"The bottom line of the performance is crystallized: instead of radicalizing our identities, instead of cultivating our wounds, we need to radicalize – to expand – and to cultivate the democratic table."

RUNE

Dear Pieter. I'm so excited soon to see your play about democracy. You informed us in you dossier that the secret society do not succeed according to plan with their political objective, and since you happen to contain a further reading list (!) on political theory with Hannah Arendt included, I know she warned about the dangers in pursuing politics as a form of making, or planning. Free actions seldom, if not never, go as planned. So however the good intention we are stuck with continuous political discussions at best.

The expansion of democracy that you call for also made me think of her critique of the Founding Fathers of America, that they left out one of their most genuine experience in writing the American constitution, the experience of «public happiness», the joy of taking part in politics, which was an experience of many Americans in the liberation from England, and in so many other revolutions. But they some how discarded all this and created the model of what we now call representative democracy in their fear of demos and populism. (Arendt calls it an oligarchy, the rule by the few, that we are stuck with today in so many ways).

PIETER

You bring on an interesting point: the fear of demos. Yes. That's what the performance is about. We just had elections, and the right wing won with a landslide victory. Instantly the 18% voters are insulted and judged: they are immoral and stupid. But the society refuses to consider them for what they are: political subjects. We can't just stick to our despite. We may not agree, but we have to live with this mess.

Democracy is the most shameless thing on earth. It means we have to live together, hopefully in peace. Harmony is not necessary for me – peace is. There will always be "others" : for some they are the extreme-right voters, for others the radical muslims, for yet others experimental artists, or artists sending out wrong texts... The call to deal with these radical others counts for all of us.

The bottom line of the performance is crystallized: instead of radicalizing our identities, instead of cultivating our wounds, we need to radicalize – to expand – and to cultivate the democratic table. Everyone welcome, however unpleasant that might be. It's not about having moral judgements over each other, it's about the painful exercise that we call democracy. (Chantal Mouffes "Left populism" happened to be most influential book of the reading list).

RUNE

Yes, a painful exercise indeed. Still I find your «bottom line» most agreeable and I believe you are right. So in what way should we best cultivate the «democratic table»? Is the fear of the people a phantom? And what did Chantal Mouffe feed into this performance?

PIETER

There are many different ways to expand democracy. It goes from local grass root movements, to alternative voting systems. There is for instance the Czech mathematician Karl Janececk, who developed an algorithm in which one voter can cast multiple votes on the same question or candidate: it allows voters as well to say; I really don't want this. So a negative vote is counted as well, it creates a much more refined and subtle landscape. But there are as well experiments like the G1000, where a 1000 citizens are invited, selected on parameters such as income, belief, education and so on, to have a divers representation of the population, these 1000 people are informed and assisted by academic experts on specific topics, and they can cast their vote. And these are just the very status quo-like ones.

RUNE

Speaking of participatory politics (I believe), you don't do participatory theater do you?

PIETER

I don't believe you need to literally push the audience to participate on stage to have participatory theater. The fashion wave of participatory theater is interesting and spot on, but reading Schiller and Fourrier in your room asks maybe more for participation than going to a contemporary show where we can cook together some soup. Very often the participatory theater is just a bit of redundant metaphor, a bit too explicit in it's aims to may taste. But there are many different tastes and they can all reach masterly hights.

RUNE

To the title. Why is this politician that the secret and benevolent society put forth a decoy? And a decoy for what? For a secret intention? Expanding democracy cannot actually be carried out in secret?

PIETER

The secrecy of it is exactly it's ambiguity: this elite doesn't see it succeeding with their plan when they would just play open card. They think it's necessary to hack democracy to save democracy. They use a fiction, a decoy, a fable animal, to attract the other preys into the direction the hunters want them to go. They inject some magic, they turn a real man into a fable figure, they make him a golem, a frankenstein, because that's the only way the believe they will manage to get the people do what they want the people to do. Their desperation has reached this point of lack of faith in people. I want to examine where this kind of desperation comes from, and where it can lead to. Very often the most extreme populists have the less faith in the people. That's why they use data-mining, propaganda and media-manipulation. They don't trust the people anymore.

RUNE

It might be just a coincidence, but as I read from some former presentations of the play, it gives associations to the Protocols of Elder Zion, the forged origin of most modern conspiracy theories, which among other things warns about the introduction of democracy as a way to conquer the world by an elite. The use of the jewish golem and magic adds to this.

PIETER

In no way i suggest a link or a reference to Jewish conspiracy. But indeed it plays with the fear of conspiracies, this fear is one of the most devastating driving forces that threaten democracy. Facts are leftist propaganda. That kind of deep thinking.