Moving and Speaking through the Event, Once More: Participation and Reenactment in Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave, and Rimini Protokoll's Deutschland 2

Bettina Brandl-Risi discusses two performances based on reenactments of historical events: Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), which revisits a bloody clash between picketers and police during a miners' strike in Thatcher-era Britain, and Rimini Protokoll's Deutschland 2—Berlin Back Up (2002), which restages a German parliamentary debate. She discusses the role of participation and spectatorship in such reenactments, arguing that these performance pieces embody new ways of thinking about history and politics.