and proprietorship, and advertising. For
him, these genres and practices denote particular ways of seeing. There is
no such thing as a natural or transcendental sight; one always looks from
a subjective and materially specific vantage point. Recent research also
1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London: BBC & Penguin Books, 1972, 7.
2 Ibid., 8.
3 Ibid., 9.
4 Ibid., 10.
2 NEW WAYS OF SEEING: THE JUDICIAL 25
leaning on neuroscientific and cognitive developments has affirmed this.5

An incalculable influence on the field of visual culture studies that would
come into relief as a semi-disciplinary constellation in the late 1980s and
onward, Ways of Seeing was in effect an early attempt at decolonizing
art history. By highlighting the political and ideological forces at play
both within the image and in the spaces of the galleries and museums,
Berger challenges long held assumptions in the art sphere concerning
overarching concepts like beauty, truth, genius, gender, bodies, value, and
taste. But his book also prefigures matters that would come into promi-
nence with the emergence of postcolonial studies decades later; one of
the three essays comprised solely of images (Chapter six) revolves around
themes of colonialism, empire, and class. Finally, and this is important in
the context of the play, Berger takes a keen interest in the relationship
between oil painting as a way of seeing and property. In his consider-
ation of Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750), Berger
concludes that the eponymous landowners in the picture, displayed next
to their vast private park, are depicted with a striking “proprietary atti-
tude” toward their land.6 As a genre that develops concurrently with the
appearance of the art market, oil painting is closely connected with trade,
ownership, and the desires of the art collector. According to Berger, the
genre discloses an obsession with property, with owning stuff, and in its
forms and intentions, it might be seen as an historical precursor to the
modern genre of advertising.
When, more than four decades later, a theater ensemble in Oslo
purposefully lift the name of Berger’s book for their own theater produc-
tion, the first subject that comes up in the media is that of property.7
Projected on stage is a succession of dwellings belonging to a motley
crew of investors, politicians on the right, high-ranking officers, and the
secretary general of NATO. In the first few weeks and months after
the play’s unveiling, these buildings—and the manner in which they
have been photographed—take center stage in the popular coverage of
Ways of Seeing, completely overshadowing what the work is really about.
5 Randall Halle, Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference in Cinema, Champaign, IL: University
of Illinois Press, 2021.
6 Ibid., 107.
7 While it is difficult to see how the title could not have been an intentional allusion
to Berger, director Roll has also explicitly confirmed this. See interview with the author,
June 3, 2020.
26 A. S. GRØNSTAD
Thanks in no small part to a series of largely misguided reviews and

comments in the country’s biggest newspapers, an impression is promptly
formed among the public that the actors are trespassers and in breach
of privacy laws. The efficacy of this narrative occasions the arraignment
in March 2019 of Black Box director Anne-Cécile Sibué-Birkeland, Pia
Maria Roll, Hanan Benammar, and Sara Baban. Up until the moment
when Bertheussen is charged with fabricating the vandalism of her own
residence, the women involved in Ways of Seeing are in fact under attack
from five different directions: the populist Progress Party, the conser-
vative prime minister, a wide segment of the media, the police, and
Bertheussen herself. While I shall return to the question of politically
motivated censorship in Chapter 3, the significance of property and
privacy in defining the initial reception of the play is worth exploring in
some more detail.
The late nineteenth-century codification of privacy, in an American
context, as the “right to be let alone” has understandably been inherent
to the modern history of surveillance.8 But it has also been subject to
persuasive re-interpretations, not the least important of which is Priscilla
M. Regan’s clarification below:
The philosophical basis of privacy policy overemphasizes the importance of

privacy to the individual and fails to recognize the broader social impor-
tance of privacy. This emphasis on privacy as an individual right or an
individual interest provides a weak basis for formulating policy to protect
privacy. When privacy is defined as an individual right, policy formulation
entails a balancing of the individual right to privacy against a competing
interest or right. In general, the competing interest is recognized as a social
interest.9
In May 2017, about eighteen months prior to the opening of Ways of

Seeing, Hege Storhaug of the right-leaning think tank Human Rights
Service invited citizens to send her information and photographs docu-
menting the location of mosques nation-wide. In October that same year,
she additionally launched what she termed “a unique project” to have
8 Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel D. Warren, “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law
Review, 4. 5 (1890): 193.
9 Priscilla M. Regan, Legislating Privacy: Technology, Social Values, and Public Policy,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, 212–221.
civilians sympathetic to her ideological program submit photographs of

muslims in public spaces.10 With Regan’s statement in mind, it might
be worth pondering the difference in styles of surveillance between
Storhaug’s undertaking and that of Ways of Seeing. The former appeals
to ordinary citizens—presumably those that are ethnically Norwegian
and political allies—to collect photographic evidence about a particular
social group in order to visualize large-scale demographic changes. The
endeavor is not bounded by the kind of mandate that regulates for
instance an art exhibition or a research project, and the target is not
individuals but a larger group of citizens perceived to possess certain
commonalities. Roll and her colleagues, on the other hand, are artists
creating something that is by definition a work of fiction, and the footage
generated is not of people but of property. Yet, it is fair to say that the
shots of the nondescript houses have been met with considerably greater
uproar in the media than has Storhaug’s “unique project,” an incongruity
of reception that perhaps bespeaks the enduring authority of the over-
privileged conception of privacy as an individual right that Regan discusses
above. Both conceptually and methodologically, Storhaug’s deployment
of photographic resources is at least to some extent reminiscent of the
discredited biometric practices that informed the scientific use of photog-
raphy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Her approach is a
straightforward collection of particular data for a similarly straightfor-
ward purpose. Ways of Seeing is driven by a much more complex objective
(which might to some extent explain the remarkable misinterpretations of
the play). The artists did not intend to film people, and in interviews Roll
has explicitly stated that the personal lives and the political convictions
of the persons whose houses they photographed were of little interest
to them.11 This position makes the entire issue of privacy moot. But if
neither the people nor their individual properties really constituted the
object of interest, what was the purpose of using this footage in the play
in the first place?
To pursue this question further, I want to take a brief detour. When
I first heard about the play, I thought the part about the housefronts
10 Hege Storhaug, “Rights dokumenterer den kulturelle revolusjonen,” Human Rights

Service, October 1, 2017, https://www.rights.no/2017/10/rights-dokumenterer-den-kul
turelle-revolusjonen/, accessed October 8, 2020.
11 Vilde Sagstad Imeland, “Tusen takk, PST!” Morgenbladet, October 9, 2020, https://
morgenbladet.no/kultur/2020/10/tusen-takk-pst, accessed October 9, 2020.
28 A. S. GRØNSTAD
sounded familiar. Then I realized I had seen something kind of similar

before, and even written about it. The instantly famous opening shot
of Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005) lingers for two and a half drawn-out
minutes on a mundane Paris street and its adjacent buildings. What we
are looking at, we soon find out, is a recording played back from a video-
tape by the owners of the residence being filmed. The identity of the
dispatcher remains unknown, but George Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a
television host who is the occupant of the surveilled property, has his
suspicions. Equal parts enigmatic and menacing, the shot comes across as
quite persistent in its demand for something that eludes both the Laurent
family and the viewers. It turns out that in his childhood, Georges was
responsible for the expulsion of his adopted Algerian brother Majid from
his family. This act of individual betrayal is then narratively connected to a
long suppressed memory in postwar French culture, which is the October
1961 massacre of two hundred French-Algerian protesters by the Paris
police (the film implies that Majid’s parents were among the victims).
The murders, acknowledged by the French state only in 1998, are what
remains “hidden” in history, and they are also what impelled Haneke to
make the film in the first place. Caché has thus been read as a story of
postcolonial guilt, in which Georges becomes increasingly troubled by
the memory of his own misdeed.12 But even more prominent in the film
is the suggestion that the accumulation of privileges that the Laurents
enjoy—their affluence and social prestige—has come at the expense of
the marginalized Other. Considered in the context of Haneke’s “intrusive
images,” Caché performs what I have elsewhere termed an “unmention-
able transgression,” which is the indictment not only of Eurocentrism per
se but of the humanist values and the aesthetic sensibility that codify its
enduring privileges.13
There are, evidently, salient differences between the shots of the house-
fronts in Caché and Ways of Seeing. Where Haneke’s gaze is taciturn, that
of the latter is more communicative, the actors thoroughly contextual-
izing the footage by providing information about the various inhabitants.
The identity of the source, moreover, is very much in the open in Ways
of Seeing, whereas in Caché it stays undisclosed. Yet the parallels are so
12 See Asbjørn Grønstad, Screening the Unwatchable: Spaces of Negation in Post-

Millennial Art Cinema, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 152.
13 Ibid., 150; 157.
striking that I was sure that Haneke’s opening shot was an intended inter-
textual quotation, which I later found out was not the case.14 Last but
not least, the video footage in Caché is substantially more threatening
than that of Ways of Seeing, accompanied as it is by other graphic material
such as drawings showing acts of violence. But in both cases, the camera
eye is resolutely fastened on seemingly inconspicuous buildings—on prop-
erty—and it lingers for quite some time on these edifices while nothing
much happens narratively. This observational gaze mimes the modality of
surveillance, and because it emanates from a minoritarian perspective, it
qualifies as sousveillance (which I have already pointed out above). An
effect produced by both works is a sense of bewilderment as to what it is
that the gaze wants. The intense, probing stare also creates a perceptual
friction in that its content is so humdrum; where the gaze itself is insis-
tent, what it shows is almost perversely unspectacular. Finally, both the
film and the play are drawn to these facades not because of their architec-
tural or material specificity but rather because of what they signify: wealth,
power, comfort—in short, privilege. These are the kinds of houses that
typically come equipped with extravagant gates and security cameras to
keep the world outside at bay. People that live here value privacy over
sociality. They eschew unwanted attention, which probably explains the
level of outrage those acts of sousveillance elicit.
A series of incidents around the Wara domicile ensures that the theme
of (private) property remains in the spotlight in the aftermath of the
play’s launch. Not long after Bertheussen shows up in the theater to
tape the performance, and not long after her piece in the national
tabloid VG appears, the Wara family’s house and car are vandalized
(December 6). A swastika and the word “rasist” adorn the car, whereas
the misspelled “rasisit” is scrawled onto the house. Later there is a fire in
a trashcan outside the property (January 17), and there is also evidence
that someone has tampered with the car (February 11). During the winter
of 2019 the Wara household receives an intimidating letter containing
powder that turns out to be crushed pills (March 2). Someone then
sets the automobile on fire (March 10), at which point the investiga-
tion is left to the Police Security Service. Bertheussen is charged with
this crime (March 14) and then two weeks later with all the other acts
of vandalism against her own residence (March 28). The court case
14 See interview with Pia Maria Roll and Hanan Benammar, June 3, 2020.
30 A. S. GRØNSTAD
that begins in September 2020 painstakingly examines all the instances

involving Bertheussen, thus keeping the subject of property fresh in the
media.
While nobody could have anticipated the massive attention that the
house fronts in Ways of Seeing would receive, the underlying twin themes
of privacy and property introduced by this “sousveillance footage” index
a different perspective that was lost on the media. Let us call it the politi-
cization of space. In his work of experimental geography that I refer to
in the introduction, the artist and researcher Trevor Paglen photographs
secret military sites (among other things), and in doing so, he argues, he
exercises his right to look. Pointing your camera at something is always a
relational act, an act of “cutting” into the fabric of the real, and inevitably
the result of this act is the engendering of new spaces. Experimental
geography, according to Paglen, entails
practices that take on the production of space in a self-reflexive way, prac-

tices that recognize that cultural production and the production of space
cannot be separated from each another [sic], and that cultural and intel-
lectual production is a spatial practice. Moreover, experimental geography
means not only seeing the production of space as an ontological condition,
but actively experimenting with the production of space as an integral part
of one’s own practice. If human activities are inextricably spatial, then new
forms of freedom and democracy can only emerge in dialectical relation to
the production of new spaces.15
Thinking about relationality, space, and photography/film in this way is

key to discerning the true nature of Ways of Seeing as a work of experi-
mental geography. Those who object to the theatrical projection of the
house fronts on the grounds of privacy infringement miss the point: what
this work of experimental geography aims to make visible is not that which
is already visible—the homes of individual politicians or investors—which
would be pointless, but rather the ideological pattern that these homes
come to visualize, which is something entirely different and which would
still remain invisible to the public if it were not for the efforts of the
15 See Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska, Life After New Media: Mediation as a Vital
Process, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012, 81; and Trevor Paglen, “Experimental
Geography: From Cultural Production to the Production of Space,” in Experimental
Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism, eds. Nato
Thompson, Brooklyn: Melville House, 2009, PAGE NO!
artists. In a way, Ways of Seeing turns slivers of physical space into an

aesthetic space, which again becomes a conduit for the appearance of a
more abstract, sociological geography in which wealth and power coalesce
with the refinement of racialist sensibilities. That the play’s inquisitiveness
about the ideological, moneyed networks obliquely endorsing xenophobia
was warranted found support during the trial, when it became clear that
Bertheussen’s actions did not occur in a vacuum but were encouraged and
abetted by powerful, informal allies that included then Secretary of State
Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde and Rita Karlsen, founder of the islam-
ophobic foundation Human Rights Service. On January 22, 2019—at
a time during which the interferences at the Wara residence were still
ongoing—the former also became Minister of the Department of Justice
and Public Security.
If the notion of experimental geography portends the production of
new spaces of experience, and if Ways of Seeing exemplifies such labor,
then we might deduce that the play has been remarkably prolific. First
of all, two of the vital concerns that the play articulates—surveillance
and systemic racism—emphatically return in the aftermath of the contro-
versy. During the trial, it became apparent that the National Police
Security Services’ scrupulous monitoring of the suspect affirmed the
point made by the play that the state’s implementation of surveillance
measures has intensified since the Lund commission’s report in the mid-
1990s.16 Supplementing photographs and video footage of Wara’s house
and car was an exceedingly thorough mapping of Bertehussen’s physical
and virtual movements after she became a suspect. Among these digital
tracks was the Messenger chat “Hækaveh” between Bertheussen, Smines
Tybring-Gjedde, Rita Karlsen, Line Marie Sandberg (former secretary
of state from the Progress Party), and three other women. Controver-
sially published a little over a week into the trial (on September 17,
2020) by the online newspaper Filter Nyheter,17 the rambling chat explic-
itly demonstrates that the participants were more than ready to access
their political connections in the government in order to retaliate against
the theater ensemble. The dialogue between those taking part in the
16 Per-Olav Sørensen, “The Ways Norway sees Laila Anita Bertheussen,” Nettavisen,
October 4, 2020, https://www.nettavisen.no/nyheter/the-ways-norway-sees-laila-anita-
bertheussen/3424027498.html, accessed October 28, 2020.
17 https://filternyheter.no/jentene-og-bertheussen-del-1-frp-kan-ikke-vaere-pa-vakt-og-
la-dette-skje/, accessed November 2, 2020.
32 A. S. GRØNSTAD
Messenger strategizing suggests that the group intended to report the

artists to the police, defund the Black Box, sway the media to write
unfavorably about Ways of Seeing, and intimidate the Bishop of Oslo
Kari Veiteberg because she had expressed sympathy toward the ensemble.
Understandably, the members of the chat group are infuriated when they
get referred to as racists.
In addition to being a vehicle for new spaces of surveillance—as well
as unlocking a discursive space otherwise inaccessible to the public—
the play also institutes a new legal space. The trial in the fall of 2020,
almost two years after its premiere, is a direct outcome of the play. But
it does not stop there. Ways of Seeing and its elaborate cultural rever-
berations produce a peculiar synthesis of aesthetics and law rarely if ever
seen in Norway previously. While the play features a pronounced judicial
dimension in the presence of former Supreme Court judge Ketil Lund
and his ruminations on the surveillance state, the trial conversely exhibits
a vigorous theatrical dimension. Art swerves toward the law, while the
law swerves toward art. It was not just that the trial was the subject of
substantial media coverage. In court, Bertheussen repeatedly showed up
carrying handbags emblazoned with images, diagrams, emoticons, and
snippets of text providing a running commentary on the legal proceed-
ings of which she was an essential part. Her highly visible presence in the
courtroom sealed the impression formed as soon as she was charged by
the NPSS that she had, somewhat ironically, become a character in the
play from which she went to such great lengths to distance herself. In a
sense, Ways of Seeing had become interactive theater, a type of participa-
tory performance in which the artist, in the words of Claire Bishop, acts as
a “producer of situations,” with the audience or viewer playing the role of
co-producers.18 Noting that projects considered participatory art charac-
teristically take place across an extended time frame, Bishop explains that
the form tends to accentuate “process over a definitive image, concept
or object” and also that it “value[s] what is invisible: a group dynamic, a
social situation, a change of energy, a raised consciousness.”19 Although
the concept of participatory art evidently encompasses projects in which
involvement is presumably voluntary and deliberate, its basic elements
18 Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship,
London: Verso, 2012, 2.
19 Ibid., 6.
also in fact pertain to Bertheussen and Ways of Seeing. It is unquestion-

ably the case that the play prompted a “situation,” that this situation
unfolded over an extended period of time, and that what it brought into
view was not so much a tangible object as “a group dynamic” and “a
raised consciousness.” Central to this participatory process, of course,
was Bertheussen’s formidably intense interaction with the artists, from
her resolute (and illicit) recording of the performance back in November
2018 to her miscellaneous acts of defacement around the Wara prop-
erty, her direct address to Pia Maria Roll in the tabloid VG on December
1, 2018, and to the expressive handbags she wore during the trial. The
harder she fought the play, the more she got entwined with it.
But the imbrication of art and law surpasses the performances of Lund
and Bertheussen on the stage and in the courtroom, respectively. Both
institutions involve an audience. As media, the performative arts can be
a laboratory for the exploration of both moral and judicial issues, as
well as an imaginative space through which popular knowledge about
the practice of law may be transmitted. But the realm of law is not
without its own compositional arrangements. A courtroom, one should
not forget, is an architectural entity, crisscrossed by a set of spatial and
relational vectors that are historically and culturally variable. The phys-
ical configuration of a courtroom in Norway, for example, is more open
and less hierarchically organized than one in England or in France. An
externalization of the kinds of relations at play in a court, such config-
urations constitute a “legal aesthetics,” which in turn—as Leif Dahlberg
has pointed out—forms particular “ways of seeing.”20 The content of
such a legal aesthetics requires intellectual scrutiny because the judicial
system produces “a visual and aesthetic field of cognitive and normative
world making.”21 This world-making potential compels us to study law
not merely as an abstract system but as a regime of representation in its
own right. The way in which Ways of Seeing has brought these domains
so closely together is in itself a reminder of a vital facet of the legal sphere
that is perhaps somewhat neglected in everyday life. Having said that, it
needs underscoring that the relationship between aesthetics and law in
20 Leif Dahlberg, “Introduction: Visualizing Law and Authority,” in Visualizing Law

and Authority: Essays on Legal Aesthetics, ed. Leif Dahlberg, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
2012, 1–9; 3. “[W]ays of seeing” is in fact the explicit phrase that occurs in conjunction
with the term “legal aesthetics.”
21 Ibid., 4.
34 A. S. GRØNSTAD
the case of Ways of Seeing is not additive but synthetic; it is not just that
the play italicizes the presence of the judicial in the artistic and the exis-
tence of the aesthetic within the legal, but rather that it engenders a new
space or, more concisely, a new expressive form that is simultaneously
poetico-judicial.
One should also not forget that the legal perspective was part of the
process of the play prior to Bertheussen being charged. While the case
was curtailed before it could develop any further, the police did accuse
the artists, along with Black Box director Anne-Cécile Sibué-Birkeland,
of violation of privacy. Although in practical terms the probability of the
artists facing a trial was quite slim, in principle their working methods—
and thus by association the work itself—could have become the subject
of legal deliberation. In such an event, law would be the arbiter of the
acceptability of an artistic expression. The actual circumstances, however,
would be that the artwork spurred an entire legal situation as its second
act. It would be easy enough to shelve the assumption that the trial
concerned art—after all, Bertheussen not the play was the defendant—
but the relation is a bit more complicated than that. Without the play,
there would never have been a trial. Also, and intriguingly, during his
interrogation of Roll (October 14, 2020), the defense attorney John
Christian Elden re-introduces an aesthetic aspect into the proceedings.
Quoting from the catalogue text for Ways of Seeing,22 Elden wants to
know whether the language might come across as frightening to the occu-
pants of the houses filmed. The text in question is a loose interpretation
of the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire’s long poem Notebook of a Return
to the Native Land (1939), a formative inspiration for the field of post-
colonial literature. Certain phrases from Césaire’s poem are woven into
the Norwegian text, such as “you lousy pig,” “the cockchafers of hope,”
“fear imperceptibly fades,” and “[t]hen I turned toward paradises lost for
him and his kin.”23 The lines that appear in the play read thus:
Vi venter i hagen, som steinene venter, som ringdua og svarttrosten og

isen og det klare vannet. Vi venter, som en tohodet nisse; møkkete, grov,
upålitelig. I blant ser vi dere gjennom soveromsvinduene: Purketryner,
22 Black Box, “Ways of Seeing,” Program, https://blackbox.no/en/546a37f7-24f6-

48ef-9085-477e40e3ac4d/, accessed November 5, 2020.
23 Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [1939], trans. Clayton
Eshleman and Annette Smith, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.
kutryner, håpets rotspisende parasitter. Sakte roer hjertet seg. Vi tenner

svarte lykter. Skrekken slipper taket. Europa forsvinner. Så vender vi oss
mot paradisene som er tapt for dere og deres nærmeste.24
Elden reads this excerpt aloud in court, a moment that a theater critic
describes as “historic, curious, and terrifying.”25 As much as the trial
is about Bertheussen’s actions, her participatory part in the centrifugal
world of the play, at this moment it also subsumes the work. By dint of his
quotation, the attorney joins law and art in an intimate albeit astoundingly
problematic way.
What accounts for Elden’s strategy here? The purpose seems to be
to persuade the court to take the words of a dramatic production at
face value, or to argue that the words could, in principle, be taken liter-
ally by those whose homes were subject to the act of sousveillance. But
the citation is not referenced in the scene showing the footage of the
houses. It occurs much later in the play, and in a context unrelated to the
sousveillance footage. That Elden is unaware of the literary status of the
quotation is improbable. Worryingly, he appears willfully to discount what
one would understand as the ontology of the statement. Such a juridifica-
tion of the aesthetic, in which Elden creatively and against his own better
judgment misreads the text, has rather unwelcome social ramifications,
to which Roll speaks eloquently in her reply to Elden: “If we are to live
in a society in which people fail to comprehend images, it is going to
be dangerous. Not only for the artists, but for everybody else too.” This
failure, whatever its causes, has been endemic to the reception of Ways of
Seeing. As I touch upon above, key social institutions such as the media,
the government, and the judicial system have all, in their own ways, been
unable to recognize the fictional-aesthetic character of the play. In a copy-
right case from the early twentieth century, the Supreme Court justice
24 This is the English translation published on the Black Box website: “We wait in
the garden. We wait like the gravel waits, like the wood pigeon and the blackbird and
the ice and the clear water. We wait, like a two-headed gnome: dirty, coarse, unreliable.
Sometimes we look through your bedroom windows: you pig-faced evil bedbugs who
feast upon the root systems of hope. Slowly the heart stops running. We light black
lanterns. The horror loses its grip. Europe disappears. Then we turn toward paradises lost
for you and your kin.”
25 Ragnhild Freng Dale, “Inn i sakens kjerne,” Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift, October 14,
2020, http://shakespearetidsskrift.no/2020/10/inn-i-sakens-kjerne, accessed November
5, 2020.
36 A. S. GRØNSTAD
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. also uses the word “dangerous” when he
pontificates about the undesirability of judges acting as art critics.26 Law
and art are in a sense opposites, occasionally even with divergent agendas.
Where the former is rational, unequivocal, and inherently conservative,
the latter is imaginative, ambiguous, and potentially revolutionary. Works
of art taking their cue from law run the risk of being rigid, whereas a
practicing of law motivated by art may become irresponsible. The perfor-
mative modality that theater and law share should not distract us from
these crucial differences. In a seminal contribution to the area of law and
art, Costas Douzinas and Lynda Nead state the following:
Lawyers live by the text and love the past, they hate novelty and misun-
derstand new languages. The law is able to appreciate new art only after it
becomes a matter of convention, use, and habit, in other words, when art
becomes like law. Great art, on the other hand, precisely because it breaks
away from conventions and rules and expresses creative freedom and imag-
ination, is the antithesis of law. The law of art is the opposite of the rule
of law.27
Elden’s courtroom employment of the Black Box text epitomizes this

incompatibility to a fault. The attorney “live[s] by the text” in that he
disregards the larger environment in which the utterance occurred in the
play. He further “misunderstand[s]” the formal specificity of the utter-
ance, confusing a poetic text with ordinary speech. The Césaire-indebted
text is unmistakably unconventional; just like the poet’s original verse, it
strives to invent a new linguistic figuration adequate to its expressive aims.
There is more to be said about Elden’s reference to the literary text.
Despite being brought up by some commentators (for instance Freng
Dale), its salience for understanding the depth of the case has not been
fully addressed. An argument could be made that Elden’s perception of
the play mirrors that of his client. Like Bertheussen, he misapprehends an
aesthetic communication as a real-life message. Whether or not she engi-
neered the assaults on her own property is beside the point here, because
26 Bleistein v Donaldson, 188 U.S. 239, 251 (1903).

27 Costas Douzinas and Lynda Nead, “Introduction,” in Law and the Image: The
Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law, eds. Costas Douzinas and Lynda Nead,
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999, 1.
what remains incontrovertible is that she did show up during a perfor-

mance of the play to record it, according to the eyewitness reports in a
rather indiscreet manner. The most likely objective for this behavior is
that she wanted to document the play’s transgressions, to use as legal
evidence later (although another explanation could be that this was a
payback gesture which mimicked the alleged invasion of privacy to which
she supposedly had been subjected—note that the two hypotheses are
not mutually exclusive). At any rate, Bertheussen’s actions in the theater
and Elden’s legal deliberations are failures of recognition; they refuse to
acknowledge the fictional and aesthetic nature of a work even though they
are culturally predisposed to do so (meaning that the educational system
and society at large have provided the essential tools to ensure that iden-
tifying a theatrical play and a poetic text as artistic expressions should be
a manageable task). What one can take away from this is that the play has
also made visible sentiments among laypersons and legal representatives
alike that come close to philistinism. More ominous, however—since it is
doubtful that Bertheussen and Elden really are incapable of recognizing
an artistic utterance—is the suspicion that they want to police art that
they personally find disagreeable. If this is the case, aesthetic illiteracy
camouflages a censorious sensibility.
Be that as it may, by invoking the literary text in the courtroom,
Elden also extends the play’s reach into juridical space, which becomes
yet another example of the experimental geography that Ways of Seeing
creates around itself. His suggestion that the text be taken as a straight-
forward declaration is reminiscent of the definitional conundrums that
materialized in a couple of famous Swedish court cases. Admittedly on
a different scale of gravity, in the late 1990s, a journalist reported Lars
Norén’s play Sju Tre (Seven Three, 1999) to the police for inciting racial
hatred. A controversial production from its very inception, Sju Tre alluded
to a paragraph in the Swedish penal code about “escape-prone prisoners,”
and its core ensemble consisted of three inmates from a high-security
prison in Tidaholm playing a version of themselves. Staged for an audi-
ence inside the prison, Sju Tre had two of the convict-actors spouting
Nazi propaganda. The prosecutor’s unenviable job, then, was to deter-
mine whether the transmission of anti-semitic sentiments was authentic
or representational; in short, whether the play was reality or a fiction. At
the end of the day, the prosecutor resolved not to indict, a decision based
38 A. S. GRØNSTAD
on the view that the controversial speech had been, in the words of Max
Liljefors, “transfigured ontologically on stage.”28
The other case, Okänd, Kvinna 2009-349701 (Unknown, Woman
2009-349701), had a slightly different outcome. While a student at the
University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Anna Odell
staged her own breakdown in public, upon which she was instantly
committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was buckled and drugged.
The hoax was part of her art project, which aimed to shine a light on
problematic practices in the psychiatric care sector. The public reaction
was largely unsympathetic at first, and some found her ethics debat-
able, although the moral integrity of the project was bolstered by the
knowledge that the episode was essentially a re-enactment of a real
collapse the artist had suffered fifteen years before. When sued by St.
Göran’s Hospital, Odell claimed that the Fundamental Law on Freedom
of Expression was applicable and that she had merely collected material
for her project (an assistant had filmed the incident). Unlike in the Norén
case, the court did not accept the premise that it was all an aesthetic
performance and maintained instead that her actions qualified as violent
defiance. Odell was issued a simple fine, and in the wake of the skir-
mish, her college ensured that all future degree projects were studied by
a lawyer.
It is true that Ways of Seeing differs from the cases of Norén and Odell,
most obviously in that the legal case was against Bertheussen, not the
artists. Yet the fact that charges were indeed pressed at one point is not so
easily dismissable. As much as Bertehussen occupied the formal center of
the trial, furthermore, few would contest the notion that it was also very
much about Ways of Seeing. Finally, Elden’s weaponization of the literary
quote in support of his client binds the juridical and the artistic in a way
that is not dissimilar to the ontological appraisals in the Swedish examples.
Elden’s brief is manifestly not to define Ways of Seeing as either reality
or fiction. Regardless, when he practically de-aestheticizes the poetic text
28 Max Liljefors, “Body and Authority in Contemporary Art: Tehching Hsieh’s One-
Year Performances,” in Visualizing Law and Authority: Essays on Legal Aesthetics, ed. Leif
Dahlberg, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012, 204–231; 209. One can only speculate if the
prosecutor would have come to a different understanding if it had been known at the
time that the prisoners during the time allotted for rehearsals had engaged in criminal
activities to bankroll a Neo-nazi group. The notorious event ended in the worst possible
way when after the closing performance two of the inmates broke out, held up a bank,
and killed two policemen in the getaway.
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kolahtanut kolme päätä yhteen, sillä kohtalo — se on hirvitys,
Kuzjma Kuzjmitš! Realismia, Kuzjma Kuzjmitš, realismia! Mutta
koska teidät on jo kauan sitten pitänyt jättää huomioon ottamatta,
niin jää jäljelle kaksi päätä, kuten lausuin, kenties lausuin kömpelösti,
mutta minä en olekaan kirjailija. Se on, toinen pää on minun, ja
toinen on tuon pedon. Siis valitkaa: minäkö vai peto? Kaikki on nyt
teidän käsissänne — kolme kohtaloa ja kaksi arpaa… Antakaa
anteeksi, minä sekaannuin, mutta te ymmärrätte… minä näen teidän
kunnioitettavista silmistänne, että te olette ymmärtänyt… Mutta jos
ette ole ymmärtänyt, niin hukun jo tänään, siinä se!»
Mitja katkaisi järjettömän puheensa tuohon »siinä se» ja hypähti

paikaltaan odottaen vastausta typerään ehdotukseensa.
Lausuessaan viimeisen lauseensa hän tunsi äkkiä ja toivottomasti,
että kaikki oli mennyt myttyyn ja, mikä oli tärkeintä, että hän oli
puhunut hirmuisen joukon pötyä. »Omituista, tänne tullessani näytti
kaikki hyvältä, ja nyt se on pötyä!» välähti äkkiä hänen toivottomassa
päässään. Kaiken aikaa hänen puhuessaan oli ukko istunut
liikkumatta ja jäisin katsein tarkannut häntä. Pitäen häntä kuitenkin
noin minuutin verran odotuksen vallassa Kuzjma Kutzjmitš viimein
lausui mitä päättävimmällä ja lohduttomimmalla äänenpainolla:
— Suokaa anteeksi, me emme harjoita tämänlaatuisia liiketoimia.
Mitja tunsi äkkiä jalkojensa pettävän.
— Kuinkas minä nyt, Kuzjma Kuzjmitš, — mutisi hän hymyillen

hervottomasti. — Minähän olen nyt mennyttä miestä, vai mitä te
arvelette?
— Suokaa anteeksi…
Mitja seisoi yhä ja katseli jäykästi ja liikkumattomana, ja huomasi
yhtäkkiä, että jotakin liikahti ukon kasvoissa. Hän vavahti.
— Katsokaahan, hyvä herra, tämmöiset asiat ovat meille hankalat,

— lausui ukko hitaasti, — alkaa käräjöinnit, täytyy käyttää
asianajajia, siinä on ihan hukassa! Mutta jos tahdotte, niin täällä on
eräs mies, jonka puoleen voisitte kääntyä…
— Herra Jumala, kuka se on!… Te saatte minut jälleen elämään,

Kuzjma
Kuzjmitš, — alkoi Mitja äkkiä epäselvästi puhua.
— Hän ei ole täkäläinen, se mies, eikä häntä nyt täällä ole. Hän
tekee talonpoikien kanssa metsäkauppoja, on nimeltään Ljagavyi. Jo
vuoden verran hän on hieronut Fjodor Pavlovitšin kanssa kauppaa
tuosta lehdostanne Tšermašnjassa, mutta eivät sovi hinnasta, olette
kukaties kuullut. Nyt hän on taas tullut ja asustaa nyt pappi Iljinskin
luona, Volovjan kievarista lienee sinne noin kaksitoista virstaa,
Iljinskin kylässä. Hän on kirjoittanut tänne minullekin tästä asiasta,
nimittäin tästä metsiköstä, pyysi neuvoa. Fjodor Pavlovitš aikoo itse
mennä hänen luokseen. Niin että jos te ennättäisitte ennen Fjodor
Pavlovitšia ja esittäisitte Ljagavyille samaa, mitä puhuitte minulle,
niin kenties syntyy hänen kanssaan kaupat…
— Nerokas ajatus! — keskeytti Mitja innostuneena. — Hän juuri,

hänelle se juuri sopii! Hän hieroo kauppaa, häneltä pyydetään
paljon, ja nyt hän juuri saakin omistuskirjan siihen, hahaha! — Ja
Mitja alkoi äkkiä nauraa lyhyttä, puisevaa nauruaan, aivan
odottamatta, niin että Samsonovinkin pää nytkähti.
— Kuinka voin kiittää teitä, Kuzjma Kuzjmitš, — intoili Mitja.

— Ei mitään, — sanoi Samsonov kumartaen päätään alemmaksi.
— Te ette tiedäkään, te olette pelastanut minut, oi, minut toi teidän

luoksenne aavistus… Siis tuon papin luo!
— Ei kestä kiittää.
— Riennän ja lennän. Olen käyttänyt väärin teidän

terveydentilaanne.
En ikänäni unohda tätä, venäläinen mies sanoo teille tämän, Kuzjma
Kuzjmitš, v-venäläinen mies!
— Jaa-hah.
Mitja oli tarttumaisillaan ukon käteen puristaakseen sitä, mutta

jotakin ilkeämielistä välähti tämän silmissä. Mitja veti takaisin
kätensä, mutta soimasi heti itseään epäluuloisuudesta. »Hän on
väsynyt»… välähti hänen mielessään.
— Hänen tähtensä! Hänen tähtensä, Kuzjma Kuzjmitš! Te

ymmärrätte, että se on hänen tähtensä! — rääkäisi hän äkkiä, niin
että koko sali kajahti, kumarsi, kääntyi jyrkästi ympäri ja lähti
entiseen tapaan nopein ja pitkin askelin taakseen katsomatta ovea
kohti. Hän värisi innostuksesta. »Olinhan ihan tuhon omaksi
joutumassa, ja nyt suojelusenkeli pelasti», liikkui hänen mielessään.
»Jos kerran sellainen käytännön mies kuin tämä ukko (ihmeen jalo
ukko, ja millainen ryhti!) osoitti tälle tielle, niin… niin tietysti voitto on
varma. Heti ja aika kyytiä! Ennen yön tuloa palaan, yöllä palaan,
mutta asia on voitettu. Saattoiko ukko todellakin pitää minua
pilkkanaan?» Näin huudahteli Mitja astellessaan asuntoonsa, eikä
hän mielessään tietysti muuta voinut kuvitellakaan, t.s. joko se oli
asiallinen neuvo (semmoisen käytännöllisen miehen antama), —
joka johtui asiantuntemuksesta ja tuon Ljagavyin (omituinen
sukunimi!) tuntemisesta tai — tai ukko oli tehnyt hänestä pilaa! Voi!
Tuo jälkimmäinen ajatus vain olikin oikea. Myöhemmin, pitkän ajan
kuluttua, kun koko katastrofi jo oli tapahtunut, ukko Samsonov itse
nauraen tunnusti pitäneensä silloin »kapteenia» pilanaan. Hän oli
ilkeä, kylmä ja ivallinen mies, jolla sen lisäksi oli sairaalloiset
antipatiat. Kapteenin innostunut muotokuva, tämän »tuhlarin ja
rahojen syytäjän» typerä uskoko, että hän, Samsonov, voi tarttua
sellaiseen mielettömyyteen kuin oli hänen »suunnitelmansa»,
mustasukkaisuusko Grušenjkaan nähden, jonka nimeen »tämä
huimapää» oli tullut hänen luokseen hupsuttelulla saamaan rahoja,
— en tiedä, mikä nimenomaan sai silloin ukon toimimaan, mutta sillä
hetkellä, kun Mitja seisoi hänen edessään tuntien jalkojensa
pettävän ja älyttömästi huudahteli olevansa mennyt mies, — sillä
hetkellä ukko katsoi häneen rajattoman ilkeyden valtaamana ja keksi
pitää häntä pilkkanaan. Mitjan mentyä Kuzjma Kuzjmitš kalpeana
kiukusta kääntyi poikansa puoleen ja käski laittamaan niin, ettei
vastedes tuota kerjäläistä täällä näkyisi, eikä häntä saisi päästää
pihallekaan, muuten…
Hän ei lausunut julki, mikä olisi seurauksena, mutta hänen

poikansakin, joka usein oli nähnyt hänet vihastuneena, vavahti
pelästyksestä. Kokonaisen tunnin sen jälkeen ukko tärisi vihasta ja
tuli iltaan mennessä niin sairaaksi, että lähetti hakemaan lääkäriä.
2.
Ljagavyi
Piti siis lähteä »laukkaamaan», mutta rahoja hevosten tilaamiseen
ei ollut kopeekkaakaan, t.s., oli kaksi kaksikymmenkopeekkaista,
mutta siinä olikin kaikki, kaikki, mitä oli jäänyt niin monien vuosien
entisestä omaisuudesta! Mutta hänellä oli kotona vanha hopeainen
kello, joka jo kauan sitten oli lakannut käymästä. Hän sieppasi sen ja
vei juutalaiselle kellosepälle, jolla oli pieni kauppa markkinapaikalla.
Tämä antoi hänelle siitä kuusi ruplaa. »En odottanut saavani
niinkään paljoa!» huudahti ihastunut Mitja (hän oli yhä edelleen
ihastuksissaan), kaappasi kuusi ruplaansa ja juoksi kotiinsa. Kotona
hän täydensi rahamääräänsä lainaamalla isäntäväeltään kolme
ruplaa, minkä nämä antoivat hänelle mielellään, vaikka ne olivatkin
heidän viimeiset rahansa, niin paljon he hänestä pitivät.
Innostuksensa tilassa Mitja samassa ilmoitti heille, että hänen
kohtalonsa nyt ratkaistaan, ja kertoi heille, hyvin kiireesti tietenkin,
melkein koko »suunnitelmansa», jonka hän äsken juuri oli esittänyt
Samsonoville, sekä Samsonovin antaman ratkaisun, tulevat
toiveensa ym. Isäntäväelleen hän oli ennenkin uskonut monta
salaisuuttaan, ja senvuoksi nämä pitivätkin häntä omana ihmisenä
eikä ollenkaan ylpeänä herrana. Saatuaan tällä tavoin kokoon
yhdeksän ruplaa Mitja lähetti tilaamaan kyytihevoset Volovjan
majataloon. Mutta tällä lailla painui mieliin ja tuli pannuksi merkille se
tosiasia, että »erään tapahtuman edellisenä päivänä Mitjalla ei ollut
kopeekkaakaan ja että hän saadakseen rahoja möi kellonsa ja
lainasi isäntäväeltään kolme ruplaa, kaikki todistajain läsnäollessa».
Huomautan tästä asiasta ennakolta; myöhemmin selviää, miksi

teen niin.
Volovjan majataloon ajettuaan Mitja tosin säteili iloisesta

aavistuksesta, että viimeinkin saa loppumaan ja selvitetyksi »kaikki
nämä asiat», mutta hän vapisi myös pelosta: mitä tapahtuu nyt
Grušenjkalle hänen poissaollessaan? Entäpä jos hän päättääkin
juuri tänään lopultakin mennä Fjodor Pavlovitšin luo? Tästä syystä
Mitja oli lähtenyt matkaan ilmoittamatta mitään Grušenjkalle ja
käskien isäntäväkeään tarkoin pitämään salassa, minne hän oli
joutunut, jos joku häntä kysyisi. »Ehdottomasti, ehdottomasti on tänä
iltana palattava takaisin», hoki hän rattailla täristessään, »ja tuo
Ljagavyi on kenties kuljetettava tänne… tämän asian
loppuunsuorittamista varten»… näin ajatteli Mitja mielen ahdistusta
tuntien, mutta voi! — hänen haaveittensa ei oltu ollenkaan sallittu
toteutua hänen »suunnitelmansa» mukaisesti.
Ensiksikin hän myöhästyi, kun lähti oikotietä Volovjan kievarista.

Tämä kyläntie ei ollutkaan kahdentoista, vaan kahdeksantoista
virstan pituinen. Toiseksi hän ei tavannut pappi Iljinskiä kotona, sillä
tämä oli mennyt naapurikylään. Sill'aikaa kuin Mitja etsiskeli häntä ja
ajoin naapurikylään yhä samoilla, jo matkasta väsyneillä hevosilla,
ennätti miltei yö tulla. Pappi, aran ja ystävällisen näköinen mies,
selitti hänelle heti, että Ljagavyi tosin oli aluksi asunut hänen
luonaan, mutta on nyt Suhoi Poselokissa ja yöpyy sinne
metsänvartijan mökkiin, sillä hänellä on sielläkin metsäkauppoja.
Kun Mitja innokkaasti pyysi pappia opastamaan hänet Ljagavyin luo
heti paikalla ja »siten tavallaan pelastamaan» hänet, niin pappi
aluksi hiukan epäröityään suostuikin opastamaan hänet Suhoi
Poselokiin; nähtävästi hänessä oli herännyt uteliaisuus. Mutta
pahaksi onneksi hän neuvoi menemään sinne jalkaisin, koska sinne
oli vain virstan verran ja »pikkuisen päälle». Mitja tietysti suostui ja
lähti harppaamaan pitkillä askelillaan niin, että pappi-rukka miltei
juoksi hänen jäljessään. Tämä ei ollut vielä vanha mies ja oli hyvin
varovainen. Mitja alkoi hänen kanssaan heti puhua suunnitelmistaan,
pyysi kiihkeästi ja hermostuneesti neuvoja Ljagavyihin nähden ja oli
äänessä koko matkan. Pappi kuunteli tarkkaavaisesti, mutta antoi
vähän neuvoja. Mitjan kysymyksiin hän vastasi vältellen: »En tiedä,
oh, en tiedä, mistäpä minä sen tietäisin» jne. Kun Mitja alkoi puhua
perintöriidoistaan isänsä kanssa, niin pappi ihan pelästyi, sillä hän oli
jossakin riippuvaisuussuhteessa Fjodor Pavlovitšiin. Ihmetellen hän
muuten tiedusteli, miksi Mitja nimitti tätä kauppaa käyvää talonpoika
Gorstkinia nimellä Ljagavyi, ja selitti vakavasti Mitjalle, että vaikka
tuo toinen todella on Ljagavyi, niin hän ei kuitenkaan ole Ljagavyi,
sillä tästä nimestä hän suuresti loukkaantuu, ja että häntä on
ehdottomasti nimitettävä Gorstkiniksi, »muuten ette saa mitään
toimeen hänen kanssaan eikä hän rupea edes kuuntelemaan»,
lopetti pappi. Mitja hämmästyi heti jossakin määrin ja selitti, että niin
oli tätä nimittänyt itse Samsonov. Tämän asianhaaran kuultuaan
pappi heti sotki pois koko asian, vaikka hän olisi tehnyt hyvän työn,
jos olisi silloin kohta selittänyt Dmitri Fjodorovitšille arvelunsa:
nimittäin että jos itse Samsonov oli lähettänyt hänet tuon talonpojan
luo nimittäen tätä Ljagavyiksi, niin eiköhän hän ollut jostakin syystä
tehnyt sitä piloillaan ja eiköhän siinä ollut jotakin kieroa? Mutta
Mitjalla ei ollut aikaa takertua »sellaisiin pikkuseikkoihin». Hän
harppaili kiireesti ja arvasi vasta heidän tultuaan Suhoi Poselokiin,
että he eivät olleet kulkeneet virstaa eikä puoltatoista, vaan
varmaankin kolme virstaa; se harmitti häntä, mutta hän nieli
harminsa. He astuivat sisälle mökkiin. Metsänvartija, papin tuttu, asui
mökin toisessa puoliskossa, ja toisessa, siistillä puolella eteisen
takana, piti majaa Gorstkin. Mentiin tuohon siistiin tupaan ja
sytytettiin talikynttilä. Tupaa oli kovasti lämmitetty. Honkaisella
pöydällä seisoi sammunut teekeitin sekä tarjotin, jolla oli kuppeja,
tyhjennetty rommipullo, ei aivan tyhjäksi juotu viinapullo sekä
vehnäleivän tähteitä. Itse matkamies makasi pitkällään penkillä,
päällysnuttu mytyksi käärittynä pään alla tyynyn virkaa
toimittamassa, ja kuorsasi raskaasti. Mitja jäi seisomaan
neuvottomana. »Tietysti hänet on herätettävä: minun asiani on hyvin
tärkeä, minä olen kovin kiiruhtanut ja minulla on kiire palata kotiin
vielä tänään», alkoi Mitja puhua hätäisesti; mutta pappi ja vartija
seisoivat äänettöminä lausumatta mielipidettään. Mitja astui
nukkuvan luo ja alkoi itse häntä herätellä, teki sen tarmokkaasti,
mutta nukkuva ei herännyt. »Hän on juovuksissa», päätteli Mitja,
»mutta mitä minun on tehtävä, Herra Jumala, mitä minun on
tehtävä!» Ja äkkiä hän hirveän kärsimättömänä alkoi nykiä nukkuvaa
käsistä ja jaloista, heilutella hänen päätään, nostaa häntä istumaan
penkille, ja sai sentään varsin kauan ponnisteltuaan vain sen verran
aikaan, että toinen alkoi järjettömästi mörähdellä ja pontevasti, joskin
epäselvin sanoin, kiroilla.
— Ei odottakaa mieluummin jonkin aikaa, — lausui viimein pappi,

— sillä nähtävästi hän ei mihinkään kykene.
— On juonut koko päivän, — lausui vartija.
— Herra Jumala! — huudahteli Mitja. — Jospa te vain tietäisitte,

miten välttämätöntä tämä minulle on, ja miten epätoivoissani nyt
olen!
— Ei, parempi olisi teidän odottaa aamuun, — sanoi pappi

uudelleen.
— Aamuun? Armahtakaa, se on mahdotonta! — Ja

epätoivoissaan hän oli vähällä taas syöksyä juopuneen kimppuun
tätä herättämään, mutta luopui heti aikeestaan ymmärtäen kaikki
ponnistelunsa hyödyttömiksi. Pappi oli vaiti, uninen vartija oli synkkä.
— Kuinka kauheita murhenäytelmiä ihmisille tuottaakaan realismi!

— lausui Mitja aivan epätoivoissaan. Hiki valui hänen kasvoistaan.
Käyttäen hetkeä hyväkseen pappi varsin järkevästi selitti, että vaikka
onnistuttaisiinkin herättämään nukkuja, niin hän juovuksissa ollen ei
kuitenkaan pysty mihinkään keskusteluun, »mutta koska teillä on
tärkeä asia, niin on varmempaa jättää se aamuun»… Mitja levitti
käsiään ja suostui.
— Pastori, minä jään tänne kynttilän kera ja otan otollisesta

silmänräpäyksestä vaarin. Kun hän herää, niin silloin heti alan…
Minä maksan sinulle kynttilästä, — kääntyi hän vartijan puoleen, —
ja yösijasta myös, muistat vielä myöhemminkin Dmitri Karamazovin.
En vain tiedä, miten teidän olonne, pastori, nyt järjestyy: mihin te
käytte makaamaan?
— Ei, minä menen kotiini. Ajan sinne hänen tammallaan, — sanoi

pappi näyttäen vartijaa. — Hyvästi nyt vain, toivon asianne
menestyvän hyvin.
Niin päätettiinkin. Pappi lähti matkaan tammalla, iloissaan siitä,

että oli lopultakin päässyt irti, mutta pyöritellen yhä ymmällä ollen
päätään ja ajatellen: eiköhän pitäne huomenna hyvissä ajoin
ilmoittaa tästä mielenkiintoisesta tapahtumasta hyväntekijälle Fjodor
Pavlovitšille, »muuten hän, kun sattuu paha onni, voi saada tietää
asiasta, suuttuu ja lakkaa osoittamasta suosiotaan». Vartija lähti
korvallistaan raapien ääneti omaan tupaansa, ja Mitja istuutui
penkille ottaakseen, kuten oli sanonut, vaarin silmänräpäyksestä.
Syvä surumielisyys laskeutui raskaan sumun tavoin hänen
sieluunsa. Syvä, kauhea suru! Hän istui, mietti eikä voinut mitään
keksiä. Kynttilä alkoi olla lopussa, sirkka alkoi sirittää, lämmitetyssä
huoneessa alkoi olla sietämättömän tukahduttavaa. Hänen
mieleensä nousi äkkiä puutarha, käytävä puutarhan perällä, isän
talossa avautuu salaperäisesti ovi, ja ovesta juoksee sisälle
Grušenjka… Hän hypähti lavitsalta.
— Murhenäytelmä! — lausui hän hampaitaan kiristellen, astui,

koneellisesti nukkuvan luo ja alkoi katsella hänen kasvojaan. Tämä
oli laiha, ei vielä vanha talonpoika, jolla oli sangen pitkulaiset kasvot,
ruskeat kiharat ja pitkä, ohut parta, yllä karttuunipaita ja musta liivi,
jonka taskusta näkyivät hopeisen kellon perät. Mitja katseli näitä
kasvoja hirveätä vihaa tuntien, ja jostakin syystä hänessä herätti
erityisesti vihaa se, että miehellä oli kihara tukka. Pääasiassa oli
sietämättömän harmillista se, että hän, Mitja, joka oli niin paljon
uhrannut, niin paljon jättänyt, seisoo tässä hänen edessään
kiireellisen asiansa kanssa perin kiusattuna, mutta tuo vetelehtijä,
»josta nyt riippuu koko minun kohtaloni, kuorsaa niinkuin ei olisi
mitään tapahtunut, aivan kuin olisi kokonaan toiselta
taivaankappaleelta». »Oi kohtalon ironiaa!» huudahti Mitja ja
hyökkäsi äkkiä aivan pyörällä päästään taas herättämään juopunutta
talonpoikaa. Hän herätteli tätä aivan raivostuneena, nyki häntä,
töykki, löikin, mutta puuhattuaan noin viisi minuuttia saamatta
taaskaan mitään toimeen hän palasi voimattoman epätoivon vallassa
penkille ja istuutui.
— Tyhmää, tyhmää! — huudahteli Mitja. — Ja… miten

epärehellistä onkaan tämä kaikki! — lisäsi hän äkkiä jostakin syystä.
Hänen päätään alkoi hirveästi kivistää: »Olisikohan jätettävä asia
sikseen? On mentävä kokonaan pois», välähti hänen mielessään.
»Ei, on oltava aamuun. Jään kuin jäänkin suottakin! Miksi minä
tulinkaan, jos nyt lähden? Eikä tässä pääse lähtemäänkään, miten
täältä nyt voisi ajaa tiehensä, oi, se on hullutusta!»
Mutta hänen päätään alkoi kivistää yhä enemmän. Hän istui
liikkumatta eikä ymmärtänyt itsekään, kun alkoi torkahdella ja äkkiä
nukkui istualleen. Nähtävästi hän oli nukkunut pari tuntia tai
enemmänkin. Hän heräsi päänkivistykseen, joka oli niin sietämätön,
että pani huutamaan. Ohimoissa jyskytti, päälakea kivisti; herättyään
hän ei pitkään aikaan päässyt täysin selville itsestään eikä tajunnut,
mitä hänelle oli tapahtunut. Viimein hän arvasi, että lämmitetyssä
huoneessa oli hirveästi häkää ja että hän kenties olisi voinut kuolla.
Mutta juopunut talonpoika makasi yhä kuorsaten; kynttilä oli sulanut
ja oli sammumaisillaan. Mitja huudahti ja lähti hoippuen rientämään
eteisen läpi vartijan tupaan. Tämä heräsi pian, mutta kuultuaan
toisessa huoneessa olevan häkää hän, vaikka lähtikin liikkeelle
ryhtyäkseen tarpeellisiin toimenpiteisiin, otti koko asian niin
hämmästyttävän tyynesti, että se kummastutti ja loukkasi Mitjaa.
— Mutta hän on kuollut, hän on kuollut, ja silloin… mitä silloin? —

huuteli Mitja hurjistuneena hänen edessään.
Ovi avattiin, avattiin myös ikkuna, avattiin savutorvi, Mitja toi

eteisestä vesiämpärin, kasteli ensin oman päänsä ja sitten,
löydettyään jonkin rievun, pisti sen veteen ja asetti sen sitten
Ljagavyin päähän. Vartija suhtautui edelleen koko tapahtumaan
ikäänkuin halveksivasti ja lausui jurosti, kun oli avannut ikkunan:
»Hyvä on näinkin», sekä meni taas makaamaan jättäen Mitjalle
sytytetyn rautaisen lyhdyn. Mitja puuhasi häkää saaneen juopuneen
kanssa puolisen tuntia kostutellen tavan takaa hänen päätään ja oli
jo vakavasti aikeissa valvoa koko yön, mutta perin nääntyneenä hän
sattui hetkiseksi istahtamaan vetääkseen henkeä ja silloin hän
samassa sulki silmänsä sekä ojentautui sen jälkeen itse tietämättään
penkille ja nukkui sikeään uneen.
Hän heräsi hirveän myöhään. Oli arviolta jo kello yhdeksän
aamua. Aurinko paistoi kirkkaasti sisälle tuvan kahdesta ikkunasta.
Eilinen kiharatukkainen talonpoika istui penkillä jo alustakkiin
pukeutuneena. Hänen edessään seisoi taas teekeitin ja uusi pullo.
Entinen, eilinen, oli jo tyhjennetty ja uudesta oli juotu enemmän kuin
puolet. Mitja hypähti ylös ja huomasi yhdellä silmäyksellä, että kirottu
moukka oli taas juovuksissa, pahasti ja auttamattomasti juovuksissa.
Hän katseli miestä minuutin verran silmät pullollaan. Talonpoika
puolestaan katseli häntä ääneti ja viekkaasti, suututtavan tyynesti,
vieläpä jonkinmoisella halveksivalla ylemmyydellä, näytti Mitjasta.
Hän riensi miehen luo.
— Anteeksi, nähkääs… minä… te olette luultavasti kuullut

täkäläiseltä vartijalta toisessa tuvassa: minä olen luutnantti Dmitri
Karamazov, sen ukko Karamazovin poika, jonka kanssa suvaitsette
hieroa kauppaa metsiköstä…
— Sen sinä valehtelet! — tokaisi talonpoika äkkiä lujasti ja

rauhallisesti.
— Mitenkä valehtelen? Tunnette kai Fjodor Pavlovitšin?
— En mitenkään tunne sinun Fjodor Pavlovitšiasi, — lausui

talonpoika ja hänen kielensä toimi omituisen kankeasti.
— Metsikköä, metsikköä te häneltä ostelette; herätkää toki,

muistakaa.
Isä Pavel Iljinski opasti minut tänne… Te olette kirjoittanut
Samsonoville, ja hän lähetti minut teidän luoksenne… — puhui Mitja
läähättäen.
— V-valehtelet! — tokaisi taas Ljagavyi. Mitja tunsi jalkojensa
kylmenevän.
— Armahtakaa, eihän tämä ole leikkiä! Te olette kenties

päissänne. Voittehan lopultakin puhua, ymmärtää… muuten…
muuten minä en ymmärrä mitään!
— Sinä olet värjäri!
— Paratkoon, minä olen Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov, minulla on

teille tarjous… edullinen tarjous… sangen edullinen… nimenomaan
metsikköä koskeva.
Talonpoika siveli arvokkaasti partaansa.
— Ei, sinä teit urakkasopimuksen ja kähvelsit kuin konna. Sinä

olet konna!
— Minä vakuutan teille, että te erehdytte! — Mitja väänteli käsiään

epätoivoissaan. Talonpoika siveli yhä partaansa ja siristi äkkiä
viekkaasti silmiään.
— Ei, tiedätkö, mitä sinun pitää minulle näyttää: näytä sinä minulle
sellainen laki, että on lupa laitella vahinkoja, kuuletko! Sinä olet
konna, ymmärrätkö sen?
Mitja vetäytyi synkkänä takaisin, ja äkkiä ikäänkuin »jokin iski

häntä otsaan», kuten hän itse myöhemmin sanoi.
Silmänräpäyksessä jokin valaisi hänen järkensä, »syttyi soihtu, ja
minä ymmärsin kaikki». Hän seisoi jähmettyneenä eikä voinut
käsittää, kuinka hän, älykäs mies, oli voinut antautua tämmöiseen
tyhmyyteen, takertua tuommoiseen juttuun ja jatkaa tätä kaikkea
melkein kokonaisen vuorokauden, puuhata tuon Ljagavyin kanssa,
kostutella hänen päätään… »No, mies on humalassa, niin että näkee
jo pikku piruja, ja juopi vielä yhtä painoa viikon, — mitäpä tässä
maksaa odottaa? Entäpä jos Samsonov on tahallaan lähettänyt
minut tänne? Entäpä jos Grušenjka… Voi hyvä Jumala, mitä
olenkaan tehnyt!…»
Talonpoika istui, katseli häntä ja naureskeli. Jossakin muussa

tapauksessa Mitja kenties olisi tappanut tuon hölmön vihapäissään,
mutta nyt hän itse oli mennyt niin heikoksi kuin lapsi. Hän astui hiljaa
lavitsan luo, otti päällystakkinsa, puki ääneti sen ylleen ja meni ulos
tuvasta. Toisessa tuvassa hän ei tavannut vartijaa, siellä ei ollut
ketään. Hän otti taskustaan pientä rahaa viisikymmentä kopeekkaa
ja pani ne pöydälle maksuksi yösijasta, kynttilästä ja häiriöstä.
Mentyään ulos tuvasta hän näki ympärillään vain metsää eikä mitään
muuta. Hän lähti kulkemaan umpimähkään, muistamatta edes mihin
suuntaan oli lähdettävä mökiltä — oikeaanko vai vasempaanko;
kiiruhtaessaan edellisenä yönä tänne papin kanssa hän ei ollut
tarkannut tietä. Ei minkäänlaista kostonhalua ollut hänen sielussaan,
ei edes Samsonovia kohtaan. Hän asteli kapeata metsätietä
ajattelematta mitään, hajamielisenä, »kadonnein aattein»,
huolehtimatta vähääkään siitä, minne meni. Vastaan tuleva lapsi olisi
voittanut hänet, niin voimattomaksi hän oli äkkiä tullut sielun ja
ruumiin puolesta. Jotenkuten hän kuitenkin joutui ulos metsästä:
hänen edessään oli äkkiä niitettyjä paljaita peltoja
silmänkantamattomiin: »Mikä toivottomuus, mikä kuolema
ylt'ympäri!» toisteli hän astuen yhä vain eteenpäin.
Ohikulkijat pelastivat hänet: ajomies kyyditsi kyläntietä jotakin

ukkoa, joka oli kauppias. Kun he saapuivat kohdalle, kysyi Mitja tietä,
ja selville kävi, että toisetkin olivat menossa Volovjaan. Ryhdyttiin
neuvottelemaan, ja Mitja pääsi rattaille mukaan. Noin kolmen tunnin
kuluttua oltiin perillä. Volovjan majatalossa Mitja tilasi heti kyydin
kaupunkiin, mutta huomasi äkkiä olevansa hirveän nälkäinen.
Hevosia valjastettaessa hänelle laitettiin munakokkeli. Hän söi sen
kaikki silmänräpäyksessä, söi ison leivänkimpaleen, söi esille
ilmestyneen makkaran ja joi kolme ryyppyä viinaa. Vahvistettuaan
itseään hän reipastui ja hänen mielensä kirkastui taas. Hän kiiti tietä
pitkin, hoputti kyytimiestä ja teki yht'äkkiä uuden ja aivan
»muuttumattoman» suunnitelman, miten saisi vielä ennen saman
päivän iltaa »nuo kirotut rahat». »Ja ajatella, ajatella, että noiden
jonninjoutavien kolmentuhannen takia tuhoutuu ihmiskohtalo!» Ja
jollei hän olisi lakkaamatta ajatellut Grušenjkaa ja sitä, eikö tälle ollut
jotakin tapahtunut, niin hän kenties olisi taas tullut aivan iloiseksi.
Mutta Grušenjkan ajattelu tunkeutui joka hetki hänen sieluunsa
terävän veitsen tavoin.
3.
Kultakaivos
Tämä oli juuri se Mitjan käynti, josta Grušenjka oli niin peläten
kertonut Rakitinille. Grušenjka odotteli silloin »pikalähettiään» ja oli
hyvin iloissaan siitä, että Mitja ei ollut käynyt edellisenä eikä sinä
päivänä, sekä toivoi, että hän, jos Jumala suo, ei tule ennen hänen
lähtöään, mutta silloin oli Mitja äkkiä tullutkin. Jatkon me tiedämme:
päästäkseen hänestä eroon oli Grušenjka heti pyytänyt häntä
saattamaan häntä Kuzjma Samsonovin luo, jonne Grušenjkan muka
välttämättömästi oli mentävä »rahoja laskemaan», ja kun Mitja oli
hänet sinne saattanut, niin hyvästellessään häntä Kuzjman portilla oli
Grušenjka ottanut häneltä lupauksen, että Mitja tulisi häntä
hakemaan kellon käydessä kahtatoista saattaakseen hänet takaisin
kotiin. Mitja oli iloissaankin tästä asiain järjestymisestä: »Hän istuu
Kuzjman luona, ei mene siis Fjodor Pavlovitšin luo… jollei hän vain
valehtele», lisäsi hän samassa. Mutta hänestä näytti, että Grušenjka
ei ollut valehdellut. Hänen mustasukkaisuutensa oli juuri sitä laatua,
että ollessaan erillään rakastamastaan naisesta hän kuvitteli heti
Jumala ties mitä kauheita asioita siitä, mitä naiselle tapahtuu ja
miten tämä siellä »pettää» häntä, mutta juostuaan taas naisen luo
järkytettynä, masentuneena, täysin vakuutettuna, että tämä on
ennättänyt olla hänelle uskoton, hän heti katsahdettuaan tämän
kasvoihin, tämän naisen nauraviin, iloisiin ja ystävällisiin kasvoihin,
tuossa tuokiossa reipastui mieleltään, lakkasi heti paikalla
epäilemästä ja iloisesti häveten soimasi itse itseään
mustasukkaisuudestaan. Saatettuaan Grušenjkan hän riensi
kotiinsa. Oi, hänen piti ennättää vielä toimittaa niin paljon tänään!
Mutta ainakin oli taakka sydämeltä pudonnut. »Pitäisi vain pian
saada tietää Smerdjakovilta, eikö siellä ole tapahtunut mitään eilen
illalla, eikö Grušenjka, mene tiedä, ole käynyt Fjodor Pavlovitšin
luona, uh!» välähti hänen päässään. Niin että hän ei ollut ennättänyt
vielä juosta asuntoonsa, kun mustasukkaisuus jo taas oli alkanut
liikahdella hänen rauhattomassa sydämessään.
Mustasukkaisuus! »Othello ei ole mustasukkainen, hän on

herkkäuskoinen», huomautti Puškin, ja jo tämä huomautus yksistään
todistaa tämän suuren venäläisen runoilijan älyn syvyyttä. Othellolla
on yksinkertaisesti rikki ruhjottu sielu, ja koko hänen
maailmankatsomuksensa on synkistynyt, sillä hänen ihanteensa on
sortunut. Mutta Othello ei rupea piileksimään, vakoilemaan,
pitämään salaa silmällä: hän on luottavainen. Päinvastoin häntä piti
johtaa äärelle, työntää eteenpäin, kiihoittaa erikoisin ponnistuksin,
että hän huomaisi uskottomuuden. Todella mustasukkainen ihminen
ei ole tämmöinen. On mahdotonta kuvitellakin koko sitä häpeätä ja
siveellistä alennustilaa, mihin mustasukkainen kykenee antautumaan
ilman mitään omantunnonvaivoja. Eikä ole niin, että he kaikki olisivat
alhaisia ja likaisia sieluja. Päinvastoin yleväsydäminen ihminen,
jonka rakkaus on puhdasta, täynnä uhrautuvaisuutta, voi kuitenkin
piiloutua pöytien alle, palkata halpamielisiä ihmisiä avukseen ja
viihtyä vakoilun ja salakuuntelun iljettävimmässä loassa. Othello ei
olisi voinut millään ehdolla tyytyä uskottomuuteen, — hän ei olisi
voinut antaa anteeksi ja tyytyä, — vaikka hänen sielunsa ei tunne
vihaa ja on viaton kuin lapsen sielu. Mutta toisin on todella
mustasukkaisen laita: vaikeata on kuvitella, mihin voi tyytyä ja viihtyä
ja mitä voi antaa anteeksi joku mustasukkainen! Mustasukkaiset
antavat anteeksi helpommin kuin kukaan muu, ja sen tietävät kaikki
naiset. Mustasukkainen kykenee tavattoman pian (tietysti pantuaan
ensin toimeen hirveän kohtauksen) antamaan anteeksi esimerkiksi jo
melkein todistetun uskottomuuden, hänen itsensä näkemät syleilyt ja
suutelot, jos hän samaan aikaan on esimerkiksi voinut jollakin tavoin
tulla vakuutetuksi siitä, että tämä tapahtui »viimeisen kerran» ja että
kilpailija tämän jälkeen heti katoaa, matkustaa maan ääriin tai että
hän itse vie naisensa pois johonkin sellaiseen paikkaan, johon tuo
peloittava kilpailija ei enää tule. Tietysti sovinto tapahtuu vain
hetkeksi, sillä jos kilpailija todella häviäisikin tiehensä, niin
mustasukkainen itse keksii jo seuraavana päivänä toisen, uuden, ja
tulee tälle mustasukkaiseksi. Luulisi, että mitä arvoa onkaan
sellaisella rakkaudella, jota täytyy noin pitää silmällä, ja mitä maksaa
rakkaus, jota pitää niin suurin ponnistuksin vahtia? Mutta juuri tätä ei
todella mustasukkainen koskaan käsitä, ja kuitenkin, toden totta,
semmoisten joukossa saattaa olla yleväsydämisiäkin ihmisiä.
Merkillistä on vielä se, että nämä samat yleväsydämiset ihmiset
seisoessaan jossakin komerossa salaa kuuntelemassa ja
vakoilemassa eivät, jos kohta he »ylevillä sydämillään» eivät selvästi
ymmärräkään kaikkea sitä siivottomuutta, johon he itse ovat
vapaaehtoisesti tuppautuneet mukaan, ainakaan sillä hetkellä, kun
seisovat tuossa komerossa, milloinkaan tunne omantunnonvaivoja.
Kun Mitja näki Grušenjkan, niin hänestä katosi mustasukkaisuus ja
hän muuttui silmänräpäyksen ajaksi luottavaiseksi ja jaloksi,
halveksipa itsekin itseään huonojen tunteittensa johdosta. Tämä
merkitsi vain sitä, että hänen rakkauteensa tuota naista kohtaan
sisältyi jotakin paljon korkeampaa kuin hän itse luulikaan eikä
ainoastaan intohimoa, ei ainoastaan »ruumiin kaartuma», josta hän
oli puhunut Aljošalle. Mutta kun Grušenjka katosi hänen näkyvistään,
niin Mitja alkoi heti taas epäillä hänessä kaikkea uskottomuuden
alhaisuutta ja kavaluutta. Eikä hän tällöin tuntenut mitään
tunnonvaivoja.
Mustasukkaisuus siis alkoi uudelleen kuohua hänessä. Joka

tapauksessa täytyi kiiruhtaa. Ensityöksi oli saatava vaikka pikkuisen
rahaa lainatuksi. Eiliset yhdeksän ruplaa olivat melkein kaikki
menneet matkalla, eikä aivan ilman rahaa tietenkään pääse
minnekään askeltakaan. Samalla kuin hän äsken rattailla istuessaan
oli miettinyt uutta suunnitelmaansa, oli hän myös tuuminut, mistä
saisi taskulainan. Hänellä oli pari kaksintaistelupistolia panoksineen,
ja se, että hän ei tähän saakka vielä ollut niitä pantannut, johtui siitä,
että hän piti niistä enemmän kuin mistään muista kapineistaan.
»Pääkaupunki»-ravintolassa hän oli jo kauan sitten jonkin verran
tutustunut erääseen nuoreen virkamieheen ja jotenkin saanut siellä
myös tietää, että tämä naimaton ja sangen varakas virkamies
intohimoisesti rakastaa aseita, ostelee pistoleja, revolvereja, tikareja,
ripustelee niitä seinilleen, näyttää tutuilleen, kehuskelee, osaa
mainiosti selittää revolverin rakenteen, kuinka se on ladattava,
kuinka laukaistava ym. Kauan ajattelematta Mitja heti meni hänen
luokseen ja ehdotti, että hän ottaisi pistolit pantiksi ja antaisi lainaksi
kymmenen ruplaa. Virkamies alkoi ilostuneena pyydellä häntä
myymään ne, mutta Mitja ei suostunut, ja virkamies antoi hänelle
kymmenen ruplaa ilmoittaen, ettei hän millään ehdolla ota korkoja.
He erosivat ystävinä. Mitja kiiruhti, hän riensi Fjodor Pavlovitšin talon
takalistoon, huvimajaansa, kutsuakseen mahdollisimman pian
puheilleen Smerdjakovin. Mutta tällä tavoin tuli merkille pannuksi
taaskin se tosiasia, että vain kolme tai neljä tuntia erään tapahtuman
edellä, josta tuonnempana tulee paljon puhuttavaksi, Mitjalla ei ollut
kopeekkaakaan rahaa ja että hän panttasi kymmenestä ruplasta
rakkaimmat kapineensa, kun taas äkkiä kolmen tunnin kuluttua
hänellä oli käsissään tuhansia… Mutta minähän teen hyppäyksen
eteenpäin.
Maria Kondratjevnan (Fjodor Pavlovitšin naapurin) luona häntä

odotti tieto Smerdjakovin sairaudesta, mikä tavattomasti hämmästytti
häntä ja teki hänet levottomaksi. Hän kuuli kertomuksen
putoamisesta kellariin, sitten kaatuvataudista, lääkärin tulosta, Fjodor
Pavlovitšin huolista; mielenkiinnolla hän kuuli senkin, että veli Ivan oli
jo aamulla lähtenyt Moskovaan. »Lienee ajanut ennen minua
Volovjan ohi», ajatteli Dmitri Fjodorovitš, mutta hän oli hirveän
huolissaan Smerdjakovin vuoksi: »Kuinka nyt käy, kuka nyt vahtii ja
antaa minulle tietoja?» Innokkaasti hän alkoi kysellä noilta naisilta,
eivätkö he olleet huomanneet mitään eilen illalla. Nämä ymmärsivät
sangen hyvin, mitä hän tiedusteli, ja haihduttivat täydelleen hänen
epäluulonsa: ei kukaan ollut käynyt, Ivan Fjodorovitš oli ollut yöllä
kotona, »kaikki oli täysin järjestyksessä». Mitja rupesi ajattelemaan.
Epäilemättä pitää tänäänkin vahtia, mutta missä: täälläkö vai
Samsonovin portilla? Hän päätti, että oli vahdittava kummassakin
paikassa, aina asianhaarain mukaan, kunnes, kunnes… Seikka oli
semmoinen, että nyt hänen edessään oli tuo »suunnitelma»,
äskeinen, uusi ja jo varma suunnitelma, jonka hän oli keksinyt
rattailla ja jonka toteuttamista ei enää voinut lykätä. Mitja päätti
uhrata siihen tunnin: »Tunnissa saan kaikki ratkaistuksi, saan kaikki
tietää, ja silloin, silloin, ensin menen Samsonovin taloon, otan
selville, onko Grušenjka siellä, ja sitten silmänräpäyksessä takaisin
tänne ja täällä kello yhteentoista asti, sitten taas Samsonovin luo
Grušenjkaa hakemaan ja saattamaan häntä kotiin.» Näin hän päätti.
Hän kiiruhti kotiinsa, peseytyi, kampasi tukkansa, puhdisti

vaatteensa, pukeutui ja lähti rouva Hohlakovin luo. Voi, hänen
»suunnitelmansa» oli täällä. Hän oli päättänyt lainata kolmetuhatta
tältä rouvalta. Ja tärkeintä on, että hän äkkiä ja ikäänkuin tuota pikaa
oli tullut tavattoman varmaksi siitä, ettei saa kieltävää vastausta.
Kenties ihmetellään sitä, että jos kerran hänellä oli tuo varmuus, niin
miksi hän ei jo aikaisemmin ollut mennyt sinne, niin sanoakseni
omaan piiriinsä, vaan lähti Samsonovin luo, laadultaan aivan oudon
miehen luo, jonka kanssa hän ei edes osannut oikealla tavalla
puhua. Mutta asia oli niin, että hän viime kuukauden aikana oli miltei
vieraantunut rouva Hohlakovista, jota hän aikaisemminkin tunsi
verraten vähän, ja sitäpaitsi hän tiesi varsin hyvin, ettei rouva
Hohlakovkaan voinut sietää häntä. Tämä rouva oli vihannut häntä
alusta alkaen yksinkertaisesti siitä syystä, että hän oli Katerina
Ivanovnan sulhanen, kun rouva Hohlakov taas jostakin syystä oli
saanut päähänsä, että Katerina Ivanovnan olisi hylättävä hänet ja
mentävä naimisiin »miellyttävän, ritarillisesti sivistyneen Ivan
Fjodorovitšin kanssa, jolla oli niin sievä käytöstapa.» Mitjan
käytöstapaa hän taas vihasi. Mitja puolestaan oli naureskellut
hänelle ja kerran jotenkin tullut sanoneeksi hänestä, että tämä rouva
on »yhtä vilkas ja ujostelematon kuin sivistymätönkin». Ja äsken
aamulla, rattailla, hänen mieleensä oli tullut valoisa ajatus: »Jos hän

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Ways of Seeing in the Neoliberal State:

A Controversial Play and Its Contexts

Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad

ISBN 978-3-030-85983-1 ISBN 978-3-030-85984-8 (eBook)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

information science and media studies for providing me with a sabbatical

Bergen Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad

1 Introduction: The Public Confronts Other Ways

Introduction: The Public Confronts Other

Abstract The introductory chapter provides relevant background infor-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Keywords Sousveillance · Racism · Experimental geography · Activism ·

information society ineludibly means living in a surveillance society.3 Prac-

3 David Lyon, Surveillance Studies: An Overview, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007.

rather than seeing surveillance as something inaugurated by new tech-

If surveillance originates in racism, and there is certainly evidence

practices. It is in the context of sousveillance as resistance to standard-

8 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” [1934], Understanding Brecht, trans.

writes, is “to reconfigure the relations and apparatus of cultural produc-

11 Trevor Paglen, “Experimental Geography: From Cultural Production to the Produc-

16 Kieran, Cashell, Aftershock: The Ethics of Contemporary Transgressive Art, London:

Party’s Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a high-profile politician, wrote on

17 Steinar Solås Suvatne, “Teaterstykke filmet hjemmet til Tybring-Gjedde. Skuespilleren

and even language itself is gradually eroding democratic values, which, I

marketable commodity,” Lehmann instead underscores the emphatically

While it may be difficult to argue that theater continues to be a mass

25 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre [1999], trans. Karen Jürs-Munby,

that illustrates Lehmann’s point that postdrama replaces dramaturgy with

rarely yields new insights—so an abandonment of formal experimenta-

who maintain that postdramatic theater is more appropriate than tradi-

37 Jerome Carroll, Karen Jürs-Munby, and Steve Giles, “Introduction: Postdramatic

While performance art may thus constitute a space of empowerment and

subject to less benign interpositions. As theorized by among others Helen

New Ways of Seeing: The Judicial

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Keywords John Berger · White privilege · Participatory art · Legal

leaning on neuroscientific and cognitive developments has affirmed this.5

Thanks in no small part to a series of largely misguided reviews and

The philosophical basis of privacy policy overemphasizes the importance of

In May 2017, about eighteen months prior to the opening of Ways of

civilians sympathetic to her ideological program submit photographs of

10 Hege Storhaug, “Rights dokumenterer den kulturelle revolusjonen,” Human Rights

sounded familiar. Then I realized I had seen something kind of similar

12 See Asbjørn Grønstad, Screening the Unwatchable: Spaces of Negation in Post-

that begins in September 2020 painstakingly examines all the instances

practices that take on the production of space in a self-reflexive way, prac-

Thinking about relationality, space, and photography/film in this way is

artists. In a way, Ways of Seeing turns slivers of physical space into an

Messenger strategizing suggests that the group intended to report the

also in fact pertain to Bertheussen and Ways of Seeing. It is unquestion-

20 Leif Dahlberg, “Introduction: Visualizing Law and Authority,” in Visualizing Law

Vi venter i hagen, som steinene venter, som ringdua og svarttrosten og

22 Black Box, “Ways of Seeing,” Program, https://blackbox.no/en/546a37f7-24f6-

kutryner, håpets rotspisende parasitter. Sakte roer hjertet seg. Vi tenner

Elden’s courtroom employment of the Black Box text epitomizes this

26 Bleistein v Donaldson, 188 U.S. 239, 251 (1903).

what remains incontrovertible is that she did show up during a perfor-

Mitja katkaisi järjettömän puheensa tuohon »siinä se» ja hypähti

— Suokaa anteeksi, me emme harjoita tämänlaatuisia liiketoimia.

Mitja tunsi äkkiä jalkojensa pettävän.

— Kuinkas minä nyt, Kuzjma Kuzjmitš, — mutisi hän hymyillen

— Katsokaahan, hyvä herra, tämmöiset asiat ovat meille hankalat,