The recommendation of the month from the CNDB Media Library is an issue of Performance Research that will blow your mind, dedicated to failure, a theme that affects (and at the beginning of this year) the field of performing arts and culture in general. We invite you to check it out and participate on Friday, January 30, at the Oracle of Performance Research, from 7:30 p.m. at CNDB, for one-to-one readings for the year 2026, performed by Paula Dunker, Renate Dinu, and Corina Cimpoieru. Only good things about failure!
Fall · Shame · Vulnerability · Fear · Blockage · Fault · Powerlessness · Confrontation · Disagreement · Creativity · Pause · Diagnosis · Fragility · Transformation
Not all failures are the same: some are minor, others common, some progressive, others cataclysmic. Perhaps it is their variety that makes them so appealing. Failure is productive because it requires repair. In failure, we are forced to think critically, to reimagine ourselves, to do something new. Failure offers a break and a refuge from the cycle of success that can be a trap of conformity, setting expectations, demanding repeated performance. Failure can also be dissent. It rebels against expertise, virtuosity, ossified competence. Failure also indicates the limits of what is possible at a given time and place. It helps us to see the society in which we are embedded in a reflexive way. Failure makes visible the places where aspirations and material realities collide. Failure, as an accusation, weakens the other. If we dare to look at those doomed to failure, set up to fail, condemned to failure, we see the limits of power. Failure generates fear. And the primitive fear of failure is more destructive than failure itself. Failure can also be a state of raw human beauty. When we fail, we are vulnerable, fragile, unguarded, open. We are perhaps most completely ourselves. Deliberate failure in the performing arts can be a strategy to stimulate creativity, a tool to discover new forms, ideas, worlds. This book’s advice to you: Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)
Performative reference/cover image: Unhinged (2010), Vlatka Horvat, durational performance, created for House Without a Maid, a project initiated by Jorge Leon & Simone Aughterlony.
Artist website and project info here:
Performative gesture: instructions for a one-minute sculpture: freeze for one minute in inactivity and indecision
Detalii despre Mediateca CNDB și mai multe perspective asupra eșecului, atât ca posibilă sursă de inspirație, câț și ca o revoltă împotriva limitei puterii, găsiți AICI.