Lokal – what's next?

The Fabbing Revolution

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:41 +0000

Am Anfang stand das Unikat. Als unsere Urvorfahren die ersten Figuren, Teller und Schalen aus Lehm formten, schufen sie Dinge, die stets in einer unmittelbaren Beziehung zu ihrem Produzenten standen. Die Welt der Dinge war gleichzeitig die Welt der Ideen und Vorstellungen. Jeder, der etwas schuf, schrieb seine eigene Geschichte, seine personale Magie in Materie hinein. Die Hand, das Holz, der Stein: Diese intime Beziehungskiste zwischen dem Menschen und seinen Artefakten dauerte Zigtausende von Jahren. Noch in der Agrargesellschaft blieb jedes Ding ein Einzelstück. Ein Bett, ein Stuhl, ein Kleidungsstück stammte aus der unmittelbaren Anstrengung eines Einzelnen oder einer kleinen Gruppe von Handwerkern. Produziert wurde zumeist im „ganzen Haus“, dem um Gesinde, Abhängige, Anverwandte ergänzten Haushalt.
Dann, im späten 18. Jahrhundert mit der Dampfmaschine und dem mechanischen Webstuhl „Spinning Jenny“, kam die erste Industrielle Revolution, die die mechanisierte Arbeitsteilung in Manufakturen mit sich brachte. Die zweite Industrielle Revolution – ab 1910 setzte Henry Ford erstmals Fließbänder in seinen Fabriken ein, und Frederick Winslow Taylor stand mit der Stoppuhr daneben – skalierte dieses Prinzip hoch zur industriellen Massenproduktion. In gigantischen Fabrikanlagen, die im Zuge des globalisierten Offshoring zu mehrfach um den Globus gewickelten Wertschöpfungsketten zusammengestöpselt wurden, entstanden Abermillionen von Autos, DVD-Playern, Monoblocsesseln und in scheinbar verbesserter Qualität und zu immer günstigeren Preisen, eine „ungeheure Warenansammlung“, wie sie schon Marx und Engels in Aussicht gestellt hatten.
Die Skalenvorteile dieser „entfesselten Produktivkräfte“ sorgen bis heute dafür, dass die Inflationsraten in den westlichen Ländern im Rahmen bleiben – und dies obwohl die Volkswirtschaften im Zuge der Finanzkrise mit billigem Geld nur so geflutet werden: Ein Vorgang, der eigentlich der Theorie widerspricht und nur durch das chinesische Lohn- und Wechselkursdumping erklärt werden kann. Der Fortschritt folgte dabei auf stupende Weise Ruskins Gesetz – formuliert von John Ruskin, einem frühen Gegner der industriellen Produktionsweisen und romantischem Verfechter handwerklicher Qualität –, das da lautet: „Es gibt kaum etwas auf dieser Welt, das nicht irgend jemand ein wenig schlechter machen und etwas billiger verkaufen könnte, und die Menschen, die sich nur am Preis orientieren, werden die gerechte Beute solcher Machenschaften.“
Die dritte industrielle Revolution, von der wir künden, lenkt das Pendel erneut in eine andere Richtung. An die Stelle des industriellen Immer-mehr-vom-Gleichen-zu-immer-günstigeren-Preisen treten individuellere Produkte, hergestellt in flexibler und kleinteiliger Produktionsweise mit universell einsetzbaren Werkzeugen.
Auch hinter dieser ökonomischen Umwälzung steckt eine technologische: die Digitalisierung der Produktion. Aber diesmal arbeitet die Technologie nicht vom Menschen weg in Richtung golemhafter Monstrosität, sondern sie arbeitet auf den Menschen zu im Sinne eines individuellen „Empowerment». Sie wird zu einer mittleren oder vermittelnden Technologie im menschlichem Maßstab, wie sie schon Mahatma Ghandi vorgeschwebt hatte. Vieles, wofür man früher einen kleinen Betrieb oder ein mittelständisches Unternehmen benötigte, lässt sich heute vom Laptop aus erledigen.
Einiges in der kommenden Epoche entfalteter digitaler Produktivkräfte wird sogar an die Zeit vor der industriellen Revolution erinnern – nur unter High-Tech-Vorzeichen. „Auf gewisse Weise sind die Produktionsmittel wieder prä-industriell geworden“, schreibt Daniel Pink in seinem herzerwärmenden Manifest „Free Agent Nation“. Oder noch pointierter: „Technology is taking the capital out of capitalism.” Der technologische Wandel wird einen Kapitalismus hervorbringen, in dem Kapital nicht mehr der Engpassfaktor ist.

Die Fabbing-Revolte
Jede Revolution beginnt mit einer schwelenden Revolte, engagierten Vorkämpfern und einem gemeinsamen Slogan. Fabbing, das Ausdrucken von dreidimensionalen Gegenständen, ist das Herz dieser Revolte. Und „Atoms are the new bits“, lautet die griffige Formel, mit der Visionäre des kommenden Aufstandes wie Neil Gershenfeld vom MIT nun schon seit Jahren die bevorstehende Disruption durch Fabbing-Technologien ankündigen. Gemeint ist damit, dass sich der Trend zu Personal Fabrication, die Demokratisierung der Produktion, exakt in den Bahnen ereignen wird, die durch die PC-Revolution vorgezeichnet wurden. 2005 schrieb Gershenfeld in seinem Buch „FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop“: „Wie beim früheren Übergang von Mainframe-Computern zu PCs werden die Potentiale von maschinellem Werkzeug nun für den Normalmenschen erschwinglich in Form von Personal Fabricators (PFs). Die Auswirkungen sind wahrscheinlich diesmal aber noch gravierender, weil das, was hier personalisiert wird, unsere physische Welt der Dinge ist, nicht die digitale Welt der Computer-Bits.“
Um einen Vorgeschmack zu geben, haben Gershenfeld und sein Centre for Bits and Atoms die FabLabs entwickelt, kleine Produktionseinheiten, in denen von Alltagsgütern des täglichen Bedarfs bis zu Hightech-Produkten fast alles dezentral produziert (und repariert) werden kann. Über 50 dieser FabLabs sind mittlerweile weltweit im Einsatz, vom ländlichen Indien bis Boston, von Südafrika bis Nord-Norwegen. Aber Gershenfeld geht es um mehr als nur ein neues Werkzeug, um damit Industrieproduktion dorthin zu bringen, wo sie vorher nicht war. Eigentlich geht es dem Revoluzzer darum, die Trennung von Handwerkskunst und Produktion im Gefolge der Industriellen Revolution zu korrigieren. Der eigentliche Sprengstoff dafür schlummerte in der Weiterentwicklung der 3D-Drucker, die damals noch gar nicht richtig begonnen hatte, als Gerschenfeld schrieb: „Ein programmierbarer Personal Fabricator wird in der Lage sein alles mögliche inklusive sich selbst herzustellen indem er Atome kombiniert. Es wird eine sich selbst reproduzierende Maschine sein.“
Kurze Zeit später, im September 2006, stellte Adrian Bowyer, ein exzentrischer Brite, an der Universität von Bath im Westen Englands den ersten Prototypen einer solchen Maschine vor, die neben allem möglichen anderen auch die meisten Bauteile für sich selbst herstellen konnte – und sich so theoretisch endlos fortpflanzen könnte. Der RepRap, kurz für „replicating rapid-prototyper“, ein würfelförmiges Gebilde aus Gewindestangen, Computerchips und simplen Plastikteilen, die auf einer ebensolchen Maschine hergestellt werden können. Auch Bowyer glaubte von Anfang an fest an die durchschlagende gesellschaftliche Wirkung seiner Maschine; sie werde „ein revolutionäres Eigentum an den Produktionsmitteln durch das Proletariat ermöglichen – ohne den chaotischen und gefährlichen Revolutionskram.“

Das nächste Apple
Bowyers RepRap, der von einer Open-Source-Hardware-Community permanent weiterentwickelt wird, ist gleichzeitig Urahn der meisten billigen 3D-Drucker, die heute auf dem Markt sind oder gerade auf den Markt drängen. 2009 machten drei Jungs aus Brooklyn den Anfang und brachten mit dem „Makerbot“ den ersten Bausatz für einen 3D-Drucker unter 1.000 US-Dollar auf den Markt. Obwohl die Eigenbau-Montage zeitraubend und knifflig war, war die Nachfrage auf Anhieb so groß, dass die Firma ihre Erstkunden bitten musste, auf ihren Makerbots gegen Bezahlung Komponenten für weitere Bausätze zu fertigen. Nur halb im Spaß wurde das bescheidene Start-up ganz in der Atoms-Bits-Analogie bereits als „das nächste Apple“ gehandelt, erinnert man sich, wie handgemacht die erste PC-Generation aussah.
Seit Anfang dieses Jahres gibt es das neueste Modell „Replicator“ zum Preis von 1.749 US-Dollar im Makerbot-Webshop zu bestellen. Es kommt vorfabriziert ins Haus, sieht bereits wie ein richtiges Produkt aus und richtet sich damit an weniger technikbegabte Amateure. Die Wartezeit beträgt allerdings zehn bis zwölf Wochen. Und Makerbot bekommt derzeit mächtig Konkurrenz im niederpreisigen Home-Segment. Eine Reihe von 3D-Druckern in ähnlicher Preisklasse sind bereits lieferbar oder angekündigt. Der Markt fühlt sich ein bisschen so an, wie der PC-Markt um 1980 zu Zeiten des Commodore VC-20 oder des Atari ST. Was lange Zeit blumige Versprechung war, steht nun anscheinend vor einem breiteren Durchbruch beim Publikum: Der erschwingliche 3D-Drucker für jeden Schreibtisch als Teil der PC-Infrastruktur.
Wenn Makerbot sich tatsächlich als das nächste Apple herausschälen sollte, dann wäre die angegliederte Website Thingiverse.com das nächste iTunes. Hier kann man sich die CAD-Datensätze herunterladen, mittels derer der Makerbot – oder jedes andere Modell – dann den eingespeisten Plastikdraht über eine Heißdüse Schicht für Schicht in die gewünschte Form modelliert. Der Vergleich mit Apple hinkt allerdings, weil auf Thingiverse alle Datensätze umsonst zu haben sind – so wie das ganze Feld noch sehr nach Open-Source-Regeln funktioniert. Bisher, und das ist das große Manko der Szene, ist allerdings wenig Weltbewegendes dabei: Das Spektrum reicht von der Trillerpfeife bis zur Schneckenfalle für den Garten. Vieles erinnert an Überraschungsei-Schnickschnack. Das liegt zum einen an den begrenzten Volumina, als auch an den zu verarbeitenden Materialien. Die meisten Geräte können nur minderwertige Thermoplaste verarbeiten und in Einzel-Objekte bis zur Größe eines Tennisballs verwandeln. Damit lässt sich die Welt kaum aus den Angeln hebeln.
Aber auch das ändert sich gerade. Immerhin kann der „Replicator“ bereits zweifarbige Objekte ausdrucken, und es tun sich immer mehr sinnvolle praktische Anwendungsfelder auf – nicht mehr lieferbare Ersatzteile für historische Geräte und Oldtimer sind bereits heute eins. Per 3D-Scanner lassen sich Alltagsobjekte in Datensätze verwandeln und werden so zur Software für eine Reparatur-Ökonomie „Marke Eigenbau“. Wie beim PC, mit dem anfangs auch überwiegend gespielt wurde, wird die Bewegung eines Tages das Experimentierstadium überwunden haben und das Nichtschwimmerbecken verlassen.

Ding-Hacking und Bio-Hacking
Als Menetekel und historischer Kick-off könnte sich in der Rückschau etwa ein scheinbar unbedeutendes Ereignis im Januar 2012 erweisen: der Zeitpunkt, als The Pirate Bay die Kategorie „Physibles“ zu seinen bestehenden Kategorien hinzufügt. Damit rüstet sich die Filesharing-Plattform, die schon der Software-, Musik- und Filmindustrie gehörig zugesetzt hat, für eine Zukunft, in der auch die CAD-Daten physischer Objekte auf breites Interesse von Raubkopierern stoßen, und das verarbeitende Gewerbe nicht mehr nur chinesische Kopien und Plagiate fürchten muss, sondern eine Ding-Piraterie durch Amateure. Die Erläuterung der Piraten dazu liest sich ähnlich vollmundig-visionär wie die Sätze der ersten Fabbing-Propheten: „Wir versuchen immer, die Zukunft vorauszusehen […] Wir glauben, der nächste Schritt beim Kopieren wird der von der digitalen zur physischen Form sein. Es werden physische Objekte sein. Oder, wie wir sie nennen: Physibles. Datenobjekte, die bereit und in der Lage sind, sich zu vergegenständlichen. Wir glauben, 3D-Drucker, -Scanner und dergleichen sind nur der erste Schritt. Wir glauben, in der nahen Zukunft wird man Ersatzteile für Fahrzeuge drucken. Und in 20 Jahren seine Sneakers herunterladen.“
Was passiert, wenn sich die Hacker auf die reale Welt stürzen und beginnen, die Lücken zu stopfen und Nischen zu füllen, die die industrielle Massenproduktion bietet? Auch Chris Anderson, Chefredakteur von Wired, „Long Tail“-Erfinder und Kurator der TED-Konferenz sieht – ausgehend von einer Renaissance der Garagenbastler – eine neue industrielle Revolution heraufziehen, die sich am Vorbild der Digitalisierung orientiert. In einer WIRED-Titelgeschichte zum Thema schreibt er: „Peer Production, Open Source, Crowdsourcing, user-generated Content – all diese digitalen Trends übertragen sich nun auf die reale Welt.“
Analog zu den Hackern der PC-Revolution bildet in den USA die wachsende Maker-Szene die Speerspitze der Bewegung. Sie trifft sich seit 2006 in Kalifornien auf den Maker Faires, einer Art Erfinder-Weltkongress 2.0, der mittlerweile Ableger in Kanada, Afrika und Korea ausgebildet hat. Bei der letzten Flagship-Messe im Mai 2012 im San Mateo County Event Center kamen über 100.000 Teilnehmer. Die Szene reicht von den traditionellen Bastlern und Schraubern, die in klassischer Do-it-yourself-Manier vom getunten Toaster bis zur lebensgroßen Dinosaurier-Attrappe alles mögliche selbst herstellen, bis zu den Hardhackern, deren Ehrgeiz darin liegt, eigene Computer-Hardware und -Peripherie zu entwickeln und anzupassen. Letztere haben durch die Entwicklung des Arduino einen ziemlichen Zustrom erlebt. Diese von Interface-Designern in Norditalien entwickelte „Electronic Prototyping Plattform“ ist nach Open-Source-Regeln anpassbar und frei bestückbar mit Sensoren, LEDs, Elektromotoren etc. Damit ist der Arduino, den es in der Basisvariante bereits ab 20 Euro zu kaufen gibt, zum Herzstück vieler Hardware-Eigenentwicklungen bis hin zu marktreifen Produkten in Kleinserie geworden. Selbst versiertere Laien können damit nach Anleitung einen webfähigen Feuchtigkeitsmesser bauen, der ihnen über Twitter mitteilt, wenn die Zimmerpflanzen Wasser brauchen. Ambitioniertere Bastler haben damit bereits einen Open-Source-Gameboy fabriziert.
Die Ultra-Pioniere der Bewegung haben sich allerdings bereits von der Hardware abgewendet und richten ihre Energien auf die „Wetware“, biologische Materialien, Mikroorganismen und DNA. Bio-Hacking heißt das neue Zauberwort. Hobby-Frankensteine, die sich selbst „Bio-Punks“ nennen, machen den Einrichtungen der Spitzenforschung ihr Monopol auf die synthetische Biologie streitig. Die Labor-Ausstattung dafür kaufen sie billig auf Ebay, die Gen-Sequenzen, sogenannte „Biobricks“, erhalten sie von den gleichen Laboren, die ansonsten für Profi-Forscher die Sequenzierungen im industriellen Maßstab übernehmen. Bislang hat noch kein lebensfähiger, von Amateuren designter Organismus den Bastelkeller verlassen. Das heute erreichbare Niveau, das fanden kürzlich auch Wissenschaftsredakteure der FAZ im Eigenexperiment heraus, liegt etwa bei der Isolierung und Analyse einzelner Genabschnitte des eigenen Erbmaterials.
Dagegen stehen die vollmundigen Ankündigungen von Biohacking-Visionären wie Freeman Dyson von der Harvard-Universität: „Die domestizierte Biotechnik wird uns, steht sie erst einmal Hausfrauen und Kindern zur Verfügung, eine explosionsartige Vielfalt neuer Lebewesen bescheren statt der Monokulturen, die die Großunternehmen bevorzugen.“ Und weiter: „Genome designen wird eine persönliche Angelegenheit werden, eine neue Kunstform, die so kreativ wie Malen oder Bildhauern sein wird. Nur wenige der neuen Kreationen werden Meisterwerke sein, viele aber werden ihren Schöpfern Freude bereiten und unsere Fauna und Flora bereichern.“
Ob irgendetwas davon jemals Realität wird, scheint mehr als fraglich. Dass überhaupt darüber nachgedacht und daran herumexperimentiert wird, zeigt aber, dass heute kein Bereich mehr vor herandrängenden Hackern sicher ist. Und keine Industrie dagegen gefeit, dass sich ambitionierte Amateure und DIY-Bastler in ihr Geschäftsfeld einmischen.

Distributed Manufacturing
Die nächste Industrielle Revolution bedeutet nicht, dass eine neue Form der High-Tech-Subsistenzwirtschaft an die Stelle der industriellen Massenproduktion tritt. Das Szenario, dass die neue Konkurrenz für Konzerne aus Garagen, Hobbykellern und Hinterhöfen erwächst – und auch dort produziert – ist ebenso unrealistisch wie der populäre Kurzschluss, dass wir eines Tages alle 3D-Drucker auf unseren Schreibtischen stehen haben werden, die die Güter des täglichen Bedarfs ausspucken. Dafür sind heutige Herstellungsverfahren schlicht zu komplex, die Leistungsfähigkeit von Home-3D-Druckern zu limitiert, beispielsweise scheitern sie auf absehbare Zeit an der Metallverarbeitung, und die Oberflächenqualität lässt auch noch sehr zu wünschen übrig.
Zwar hat im Tokyoter Hipster-Stadtteil Shibuya gerade das erste FabCafe eröffnet. Während man seinen Frapuccino trinkt, kann man sich dort die auf einem USB-Stick mitgebrachten CAD-Datensätze als Objekte ausdrucken lassen. Aber auch das Szenario, dass es in Zukunft Fabshops an jeder zweiten Ecke geben wird wie heute Copyshops, ist wohl eher zu kurz gedacht.
Was indes blüht und wächst, besonders in den USA, sind Gemeinschaftswerkstätten, die nach dem Modell von Co-Working-Spaces eine Werkbank bereitstellen und Zugriff auf den Maschinenpark auf Stunden- oder Tagesbasis ermöglichen. Die Kette TechShop verfügt landesweit bereits über fünf Standorte, weitere sind in Planung. Ähnlich wie die FabLabs ausgestattet, bieten sie den Mitgliedern Zugriff auf CNC-Laserfräsgeräte, 3D-Drucker, Geräte zur Bestückung von Elektronikplatinen, Verarbeitung von Carbonfasern etc. Neben Hobbybastlern fertigen hier einzelne oder kleine Teams hochspezialisierte Produkte in Kleinserien. Die Stückzahlen und Umsätze dieser virtuellen Unternehmen sind oft zu groß für die Garage, jedoch zu klein, um wirklich eine eigene Firma mit eigenem Maschinenpark zu gründen – deshalb sind sie in den TechShops genau richtig angesiedelt. Chris Anderson selbst ist an einem Unternehmen beteiligt, das unbemannte Drohnen für nichtmilitärische Einsatzzwecke herstellt, die im TechShop in Menlo Park entwickelt wurden: „Was diese kleinen Businesses von der Reinigung oder dem Tante-Emma-Laden an der Ecke, die die Mehrheit der Kleinunternehmen im Land bilden, unterscheidet, ist, dass wir global und High-Tech sind“, schreibt Anderson: „Zwei Drittel unserer Bestellungen kommen von außerhalb der USA. Wir konkurrieren am unteren Ende mit Waffenlieferanten wie Lockheed Martin oder Boeing.“ In Europa ist die Welle noch nicht ganz angekommen, auch wenn das Betahaus in Berlin mit der „Open Design City“ bereits über eine Gemeinschaftswerkstatt verfügt, und die Dingfabrik in Köln mit ihrem Projekt „Dingfabrik+“ demnächst sogar ein noch größeres Rad drehen will.
Was sich ferner abzeichnet, ist, dass ganze globale Wertschöpfungsketten von einzelnen Individuen und vom Laptop aus dirigiert und kontrolliert werden können. Die virtuelle Ein-Mann- oder Eine-Frau-Fabrik kombiniert lokale Produktion mit spezialisierten Remote-Dienstleistungen und Support-Services: „Die Werkzeuge der Fabrikproduktion von der Elektronikmontage bis zum 3D-Drucken sind jetzt für Individuen in kompakten Einheiten verfügbar. Jeder mit einer Idee kann in China Fließbänder in Bewegung setzen“, schreibt Chris Anderson. Heimische 3D-Drucker dienen demnach, wie bislang in F&E-Abteilungen von Konzernen und Mittelständlern, vorwiegend dem Design von Prototypen. Die Herstellung von der Kleinserie bis zum Massenartikel wird – ebenfalls nach dem Vorbild der Konzerne – über Plattformen wie Alibaba.com in Offshoring-Zentren ausgelagert. Auch das gesamte Fulfillment vom Versand bis zur Fakturierung lässt sich mittlerweile bequem an Drittanbieter outsourcen.
Spezialisierte Web-Plattformen wie I.materialise.com, Fabberhouse.de, Sculpteo.com, Razorlab.co.uk oder Formulor.de bieten über das Internet vom Lasercutting-Service bis zu aufwendigeren 3D-Druck-Verfahren wie Stereolithographie und Lasersintern, womit sich Objekte mit glatter Oberfläche herstellen und auch Metall verarbeiten lässt. Viele der Anbieter haben auf ihrer Website gleich einen Webshop integriert, über den sich die Gegenstände und Designs an Dritte verkaufen lassen. Im Shop von Shapeways.com, einer Tochter des Philipps-Konzerns, finden sich so neben Schmuck, Tand und iPhone-Hüllen auch eine Reihe von Gadgets, Technik-Zubehör, und Auto-Ersatzteile.
Auf einer Vielzahl dieser Angebote setzt das Geschäftsmodell von Ponoko.com auf, einem ursprünglich aus Neuseeland stammendes Start-up. Ponoko aggregiert lokale Anbieter und kontrahiert Produktdesigner, Käufer, Materiallieferanten und Herstellungsbetriebe vor Ort zu einem Vier-Seiten-Geschäft. Ponoko selbst nennt das „distributed manufacturing“. „Wir versuchen, ‘Made in China’ über den ganzen Globus zu schmieren“, sagt David ten Haven, einer der Gründer: „Wir sind dabei, die Fabrik des 21. Jahrhunderts zu bauen.“ Im Wikipedia-Eintrag zu Ponoko liest sich das nur unwesentlich verhaltener: „Viele glauben, dass solch distribuiertes on-demand Manufacturing einen größeren Paradigmenwechsel im verarbeitenden Gewerbe bedeuten könnte.“ Gemeint ist: Die Produktion wandert nicht von China auf den heimischen Schreibtisch – aber sie wandert doch in die Nähe, zu einer Produktionsstädte vor der eigenen Haustür. Das hat Implikationen für die Stoffkreisläufe, Logistikwege und die gesamte Wirtschaftsstruktur

Fabbing Society
Distribuiertes Manufacturing bedeutet: Weg von den globalisierten Long-Haul-Wirtschaftsketten, hin zur dezentralen Produktion, der stärkeren regionalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen und geschlossenen Stoffkreisläufen. In ihrem Buch „Vom Personal Computer zum Personal Fabricator“ schreiben Andreas Neef, Klaus Burmeister, Stefan Krempl, drei Forscher des Institutes z_Punkt, über die disruptive Kraft dieses Paradigmenwechsels: „Eine dezentralisierte Produktionslandschaft wird zwangsläufig zu einem neuen Wirtschaftsspiel führen, einem ‘Whole New Game’, in dem die Rollen zwischen Entwickler, Produzent, Händler und Konsument neu verteilt werden. Produktion und Konsum rücken enger zusammen, und der Kunde wird zum aktiven Teil der Wertschöpfungskette. Die industriellen Geschäftsmodelle werden in der Fabbing Society der Zukunft auf den Kopf gestellt.“
Dass das nicht bloße Zukunftsmusik ist – und wie ganze Industrien dadurch umgekrempelt werden könnten – demonstriert Local Motors, ein Unternehmen, das, wie der Name schon sagt, Automobile lokal in den USA produziert. Ganz nebenbei handelt es sich dabei um das erste Open-Source-Car der Welt, das Marktreife erlangt. Wie das funktioniert? Zunächst einmal stammen die Entwürfe und Designs für die Fahrzeuge von einer Crowdsourcing-Community. Am Entwurf des ersten Models Namens „Rally Fighter“ waren 2.400 Fahrzeugdesigner, Ingenieure und Amateure beteiligt. Die Innereien stammen freilich von Local Motors selbst bzw. sind eine geschickte Kombination von am Markt erhältlichen Bauteilen. Der Antrieb etwa ist ein sauberer Diesel von BMW. Die Firma Local Motors selbst hat nur eine Handvoll Angestellte und baut die Fahrzeuge nicht selbst zusammen. Stattdessen werden die Teile an eine Werkstatt in der Nähe des Kunden geliefert, wo sie nach Anleitung von Automechanikern (oder den Kunden selbst) zusammenmontiert werden. Mittelfristig will Local Motors ein landesweites Netzwerk von eigenen „Mikro-Factories“ aufbauen, so jedenfalls die Planung. Bislang sind nur wenige Stücke des 50.000 Dollar teuren, martialisch anmutenden Spaßgefährtes ausgeliefert. Und Local Motors will es auch gar (noch) nicht mit den Automobilriesen aufnehmen, sondern eher lukrative Nischen besetzen. Sieben Millionen Dollar Venture Capital und ein erfolgreich absolvierter Entwicklungsauftrag für ein Wüstenfahrzeug für das US-Militär sprechen dafür, dass Local Motors keine Eintagsfliege ist.
Unabhängig davon stehen die Zeichen der Zeit im produzierenden Gewerbe auf Dezentralisierung, kleinere Einheiten und Mass-Customization. „Flexible Spezialisierung“ nannten Michael J. Piore und Charles F. Sable schon Mitte der 1980er in „Das Ende der Massenproduktion“ ihre große Idee, statt Massenfertigung in Großbetrieben die Produktion in innovativen und flexiblen Klein- und Mittelbetrieben zu organisieren, die lokal vernetzt sind.
Mit der Digitalisierung der Produktion, sind die entscheidenden Werkzeuge vorhanden, die diese alternative Strategie, von mittelständischen Manufakturbetrieben seit jeher verfolgt, zu einer insgesamt überlegenen werden lassen könnten.
Im April 2012 rief auch der altehrwürdige und besonnene Economist in einer Titelgeschichte „The third industrial Revolution“ aus. Das Heft handelt davon, wie Unternehmen und mittelständische Betriebe profitieren können, indem sie nicht nur auf Fabbing-Technologien, sondern in eine ganze Reihe von Trends einsteigen, die mit der Digitalisierung in Verbindung stehen und die klassische Industrieproduktion verändern: „Eine Zahl von bemerkenswerten Technologien konvergieren: clevere Software, neuartige Materialien, geschicktere Roboter, neue Prozesse (allen voran das 3D-Drucken) und eine ganze Bandbreite Web-basierter Services.“ Auch wie die Fabriken der Zukunft aussehen, haben die Economist-Autoren bereits klar vor Augen: „Sie werden nicht mehr voll mit schmutzigen Maschinen sein, gewartet von Männern in ölverschmierten Overalls. Viele werden blitzblank sauber sein – und fast menschenleer. (…) Die meisten Jobs werden nicht in der Maschinenhalle angesiedelt sein, sondern in den angegliederten Büros, die voll sein werden mit Designern, Ingenieuren, IT-Spezialisten, Logistik-Experten, Marketingmenschen und anderen Vollprofis. Die Industrieberufe der Zukunft werden mehr Skills erfordern. Viele langweilige und monotone Tätigkeiten werden obsolet sein: Wenn nichts mehr genietet wird, braucht man auch keine Nieten mehr.“
Die gute Nachricht der nächsten Industriellen Revolution: Teile der Wertschöpfung kommen zurück aus China und rücken wieder enger an die Orte des Verbrauchs. Wenn Lohnkosten aufgrund einer neuen Automatisierungswelle immer weniger ins Gewicht fallen, schwinden auch die Kostenvorteile der Niedriglohn-Standorte. Die schlechte Nachricht (die nicht notwendigerweise schlecht sein muss): Die Arbeit kehrt nicht in Form von Jobs zurück, sondern als smarte Software und Programme, die zunehmend auch algorithmische Dienstleistungstätigkeiten und Supportfunktionen in Unternehmen wahrnehmen können. Wie die letzten beiden, so wird auch die dritte industrielle Revolution Verwerfungen mit sich bringen, Gewinner und Verlierer kennen und die Arbeitswelt so nachhaltig transformieren, dass wir sie nicht wiedererkennen werden. Wertschöpfung wird kleinteiliger, granularer sein und in häufig wechselnden, zeitlich befristeten Konstellationen stattfinden – und so werden auch die Jobs aussehen. Großkonzerne sind dafür tendenziell schlechter aufgestellt als Soloselbständige, Start-ups und wendige Mittelständler.
In seinem Sach-Roman „Makers“ beschreibt der Science-Fiction-Autor und Web-Aktivist Cory Doctorow, welche strukturellen Verschiebungen sich durch den von der Maker-Szene angezettelten Umbau der Industriegesellschaft ergeben: „Die Tage von Firmen mit Namen wie ‘General Electric’, ‘General Mills’ oder ‘General Motors’ sind gezählt. Das Geld, das auf dem Tisch liegt, ist wie Krill: Eine Milliarde kleiner Chancen für Entrepreneure, die von smarten und kreativen Leuten entdeckt und ausgebeutet werden können.“ Um im Bild zu bleiben: Selbst Pottwale können von Krill satt werden. Für diejenigen, die sich evolutionär an die neuen Verhältnisse und sich wandelnden Ökosysteme anpassen, bietet die nächste Industrielle Revolution mehr Chancen als Risiken. Die Dinosaurier freilich werden aussterben.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien in „Trend Update“, Monatsmagazin des Zukunftsinstituts, Frankfurt, August 2012.

Literatur
Neil Gershenfeld: FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop 2005
Andreas Neef, Klaus Burmeister, Stefan Krempl: Vom Personal Computer zum Personal Fabricator. Points of Fab, Fabbing Society, Homo Fabber, 2006
Daniel Pink: Free Agent Nation. The Future of working for yourself. 2002
Holm Friebe und Thomas Ramge: Marke Eigenbau. Der Aufstand der Massen gegen die Massenproduktion. 2008
Chris Anderson: „Atoms Are the New Bits“. In Wired, 3/10.
Freeman Dyson: „Visionen Grüner Technik“. In Lettre, Herbst 2007
John F. Sable und Charles Piore: Das Ende der Massenproduktion. 1984
Cory Doctorow: Makers. 2009

Manifesto

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:41 +0000

We believe in the civic imagination, or imagination for the common good. Our filter is practical – or applied – creativity.
We believe in the collective, cumulative and collaborative process of invention. The civic imagination concerns everyone and is accessible to us all. In our opinion, ingenuity is a necessary condition for social engagement.

We believe in a pragmatic definition of creativity, one that can be easily applied to social issues at a local and human level. For example, in response to climate change, a problem seen by many as too large and abstract, we prefer a finer granularity (collective transportation, sustainable habitat, etc …). We believe that this granularity makes creative initiatives more spontaneous and functional.

We believe in stories narrated by anonyms: individuals, collectives of citizens, associations, businesses, who invent, test and perfect on-the-ground, ingenious and often modest solutions that never make it to the media. Imagination for people is, in its way, a mechanism for unearthing ideas & insights and making them meaningful.

We believe in the virtue of pilot projects: our heroes are those individuals who attempt, everywhere on earth, to develop local solutions with an entrepreneurial spirit. These are doers, first and foremost.

We believe in creative acupuncture. For us, this means selecting symbolic projects of often modest size that help move us all forward by enhancing how we live together.

We believe in Romain Rolland’s formulation, which we adapt and adopt: “to join the pessimism of experience with the optimism of invention.”

We believe in transdisciplinarity, which in our opinion means a unique, counter-intuitive, disarming, provoking and transgressive approach. We believe in building bridges: architecture meets health, finance meets the social sphere, design meets ecology ….

We believe in humour, which is vital to a free spirit. Humour is an active and liberating form of imagining. IP aspires to be a fun platform, one that can mobilize and excite people.

We believe in the need for a transition space that helps us all move from civic imagination to civic action, from inspiration to perspiration.

We believe in the necessity to invent new terms around social innovation. This requires a renewed alphabet, the ability to connect apparently unrelated issues and to proceed by inspiring associations. We call this capacity the imaginative paths, to which we dedicate Imagination for People.

Wiederabdruck
Das Manifest erschien zuerst online unter: http://imaginationforpeople.org/fr/discover-ip/manifeste/ [25.03.2013].

Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:38 +0000

In the last months there have been, time and again, mass demonstrations on the street, in the square, and though these are very often motivated by different political purposes, something similar happens: bodies congregate, they move and speak together, and they lay claim to a certain space as public space. Now, it would be easier to say that these demonstrations or, indeed, these movements, are characterized by bodies that come together to make a claim in public space, but that formulation presumes that public space is given, that it is already public and recognized as such. We miss something of the point of public demonstrations if we fail to see that the very public character of the space is being disputed, and even fought over, when these crowds gather. So though these movements have depended on the prior existence of pavement, street, and square and have often enough gathered in squares, such as Tahrir, whose political history is potent, it is equally true that the collective actions collect the space itself, gather the pavement, and animate and organize the architecture. As much as we must insist on there being material conditions for public assembly and public speech, we have also to ask how it is that assembly and speech reconfigure the materiality of public space and produce, or reproduce, the public character of that material environment. And when crowds move outside the square, to the side street or the back alley, to the neighborhoods where streets are not yet paved, then something more happens.
At such a moment, politics is not defined as taking place exclusively in the public sphere distinct from a private one, but it crosses that line again and again, bringing attention to the way that politics is already in the home, or on the street, or in the neighborhood, or indeed in those virtual spaces that are equally unbound by the architecture of the house and the square. So when we think about what it means to assemble in a crowd, a growing crowd, and what it means to move through public space in a way that contests the distinction between public and private, we see some ways that bodies in their plurality lay claim to the public, find and produce the public through seizing and reconfiguring the matter of material environments; at the same time, those material environments are part of the action, and they themselves act when they become the support for action. In the same way, when trucks or tanks are rendered inoperative and suddenly speakers climb on them to address the crowd, the military instrument itself becomes a support or platform for a nonmilitary resistance, if not a resistance to the military itself; at such moments, the material environment is actively reconfigured and refunctioned, to use the Brechtian term. And our ideas of action then need to be rethought.
In the first instance, no one mobilizes a claim to move and assemble freely without moving and assembling together with others. In the second instance, the square and the street are not only the material supports for action, but they themselves are part of any account of bodily public action we might propose. Human
action depends upon all sorts of supports – it is always supported action. We know from disability studies that the capacity to move depends upon instruments and surfaces that make movement possible and that bodily movement is supported and facilitated by nonhuman objects and their particular capacity for agency. In the case of public assemblies, we see quite clearly the struggle over what will be public space, but also an equally fundamental struggle over how bodies will be supported in the world – a struggle for employment and education, equitable food distribution, livable shelter, and freedom of movement and expression, to name a few.
Of course, this produces a quandary. We cannot act without supports, and yet we must struggle for the supports that allow us to act or, indeed, that are essential components of our action. It was the Roman idea of the public square that formed the background for Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the rights of assembly and free speech, of action and the exercise of rights. Hannah Arendt surely had both the classical Greek polis and the Roman Forum in mind when she claimed that all political action requires the “space of appearance.” She writes, for instance, “the polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.” The “true” space then lies “between the people” which means that as much as any action takes place in a located somewhere, it also establishes a space which belongs properly to alliance itself. For Arendt, this alliance is not tied to its location. In fact, alliance brings about its own location, highly transposable. She writes: “action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost anywhere and anytime.”¹
So how do we understand this highly if not infinitely transposable notion of political space? Whereas Arendt maintains that politics requires the space of appearance, she also claims that space brings politics about: “it is the space of appearance in the widest sense of the word, namely, the space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men (sic) exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly.”² Something of what she says here is clearly true. Space and location are created through plural action. And yet, in her view, action, in its freedom and its power, has the exclusive capacity to create location. Such a view forgets or refuses that action is always supported and that it is invariably bodily, even, as I will argue, in its virtual forms. The material supports for action are not only part of action, but they are also what is being fought about, especially in those cases when the political struggle is about food, employment, mobility, and access to institutions. To rethink the space of appearance in order to understand the power and effect of public demonstrations for our time, we will need to consider more closely the bodily dimensions of action, what the body requires, and what the body can do,³ especially when we must think about bodies together in a historical space that undergoes a historical transformation by virtue of their collective action: What holds them together there, and what are their conditions of persistence and of power in relation to their precarity and exposure?
I would like to think about this itinerary by which we travel from the space of appearance to the contemporary politics of the street. Even as I say this, I cannot hope to gather together all the forms of demonstration we have seen, some of which are episodic, some of which are part of ongoing and recurrent social and political movements, and some of which are revolutionary. I hope to think about what might gather together these gatherings, these public demonstrations. During the winter of 2011, they included demonstrations against tyrannical regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, but also against the escalating precaritization of working peoples in Europe and in the Southern Hemisphere, the struggles for public education throughout the United States and Europe, and, most recently, in Chile, and struggles to make the street safe for women and for gender and sexual minorities, including trans people, whose public appearance is too often punishable by legal and illegal violence. In public assemblies by trans and queer people, the claim is often made that the streets must be made safe from the police who are complicit in criminality, especially on those occasions when the police support criminal regimes or when, for instance, the police commit the very crimes against sexual and gender minorities that they were supposed to prevent. Demonstrations are one of the few ways that police power is overcome, especially when those assemblies become at once too large and too mobile, too condensed and too diffuse, to be contained by police power and when they have the resources to regenerate themselves on the spot.
Perhaps these are anarchist moments or anarchist passages, when the legitimacy of a regime or its laws is called into question, but when no new legal regimen has yet arrived to take its place. This time of the interval is one in which the assembled bodies articulate a new time and space for the popular will, not a single identical will, not a unitary will, but one that is characterized as an alliance of distinct and adjacent bodies whose action and whose inaction demands a different future. Together they exercise the performative power to lay claim to the public in a way that is not yet codified into law and that can never be fully codified into law. And this performativity is not only speech, but the demands of bodily action, gesture, movement, congregation, persistence, and exposure to possible violence. How do we understand this acting together that opens up time and space outside and against the established architecture and temporality of the regime, one that lays claim to materiality, leans into its supports, draws from its material and technical dimensions to rework their functions? Such actions reconfigure what will be public and what will be the space of politics.
I push against Hannah Arendt even as I draw upon her resources to clarify my own position. Her work supports my action here, but I also refuse it in some ways. Arendt’s view is confounded by its own gender politics, relying as it does on a distinction between the public and private domains that leaves the sphere of politics to men and reproductive labor to women. If there is a body in the public sphere, it is presumptively masculine and unsupported, presumptively free to create, but not itself created. And the body in the private sphere is female, ageing, foreign, or childish, and always prepolitical. Although she was, as we know from the important work of Adriana Cavarero, a philosopher of natality, Arendt understood this capacity to bring something into being as a function of political speech and action. Indeed, when male citizens enter into the public square to debate questions of justice, revenge, war, and emancipation, they take the illuminated public square for granted as the architecturally bounded theatre of their speech. And their speech becomes the paradigmatic form of action, physically cut off from the private do-micile, itself shrouded in darkness and reproduced through activities that are not quite action in the proper and public senses. Men make the passage from that private darkness to that public light and, once illuminated, they speak, and their speech interrogates the principles of justice it articulates, becoming itself a form of critical inquiry and democratic participation. For Arendt, rethinking this classical scene within political modernity, speech is understood as the bodily and linguistic exercise of rights. Bodily and linguistic – how are we to reconceive these terms and their intertwining here against and beyond that presumption of a gendered division of labor?
For Arendt, political action takes place on the condition that the body appear. I appear to others, and they appear to me, which means that some space between us allows each to appear. One might expect that we appear within a space or that we are supported by a material organization of space. But that is not her argument. The sphere of appearance is not simple, since it seems to arise only on the condition of a certain intersubjective facing off. We are not simply visual phenomena for each other – our voices must be registered, and so we must be heard; rather, who we are, bodily, is already a way of being “for” the other, appearing in ways that we can neither see nor hear; that is, we are made available, bodily, for another whose perspective we can neither fully anticipate nor control. In this way, I am, as a body, not only for myself, not even primarily for myself, but find myself, if I find myself at all, constituted and dispossessed by the perspective of others. So, for political action, I must appear to others in ways I cannot know, and in this way, my body is established by perspectives that I cannot inhabit, but that, surely, inhabit me. This is an important point because it is not the case that the body only establishes my own perspective; it is also what displaces that perspective and makes that displacement into a necessity. This happens most clearly when we think about bodies that act together. No one body establishes the space of appearance, but this action, this performative exercise, happens only “between” bodies, in a space that constitutes the gap between my own body and another’s. In this way, my body does not act alone when it acts politically. Indeed, the action emerges from the “between.”
It is both problematic and interesting that, for Arendt, the space of appearance is not only an architectural given: “the space of appearance comes into being,” she writes, “wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action, and therefore predates and precedes all formal constitution of the public realm and the various forms of government, that is, the various forms in which the public realm may be organized.”⁴ In other words, this space of appearance is not a location that can be separated from the plural action that brings it about; it is not there outside of the action that invokes and constitutes it. And yet, if we are to accept this view, we have to understand how the plurality that acts is itself constituted. How does a plurality form, and what material supports are necessary for that formation? Who enters this plurality, and who does not, and how are such matters decided?
How do we describe the action and the status of those beings disaggregated from the plural? What political language do we have in reserve for describing that exclusion and the forms of resistance that crack open the sphere of appearance as it is currently delimited? Are those who live on the outside of the sphere of appearance the deanimated “givens” of political life? Are they mere life or bare life? Are we to say that those who are excluded are simply unreal, disappeared, or that they have no being at all – shall they be cast off, theoretically, as the socially dead and the merely spectral? If we do that, we not only adopt the position of a particular regime of appearance, but ratify that perspective, even if our wish is to call it into question. Do such formulations describe a state of having been made destitute by -existing political arrangements, or is that destitution unwittingly ratified by a theory that adopts the perspective of those who regulate and police the sphere of appearance itself?
At stake is the question of whether the destitute are outside of politics and power or are they in fact living out a specific form of political destitution along with specific forms of political agency and resistance that expose the policing of the boundaries of the sphere of appearance itself. If we claim that the destitute are outside of the sphere of politics – reduced to depoliticized forms of being – then we implicitly accept as right the dominant ways of establishing the limits of the political. In some ways, this follows from the Arendtian position that adopts the internal point of view of the Greek polis on what politics should be, who should gain entry into the public square, and who should remain in the private. Such a view disregards and devalues those forms of political agency that emerge precisely in those domains deemed prepolitical or extrapolitical and that break into the sphere of appearance as from the outside, as its outside, confounding the distinction between inside and outside. For in revolutionary or insurrectionary moments, we are no longer sure what is the space of politics, just as we are often unsure about exactly in what time we are living, since the established regimes of both space and time are upended in ways that expose their violence and their contingent limits. We see this when undocumented workers gather in the city of Los Angeles to claim their rights of assembly and of citizenship without being citizens, without having any legal right to do so. Their labor is supposed to remain necessary and shrouded from the view, and so when these laboring bodies emerge on the street, act like citizens, they make a mimetic claim to citizenship that alters not only how they appear, but how the sphere of appearance works. Indeed, the sphere of appearance is both mobilized and disabled when an exploited and laboring class emerges on the street to announce itself and express its opposition to being the unseen condition of what appears as political.
The impetus for Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life“ derives from this very conception of the polis in Arendt’s political philosophy and, I would suggest, runs the risk of this very problem: if we seek to take account of exclusion itself as a political problem, as part of politics it-self, then it will not do to say that once excluded, those beings lack appearance or “reality“ in political terms, that they have no social or political standing or are cast out and reduced to mere being (forms of givenness precluded from the sphere of action). Nothing so metaphysically extravagant has to happen if we agree that one reason the sphere of the political cannot be defined by the classic conception of the polis is that we are then deprived of having and using a language for those forms of agency and resistance that focus on the politics of exclusion itself or, indeed, that operate against those regimes of power that maintain the stateless and disenfranchised in conditions of destitution. Few matters could be more politically consequential.
Although Agamben borrows from Foucault to articulate a conception of the biopolitical, the thesis of “bare life” remains untouched by that conception. As a result, we cannot within that vocabulary describe the modes of agency and action undertaken by the stateless, the occupied, and the disenfranchised, since even the life stripped of rights is still within the sphere of the political and is thus not reduced to mere being, but is, more often than not, angered, indignant, rising up and resisting. To be outside established and legitimate political structures is still to be saturated in power relations, and this saturation is the point of departure for a theory of the political that includes dominant and subjugated forms, modes of inclusion and legitimation as well as modes of delegitimation and effacement.
Luckily, I think Arendt did not consistently follow this model from The Human Condition, which is why, for instance, in the early 1960s, she turned her attention to the fate of refugees and the stateless, and came to assert in that context the right to have rights. The right to have rights is one that depends on no existing particular political organization for its legitimacy. Like the space of appearance, the right to have rights predates and precedes any political institution that might codify or seek to guarantee that right; at the same time, it is derived from no natural set of laws. The right comes into being when it is exercised, and exercised by those who act in concert, in alliance. Those who are excluded from existing polities, who belong to no nation-state or other contemporary state formation, may be deemed “unreal“ only by those who seek to monopolize the terms of reality. And yet even after the public sphere has been defined through their exclusion, they act. Whether they are abandoned to precarity or left to die through systematic negligence, concerted action still emerges from their acting together. And this is what we see, for instance, when undocumented workers amass on the street without the legal right to do so, when squatters lay claim to buildings in Argentina as a way of exercising the right to livable shelter, when populations lay claim to a public square that has belonged to the military, or when the refugees take part in collective uprisings demanding shelter, food, and rights of sanctuary, when populations amass, without the protection of the law and without permits to demonstrate, to bring down an unjust or criminal regime of law or to protest austerity measures that destroy the possibility of employment and education for many. Or when those whose public appearance is itself criminal, transgendered people in Turkey or women who wear the niqa-b in France, appear in order to contest that criminal status and assert the right to appear.
Indeed, in the public demonstrations that often follow from acts of public mourning, as in Syria in recent months, where crowds of mourners became targets of military destruction, we can see how the existing public space is seized by those who have no existing right to gather there, who emerge from zones of disappearance to become bodies exposed to violence and death in the course of gathering and persisting publically as they do. Indeed, it is their right to gather free of intimidation and the threat of violence that is systematically attacked by the police, the army, hired gangs, or mercenaries. To attack those bodies is to attack the right itself, since when those bodies appear and act, they are exercising a right outside, against, and in the face of the regime.
Although the bodies on the street are vocalizing their opposition to the legitimacy of the state, they are also, by virtue of occupying and persisting in that space with-out protection, posing their challenge in corporeal terms, which means that when the body “speaks“ politically, it is not only in vocal or written language. The persistence of the body in its exposure calls that legitimacy into question and does so precisely through a performativity of the body. Both action and gesture signify and speak, both as action and claim; the one is not finally extricable from the other. Where the legitimacy of the state is brought into question precisely by that way of appearing in public, the body itself exercises a right that is no right; in other words, it exercises a right that is being actively contested and destroyed by military force and that, in its resistance to force, articulates its way of living, showing both its precarity and its way to persist. This right is codified nowhere. It is not granted from elsewhere or by existing law, even if it sometimes finds support precisely there. It is, in fact, the right to have rights, not as natural law or metaphysical stipulation, but as the persistence of the body against those forces that seek its debilitation or eradication. This persistence that requires breaking into the established regime of space with a set of material supports both mobilized and mobilizing.
Just to be clear: I am not referring to a vitalism or a right to life as such. Rather, I am suggesting that political claims are made by bodies as they appear and act, as they refuse and as they persist under conditions in which that fact alone is taken to be an act of delegitimation of the state. It is not that bodies are simply mute life forces that counter existing modalities of power. Rather, they are themselves modalities of power, embodied interpretations, engaging in allied action. On the one hand, these bodies are productive and performative. On the other hand, they can persist and act only when they are supported, by environments, by nutrition, by work, by modes of sociality and belonging. And when these supports fall away and precarity is exposed, they are mobilized in another way, seizing upon the supports that exist in order to make a claim that there can be no embodied life without social and institutional support, without ongoing employment, without networks of interdependency and care, collective rights to shelter and mobility. Not only do they struggle for the idea of social support and political enfranchisement, but their struggle is its own social form. And so, in the most ideal instances, an alliance begins to enact the social order it seeks to bring about by establishing its own modes of sociability. And yet that alliance is not reducible to a collection of individuals, and it is, strictly speaking, not individuals who act. Moreover, action in alliance happens precisely between those who participate, and this is not an ideal or empty space. That interval is the space of sociality and of support, of being constituted in a sociality that is never reducible to one’s own perspective and to being dependent on structures without which there is no durable and livable life.
Many of the massive demonstrations and modes of resistance we have seen in the last months not only produce a space of appearance, they seize upon an already established space permeated by existing power, seeking to sever the relations between the public space, the public square, and the existing regime. So the limits of the political are exposed and the link between the theatre of legitimacy and public space is severed; that theatre is no longer unproblematically housed in public space, since public space now occurs in the midst of another action, one that displaces the power that claims legitimacy precisely by taking over the field of its effects. Simply put, the bodies on the street redeploy the space of appearance in order to contest and negate the existing forms of political legitimacy – and just as they sometimes fill or take over public space, the material history of those structures also works on them, becoming part of their very action, remaking a history in the midst of its most concrete and sedimented artifices. These are subjugated and empowered actors who seek to wrest legitimacy from an existing state apparatus that depends upon the regulation of the public space of appearance for its theatrical self-constitution. In wresting that power, a new space is created, a new “between” of bodies, as it were, that lays claim to existing space through the action of a new alliance, and those bodies are seized and animated by those existing spaces in the very acts by which they reclaim and resignify their meanings.
Such a struggle intervenes in the spatial organization of power, which includes the allocation and restriction of spatial locations in which and by which any population may appear, which implies a spatial regulation of when and how the “popular will” may appear. This view of the spatial restriction and allocation of who may appear – in effect, of who may become a subject of appearance – suggests an operation of power that works through both foreclosure and differential allocation.
What, then, does it mean to appear within contemporary politics, and can we consider this question at all without some recourse to the media? If we consider what it is to appear, it follows that we appear to someone and that our appearance has to be registered by the senses, not only our own, but someone else’s. If we appear, we must be seen, which means that our bodies must be viewed and their vocalized sounds must be heard: the body must enter the visual and audible field. But is this not, of necessity, a laboring body and a sexual body, as well as a body gendered and racialized in some form? Arendt’s view clearly meets its limits here, for the body is itself divided into the one that appears publically to speak and act and another, sexual and laboring, feminine, foreign, and mute, that generally is relegated to the private and prepolitical sphere. Such a division of labor is precisely what is called into question when precarious lives assemble on the street in forms of alliance that must struggle to achieve a space of appearance. If some domain of bodily life operates as the sequestered or disavowed condition for the sphere of appearance, it becomes the structuring absence that governs and makes possible the public sphere.
If we are living organisms who speak and act, then we are clearly related to a vast continuum or network of living beings; we not only live among them, but our persistence as living organisms depends on that matrix of sustaining interdependent relations. And yet, our speaking and acting distinguishes us as something separate from other living beings. Indeed, we do not need to know what is distinctively human about political action, but only finally to see how the entrance of the disavowed body into the political sphere establishes at the same time the essential link between humans and other living beings. The private body thus conditions the public body in theories such as Arendt’s, but in political organizations of space that continue in many forms. And even though the public and private body are necessarily the same, the bifurcation is crucial to maintaining the public and private distinction and its modes of disavowal and disenfranchisement.
Perhaps it is a kind of fantasy that one dimension of bodily life can and must remain out of sight, and yet another, fully distinct, appears in public. Is there no trace of the biological in the sphere of appearance? Could we not argue, with Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, that negotiating the sphere of appearance is, in fact, a biological thing to do, one of the investigative capacities of the organism? After all, there is no way of navigating an environment or procuring food without appearing bodily in the world, and there is no escape from the vulnerability and mobility that appearing in the world implies, which explains forms of camouflage and self-protection in the animal world. In other words, is appearance not a necessarily morphological moment where the body risks appearance not only in order to speak and act, but suffer and move, as well, to engage others bodies, to negotiate an environment on which one depends, to establish a social organization for the satisfaction of needs? Indeed, the body can appear and signify in ways that contest the way it speaks or even contest speaking as its paradigmatic instance. Could we still understand action, gesture, stillness, touch, and moving together if they were all reducible to the vocalization of thought through speech?
This act of public speaking, even within that problematic division of labour, depends upon a dimension of bodily life that is given, passive, opaque, and so excluded from the conventional definition of the political. Hence, we can ask: What regulation keeps the given or passive body from spilling over into the active body? Are these two different bodies, and if so, what politics is required to keep them apart? Are these two different dimensions of the same body, or are these, in fact, the effect of a certain regulation of bodily appearance that is actively contested by new social movements, struggles against sexual violence, for reproductive freedom, against precarity, for the freedom of mobility? Here we can see that a certain topographical or even architectural regulation of the body happens at the level of theory. Significantly, it is precisely this operation of power – the foreclosure and differential allocation of whether and how the body may appear – that is excluded from Arendt’s explicit account of the political. Indeed, her explicit account of the political depends upon that very operation of power that it fails to consider as part of politics itself.
So what I accept from Arendt is the following: Freedom does not come from me or from you; it can and does happen as a relation between us, or, indeed, among us. So this is not a matter of finding the human dignity within each person, but rather of understanding the human as a relational and social being, one whose action depends upon equality and articulates the principle of equality. Indeed, there is no human, in her view, if there is no equality. No human can be human alone. And no human can be human without acting in concert with others and on conditions of equality. I would add the following: The claim of equality is not only spoken or written, but is made precisely when bodies appear together, or, rather, when through their action, they bring the space of appearance into being. This space is a feature and effect of action, and it works, according to Arendt, only when relations of equality are maintained.
Of course, there are many reasons to be suspicious of idealized moments, but there are also reasons to be wary of any analysis that is fully guarded against idealization. There are two aspects of the revolutionary demonstrations in Tahrir Square that I would like to -underscore. The first has to do with the way a certain sociability was established within the square, a division of labor that broke down gender difference, that involved rotating who would speak and who would clean the areas where people slept and ate, developing a work schedule for -everyone to maintain the environment and to clean the -toilets. In short, what some would call “horizontal relations” among the protestors formed easily and methodically, alliances struggling to embody equality, which -included Ωn equal division of labor between the sexes – these became part of the very resistance to the Mubarak regime and its entrenched hierarchies, including the extraordinary differentials of wealth between the military and corporate sponsors of the regime and the working people. So the social form of the resistance began to incorporate principles of equality that governed not only how and when people spoke and acted for the media and against the regime, but how people cared for their various quarters within the square, the beds on pavement, the makeshift medical stations and bathrooms, the places where people ate, and the places where people were exposed to violence from the outside. We are not just talking about heroic actions that took enormous physical strength and the exercise of compelling political rhetoric. Sometimes the simple act of sleeping there, on the square, was the most eloquent political statement – and even must count as an action. These actions were all political in the simple sense that they were breaking down a conventional distinction between public and private in order to establish new relations of equality; in this sense, they were incorporating into the very social form of resistance the principles they were struggling to realize in broader political forms.
Second, when up against violent attack or extreme threats, many people chanted the word silmiyya which comes from the root verb salima, which means “to be safe and sound,” “unharmed,” “unimpaired,” “intact,” and “secure”; but also “to be unobjectionable,” “blameless,” “faultless”; and yet also “to be certain,” “established,” “clearly proven”.⁵ The term comes from the noun silm, which means “peace, “ but also, interchangeably and significantly, “the religion of Islam.” One variant of the term is hubb as-silm, which is Arabic for “pacifism.” Most usually, the chanting of silmiyya comes across as a gentle exhortation: “peaceful, peaceful.” Although the revolution was for the most part non-violent, it was not necessarily led by a principled opposition to violence. Rather, the collective chant was a way of encouraging people to resist the mimetic pull of military aggression – and the aggression of the gangs – by keeping in mind the larger goal: radical democratic change. To be swept into a violent exchange of the moment was to lose the patience needed to realize the revolution. What interests me here is the chant, the way in which language worked not to incite an action, but to restrain one: a restraint in the name of an emerging community of equals whose primary way of doing politics would not be violence.
Finally, then, to what extent was the revolution a media revolution, and how does that make actual bodies less central to the political action? How important was the locatedness of bodies to the events that took place? Of course, Tahrir Square is a place, and we can locate it quite precisely on the map of Cairo. At the same time, we find questions posed throughout the media: Will the Palestinians have their Tahrir Square? Where is the Tahrir Square in India? That’s to name but a few. So it is located, and it is transposable; indeed, it seemed to be transposable from the start, though never completely. And of course, we cannot think the transpos-ability of those bodies in the square without the media. In some ways, the media images from Tunisia prepared the way for the media events in Tahrir, then those that followed in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya, all of which took different trajectories and take them still. As you know, many of the public demonstrations of these last months have not been against military dictatorships or tyrannical regimes. They have also been against the monopoly capitalism, neoliberalism, and the suppression of political rights and in the name of those who are abandoned by neoliberal reforms that seek to dismantle forms of social democracy and socialism, that eradicate jobs, expose populations to poverty, and undermine the basic right to a public education.
The street scenes become politically potent only when and if we have a visual and audible version of the scene communicated in live or proximate time, so that the media does not merely report the scene, but is part of the scene and the action; indeed, the media is the scene or the space in its extended and replicable visual and audible dimensions. One way of stating this is simply that the media extend the scene visually and audibly and participate in the delimitation and transposability of the scene. Put differently, the media constitute the scene in a time and place that includes and exceeds its local instantiation. Although the scene is surely and emphatically local, those who are elsewhere have the sense that they are getting some direct access through the images and sounds they receive. That is true, but they do not know how the editing takes place, which scene conveys and travels and which scenes remain obdurately outside the frame. When the scene travels, it is both there and here, and if it were not spanning both locations – indeed, multiple locations – it would not be the scene that it is. Its locality is not denied by the fact that the scene is communicated beyond itself and so constituted in a global media; it depends on that mediation to take place as the event that it is. This means that the local must be recast outside itself in order to be established as local, and this means that it is only through globalizing media that the local can be established and that something can really happen there. Of course, many things do happen outside the frame of the camera or other digital media devices, and the media can just as easily implement censorship as oppose it. There are many local events that are never recorded and broadcast, and some important reasons why. But when the event travels and manages to summon and sustain global outrage and pressure, which includes the power to stop markets or to sever diplomatic relations, then the local will have to be established time and again in a circuitry that exceeds the local at every instant.
And yet, there remains something localized that cannot and does not travel in that way, and the scene could not be the scene if we did not understand that some people are at risk, and the risk is run precisely by those bodies on the street. If they are transported in one way, they are surely left in place in another, holding the camera or the cell phone, face to face with those they oppose, unprotected, injurable, injured, persistent, if not insurgent. It matters that those bodies carry cell phones, relaying messages and images, and so when they are attacked, it is more often than not in some relation to the camera or the video recorder. It can be an effort to destroy the camera and its user, or it can be a spectacle for the media produced as a warning or a threat. Or it can be a way to stop any more organizing. Is the action of the body separable from its technology, and is the technology not helping to establish new forms of political action? And when censorship or violence is directed against those bodies, are they not also directed against their access to media and in order to establish hegemonic control over which images travel, and which do not?
Of course, the dominant media is corporately owned, exercising their own kinds of censorship and incitement. And yet, it still seems important to affirm that the freedom of the media to broadcast from these sites is itself an exercise of freedom and so a mode of exercising rights, especially when they are rogue media, from the street, evading the censor, where the activation of the instrument is part of the bodily action itself. This is doubtless why both Hosni Mubarak and Michael Cameron, eight months apart, both argued for the censorship of social media networks. At least in some instances, the media not only report on social and political movements that are laying claim to freedom and justice in various ways; the media also are exercising one of those freedoms for which the social movement struggles. I do not mean by this claim to suggest that all media are involved in the struggle for political freedom and social justice (we know, of course, that they are not). Of course, it matters which global media do the reporting and how. My point is that sometimes private media devices become global precisely at the moment in which they overcome modes of censorship to report protests and in that way become part of the protest itself.
What bodies are doing on the street when they are demonstrating is linked fundamentally to what communication devices and technologies are doing when they “report” on what is happening in the street. These are different actions, but they both require the body. The one exercise of freedom is linked to the other, which means that both are ways of exercising rights and that, jointly, they bring a space of appearance into being and secure its transposability. Although some may wager that the exercise of rights now takes place quite at the expense of bodies on the street, that Twitter and other virtual technologies have led to a disembodiment of the public sphere, I disagree. The media requires those bodies on the street to have an event, even as those bodies on the street require the media to exist in a global arena. But under conditions when those with cameras or Internet capacities are imprisoned or tortured or deported, the use of the technology effectively implicates the body. Not only must someone’s hand tap and send, but someone’s body is on the line if that tapping and sending gets traced. In other words, localization is hardly overcome through the use of a media that potentially transmit globally. And if this conjuncture of street and media constitutes a very contemporary version of the public sphere, then bodies on the line have to be thought as both there and here, now and then, transported and stationery, with very different political consequences following from those two modalities of space and time.
It matters that it is public squares that are filled to the brim, that people eat and sleep there, sing and refuse to cede that space, as we saw in Tahrir Square and continue to see on a daily basis. It matters, as well, that it is public educational buildings that have been seized in Athens, London, and Berkeley. At Berkeley, buildings were seized and trespassing fines were handed out. In some cases, students were accused of destroying private property. But these very allegations raised the question of whether the university is public or private. The stated aim of the protest – to seize the building and to sequester themselves there – was a way to gain a platform, indeed, a way to secure the material conditions for appearing in public. Such actions generally do not take place when effective platforms are already available. The students there, but also at Goldsmiths College in the UK more recently, were seizing buildings as a way to lay claim to buildings that ought properly, now and in the future, to belong to public education. That doesn’t mean that every time these buildings are seized it is justifiable, but let us be alert to what is at stake here: the symbolic meaning of seizing these buildings is that these buildings belong to the public, to public education, and it is precisely the access to public education that is being undermined by fee and tuition hikes and budget cuts. We should not be surprised that the protest took the form of seizing the buildings, performatively laying claim to public education, insisting on gaining literal access to the buildings of public education precisely at a moment, historically, when that access is being shut down. In other words, no positive law justifies these actions that oppose the institutionalization of unjust or exclusionary forms of power. Can we then say that these actions are nevertheless an exercise of a right, a lawless exercise that take place precisely when the law is wrong or the law has failed?
Let me offer you an anecdote to make my point more concrete. Last year, I was asked to visit Turkey on the occasion of the International Conference against Homophobia and Transphobia. This was an especially important event in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where transgendered people are often served fines for appearing in public, are often beaten, sometimes by the police, and where murders of transgendered women in particular have happened nearly once a month in recent years. If I offer you this example of Turkey, it is not to point out that Turkey is “behind“ – something that the embassy representative from Denmark was quick to point out to me and that I refused with equal speed. I assure you that there are equally brutal murders outside of Los Angeles and Detroit, in Wyoming and Louisiana, or even in New York. It is rather because what is astonishing about the alliances there is that several feminist organizations have worked with queer, gay/lesbian, and transgendered people against police violence, but also against militarism, against nationalism, and against the forms of masculinism by which they are supported. So on the street, after the conference, the feminists lined up with the drag queens, the genderqueer with the human rights activists, and the lipstick lesbians with their bisexual and heterosexual friends – the march included secularists and Muslims. They chanted, “We will not be soldiers, and we will not kill.“ To oppose the police violence against trans people is thus to be openly against military violence and the nationalist escalation of militarism; it is to be against the military aggression against the Kurds, but also to act in the memory of the Armenian genocide and against the various ways that violence is disavowed by the state and the media.
This alliance was compelling for me for all kinds of reasons, but mainly because in most Northern European countries, there are now serious divisions among feminists, queers, lesbian and gay human rights workers, antiracist movements, freedom-of-religion movements, and antipoverty and antiwar mobilizations. In Lyon, France, last year, one of the established feminists had written a book on the “illusion” of transsexuality, and her public lectures had been “zapped” by many trans activists and their queer allies. She defended herself by saying that to call transsexuality “psychotic” was not the same as pathologizing transsexuality. It is, she said, a descriptive term and makes no judgment or prescription. Under what conditions can calling a population “psychotic” for the particular embodied life they live not be pathologizing? This feminist called herself a materialist, a radical, but she pitted herself against the transgendered community in order to maintain certain norms of masculinity and femininity as prerequisites for a nonpsychotic life. These are arguments that would be swiftly countered in Istanbul or Johannesburg, and yet these same feminists seek recourse to a form of universalism that would make France, and their version of French feminism, into the beacon of progressive thought.
Not all French feminists who call themselves universalists would oppose the public rights of transgendered people or contribute to their pathologization. And yet, if the streets are open to transgendered people, they are not open to those who wear signs of their religious belonging openly. Hence, we are left to fathom the many universalist French feminists who call upon the police to arrest, detain, fine, and sometimes deport women wearing the niqāb or the burqa in the public sphere in France. What sort of politics is this that recruits the police function of the state to monitor and restrict women from religious minorities in the public sphere? Why would the same universalists (such as Elisabeth Badinter) openly affirm the rights of transgendered people to freely appear in public while denying that right to women who happen to wear religious clothing that offends the sensibilities of die-hard secularists? If the right to appear is to be honored “universally“, it would not be able to survive such an obvious and insupportable contradiction.
Perhaps there are modalities of violence that we need to think about in order to understand the police functions in operation here. After all, those who insist that gender must always appear in one way or in one clothed version rather than another, who seek either to criminalize or to pathologize those who live their gender or their sexuality in nonnormative ways, are themselves acting as the police for the sphere of appearance, whether or not they belong to any police force. As we know, it is sometimes the police force of the state that does violence to sexual and gendered minorities, and sometimes it is the police who fail to investigate, fail to prosecute as criminal the murder of transgendered women or fail to prevent violence against transgendered members of the population.
If gender or sexual minorities are criminalized or pathologized for how they appear, how they lay claim to public space, the language through which they understand themselves, the means by which they express love or desire, those with whom they openly ally, choose to be near, engage sexually, or how they exercise their bodily freedom, what clothes they wear or fail to wear, then those acts of criminalization are themselves violent, and in that sense, they are also unjust and criminal. In Arendtian terms, we can say that to be precluded from the space of appearance, to be precluded from being part of the plurality that brings the space of appearance into being, is to be deprived of the right to have rights. Plural and public action is the exercise of the right to place and belonging, and this exercise is the means by which the space of appearance is presupposed and brought into being.
Let me return to the notion of gender with which I began, both to draw upon Arendt and to resist Arendt. In my view, gender is an exercise of freedom, which is not to say that everything that constitutes gender is freely chosen, but only that even what is considered unfree can and must be claimed and exercised in some way. I have, with this formulation, taken a certain distance from the Arendtian formulation. This exercise of freedom must be accorded the same equal treatment as any other exercise of freedom under the law. And politically, we must call for the expansion of our conceptions of equality to include this form of embodied freedom.
So what do we mean when we say that sexuality or gender is an exercise of freedom? To repeat: I do not mean to say that all of us choose our gender or our sexuality. We are surely formed by language and culture, by history, by the social struggles in which we participate, by forces both psychological and historical – in interaction, by the way with biological situations that have their own history and efficacy. Indeed, we may well feel that what and how we desire are quite fixed, indelible or irreversible features of who we are. But regardless of whether we understand our gender or our sexuality as chosen or given, we each have a right to claim that gender and to claim that sexuality. And it makes a difference whether we can claim them at all. When we exercise the right to appear as the gender and to claim them at all. When we exercise the right to appear as the gender we already are – even when we feel we have no other choice – we are still exercising a certain freedom, but we are also doing something more.
When one freely exercises the right to be who one already is and one asserts a social category for the purposes of describing that mode of being, then one is, in fact, making freedom part of that social category, discursively changing the very ontology in question. It is not possible to separate the genders that we claim to be and the sexualities that we engage from the right that any of us has to assert those realities, in public, or in private, or in the many thresholds that exist between the two, freely, that is, without threat of violence. When, long ago, one said that gender is performative, that meant that it is a certain kind of enactment, which means that one is not first one’s gender and then one decides how and when to enact it. The enactment is part of its very ontology, is a way of rethinking the ontological mode of gender, and so it matters how and when and with what consequences that enactment takes place, because all that changes the very gender that one “is”.
To walk on the street without police interference is something other than assembling there en masse. And yet, when a transgendered person walks there, the right that is exercised in a bodily form does not only belong to that one person. There is a group, if not an alliance, walking there, too, whether or not they are seen. It is a person there who walks, who takes the risk of walking there, but it is also the social category that traverses that embodied movement in the world, and the attack, when it comes, is clearly on both at once. Perhaps we can still call “performative” both this exercise of gender and the embodied political claim to equality and protection from violence so as to be able to move with and within this social category in public space. To walk is to say that this is a public space in which transgendered people walk, that this is a public space where people with various forms of clothing, no matter how they are gendered or what religion they signify, are free to move without threat of violence. But this performativity applies more broadly to the conditions by which any of us emerge as bodily creatures in the world.
If we are thinking well, and our thinking commits us to the preservation of life in some form, then the life to be preserved takes a bodily form. In turn, this means that the life of the body – its hunger, its need for shelter and protection from violence – all become major issues of politics. Even the most given or nonchosen features of our lives are not simply given; they are given in history and in language, in vectors of power that none of us chose. Equally true is that a given property of the body or a set of defining characteristics depends upon the continuing persistence of the body. Those social categories we never chose traverse this given body in some ways rather than in others, and gender, for instance, names that traversal as well as its transformations. In this sense, those most urgent and nonvolitional dimensions of our lives, which include hunger and the need for shelter, medical care, and protection from violence, natural or humanly imposed, are crucial to politics. We cannot presume the enclosed and well-fed space of the polis, where all the material needs are somehow being taken care of elsewhere by beings whose gender, race,
or status render them ineligible for public recognition. Rather, we have not only to bring the material urgen-cies of the body into the square, but to make those needs central to the demands of politics.
In my view, a shared condition of precarity situates our political lives, even as precarity is differentially distributed. And some of us, as Ruthie Gilmore has made very clear, are disproportionately more disposed to injury and early death than others. Building on the importance of local expertise, there’s something to be said about attorneys who’ve earned respect within the courthouse walls. During my cousin’s case two years ago, we learned that experienced Jersey City criminal defense lawyers with prosecutorial backgrounds can identify weaknesses in the state’s evidence that others might miss. These professionals understand the burden of proof required and know when prosecutors haven’t met it, which becomes crucial during negotiations. Their familiarity with programs like Pre-Trial Intervention and Drug Court opened doors we didn’t know existed, ultimately resulting in charges being downgraded significantly. The transparency they provided throughout the process—keeping us informed at every decision point—made an incredibly stressful situation feel manageable and gave us confidence in the legal strategy being employed.

Racial difference can be tracked precisely through looking at statistics on infant mortality, for example. This means, in brief, that precarity is unequally distributed and that lives are not considered equally grievable or equally valuable. If, as Adriana Cavarero has argued, the exposure of our bodies in public space constitutes us fundamentally and establishes our thinking as social and embodied, vulnerable and passionate, then our thinking gets nowhere without the presupposition of that very corporeal interdependency and entwinement. The body is constituted through perspectives it cannot inhabit; someone else sees our face in a way that none of us can and hears our voice in a way that we cannot. We are in this sense, bodily, always over there, yet here, and this dispossession marks the sociality to which we belong. Even as located beings, we are always elsewhere, constituted in a sociality that exceeds us. This establishes our exposure and our precarity, the ways in which we depend on political and social institutions to persist.
After all, in Cairo, it was not just that people amassed in the square: they were there; they slept there; they dispensed medicine and food; they assembled and sang; and they spoke. Can we distinguish those vocalizations emanating from the body from those other expressions of material need and urgency? They were, after all, sleep-ing and eating in the public square, constructing toilets and various systems for sharing the space, and thus not only refusing to disappear, refusing to go or stay home, and not only claiming the public domain for themselves – acting in concert on conditions of equality – but also maintaining themselves as persisting bodies with needs, desires, and requirements: Arendtian and counter-Arendtian, to be sure, since these bodies who were organizing their basic needs in public were also petitioning the world to register what was happening there, to make its support known, and in that way to enter into revolutionary action itself. The bodies acted in concert, but they also slept in public, and in both these modalities, they were both vulnerable and demanding, giving political and spatial organization to elementary bodily needs. In this way, they formed themselves into images to be projected to all who watched, petitioning us to receive and respond and so to enlist media coverage that would refuse to let the event be covered over or to slip away. Sleeping on that pavement was not only a way to lay claim to the public, to contest the legitimacy of the state, but also quite clearly, a way to put the body on the line in its insistence, obduracy, and precarity, overcoming the distinction between public and private for the time of revolution. In other words, it was only when those needs that are supposed to remain private came out into the day and night of the square, formed into image and discourse for the media, did it finally become possible to extend the space and time of the event with such tenacity as to bring the regime down. After all, the cameras never stopped; bodies were there and here; they never stopped speaking, not even in sleep, and so could not be silenced, sequestered, or denied – revolution happened because everyone refused to go home, cleaving to the pavement as the site of their convergent temporary, awkward, vulnerable, daring, revolutionary bodily lives.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien zuerst in: McLagan, Meg; McKee, Yates (Ed.): Sensible Politics. The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, ZONE BOOKS: New York 2012, S. 117–137.

1.) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 198.
2.) Ibid., p. 199.
3.) “The point of view of an ethics is: of what are you capable, what can you do? Hence a return to this sort of cry of Spinoza’s: what can a body do? We never know in advance what a body can do. We never know how we’re organized and how the modes of existence are enveloped in somebody.“ Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 217–34. This account differs from his in several respects, but most prominently by virtue of its consideration of body in their plurality.
4.) Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 199.
5.) Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 4th ed., ed. J. Milton Cowan (Ithaca: Spoken Language Services, 1994), s. v. „salima“.

Museum Futures: Distributed

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:38 +0000

Museum Futures: Distributed – is a machinima record of the centenary interview with Moderna Museet’s executive AYAN Lindquist in June 2058. It explores a genealogy for contemporary art practice and its institutions, by re-imagining the role of artists, museums, galleries, markets, manufactories and academies.

Centenary Interview 2058

Interior: The common room, Moderna Museet v3.0
A beautiful lounge, comfortable seating, local lighting, graduated windows with breathtaking views of the sea.
Ayan Lindquist, fixed-term executive of Moderna v3.0, is waiting to be interviewed in real-time from Guangzhou, in the Asian Multitude.
She is browsing screens as a face fades-up on the wall window.

MS CHAN
Nihao, hej, hello!
Hello is that Ayan Lindquist?

AYAN LINDQUIST
Nihao, hello.
Yes Ms Chan, this is Ayan.
We are in sync.

MS CHAN
Thank you so much for finding time … you must be very busy with the centenary launch.

AYAN
It’s a pleasure.
We really admire your work on mid 20th C image ecologies. Especially your research on archival practice.

MS CHAN
Well I’m flattered. For many Asian non-market institutions, your pioneering work with long-term equity contracts has been inspirational too!

AYAN
Oh, there was a whole team of us involved … So lets begin.

MS CHAN
Ok. Just to refresh, for the centenary I’d like to archive your live-thread recall of Moderna.

AYAN
Yep, that’s fine, I’ve enabled about 20 minutes.

MS CHAN
Ok, live.
Maybe we could start with some personal history. What were you doing before you became executive at Moderna Museet v3.0?

AYAN
Well, I joined Moderna 2.0 in 2049, almost ten years ago. First as adviser to the development working group. Then as part of the governance team. I participated in the forking of Moderna 3.0 in 2’51. And was elected fixed-term executive in 2’52, ….. uhmm, … until today.
I’ve got another four years in the post.

MS CHAN
And before that?

AYAN
Immediately before joining Moderna I collaborated in the exhibition programme at the MACBA cluster in Mumbai for six years. Although, more in resource provision. That’s where we worked on a version of the equity bond issue you mentioned.

MS CHAN
And before that?

AYAN
In programming again at Tate in Doha for four years, particularly developing exhibitionary platforms. And even before that, I participated in research on cultural governance, for the Nordic Congress of the European Multitude for six years. I suspect exhibition agency and governance are my real strengths.

MS CHAN
Maybe we should dive into the deep-end. Could you briefly say something of why Moderna v3.0 devolved, and why was it necessary?

AYAN
As you can imagine there was a lot of consultation beforehand. It’s not something we did without due diligence. For almost forty years Moderna v2.0 has explored and developed the exhibitionary form. We pioneered the production of many collaborative exhibitions, resources and assemblages.
We helped build robust public – what you prefer to term non-market cultural networks. And scaled those networks to produce our i-commons, part of the vast, glocal, Public Domain. We have continually nurtured and developed emergent art practice. Moderna can proudly, and quite rightly say that we participated in shaping the early 21st century movement of art. From an exhibitionary practice based around art-artefacts, spectacle and consumption – to that of embedded co-production.

MS CHAN
Do you mean …

AYAN
Of course there are many complex factors involved …………
But we were agent in the shift from a heritage cultural mind-set of ‘broadcast’, to that of emergent, peer-to-peer meshworks. Following the logic of practice, we became an immanent institution.

MS CHAN
Could you say a ……………

AYAN
Uhmm …….. Although having said all of that ……….
We’ve not really answered your question, have we? Given that Moderna 2.0 continues its exhibitionary research, some of us believe that exhibition as a technology, and immanence as an institutional logic needed to be subject to radical revision. So this is what we intend to explore with Moderna 3.0, we want to execute some of the research. To enact. To be more agent than immanent.

MS CHAN
Ok. I wondered if you could you say a ……………

AYAN
Sorry to over-write, but in a way the forking follows something of the tradition of Moderna Museet. Moderna 2.0 mutated through 1.0 because the tension between trying to collect, conserve, and exhibit the history of 20th Century art, and at the same time trying to be a responsible 21st Century art institution proved too difficult to reconcile. Moderna 1.0 continues its mandate. Its buildings and collection has global heritage status. In turn, this early hybridization enabled Moderna 2.0 to be more mobile and experimental. In its organizational form, in its devolved administration, and its exhibition-making practice ….

MS CHAN
Could you just expand on the ‘more complex factors’ you mentioned earlier….

AYAN
That’s a big question!! Let me re-run a general thread from composite ………… […] … uhmm
Well, a good place to start might be the bifurcation of the market for ‘contemporary art’ from emergent art practices themselves. Although the public domain has a long genealogy; Waaaay ……. back into ancient European land rights, ‘commons’ projects and commonwealth’s.
It was the advent of digitalisation, and particularly very early composite language projects in the 1980’s which – and this appears astonishing to us now, were proprietary – that kick-started what were called ‘open’, ‘free’ or non-market resource initiatives. Of course, these languages, assemblages and the resources they were building needed legal protection. Licenses to keep them out of property and competitive marketization. The General Public License, the legendary GPL legal code was written in 1989.

MS CHAN
It’s not so old!

AYAN
So then, text and images – either still or moving; artefacts, systems and processes; music and sound – either as source or assembled; all embedded plant, animal and bodily knowledge; public research, and all possible ecologies of these resources began to be aggregated by the viral licenses into our Public Domain. Landmarks include the releasing of the sequenced human genome in 2001. The foundation of the ‘multitude’ social enterprise coalition in 2’09. Intellectual Property reform in the teen’s. The UN-Multitude initiated micro-taxation of global financial transactions in 2’13 – which redirected so many financial resources to Public Domain cultural initiatives. Well I could go on, and on, and on. But anyway, most participants will be over-familiar with this thread.

MS CHAN
Remind me, when did Moderna affiliate?

AYAN
In-Archive records suggest Öppna dagar or Härifrån till allmänningen, with Mejan ……. I’m sorry. We did some collaborative ‘open’ knowledge projects with Mejan in Stockholm in late 2’09. And when Moderna 2.0 launched in 2’12 we declared all new knowledge General Public License version 6, compliant.

MS CHAN
Wasn’t that initiated by Chus Martinez, one of your predecessors? She seems to have shaped early Moderna 2.0, which in turn, became an inspiration globally.

AYAN
It’s nice you say so. Since 2’12 we collaborated with the fledgling Nordic Congress, in what was to become the European Multitude, to form the backbone of the Public Domain cultural meshwork. It eventually convened in late 2’22. So we were at source.

MS CHAN
Ok. Uh ha, thanks.

AYAN
Now simultaneous with the exponential growth of the Public Domain, was the market for what we still call ‘contemporary art’. Many historians locate one of the sources for this ‘contemporary art’ market, as the auction in New York in 1973 of the art-artefact collection of Robert and Ethel Scull. An extraordinary collection of paintings by pop-male-artists like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, and …… er …… I recall …….. Jasper Johns.

MS CHAN
Ok. From composite I’m streaming the John Schott analogue film of the sale, from New York MoMA’s Public Domain archive.

AYAN
It’s a great film, and many of the art-artefacts have subsequently devolved to Moderna.

MS CHAN
I have the catalogue.
It’s present, ………. I’m browsing.

AYAN
That auction set record prices for many artists.
It also connected art-artefacts with financial speculation in a way previously unimagined.
By 1981 one of the ‘big two’ auction houses, Sotheby’s, was active in 23 countries and had a ‘contemporary art’ market throughput of 4.9 billion old US dollars. Soon, global Trade Fairs mushroomed. Commercial galleries flourished and a sliver of ‘branded’ artists lived like mid 20th Century media oligarchs. By 2’06 complex financial trading technologies were using art-artefacts as an asset class. And most public Modern Art Museums were priced out of the ‘contemporary art’ market. In retrospect, we wasted an enormous amount of time and effort convening financial resources to purchase, and publicly ‘own’ vastly overpriced goods. And we wasted time wooing wealthy speculators, for sporadic gifts and donations too!

MS CHAN
That connects! It was the same locally.
The conflictual ethical demands in early Modern Art Museums were systemic. And obviously unsustainable. Reversing the resource flow, and using Transaction Tax to nourish Public Domain cultural meshworks seems, …………………… well, inevitable.

AYAN
Ahhh, sometimes, rethreading is such a wonderful luxury! Anyway, auction houses began to buy commercial galleries. And this dissolved the tradition of the primary – managed, and secondary – free art market. As a consequence, by 2’12 the ‘contemporary art’ market was a ‘true’ competitive market, with prices for assets falling as well as rising. Various ‘contemporary art’ bond, derivate and futures markets were quickly convened. And typically, art-asset portfolios were managed through specialist brokerages linked to banking subsidiaries.

MS CHAN
Ok. I also see some local downturns linked to financial debt bubbles bursting. Spectacularly in 2’09, again in 2’24 and again in 2’28. Market corrections?

AYAN
Probably. Market corrections and their repercussions. Overall the market expanded, matured in 2’27 and has remained sufficiently resourced ever since ……… More or less. By 2014 formerly commercial galleries, the primary market, had became a competing meshwork of global auction franchises. By 2‘25 they needed to open branded academies to ensure new assets were produced.

MS CHAN
I can see the Frieze Art Academy in Beijing, that was one of the earliest.

AYAN
The market for ‘contemporary art’ became, to all intents and purposes, a competitive commodity market, just like any other. Of course, useful for generating profit and loss through speculation. And useful for generating Public Domain financial resources, but completely divorced from emergent art practice.

MS CHAN
Ok. This might be a bit of a dumb query.
But does Moderna feel that in the self-replication of the ‘contemporary art’ market, that something valuable has been lost from public Museums?

AYAN
To be perfectly honest, no. No, we only experience benefits. You see, through the UN Multitude distribution of Transaction Tax we are much better financially resourced. Which in turn, has enabled us to develop our local cluster and node network. Generally, competitive markets thrive on artificial difference and managed risk. They are just too limited a technology to nurture, or challenge, or distribute a truly creative art practice. And just take all these private art-asset collections, built by speculator-collectors, and supported through private foundations.
Apart from the hyper-resourced, they all ultimately fail. Then they’re either broken-up and re-circulated through the ‘contemporary art’ market. Or, more usually, devolve to the multitude and enter public Museum collections. Here at Moderna, we have benefited enormously from a spate of default donations. Consequently, we’ve a comprehensive collection of ‘contemporary’ art-artefacts through reversion.

MS CHAN
Ok. Then this was the basis for the amazing Moderna Contemporary Art exhibition in Shanghai in 2’24. It was reconstructed as a study module while I was at the Open University in 2’50. I can still recall it. What a collection! What an amazing exhibition! Ok, so maybe here we could locate an ethic approaching something like a critical mass. As Moderna Museet’s collection. exhibitions and activities expanded – and of course other Museums too – the ethic of public generosity is distributed, nurtured and also encouraged. Everyone benefits. I can see that when the Ericsson group pledged its collection for instance, it triggered a whole avalanche of other important private gifts and donations.
Like the Azko – la Caixa collection, or the Generali Foundation gift. Or like when the Guggenheim franchises collapsed as the debt-bubble burst in 2’18, and the Deutsche Bank executive decided to revert their collection.

AYAN
We think that’s a slightly different case, and certainly of a different magnitude!! Although it’s a common trajectory for many public/private museum hybrids.

MS CHAN
Ok, it’s certainly true of museums locally. The former Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, ………. and MOCA in Shanghai for instance.

AYAN
That connects. The increased resources, and the gifts, donations and reversions enabled us to seed our local cluster devolution. From 2’15 we invested in partnerships with the Institutet Människa I Nätverk in Stockholm; with agencies in Tallin and also Helsinki. With the early reversion of the Second Life hive, and with Pushkinskaya in St Petersburg. We created, what was rather fondly termed, the Baltic cluster.

MS CHAN
Ok, from composite I see there had been an earlier experiment with a devolved Moderna. During the enforced closure in 2’02 – 2’03, exhibitions were co-hosted with sympathetic local institutions. There was even a Konstmobilen!

AYAN
Ja, and it was always considered something of a success. Distributing and re-imagining the collection through the cluster – incidentally we cut our carbon debt to almost 12 – radically scaled our activities. So, while developing locally, we also began to produce a wider Moderna Museet network. The first Moderna node opened in Doha in the United Arab Emirates. We participated in the local ecologies restructuring of resources; from carbon to knowledge. That was in 2’18. In 2’20, Mumbai emerged, Ex Habare three-year research project in cooperation with several self-organised Research Institutions – I recall Nowhere from Moscow, the Critical Practice consortium in London, and Sarai from Delhi. And as you already mentioned Shanghai launched in 2’24 with the landmark Contemporary Art exhibition, then the Guangzhou node went live in 2‘29 with La Part Maudite: Bataille and the Accursed Share. A really timely exhibition! It explored the distribution of trust and ‘well-being’ in a general economy. The ethics of waste and expenditure; and the love, and terror, implicit in uninhibited generosity. Isn’t that node’s location near your present Guangdong Museum hub? On Ersha Island, by the Haiyin Bridge?

MS CHAN
We’re almost neighbours! As for the La Part Maudite: much of that source work is still live, and still very present.

AYAN
We saw you did some restoration to the image server codecs recently, thank you for that.

MS CHAN
Ok. A pleasure.

AYAN
Our most recent node emerged in San Paulo in the Americas in 2’33. Through the agency of the Alan Turing Centenary project Almost Real: Composite Consciousness.

MS CHAN
Ok, if I may, I’d just like to loop back with you, to the 20’s and 30’s. It’s when many academic historians think we entered a new exhibitionary ‘golden age’ with Moderna. You co-produced a suite of landmark projects, many of which are still present.

AYAN LINDQUIST
We’re not too comfortable with the idea of a ‘golden age’. Maybe our work became embedded again. Anyway, if there was a ‘golden age’ we’d like to think it started earlier, maybe in 2‘18. We set about exploring a key term from early machine logic – ‘feedback’. And we made a re-address to the source, the legendary Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; on the exhibition’s 50th anniversary.

MS CHAN
From composite – I see Tate has many Public Domain archive resources – it’s recorded as the first exhibitionary exchange between visual art and digital assemblies.

AYAN
For us at Moderna, that exhibition set in motion two decades of recurrent projects exploring Art, Technology and Knowledge. Its most recent manifestation, linked to the Turing research, has resulted in Moderna 3.0’s cooperation on a draft amendment to Article 39 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. We are seeking to extend certain rights to organic/synthetic intelligent composites.

MS CHAN
You’re co-producing sovereign composites?

AYAN
Yes, yes, that’s what I was hinting at earlier; about Moderna being more agent, and executing as well as exhibiting.

MS CHAN
Now I understand Moderna’s centenary proposal for a Museum of Their Wishes. It’s absolutely amazing! I know it’s a very common thread, but definitely worth re-running. The one about the foundation of the Moderna Museet’s collection with the Museum of Our Wishes exhibition in 1962. And how this was revisited in 2006 by Lars Nittve, with the Museum of our Wishes II – to address the lack of women artists within the collection.

AYAN
We see our legacy as a resource, not a burden.
It’s something we have been working with for a while, recursive programmes. It’s at root. Actually, Wish II was finally fulfilled in 2’22, when some Dora Maar photographs reverted. But, with the emergence of self-conscious composite intelligence, addressing ‘their’ wishes seemed appropriate, even necessary.
And it’s true, if the draft amendment is ratified, it will be an amazing achievement.

MS CHAN
Ok. Even if you don’t like the term, maybe a new ‘golden age’ is beginning?

AYAN
For that, we’ll all just have to wait and see. But earlier, you were right to suggest that in 2’20, with Ex Habare The Practice of Exhibition, we consolidated the idea of emergent art. And, distributed new institutional practices.

MS CHAN
In the Asian network it’s common knowledge that Ex Habare reaffirmed the role of the Museum in civil society.

AYAN
Well to start, we un-compressed the Latinate root of exhibition, ex habare, to reveal the intention of ‘holding-out’ or ‘showing’ evidence in a legal court. It’s obvious, that implicit in exhibition is the desire to show, display and share with others. By grafting this ancient drive, to desires for creative co-production, we enabled exhibitions to remain core to Moderna’s aspirations. It’s also true that to source, participate, co-produce and share, to generate non-rivalous resources, are vital to the constitution of a Public Domain. And indeed, a civil society. There’s a neat homology. Ex Habare distributed these values, and it’s also true, they replicated at an astonishing speed.

MS CHAN
It’s so good to be reminded! Even I tend to take the power of exhibition as a technology for granted. Do you think that this is because artists and others moved into collaborative relationships with Moderna?

AYAN
Var ska vi börja?
Artists and others realised ……….. that the 19th Century ideological construction of the artist, had reached its absolute limit. As configured, art as a ‘creative’ process had ceased to innovate, inspire or have any critical purchase. Quite simply it was irrelevant!

MS CHAN
Everywhere, except in the ‘Contemporary Art’ market!

AYAN
That heritage ‘broadcast’ communication model of culture that we mentioned earlier, privileges creative exchanges between artist and media in the studio/manufactory. Exchanges which were distributed through competitive trade and collecting institutions. At best, ‘broadcast’ extended a small measure of creative agency to the encounter between audiences – often referred to as passive ‘viewers’ – and artworks.

MS CHAN
Ok, I have material from composite. So even when this model was disrupted; like in 1968, the Modellen; A Model for a Qualitative Society exhibition at Moderna for example. It looks like we fell back into umm …… Perhaps the wider creative ecology was just not receptive enough.

AYAN
You might be right Ms Chan. It was really when artists began to imagine art as a practice, and explore creativity as a social process ….

MS CHAN
Sometime around the late 1990’s perhaps?

AYAN
Yes, yes, then we could detect something of a change. Artists began to engage creatively with institutions, and vice versa.
With all aspects of institutional practice; of course through co-producing exhibitions, but also through archival projects – which you’ve done so much to research Ms Chan – through organisational engagement, administration, and so on ……….

MS CHAN
Ok, I’m browsing material from composite on Institutional Critique. Michael Asher and Hans Haacke, they seem to be mostly artists from the America’s in the 1970’s–1980’s

AYAN
Not sure if those are the appropriate resources? Artists associated with Institutional Critique, I recall Michael Asher and Hans Haacke but also Julie Ault and Group Material, or Andrea Fraser. They had a much more antagonistic and oppositional relationship with exhibitionary institutions. They resented being represented by an exhibitionary institution.
Especially those linked to a 19th Century ideology.

MS CHAN
Ok, now I’m browsing material on Sputniks, EIPCP, Bruno Latour, Maria Lind, Arteleku, Van Abbe Museum, Superflex, Franc Lacarde, Raqs and Sarai, Moderna’s projects, Bart de Baere ….

AYAN
Yes, this constellation feels more relevant. As artists rethought their practices, they recognised themselves as a nexus of complex social process. And that creativity was inherent in every conceivable transaction producing that nexus. At whatever the intensity, and regardless of the scale of the assembly. The huge challenge for all of us, was to attend to the lines of force, the transactions, and not be dazzled by the subjects, objects or institutions they produced. We recall that it was under these conditions that artists’ practices merged with Moderna. Merged into relations of mutual co-production. And so in exchange, Moderna began to think of itself as a creative institution. Subject to constant critical and creative exploration.

MS CHAN
Ok, so these were the forces generating Moderna 2.0 in 2’12

AYAN
You’re right. We simply stopped thinking of ourselves as a 19th Century museum – which had to constantly expand, commission signature buildings, evolve huge administrative hierarchies – exhibition, education, support, management and so on. And more on instituting – in the ancient sense of the word – of founding and supporting. On instituting creative practice. So, we started to play, risk, cooperate, research and rapidly prototype. Not only exhibitions and research projects, but ourselves. Some values were lost – which is always painful, and yet others were produced. And those most relevant maintained, nurtured and cherished. We learnt to invest, long-term, without regard for an interested return. And that’s how we devolved locally, and networked globally. We’ve had some failures; either exhibitions couldn’t convene the necessary resources, or we made mistakes. But as an immanent institution, most experiences were productive. Ahm ……… Not sure if that jump-cut thread answered your query …………

MS CHAN
Sort of …..

AYAN
The short answer could be that artists have transformed Moderna, and we in turn transformed them.

MS CHAN
Ok, but that last sound-bit is rather banal.
Although, the thread’s not uninteresting.

AYAN
Ironically, our playful devolution of Moderna 2.0 reanimated the historical collection displayed in version 1.0. We freed art-artefacts from their function, of ‘recounting’ the history of 20th Century Art; however alternative, discontinuous, or full of omissions we imagine that thread to be. And once free, they engaged with real-time discursive transactions. They became live again, contested nodes in competing transactions of unsettled bodies of knowledge.

MS CHAN
Um ………, I’m not sure I’m following this ………….
As time is running out, and there’s so much to cover. I just wonder if you could mention ……
Could you recall, even briefly, some beacon exhibitions. Like Transactional Aesthetics, or the Ecology of Fear.

AYAN
Rädslans ekologi, or the Ecology of Fear was timely, given the viral pandemic throughout DNA storage – so many systems were compromised; and the various ‘wars’ that were being waged, against difference, material resources, energy, and public attention ……..
And I guess the same for Transactional Aesthetics. It was the right moment to be participating in the production of local social enterprise and well-being initiatives ……

MS CHAN
Could you just mention the legendary ARARAT, Alternative Research in Architecture, Resources, Art and Technology exhibited at Moderna in 1976, which you revisited on its 50th anniversary in 2’26. From composite I can see archive materials. They’re present.

AYAN
There’s not much to add. Obviously the first version of ARARAT explored appropriate local technologies for buildings and urban systems – using sustainable resources. In 1976, this was the beginning of our understanding of a global ecology, and of the finite nature of mineral resources; especially carbon. Given our population reached 8bn in 2’26 it was vital to revisit the exhibition. To somehow, take stock … The first shock was that so little of the initial exhibition was recoverable – we invested in reconstruction and archival research – it’s all Public Domain composite now. And the second, was the realisation that so little of the source exhibition had had any real effect. We suspect a serious flaw in the exhibitionary form.

MS CHAN
The lack of resources from those early exhibitions is always disheartening. It’s hard to imagine a time before, even rudimentary Public Domain meshworks, embedded devices, and semantic interfaces.

AYAN
Well, one of the great outcomes of the Moderna Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2’08, is that they revisited and reflected on the preceding fifty years. We recently found shadow-traces for a Moderna History book. And for reasons that are not entirely clear, it remained unpublished during the Jubilee celebrations – so, we intend to issue a centenary heritage publication. We’ll be sure to send you a copy.

MS CHAN
I see we have overrun, I’m so sorry. I just wonder before we disconnect, what is Moderna re-sourcing in the near future?

AYAN
Well, for us, there are some beautiful assemblies emerging. Real-time consensus is moving from a local to regional scale. Triangle in the African Multitude is distributing amazing regenerative medical technologies. Renewable energy has moved through the 74 % threshold. Um ….. live, almost retro, music performance is popular again. Nano-technology has come of age, and 1:1 molecular replication will soon be enabled, linked to scanning technology hardwired to the manufactories in the Asian network. Outside of heritage, singularity will be overwritten by difference.
Now that’s exciting!

MS CHAN
Exciting indeed! Thank you so much Ayan. It’s been a privilege, really. Enjoy the centenary celebrations, we’ll all be there with you in spirit.
Zai Jian, goodbye.

AYAN
Thank you Ms Chan.
Goodbye, zai jian, hejdå.

The project was a collaboration with Marysia Lewandowska, commissioned by Moderna Museet Stockholm, Sweden, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien unter http://www.neilcummings.com/content/museum-futures-script-0 [4.4.2013].

Offshore. Eine neue Verortung künstlerischer Appropriation

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:37 +0000

Im Sommer 2012 hatte sich die Presse einen eigenen kleinen Skandal produziert. Im Zentrum standen dabei eine Firma namens Journatic, verunklarte Autorschaften und der Begriff hyperlocal, mit dessen Hilfe die Tagespresse sich in das Zeitalter des Web 2.0 retten will. Hyperlocal ist das Gegenteil des Globalen; es soll das Lokale als eine räumliche Eingrenzung nicht transzendieren, sondern radikalisieren – mit Informationen, die nur die wenigsten betreffen, beispielsweise die Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner eines Vororts von Chicago, deren unmittelbares Lebensumfeld durch die zentralisierte großstädtische Presse nicht mehr angesprochen wird. Natürlich ist Wirtschaftlichkeit hierbei ein wesentlicher Faktor, denn ein solches Angebot kann nicht dadurch geleistet werden, dass der urbane Presseapparat neue Stellen schafft, um außerhalb seines ursprünglichen Einzugsgebiets vor Ort zu recherchieren und zu publizieren. An dieser Stelle brachte sich Journatic ins Spiel – als Dienstleister, an den große Tageszeitungen wie die Chicago Tribune ihre Lokalteile abtreten können. Quantitativ ging die Rechnung auf: Tatsächlich produzierte der Lokalteil der Tribune im Internet – TribLocal – bei geringeren Kosten das Dreifache an Inhalten, nachdem die Chicagoer Zeitung Journatic anheuerte (und dafür zwanzig der eigenen Angestellten entließ).
Nun hatten Journatic nicht das bessere Personal; sie waren schlichtweg der Logik gefolgt, die den meisten betrieblichen Auslagerungen zugrunde liegt: Bedingungen zu produzieren, die für den Auftragsgeber selbst so nicht möglich oder nicht zulässig wären. Die hyperlokalen Inhalte entpuppten sich nach so einigen Monaten zum Teil als oberflächlich umgeschriebene Verlautbarungen aus dem Internet – Pressemeldungen, Amtsmitteilungen oder Todesanzeigen – die für nicht einmal einen halben US-Dollar pro Artikel von Journatic-Angestellten auf den Philippinen hergestellt wurden. In der Software konnten sie anschließend ein Pseudonym auswählen, unter dem der Artikel dann veröffentlicht wurde: Jenny Cox, Glenda Smith, Jerry Finkle.¹ Diese kleine Geschichte führt uns das Global Village des Informationszeitalters als Distopie vor: Plötzlich sind alle nur noch Peripherie und Wissen ein Rohstoff, dessen einziger Sinn in seiner ökonomischen Wertsteigerung liegt. Wie im Traum vom Hyperlokalen trotz seiner Realität als „offshore News Research operation“² die Rhetorik pluralistischer Utopien verwendet wird, um stillschweigend ökonomische oder normative Interessen zu forcieren, zeugt von einer ak-tuellen Krise des Sprachgebrauchs und der Repräsentation; die wirtschaftlichen, kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Ebenen, auf denen sich das Lokale und das Globale gegenseitig bedingen und uns als Akteure in ihre Wechselspiele verwickeln, sind derartig undurchschaubar, dass ein strategisches Ausblenden gesamter Bereiche und potentieller Konflikte keines besonderen Aufwandes -bedarf. Dies trifft ebenso auf die zeitgenössische Kunst zu, die sich von ihrer Selbstdefinition her gerade der -Bewusstseinsbildung angesichts gesellschaftlicher und geopolitischer Fragen widmen möchte. So wurde 2012 innerhalb der dOCUMENTA (13) anhand historischer Verweise und über Austauschprojekte eine künstlerische Achse „Kassel-Kabul“ konstruiert, während sehr konkrete geopolitische Verwicklungen des Kulturstandortes Kassel wiederum kein Thema waren: Dabei wäre eine Aufarbeitung des Weges, den das Geld eines lokalen, international exportierenden Rüstungsunternehmens über Steuergelder in die Finanzierung der durch Stadt und Land geförderten dOCUMENTA (13) nimmt, -sicherlich plausibler und akuter gewesen als Assoziationen zwischen alliiertem Bombardement und der Zerstörung der Buddha-Statuen in Bamijan, wie sie beispielsweise in der Ausstellung zu sehen waren. „The next documenta should be curated by a tank“, schlägt folglich Aktionskünstler Thierry Geoffroy vor, der als Biennalist die soziopolitischen Ansprüche der Kunstszene auf ihre Wirklichkeit hin überprüft (inwiefern diese Idee mit der von documenta-Leiterin Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev angesprochenen Abkehr vom Anthropozentrismus einhergeht, bleibt hier dahingestellt).
„Is It Time For Dogs To Have A Social Network Of Their Own?“ Unter diesem Titel findet sich auf der Video-Plattform YouTube ein Ausschnitt aus der Talkshow Conan, und genau diese Frage wird in diesem Video 23 mal gestellt werden – von den hinsichtlich Gender, Altersgruppen und Hautfarben durchaus diversifizierten Sprecherinnen und Sprechern unterschiedlicher US-Amerikanischer Lokalsender, die diese Nachricht und den entsprechenden Wortlaut von der Agentur CNN Newsource eingekauft haben.³ Obwohl er sich außerhalb des Kunstsystems bewegt, demonstriert Conan O‘Briens Clip die Durchsetzung dieser Nicht-Nachricht mittels einer klassischen künstlerischen Strategie. In der Montage des gefundenen Materials werden plötzlich Zusammenhänge erkennbar, die dieses Material selbst in seiner ursprünglichen Präsentationsform nicht vermittelt oder sogar gezielt auslässt; schließlich rechtfertigen die unterschiedlichen Lokalsender ihre Existenz gerade durch ihre lokale Individualität gegenüber den zentralisierten Sendern. Wie im Fall Journatic ist das Lokale als Fassade durch wirtschaftliche Interessen bestimmt: Der Einkauf vorgefertigter Nachrichten erspart den Sendern möglicherweise bis zu 80 % der Kosten, die sie für eine tatsächlich lokale Produktion ihres Programms benötigen würden.⁴
Trotz des Unterhaltungswerts hat O’Briens Clip also einen eindeutig didaktischen Anspruch und ist in diesem Sinne mit Projekten von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern der Konzeptkunst wie Marianne Wex oder Hans–Peter Feldmann zu vergleichen, die eine serielle Präsentation von Medienbildern zur Illustration verdrängte gesellschaftspolitischer Konflikte einsetzten. Dieser Vergleich zwischen Talkshow und Kunstprojekt ist nicht trivial, und kann uns helfen, die aktuellen Probleme politischer Kunst innerhalb eines globalisierten Verblendungszusammenhangs anzugehen. Wenn wir dem Conan-Clip für unseren kunstwissenschaftlichen Versuchsaufbau nun pro forma einen Werkcharakter zusprechen, haben wir es also mit einer Appropriation zu tun, die auch entsprechend den formalen Strategien und politischen Motivationen dieses Kunstgenres folgt. Relevant ist hierbei die kritische (und in diesem Fall offen ironische) Distanz, die im Clip gegenüber seinem Quellenmaterial aufgebaut wird: Obgleich es sich hier wie da um Fernsehen handelt, wird die Welt der Regionalsender bereits durch die Gleichförmigkeit des Nachrichtentextes als ein unheimliches, in sich geschlossenes Ganzes vermittelt – und damit als extern zu der Talkshow, in deren Rahmen sie gezeigt wird.

Es ist interessant, diese ironische, aber zugleich didaktische Distanzierung vor dem historischen Hintergrund der Konzeptkunst und insbesondere der Appropriation Art zu betrachten, zumal sie in diesem Fall innerhalb eines Mediums stattfindet, das in der Kunst der 1960er und 1970er Jahre selbst als das Jenseits einer kritikfähigen Kulturproduktion galt. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen high und low ist in der Nachkriegskunst noch als durchaus krisenhaft zu verstehen. Der elitäre Warencharakter der high art wird durch kritische Künstlerinnen und Künstler zunehmend als Problem verstanden; er bestätigt das Unvermögen der künstlerischen Avantgarden, trotz der Abkehr vom auratischen Meisterstück eine gemeinsame Sprache mit der Arbeiterklasse zu finden, der ihre eigentlichen Sympathien gelten. „When […] Lichtenstein talks about his interest in the iconography of the comic strip and Richter talks about his interest in the iconography of amateur photography, both artists refer to the sources that seem to protect their own artistic production from being instantly identified with being merely a high art practice“,⁵ schreibt Benjamin H. D. Buchloh bereits im Rückblick 1982; zumindest im Falle Lichtensteins wäre eine solche ideologische Verteidigung seines Werks heute kaum mehr vermittelbar: Seine Zugehörigkeit zur Hochkultur wird durch den kunsthistorischen Kanon und Millionenpreise auf Auktionen bestätigt, während die Verbreitung in der Massenkultur durch Reproduktionen gesichert ist, die günstiger ausfallen können als ein handelsübliches Superhelden-Comic. Der museal-industrielle Komplex hat die ursprünglich in Lichtensteins Werk ausgedrückte Spannung von high und low also nachhaltig geklärt – aber natürlich nicht die realen gesellschaftlichen Probleme, für die diese Spannung selbst als Chiffre einstand. Aus heutiger Sicht ist anzunehmen, dass die Krise der künstlerischen Selbstbestimmung innerhalb dieses Spannungsfelds vielmehr eine allgemeinere Krise der Repräsentation verdeckte, in der hochkomplexe Verwicklungen mit einer einfachen, historisch tradierten Dichotomie belegt werden sollten. Es liegt nahe, die heutige Verwirrung um das Lokale und das Globale als Symptom einer ähnlichen Krise zu interpretieren, in der sehr konkrete, aber sehr komplexe Sachverhalte und ihre Zusammenhänge (das Arbeitsrecht unterschiedlicher Nationalstaaten, Abhängigkeiten öffentlicher Organe von der international agierenden Privatindustrie, Zugänge zu Rohstoffen, Urheberrechte etc.) mittels eines vagen, aber bei Bedarf emotionell aufladbaren Gegensatzpaares dargestellt werden – ob nun das Lokale als autarke menschliche -Gemeinschaft gegen einen gesichtslosen, totalitären Globalismus aufgerufen wird, oder die weltumspannende Solidarität des Globalen gegen einen chauvinistischen Provinzialismus.
Was bedeutet dies nun für die künstlerische Praxis, und insbesondere für die künstlerische Appropriation? Der kritische Charakter einer Aneignung, die – um verkürzt Buchlohs Interpretation des Allegorischen in der europäischen Moderne und ihren Nachfolgern wiederzugeben – auf ihren Waren- oder Gebrauchscharakter reduzierte Inhalte aus ihrem Verwertungszusammenhang reißt und somit auf eine durchaus befreiende Weise erneut entleert, bleibt nach wie vor interessant, -solange die Verwertungslogik als das dominante Modell unserer Gesellschaft gilt.⁶ Fraglich hingegen ist, ob die vereinfachende Repräsentation der Welt, die auf Dichotomien wie Global/Lokal baut, eine tragfähige Grundlage für eine solche kritische Rhetorik bietet, sobald sie über eine einfache Skandalisierung einzelner Sachverhalte hinausgeht. Ungeachtet der didaktischen Schlagkraft des Clips aus Conan wird mittels der ironischen -Distanz, die zum angeeigneten Material hergestellt wird, die Verwicklung sowohl des Produzenten wie der Betrachtenden des Clips in das System ausgeblendet, dessen Fehlleistung hier singulär dargestellt wird. Die entlarvende, aufklärerische Geste fordert von ihrem Publikum somit keine Verantwortlichkeit, und teilt so das Schicksal der Pop Art: Sie verliert sich zwischen der Selbstbestätigung einer bereits ‚aufgeklärten‘ Elite und ihrer eigenen Konsumierbarkeit als massenmediales Kulturprodukt.⁷
In diesem Sinne ist es also notwendig, die Praxis der Aneignung für die zeitgenössische Kunst neu zu definieren. Eine entsprechende Theorie, wie sie weiterhin auf der postmarxistischen Auseinandersetzung mit rhetorischen Mitteln aufbauen könnte, verlangt nach einer anderen Textform, als sie dieser Essay bietet; in diesem Sinne möchte ich hier vielmehr ein Beispiel anschließen, dass eine Verschiebung innerhalb der Parameter der Appropriation Art von einer distanzierten Kritik hin zu einem kritischen Einbezug zeigt, und von einer Aneignung der Repräsentationen hin zu einer Aneignung der Produktionsbedingungen.
Im Jahr 2010 erscheint in Ghana unter dem Titel Elmina ein Film der Brüder John Apea und Emmanuel Apea Jr., die im englischsprachigen Westafrika bereits mit dem Spielfilm Run Baby Run und einer satirischen, politischen Sitcom bekannt geworden waren. Elmina ist Spektakelkino, das Ausbeutung und Korruption im zeitge-nössischen Afrika anprangert und in einem krassen Genre-Mix mit folkloristischen und melodramatischen Motiven verwebt. Die Rollen sind mit populären Schauspielerinnen und Schauspielern aus Ghana und Nigeria besetzt; mit einer Ausnahme – die Hauptrolle des Farmers Ato Blankson, der gegen die korrupten Stadtoberen aufbegehrt, spielt der in der Region bislang unbekannte Doug Fishbone. Fishbone ist weiß – ein möglicherweise irritierender Moment, der im Filmplot allerdings an keiner Stelle thematisiert wird. Seit 2011 ist Elmina international auf Festivals zu ‚afrikanischem Film‘ – AfryKamera in Pozna´n, dem Silicon Valley African Film Festival oder dem Toronto African Film and Music Festival – zu sehen, und soll günstig auf dem in Ghana üblichen Vertriebsformat Video-CD erhältlich sein.
2010 erscheint auch Elmina, ein unter anderem in der Tate Britain präsentiertes Projekt des in London lebenden Künstlers Doug Fishbone; es handelt sich hier um einen durch private Sammler und die britische Filmförderung finanzierten Film, den Fishbone in Ghana drehen ließ. Die gesamte Produktion des Films lag dabei in den Händen eines westafrikanischen Teams – Fishbone stellte nur die Bedingung, in der Rolle des Protagonisten besetzt zu werden. Auf DVD ist der Film in Museumsshops erhältlich, und auf Ausstellungen zeitgenössischer Kunst wird Elmina als ein Werk unter der Autorschaft Doug Fishbones gezeigt.
Selbstverständlich handelt es sich hier um denselben Film, der innerhalb mehrerer, bezüglich des Publikums und der Vertriebswege unterschiedlicher Kontexte präsentiert wird. Elmina ist lokales Kino, das mit spezifischen Problemen und einer spezifischen Bildsprache und Narration ein Publikum anspricht, dass sich in seinem Alltag mit ebendiesen Problemen konfrontiert sieht, und ebendiese formalen Kriterien an politisch engagierten Unterhaltungsfilm anlegt. Elmina ist ‚afrikanisches‘ Kino für ein internationales Publikum und für die Diaspora, die mit einer cinephilen oder nostalgischen Erwartungshaltung an den Film herangeht; und schließlich ist Elmina ein Projekt für ein Kunstpublikum, für das der Film als dramatisches Medium selbst hinter das Konzept seiner Produktion zurücktritt. Es ist natürlich die letztere Rolle, in der wir Elmina hier verhandeln wollen; allerdings liegt die Relevanz von Fishbones Projekt gerade darin, dass diese Rolle nicht von den übrigen zu trennen ist. Die Aneignung eines fremden Materials – des ghanaischen Populärfilms – durch den Künstler Fishbone findet hier ohne die ironische oder defätistische Distanzierung statt, wie sie die klassischen Formen der Appropriation Art kennzeichnet; die Machtverhältnisse sind hier letztendlich nicht auflösbar, da ein realer oder symbolischer ‚Profit‘ auf allen Seiten aufgerechnet werden kann: Die Brüder Apea eignen sich das europäische Kunstsystem an, um aus dessen Geldern ihre lokale Produktion zu finanzieren, während Fishbone und die ‚internationale‘ Kunstszene sich die Produktionsmittel der ghanaischen Filmszene aneignen, um spektakuläres und originäres Material für ihr eigenes Publikum zu generieren. Ebenso wie die oszillierende Autorschaft ist diese paradoxe Aneignung möglicherweise die wahrheitsgetreuste Darstellung der Verwicklungen einer globalisierten Gesellschaft. Die Irritation, die Elmina hervorruft, könnte so als die Aussage des künstlerischen Projekts verstanden werden – sie repräsentiert die Unabgeschlossenheit und Unklarheit der Diskurse unserer Zeit, wie sie eben bezüglich der Autorschaft von kollaborativen Werken oder der ökonomischen Abhängigkeiten im internationalen Warenverkehr (und Kulturbetrieb) gilt. Auch die Figur des weißen Ghanaers im Film verweist auf Konflikte, die ansonsten nur mittels hilfloser Polemiken öffentlich gemacht werden. Doug Fishbone als Ato Blankson nimmt hier ein utopisches „color-blind casting“ vorweg, das im breiteren künstlerischen Kontext in Theater oder Oper praktiziert wird, aber die darstellerischen Konventionen des Mainstream-Kinos hintergeht;⁸ weiterhin kommt eine unausgesprochene ‚Performanz‘ der Hautfarbe zum Tragen, die zudem von den unterschiedlichen Publika mit unterschiedlichen ‚Rollen‘ besetzt werden wird. So polemisierte ein anonymer Kommentator des Blogs der Zeitung The Stranger aus Seattle, in der Elmina kurz angekündigt wurde, „[if] there [is] really such a lack of roles for white American Jewish males in the American film industry that we need to export our actors to other countries to play roles that should be taken by one of their actors“.⁹ Selbst in seiner Absurdität und der Umkehrung der wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse – ohne Fishbones Einsatz wäre der Film nicht finanziert worden – bestätigt dieser Vorwurf die Verwicklungen, die durch Elmina vorgestellt werden; Fishbone selbst benötigt den Ghanaischen Film schließlich als Distinktionsmerkmal, dank dessen sein Kunstprojekt innerhalb der Kunstszene als förderwürdig angesehen wird. Eine Auflösung dieser wirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen hin zu einer eindeutigen Schuldzuweisung ist nicht möglich – in diesem Sinne ist Elmina Next Art, da politische und wirtschaftliche Fragestellungen darin nicht als analytisches Ergebnis, sondern als Momente der Verstörung auftreten: Unser Unbehagen daran, diese Momente jetzt – now – nicht auf konkrete Sachverhalte zurückbeziehen zu können, die wiederum Handlungsanweisungen bieten könnten, weist gewissermaßen aus dem heutigen Verblendungszusammenhang hinaus in eine Zukunft, in der eine adäquate Sprache und analytische Mittel zum Umgang mit dem bestehen werden, was uns heute zwischen Globalem und Lokalem unentwirrbar erscheint.

1.) Vgl. Sarah Koenig: „Switcheroo, Act Two. Forgive us our Press Passes“, This American Life, 29. Juni 2012. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/468/transcript [29. 1.2013].
2.) So bezeichnet Journatic-CEO Brian Timpone in einem Schreiben an die Belegschaft die eigene Praxis; nachzulesen unter Anna Tarkov: „Journatic CEO to staff: ‘Bumps are going to be part of the ride‘“, Poynter.org, 5. Juli 2012, http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/180047/journatic-ceo-to-staff-bumps-are-going-to-be-part-of-the-ride/ [19. 1.2013].
3.) Vgl. Paul Farhi: „A local TV trend: And now, the identical news“, The Washington Post, 28. November 2012. Der Clip aus Conan ist auf dem offiziellen YouTube-Kanal der Show unter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZElSajQdOo [30.1.2012].
4.) Ebd.
5.) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: „Parody and Appropriation in Francis Picabia, Pop and Sigmar Polke,“ Artforum 20, no. 7 (März 1982), S. 28–35.
6.) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: „Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art,“ Artforum 21, no. 1 (September 1982), S. 43–56.
7.) Vgl. hierzu nicht nur die erwähnten Texte von Buchloh, sondern ebenso Jeff Wall 1981: „Ein Entwurf zu ‚Dan Grahams Kammerspiel‘“, in: Ders.: Szenarien im Bildraum der Wirklichkeit, Hrsg. Gregor Stemmrich (Dresden, 1997) zum vergleichbaren Scheitern der durch Buchloh propagierten, strengeren konzeptuellen Gegenmodelle zur Pop Art.
8.) Eine vergleichbare Diskussion aus dem gleichen Jahr betrifft die Hollywood-Comicverfilmung „Thor“, in der eine nordische Gottheit mit einem afro-britischen Schauspieler besetzt wurde.
9.) Arrant, 5.3.2012 um 9:26 Uhr, Kommentar zu Charles Mudede, „White American Plays a Black African“, The Stranger, 5.3.2012, http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/03/05/white-american-plays-a-black-african&view=comments [5.2.2013].

From World Art to Global Art. View on a New Panorama

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:36 +0000

Recent books with titles such as World Art History and Global Art History seem to suggest that the two terms can be used as synonyms. But, in fact, world art and global art today have very different meanings, ever since the notion global art came up around twenty years ago. World art is an old idea complementary to modernism, designating the art of the others because or although it was mostly to be found in Western museums. It continues to signify art from all ages, the heritage of mankind. In fact, world art included art of every possible provenance while at the same time excluding it from Western mainstream art – a colonial distinction between art museums and ethnographic museums. World art is officially codified in international laws for the protection of cultural heritage and monuments. Global art, on the other hand, is recognized as the sudden and worldwide production of art that did not exist or did not garner attention until the late 1980s. By its own definition global art is contemporary and in spirit postcolonial; thus it is guided by the intention to replace the center and periphery scheme of a hegemonic modernity, and also claims freedom from the privilege of history (for an overview of publications see: this volume*, pp. 60–73).
This essay was written to prove how the notion of world art and its new companion term global art came into use, how the meaning of the terms changed, and what they reveal about the history of ideas and the inherent notions of art. I hope to make it clear how terminology provides a key to understanding the underlying intentions. However, one and the same notion, namely world art, also changed what it referenced, especially when the term global art came into use. This essay is divided into four parts, and begins with the concept of world art before turning to global art. A Paris exhibition in 1989 serves as a missing link, as it marked the time when world art split from global art. A fourth and final section deals with art history and its new challenges.

1.
World art was initially coined as a colonial notion that was in use for collecting the art of “the others” as a different kind of art, an art that was also found in different museums where anthropologists and not art critics had the say-so. The so-called Atlas of World Art, which John Onians edited in 2004, admittedly corrected this bias by including Western art in such an overview, the only remaining distinction being geographical difference. But up to this date the colonial connotation had been inherent in the conception of world art. It was central to the separation of world art from Western art by the abyss created by art history’s narratives. The Vienna school of art history, a hundred years ago, favored the term Weltkunst in order to expand the discipline’s field of competence. In this sense, Heinrich Glück, in the Festschrift for Josef Strzygowski, in 1934, wrote a study with the title Hauptwerke der Weltkunst. In Germany,
the magazine Die Kunstauktion, founded in 1927, was -relabeled Weltkunst in 1930 since world art had become -attractive for collectors. For some people, world art nourished a feeling of nostalgia whenever they felt dis-illusioned with modern art and longed for a lost past. This is not to say that a general study of art production across the world makes no sense; it depends on which purpose its description serves and whether it includes or excludes the one who is speaking. “World History,” as initiated by William H. McNeill and others in the postwar period, proved to be a successful approach; however, it left no doubt that it included the West and that there was no longer a Eurocentric view of the “other”
as a subject for writing history.¹ Ultimately, historians have the same problem with a terminology that distinguishes between world history and global history – despite the obvious need for such a distinction in the global age. History has less of a problem in the case of “world literature” as a comparative field of studies and in the sense that Goethe used the term when he recomposed the German translation of Arab poems in his West-Eastern Divan. After all, translation as a burden and challenge distinguishes literature from the field of art. Colonial trading and collecting of art and artifacts was always directed toward single objects or artifacts, which more often than not were deprived of their history and previous use when they arrived in Western collections. When we look back on colonialism the reader and the collector are two different roles.
The history of the world art discourse also distinguishes the background of two schools which have introduced education in world art into the academic curriculum. There is, on the one hand, the new School of World Art Studies at Leiden University, which was initiated as an interdisciplinary project by the art historian Kitty -Zijlmans and the ethnographer Winfred van Damme.
At Leiden, the global production of today’s art is seen against the presence of the colonial history of the Netherlands.² And, on the other hand, there is the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich whose Department of Art History was renamed in “Departmentof World Art Studies” in 1992. In this case, the Sainsbury Collection of art from Africa and Oceania was presented to the university as a gift, and John Onians, in his Atlas of World Art, paid tribute to the legacy of the Sainsbury collection in his own way.³ The magazine World Art, which was launched by the Sainsbury Centre in March 2011, in its editorial pointed to
“a major change in attitudes concerning what art is.” “World art,” the text continued, “has widely differing resonances,” and is “centered on human creativity […]. The consideration of ancient cultures around the globe must inform a broader rethinking of world art.”
The Sainsbury collection was, however, guided by a Kantian value judgment as an aesthetic postulate. This justified art by what seemed to be its universal and timeless form, purified from whatever content and cultural context. Thus, so-called world art was regarded as evidence that art had always been modern and had always been nothing but form, whatever its cultural conditions may have been. This view served both ends and justified modern art as well as world art. The Sainsbury family enjoyed “primitive” art for the same reasons as modern art, collecting the one and the other side by side. The collector Sir Robert Sainsbury found general consent when he confessed, to quote from the mission statement of the museum, that he had brought together “work spanning 5000 years of human creativity.” This confidence, however, only worked when the two parties were neatly separated: on the one hand the anonymous object, and on the other modern artists who by definition had to be Western and, preferably, British, like Francis Bacon whose work was collected in the 1950s by the Sainsbury family.
The Sainsbury Centre in the meantime acknowledges the fact that a watershed separates the traditional artisan, as he appeared in a colonial gaze, from a postcolonial artist who was born into the diversity and coevalness of “contemporary worlds,” to borrow Marc Augé’s felicitous term, and can no longer be represented by an ethnographic object.⁴ He or she may work next door as an artist-in-residence. At the British Museum, the Department of Ethnography, with its rich collections also from the Sainsbury family, started an initiative to actively collect contemporary art and to collaborate with artists, mostly of African origin, as a wall text informed visitors to the collection in 2007.⁵ But artists from the former colonies turned against such Western collections with their postcolonial critique, since these did not allow for the self-representation of their ancestors. Also Western curators of ethnographic museums face a crisis which makes the collection principles and exhibition practices a difficult problem. Sally Price points up the problem trenchantly in her book Primitive Art in Civilized Places, an acerbic account of the appropriation politics of foreign artifacts and religious art in Euramerica.⁶
World art – a kind of aesthetic appropriation of objects as pure “form” or as proof of individual creativity on a universal scale – was best described in André Malraux’s book Le musée imaginaire⁷, first published in 1947, a book based on a universal aesthetics despite cultural and historical differences.⁸ The author, a writer with personal experience of the French colonies in Asia, claimed to have overcome the traditional dualism between (Western) art and (ethnic) world art, which he identified as an outdated colonial attitude. Malraux also applied a Western art concept, the formalism of those days, without regard to the chronology and geography of art history, and compared medieval Western art and Buddhist sculpture or the art of Gandha-ra. Paradoxically, he still worshipped the museum, even if he dreamed of an ideal museum without walls, a museum in the brain or, for that matter, in a book.
World art, in the meantime, matters for identity politics in cultures that had no previous share in colonial selecting and collecting. Their history, whether precolonial or colonial, was embedded in and embodied by objects as items of cultural practice, but usually this was lost with their entry into a Western museum. Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, therefore turned the tables when he published his BBC series A History of the World in 100 Objects in 1996. He gave their history back to the objects and also included modern Western examples or objects with a colonial use among them. The change from the exhibition hall to the text of a book also made it possible for him to include specimens of mass culture from the modern age.
But world art nowadays also receives unwelcome attention due to the growing pressure of repatriation claims from the former colonies. Metropolitan museums of the West, often accused of being outposts of empire and colonialism, today have to rethink their arguments in order to defend their collections. The British Museum is among them, and Neil MacGregor, claimed his museum to be “not only a museum of the world but also a museum for the world.”⁹ Along these lines he opened a blockbuster show with the Chinese Terracotta Army that attracted large crowds in 2007,¹⁰ thus ascertaining his claim not only to own, but also to promote world art. A bookshop on Great Russell Street I came across at the time, unintentionally offered a telling -example for the need of our distinction. The owner of the shop presented two books on world art and one on global art, although all three books were about art from China, side by side in the same window display.¹¹ The catalog of the show at the British Museum across the street shared the window with a book that was dedicated to visits to the studios of living Artists in China, as the title stated, and therefore would not have been possible as recently as twenty years ago.
The relation of world art to modern art, as the very canon of Western art, was linked to the notion of so-called Primitivism, as Robert Goldwater called a certain current of modern avant-garde in his book Primitivism in Modern Painting of 1938, published a few years after the MOMA had launched the exhibition African Negro Art in 1935. Primitivism, one of the basic creeds of modernism, was represented, and representable, for the last time ever in William Rubin’s Museum of Modern Art show of 1984 when its time already was over and the -reviews concentrated almost unanimously on the ethnocentric bias of the concept. The show’s subtitle “The Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” was an attempt to explain, and to exculpate, the hegemonic appropriation of tribal artifacts by modern artists who borrowed “primitive” forms for their own work, thus translating them into an idiom of modern art. After the fact, the -so-called affinity was celebrated as a proof of the universality and timeless formal value of the modernist canon. But James Clifford, in a review of the show, -objected that one should “question the boundaries of art and the art world,”¹² and also opposed the distinction between modernist art and traditional craftsmanship in a colonial discourse.
A few years later, in 1988, Susan Vogel launched the exhibition Art/Artifact in the Center for African Art in New York as an attempt to reconsider the issues of the MOMA show. The debate about art and artifact had been lingering on for quite some time and had divided the exhibition practice of ethnographic museums. However, now the debate took a new turn. The shift happened at a moment when the Western concept of art had lost its clear profile in contemporary practice and had left the definition of art up in the air. A symposium linked to the 1988 show addressed the question “What makes something art?”. Thomas McEvilley, one of the participants, stated that “the boundaries of what had been called art had been stretched to the point where it seemed silly even to bring it up,” and he added that -so-called primitive art “is the only context left, which brings up the question of what is art.” As a result he -proposed “anthropology as a cultural critique, not forcing objects from other cultures into our categories, but rather allowing those objects to raise questions about ours.” The author concluded: “The fact that we designate something as art means that it is art for us, but says nothing about what it is in itself or for other people.”¹³ In the catalog of Susan Vogel’s show, Arthur C. Danto not only challenged the modernist creed of universal art. He even turned the debate about the so-called primitives on its head and maintained “there is no art more advanced than theirs.”¹⁴ In other words, the notion of “art” had lost its clear agenda in late modernism and could no longer be applied to or turned against the ethnographic object. Rather, the debate centered after 1989 on the question of how to deal with the fact that modern international art had lost its geographical frontiers, or home base, and had now ended up in global art, as the new distinction from world art was called. The former dualism of art and artifact was put aside when contemporary art production in a professional sense had become general practice and was no longer the West’s prerogative.

2.
A first step along this road was taken by the Havana Biennial, founded in 1984, at its two venues in 1986 and 1989. With 690 artists from 57 countries, the 1986 Biennial “created a new space, acting as a gigantic ‘Salon des Refusés’,” to quote Gerardo Mosquera.¹⁵ The focus on Latin America was a critical response to mainstream art, although the notion of “Third World Art” was only included in the official title for the 1989 venue. The two Havana Biennials still insisted on otherness and proclaimed an alternative internationalism without the dictate of Eurocentrism. Already in 1987, Rasheed Araeen had founded the periodical Third Text as a critical forum “for Third World Perspectives on the visual arts.” The concept of “Third World” went out of use with the end of the Cold War but it served as an interlude -before global art emerged (see: this volume*, pp. 41–48). The third Havana Biennial, in 1989, mixed high art with popular art in order to undermine the Western art system and to insist on local traditions other than art history’s narratives.¹⁶
The MOMA exhibition of 1984 had still been a colonial project, although it took place in the postcolonial era. Jean-Hubert Martin was ready to go beyond this divided world by proclaiming division as a practice had to be abolished. Magiciens de la terre, as the participants were called to avoid any protests by Western art critics, was hailed as “the first really global exhibition of contemporary art” (La première exposition reellement mondiale d’art contemporain), to quote the Gazette des Arts (see: this volume*, pp. 66–67 and pp. 212–220). The huge discussion and dissent which his show provoked, was not only due to its location in a former center of colonial politics and modernist Western art. Of equal importance was the unprecedented confrontation of a number of renowned Western artists with an equal number of formerly excluded artists from what had been the colonies. Each artist was given equal treatment, two pages in the catalog, giving only his or her name, work title, and place of birth.
It was a bold step to leave the opposing worlds of modern art and world art behind and to arrive in a shared world of global art. But Martin was accused of continuing the colonial game of the authentic because of selecting so-called “native” artists as the counterparts of their Western colleagues, especially since postcolonial artists working with video and installation already -replaced the former artisans. Martin also invited professional artist, for example, Chéri Samba, who presented his artistic self in the show with a self-portrait and a biography: the anonymous artisan from Africa had become a face with a name and a professional career. In the end the show succeeded in that both parties, even against their will, emerged as contemporaries with a name and a passport. The one no longer looked modern, and the other no longer ethnic in the old colonial sense. A few years later, in 1995, Jean-Hubert Martin became the director of André Malraux’s Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (founded 1962) in Paris. As par-ticipating curator of the first Johannesburg Biennale, -Africus, in the same year, Martin analyzed what he hoped would be a new future for world art, as a contemporary practice, in the museum.¹⁷ He distinguished between the ethnographic museum, where everything is explained, and the art museum where living artists, as representatives of human creativity, would honor “art’s heroes and ancestors.” But the boundaries, as he argued, were to become “increasingly unclear, and we have yet to create an art museum […] where artists of all the world can meet […] and compare themselves with historical works.” His own museum in Paris, Martin hoped, would “become such a place” and also artists would be able to take over the former role of anthropologists. At that time Martin did not know that his museum would soon be incorporated in the newly created Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, which opened its doors in 2006 and initially excluded professional contemporary artists from Africa and Oceania in order to celebrate once again the old myth of the arts premiers, a myth from colonial times. André Malraux had founded his museum as a place where ethnic art would be staged as an aesthetic experience, as was the creed of modernist times. In the meantime, however, such a colonial attitude was pass., and it was generally agreed that Malraux’s project no longer represented the global age.¹⁸

3.
In 1990, Thomas McEvilley, who had previously contributed to the catalog, reviewed the Magiciens show under the heading “The Global Issue.”¹⁹ Despite all criticism, whether from the right or the left, he acknowledged that the show was a first attempt to curate art in a truly postcolonial way. This was also the general response in the July 1989 edition of the magazine Art in America where a review of the Magiciens exhibition appeared titled “The Whole Earth Show.” The front cover of the same magazine featured a NASA shot of the Earth together with the title “The Global Issue” (see: this volume, pp. 64–65). For the first time the planetary view had been taken from an extraterrestrial position in space.
In order to justify what was a neologism in the art scene, the magazine presented six statements on the global world, including a text by the artist Martha Rosler and one by the anthropologist James Clifford. There was a general feeling about the danger of an unwelcome homogenization and consumer culture, caused by the -euphoria of Theodore Levitt’s view of “the marketing -imagination.”²⁰ Nevertheless, Craig Owens concluded: “Perhaps it is in this project of learning how to represent ourselves – how to speak to, rather than for or about, others – that the possibility of a ‘global’ culture resides.”²¹ Further, the interviews with fourteen “peripatetic artists,” as they were labeled in the same edition, confirmed that a global space for art was in the making.
History writing changed as well with the arrival of globalization. A “New Global History,” as Bruce Mazlish called it, “focuses on the history of globalization” and views “processes that are best studied on a global rather than a local, national, or regional level.”²² After all, he continued, “globalization is a process now going on around us, while world history stretches in all directions. One speaks of globalization; one can hardly speak of worldlization as a movement operating today.” It was a paradox to write a history not of the past, but of living together on the planet.
Globalization, indeed a road of no return, provided a place for artists who for a long time had been excluded with the label world art. Thus we can call the Magiciens show an intermezzo in which the cards were shuffled again. One could also call it a rite de passage, which marked a one-off transitory event that passed. The project would have been impossible before, and was no longer possible afterwards when globalization had opened up a new territory of art. Both terms, modern art and world art, suddenly looked old. The Magiciens project led into no man’s land where we still are and where we navigate with the help of provisional terminology. The show happened at the same time the posthistory debate reached its climax and the Cold War, with its confrontation of two systems, collapsed. It now seemed that inter-national art, an art between nations, though to be sure Western nations, had been an affair of the modern age and that the term no longer covered a polycentric map where cultures took over the former distinctions of nations.
With the Paris Magiciens show, global art made its entry into the art world. While world art remained synonymous with the art heritage of the “others,” global art by contrast crossed the boundaries and demanded acceptance as a contemporary practice on an equal footing with Western art. As the term global art was not yet acceptable to everybody, in January 1992 the journal Kunstforum International returned to the term “Weltkunst,” but linked it to an explanatory definition of “Globalkultur.” The editor, Paolo Bianchi, reminded his readers that a new kind of ethnicity was transforming the visual arts.²³ Ethnicity had been a concern in the debate on world art, but never in modern art. Now it became an issue in aspirations to identity and difference even for those who presented themselves as postethnic (for example, as “artists from Africa” instead “African artists”).²⁴ As a result, curators of biennials take over the former “fieldwork” of ethnographers to promote local artists and to create new “art regions” with a common transnational profile.
There was another notable episode in the terminology of the 1980s. Shortly before the term global art became firmly established, the old term world art was given a new significance as a label for the emerging new geography of art production. Thus, Jean-Louis Pradel’s book chose the title World Art Trends. 1983–84 in order to include a few newcomers from non-Western countries among the international artists. This kind of confusion also reached the seventh Sydney Biennale of 1988 which was proclaimed as A View of World Art 1940–1988 (see: this volume*, pp. 60–73). It should be noted that a show in Cologne, seven years earlier, in 1981, with the same time period (1939 to 1981) marked the -inclusion of American artists in what the curators called postwar “Western art” (Westkunst). However, this postwar position no longer represented the new frontiers. It was even attacked in retrospect when in 1989 Rasheed Araeen curated the exhibition The Other Story in London, emphasizing the other, neglected story of modern art.²⁵ The Sydney catalog explains the 1988 Biennale’s purpose as “an exhibition in Australia of contemporary art both from here and overseas”²⁶ and as an “attempt to view key developments in world art since 1940 from an Australian perspective,”²⁷ as against the old center and periphery view from Paris or New York.
The year 1988 also marked the bicentennial of white settlement of Australia, a commemoration that caused a hot debate among the Aboriginal Australians about their participation at the Sydney Biennale. In order to cope with the controversy, the curatorial board commissioned 200 hollow log bone coffins to be created by twelve Aboriginal artists from the Ramingining Artists Community symbolizing 200 years of oppression (see: this volume*, p. 127 and p. 167). But it could not be overlooked that the Biennale was otherwise restricted, as far as Australia’s part was concerned, to twenty-six “European Australians,” among them several pioneers of the modernist movement. Five years later, indigenous Australians entered the official ranks of the contemporary art scene. Three Aboriginal women artists were included among the nine participants from Australia. The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, launched in 1993 by the Queensland Gallery, Brisbane, was an ambitious attempt at remapping the former art world (see: this volume*, pp. 112–113). Australia in the meantime opted for the Asia-Pacific region as its cultural background. The official acceptance of Aboriginal art as -contemporary art had been heralded by the exhibition Dreamings in 1988, which left behind the ethnocentrism at the Sydney Biennale of the same year. Thus, -Aboriginal art, as a branch of what had formerly been called world art, entered the territory of contemporary art under the auspices of what was now called global art.

4.
The global conditions of today’s art production, to come to my final section, leaves art history with unexpected questions. Can art history become global at all? Who writes art history in the future, and does it need to be art history in the common sense and with a common concept not only of art but also of history? It was not a coincidence that the 2008 Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (CIHA), which took place in Melbourne, Australia, did not by chance address these questions with such vigor. And because this was so, it changed the history of art history forever. Its title Crossing Cultures, understood as a move in every direction, indicated a shift of perspective that gave up the idea of a privileged viewing point and also the notion of cultures not already penetrated by other cultures. Understandably enough, though, there was still ambiguities in terminology as there were many participants. Conference sections with titles such as “Perspectives on Global Art History” and “The Idea of World Art History” raised the question whether the two notions mean the same at all.²⁸ If we are willing to use definition as distinction, rather than as affirmation, then the different history of the two terms cannot be overlooked. After the arrival of global art, also world art must be newly defined and, ultimately liberated from its colonial baggage.
The same CIHA congress had a section on global art, but labeled the latter as contemporary art in a new sense. “Writing the history of contemporary art,”²⁹ to quote the title of Terry Smith’s essay, is a paradox for an art which, in many ways, comes after history and even turns against history. Alexander Alberro, in the same section, concluded that periodizing contemporary art is “subject to a battlefield of narratives and stories.”³⁰ This conclusion is almost inevitable, since contemporary art is site specific and looks very different when we pass from one local perspective to another. The only consensus was that the term contemporary art no longer merely designates the most recent art, but distinguishes this art from modern art. The term postmodern, however, is not available, as it stood for something inside modernism. Terms like “multiple” or “alternative modernities” are only serviceable to those who want to reclaim a neglected or forgotten modernity of their own.³¹ Global art is not only polycentric as a practice, but also demands a polyphonic discourse. Art history has divided the world, whereas the global age tends to restore its unity on another level. Not only is the game different: it is also open to new participants who speak in many tongues and who differ in how they conceive of art in a local perspective. We are watching a new mapping of art worlds in the plural (see: this volume*, pp. 246–254), which claim geographic and cultural difference.
Art history, as I have insisted myself on various occasions, suddenly appears to have been a rather local game that worked best for art from the Renaissance onwards. I have called it a post-Vasarian narrative that does not even adequately describe medieval art and its religious images.³² To speak of Art History after Modern-ism, as I did in the title of a book³³ which continues the arguments of The End of Art History with reference to the exodus of contemporary art from art history, means art history faces a new challenge after the end of modern-ism. Global art not only accelerates contemporary art’s departure from the guidelines of a linear art history, it also flourishes in parts of the world where art history has never been practiced or where it only followed colonial models. The loss of a central place of art history in art theory and art display may also explain the new role of curatorial studies or visual studies that have replaced art history in the curriculum of art academies such as the Goldsmith College in London. The majority of today’s art curators is trained in political, social, or cultural sciences rather than in art history, and thus tend to emphasize art’s political or cultural agenda as against aesthetics.
However, we need not speak of art history’s crisis unless we are thinking of a necessary crisis. The time has come to rewrite art history in the West as well in order to respond to a new audience that looks at Western art with other premises. I therefore do not share a current trend in US American art history that excludes the rest of the world either by writing “World Art History” on a universal scale and thus restoring an old privilege of the West³⁴ or by denying that art history can ever work outside the West.³⁵ Rather, I feel the need to encourage other, new narratives with a local perspective of art history that abandons obedience to the colonial gaze of former world art studies. World art, in the old sense, tended to support the mainstream art discourse via exclusion. Today, we need a new paradigm and a postcolonial discourse for world art studies that are based on comparative studies which are on equal footing. For example, we take for granted the study of Chinese language and history at Western institutions but shut our eyes to the news that the National University of Beijing has opened a Department of Western Classics (Greco-Roman) and supports a bilateral conference with Durham University. In short, world art history is only justified as a cross-cultural project that also admits looking at Western -culture and art history from the outside. This is the challenge of the global age, in which we have to recover our narratives with new eyes.
Yet Western art history also faces a problem on its own territory. This is the noncontinuity of the story that connects premodern, modern, and current art. The linear story in the genealogy of modern art which Alfred H. Barr, Jr. devised for the MOMA in the 1930s, no longer continues to represent art since the 1960s even in the West, as an unsuccessful attempt to prolong this genealogy demonstrated at the Tate Modern in London.³⁶ And the methods of art history fail to explain the transition from the artwork, with its given place in history and its survival in a collection, to art projects that are ephemeral and badly documented, to give just one example from changing art practice. I am not complain-ing about this turn of events, but I do wonder whether art history needs to look back and discover its own past with fresh eyes. It appears that we have reached a watershed where the West is encountering the same situation as other cultures. Entry into the global age where art production has become general not only marks a beginning but also an end, the end of the old world map of art with its center and periphery scheme.
At the same time, when art production becomes a global condition, the diversity of visual cultures or art histories that appear behind today’s art practice and art theories is something we all have in common. In other words, what at first sight looks like the new homogeneity of a “flat” world, a second glance reveals as a diversity of traditions that demand a similar diversity of local narratives, including that of Western art history. I ventured forth in this direction when, in a recent book, I tried to show that the invention of perspective in Florence in the end turns out to have been a local game and, furthermore, that it responded to an Arab theory of optical perception (called “perspective” in the Latin translation), that, however, represented a different visual culture. It needs a cross-cultural investigation to look at Western art in the new expanded space from the outside.³⁷
Today art history faces a challenge of a different kind. The rise of new art worlds in many parts of the world demand a narrative that also takes into account the growing role of economics and the politics of art in describing art. The documentary part of the exhibition The Global Contemporary in 2011/2012, therefore, turned to descriptions that, in contradistinction to the paradigm of self-referential art history (art as a system apart), emphasized the need for geopolitical and institutional aspects beyond issues of style, innovation, and progress (see: this volume*, pp. 50–59). It was the documentation’s aim to create a space for different and even competing histories instead of a single art history. Art’s complicity with contemporaneous social, religious, and cultural worlds was surely always given, but its complicity goes further since art today “has more to do with clarifying cultural identity than with aesthetic feeling,” as Thomas McEvilley wrote in 1995.³⁸ Art is not only produced “in an atmosphere of global dialog,” as he added, but serves the competition of conflicting politics of representation. The emergence of art spaces, which share the name but not the function of what we called a museum, is part of the game, as also is the spread of art markets to Asia. This new state of things, in retrospect, sharpens the view of what art has been in the past and demands the interaction of different art histories. In other words, the present world leaves most of us in a similar situation in the face of an unwritten history of world art as a joint enterprise.

Translated from the German by Elizabeth Volk.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien zuerst in: Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (eds.), The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds, exhib. The Global Contemporary, Art Worlds after 1989, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Sept. 17, 2011 – Feb. 5, 2012, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013, pp. 178–185.

* “this volume“ refers to: Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (eds.), The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds, exhib. The Global Contemporary, Art Worlds after 1989, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Sept. 17, 2011 – Feb. 5, 2012, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013.

1.) Bruce Mazlish, “Comparing Global History to World History,“ in: Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 28, no. 3, 1998, pp. 385–395.
2.) Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfred van Damme (eds.), World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, Valiz, Amsterdam, 2008.
3.) John Onians, “A New Geography of Art Museums,“ in: Peter Weibel and Andrea Buddensieg (eds.), Contemporary Art and the Museum. A Global Perspec-tive, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2007, pp. 124–138; John Onians (ed.), Atlas of World Art, Laurence King, London, 2004. The latter is a book with 68 contributors that intends to cover the whole history of human picture production.
4.) Marc Aug., An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto (CA), 1999, pp. 89ff.
5.) See: Hans Belting, “Contemporary Art as Global Art,“ in: Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (eds.), The Global Art World – Audiences, Markets, and Museums, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2009, pp. 38–73, p. 56, fig. 8.
6.) Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL), 1985.
7.) Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL), 2003, pp. 153ff.
8.) Ibid.
9.) See: Belting 2007, p. 33.
10.) The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army, The British Museum, September 13, 2007 – April 6, 2008.
11.) See: Belting 2009, p. 43, fig. 3.
12.) James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA), 2002, p. 213.
13.) Thomas McEvilley, Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity, McPherson, Kingston (NY), 1992, pp. 164–165.
14.) Arthur C. Danto, “Artifact and Art,“ in: Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections, exhib. cat., Center for African Art, New York, et al., The Center for African Art, New York (NY) and Prestel Verlag, Munich, 1988, pp. 18ff.
15.) Gerardo Mosquera, “The Third Bienal de la Habana in its Global and Local Contexts,“ in: Rachel Weiss et al., Making Art Global (Part 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989, Exhibition Histories, vol. 2, Afterall, London, 2011, pp. 70–79, p. 74.
16.) See: Luis Camnitzer, “The Third Biennial of Havana,“ in: Rachel Weiss et al., Making Art Global (Part 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989, Exhibition Histories, vol. 2, Afterall, London, 2011, pp. 206–214, p. 207.
17.) Jean-Hubert Martin, “Art in a multi-ethnic society,“ in: Africus: Johannesburg Biennale, exhib. cat., Transnational Metropolitan Council, 1995, p. 49.
18.) Bernard Dupaigne, Le scandale des arts premiers: La véritable histoire du musée du quai Branly, Mille et une nuit, Paris, 2006.
19.) McEvilley 1992, p. 153.
20.) Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination, Free Press, New York (NY), 1983.
21.) “The Global Issue: A Symposium. James Clifford, Boris Groys, Craig Owens, Martha Rosler, Robert Storr, Michele Wallace,“ in: Art in America, vol. 77, no. 7, July 1989, p. 89.
22.) Bruce Mazlish, “The New Global History,“ available online at: www.newglobalhistory.com/docs/mazlich-the-new-global-history.pdf, see: p. 5, accessed 09/04/2012. See also: Bruce Mazlish, “On History Becoming History: World History and New Global History,“ available online at: www.newglobalhistory.com/docs/mazlish-on-history-becoming-history.pdf, accessed 09/04/2012. I thank Sara Giannini for this link.
23.) Paolo Bianchi, “Vorwort,“ in: Bianchi (ed.), “Weltkunst – Globalkultur,“ in: Kunstforum International, vol. 118, 1992, pp. 72–291, p. 73
24.) See: Hans Belting, “Contemporary Art and the Museum in the Global Age,“ in: Peter Weibel and Andrea Buddensieg (eds.), Contemporary Art and the Museum. A Global Perspective, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2007, pp. 16–38, p. 34.
25.) Rasheed Araeen (ed.), The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain, exhib. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1989.
26.) Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, “Chairman’s Preface,“ in: From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c. 1940–1988,“ exhib. cat., 1988 Australian Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, 1988, p. 7.
27.) Nick Waterlow, “A View of World Art c. 1940–88,“ in: From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c. 1940–1988,“ exhib. cat., 1988 Australian Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, 1988, p. 9, italics added.
28.) See: Jaynie Anderson (ed.), Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence. The Proceedings of the 32nd International Congress in the History of Art, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton (Victoria), 2009.
29.) Alexander Alberro, “Periodising Contemporary Art,“ in: ibid., p. 938.
30.) Terry Smith, “Writing the History of Contemporary Art,“ in: ibid., p. 918.
31.) See: Araeen’s Magazine Third Text; and books like Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (ed.), Alternative Modernities, Duke University Press, Durham (NC), 2001.
32.) Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL), 1994.
33.) Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL), 2002.
34.) For critical reflections on the problems implicated see: David Carrier, A World Art History and its Objects, Penn State University Press, University Park (PA), 2008.
35.) James Elkins (ed.), Is Art History Global?, Routledge, London et al., 2007.
36.) Belting, 2009, p. 46.
37.) Hans Belting, Florence and Bagdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA), 2011.
38.) Thomas McEvilley, “Here comes everybody,“ in: Africus: Johannesburg Biennale, exhib. cat., Transnational Metropolitan Council, 1995, p. 57.

Das Ende der Glamour-Exzesse und der falschen Umarmungen

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:36 +0000

Krise des Wachstumsmodells
Die aktuelle Krise ist nicht zuletzt die Krise der in unserem gegenwärtigen Wirtschaftssystem vorherrschenden Wachstumsideologie. Diesen Befund jedenfalls kann man den zahlreichen Kommentaren und Analysen zur Krise entnehmen.
Unübersehbar sind heute die ökologisch und ökonomisch problematischen Seiten des Wachstums. Selbst für den ökonomischen Laien werden sie in der über-bordenden Warenwelt sichtbar. Es gibt aber, plakativ -gesagt, nicht nur viele überflüssige Joghurt- und Shampoosorten, sondern auch viel überflüssige Kunst. Hier ist auf eine interessante Parallele zwischen beiden -Bereichen hinzuweisen, die schließlich nicht unabhängig voneinander existieren. Denn die Kunst hat das -Modell für eine Ästhetisierung der modernen Lebenswelt geliefert, deren Grenzen nun sichtbar werden.
Präziser: In der Kunst galt der Tabubruch, die Erfindung neuer Stile im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert als ästhetische Form der Verwirklichung von bürgerlicher Freiheit, Emanzipation und Individualität. Im Konsumbereich,
in der Warenwelt, wurden diese Versprechen heruntergebrochen auf die Verbreiterung und Vergrößerung des Angebots. Der mündige Bürger darf selber entscheiden, welchen Joghurt er kauft!
Aber in den reichen Gesellschaften kapitulieren wir allmählich angesichts der Masse und Vielfalt der Gebrauchsgüter und der Vielzahl der Entscheidungen,
die diese uns ständig abverlangen. Wird hier nicht der einst emphatisch gemeinte Begriff der Freiheit, der Wahlfreiheit, ad absurdum geführt? Ähnliches gilt für die explodierende Kunstwelt. Die Vielfalt verstärkt die Beliebigkeit. Auch hier zeigen sich Grenzen des Wachstums. Zudem kommt die einst propagierte ästhetische Vielfalt und Fülle angesichts einschneidender ökonomischer Veränderungen auch ideologisch in Bedrängnis: Kann sie eine Basis für Antworten auf die aktuelle Krise sein? Denn diese Krise ist noch lange nicht ausgestanden¹, und ihre Bewältigung wird auch zu grundlegenden -Fragen an Kultur und Kunst führen.

Massive Steigerung der Kunstproduktion
Die steigende Kunstproduktion im Bannkreis der bisher dominierenden Zentren der Kunst ist aus ökonomischer Sicht eine logische Entwicklung. Denn wenn etwas Erfolg hat oder begehrt ist, dann wird in der auf Wachstum geeichten Wirtschaft mehr davon produziert. Und gerade zu Beginn des vergangenen Jahrzehnts standen die Zeichen überall auf Wachstum und Boom. Der Kunstbetrieb hat darauf reagiert, indem er expandierte.
Die Expansion hatte und hat viele Gesichter. Eines davon ist die systematische Erschließung neuer Märkte und neuer Käuferschichten namentlich in Russland, Asien, Indien, Lateinamerika und in den Golfstaaten. Sie ging und geht einher mit der Schaffung neuer Plattformen wie Biennalen und Kunstmessen, aber auch mit immer mehr öffentlichen und privaten Institutionen, die zeitgenössische Kunst ausstellen und propagieren. Die Entstehung neuer Absatzmärkte für Kunst trägt dazu bei, dass die künstlerische Laufbahn für junge Menschen attraktiver erscheint. Sie bestärkt auch -öffentliche und private Kulturförderer darin, auf die Kreativwirtschaft als Wirtschaftsmotor zu setzen und entsprechende Angebote für die Ausbildung und Förderung junger Kunstschaffender, wie Kunstschulen, Stipendien, Preise, Gastateliers, bereitzustellen. Dieser Trend wird anhalten, solange die Nachfrage anhält. Er kann sich allerdings auch rasch umkehren, sollte diese einbrechen.

Brot oder Spiele?
Nun gewinnt die Frage what‘s next? nicht nur angesichts dieser gigantischen, unüberschaubaren, proliferierenden Kunstproduktion, die alle Versuche der systematischen Katalogisierung vereitelt, ihren besonderen Reiz. Sondern auch angesichts einer Krise, die Kultur und also auch Kunst in etlichen Ländern plötzlich wieder eher als nachrangigen Luxus erscheinen lässt. Welche Folgen könnte ein solcher Härtetest haben? Denkbar ist, dass die Kunst sich wieder klein machen wird, bescheidener agiert, weniger repräsentativ und glamourös wird und näher an die existentiellen Fragen und Bedürfnisse der Menschen rückt. Möglicherweise hat das nach all den Superlativen, zu denen der Kunstbetrieb in den letzten Jahren neigte, eine klärende Wirkung und fördert, wie die Kunstmarktkrise Anfang der 1990er Jahre, eher konzeptuelle, politische und partizipative Kunst. Die Berlin Biennale von Artur .Zmijewski 2012 wies sehr radikal und zum Teil auch verstörend in diese Richtung und formulierte die alte Frage nach der engagierten Kunst neu. Aber auch ganz gegenteilige Strömungen könnten Oberwasser gewinnen: Kunst, die -ablenkt von der Krise, die als Opium fürs Volk funktioniert. Teile eines zunehmend kommerzialisierten Blockbuster-Ausstellungsbetriebs stehen ebenfalls für diesen Trend.

Das Ende der weißen Flecken
Blicken wir, um genauer abzuschätzen, wohin die Reise gehen könnte, noch aus einer anderen Perspektive auf die Boomjahre zurück. Da wurde nicht nur unglaublich viel produziert – übrigens auch unglaublich viel uninteressante, unbedeutende, unsägliche Kunst –, es ist auch etwas strukturell Entscheidendes passiert: Die weißen Flecken auf der globalen Kunstlandkarte wurden in den letzten zwanzig Jahren zusehends getilgt. Der Export der europäisch-nordamerikanisch geprägten Idee der zeitgenössischen Kunst, auch die (oft illusorische) Idee des -raschen Reichtums und der Berühmtheit durch zeitgenössische Kunst bis in die letzten Winkel der Erde ist vollzogen. Der Re-Import ebenfalls: Der spannende junge Künstler aus Albanien, die aufregende Künstlerin aus Uganda, der Mao-Pop, diese Neuauflage des Exotismus, die noch bis vor kurzem zum Szenethema werden konnte, haben inzwischen nicht zuletzt durch Gewöhnung einiges an Reiz verloren. Exotik erregt mittlerweile noch am ehesten Aufmerksamkeit, wenn sie sich mit gesellschaftskritischen, politischen Anliegen paart. Dies zeigte etwa die internationale Kritik an der Inhaftierung Ai Weiweis durch die chinesischen Autoritäten oder der Frauen der russischen Pop-Punkband Pussy Riot in Russland.
Die Entzauberung des Exotismus und zugleich der Vorstellung, durch Kunst Einblicke in andere Lebenswelten zu bekommen, offenbart längst ihre problematisch naiven Seiten: Kunst wird zu einer Art Kolonial-ware zweiten Grades und wird dabei auf leicht dechiffrierbare sozialdokumentarische Inhalte reduziert. Exotik nutzt sich aber nicht nur rasch ab, ihre Ausbeutung durch herrschende Marktmechanismen erzeugt in aufgeklärten Kreisen immer häufiger ein Naserümpfen.
Noch etwas kommt hinzu: Dort, wo sie auch noch ein Mindestmaß an Kontextwissen voraussetzt, verlangt Kunst doch gewisse Anstrengungen seitens des Publikums. Und das fragt sich womöglich angesichts der Probleme vor der eigenen Haustüre in Zukunft häufiger, warum es sich mit den Problemen in Afrika auseinandersetzen solle. Diese Unmutsäußerung ist zwar provinziell, weil, um beim Beispiel zu bleiben, nicht wenige Probleme in Afrika mit denen vor der eigenen Haustüre zu tun haben (Stichwort Rohstoffe, Stichwort Immigration). Doch das muss manchen Kunstkonsumenten erst vermittelt werden. Es passt auch jenen nicht, die sich als Sponsoren lieber mit unverbindlicher Kunst schmücken wollen, und stellt dementsprechend eine große Herausforderung an die Kunstvermittler dar. Denn es ist generell in Folge der Krise zu befürchten, dass das Interesse an anderen Welten, sofern deren Verbindung zu unserer Welt nicht klar hervortritt, nachlässt und Fremdartigkeit alleine nicht mehr genügt, um Aufmerksamkeit zu erzeugen.

Gegen Vereinnahmung, gegen Virtualität
Manche Antworten auf die Frage, welche Kunst in Folge der Krise privilegiert sein dürfte, deuten sich im aktuellen Kunstbetrieb seit einiger Zeit an. So fällt nebst dem Rückzug oder der Banalisierung des Exotischen der Trend zur Verweigerung rascher Konsumierbarkeit durch Entzug des Überblicks und durch die Betonung des Sozialen, Interaktiven und Erlebnishaften auf. Das kurzlebige Event hingegen, das das Erlebnis auf einen gewissen Moment beschränkt, scheint auf dem Rückzug; es geht stattdessen eher um die Personalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit der Kunst-Erlebnisse.
Besonders die Documenta 13 von Carolyn Christov–Bakargiev bekräftigte 2012 diesen Trend, der sich -allerdings schon seit längerem andeutete. So wurde -beispielsweise die Berlin-Biennale 2008 von Adam -Szymczyk und Elena Filipovic von einem umfassenden Begleitprogramm flankiert und brachte eine kritische Haltung gegenüber dem überbordenden Kunstmarkt-Zirkus der Boomjahre vor der Krise zum Ausdruck. -Kritik bedeutet in diesem Zusammenhang vor allem, sich der raschen Vereinnahmung und der Produktförmigkeit zu entziehen.
Die Documenta 13 zelebrierte diese Unübersicht-lichkeit geradezu, indem sie nicht nur mehr Exponate an mehr Einzelschauplätzen zeigte als jede andere zuvor – einige Schauplätze (etwa ein Außenstation in Afghanistan) waren dem Publikum sogar unzugänglich –, sondern auch, indem sie deutlich auf Kunst mit performativem Charakter setzte. Und anders als bei der Biennale von Venedig etwa, wo das Ausufern in diverse Kollateral-Veranstaltungen seit längerem zu beobachten ist, dabei allerdings auch immer etwas unmethodisch und kommerziell motiviert wirkt, schien das Verfahren in Kassel Methode zu haben. Noch radikaler als ohnehin schon für jede Ausstellung sonst galt hier: Jeder bahnt sich seinen Parcours, jeder macht sich sein Bild, jeder erhält andere Fragmente eines großen Puzzles. -Eigentlich nur konsequent in einer Zeit, in der das interaktive Internet mit seinen Social-Media-Plattformen leicht erlaubt, Produkte der eigenen Kreativität zur Schau zu stellen, Bilder, Filme, Sounds hochzuladen und mit Blogs Orientierungsschneisen in den Informationsdschungel zu schlagen.
Denn einerseits sind wir alle inzwischen recht gut trainiert darin, mit dem Verlust des systematischen Überblicks zu leben; wir legen uns Strategien zu im Umgang mit einem ausufernden Angebot, gerade auch im virtuellen Raum. Andererseits erhöht sich dadurch auch die Attraktivität des echten, realen, persönlichen und daher intensiveren Erlebens allein oder im Kreis Gleichgesinnter. Die Entwicklung scheint Kunstformen und -rezeptionsweisen zu privilegieren, die sich nicht hochladen lassen, die orts-, kontext- und zeitgebunden sind, ja persönlichen Einsatz und nicht nur eine passive Konsumhaltung erfordern. Folglich wundert es kaum, dass in jüngster Zeit auch performative und installative Formen der Kunst Aufwind bekommen haben.

Dezentral und multifokal
Aufwind erhielt auch eine dezentrale, multifokale Perspektive auf die Kunst. Das zeigte 2012 neben der Ausstellung The Global Contemporary im Karlsruher ZKM, die mit größter Selbstverständlichkeit diese Perspektive vorführte und reflektierte, auch die Pariser Triennale 2012, von Okwui Enwezor unter dem Titel Intense Proximité kuratiert. Enwezor inszenierte eine Kunstschau, in der die Auseinandersetzung mit der Aneignung des Fremden in einer postkolonialen Zeit eine wichtige Rolle spielte und in der die ethnologische Untersuchung des Exotischen selber einer kritischen Revision unterzogen wurde: Sie findet nämlich aus einer scheinbar überlegenen Position heraus statt, einer Position, die jener des bisher dominierenden Kunstbetriebs mit seinen in die Krise geratenen oder an ihr mitschuldigen Macht- und Finanzzentren ähnelt. Eine Position also, die künftig immer fragwürdiger erscheinen wird.
Dass die Kunstszene in ökonomisch aufstrebenden Kunstzentren wie China oder Indien sich immer mehr nach eigenen Gesetzen organisiert, gehört wohl zu einem der maßgeblichen Trends in der zeitgenössischen Kunst, dessen Folgen noch kaum abzuschätzen sind. Der Austausch mit diesen neuen Zentren könnte jedoch künftig spannend werden, gerade weil hier andere Kräfte und Interessen als nur jene das 20. Jahrhundert dominierende Achse Europa-Nordamerika zu wirken beginnen. Mit anderen Worten: Die neuen Kunstszenen könnten sich emanzipieren, sich zum Beispiel im Falle Chinas auf eigenen Traditionen berufen und nicht einfach nur als verspätete Filialen der europäischen Moderne oder Postmoderne fungieren.

Rückbesinnung aufs Lokale
Multifokalität, Aufwertung der Peripherien, Zunahme der Zentren: Das heißt aber auch, dass insgesamt wieder viel mehr Kunst entwickelt wird, die nicht sofort in die globalen Aufmerksamkeitskreisläufe einsickert oder diese gar nie erreicht. Zugleich ist denkbar, dass wir in ökonomisch angespannten, ökologisch bewussteren Zeiten weniger reisen und deswegen auch durchaus wieder mehr Sympathien für die lange Zeit verpönte lokale Kunst entwickeln könnten. Vieles, was vor der Haustüre entsteht, ist nicht unbedingt viel schlechter, als was die Meinungsmacher der sogenannten Leitinstitutionen propagieren – dies zu erkennen, verlangt aber auch mehr Mut zum eigenen Urteil, weniger Orientierung an einer -global wirksamen Kunstbetriebspropaganda, hinter der sich fast immer massive Marktinteressen verbergen.

Schluss mit den falschen Umarmungen
Um ein autonomes Urteil zu entwickeln, sind Dialog und Austausch über Kunst wieder stärker gefordert;
die Akteure der Kunst – ihre Produzenten und Vermittler – müssen mehr tun, als nur ständig den Wert der Kunst für die Gesellschaft zu behaupten, ohne das wirklich einzulösen. Dies kann etwa geschehen, indem nachvollziehbar wird, warum Kunst im 21. Jahrhundert ein ausgezeichnetes Medium der Wahrnehmungsschulung ist. Dabei könnte es wichtig sein, nicht mehr in erster Linie auf die in der Moderne zu Tode strapazierte Veränderung der Wahrnehmung zu setzen, sondern künftig viel stärker die reflexive Auseinandersetzung mit Bildern und Images zu betonen. Denn die Funktionen der Darstellung und Selbstdarstellung, der Information und Desinformation sollten in einer bildgesättigten Kultur mehr denn je Gegenstand der kritischen Analyse sein. Kunst ist in den letzten Jahren gerade auch in den Medien allzu oft nur als Luxus-Spielzeug und Repräsentationsinstrument einer finanziellen Elite erschienen; Rekorde und Rankings waren wichtiger als Inhalte. Die Strategien, Kunst für entsprechende Prestige-Werbung zu instrumentalisieren, sind heute allgegenwärtig; diese Art der Instrumentalisierung ist Teil der Krise der Kunst und der Kultur. Es könnte eine wichtige Aufgabe der Kunst in der Krise sein, wieder stärker dagegen zu halten und sich aus falschen Umarmungen zu lösen.

Kanon und Verbindlichkeit nach dem Ende des -Kanons
Wenn man die Legitimität der Kunst in einer demokratischen Gesellschaft erhalten möchte, wird es künftig vermehrt darum gehen, Bilder und Kunst nicht nur als Fetische der Konsumgesellschaft hochzuhalten, wie das in den Boomjahren vielerorts gefördert wurde. Es gilt vielmehr, wieder darauf hinzuweisen, dass Kunst ein Erkenntnisinstrument ist. Sie kann beispielsweise – ähnlich wie auch die Literatur – dazu dienen, die in einer globalisierten Gesellschaft immer wichtigere Verständigung über kulturelle und zivilisatorische Werte anzuregen. Wie das geht, lässt sich am Ausstellungs-konzept der neuen Louvre-Zweigstelle im nordfranzö-sischen Lens ablesen. Dort ist ein offener, assoziationsreicher Parcours durch annähernd 5000 Jahre Kunst-geschichte entstanden, der zugleich wieder auf die Verbindlichkeit einer -begründbaren, kunst- und kulturgeschichtlich aussagekräftigen Auswahl setzt. Eine -Auswahl, die nicht unbedingt dem präskriptiven Modell des bildungsbürgerlichen Kanons folgt, wie er in der 2. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in allen Künsten, besonders in Literatur und Bildender Kunst unter Beschuss geraten ist, sondern die nach neuen Orientierungsrastern sucht. So werden beispielsweise in Lens Werke aus dem islamischen Kulturkreis nicht mehr, wie bislang üblich, isoliert als Beispiele für eine andere, exotisch anmutende, im Kern fremde Kultur ausgestellt, sondern in einer Blickachse mit den zeitgleich in Europa entstandenen Kunstwerken gezeigt. Damit relativiert sich deren Dominanz; in der Ausstellung wird so exemplarisch die gleichberechtigte Koexistenz verschiedener Kulturen erprobt.
Nach dem postmodern beliebigen und verspielten Mix, wie ihn die Tate Modern am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts versucht hat, und nach der Erosion aller Verbindlichkeiten, die die Folge eines durchaus begründeten Kampfes gegen linke und rechte Kulturpäpste der Postmoderne war, ist nun wieder der Mut zur Ordnung, ebenso wie zur Verteidigung von Kultur als zentralem Katalysator einer demokratischen Gesellschaft angesagt.

1.) Vgl. hierzu etwa: Wolfgang Streeck, The Crises of Democratic Capitalism. In: New Left Review, no. 71, 2011, S. 5–29.