The more of us there are, the faster we will reach the goal

Three Slovenian artists at that time all three officially changed their original civic names to the name of Janez Janša. They use it in official contacts and all their documents are drawn up in this name. In order to understand this project, which also includes the performance The More of Us There Are, the Faster We Will Reach the Goal, one needs a short excursion into the current Slovene political scene. The name Janez Janša (officially Ivan Janša) in fact belongs to one of the most prominent Slovene politicians since 1991, when the country separated from the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia.

Janša had already been known in the 1980’s, as an author of articles in which he criticized depletion of finances in the Yugoslav People’s Army. At that time, the communist regime reacted to these articles by accusing him of illegal procurement of confidential material. In this trial two journalists from the journal Mladina and an army lieutenant were also accused and sentenced together with Janša. The trial was marked by several procedural mistakes, the most important being that it was conducted in Serbo-Croatian, although, according to the current law, court trials should have been conducted in the language of the country where the trial was taking place, i.e., Slovene. Even though the sentences were lifted in the end, this moment is considered by some historians as the beginning of the split between Slovene and Serbo-Croatian communists.

As early as 1989 Janez Janša was one of the founding members of the first known Slovene opposition party called The Slovene Democratic Union. Following the 1990 first democratic elections, in which the platform DEMOS, which he was a member of, won, he became the minister of defence. He held this post also after the collapse of DEMOS until 1994, when he had to resign, due to a scandal considered at that time as an abuse of power. By that time he had been the president of a further political party already for a year, the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia which he joined in 1992. In the meantime, it changed its name to Slovene Democratic Party and instead of social democracy started enforcing the policy of the right wing, economic liberalism, while claiming allegiance to the ideas of a conservative right-wing policy from the point of view of social orientation.

In the period of 2004 to 2008 Janez Janša became the Slovene Prime Minister for the first time. Today it has acquired another interesting dimension: even though Janša was accused of corrupt practices in the military technology trade in 2011, in February 2012 he became the Slovene Prime Minister for the second time. It must be added, that Janša, as one of the longest serving politicians in the modern history of Slovenia, has become one of the mightiest men in the country.

The main aim of changing the name by the three artists is to shoot a fi    It is nearly fi   the extracts of it form the substantial part of the performance The More of Us There Are, the Faster We Will Reach the Goal. The fact itself that a substantial part of the stage form is based on the film material clearly proves that the project oscillates between several artistic forms and opens a question what is understood as theatre and where are its limits.

Presenting the basic layout of a documentary drama (or rather documentary art?) it opens general questions about the identity of an individual or the role of names in human lives.

At the same time, it presents detailed stories of three individual people (and their families) who have decided to change their names. Primarily, the authors do not intend to answer the questions, quite the opposite, some are left unanswered.

Probably the most outspoken proof of the fact how successful the authors are in mixing two worlds – that of art and that of reality – in the context of the current multi-media times, is a consequence of putting their project on the internet. While few years ago the internet encyclopaedia and internet searches were aware of only one Janez Janša, now there are several definitions following the name: politician, theatre director, visual artist, artist...
Miro Zwiefelhofer

“In the performance, we follow the weight of the name change primarily in the concrete case of three artists changing their name to Janez Janša. We follow more intimate testimonies, for example, of their parents, who – as their new birth certificate bespeaks – gave birth to Janez Janša. Their son’s decision confused them, shocked them, even hurt them. They do not understand this gesture. Then, there are political analyses of this name change that explain the gesture either as an apology of Janez Janša’s politics (…) or as a subversive act (…), whose multiplication of the name relativized the value of the ´original´ Janša.”
Jela Krečič, Delo, April 2010

 “The spectators, in fact, attentively followed the video projection and the simultaneous goings on stage; they reacted with amazement, they were astonished, satisfied, excited, one could hear giggling, while from the two or three Slovenians present a boisterous laughter occasionally boomed.”
Uršula Rebek, Dnevnik, May 2010