Ideologie – what's next?

Maurice Blanchot’s Critique of the Everyday: A Challenge for Art Education

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 13:17:15 +0000

Although it is fair to say that the everyday has served as one of the central conceptual frames in the implementation of visual culture theory in art education throughout the past decade,¹ it seems that the everydayness of the everyday has remained vaguely theorized, and, more recently, nearly disappeared from art edu-cation literature. In Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE), the everyday has been associated with objects and practices of popular culture that (symptomatically) represent the existing structures of societal power in students’ lives. However, I see that understanding the everyday merely through practices that assumedly -unfold students’ relationship with ideological superstructures reproduces the very logic of power that VCAE’s critique of art education has tried to subvert. To challenge this logic, I turn to Maurice Blanchot’s -conceptualization of the everyday as a radically ambi-valent state of non-production that, I claim, offers tools to rethink the sociopolitical function of art education. After all, for Blanchot, the everyday is something that escapes; it evades the endless production of its own meaning.
In this text, I take a short excursion into “everyday aesthetics” as discussed by art educator Paul Duncum,² and show that by framing the everyday as a question of curricular contents (that is, positioning the “everyday aesthetics” against the aesthetics of institutionalized art), art education itself remains beyond a politico-philosophical critique. Contra Duncum, I explain how Blanchot’s conceptualization of the everyday might open a language of critique that corrodes rather than replaces the existing characterizations of our profession.
From the late 1990s to the 2000s, the advocates of VCAE attempted to turn popular culture from a demonized realm of ideological indoctrination into a contested site of socio-subjective practices that are more complex than binaries such as high art/low art, intellectual/idiotic, or authentic/copied might suggest. Despite the efforts to keep VCAE as an inclusive category where various forms of visual practices are examined, discussed, and created, it has been often understood as synonymous with the study of popular culture in the cost of rejecting various forms of art-making or artistic thinking.³ This critique did not emerge ex nihilo, since the discourse around VCAE in its early phase was explicitly critical toward fine arts. For example, Duncum argued in 1999 that “everyday aesthetic experiences are more significant than experiences of high art in forming and informing one’s identity and view of the world beyond personal experience.”⁴ For him, such experiences are a “backdrop to life.”⁵As visible, Duncum’s critical stance toward fine arts is directly linked to the everyday. By favoring the “everyday aesthetics” over “high art,” one ends up with a binary where the two opposing ends (popular culture and institutionalized art) are assessed through their relation to the everyday as the central realm of human experience of the self and the society. Such characterization of the political potential of the everyday relies heavily on the idea of popular culture qua everyday aesthetics as a tool that disrupt pedagogical thinking that reproduces the existing dynamics of societal power by excluding students’ real life from the art curriculum.⁶ In this respect, the everyday is seen first and foremost as a site of relevancy that connects students’ self to the art curriculum (and vice versa). For Duncum, “everyday aesthetic sites are more influential in structuring thought, feelings and actions than the fine arts precisely because they are everyday. It is because they are so ordinary that they are so significant.”⁷What, then, constitutes this significance? It seems that it is the tangible ordinariness of the everyday that makes popular culture relevant to the students, and such relevancy is associated directly with subject formation in contemporary societies. This view is based on two assumptions. Firstly, it requires that the everyday and its ordinariness are both accessible and that they grant an access to ideological subject formation. Such accessibility treats the everyday as an embodiment of ideological superstructures that can be analyzed and critiqued (i. e. accessed) through art education. Secondly, the idea of accessibility makes one approach ideology as a collection of representations that can be analyzed through critical art education, which means that the political project of art education is dependent on the endless production of representations that, for different reasons, students identify themselves with. For the theorization of the everyday, these two assumptions mean that the everyday is never more than what is already accessible: like an empty vessel, it carries its own ideology that merely waits to be deciphered by its subjects.
In this respect, to claim that the everyday aesthetic experiences are relevant and thus more important to the construction of students’ identities and subjectivities than non-everyday activities makes the everyday an overdetermined site of pedagogical interventions. Although the introduction of popular culture qua everyday aesthetics in the art curricula might have served as an important critique of institutionalized art, the presumed relevancy of everydayness reproduces a similar scene of subjectification as what one can find from transcendental characterizations of art. Indeed, the fetishization of the immediate seems to be symptomatic to the tradition of art education that bases its societal need on the dialectics between knowledge and non-knowledge; a dialectics where art education serves as the ultimate completion of an educated subjectivity. This is why seeing the everyday as a question of a curricular content, manifested in the division between the familiar (e. g. popular culture) and the unfamiliar (e. g. institutionalized art), makes it merely a reversed image of the institutions that VCAE has attempted to critique.⁸Despite the fact that the relationship between the everyday and art education has been a rather unfashionable topic of discussion after the heydays of VCAE in the mid 2000s, I see that it is worth to reexamine its possible radical characteristics for art education theory. This turns me to Blanchot, a thinker who rejects dialectical structures in his writings and offers a radical alternative to a critical thinking that exhausts itself in its own negativity. For him, the tension between concepts is neither based on either/or dichotomy nor reduced into a pluralistic both, but unfolds the very corrosiveness of language itself. His emphasis on the corrosion rather than in the production of language means that he engages the reader in a thought that puts itself in peril. In terms of my argument here, Blanchot helps to relocate the theorization of the everyday in art education from curricular contents to the ontology of its politics and opens the everyday outside of its predetermined characterizations.
In his essay Everyday Speech, Blanchot makes a repetitive claim that the everyday “escapes.”⁹ In order to understand what does this mean, it is worth quoting the essay at length: “The everyday is no longer the average, statistically established existence of a given society at a given moment; it is a category, a utopia and an Idea, without which one would not know how to get at either hidden present or the discoverable future of manifest beings. Man (the individual of today, of our modern societies) is at once engulfed within and deprived of the everyday. And a third definition: the everyday is also the ambiguity of these two movements, the one and the other hardly graspable.”¹⁰Here, Blanchot acknowledges that the everyday bears the characteristics of a silent backdrop of the society as well as an idealistic frame for a societal change; two characterizations that fit well with the idea of accessibility discussed above. However, his third definition -disrupts such logic: the “ambiguity of these two movements” pushes the everyday away from clear traits of predetermination. As he continues, “the everyday is the inaccessible to which we have always already had access; the everyday is inaccessible, but only insofar as every mode acceding is foreign to it.”¹¹ Thus, Blanchot does not try to position the everyday as a dialectical pair for the non-everyday (like the dichotomy familiar/unfamiliar suggests), since it always escapes the attention that it receives. The everyday is not, then, an empty or idealistic frame for life, but rather a collapse of such framing: “What is proper to the everyday is that it designates us a region or a level of speech where the determinations true and false, like the opposition of yes and no, do not apply – the everyday being always before what affirms it and yet incessantly reconstituting itself beyond all that negates it.”¹² In other words, not merely a vessel that contains the ordinary stuff that people are surrounded by, Blanchot’s everyday unfolds a radical ambiguity at the very center of the ordinary.
Due to this ambiguous characteristic, Blanchot sees that experience of the everyday is not manifested in excitement or familiarity (as Duncum’s “everyday aesthetics” seems to suggest), but in boredom, which, for him, is the closest we can get to the everyday experience. He writes: “Boredom is the everyday become manifest: consequently, the everyday after it has lost its essential – constitutive – trait of being unperceived. Thus the everyday always sends us back to that inapparent and nonetheless unconcealed part of existence that is insignificant because it remains always to the hither side of what signifies it.”¹³If boredom is the “everyday become manifest” (not fully, as Blanchot points out), the everyday loses its operativeness in relation to forms of educational subjectification that equate human life with a clearly defined actualization of one’s existence. The “inapparent and nonetheless unconcealed part of existence” that Blanchot refers to denotes a life that is capable of its own passivity; a life that distracts the logic of recognition that keeps its dialectics running through an endless production of representations. Contra the significance that Duncum relates to the “everyday aesthetics,” it is precisely the insignificance (embodied in boredom) that opens the pedagogy of the Blanchotian everyday to its political potential: it denotes an unknown that, as Blanchot writes, “supposes a relation that is foreign to every exigency of identity, of unity, even of presence.”¹⁴ For Blanchot, working from this unknown is the central task of writing; I see that it could also inform political theorization in art education.
Notably, it would be problematic to see the Blanchotian everyday simply as a liberatory space of politics. As he states, it contains a “dangerous essence” and he agrees with Henri Lefebvre that it is “the medium in which … alienations, fetishisms, and reifications produce their effects.”¹⁵ Nevertheless, he also states that the everyday “is in the street” and that “the man in the street is always on the verge of becoming political man.”¹⁶ By withholding any exhaustive description, Blanchot forces to rethink how the relation between the everyday and its politics becomes constituted. Whereas Duncum seems to base the political potential of the “everyday aesthetics” in familiarity, Blanchot locates this potential in the ambiguity that the state of being “on the verge” of politics entails. To get an idea what such radical ambiguity would mean for political theorization, Blanchot’s response to a questionnaire on committed literature offers a hint: “How to respond to your questionnaire when the writer is always in search of a question that is not asked of him in advance and which obliges him, whenever he believes he can be content with a question, slowly and patiently to put himself into question, faced with the lost question which is no longer the same and makes him turn aside from himself?”¹⁷Following this remark, I suggest that the everyday should be approached as a “lost question;” a question that does not merely challenge the content of art curriculum as a strategy of subjectification, but disrupts the very function of art education itself. As Blanchot writes elsewhere: “how can man – he the universal, the eternal, always accomplishing himself, always accomplished and repeating himself in a Discourse that does no more than endlessly speak itself – not hold to this sufficiency, and go on put himself, as such, in question? Properly speaking, he cannot.”¹⁸For me, the radicalness of Blanchot’s thought stems precisely from this observation. The critique of art education through the everyday in VCAE has not put art education as such in question, but, on the contrary, secured its position as the central element of the completion of one’s subjectivity through the content of art curriculum. Through Blanchot and his conceptualization of the everyday, this endless self-affirmation is rendered inoperative and thrust into the radical unknown that makes art education “turn aside” from itself. For the political theorization in our field, this allows an ontological critique of the sociopolitical projects of art education to emerge, which, I claim, offers more tools to tackle not only the existing order, but also to question the possible futures that art education qua political action tries to promise. While VCAE has helped to develop the sociopolitical theorization in art education, it has also sustained some old boundaries for our thought. Thus, it is important to approach the limits of our language(s) of critique; limits that denote the overdetermined relations between art, education, and the societal context in which they emerge. Blanchotian thought does not offer an easy way out from this problematic, but it does offer ways to put us, as such, in question.

1.) This text, originally presented as a conference paper at the National Art Education Association’s National Convention (Forth Worth, TX) in March 2013, is situated specifically in the North American academic context. For summaries of Visual Culture Art Education in this context, see T. Anderson, ”Roots, reason, and structure: framing visual culture art education”, International Journal of Arts Education, 1 (3), 2003, pp. 5–26; P. Duncum, ”Visual culture art education: why, what and how”, Journal of Art & Design Education, 21 (3), 2002, pp. 14–23; K. Tavin, ”Wrestling with angels, searching for ghosts: toward a critical pedagogy of visual culture”, Studies in Art Education, 44 (3), 2002, pp. 197–213.
2.) Besides that Duncum has been one of the early proponents of art curriculum that deals with popular culture, he consistently used the term everyday in his critique of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE).
3.) See A. Efland, ”Problems confronting visual culture”, Art Education 58 (6), 2005, pp. 35–40; J. C. Van Camp, ”Visual culture and aesthetics: everything old is new again … or is it?”, Arts Education Policy Review, 106 (1), 2006, pp. 33–37.
4.) P. Duncum, “A case for an art education of everyday aesthetic experiences”, Studies in Art Education 40 (4), 1999, p. 296.
5.) P. Duncum, “Theorising everyday aesthetic experiences with contemporary visual culture”, Visual Arts Research, 28 (2), 2002, p. 5.
6.) Similar ideas about the importance of close relationship between student’s life and school were expressed throughout the 20th century, most importantly by John Dewey. See J. Dewey, The school and the society and the child and the curriculum. Chicago, IL 1990.
7.) Duncum 1999, p. 299.
8.) It is notable that Duncum and other VCAE advocates have later taken a critical stance towards the early developments of VCAE. However, these critiques have not addressed the question of the everyday. For this critique, see P. Duncum, ”Thinking critically about critical thinking: towards a post-critical, dialogic pedagogy of popular visual culture”, International Journal of Education through Art, 4 (3), 2008, pp. 247–257.
9.) M. Blanchot, The infinite conversation. Minneapolis, MN 1993.
10.) Op. cit., p. 239.
11.) Op. cit., p. 245.
12.) Op. cit., p. 242.
13.) Op. cit., p. 242.
14.) Op. cit., p. 300, original emphasis.
15.) Op. cit., p. 244.
16.) Op. cit., p. 240–242.
17.) M. Blanchot, “Refuse the established order”, Paragraph, 30 (3), 2007, p. 20.
18.) Blanchot 1993, p. 207.

“School”

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 13:16:15 +0000

Wie lassen sich Lehr- und Lernprozesse erforschen? Angesichts der neoliberalen Funktion von Evaluierungen für die Ökonomisierung und Modularisierung von Bildung und der notwendigen Intimität pädagogischer Verhältnisse ist dies keine leichte Frage. Sie wurde in den letzten Jahren zunehmend gestellt und hat in diesem Zusammenhang mehr Folgefragen aufgeworfen denn emanzipative Antworten für eine nächste Gesellschaft generiert. Nun scheint ein künstlerisches Projekt in diesem Zusammenhang Überzeugenderes zu leisten als so manche didaktische Untersuchung: Smadar Dreyfus hat über einen Zeitraum von zwei Jahren Tonaufnahmen in Tel Aviver Schulen gemacht, diese penibel transkribiert, übersetzt und dabei sehr genau gearbeitet, um so viel wie möglich von dem, was im Klassenzimmer gesagt wurde, zugänglich zu machen. Dabei fällt auch gleich auf, dass dies viel mehr ist als die Lehrenden selbst hören und aufgreifen konnten. Aus dem Prozess der Investigation – der Kooperation mit den Schule, der Aufnahme, Transkription, Übersetzung und Redaktion – entwickelte Dreyfus eine raumgreifende Installation bestehend aus dem Sound und der visuellen englischen Übersetzung von 7 Schulstunden und einer Pause in israelischen Schulen, deren Intensität es sich schwer entziehen lässt. Die minutiöse Arbeit hat sich gelohnt, denn durch die künstlerische Forschung tritt am empirischen Material das gemeinhin nicht Gehörte in der „Black Box“ Klassenzimmer zutage. So zeigt „School“, dass in jedem Klassenzimmer Hegemonie nicht nur eingeübt wird, sondern immer auch umstritten ist. Denn die Lehr- und Lernsituationen, deren ZeugInnen wir in der Installation werden, sind nicht nur stets von machtvollen Erzählungen, disziplinierenden Organisationsstrukturen und nationalen Deutungsmustern durchzogen, sie sind auch Schauplätze von Ungehorsam und Desinteresse und sie sind durchdrungen von der Lust am Wissen und dem Wunsch nach Veränderung. So verdanken wir dem Projekt endlich konkrete Einblicke in die Widersprüche, die Bildungsräume durchziehen. Denn die Stimmen, die wir hören, erzählen von viel mehr als jeder Fragebogen ermitteln könnte: Sie ordnen sich unter und fügen sich ein, sie versuchen zu folgen und spielen sich aus, aber sie flüstern auch dazwischen und quatschen hinweg, sie langweilen sich sichtlich, weigern sich trotzig und helfen zusammen, sie sprechen zurück und lehnen sich auf.

Nora Sternfeld

EB: I’d like to start by asking what led you to begin researching Tel Aviv schools?
SD: School began as an autobiographical research, emerging from my own background. I was born and grew up in Tel Aviv, and since moving to London in 1990, my relationship to where I come from has increasingly become the source of a sense of urgency in my work. For me, the research and the work are forms of returning.
Until recently, when going to vote in Israel, I used to go to a polling station located in my old school, which was a rather strange and somewhat melancholic experience. Wandering through the school corridors, I was reminded of the voices that I experienced in my own education and the impressions they left. I have a very strong memory of how teachers spoke and how they used their voices: they had a particular vocal inflection. To me, voices enact spatial and social relations and what has emerged in my research over the years is in part the implicit social and cultural conditioning that is embedded in the voice.
School started as an open-ended idea: there is a shared intimacy between teacher and pupils, but also there is a kind of performance that goes on in the classroom. I wanted to see if I could get an insight into these spaces, which are part of a public institution but are actually closed to most of the public: even parents don’t get to see what’s going on in there. It was also a matter of curiosity to see if and how it has changed since I was a pupil in the 1970s.

Can you describe the process of research and -recording?
Initially I got permission to sit in on a couple of lessons, to listen to the teacher. Then I realized how fascinating it was to listen to the pupils as well, to their responses and interactions with the teacher, how they behave. They form different groups, like microcosms; each classroom a kind of mini-society. This made me think about just how we are marked by these relationships. Who is your friend? Who is not your friend? Who’s smarter than whom? How do you converse with the teacher? All these little preoccupations are a part of becoming, part of a process.
I discussed the classroom setting with the sound recordist who was working with me, and we began experimenting with ways to record the field of voices in the classroom spatially. I wanted to dislocate this field of voices and sounds, and then to reconstruct them spatially for the visitor in the installation. How the viewer-listener is positioned in relation to voices and sounds is always a central consideration in my work, so the recordings needed to reflect the directionality of the multiple voices and to register where they were situated in the classroom space. This process led us to develop a multidirectional web of microphones attached to the classroom ceiling.
At the same time, it was necessary to convince the institutions to let me in, to get used to my presence, and to have some understanding of my project. I applied to the Israeli Ministry of Education for permission to record in the schools, and they agreed but posed a set of conditions and constraints: I was not allowed to film or photograph the lessons, identify anybody by their full name or identify any of the schools. For each school there was a long process of achieving consent: when the headmaster was open to cooperation, I also explained the project to the teachers, pupils, and parents to get their consent. I was instructed not to interfere with or interrupt the school’s timetables or its daily operations, so I had no control over the content of the lessons that were taught or any other aspect of the way the lessons were run.
Finally, the sound recordist and I were not allowed to be present in the classroom during the lessons: we installed the microphones in advance and then had to wait in the corridor during the recording. In fact, I only listened properly to the lessons when I was back in my studio in London – that was the moment when I was confronted with the material as decontextualized, pure sound. I then engaged in a kind of forensics, a close analysis of recordings of what at first sound like banal exchanges between teacher and pupils. I became obsessed with picking out every utterance and placing it as text on the screen. I also found that the microphones picked up speech and sounds that the teacher hadn’t heard and these revealed a great deal about the class dynamics and its undercurrents.

How did you go about selecting the particular recordings to use?
It was important to me to have a multiplicity of voices and a range of subjects in School and to see how different modes of delivery by different teachers affect their interaction with the pupils. I recorded 68 lessons over a period of two years. Given the conditions that had been set for me, the lessons were necessarily randomly recorded. After the intensive and extended periods of time spent listening and editing, I finally selected seven of the 68 lessons for the installation. This was a hard but significant part of the process. Each lesson was carefully edited down to about 23 minutes: it was a fine line, as I had to bear in mind the danger of distorting the meaning of what the teacher and the pupils were saying by taking their words out of context. The variety of subjects, the quality of the teacher’s voice, the pupils’ voices, their language, their interactions with the teacher and amongst themselves, and how they relate to the subject taught – these all became considerations that contributed to my selection. So School is born of subjective research; it is not an attempt to give a documentary report or to do statistical research on the conditions of education in Israel.

What kind of schools are these and what kinds of pupils attend them?
The Israeli education system is wide and varied, and it’s sectarian: there are ultra-orthodox schools, Arab schools, Kibbutz schools, etc. I wanted, however, to revisit the kind of education that I had, schools that I went to, or similar. The pupils whose voices are in the work come from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, but overall it’s secular state education. You could call it middle Israel.

And how old are the pupils? It strikes me that a work such as this could be made in relation to university students or younger children, but you have very specifically chosen to work with pupils of a particular age.
The children are between 11 and 15 years old. I focused on this age group because I specifically wanted to capture the performance of the voice in a particular time of transition, both physically and mentally. It’s during this period of early adolescence that one starts forming an adult identity. It’s a complex process, but at this stage children establish a more conscious relationship to the world outside the family.

School is very immersive, but it’s notable that this immersion is achieved in a dark space with no concrete reference to a classroom setting, such as the presence of chairs or desks.
You have a point here, but I would add that the architectural structure of School does retain a crucial spatial principle from school settings: it has a set of rooms that are connected by a corridor. No other feature of a school en-vironment as we know it is represented. This is quite -intentional, because not only do I not want anything to distract from the sound, but I would also like to avoid any visual references to particular locations and cultures. I dislocate the sounds into this dark, visually blank space but I keep the spatial arrangement of the rooms and the corridor to create a directional sound environment and form a specific experience for the viewer-listener.

This space of experience will be different for each viewer-listener depending on the particular trajectory he or she takes through the installation.
Yes, from the outset it made sense to me to have a multiplicity of lessons – one in each room – and for the visitor to experience this multiplicity, at times simultaneously, in the corridor. This space is where the visitor wanders between the classrooms, where her route forms an unpredictable narrative that she accumulates from one lesson to the next. The seven lessons play at the same time, and the visitor juxtaposes the lessons in her trajectory and in her experience; she stumbles, say, upon history, then maybe into biology, or suddenly encounters Arabic, at times even coming across the same lesson twice rather than going through all the complete lessons in a prescribed order. When the cycle of lessons ends, the sounds of a school break fill the corridor: kids running and shouting, doors slamming. It is a kind of release. Then the lessons start again in all the rooms.
What is created is an affective space, which I believe is also a productive one. The sound touches you in an unpredictable way and produces something within you. I find it fascinating that something in these sounds can move from one culture into another culture through this experience.

In your earlier installations Lifeguards (2002–05) and Mother’s Day (2006–08), you use the same technique of visualizing voices through projections that transcribe and translate what is being said, but in those installations you retain the use of representational images. Here, you dispense with the representational image entirely, which strikes me as significant. What is at stake in the absence of the image in School?
I find sound more visceral, more intimate than an image, and in my work I focus on very specific sounds that encompass the voice, which is a highly loaded and emotive element. In Lifeguards and Mother’s Day, I separated sound from image and placed the viewer-listener inside the “cut” between the two; for School I was thinking differently about the position of the visitor. Without the apparent certainty of an image you are stepping into something else, something ambiguous that is outside what is knowable. It activates a subjective experience and opens up this experience to a range of potential meanings.
In darkness one listens differently as well as directionally, and School makes use of that experience and gives it weight. The voice field and soundscape are concrete in the sense that they conjure up an image in the mind’s eye. Without a representational image to guide you, you are cast into the amplitude of your own memory of voices in education. Paradoxically, the loss of a sense of embodiment when in darkness is important in enabling this to happen: it facilitates your immersion in the soundscape. Not only are you addressed by the teacher’s voice, but you also find yourself among teenagers who are often distracted, bored, and opinionated. You get drawn into that scene, you start taking sides, deciding you like certain people and not others. You inevitably feel as if you are addressed by these voices; you become situated as another subject and implicated in the scene in which you are moving.

It strikes me that the thematics of translation form a red thread throughout School. We move from the space of the school to the space of the installation, from spoken language to text, and from Hebrew to English. What is the significance of translation in your work?
I often work with materials from Israel and in my primary language, Hebrew, which compels me to consider what it means for a visitor to encounter these materials in another culture: how the work embodies an act of translation, how to characterize the position and experience of being a viewer/listener/reader, and how to make it a productive position.
And yes, you are right, School is in many ways a work of and about translation. The teacher interprets “knowledge” that comes from prescribed texts to the pupils (each teacher of course has a different approach); the pupils discuss their understanding of the lesson (it is not only the text); the discussion and any audible utterance in the classroom is translated from Hebrew to English, edited and merged together as visual text on the screen – disciplinary events and outbreaks of hilarity included.
And of course, there is the spatial translation of School and how the visitor is positioned in a place of translation. As a visitor you have work to do: you are always grappling to understand what’s going on. In my work this goes back to Lifeguards, in which I used the translation of speech to present contradictions and misunderstandings between the gesture of the voice and the meaning of what is being said. In School, the visitor is listening and reading, coping with interruptions and distractions, interpreting and contextualizing; she is constantly in translation and translating.

A major aspect of the affective dimension of the work is the experience of reading the projected titles, synchronized with the rhythm of the voices. Sometimes they are too fast and numerous to fully comprehend. Can we perhaps understand the viewer’s inability to keep up with the speed of the titles as an allegory of the failure of translation to ever truly give a complete rendering of the original?
Yes, there is a certain inability to read absolutely everything, even for native English speakers. To me, this is part of what it means to be in translation: it is never complete, it is always partial, and you have to make do with partial knowledge. I deliberately construct the situation so that the visitor is left to fill the gaps, to actively reconstruct what is being said, and in the process she gradually becomes more implicated.

It’s a matter of knowing that one doesn’t know everything and can’t understand everything. Instead, we recognize that partiality and acknowledge it. This seems to me to be at the heart of what it is to have an ethical relation to another culture.
It’s an essential layer within the whole experience, yes. Perhaps it comes from the fact that I inhabit this on-going condition of translation, oscillating between two cultures and languages. In a sense, I try to reproduce that for the visitor. For example, when you read the synchronized titles, the rhythm in which the words are uttered and the breathing of the speaking voice become the rhythm of the flashing titles. I think this is particularly relevant to the experience of the non-Hebrew speaking visitor: she is listening to a language that is foreign to her, and she can see and feel its rhythm as well as its sounds through her body while trying to keep up with its translation.

The whiteness of the titles creates a pulsation of light in the dark room.
Again, it’s another example of the affective dimension of the installation. The rhythm of the work choreographs sounds, light, and darkness in relation to the architecture of the space. School could be considered as the dark interior of a time capsule, an all-encompassing, polyphonic, orchestrated environment that affects the visitor with its own rules and principles.

Throughout your work, we see a distinct interest in historiography. However, it is what we might call a “minor history,” not in the sense that it is insignificant but in that it leaves behind the big events and the major players. Instead, you focus on small, quotidian moments. Is it fair to say that you approach geopolitical issues through the documentation of everyday lived experience?
As I mentioned earlier, I come to subjects in my work through my personal experience and from my relation to the voice. I am interested in how these are affected by and implicated in social and political conditions, but I am also grappling with my personal relation to these conditions, my mixed relationship with the place I come from. I think this reveals something about how geopolitical issues reverberate in everyday life and situations, and this is how the work has much wider implications than its content might otherwise imply: it oscillates between a specific locality with its cultural narratives, and wider concerns about the relations between the individual and the collective.

So how important is the political dimension in School?
School is of course embedded in specific political realities but, it’s important to understand that it addresses these realities in an oblique way. Significantly, some of the strategies we discussed earlier amount to a political positioning in themselves, although in a different register than geopolitics: there is considerable value here to a multiplicity – of voices, for example, or of modes of disputation. There is also the way in which visitors are affected and implicated in the installation, the heightened condition of translation, and the absence of representational images. All these things are political in a sense.
I have an interest in how visitors to School might begin to think differently about how education functions within their own society and culture, and how it relates to subjectivity. In fact, during its first presentation at the Folkestone Triennial in 2011, I spent many days observing the audience inside the installation and had conversations with them about their experience of the work. It was striking how many wanted to discuss their own education in comparison with elements in the work.

Everybody is touched by education, of course, which is part of why it’s such a politically hot issue around the world.
Yes, it is always intertwined. For example, in the context of Israel there’s recently been a stormy internal debate that most non-Israeli audiences would not be aware of, regarding how politically charged issues and political views should be discussed by teachers in secondary education. Some teachers have been accused by politicians from the right of bringing politics and personal political views into the classroom.

As if there could be an education without politics.
Exactly. These teachers pointed out that it would be impossible to cover the curriculum without discussing politically charged issues at all, especially in the teaching of citizenship. And Israel is not alone in having disputes over the place of politics in education: for example, in the United Kingdom right now there is a debate raging about changes to the history curriculum that the current Minister for Education is trying to push through, and which many regard as highly ideological.

This brings us to the politics of subject formation. The school is a key example of what Louis Althusser calls an “ideological state apparatus.” It’s not a repressive apparatus like the police or the prison, but it is nonetheless an apparatus for producing and reproducing subjects, for interpellating subjects to the ideology of the state. I think we can definitely see this understanding of the educational institution at play in School. But unlike Althusser, who has a rather totalizing view of ideology, you offer something a little more open and conflicted. We feel that force of interpellation, but we also see counterforces that are actively trying to negotiate it.
I was surprised at how willing and eager the pupils are to assert their own views, sometimes really contradicting what the teacher is saying.
It is interesting to see that place where these discursive negotiations happen and how they happen, but as an artist, I am not out to illustrate a particular theoretical position. I think it’s clear in School that the reproduction of ideology is not seamless and it’s not total. As far as I’m concerned, education is a process of hit and miss from which subjectivity emerges. The commotion and social dynamics of the classroom enable the visitor to feel the insecurity of being a teenager. School shows that being a teenager is fraught, partly because there is resistance to conforming to the expectations of the institution, and partly because as teenagers they are in a state of being “in-between”. At the same time, we hear the pupils in class being repeatedly told, “Think for yourselves!” These contradictory demands confuse what is resistance, what is conformity, and what is interpellation. There’s a tension between resistance and conformity here, and I think this tension is telling, because it is something that is not entirely controllable or predictable by the institution. Also, for me, this has a relation to the importance of ambiguity: if, in School, visitors are positioned in a place of contradictions and uncertainties, it does not mean that they are left without meaning – on the contrary.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text ist eine gekürzte Fassung des im Februar 2014 geführten Interviews, zuerst erschienen in: Hila Peleg, Erika Balsom (Hg.), Berlin Documentary Forum 3. Berlin 2014, S. 164–169.

1.) ‚School‘ (2009-11) Seven channels of HD Video / 42 channels of Sound / specially constructed Architecture.
Duration: Seven synchronised lessons of 24 minutes each and a 3 minutes school break, on a loop. Excerpt of Lesson 1 of 7: History (12‘30“ from 25‘17“) are linked via QR code.

Das politische Programm der Kunst

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:47 +0000

Die künstlerische Ausbildung und die Mechanismen der modernen marktwirtschaftlichen Demokratie bringen Spezialisten auf dem Gebiet einer besonderen Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit hervor: Künstler. Diese besondere Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit beruht auf der praktischen Fähigkeit, mit den Sphären des Sinnlichen, Geistigen, Körperlichen, der Gefühle und zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen auf eine bestimmte, für den Bereich der Kunst charakteristische Weise zu operieren. Andere Bereiche – die Bildung, die Politik – operieren mit denselben Sphären, doch sie unterscheiden sich hinsichtlich ihrer Verwendung der Instrumente der gesellschaftlichen Einflussnahme. Kunst ist Nicht-Politik, Bildung ist Nicht-Kunst, Politik ist Nicht-Bildung und Nicht-Kunst.
Die Künstler haben das Recht, ihre Gabe der besonderen Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit, die aus ihrer kulturellen Bildung und ihrer Position innerhalb der liberalen Gesellschaft resultiert, zu nutzen, jedoch unter der Bedingung, dass sie diese Gabe nicht in anderen Bereichen einsetzen als in dem der Kunst. Der gegenwärtige künstlerische Kapitalismus – also die Ideologie einer Welt der Kunst, die diese Welt gemäß dem Parameter der ökonomischen Akkumulation und/oder dem von einzelnen Künstlern, Kunstrichtungen und Kunstobjekten hervorgebrachten symbolischen Kapital organisiert – hat strukturelle und finanzielle Mechanismen geschaffen, deren Ziel es ist, den Einfluss jener besonderen Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit ausschließlich auf den Bereich der Kunst zu beschränken. Er hat außerdem diskursive Mechanismen zur Legitimierung dieser Beschränkung geschaffen, die auf die Vorstellungskraft der Öffentlichkeit und die Vorstellungskraft der Künstler selbst einwirken. Sobald Künstler versuchen, ihre Gabe in anderen Bereichen anzuwenden, sagt man, sie seien zu Aktivisten, Politikern, Sozialagitatoren, Publizisten, Lehrern und so weiter geworden und hätten aufgehört, Künstler zu sein. Mit dieser Sichtweise stimmen wir nicht überein.
Wenn die Kunst irgendeinen anderen Zweck erfüllen soll als die Reproduktion ihrer selbst, sollte sie jene künstlerische Gabe nach außen tragen – hinein in die nichtkünstlerische Welt. Die Kunst sollte einen wirklichen Unterschied machen und einen unumkehrbaren Wandel herbeiführen. Dies erfordert ein Infragestellen des Status der Kunst und ihrer Sonderstellung gegenüber den anderen Bereichen und daran anschließend eine langfristige und erkennbare Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit des individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Lebens in anderen Bereichen als dem der Kunst.

1.
Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst sollte darauf abzielen, ihn um andere künstlerische und außerkünstlerische Gattungen zu erweitern und ihm Personen aus anderen Bereichen zuzuführen.
Künstlerische Projekte bedienen sich in der Regel bestimmter Gattungen, die innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst wiedererkennbar und etabliert sind: Filme, Aktionen, Installationen, Bilder. Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst beruht auf seiner Erweiterung um Gattungen, die zwar als künstlerisch wahrgenommen werden (bzw. die an den Bereich der Kunst angrenzen), jedoch innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst keine Anerkennung finden (z. B. Re-enactments historischer Ereignisse, die im Grenzbereich zwischen Theater und Performance angesiedelt sind). In der Konsequenz beinhaltet die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst auch die Einbindung von Personen, die im Bereich Kultur tätig sind, jedoch bisher nicht als Künstler angesehen wurden. Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst beruht außerdem auf seiner Erweiterung um Gattungen, die nicht als künstlerisch wahrgenommen werden (z. B. Beerdigungen, Gottesdienste, chirurgische Eingriffe usw.), sowie um Personen, die außerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst tätig sind, die kunstfremde Objekte herstellen und/oder Handlungen ausführen (Wissenschaftler, Handwerker, Arbeiter, Politiker usw.). Die politische Einwirkung auf die Kunst beruht darüber hinaus auf der Verwendung von Gattungen aus dem Bereich der Politik (Kongresse, Demonstrationen usw.). Die Verwendung politischer Gattungen und anderer Gattungen, die nicht als künstlerisch wahrgenommen werden, kann in zwei Richtungen erfolgen. Die erste Richtung bezeichnet die Verwendung einer politischen Gattung (oder einer Gattung aus einem anderen Bereich) im Bereich der Kunst. Die zweite Richtung bezeichnet das Eingreifen der Kunst in aktuelle Geschehnisse aus dem Bereich der Politik (oder aus einem anderen Bereich). Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst schließt auch die Ausübung – innerhalb der Kunst und/oder Tätigkeiten ein, wie beispielsweise Bildungsprojekte, Sozialisationsprojekte und sozialaktivistische Kampagnen.

2.
Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst sollte sich anhand einer Neudefinition der künstlerischen Materie und einer Neukonzeption künstlerischen Handelns, die auf langfristige und erkennbare Resultate ausgerichtet ist, vollziehen.
Das Ziel künstlerischer Projekte ist die Herstellung singulärer Kunstobjekte, das Ziel der Künstler ist die Realisierung aufeinanderfolgender künstlerischer Projekte. Diese Tatsache resultiert aus dem reproduktiven Charakter des Bereichs der Kunst. Man sagt, die Materie der Kunst seien einzelne Filme, Aktionen oder Installationen. Die politische Einwirkung auf den Bereich der Kunst bedeutet in diesem Fall eine Neudefinition der künstlerischen Materie als das kontinuierliche individuelle und kollektive Leben und eine Neukonzeption künstlerischen Handelns, die auf langfristige und erkennbare Resultate ausgerichtet ist.
Was bedeutet langfristig? Ein Leben lang. Künstlerisches Handeln sollte unsere Existenz auf unumkehrbare Weise transformieren. Kann sie dies mithilfe einer einzelnen Geste leisten? Manchmal ja. In anderen Fällen bedarf die Konzeption künstlerischen Handelns der schrittweisen Formulierung konkreter, erreichbarer Ziele, einzelner Schritte auf dem Weg zu einer Transformation des Lebens. Sie bedarf darüber hinaus der Formulierung konkreter Aufgaben und Fragen, auf die das künstlerische Handeln konkrete Antworten liefern sollte. Die Kunst ist dann wirkungsvoll, wenn es ihr sukzessive gelingt, Antworten zu finden und Ziele zu erreichen. Die langfristige Wirkung der Kunst lässt sich als eine Vektorsumme kurzfristiger Einzelwirkungen beschreiben.
Was bedeutet erkennbar? Über die künstlerische Wirkung innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst entscheidet die materielle Existenz öffentlich ausgestellter Kunstobjekte und deren dokumentierte Anerkennung von Rezipienten, die innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst hohen symbolischen Status besitzen (z. B. Kritiker). Über die erkennbare Wirkung außerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst entscheidet (per analogiam) die wirkliche Veränderung der Parameter des individuellen und kollektiven Lebens (da eben sie zur Materie der Kunst wird). Diese Veränderung wird öffentlich gemacht und durch die Anerkennung von Rezipienten, die einen hohen Status außerhalb der Kunst genießen (in Form von Pressereaktionen, amtlichen Mitteilungen und Kommuniqués), dokumentiert. Künstlerisches Handeln, das keine Aussicht auf eine solche Resonanz oder auf jedwede Bestätigung seiner Existenz von außerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst hat, schafft keine Politik, das heißt, sie bewirkt keinen Unterschied, der eine Veränderung des Status quo in und außerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst herbeiführt.

3.
Das Eindringen künstlerischen Handelns in andere Bereiche als den der Kunst muss sich auf solche Weise vollziehen, dass in dem neuen Bereich ebenfalls Politik geschaffen wird.
Was bedeutet in der Praxis eine Veränderung des Status quo außerhalb der Kunst? Es genügt nicht, dass künstlerisches Handeln aus dem Bereich der Kunst hinaustritt. Als Reaktion auf solcherlei Grenzüberschreitungen greifen für gewöhnlich diskursive Mechanismen, die darauf abzielen, ein derartiges Handeln zu diskreditieren. Die Repräsentanten des Bereichs, in den die Künstler eindringen, sagen dann oft: Das ist nur Kunst. Das Eindringen künstlerischen Handelns in einen anderen Bereich als den der Kunst muss sich auf solche Weise vollziehen, dass auch in dem neuen Bereich eine wirkliche Veränderung der in ihm herrschenden Verhältnisse herbeigeführt wird. Wenn wir zum Beispiel als Künstler in einen sozialen Kampf um die Emanzipation einer bestimmten Gruppe eingreifen, weil wir der Meinung sind, dass die Methoden, die bislang in diesem Bereich angewandt wurden, zu keinem Erfolg geführt haben, müssen wir in der Lage sein, alternative Methoden anzubieten. Dies erfordert eine gewisse Kompetenz in jenem Bereich, in den wir als Künstler einzudringen versuchen. Die Gabe der besonderen Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit und die Kompetenz in einem anderen Bereich als dem der Kunst erhöhen die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dort einen Wandel herbeizuführen, das heißt: Politik zu schaffen. Die anderen Bereiche bedürfen der Intervention von Künstlern, um den Kreis ihrer eigenen Reproduktion zu durchbrechen. Analog dazu kann das Hinaustreten von Künstlern aus dem Bereich der Kunst dabei helfen, die ständige Reproduktion des Bereichs der Kunst zu unterbrechen.
Eine Veränderung des Status quo außerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst bedeutet auch die Anwendung künstlerischer Mittel zur Verifizierung von Thesen, die in diesen Bereichen (in der Wissenschaft, in der Publizistik, in der Politik usw.) entwickelt wurden.

4.
Die Aufgabe der Kunst ist die Affirmation einer Gemeinschaft, die ihre eigene Universalisierung anstrebt. Dies sollte auf dem Wege einer Beschleunigung des Prozesses der Überwindung kollektiver Widersprüche im Bereich sozialer Konflikte geschehen.
Da die Materie der Kunst das individuelle und kollektive Leben ist, und künstlerisches Handeln eine erkennbare Auswirkung auf diese Materie haben sollte, ist es unumgänglich, Stellung zu den sozialen Prinzipien zu beziehen, die den Rahmen für die Kunst bilden.
Konflikte sind ein inhärentes Merkmal der Gesellschaft. Da wir alle unterschiedlich sind, existieren zwischen uns miteinander konfligierende und sich gegenseitig ausschließende Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen. Man nimmt allgemein an, dass diese Unterschiede auf dem Wege gesellschaftlicher Aushandlungsprozesse zu beseitigen sind. Nicht aushandelbare Unterschiede sollen wir in unser Privatleben verlagern und dort ausleben. Die Dynamik der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung der vergangenen Jahrzehnte hat jedoch gezeigt, dass gerade jene nicht aushandelbaren Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen zu den wichtigsten Bestandteilen individueller und kollektiver Identität werden. Folglich treten sie in den öffentlichen Raum – in Form von Postulaten, die Anspruch auf ihre Verwirklichung erheben, und Merkmalen, die Akzeptanz einfordern. Das dialogische Modell der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung hat einen toten Punkt erreicht. Ein sozialer Dialog über nicht verhandelbare Postulate ist unmöglich, ebenso wenig wie ein Akzeptieren inakzeptabler Merkmale. Gleichzeitig besteht kein Zweifel daran, dass die Gemeinschaft, in der wir leben, sich selbst universalisiert (d. h., immer neue Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen in den eigenen Rahmen zwingt). Wir beobachten eine Dialektik der Entstehung und Überwindung individueller und kollektiver Widersprüche. Jedes Entstehen abweichender Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen erzeugt einen unvermeidlichen Antagonismus, der zur Eskalation eines sozialen Konflikts führt. In den meisten Fällen nimmt dieser die Form von direkter oder indirekter politischer Gewalt an, um anschließend die zugrundeliegenden Widersprüche zu überwinden und eine neue gesellschaftliche Konstellation zu schaffen, die die transformierten Merkmale der zuvor antagonistischen Gruppen in ihren Horizont mit einschließt. Diese Überwindung kennzeichnet den Übergang einer Gemeinschaft in ein neues Stadium der gesellschaftlichen Universalisierung. Auch wenn der hier beschriebene Prozess schmerzhafter ist als der Versuch eines Dialogs zwischen zerstrittenen sozialen Gruppen, scheint er doch dem wirklichen Charakter sozialen Handelns näherzukommen. Soziale Konflikte dürfen nicht überdeckt, sondern müssen konsequent aufgearbeitet werden. Welche Rolle sollte die Kunst innerhalb dieses Prozesses spielen?
Der Bereich sozialer Konflikte strebt wie jeder andere Bereich (z. B. der Bereich der Kunst) in erster Linie nach der Aufrechterhaltung des eigenen Status quo. Dem Bereich sozialer Konflikte ist daran gelegen, antagonistische Spannungen zwischen sozialen Gruppen möglichst lang aufrechtzuerhalten und die Überwindung sozialer Widersprüche zu verzögern. Dies ist genau der richtige Ort und die richtige Zeit für künstlerische Interventionen. Die Kunst sollte unterstützend auf den Prozess der Überwindung sozialer Widersprüche einwirken. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass sie soziale Konflikte anheizen soll, sondern dass sie soziale Konflikte erfolgreich verarbeitet: Sie muss antagonistische Spannungen erkennen, von dieser Erkenntnis ausgehend Konflikte evozieren, zu ihrer Eskalation und damit zu ihrer Überwindung führen und auf diese Weise eine neue Gemeinschaft erzeugen, in der die zuvor existierenden Konflikte nicht mehr gültig sind. Bis zur Entstehung neuer Konflikte hat die Kunst ihre Arbeit fürs Erste getan.
Wie ist dies in der Praxis zu realisieren? Ein Künstler, der sich diese Frage stellt, sollte zunächst einmal eine Selbstcharakterisierung vornehmen: die Definition einer sozialen Gruppe, von deren Position aus er sich äußert und die er somit de facto repräsentiert, sowie die Definition der sich aus der Positionierung innerhalb einer konkreten sozialen Gruppe ergebenden Urteile, Meinungen und Hypothesen bezüglich des Gegenstands seiner Intervention. Ein Künstler, der in seinem künstlerischen Handeln seine eigene Position verschleiert, bewirkt eine Verfälschung der Situation, in die er interveniert.
Die Wahl eines künstlerischen Raums sollte nach dem Kriterium der gesellschaftlichen Divergenz erfolgen. In den meisten Fällen geschieht dies intuitiv. Künstler verorten ihre eigenen Handlungen – zumeist unbewusst – in einem anderen Umfeld als ihrem eigenen. Sie dringen in fremde Bereiche vor, geleitet von der intuitiven Suche nach dem Anderen, die mittlerweile zum Standard der Kunst geworden ist. Jene intuitive Praxis bedarf der Teilnahme des Bewusstseins.
Wenn die Kunst sich heute auf das Terrain des gesellschaftlich Anderen begibt, hat sie die Tendenz, sich mit der Lokalisierung jenes Anderen und seiner Repräsentierung zu begnügen. Das ist zu wenig. Manchmal versucht die Kunst auch, einen Schritt weiter zu gehen. Eine Kunst, die sich zum Beispiel der Darstellung von Minderheiten widmet, präsentiert das gesellschaftlich Andere für gewöhnlich mit der Absicht, es infrage zu stellen – also im Grunde, um eine heterogene Gemeinschaft zu homogenisieren. Oft geschieht dies beispielsweise bei einer Form von Theater, die Mitglieder bestimmter Randgruppen ihre eigenen Geschichten erzählen lässt, um den Zuschauern, die zur dominierenden gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Gruppe gehören, zu zeigen, dass »jene« in Wirklichkeit genauso sind wie »wir«. Die Identifizierung und Darstellung von Unterschieden darf nicht die finale Aufgabe der Kunst sein, und auch kein Schritt in Richtung der Annihilierung des Andersartigen. Sie darf lediglich ein Ausgangspunkt sein, ein erster Schritt auf dem Wege zu einer wirklichen Aufarbeitung von Konflikten.
Die Kunst sollte auf eine Konfrontation hinarbeiten, also einen wirklichen Zusammenstoß von Unterschieden herbeiführen. Aber Vorsicht! Das Eindringen künstlerischen Handelns in andere Bereiche muss sich auf solche Weise vollziehen, dass auch in dem neuen Bereich ein wirklicher Unterschied bewirkt wird. Wir haben bereits erwähnt, dass der Bereich sozialer Konflikte, genau wie jeder andere Bereich (z. B. der Bereich der Kunst), in erster Linie nach der Aufrechterhaltung des eigenen Status quo strebt. Künstler können ihre Gabe der besonderen Sensibilität für die Wirklichkeit dazu einsetzen, einen sozialen Konflikt zu evozieren, der nicht mehr nur die im Bereich bestehenden widersprüchlichen Parameter (Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen) reproduziert. Künstlerisches Schaffen basiert auf der Entwicklung von Szenarien zur Überwindung sozialer Widersprüche. Diese Szenarien sollten für den Bereich sozialer Konflikte nicht allzu leicht vorhersehbar und somit in ihrer Realisierung leicht zu verhindern sein. Die Umsetzung von Szenarien sozialer Antagonismen ermöglicht die tatsächliche Überwindung dieser Antagonismen und damit den Übergang einer Gemeinschaft in ein neues Stadium der gesellschaftlichen Universalisierung. Letzten Endes dient künstlerisches Handeln nämlich immer der Affirmation einer Gemeinschaft.
Die Dialektik von Konflikt und Koexistenz, von Kritik und Affirmation sollte die Philosophie der Kunst sein. Die Unterstützung des Prozesses der gesellschaftlichen Universalisierung anhand der Entwicklung von Szenarien zur Überwindung sozialer Widersprüche ist die Richtung, die sie einschlagen sollte. Und die Veränderung des individuellen und überindividuellen Lebens zum Besseren und Wahreren, das heißt hin zu einer universalisierten Zukunftsgesellschaft, die sämtliche möglichen Merkmale, Bedürfnisse und Interessen berücksichtigt und akzeptiert, sollte das oberste Ziel der Kunst sein.

5.
Der fundamentale Antagonismus innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst resultiert aus dem Konflikt zwischen einer Kunst, die den Titel einer apolitischen Schmiede neuer ästhetischer Formen für sich beansprucht, und der politischen Kunst.
Die oben beschriebenen Wirkungsmechanismen im Bereich sozialer Konflikte sind auch innerhalb des Bereichs der Kunst gültig. Der fundamentale Antagonismus innerhalb dieses Bereichs resultiert aus dem Konflikt zwischen einer Kunst, die den Titel einer apolitischen Schmiede neuer ästhetischer Formen für sich beansprucht, und der politischen Kunst. Die Erstere soll der individuellen Expression dienen, die spirituellen Erfahrungen des Individuums wiedergeben und die außerkünstlerische Wirklichkeit dokumentieren, ohne in ihre Abläufe einzugreifen. Die Kunst dieses Typus propagiert die Demontage, Dekonstruktion und Dekomposition sämtlicher Ideologien, Weltanschauungen und anderer kohärenter Narrative zugunsten der Unbestimmtheit des Lebens und eines Wirklichkeitspluralismus, der eine freie Wahlmöglichkeit garantieren soll. Die politische Kunst postuliert den Vorrang der Praxis des Lebens vor der Ästhetik und die Überlegenheit des Kollektiven über das Individuelle, sie betrachtet Existenzialismus und Spiritualität im Spannungsverhältnis zum Materialismus eines Systems der sozialen und ökonomischen Organisation, sie will gezielt in die außerkünstlerische Wirklichkeit eingreifen und – auf dem Wege der Überwindung sozialer Widersprüche, der Herbeiführung eines wirklichen Unterschieds und einer unumkehrbaren Transformation der Wirklichkeit – zur Schaffung einer universalisierten Zukunftsgesellschaft beitragen.

6.
Es gibt einen Teilsektor der gesellschaftlich orientierten Kunst, der unter dem Deckmantel einer linken Sensibilität für soziale Probleme in Wirklichkeit den existierenden gesellschaftlichen und künstlerischen Status quo reproduziert.
Die Interaktion zwischen den beiden genannten Richtungen hat eine Art Teilsektor der Kunst hervorgebracht, dessen Handlungen auf den gesellschaftlichen Raum ausgerichtet sind, der jedoch keine dauerhaften gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen bewirkt. Man kann diesen Teilsektor als fragmentarische Synthese ehemaliger Widersprüche im Bereich der Kunst ansehen: Widersprüche zwischen der postmodernen Kunst und der kritisch orientierten Kunst. Unter postmoderner Kunst verstehe ich jene Kunst, die eine Evokation der individualisierten, fragmentarisierten und ästhetisierten postmodernen Identität darstellt. Unter kritisch orientierter Kunst verstehe ich jene Kunst, die eine Evokation des postmodernen Konzepts des Widerstands gegen Machtverhältnisse auf dem Wege ihrer permanenten Dekomposition darstellt. Dieser Teilsektor hat sich in einem Syntheseprozess herausgebildet, in dessen Verlauf die kritisch orientierte Kunst die anthropologische These eines postmodernen Identitätskonzepts übernahm, während die postmoderne Kunst ihr Interesse vom Individuellen und Ästhetischen auf das Kollektive verlagerte und die Idee einer permanenten Dekomposition der Machtverhältnisse als Horizont ihrer eigenen gesellschaftlichen Praxis annahm. Die Existenz jenes Teilsektors erweckt den Eindruck, die Gegenwartskunst werde von der politischen Linken dominiert. Die Vielzahl von Aktionen, die sich mit Randgruppen beschäftigen, von Partizipationsprojekten, die die Beteiligung an demokratischen Prozessen fördern sollen, und von Maßnahmen zur Emanzipation unterdrückter Gruppen sollen als Beweis für eine linke Orientierung der Kunst dienen. Handelt es sich hierbei wirklich um linke Praktiken, und wird die Gegenwartskunst also tatsächlich von einer linken künstlerischen Gruppierung dominiert?
Linke Politik ist mehr als nur eine Reihe von Überzeugungen, die sich durch eine liberale Haltung gegenüber Fragen der Kultur und der Moral, durch eine ökonomische Fürsorge, die sich in der Vision des Wohlfahrtsstaats niederschlägt, und die Intuition, dass die staatlichen Institutionen als Hüter der individuellen Freiheit, der Einhaltung demokratischer Standards und der gerechten Verteilung des Wohlstands fungieren sollten. Linke Politik bedeutet in erster Linie die Unterstützung des Prozesses der Universalisierung der Gesellschaft (die Integration immer weiterer Merkmals-, Bedürfnis- und Interessenskonstellationen) durch die Herbeiführung eines wirklichen Unterschieds sowie durch die Provokation und Überwindung sozialer Antagonismen. In diesem Sinne sehe ich in jener auf den gesellschaftlichen Raum ausgerichteten Hauptströmung der Gegenwartskunst nicht mehr als ein gut gemeintes Bemühen der politischen Mitte, die Folgen der sozialen Verwüstung (dem Resultat zivilisatorischer Prozesse im Zusammenhang mit der gegenwärtigen kapitalistischen Revolution) mithilfe künstlerischer Handlungen abzuschwächen. Die Kunst wird nicht von der politischen Linken dominiert. Es herrscht dort vielmehr eine Art apolitischer Humanismus, der unter dem Deckmantel einer Verbesserung der Lebensqualität lediglich den gesellschaftlichen und künstlerischen Status quo reproduziert.

7.
Eine Unterbrechung des Prozesses der Reproduktion des gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen und künstlerischen Status quo im Teilsektor der gesellschaftlich orientierten Kunst erfordert eine Ausdehnung der künstlerischen Praxis durch ihre Verankerung in politischen Institutionen.
Warum zeichnet sich künstlerisches Handeln im gesellschaftlichen Raum durch wirkliches Engagement aus und ist doch nicht in der Lage, eine nachhaltige Transformation der Gesellschaft zu bewirken? Weil der apolitische Humanismus der Künstler ihre Zusammenarbeit mit gesellschaftlichen und politischen Institutionen verhindert, da sie in diesen eine Bedrohung ihrer künstlerischen Freiheit sehen. Man kann die genannten Institutionen jedoch auch als starke kollektive Subjekte begreifen, die das Potenzial haben, eine strukturelle Transformation der Wirklichkeit zu bewirken. Die Künstler sollten versuchen, ihre eigene Praxis auszudehnen, indem sie sie in derartigen Institutionen verankern. Sie sollten nach potenziellen Bündnispartnern aus dem Bereich der Politik suchen. Sie sollten Organisationen aus diesem Bereich beitreten. Ein Künstler, der die Zusammenarbeit mit gesellschaftlichen und politischen Organisationen verweigert, erklärt damit nur sein mangelndes Interesse an der Nachhaltigkeit künstlerischen Handelns. Die Einmaligkeit von Aktionen der gesellschaftlich engagierten Kunst ohne die strukturelle Unterstützung durch dauerhaft im Raum der gesellschaftlichen Praxis verankerte Institutionen verdammt sie zur Nichtexistenz.

8.
Die politische Einwirkung auf den Teilsektor der gesellschaftlich orientierten Kunst erfordert die Einbindung von Repräsentanten der politischen Rechten, das heißt gesellschaftlicher Hegemonen und aktiver Politiker.
Einer der Mechanismen, mit denen die gesellschaftlich orientierte Kunst den bestehenden gesellschaftlichen und künstlerischen Status quo reproduziert, ist die scharfe Grenzziehung zwischen Meinungen und Personen, die sich in den Rahmen der Political Correctness der apolitischen Kunst einfügen, und jenen, die keinen Zugang zu den durch diesen Rahmen vorgegebenen Meinungen und Praktiken haben. Die politische Einwirkung auf den Teilsektor der gesellschaftlich orientierten Kunst erfordert die Einbindung von Individuen, Gruppen und Kunstschaffenden, die bisher nicht von ihr berücksichtigt wurden, darunter die Repräsentanten der (weltlichen und religiösen) politischen Rechten: Nationalisten, Integralisten und die sogenannten Populisten und Radikalen sowie anderer Personen und Gruppen, die außerhalb der Political Correctness der Kunst und der vorherrschenden Wahrnehmung der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaftsordnung stehen. Die Gegenwartskunst hat die politische Rechte ausgegrenzt. Ebenso notwendig ist die Einbindung von Personen, die als Ausgrenzende wahrgenommen werden (d. h. Hegemonen, Personen, die einen hohen symbolischen und/oder ökonomischen Status genießen). Die Gegenwartskunst hat Methoden zur Subjektivierung der Ausgegrenzten und zur Linderung des Schmerzes der Unterdrückten entwickelt, doch sie scheut davor zurück, jene zu erziehen, die ausgrenzende und unterdrückende Handlungen verüben, dabei sind sie es, die eine Intervention vonseiten der Kunst am dringendsten benötigen. Die Gegenwartskunst hat die Ausgrenzenden ausgegrenzt. Dies betrifft auch aktive Politiker. Kunst sollte Politik sein, in dem Sinne, dass sie den Status quo im Bereich der Kunst infrage stellt, die Trennung zwischen dem Bereich der Kunst und anderen Bereichen aufhebt und den Status quo in anderen Bereichen als dem der Kunst infrage stellt – auf dem Wege einer langfristigen und erkennbaren Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit des individuellen und kollektiven Lebens. Doch sie sollte auch der Politik im engeren Sinne entgegenkommen – als einer Praxis zur Regulierung des Lebens mithilfe der Formulierung von Gesetzen und Richtlinien für das alltägliche Handeln. Sie sollte die Last auf sich nehmen, einen Einfluss auf die Wirklichkeit auszuüben: durch die Einwirkung auf Politiker, die Verifizierung politischer Thesen und die Formulierung politischer Alternativen. An dieser Stelle mögen Zweifel an der Kompetenz der Kunst und ihrer Legitimation zum Eingriff in den Bereich der Politik aufkommen. Diese Zweifel suggerieren, dass die politische Praxis eine spezialisierte, vom Alltag des individuellen und kollektiven Lebens abstrahierte Handlungsweise darstellt. Jeder Künstler ist ein Bürger, und jeder Bürger verfügt über eine politische Kompetenz, die er sich durch die Auseinandersetzung mit der Wirklichkeit erworben hat – einer Wirklichkeit, die durch Richtlinien organisiert ist, die im Bereich der aktiven Politik definiert wurden. Die gesellschaftliche Legitimation zum Eingriff in jenen Bereich sollte sich aus einer Veränderung im gesellschaftlichen Bild der Kunst, einer Neuverortung der Kunst im Bereich sozialer Konflikte und im Bereich der Politik sowie einem Wechsel des künstlerischen Paradigmas (das sich gegenwärtig einer überheblichen Apolitizität rühmt) ableiten.

9.
Das auf Präsentation und Repräsentation basierende Paradigma der Kunst sollte durch ein Paradigma ersetzt werden, das auf einer wirklichen, langfristigen und erkennbaren Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit basiert. Die Gegenwartskunst basiert auf Präsentation und Repräsentation. Die Repräsentation der Wirklichkeit wird in Form von Artefakten präsentiert. Aus diesem Grunde haben wir gesagt, dass die Materie der Kunst Filme, Aktionen oder Installationen sind, die – dies sei hinzugefügt – sich auf etwas außerhalb ihrer selbst beziehen sollen. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass die Gegenwartskunst nicht auch andere Parameter (z. B. den Parameter der Veränderung der Wirklichkeit, der Verbesserung des Lebens von Individuen und Gruppen usw.) berücksichtigen würde. Ihr Endprodukt ist jedoch die Darstellung eines Prozesses in Gestalt eines Artefakts, das zum Gegenstand ästhetischer und marktwirtschaftlicher Bewertung wird. Das Ziel von Kunstinstitutionen ist die Herstellung und Präsentation von Artefakten, die sich auf die außerkünstlerische Wirklichkeit beziehen, das Ziel der Kunstkritik ist die ästhetische Analyse und Bewertung einmaliger Kunstprodukte.
Dieses Paradigma muss verändert werden. Die Materie der Kunst sollte das individuelle und kollektive Leben sein, ihr wichtigster Parameter die wirkliche, langfristige und erkennbare Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit, ihr Bewertungskriterium die Qualität der hergestellten sozialen Bindungen, die als Beleg für die Richtigkeit der Lokalisierung sozialer Widersprüche und die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von Szenarien zu ihrer Überwindung gelten kann.

10.
Das Wesen der Kunst ist die ständige Erneuerung der Wahrhaftigkeit ihres eigenen Ziels.
Dieses Postulat, das im Grunde sämtliche zuvor formulierten Appelle in sich enthält, stößt möglicherweise auf Gegenargumente mit dem Verweis auf historische Parallelen. Wann immer heute vom politischen Charakter der Kunst, von ihrer sozialen Funktion, von ihren gesellschaftlichen Aufgaben und so weiter die Rede ist, wird sofort argumentiert, dies sei eine Wiederholung von Parolen, wie sie zum Beispiel in den 1970er-Jahren gängig waren. Mit dieser historischen Analogie sollen die erhobenen Forderungen entkräftet werden, denn nach der heute gültigen Definition beruht die Aufgabe der Kunst auf der Hervorbringung immer neuer künstlerischer Formen mit immer neuen künstlerischen Inhalten – als Antwort auf immer neue individuelle und kollektive Probleme. Diese Auffassung von Kunst ist falsch.
Der Theaterkünstler Thomas Richards wurde einmal gefragt, warum in seinen performativen Inszenierungen immer wieder die gleichen Formen und Handlungsabläufe wiederholt werden. Warum man – der Logik der Gegenwartskunst folgend, die jedes Mal etwas Neues fordert – den Eindruck gewinnt, er tue immer dasselbe. Richards hat darauf geantwortet, er habe dank seiner künstlerischen Praxis herausgefunden, welche Handlungsabläufe am besten dazu geeignet sind, das seiner Kunst vorschwebende Ziel zu erreichen. Und er hat hinzugefügt, ebenso gut könne man einem Yogi vorwerfen, er wiederhole immer die gleichen Positionen.
Das Wesen der Kunst ist nicht die Hervorbringung immer neuer künstlerischer Formen, sondern die unablässige Erneuerung der Wahrhaftigkeit ihres Ziels. Und dieses Ziel ist die tatsächliche Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit. Davon war bereits die Rede. Die Wiederholbarkeit von Forderungen bezüglich der Kunst ist ein Garant für die Erneuerbarkeit der Wahrhaftigkeit ihres Ziels. Fortschritt ist ein Merkmal der Wirklichkeit. Auch davon war bereits die Rede. Fortschritt in der Kunst basiert auf ihrer Unterstützung des Fortschritts in der Wirklichkeit. Das oberste programmatische Ziel der Kunst ist die konsequente, kontinuierliche Arbeit zugunsten der Schaffung eines neuen künstlerisch-gesellschaftlichen Paradigmas – die Herbeiführung eines wirklichen Unterschieds und eines unumkehrbaren Wandels hin zu einer universalisierten Gesellschaft. Ein solcher Anspruch kann sich nur dann erfüllen, wenn die Kunst nicht davor zurückschreckt, sich »nichtkünstlerischer« Gattungen, Instrumente und Personen zu bedienen. Jeder Künstler sollte sich selbst zu den folgenden Themen befragen: zur Wirkung seiner Kunst auf das eigene Leben (Wie verändert sich dein Leben angesichts deiner künstlerischen Handlung? Was verändert sich konkret? Bis zu welchem Grad? Wird diese Veränderung unumkehrbar und dauerhaft sein?); zur Wirkung seiner Kunst auf die unmittelbaren Rezipienten (Welchen Effekt wird dein künstlerisches Handeln auf den Beobachter haben? Was wird sich in seinem Leben konkret verändern?); zur Wirkung auf die Umgebung (Welche sichtbaren Veränderungen bewirkt dein künstlerisches Handeln in deiner Umgebung? Wird es eine dauerhafte Veränderung sein? Wird es möglich sein, sie zu ignorieren oder sie leicht wieder rückgängig zu machen?); zur Wirkung auf die mittelbaren Rezipienten, auf ganze soziale Gruppen oder auf die gesamte Gesellschaft (Hat dein künstlerisches Handeln einen wahrnehmbaren und dauerhaften Einfluss auf die Gesellschaft? Zeichnen sich hinsichtlich der angestrebten Resultate deines Handelns Möglichkeiten ab, Unzulänglichkeiten z. B. im Rechtssystem zu korrigieren? Solltest du Politiker mit diesen Resultaten vertraut machen? Wen solltest du mit ihnen vertraut machen? Wer ist der am weitesten entfernte vorgestellte Adressat deines künstlerischen Handelns? Und du selbst? Wen repräsentierst du mit deinem künstlerischen Handeln? Die Werte welcher sozialen Gruppe? Welcher Lobby oder Interessengruppe?). Ist es nur ein Zufall, wenn wir von der Zukunft sagen, sie zeichne sich ab?

Aus dem Polnischen von Heinz Rosenau

Dieser Text erschien anlässlich der Publikation „Forget Fear“ der 7. Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst (27. April – 1. Juli 2012), hrsg. von Artur .Zmijewski und Joanna Warsza, Köln 2012, S. 378–393.

Manifesto

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:43 +0000

Experience of life in the Soviet Union always forced me to avoid the theme ‘Art of the Future’ and futurological themes in general. This is probably connected with the fact that the Soviet ideology was always directed toward the future – the ‘building of Communism’ – and did not pay attention to the existential life of man ‘here and now’. In the Soviet Union, neither life itself nor the rights of the individual were worth anything. And one of the forms of resistance to this ideology was to ignore futurology in all its manifestations.
This is the main reason why I cannot say anything about the art of the future.
In my view, we cannot predict what the GOOD art of the future will be like, since good art, the art of the aesthetic, contacts ‘here and now’, is always connected with the present and is deeply personal. Everything that we can imagine in the future is merely BAD art, of which, however, there is always more than good art. In this respect, one can say with confidence that there will be no less bad art in the future than there is now.
Totalitarian social systems are always based one way or another on futurological fantasies, and in this respect futurological forms and totalitarian forms have the same nature.
The future is unclear, and I think it will remain like this. The best works of the present contain these incomprehensible points, obscure to the end, which indicate to us – included – the unknown art of the future.

Wiederabdruck
Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon, 2008.

Weiterführende Informationen/Bilder/Materialien whtsnxt.net/108

Truth is concrete

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:42 +0000

Opening Introduction
“Truth is concrete” – this was the sentence written in big letters over Bertolt Brecht’s desk in his Danish exile – quoting Lenin quoting Hegel quoting Augustine. In a time of extreme political turbulence it was a constant reminder never to forget the reality around in Europe of the late 1930ies. In another corner of his study stood – as Walter Benjamin writes in his notes – a little wooden donkey with a sign around his neck: “Even I must understand it”. So: For the next seven days we propose to take the possibility of concrete truth as a working hypothesis and to look for direct action, concrete change and knowledge. For an art that not only represents and documents, but that engages in specific political and social situations – and for an activism that not only acts for the sake of acting but searches for intelligent, creative means of self-empowerment: artistic strategies in politics, political strategies in art.
“Art is a leftist hobby” – we chose this obviously provoking quote of the Dutch right wing politician Geert Wilders as a negative motto because it was bothering us. Not only because it was meant to be offensive but even more because we could not as easily dismiss it as we would have liked to. Isn’t indeed the status of art reduced more and more to the relevance of a mere hobby? Didn’t indeed self-reflection and self-critique of art turn too often into self-involvedness or even self-indulgence?
One and a half year ago – when we decided on the topic and the format of “Truth is concrete” as a 24/7 marathon camp – the Arab Spring was still a spring. And the summer and autumn of Occupy hadn’t yet begun. The so called Euro-crisis was already all over the news and the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima just had happened. The huge demonstrations and the disillusioning elections in Russia were yet to come. It was obvious that things were changing rapidly in many ways in many corners of the world.
And of course: Everywhere where politics and society were shaken up, artists were among the first to get involved, among the first to join the political and social movements. But the question that kept re-occurring was: How did art, how did artistic strategies play a role? Did they play a role?
It was clear, that this was a time where we – as artists, theorists, curators – had to question for ourselves what we were doing and why. How we position ourselves. What our responsibilities are. Not only in critiquing our own field, our own institutions, formats, but in the relation to our societies, to the world. I think, most of us shared the strong feeling that we could not just wait and see how things would develop, what answers would derive over time. We shared the strong feeling, that we not only had to try to understand our role in all this, but also to directly engage and take part in shaping the discourse.
“Truth is concrete” seems to come at a moment of a paradigm shift in the relation of arts and politics: A generation of philosophers that derived complex and abstract theoretical concepts from very own and very concrete political experience and engagement was followed by a generation of philosophers (and artists, curators for that matter) that continued their thoughts – but often without binding them back to a contemporary, concrete reality.
We got used to call concepts, cultural theories, art works “political” even if they are only quite distantly based on theories that themselves already were quite distant from the concrete impulses that sparked them. A very homeopathic, second-hand interpretation of political philosophy became the main guideline of contemporary art discourse.
The classic leftist idea of “the private is the political“ was meant to politicise the private. But it seems that it rather privatised the political. The idea of “the aesthetical is the political“ was meant to politicize the aesthetical. But it seems that it aestheticized the political instead.
So we learned to replace critique with criticality, the political with the post-political, neoliberal capitalism with cultural capitalism. But where the answers get too complicated and abstract, the desire for simple solutions is growing. Art seems widely to have lost contact with a larger base.
The constant awareness of the complexity of the notions of truth, reality or even politics seem to have manoeuvred us into a dead-end road: either we are too simple, or we are too complex, too populist or too stuck in hermetic eremitism. Either we include too much or we exclude too many. We reached a point where the necessary awareness that everything is contingent and relative is in danger of just becoming intellectual relativism.
That is why this marathon focuses on very consequent, even radical interpretations of what art could, should, must be: On an art that very directly and hands-on gets involved. The next seven days we want to investigate what art can be – and: what politics could be.
So what is to be done? Can art help solve problems that politics and societies themselves have ignored for so long? Should art be a social or political tool, can it be useful? And why should artists know what to do when nobody else does?
Art and politics always have been in strange love/hate relationships. With this project we purposely ignore many of the borders, conflicts and resentments. Art is not activism and activism is not art. But the common ground, the shared space is large and, I believe, growingly important. It is a space that offers a chance for art to be engaged, connected and relevant. It is a space that offers activism a chance not to get stuck in ideology, routine and functionarism, a chance to stay unpredictable and sharp.
It is this space which we built this camp on and from where we want to take a close look at what happens when the differences between art and activism lose importance.
By focussing on “artistic strategies in politics and political strategies in art we hope to stay concrete. To talk about specific tools and specific ways of doing and thinking. We hope to avoid some of the usual-suspect dead-end ideological discussions. We hope not only to think together but also to find solutions for implementing. To create collaborations that might be considered unlikely. Truth is concrete is an invitation to show each other what we do, what we developed, what we are good at. To exchange tactics and strategies.
The probably most popular definition of strategies and tactics in our field comes from Michel de Certeau, who called strategy „the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that become possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated.“ Strategies belong to the ones in power.
Tactic, on the other hand “is the art of the weak”, that fights that power: it “operates in isolated actions, blow by blow. It takes advantage of ‚opportunities’ and depends on them, being without any base where it could stockpile its winnings, build up its own position, and plan raids.”
But we chose the term strategies on purpose, not because we are an institution, and by such perhaps one of the “subjects with will and power” to which de Certeau refers. But we are also interested in how the consequent use of certain tactics, the combination of certain tactics, the invention of tactics follow strategies or form strategies. We also need a “base” to take the term of de Certeau – not to stockpile the winnings, but to collect our attempts, approaches, our tactics.
That is why at the centre of the programme of “Truth is concrete“ are short, precise, so called Tactic Talks: Just 25 minutes of presentation of one project, one action, one proposal, one tactic. These talks build the nucleus of a kind of toolbox in progress.
170 hours, more than 200 artists, activists and theorists. Additionally 100 grants. A machine that runs non-stop – often too fast, sometimes too slow. All day, all night. It produces thought, arguments, knowledge, but is also creates frustration and exhaustion.
So: Does this marathon not just mirror or even fulfil the neoliberal agenda of more and more, of extreme labour, permanent availability etc.? Does it not just prolong the race with which we are struggling anyways in our capitalist environment? Would it not be better to slow down, to take time?
We aim in the opposite direction. Taking a break is not going to help. This machine of 170 hours does not pose a task that can be fulfilled (like some mega exhibitions or the in the art field popular 12 or 24 hour marathons propose). There is no accomplishment. This marathon cannot be easily commodified, not easily be consumed. It in its way is Incommensurable. There is no right time to, it is not build around highlights. There are not the best couple of hours to grasp it the right way.
There won’t be one marathon, there will be many. Shorter ones and longer ones. Some on the search for depth on topics that one is already familiar with. Others searching rather for things that one has no idea about yet. Having to miss out is part of having to make choices.
In a way it is also a metaphor for political movements: Spending an hour or so at Occupy Wall Street you will talk to some people, see some tents, maybe smell some of the spirit. You come back, listen into some committee meetings, maybe next time start talking yourself. Or you move in. All is possible, but it will give you different intensities.
We are interested not only in the intellectual intensity this hopefully will produce. We are also interested in physical intensity. In the impact this meeting has on our bodies. And we are interested in the social, collective intensity. In the here and now.
The marathon is the centre, surrounded by a camp-like living and working environment, a social space with its own needs and timings. “Truth is concrete” creates a one-week community, mixing day and night, developing its own jet lag towards the outside world – at the same time being open and free for everybody to join.
The programme of the marathon is accompanied by one-day-workshops, several durational projects and an exhibition. And – most important – by a parallel “Open marathon” that is based on self-organisation: its content is produced entirely by the participants – everybody is welcome to fill the slots, spontaneously or a couple of days in advance.
“Truth is concrete” creates a one-week community, mixing day and night, developing its own jet lag towards the outside world – at the same time being open and free for everybody to join.
So is this all just too much? Maybe. But maybe we have no time to lose. The world keeps changing at a fast pace and the marathon is a work meeting – an extreme effort at a time that seems to need extreme efforts.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien am 21. September 2012 unter: http://truthisconcrete.org/texts/?p=90 von herbst. Theorie zur Praxis 2012 [16.7.2013].

Occupy Wall Street´s anarchist roots

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:39 +0000

“How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what’s with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don’t you realise all this radical language is going to alienate people? You’re never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!”
If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States‘ financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace.
I should be clear here what I mean by „anarchist principles“. The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society – that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.

Anarchism versus Marxism
Traditional Marxism, of course, aspired to the same ultimate goal but there was a key difference. Most Marxists insisted that it was necessary first to seize state power, and all the mechanisms of bureaucratic violence that come with it, and use them to transform society – to the point where, they argued such mechanisms would, ultimately, become redundant and fade away. Even back in the 19th century, anarchists argued that this was a pipe dream. One cannot, they argued, create peace by training for war, equality by creating top-down chains of command, or, for that matter, human happiness by becoming grim joyless revolutionaries who sacrifice all personal self-realisation or self-fulfillment to the cause.
It’s not just that the ends do not justify the means (though they don’t), you will never achieve the ends at all unless the means are themselves a model for the world you wish to create. Hence the famous anarchist call to begin “building the new society in the shell of the old” with egalitarian experiments ranging from free schools to radical labour unions to rural communes.
Anarchism was also a revolutionary ideology, and its emphasis on individual conscience and individual initiative meant that during the first heyday of revolutionary anarchism between roughly 1875 and 1914, many took the fight directly to heads of state and capitalists, with bombings and assassinations. Hence the popular image of the anarchist bomb-thrower. It’s worthy of note that anarchists were perhaps the first political movement to realise that terrorism, even if not directed at innocents, doesn’t work. For nearly a century now, in fact, anarchism has been one of the very few political philosophies whose exponents never blow anyone up (indeed, the 20th-century political leader who drew most from the anarchist tradition was Mohandas K Gandhi.)
Yet for the period of roughly 1914 to 1989, a period during which the world was continually either fighting or preparing for world wars, anarchism went into something of an eclipse for precisely that reason: To seem “realistic“, in such violent times, a political movement had to be capable of organising armies, navies and ballistic missile systems, and that was one thing at which Marxists could often excel. But everyone recognised that anarchists – rather to their credit – would never be able to pull it off. It was only after 1989, when the age of great war mobilisations seemed to have ended, that a global revolutionary movement based on anarchist principles – the global justice movement – promptly reappeared.
How, then, did OWS embody anarchist principles? It might be helpful to go over this point by point:

1) The refusal to recognise the legitimacy of existing political institutions.
One reason for the much-discussed refusal to issue demands is because issuing demands means recognising the legitimacy – or at least, the power – of those of whom the demands are made. Anarchists often note that this is the difference between protest and direct action: Protest, however militant, is an appeal to the authorities to behave differently; direct action, whether it’s a matter of a community building a well or making salt in defiance of the law (Gandhi’s example again), trying to shut down a meeting or occupy a factory, is a matter of acting as if the existing structure of power does not even exist. Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.

2) The refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order.
The second principle, obviously, follows from the first. From the very beginning, when we first started holding planning meetings in Tompkins Square Park in New York, organisers knowingly ignored local ordinances that insisted that any gathering of more than 12 people in a public park is illegal without police permission – simply on the grounds that such laws should not exist. On the same grounds, of course, we chose to occupy a park, inspired by examples from the Middle East and southern Europe, on the grounds that, as the public, we should not need permission to occupy public space. This might have been a very minor form of civil disobedience but it was crucial that we began with a commitment to answer only to a moral order, not a legal one.

3) The refusal to create an internal hierarchy, but instead to create a form of consensus-based direct democracy.
From the very beginning, too, organisers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus. The first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership structure that could be co-opted or coerced; the second, that no majority could bend a minority to its will, but that all crucial decisions had to be made by general consent. American anarchists have long considered consensus process (a tradition that has emerged from a confluence of feminism, anarchism and spiritual traditions like the Quakers) crucial for the reason that it is the only form of decision-making that could operate without coercive enforcement – since if a majority does not have the means to compel a minority to obey its dictates, all decisions will, of necessity, have to be made by general consent.

4) The embrace of prefigurative politics.
As a result, Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society – not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self-organisation – a genuine attempt to create the institutions of a new society in the shell of the old.
Why did it work? Why did it catch on? One reason is, clearly, because most Americans are far more willing to embrace radical ideas than anyone in the established media is willing to admit. The basic message – that the American political order is absolutely and irredeemably corrupt, that both parties have been bought and sold by the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, and that if we are to live in any sort of genuinely democratic society, we’re going to have to start from scratch – clearly struck a profound chord in the American psyche.
Perhaps this is not surprising: We are facing conditions that rival those of the 1930s, the main difference being that the media seems stubbornly willing to acknowledge it. It raises intriguing questions about the role of the media itself in American society. Radical critics usually assume the “corporate media”, as they call it, mainly exists to convince the public that existing institutions are healthy, legitimate and just. It is becoming increasingly apparent that they do not really see this is possible; rather, their role is simply to convince members of an increasingly angry public that no one else has come to the same conclusions they have. The result is an ideology that no one really believes, but most people at least suspect that everybody else does.
Nowhere is this disjunction between what ordinary Americans really think, and what the media and political establishment tells them they think, more clear than when we talk about democracy.

Democracy in America?
According to the official version, of course, “democracy” is a system created by the Founding Fathers, based on checks and balances between president, congress and judiciary. In fact, nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution does it say anything about the US being a “democracy”. The authors of those documents, almost to a man, defined “democracy” as a matter of collective self-governance by popular assemblies, and as such they were dead-set against it.
Democracy meant the madness of crowds: bloody, tumultuous and untenable. “There was never a democracy that didn’t commit suicide,“ wrote Adams; Hamilton justified the system of checks and balances by insisting that it was necessary to create a permanent body of the “rich and well-born“ to check the “imprudence“ of democracy, or even that limited form that would be allowed in the lower house of representatives.
The result was a republic – modelled not on Athens, but on Rome. It only came to be redefined as a “democracy” in the early 19th century because ordinary Americans had very different views, and persistently tended to vote – those who were allowed to vote – for candidates who called themselves “democrats”. But what did – and what do – ordinary Americans mean by the word? Did they really just mean a system where they get to weigh in on which politicians will run the government? It seems implausible. After all, most Americans loathe politicians, and tend to be skeptical about the very idea of government. If they universally hold out “democracy” as their political ideal, it can only be because they still see it, however vaguely, as self-governance – as what the Founding Fathers tended to denounce as either “democracy” or, as they sometimes also put it, “anarchy”.
If nothing else, this would help explain the enthusiasm with which they have embraced a movement based on directly democratic principles, despite the uniformly contemptuous dismissal of the United States’ media and political class.
In fact, this is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles – direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones – has cropped up in the US. The civil rights movement (at least its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, and the global justice movement all took similar directions. Never, however, has one grown so startlingly quickly. But in part, this is because this time around, the organisers went straight for the central contradiction. They directly challenged the pretenses of the ruling elite that they are presiding over a democracy.
When it comes to their most basic political sensibilities, most Americans are deeply conflicted. Most combine a deep reverence for individual freedom with a near-worshipful identification with institutions like the army and police. Most combine an enthusiasm for markets with a hatred of capitalists. Most are simultaneously profoundly egalitarian, and deeply racist. Few are actual anarchists; few even know what “anarchism” means; it’s not clear how many, if they did learn, would ultimately wish to discard the state and capitalism entirely. Anarchism is much more than simply grassroots democracy: It ultimately aims to eliminate all social relations, from wage labour to patriarchy, that can only be maintained by the systematic threat of force.
But one thing overwhelming numbers of Americans do feel is that something is terribly wrong with their country, that its key institutions are controlled by an arrogant elite, that radical change of some kind is long since overdue. They’re right. It’s hard to imagine a political system so systematically corrupt – one where bribery, on every level, has not only been made legal, but soliciting and dispensing bribes has become the full-time occupation of every American politician. The outrage is appropriate. The problem is that up until September 17, the only side of the spectrum willing to propose radical solutions of any sort was the Right. As the history of the past movements all make clear, nothing terrifies those running the US more than the danger of democracy breaking out. The immediate response to even a modest spark of democratically organised civil disobedience is a panicked combination of concessions and brutality. How else can one explain the recent national mobilisation of thousands of riot cops, the beatings, chemical attacks, and mass arrests, of citizens engaged in precisely the kind of democratic assemblies the Bill of Rights was designed to protect, and whose only crime – if any – was the violation of local camping regulations?
Our media pundits might insist that if average Americans ever realised the anarchist role in Occupy Wall Street, they would turn away in shock and horror; but our rulers seem, rather, to labour under a lingering fear that if any significant number of Americans do find out what anarchism really is, they might well decide that rulers of any sort are unnecessary.

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Dieser Text erschien unter http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html [8.9.2013].

The Contemporary Artist as Role Model in a Crisis of Competence

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:39 +0000

In a universe of increasing incompetence, in which amateurism flourishes, the contemporary artist offers an interesting role model. Society can learn much from the ways in which the contemporary artist makes his ignorance effective.

As a profession, contemporary art occupies a special position. Lacking a clear standard of craftsmanship, it is not a real métier: neither technical nor aesthetic criteria exist that can help identify a ‘competent work of art’. In this respect contemporary visual art differs from other art forms, such as music or dance, that still have solid minimum criteria for technique and skill. Aspiring musicians who need help distributing their new songs or albums may partner with a Distrokid distributor.
Should artists be able to hold a hammer? In contemporary art even insiders rarely agree about criteria of artistic quality. A particular artist’s work may be judged as pathetic wreckage by some and at the same time as a revolutionary new aesthetic by others. This lack of consensus about quality and artistic merit will continue to provide material for Gerrit Komrij to write cynical newspaper columns. It is, however, actually a fascinating characteristic that makes the contemporary artist an unexpected role model in today’s society.
At the moment, we see around us a real, overall crisis of competence. The most distressing examples of this have shown up in the financial sector, with banks, investors and insurance companies (‘The incompetence is baffling,’ according to financial markets supervisor Hans Hoogervorst, last April). Major infrastructural projects that have stranded or failed completely also indicate a fundamental lack of expertise, in this case on the part of government authorities and project developers. ‘When the government stopped building bridges and roads, knowledge and expertise shifted to market players,’ according to the city of Almere’s alderman, Adri Duivesteijn (NRC Handelsblad, 12 December 2009). But those market players themselves also seem to be failing. Contractors and subcontractors building the sheet piling for Amsterdam’s new metro line have made tremendous blunders, with well-publicized, disastrous consequences. From other sectors of society, including elementary education and forensic psychiatry, painful cases of incompetence are being reported as well.
Universities, colleges, government bodies and other organizations are meanwhile obsessed by the phantom of ‘excellence’. But the more they repeat this mantra, beating the drum of the knowledge economy, the clearer it becomes that society as a whole finds itself in a crisis of competence.
Incompetence is certainly a thing of every age. The current crisis may be due to the fact that technical, managerial and economic systems have become so complex and intertwined that minor incidents are more likely to have far-reaching consequences. Automation has in any case proven to be no remedy for the unreliable human factor. In fact, it only multiplies the consequences of human failure.
There is also a clear ideological component. Within the neoliberal network economy, knowledge tends to dissolve in a quick succession of temporary projects, causing a loss of focus and concentration. The durable institutional logic of the state, the school or the museum evaporates in an ever more rapid sequence of reorganizations and management trends. To control and innovate the organization itself has become an obsession that is making managers lose sight of more substantial tasks.
In this context, the contemporary artist is an interesting role model. In a universe of increasing incompetence, only artists know how to make their lack of expertise productive. Contemporary artists are professionals without a profession, craftspeople without a craft, dilettantes with infinite potential. Only artists routinely subject the professional content of their discipline to debate, as part of their everyday practice. With each new work they make, artists embrace the crisis of competence instead of shifting it to others, as is the case in most other domains. They accept complete responsibility, in defiance of the neoliberal tendency to delegate and outsource. By definition, the creation of a work of art entails a critical test of the criteria of creative competence and artistic skill. Thus visual art can be considered as a form of societal meta-production: any contemporary work of art is like a condensed re-enactment of the crisis of competence in a public context.
What are the implications for art schools? The ideal visual art curriculum neither denies nor conceals the lack of substance at the heart of the artistic profession, nor does it anxiously try to renew or reconstruct some lost craft. Instead it makes this fundamental condition the focal point of a permanently reflective practice. However paradoxically, the true competence of the artist is the ability to work with his or her own incompetence. Art students have to learn to face the indeterminate nature of their profession, without recourse to generally valid methods and techniques.
In the mundane reality of both politics and business, such critical capacity has been lost. Due to pressure from voters, shareholders, consumers and the media, the fear of making mistakes has overtaken all other concerns. Even if the contemporary artist is not able to come up with a general solution to this dilemma, the artistic attitude in dealing with (in)competence is well worth a closer look. Art education may be the only place where this particular type of ‘competency training’ exists.

Translated from the Dutch by Mari Shields.

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Dieser Text erschien zuerst in: Pascal Gielen & Camiel van Winkel: ‘De kunstenaar als rolmodel in tijden van competentiecrisis’, in: Metropolis M 5 (October/November 2010), pp. 17-18. Englische Übersetzung: http://metropolism.com/magazine/2010-no5/de-kunstenaar-als-rolmodel-in-ti/english [7.5.2013].