Esctopia is a hardcore playground elaborating through banality, artifice, mediocrity and ostentation perversely sophisticated appeal of the contemporary superheroism and myth-making. This international multimedia collaboration on the intersection of performance and visual arts refers to the graphical origins of comics and comments on the actual excessive collage insanity of the media in the style of early happenings known as well as the theatre of painters.
Although apparently trivial, superheroes embody through metaphor our social and political realities, represent concepts reflective of sexuality and corporeality, and power of transformation. Physics of superheroes shows mostly preoccupation with muscle mass and abuse of steroids. Their own sexuality is sublimated and subverted and most of them are celibate. In many stories homoeroticism may be ambiguous, but fetishism and transvestism are obvious.
They often show symptoms of paranoia, beliefs of grandiosity, narcissism, repetitive and compulsory behaviour, social anxiety and shyness. Superheroes and their superegos are inseparable, but there are times when they struggle. In superhero stories no death is permanent and often seems more like an extended holiday, from which one eventually returns unharmed, with a new sense of purpose and a more stylish haircut and costume.

Developed within the residency program MPRA of Nastawnia Association in Poznań (PL) in 2012 and finalized and re-premiered in the co-production with WUK performing arts in March 2014 in Vienna.

Concept: Milan Loviška
Dramaturgy / Performance: Milan Loviška, Otto Krause
Costume / Stage Design and Realization: Otto Krause
Sound: Jakub Królikowski
Visuals: Milan Loviška, Kacper Lipiński
Duration: 55 min

A co-production of Territorium KV and WUK performing arts
Support: Nastawnia Association & MPRA, Visegrad Fund, Ministry of Culture of The Slovak Republic, City of Poznań, The Rootz, Marshal Office of The Wielkopolska Region

1st Premiere @ Malta Festival, 3. July 2012, The Rootz, Poznań
2nd Premiere @ WUK Projektraum, 20. March 2014, Vienna

Photo: Birgit Mayer 2014