Prof. Grzegorz Ziółkowski will deliver a paper Carnival elements as licensed transgression in Colonia Dignidad, a sinister German enclave in Chile at the annual conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), which will take place in Cologne (Köln), Germany, from 9 to 13 June 2025, entitled Performing Carnival: Ekstasis, Subversion, Metamorphosis. The paper will share some of the findings from Prof. Ziółkowski’s current research project entitled The Performative Realm of ‘Colonia Dignidad’, a German Enclave in Chile, in Historical and Political Contexts, supported by the National Science Centre (NCN; 2021/43/B/HS2/00360).
Abstract: Performative practices were an integral part of the complex activities of Colonia Dignidad, a pseudo-religious community that originated in North Rhine-Westphalia and operated in Chile from the early 1960s. For decades, it systematically committed numerous crimes and violated human rights. Through various public performances, including acrobatic displays and music concerts, the colony’s manipulative leader, Paul Schäfer, and his inner circle successfully cultivated the image of an orderly group focused on charity work, undoubtedly one of the key factors which enabled the group’s longevity and staying power. However, the community’s performative activities were directed not only outwards but also inwards. The latter in some cases resorted to the carnival tradition with its poetics of abundance, surprise and transgression, as well as astonishing metamorphoses, elaborate disguises and an upside-down world. This may seem paradoxical in a place where rank-and-file settlers suffered pervasive oppression, were subjected to constant surveillance, and were brought into line with beatings, electroshocks and psychotropic drugs. The paper will argue that transgressive elements in the colony’s inner performances were in fact licensed by those in power, and by allowing them to occur, group and individual energies were controlled in yet another way. This argument will be illustrated by two examples set in a historical context: an early performance of a demonstrative drowning of Santa Claus in the Perquilauquén River (1962?); and a performance (previously unmentioned in the literature on the subject) staged by young female colonists impersonating the area’s indigenous inhabitants, the Mapuche, shortly after Schäfer’s escape to Argentina (1998?).