With Ötzi (corpse) as a representative for the nonhuman but also as a representative for the (prehistoric) universal human he lends himself to be a (non)personification for both. The way his physical body + namesake are being treated is very interesting and telling of how we (subconsciously) deal with grand metanarratives like the exodus of anthropocentrism in posthumanism.

As he is located at the depths of the Uncanny Valley (not-unlike-us-but-also-not-like-us-enough) he is an abject being that questions our own human nature and thus threaten anthropocentric belief-systems. But as he is dangerous he is also a powerful symbol, and thus (not unlike the corpse of Lenin getting appropriated for communist propaganda) he is urgently transformed into a representative for the very ideology he threatens to deconstruct.

But just like he is a tool to Flintstonize (trademarked) the prehistoric human, and demonstrate that our modern capitalist ways of living are inevitable, he can also be turned into propaganda for the other side of the uncanny coin; namely the reasons that he is unlike us: the fact that he is a frozen corpse in a cooling cell dead for 5400 years. He can “advocate for the nonhumans” as well, and with him being one of the biggest nonhuman celebrities, he might even be quite a powerful advocate as well.

“Similar to Lenin’s body, the corpse of Ötzi will become superfluous when the immortal narrative he represents collapses. We will look at the shimmering corpse in the cooling cell, and be unable to think of any sensible reason why we keep him from decomposing.

One day, when we shed our deeply imbedded skins of humanistic anthropocentrism, our capitalist ideas of never-ending progress and our insatiable urge for consumption and spectacle, maybe then we can strike an alliance with the productive and immanent force of zoe and let Ötzi’s language be one of posthumous decay. Maybe this is when we become posthuman ourselves.”

Ecce Ötzi

“I would not be surprised if the characteristics of Ötzi’s world that are unrepresented in his familiar celebrated story, the tale of his life (the language he spoke, the things he thought, the people he loved) rather than his death, would actually exhibit an interdependent and pan-human alternative to our anthropocentric isolation and oppose the fake inevitability of capitalist humanism.”

Ecce Ötzi

"With the demise of the party, the Communist project, and the Soviet polity in 1991, Lenin’s body was severed from this complex political structure and lost its role as the immortal body of the party-sovereign.
The Russian state, it seems, cannot decide how to treat Lenin’s legacy."
(...)
"Leninism was not just a personal creation of Lenin, and the body in the mausoleum is not just his personal body. Both are complex productions of many people and a long history; reducing them to the body and actions of one person, as do many politicians and journalists today, is historically, politically, and ethically problematic."

Alexei Yurchak (Bodies of Lenin)

“Once the centrality of anthropos is challenged, a number of boundaries between ‘Man’ and his others go tumbling down, in a cascade effect that opens up unexpected perspectives. Thus, if the crisis of Humanism inaugurates the posthuman by empowering the sexualized and racialized human ‘others' to emancipate themselves from the dialectics of master-slave relations, the crisis of anthropos relinquishes the demonic forces of the naturalized others. Animals, insects, plants and the environment, in fact the planet and the cosmos as a whole, are called into play.”

Rosi Braidotti (Posthuman)

Is there a way to create localized, embedded narratives that talk from a specific location and context and about the diversity of human experience and the plurality of meanings and truths, but still use a mode of generalization or decontextualization to isolate these notions, and view them from an alien point of view to find deeper layers of understanding of topics like the posthuman predicament?

How does this translate to Beneden-Leeuwen?
How can Otzi be (not appropriated but) utilized? shaped into a representative? In small town urgencies?

Misrepresentation
Otzi as a medium
Otzi as a tool

The uncomfortable relation to the local sphere, sometimes untranslatable

(The small town is like a enclosed bubble where empathy stays physically and geographically closer to the self, where news spreads quickly in whispering gossip, the status-quo is more ingrained and inerasable and thus provocative ideas are more easily shunned.)

Two members of a carnavals association from "unnamed village" are contemplating what they should do with the paper-maché Ötzi head that was the prominent centre of their unused float. (Storm and sickness.) They are afraid the sovereign narrative of humanist anthropocentrism and the dominance of human species and the Universal Man might collapse when they burn the effigy. They are contemplating if its posthumous decay could mean a posthuman future, and whether they are ready for this.

Word of this crucial decision spread through "unnamed village", and other characters are outspoken about this decision.

SCENE 1
Rosmolen Beneden-Leeuwen meeting room, tables in a big square with an empty space in the middle. In this empty space stands a very large paper-mache head of a sad Otzi, tears in his eyes. Artificial light, grey-ish shot.

SCENE 5
A small auditorium in Beneden-Leeuwen. The stage is dark but two shadows are slightly visible on stage. Two flashlights light up the faces of the actors, which are fully green. You can’t see much else than their two faces and the silhouette of the dark stage. (Could be children.)

SCENE 6
A small car or scooter is driving through Dorp in the dark. (Night modus camera.) An undisclosed actor is singing a protest song through a megaphone. (A slow rendition of Anton aus Tirol with new lyrics)

SCENE 10
A group of young street dancers with Otzi masks perform a (unrelated) choreography, semi professionally recorded, outside in a greyish setting.

SCENE 11
In the same small-town auditorium, maybe to abruptly break up the dialogue of the two man, a drag lipsync performance starts on Do What U Want/American Pie by a drag artist who calls herself Otza. (Cavewoman attire, me? My dad?)

SCENE 12
The burning of Otzi.

SCENE 13
Shots of drawings, carvings, graffiti and political slogans throughout the village.

Sondra Perry - Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One
Liza Johnson - In the Air
Ryan Trecartin - Whether Line
Korakrit Arunanondchai - No History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names
Jordan Wolfson - Raspberry Poser
Cyprien Gaillard - Nightlife
Jon Rafman - Still Life (Betamale)
Carolthekitty - Celebrity Collages
Viktor Naumovski - Standing in the Sun
Harmony Korine - Mister Lonely
Martin McDonagh - Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri
Ari Aster - Midsommar
Reality TV (Big Brother)

KILL OTZI / RELEASE HIS BODY

The politics of a reproduction/duplication
The folklore of a carnaval object
The moment a symbol is believed
and the symbol becomes the thing itself
The fear of destruction, the loss of this essence

The characters made the object themselves
They express themselves despite the "straightjacket" of a society that doesn't believe in such things anymore

Altars for invisible people (Iceland)
Shrines for Ötzi

"It starts with people believing in the symbol. Even though they do not understand in what they believe, they cannot have the same conscious understanding of the situation as the director. Their urgencies are on a different level. None of the players understand what they are a part of."

Idolization of (nonhuman) celebrities
The incorrupt bodies of saints
(The incorrupt faces of the Kardashians)
Incorrupt (hyperreal) corpses frozen in time

Obsession
The cult folowing of Christine Weston Chandler (Chris-Chan)

Reality TV (Big Brother)
Uncanniness
Oversized human (posthumous) effigies
Brad Pitt's Ötzi tattoo
The Burning of the Braoier (carnaval)
Otzi with Tears in his Eyes

"If only we could cry like Ötzi when we have pain in our hearts"
- Pope Franciscus

oh and it's a musical

hey

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