Bringing her new work “How to Turn to Stone” to Istanbul audiences at Beykoz Kundura’s Kundura Sahne on November 4, 5 and 6, Manuela Infante is a figure who in recent years has frequently been in the spotlight of the international performing arts scene with works that bring complex theoretical subjects to the stage. Thanks to the time she spent and the experience she gained in Canada and the Netherlands, the Chilean theater artist is able to look through the windows of both the North and the South, and her work is often considered within the school of thought that some call the “nonhuman turn.” Approaching theater as more than a place for storytelling, as a kind of laboratory of embodied philosophy, Infante, in her latest work “How to Turn to Stone”, focuses on the similarity between laboring bodies and geological formations, and on the history, in fact true of both, of how natural resources are extracted from the earth and consumed, underlining that we too are made of stone and can be extracted like a mineral.

Interview: Ayşe Draz*

Could you tell us a little about your journey from Chile to the Netherlands? As someone who studied Cultural Studies, how do you think being exposed to different cultures has shaped your artistic journey?

I grew up in Canada, and that was actually my first encounter with these different cultures. Canada is a very culturally rich place. Then I lived in Chile. After that, in the Netherlands. These experiences have certainly had an impact on my work. The contrast between living in the wealthy countries I mentioned, Canada and the Netherlands, and living in Chile showed me very clearly, from a very young age, that the North and the South are not the same world. What makes the wealth and comfort of the North sustainable is the exploitation and depletion of the South. As a child and as a young person, this always affected me deeply, and I have never stopped taking it up as an issue in my plays.

As a playwright, director, screenwriter and musician, you make work with more than one identity; what kind of interaction do these various identities have with one another?

For me, it is a single identity. The interdisciplinary divisions between the arts, or even between science and philosophy or mystical thought, mean nothing to me. I think that today, standing in the midst of such complex global problems, these disciplinary divisions don’t help us at all. They don’t help us think about new forms of relationship, new models for the world, and so on. I chose to work in theater because it felt like a place where I could do a kind of musical philosophy; when I entered theater school I was a musician, and I wanted to study philosophy. I wasn’t very interested in the theatrical tradition, but instead I found a field, a very rare one, where different disciplines are intertwined. That is why I am a theater maker.

“Creations that bring complex theoretical subjects to the stage” are what you are known for. How did this interest come about? Why is it necessary to bring such subjects to the stage?

My stage works grow out of subjects that matter to me. I see myself as a kind of mystical scientist. I use theater as an experiment room for dancing around the things that make me curious, that amaze me, that I feel are ungraspable and unthinkable.

In your work, you consciously try to leave certain ambiguities as “an area that cannot be resolved within human knowledge.” Could you elaborate on this a little? What kind of relationship are you trying to build between the stage and the audience?

In recent years, captivated by the magic of what is more than human (more-than-human) that was present in my earlier work, I began to define the more-than-human simply as this zone: the place that human knowledge can never reach. That zone, that horizon, is not only out there at the end of our sight, but also right here, extending into our bodies, our psyches, our biographies and our histories. I am fascinated by the idea that in everything and everyone, always, there is an excess that we cannot understand, cannot control, cannot appropriate. I try to find ways not to lose the presence of this excess. A respectful presence. I try to find an ethical approach to what is unknown to me, to what is radically different, such as a plant, a stone, oil and so on. And to take the audience with me on this journey. Being in the theater is not about understanding everything, making sense of everything, which is itself also a form of exploitation; it is rather about discovering new ways of being in the presence of bodies, ideas and images, in the presence of this unknown excess.

In your previous work Vegetative State (Estado Vegetal), you explore concepts such as plant intelligence and the possibilities of communication by addressing the impossibility of dialogue between humans and plants. Your more recent work How to Turn to Stone, which you will bring to Istanbul, places stones/rocks at its center as “inanimate” things, and proposes a different form of resistance to the current rhetoric of life, in which “concepts such as growth, progress and development are of central importance to the dominant political and economic frameworks.” As can be seen in both of these examples, your work is often regarded as posthuman or post-anthropocentric theater; could you tell us a little about your interest in and approach to this field? How would you define posthuman or post-anthropocentric theater?

In recent years, I have been working in tune with the ideas of a current of thought that some call the nonhuman turn, the post-humanities and so on. I usually draw inspiration from critical philosophy and theory; I am fascinated by the idea of using the stage as a place to bring to life a way of thinking about the world thoroughly and in an untamed manner, by the idea of theater as a thinking thing, or as a thing for thinking with the body. I start with theory and then… I turn everything upside down in a very irresponsible way. To put it directly, by emphasizing the agentive contribution of nonhuman forces (operating in nature, in the human body, in history, in politics, in the economy, etc.), thinkers of the nonhuman turn develop work that aims to debunk human-centered (anthropocentric) thinking. All posthumanists are trying, in one way or another, to rewrite the grammar of agency. That means rewriting the grammar of action.

Who and what is or is not allowed to have agency, who and what can or cannot act. Posthuman or nonhuman thought is also a practice that levels a harsh critique at the concept of the Human written with a capital H, disrupting its normalization by looking at how this universal Human was constructed, who this Human actually is, what practices it has used to build its own domain, and whom it has left out in order to build that domain and establish itself as a universal reference. Seen from the perspective of the South, this is a very important aspect of nonhuman thought. The concept of the “Human” has served to sustain and justify major forms of exploitation and exclusion. Not only of nonhumans, but also of humans considered less than human.

How do you put together your artistic team (performers, musicians and so on) when working on your projects?

I work with artists who fascinate me. I usually set out with very broad questions. The contributions of the actors, dramaturgs and musicians are what form the backbone of my work.

Is there anything you would like to say to the Istanbul audience before they encounter your work ?

To be patient with the work. As if they were looking at a landscape painting.

*This interview was published in the September-October 2022 issue of Art Unlimited magazine.