Developed in collaboration with a team of experts from Belgian universities, Some Use For Your Broken Clay Pots is a theatre piece whose script is the constitutional text for a democratic state that does not yet exist. Like a work of speculative fiction, this one-man performance aims to give an insight into possible futures by providing us with the code underpinning the life of an imagined society.
«Some Use For Your Broken Clay Pots» is structured as a debate between Swiss born, Brussels based artist Christophe Meierhans and the audience about a proposal for a fictional constitution. He presents elements of what that democratic system is, and attempt to convince the audience that his option is better than any other. As the audience questions and criticises him, more of the constitution is gradually unveiled.
The piece takes its title from the ancient Greek notion of political ostracism, in which the names of election candidates were inscribed on broken pot shards (ostraka) or oyster shells and drawn out at random. ‘Broken clay pots are considered useless, garbage,’ says Meierhans. ‘But we can actually reuse them, just as we can recycle the idea of positive disqualification. I want to devise an imaginary constitution that is not based on election – voting based on promises for the future – but on disqualification – elimination based on past actions. I hope it will reveal that the real constitution we have is also a fiction, an invention. It was constructed some time ago and is just a tool like any other.’
