Romeo Castellucci is one of the greatest names in European theatre, a master in the creation of images that stay in our memory forever. His most recent creation, “The Third Reich” is a performative video-installation based on the spectral representation of all names. All the nouns found in the Italian dictionary (here translated to Portuguese) are projected, in sequence, one by one. These nouns potentially represent all existing objects that have a name.

The speed of this sequence is attributed by our capacity to retain, based on our retina and memory, a word that appears in a flash with the duration of a twentieth of a second. This restricts our vision which then reaches a critical point where fusion happens, right before our perception loses control. In this oscillation, it is no longer possible to distinguish words individually.

In the limit situation created by this machine of spouting words, some will leave a trace in the visual cortex of the spectator, while others, most of them, will be lost. The audience, helpless when treated this way, is subject to the human word, in terms of quantity. Not what, but how much. This furious bunch of words does not allow space for choice or judgement. The core of language returns to white noise that leads to chaos.

“The Third Reich” is the image of a mandatory and imposed communication, with a violence that is accompanied by its claim to equality. Here, the language machine exhausts entire spheres of reality, as the nouns are all the same, mechanically and mass-produced, like prefabricated buildings in a knowledge from which there is no escape. All pauses are abolished, occupied. The pause, or the absence of words, becomes a battlefield following the military aggression of these words; the nouns from the dictionary, projected on the screen, are like flags planted on conquered land.