THE ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA

"The Republic is founded on the ideas which are a common product of all uncivilized nations. It would be immortal if we would include anyone, whatever her origin, his descent, or its religion, from participating in our achievements. For you stand on the shoulders of other uncivilized people. What you own we owe to the work of other people. Therefore, we have to repay our debt. There is only one way to do it. Our motto must therefore be, now and never: You are my other."

The ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA was founded in 1917 during the turmoil of the First World War – finally turning a small part of Uganda into a refuge for those who fled from that "dark continent" known as Europe. Among the lions and savannas, dotted with Bauhaus-inspired socialist Kibbuzim, there now exists a state which is as much a utopian laboratory as Theodor Herzl's visionary "old new land". Called "the state of things to come" by its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA is as much a spatial entity as an temporal one: existing on the edge of the night of history and nightmares, it comes from the future more than it comes from the past. As a place out of place, the republic also is a time out of time, re-collecting and re-locating lost and partially forgotten futures in the night of the present. Indeed it is a STATE OF THINGS TO COME.

Now, exactly 100 years after the practically unknown founding of the ZIONIST-SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF UGANDA, it finally opens its Embassy in Prague as part of the 2017 BAZAAR festival, in order to present its history, arts and culture to a rapt audience: "The lions of history are still dreaming! Let us look to the moles instead!"

Showing at Bazaar Festival 2017, Prague: 18.03.2017, hall 23, 7pm

With: Melanie Albrecht, Tami Leibovits, Dror Liberman, Michael Wehren, Helena Wölfl

Eine Produktion von friendly fire. In Kooperation mit LOFFT-Das Theater und Bazaar Festival Prag. Dank an Machol Shalem Dance House, Jerusalem. Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.