Thousands march towards Syntagma Square in Athens, Wednesday 19/10 (photo via @MachahirNews)

I feel rather conflicted about not being in Athens today, in what looks already like one of the biggest demonstrations in recent years. I did, however, in the end believe that speaking about what we are going through in Greece is useful, particularly if it is done in other places that might have sympathy, but not a whole lot of information, as it were, from the “ground”. Moreover, it seemed to me, since I received the invitation to participate in the “Arts, Civil Society and Crisis” Symposium in Cork, Ireland, that the organizers’ intention was to challenge the insular way with which arts professionals are accustomed to treating social upheaval, even though all the while contemporary art is deemed to be politically poignant and socially relevant.

My thoughts are with the people down in Athens, and my friends of course. All the best and take care these days. Here is a legal guide for demonstrators (in Greek), with what to do if you get in trouble with the Police. And right below is the Symposium programme.

Photo: Augustine O' Donoghue

Create and Voluntary Arts Ireland

Arts and Civil Society Symposium

Date: 20 and 21 October 2011
Venue: Christchurch, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork City

Create and Voluntary Arts Ireland are hosting a symposium to discuss the current and future relationship of arts and civil society.

• How might we rethink the relationship of arts and civil society in a time of crisis?
• What might constitute new modes of cultural resistance?
• How is art embedded in the everyday?

The symposium is a great opportunity to participate in a discussion with a national and an international cohort of artists, thinkers, community activists and civil society leaders.

Over the two days, speakers will address how and if art in the context of civil society fits with a market led art/cultural tourism model – and whether it should – and how arts and culture can be reaffirmed at the heart of civic engagement.

Create and Voluntary Arts Ireland have confirmed the participation of Dr Anthony Downey as keynote speaker and speakers from Italy, Ireland, England, Greece and Portugal who will take part in the Carnegie Challenge Debate – Arts and Civil Society in Crisis.

Full programme and biographies

image via ThePressProject.net

Most people are familiar with Jan Vermeer, one of the most famous painters in history. What is perhaps less known is that up to a point in his career, so the legend goes, Vermeer was hardly an outstanding artist. It is assumed that he developed his unrivalled mastery of light and colour through the use of a camera obscura, a device that projected images on a surface through a lens. Now, what is even more interesting is that Delft, the city where Vermeer lived and worked, was home to yet another 17^th century innovator, the lens-maker Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Reclusive and secretive to the point of paranoia, Leeuwenhoek never allowed much information to leak out about how precisely he achieved such staggering results in optics – serious stuff for a century that was taking an increasing interest in the observation of the natural world. As for art historians, they will probably never know how much of Vermeer’s success in art is owed to Leeuwenhoek’s technology. We know that Leeuwenhoek was listed as an executor of Vermeer’s estate, after the latter’s demise, but no optical device has been found among the painter’s belongings. So, we can assume, but we do not know…

The point of this apparently unrelated introduction is to illustrate that history and experience teems with associations and arguments that produce convenient and attractive analyses – if only we could be sure they are true. These analyses may well point to actual events, then again they may not. We should take the lesson into the present.

The Greek Police attacked protesters in Athens, who have been demonstrating peacefully on Syntagma Square for 27 days now, with unspeakable violence and mostly without provocation on Wednesday, June 15^th. I say “mostly” without provocation, because there were riots. These riots, however, were relatively isolated and did not include the main body of protesters at Syntagma, who for the most part were singing and dancing, as tear gas started exploding in their midst.

Was this a preplanned turn of events, a targeted effort by the Greek Government to suppress the protests? There are reasons to believe so. Many are aware – this writer being an eye-witness – that there are secret Police among the demonstrators, disguised as rioters, often carrying petrol bombs and other material. (One of them was actually found out by demonstrators on the 15^th, carrying, rather stupidly, police identification.) Did the Police, then, provoke the riots?

Read more at The Press Project (beta) English language version…

Curators, art administrators and cultural managers, we should douse ourselves in petrol and light a match.  It is our only hope of doing anything politically meaningful. Everything else is just avoiding the issue, and abating the guilt of those that still feel some, including artists.

This is the first of what will obviously be a series of texts. I have been a curator and an administrator for a while now, and it will take rather a lot to explain where I come from and where this is going.

Let me repeat something I have often written – it is even part of the “about” page of this blog: art does not always reflect the sociopolitical conditions of its time. But there are times where some art does. Some art must. I feel this is one of those times.

Let’s call this an introduction – a teaser even. We’ll pick it up soon enough.

The Banner reads: Hunger Strikers we are with you / Greek and immigrant workers united / Legitimization for everyone now! (image via hungerstrike300.espivblogs.net)

Since yesterday 300 immigrants are on hunger strike, most of them in the School of Law in the University of Athens, and about fifty of them in the Labour Centre in Thessaloniki. They are protesting against Greece’s admittedly outrageous immigration policy, but not just that; they are giving voice to a message that more often than not gets lost in the midst of the dominant liberal-democratic discourse about “practical solutions” and “realistic assessments”: the message that no person is “illegal”, that there should be a way for everyone to enjoy equal rights and to have a share in any country he or she chooses. In fact, the most important aspect of this message is that we should under no circumstances accept the premise adopted by almost the entirety of the political spectrum that “we can hold no more immigrants” – on the contrary, we should raise the stakes by insisting that rather than finding efficient ways of keeping them out, we should be inviting more of them in.

Understandably this sort of emancipatory maximalism will come up against all kinds of arguments advocating “reason”, “practical problems” and “obstacles in the real world”. But it is important to maintain that it is exactly this sort of emancipatory maximalism that is needed to demystify such arguments and point out that although they pose as “common sense”, they are in fact deeply ideological, entrenched in an ideology that has become the driving force of Liberal Democracy, an ideology that obscures all fundamental issues by substituting them with their “practical” equivalent. There might be a quantitative difference between all-out fascism and the dominant stance that guiltily admits that “we can hold no more immigrants”; but there is no qualitative difference – harsh as this may seem – and those that are bothered by such an assertion might do well to consider it. In contemporary Greece, we live in a political situation where the Minister for the Protection of the Citizen – I can’t get over how Orwellesque this sounds! – intends to build a wall in our northern border, and where a neo-Nazi organization, Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) that terrorizes immigrants and political opponents has occupied and completely controls the central square of Agios Pandeleimonas, under the unashamed tolerance of the Government, the Parliament and the Police. These are not “reasonable” times.

The hunger strike in the Athens School of Law has been organized through what has been named Solidarity Initiative, a coalition comprising of small and fringe Left-Wing political parties, NGOs and other groups. Reactions have been immediate and not all that varied (I do not mean reactions of the “patriotic” type, but rather mainstream reactions that pose as reasonable while in reality embody fascism in the shell of reason): alongside the most ridiculously racist, such as concerns about an “unhygienic environment” affecting the health of the students, most were focused on two issues: first, on the legitimacy of occupying a university for this kind of protest and consequently on the threat to “academic purity” that it poses; and second, on the exploitation of the “unfortunates” by elements of the Left that make up the Solidarity Initiative.

I think there is some merit in both reactions. I am not convinced that the Law School is the most appropriate place for this, more appropriate, anyway, than Syntagma Square, in front of the Parliament. And, having no sympathy anyway for the hysterics of much of what is the fringe Left, I don’t have any difficulty in accepting that political exploitation is in some measure involved. (Although it should be said that “exploitation” is a hugely misleading choice of word: this is what the Left does, it is not exactly “exploiting” something, unless we are willing to say that a Labour movement is exploiting workers, a Feminist movement is exploiting women, an LGBT movement is exploiting gays and lesbians and so on – the paradox should be obvious to everyone.) But, in any case, I mostly think that both these issues are marginal and that their occupying much of the public discussion generated by the hunger strike is suspect, particularly if we factor in the complete disproportionality of representation of Right-Wing and Left-Wing views on immigration by the mainstream Media.

To put it succinctly: yes, there is an issue of legitimacy but it pales next to the issue brought forth by the hunger strike. And yes, there is an issue of political exploitation, but it is only part of the picture: the other part is political solidarity, and political solidarity is a requisite for the political subjectivization of people that have no political rights, no political existence. We should not fall into the trap of letting the argument about exploitation mask this subjectivization into its opposite and convince us that the immigrants are objects in the hands of the Left – we should rather see this as the most skilful and treacherous of liberal-democratic attempts to debase any sense of solidarity. All doubts and scepticism notwithstanding, we have to see that this is the strongest case of political subjectivization of immigrants we have ever seen in this country. And it should make us immensely proud.

image via yolksoc.blogspot.com

Greece does have a long history of political violence. Even after 1974, after the fall of the military junta that ruled the country since 1967, political violence has not been uncommon. Political assassinations or urban terrorism, depending on one’s choice of term, were not infrequent. And neither were killings by police – the victims sometimes being seasoned anarchist militants, sometimes not all that seasoned: the killing of 15 year old Michalis Kaltezas in 1985 by policeman Athanassios Melistas, during the aftermath of a demonstration, is a case in point.

So, the initial incident that took place on Saturday, December 6^th 2008, was anything but unprecedented: on the face of it, the killing of 16 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos by policeman Epameinondas Korkoneas was not all that dissimilar to the killing of 1985. What is more, what back in 1985 was a rather efficient organization, “17^th November”, that retaliated by attacking policemen, in 2008 no longer existed, most of its members having been convicted and imprisoned. One might have been justified to expect an even weaker reaction than that of 1985, which did of course see riots, occupations of universities, and clashes with police, but by no means on a scale substantially more significant than what the country had been used to for many years.

What happened, however, that Saturday night in 2008 was quite different. The killing might not have been unprecedented, but the eruption that followed was. Athens, and to a large extent, other major cities, did become literally lawless. Not only was the destruction widespread, it also lasted an unusually long time, almost until Christmas.

A very frustrating element of the events of December 08 is the lack of data: We have as yet no comprehensive study as to the make-up of the rioting crowds. We know certainly, from their own literature, that anarchist groups participated. We also know that Leftist groups, and political Parties of the opposition, participated in some demonstrations. According to the police, there were a lot of illegal immigrants involved. And according to eye-witnesses, many of the rioters were school and university students, including many from the more affluent parts of the cities. But the fact remains that a sustained study, involving systematic interviews, is lacking. On the other hand, a whole lot of analysis has sought to take the place of hard data. Pages upon pages have been written with regard to what December 08 was or wasn’t. That is, until October 09.

Greece elected a new government in October 2009, and almost immediately was hit by what many call the worst financial crisis in its history. Crippled by a large deficit and unable to service its national debt, it sought the assistance of the European Union and the IMF. Harsh austerity measures have been passed, decimating salaries and pensions, which, despite persistent protests, have mostly been upheld.

It is not difficult to see the two events – December 08 and the debt crisis that begun in 2009 – as parts of the same phenomenon of a society in turmoil. In fact, the Greek Left seems to mostly perceive them as such, though the demonstrations and protests that have followed the involvement of the IMF have a distinctly different flavor to December 08. Contrary to this perception, then, I think that the two events and the response to them are markedly different – so much so that they may be taken to represent two symbolic peaks in a struggle for ideological dominance over the middle class. Moreover, in that struggle one may see wider phenomena that do not only concern Greece, but illuminate a broader need for a new way to assess liberal democracy as the dominant political paradigm of our time.

To put it succinctly: both December 08 and the debt crisis were analyzed in a variety of ways, from a multitude of political standpoints. Through it all, however, dominant designations did emerge that in the end made for unequivocal symbolizations: however else December 08 might have been presented in the mainstream media or by liberal or conservative analysts, the dominant perception was constructed in the language of the Left: it was a revolt. On the other hand, however else the debt crisis might have been presented by the Left, the dominant perception is constructed in the language of liberal democracy: an issue of individual responsibility, of not managing one’s affairs as efficiently as one should, a “breach of contract”.

One can almost visualize the body of the middle class being torn between these two ways of seeing, however difficult it may be to define exactly who belongs to the middle class. I would favor a broad definition: in this case, by middle class we may define those not represented in any meaningful way in any of the available symbolizations – neither, then, the organized unions, nor the elite of corporate executives, neither the immediate “clients” of the political parties, nor the fringe, radical Left. But almost everybody else, in short those who are not represented in power, whichever side may that power reside in. They are the prize.

The following three observations aim to provide some insight into how this ideological operation is taking place. And to explain how liberal democracy is yet again winning – becoming, in the process, much less liberal and much less a democracy than we would wish.

Breach of contract: a cultural attack

The initial response of Greece’s partners in the EU, when it was made known that the national deficit was much higher than previously thought, and that perhaps Greek governments had been misleading with their data, was typical of liberal democratic parlance: Greece did not live up to its obligations as a member state, and it should take measures to rectify the situation. It was a clear case of breach of contract: we had an agreement; one of the parties did not honor it, so now remedies must be sought, in order to bring it back into the class of legitimate partners.

Leaving aside all the – often rather reasonable – claims against the legitimacy of the agreement itself, a very interesting phenomenon began to emerge: the intensifying criticism of Greece’s financial problems in the international Press started shifting from the technocratic to the cultural: little by little, Greece became not a formerly legitimate partner that had not lived up to an agreement, but one inherently unable to live up to one, the argument being that as Mediterraneans (Southerners, Easterners…), Greeks are neither hard-working nor efficient, nor bound by the proper ethic of a contemporary Western society that assumes the duty of the citizen to pay taxes, to obey the law, and to tell the truth. The deficiency was then not technical, but cultural. The examples are many, the highlight being, of course, the cover of the German “Focus” magazine, depicting Venus de Milo with a raised middle finger. The very designation PIIGS – a very serious joke, indeed – might even be sufficient in order to see this development at work: by invoking the cultural disadvantage, Greece and other countries are exoticised into an appropriate object of reform.

There are several consequences of this shift into cultural stereotyping, but perhaps the most serious among them was a strengthening of an idea that could be termed the “Greek exception”. In order to understand this, one has of course to be familiar with the particularities of Greek nationalism and the construction of the modern Greek identity through the 19^th and 20^th centuries: refusing to identify wholly with either the East or the West, modern Greece has largely defined itself not only as the parent of Western Civilization – claiming an unbroken lineage from classical times, through Byzantium, and into the modern era – but therefore also as a singular state, one that inherently does not “belong”, but is unavoidably a misunderstood, often vilified, object of envy. The point is that this exceptionalism resurfaced, through the recent crisis, in the language not only of fringe far-Right groups, but also of Right Wing parliamentary Parties, and even of the main opposition Party (the one that had been in government until October 2009), seeking to resist what was termed a loss of sovereignty to outsiders. (A curious twist in this might be that although the main opposition Party voted against IMF involvement in the Greek parliament, the far-Right party supported the government, but only through the very same argument of the need to rebuild the country’s independence, pride, and unique position of cultural superiority against European intruders.)

What was intended then as a call for the “modernization” of Greece, through the shift toward the cultural, provoked a regressive, if not downright reactionary, response in strengthening exactly the forces that through their exaggerated and obsessive defense of Greek exceptionalism do in fact legitimize that very call for “modernization” and stand in as willing examples of what needs to be “reformed” in Greece.

Because this is finally the point: if the choice is between exceptionalism and the liberal democracy of global capitalism, most progressive minds in Greece are siding with the latter. Liberal democracy and neoliberal economics manage to pose as exactly that which their ideological make-up claims they are: perhaps not the best, but the only rational choice available at the moment, the least evil way of doing things and going forward.

Against violence, wherever it may come from

Though December 08 was too eruptive to invite serious conceptual opposition at that time, in the months that followed, one of the critical themes that sprung forth – perhaps for the first time in Greece’s history of political violence – was a widespread, unconditional condemnation of violence, wherever it may come from. Demonstrations through 2009 that involved violent protests served to strengthen that condemnation, which peaked with the deaths of four people, in April 2010, in a bank that was allegedly set ablaze by anarchist protesters.

Commentators and politicians in all media and on all sides shared the view that any kind of violence would henceforth be unacceptable, leaving the fringe anarchist groups pretty much alone in debating the possibilities of further revolt. There are several interesting developments that relate to this conceptual shift, but what I find most interesting at the moment is neither the intensifying, uninhibited campaign against urban terrorism and the subsequent erosion of civil liberties, nor the related critique against the state monopoly on violence. What I find truly disturbing are the conceptual consequences of this unconditional condemnation, the possibilities, or rather the restriction on possibilities, of language that it fosters.

Democracy is conceptualized as a space of consent. What makes this space consensual is a relic of liberalism’s radical roots, the very notion that outside this space there is another, from which it is possible to subvert consensus, whenever it ceases to be such, whenever the consensual space becomes oppressive. The very conceptual possibility of consent exists only because the possibility of subversion exists. This outside space, the conceptual space from which subversion is possible is not legitimate within the confines of Democracy, but it is a prerequisite for its existence. Violence is then a conceptual prerequisite to consent, because what does consent really mean otherwise?

The truly worrisome effect of this unconditional condemnation of violence is that it finally sees violence only as a means without an end, extinguishing any liberal radical heritage and transforming any process of reaching consensus into a series of affirmative but non-performative gestures. Dissent is separated from its target, the reversal of a specific power-relation, and is relegated to the status of “opinion”. (Isn’t that what they say? Anyone can have their own opinion in a democracy…)

Social struggle: a failure of language

Protests and demonstrations through 2009 and 2010, though almost an everyday occurrence in the streets of Athens, have achieved remarkably little. Concessions on the part of the government have been scant.

Moreover, the constant protests have invited a new kind of reaction, one neatly framed in what, in liberal democratic parlance, is simply deemed to be “common sense”: These people (i.e. farmers, public sector employees, union members, and other protesters) have been milking the state for ages. We are tired of being the only ones who work for a living. They are used to privileges that are unfair, simply because their local MP wanted to do favors to their trade union. We should have known there would be a time when corruption, clientelism, and false data would catch up with us. The EU and the foreign Press are right. We are the ones that messed up and we have to pay for it. These people better assume their responsibilities. And so on.

It might, to a degree, be a justifiable reaction, but it is a peculiarly shallow one, so much so that it is indicative of the operation it conceals. I would argue it is in fact not a reaction based on a true political outlook, but rather a process of reverse aesthetisization, a stereotyping of the protesters into a convenient but arbitrary whole that encompasses everything that bothers us about ‘old Greece’ and the way it appears: discourteous, insular, uncultivated, slow, unglamorous, provincial. I would argue that the issue is mostly an aesthetic one. In being aesthetic it can, of course, form a political space, and in a way it is doing so, though without a serious questioning of what this space is becoming.

It stands to reason, though again it is an impression lacking data, that the ones reacting in this way are mostly young or middle-aged professionals, fairly highly educated. They mainly work in areas such as digital technologies, economics, sciences, the Media, communication, or culture – unusual lines of work for the Greek middle class, such as it was, up to ten or fifteen years ago, and even today to some extent. Some of them live and work abroad, and those that live in Greece feel like they are here by choice: getting fed up and moving away is always an option. They have traveled and have seen different places, and they speak at least one foreign language fluently. They feel comfortable with other nationalities, and are often familiar with other countries’ idioms, history and sense of humor. In short, they take pride in being self-sufficient, productive, educated and cosmopolitan. And they feel that the country they come from has embarrassed them for way too long. They know they don’t deserve to be PIIGS, and they resent being in this position.

It is no wonder, then, that in the protesters they see everything they detest: the antiquated, paradoxical public services; the surviving state monopolies; the over-subsidized farmers who block the roads; the civil servants who give them attitude behind a glass panel, while taking off every day at 13.30; the people who make a career out of trade unionism, before they move on to running for MP; the tax officials who will take a bribe in order not to hassle you. And all this, dressed up in the unyielding, strange language of the Greek Communist Party and the populist trade unions.

Yet, there is a great danger in the way this reaction to the protests is taking shape. Its aesthetic constitution leaves it without a substantial political backbone. As a result, what is in truth an emotional reaction, becomes usurped by an ideology, that of open markets, legalistic human rights, individual responsibility, simplistic cosmopolitanism, and increasing biopolitical control. Common sense becomes a mask for what is essentially a programme that purposefully obscures the differences between state and society, economy and prosperity, country and people, economic models and bare bodies.

The fact is that the people I am describing are being tricked by their relative social superiority into an unholy pact; they are being in effect flattered into submission. In reality, the distance that separates them from the arbiters of economic orthodoxy in Europe is far greater than the one that separates them from the protesters.

But there is no escaping it: these people are the vanguard of the middle class and are being won over by the dominant liberal democratic discourse. Their reaction to the protests has been one ranging from annoyance to rage: they just want the country to “run properly”, they want petrol for their cars, the roads to be open, the shops to be safe, the banks to lend them money.

The interesting and disquieting fact is that the demonstrations are not only ineffective in terms of material concessions on the part of the government or the IMF; they are also ineffective in terms of symbolism, failing to convince the vast majority of citizens not only of their usefulness, but also of their morality. Because, in feeling unrepresented in the protests, what the middle class is really saying is that it views them as the other side of power, another way in which peaceful and reasonable existence is hindered and controlled. The failure of the Left to see that disillusionment is far reaching in that it is a failure of language.

It seems that in Greece, in the last months, that great barrier to unchecked capitalism, the popular movement, which has seen us all through the development of our modern concepts of social justice, is drawing its last breaths.

***

In the turbulent weeks of December 08, a slogan was often heard: “These days are for Alexis”. Emotional though it might have been, and touching, I couldn’t help but think whether it was truly something to encompass what was at stake. The images that circled the world at the time were riveting, but not enough.

Several days into the riots, another slogan emerged, this one coined by anarchist groups that felt, obviously, that their time had finally come: “We are an image from the future”. Looking at the future from the current moment in time, I wish they were right.

***

This is the English version of the text that appears in the current issue Swedish magazine Subaltern. A part of it has appeared previously in this blog, albeit in slightly different form. You can order the issue on their website.

Panayiotis Lamprou, “Portrait of My British Wife” (via guardian.co.uk)

In an article in The Guardian about a photograph by Panayiotis Lamprou, Portrait of My British Wife, on the shortlist of this year’s Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize, the writer asks what he admits is a “vexed question”: “When does art become voyeurism or, indeed, pornography?”

The first problem with such a question is the precise way it is posed: the concept of pornography is not a direct extension – a kind of ‘bloating’ – of the concept of voyeurism, as is implied by the way the question is formulated. A consumer of pornography is not simply a less inhibited voyeur. In fact, whereas voyeurism may be an extremely ‘open’ concept that easily lends itself to metaphor, pornography is a very ‘closed’ concept that does not lend itself to metaphor at all. (Whereas there is a metaphorically voyeuristic, there is no metaphorically pornographic.) If I were to attempt a definition, I would suggest that pornographic is the kind of image where any narrative is rendered meaningless in favour of explicitness.  (That is why In Thru the Backdoor 2 is pornography, whereas In the Realm of the Senses is not.) Voyeurism does not work in the same way. The voyeur, actual or metaphorical, inscribes him/herself in a narrative, the consumer of pornography is deprived of it.

The second problem with the question is that art and voyeurism are hardly mutually exclusive. More precisely, if we concede that something is voyeuristic, this does not preclude its being art. On the contrary, the element of voyeurism is crucial in countless Venuses and Magdalenes that we admire as great works of art. In the same way, the photograph is quite clear: the fact that this is the photographer’s wife renders our viewing act indeed voyeuristic, but this forms part of the artistic function of the work – it is not its opposite.

The third problem is that whatever is sexually explicit is not necessarily pornographic. The determining factor for pornography is not sexual explicitness – it may rather be approached through the question: what else is an image, apart from sexually explicit, what else does it do apart from revealing all? The reason we cannot consider many works of art as pornographic is that they are complex interweavings of meaning, including narrative strands that incorporate sexual explicitness as their integral part. On the other hand, what makes a pornographic work is its insistence to include only the revelation-by-itself, its eclipse of all narrative, of all other meaning. This is clearly not the case with this photograph.

It seems that a “vexed” question begs a vexed answer: sometimes you can’t get a right answer, unless you have asked the right question.

Post scriptum: Much more interesting than the question of art versus pornography is the question of gender bias in the photograph. Meaning that, although a wife can of course be territorial about a husband, the photograph is dependent on the fact that only a wife can be a true ‘possesion’. This is one of those instances where oppressive speech, though not exactly appropriated as is the case in activist discourse, is given as an a posteriori key to a reading of the work, in order to imply its own oppressive content. This is complicated further by the implication in the designation ‘British’, with all its allusions to northern sexual repression thawed by southern sexuality. (Though not ‘casual’ sexuality, as has been argued; more appropriate would be to say ‘uninhibited’: shaved pubic hair and unshaved armpits hardly spell out casualness.) All in all, this is fighting fire (stereotypes) with fire: a primal fear is contained in the thought of losing one’s women to the PIIGS. I have to admit I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Photo via AFP/BBC

It is easy to laugh at the debate that has raged through the US regarding the proposed Islamic Cultural Centre to be built near Ground Zero. To say that some reactions have been bigoted is a serious understatement, not to mention that whatever Sarah Palin says should immediately point even moderately thoughtful people in the opposite direction. Funnier still: Republicans oppose the building of private stuff on private land – detractors of big government asking, well, the government to curtail the rights of private enterprise?

Particularly when a statement of defense of religious freedom by President Obama leads to predictions that his stance will cost him in the midterm elections, it is way too easy to laugh at that supposed cornerstone of American politics, the separation of Church and State. And when a poll reveals that a sizable number of US citizens believe their president to be Muslim, prompting the White House representative to deny it and provide assurances of the President’s Christianity, well, things get downright hilarious.

We do deride Americans for such ridiculous debates. It is often that we see people self-importantly assert that “this wouldn’t happen here”. But are we wise to be so smug?

True, in Greece we mostly don’t give a damn whether our Prime Minister prays. But it would be easy to argue that this is neither because we have a healthier attitude towards publicly displayed religious practices (we do not: we have planes bring over a candle from the holy land every Easter), nor because Church and State are so well separated that we needn’t worry (they are not: quite soon after assuming power, our Prime Minister invited the Archbishop of Athens to a Cabinet meeting). On the contrary, the reason we couldn’t care less whether our politicians pray is because the position of the Church in our political power structure is under no threat whatsoever. What is more, in terms of symbolism, the very identity of our State as the home of a Greek-Orthodox nation is only marginally disputed: we do not provide opportunities for other religions to worship freely, at all.

So when we laugh at the naiveté of American religious posturing, we might as well think that in the US the hold of religion over politics is by no means as strong or as secure or as undisputed. The ‘ritualistically’ given religious bona fides of a President are not that much of a concession for what is in every essential way a much more tolerant society, a polity with a much deeper sense of separation of Church and State, and a symbolic identity that is much more multi-faceted and open than ours.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? As Liberal-Democratic arguments go, the one above is one of the best.

But, once again, it misses the point, or rather, obscures the point. It might be true that as far as the – more specific than it customarily appears – Liberal-Democratic formulation of ‘religious tolerance’ is concerned, all of the above is correct, but the point of the matter lies elsewhere, it lies in the shadows behind the misleading dilemma of ‘tolerance’ versus ‘intolerance’ – the point being, I guess, freedom.

There is a sense in which the champions of tolerance and supporters of the proposed Islamic Centre (I can’t call them Democrats because supporters and non-supporters are not exactly divided along Democrat/Republican lines, and besides, from my point of view, supporters would include most ‘progressive’ Europeans – the ones that got enraged over the Swiss referendum a year ago, for example –, as well as ‘moderate’ Middle Easterners, and other ‘moderates’ around the world) are much more dangerous than the ‘other side’, even though those on that other side are indisputably bigots and, often, racist.

How then can supporters of tolerance be more dangerous than supporters of intolerance? Counter-intuitive though it is, a case can be made if we ask: when someone is doing something, what else, that might not be apparent, is being done by and through that very same something? Meaning, when ‘tolerance’ is advocated – not just when ‘moderates’ reiterate commonplaces, but poignantly as a staple of Liberal Democracy –, what else does that ‘tolerance’ stand for, what else is it doing?

Islam is not radical because there are fundamentalists. It is not radical because some people commit terrorist acts. However harsh this may be to victims, that there are fundamentalists might be a horrible fact, but in terms of this discussion it is also a marginal fact. If a reading of just a few crazies ‘corrupting’ a whole culture, as moderates would have it, were accurate or helpful, things would be relatively simple – in the sense that they are simple with Christian militias, or the Oklahoma bombing. And, no, this is not that New Atheist argument, put forth by Sam Harris, among others, that much of Islam is a ‘death cult’. (Granted, religions may be violent, but much of the New Atheist analysis, though it mercifully departs from the Liberal-Democratic notion of ‘moderation’, winds up way off target by misunderstanding religion in a most profound way: it takes the Western, Liberal-Democratic outlook on religious practice as a personal [lifestyle] choice to be a given, a plain, rational, commonsensical even, attitude towards religious belief, without attempting in the slightest to unmask it. In short, while it ascribes ideological characteristics to religion-as-community, as is the case in Islam for example, it does so from a presupposed non-ideological position, which obviously does not exist: religion can only be a personal [lifestyle] choice, if one is already inscribed in Western, Liberal Democratic ideology. There is no ‘rationality’ here except as ideology.)

Islam is radical because it constitutes a counterpoint to Western ideology, particularly Liberal Democracy as universal-social-ethic. (One might be justified to ask: Which Islam are we talking about? And they would be right. Islam is not one thing, certainly not in the sense that the Liberal-Democratic ethic is one thing. There is, however, a way in which it is one thing: in the eyes of Western Liberal Democracy, as the enemy. Self-definition and extra-definition are, in this sense, one and the same.) Islam’s radicalism – and therefore both its potential as an agent of change and its character as a political power – is intrinsic to its position as the ‘enemy’ of the West. (What is also worth pointing out here is that this is no ‘clash of civilizations’. It is the political-proper.)

It can be argued therefore that ‘tolerance’ is a bridge-builder at the apparent level, but at a deeper level it is an attempt at de-politicization. Building – since this is where we started from – an Islamic Centre near Ground Zero (with all the symbolism that such an act entails – this is not just another mosque in an American city) does not just present a situation where the ‘fans of rapprochement’ squabble with the bigots; it is, at the deeper level, a specific move in a programme for the de-politicization of the enemy. (In that sense, quite funnily, supporters of the Islamic Centre are worse enemies of Islam than bigots are.) The problem is, of course, that whereas bridge-building refers to two equal sides, de-politicization is (the most important) part of a programme for dominance. ‘Rapprochement’ in this case is a mystification of the underlying effort for imposing a Western-as-universal ethic under the guise of ‘friendship’. Islam in those terms – Islam articulated in the terms of tolerance – is not Islam at all; it is, in a sense, analogous to Hollywood Buddhism: no-one, except perhaps a Hollywood star, would say that Hollywood Buddhism is an alternative to the Hollywood lifestyle – in fact it is most essentially the Hollywood lifestyle. In the same way, Islam near Ground Zero is the West.

While I was discussing the above points with several people, it was put to me: So what’s wrong? If this can be a step away from religious zealotry, what’s wrong? Even if we do consider fundamentalism a marginal fact, isn’t Islam, in today’s world, permissive or at least facilitatory of Theocracy, as in Iran, and even Palestine? Does it not provide the basis for the rhetoric of Hamas or Hezbollah? So, again, even if what I am saying about de-politicization is correct, what is wrong with de-radicalizing Islam? Isn’t Liberal Democracy essentially correct? Isn’t it better to worship, if one feels the need, as a personal choice, isn’t it better to live in democratic societies where we respect human rights, everyone is free to do as they please etc? In the end, what’s wrong with imposing a Western-as-universal ethic, if that ethic is right?

Well, yes, of course it is better to be free and all that. But as soon as we concede that rather obvious point, the rest is not self-evident, at all. Because, again, what we must ask is: even if we agree that it is right, apart from right, what else is a Western-as-universal ethic? What else does it do?

Let us reverse the question for a second: apart from religious, what else are Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran? They are political. What do they do, apart from shouting “Allahu Akbar”? They are engaged in political conflict. What does it mean to be engaged in political conflict? It means to struggle to acquire a power of determination. Over oneself, over one’s fate.

In concealing its programme for dominance, the Western-as-universal ethic also conceals the political in the enemy. That is why it is this, much more than straight-forward bigotry, that stipulates that the enemy are just crazy zealots, without any substantial political claim beyond that. Because, in the end, struggling to acquire a power of determination over oneself would be to struggle for an Enlightenment ethic-proper, which would then appear as part of the enemy ideology, a valid claim by any (Western) standard.

Distinguishing between the apparent level and the deeper level, and unmasking the process of concealment behind ‘tolerance’ and ‘moderation’, is not important because it allows us to cheer for Theocracy or to agree with bigots. It doesn’t. (And, of course, whoever wants to build a mosque should build one – I wish they’d build a few over here.) It is important because it helps us realise that if we concede that imposing, through such a process of concealment, a Western-as-universal ethic is acceptable, even on the condition that it is right, what we are saying is that the struggle to acquire a power of determination over oneself – a claim to an Enlightenment ethic-proper – is not permissible to those excluded by Western Enlightenment and its descendant, Liberal Democracy. That is too steep a price to pay for anyone who claims they believe in freedom.

Flirting is, in terms of content, highly stereotypical, and undeniably includes an element of the ridiculous.

Formally, however, flirting is very different. A specialized manner of interaction, it is composed by a ‘thesis’ and an ‘antithesis’, which are differentiated: only the thesis is actually flirting-proper, stereotypical. The antithesis, by contrast, is unpredictable, variable. In a sense, only one person at a time actually flirts – there is a ‘flirter’ and a ‘flirtee’. The object of the stereotypical utterance by the ‘flirter’ is simply to allow for the formal exchange, which in turn allows the ‘flirtee’ to reveal something about themselves. (Even if invented, it is always a sort of revelation.)

This is the reason we tolerate the ridiculous in flirting. Because flirting is not constantly ridiculous, but only intermittently: it always seeks to reveal something about the other person, to enable us to learn something hitherto unknown or obscure.

This is, furthermore, the reason flirting is only really possible in the very beginning of a relationship. When we have come to know each other fairly well, this particular form of exchange becomes impossible, because the stereotypical thesis ceases to function: the antithesis has nothing further to reveal.

Now you know why what sounded good when first proposed – revitalizing your relationship through ‘reintroducing’ yourselves – seems ridiculous when enacted; when, for example, you actually attempt to ‘date’ a long-term companion. This is also the answer to your bewilderment when something you used to do, to which you ascribed the almost magical quality of having won his/her heart, now fails to arouse the other person, and even provokes an angry, ‘don’t be stupid’ kind of reaction.

(This might look like the beginning of an agony-aunt column in a pop-linguistics journal, or simply a rather un-Chauceresque way to the familiarity-breeds-contempt idea, but there it goes. Tough luck, isn’t it?)

Cover of "Atlantis. Hidden Histories – New Identities: European Art 20 Years After the Iron Curtain", where this text is included.

A couple of years ago, at an inaugural conference for yet another biennale in Europe, I listened to this statement: “Biennials can be seen both as a tool of neoliberal capitalism and as a laboratory for prudent utopias”[i].

Although one could take issue with almost every term – “neoliberal”, “capitalism”, “utopias” – I have been thinking that this is in fact a poignant statement. It is poignant because it points to the fact that biennales, a form of presenting art that has proliferated to an enormous extent in the last three decades, are inherently unstable, self-contradictory and unresolved. In this sense, they mirror closely various problematics in our thinking about our new “global” world and particularly its mystifications and underlying conflicts. What makes the aforementioned statement even more attractive is, of course, the word “prudent”. “Prudent” here implies, quite correctly, that the biennale is not a revolutionary scheme. Although I hardly believe that what biennales make is especially “utopian”, I would suggest that biennales are a space of imagination, a space where unresolved conflicts may dwell and be contemplated upon.

So what are these conflicts, or rather, inherent contradictions, that mirror larger problematics?

First of all, there is the famous dipole of Global and Local. In order to be a biennale, a periodic arts event must partake in a kind of artistic discourse that is, if anything, supra-national. Biennales are, by and large, fiercely international in their selections of artists and curators, and their critical success largely depends on the so-called “opening crowd”, art-world insiders that include itinerant curators, critics, journalists, as well as the ubiquitous network of people that bear the somewhat fuzzy title of “art professional”.

On the other hand, contrary to most art-world insiders’ perceptions, who often criticize biennales as too large or too complex to be viewed, most visitors to a biennale are locals, people with a totally different attitude to art shows than the one displayed by the opening crowd. In fact, most people see the biennale in their city, or, at best, their country, and no other. Some have been to Venice, but a very small percentage of a biennale’s visitors in one city will have seen other biennales in locations as diverse as Brussels, Liverpool, Berlin, Istanbul, Athens, Marrakesh, Singapore and Sydney. Just to give a statistical twist to this, the 1st Athens Biennale 2007 Destroy Athens received approximately 4,000 visitors over its two-day opening, while its total attendance was over 50,000. The 2^nd Athens Biennale 2009 Heaven had fewer visitors at the opening, about 2,500, but close to 75,000 visitors in total. And in some of the older biennales, where attendance reaches figures twice as high, and sometimes even in the hundreds of thousands, the gap between the international dignitaries and the local public is far greater.

The fact is that biennales depend both on critical success within an international discourse, which amounts to a definite, if sometimes understated for fear of political incorrectness, claim to universality, and on their attendance, which amounts to a claim to a kind of cultural “groundedness” that makes up most of their rhetoric at home, but is understandably absent from their international pronouncements.

Then, there is perhaps a less perceptible contradiction that springs forth from the previous one. Biennales do show what a relatively uninformed observer might call highly specialized art, or, in any case, non popular art. This is backed up by looking at attendance figures from museums around the world[ii], which I think make the art-world’s claim that contemporary art is squarely in the mainstream, seem like a gross exaggeration. At the same time, however, biennales are massive, mainstream festivals that often depend on the cooperation of city and state authorities, and even contribute to the marketing of a city’s cultural identity in the arena of global tourism and competition for outside investment.

I am not ready to admit that the art shown at biennales is avant-garde, and therefore that the key to its relative lack of popularity is precisely its democratic character[iii], but here is a third contradiction: Biennales claim a democratic character in at least two respects. Firstly, they are addressed to a wide audience, taking care not to pose as elitist, through highly refined communication strategies, articulation of public discourse, education programmes, tours, etc. Secondly, they are by definition a kind of survey – at least to the extent that their character has evolved from the Great Exhibition of the 19^th century. They are at their core surveys of what happens to be current in a particular field, arbitrary snapshots of a zeitgeist.

They are also, however, bearers of strong narratives, conscious of the inherent futility of surveys. In a way, they are self-negating in that they approach this character of theirs through highly authored exhibitions, where the particular exhibits may be arbitrary samples that could well be exchanged for others, but the overall narrative is extremely specific. This is not just an unavoidable symptom of any process of selection, but a conscious behaviour. And it is precisely its self-consciousness that makes it exclusive, in contradiction to the democratic character of the survey.

Mentioning the descent of biennales from the Great Exhibitions, it is worth noting that this happened through the resounding influence of the Venice Biennale – the only biennale in the world that still retains the legacy of the Great Exhibition, the pavilion. Yet, although all other biennales have rejected the national pavilion as a relic of the age of nationalism, the contradiction between what we could call “nationalism” and “antinationalism” is ever present. Again, most biennales in the world flaunt their internationalism as their most defining trait, and generally adopt a critical language against the hegemony of powerful states and their privileged art production. (One walk around the Giardini della Biennale in Venice is enough to provide a pretty lasting image of this hegemony, particularly as one enters the courtyard formed by the bulks of the pavilions of Great Britain, Germany and France.)

Nevertheless, selections in biennales are still very much determined by national interests. The main reason is, of course, funding. Biennales raise considerable funds from authorities and institutions in various countries, which are precisely in the business of promoting their national artists, by providing funds so that their artists may show their work abroad. This, quite expectably, creates a landscape where the most affluent countries are better represented, and, what is more, where organisers already know that if they want an adequately funded event, they might as well make up their minds that working with Western Europeans, Scandinavians and Americans pays better.

Lastly, perhaps the most fundamental contradiction may be this: Biennales are obviously children of the market economy, and a globalised one at that. But they are also one of the few spaces where public discourse is articulated, which challenges the precepts of liberal democracy, market economy, and globalisation of capital. Some of the things that are articulated within the precarious structure of a biennale would be unutterable in most other contexts.

A lot of people’s answer to these contradictions is that we need to resolve them. That we should make up our minds whether biennales serve God or the devil. I am not so sure.

What seems extraordinary to me is that biennales really do embrace every side of these contradictions. They really, intensely are all these things at the same time: global and local, specialised and massive, democratic and exclusive, nationalist and antinationalist, conformist and dissenting. I think that the moment a biennale sways too much towards one of these sides, its most valuable possibilities are lost.

When XYZ (that is, my two partners, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, and I) were still preparing the 1^st Athens Biennale, we held a conference in the Old Parliament of Athens, titled “Prayer for (Passive) Resistance”, and in our text, we wrote: “…if our subject is entrapment, exclusion and the inability to participate or communicate, how can we elaborate on it by claiming our right to participate in the very discussion that denies us that right and denies us the competence to elaborate on such a subject? If it seems to us that the position from which something is stated precedes the statement itself, how can we talk of the position in a way which might have an impact, but which would not negate our statement or twist it beyond recognition? If participation is a prerequisite, how can one discuss exclusion without actually denying its reality in practice? And, finally, if one does not deny the reality of exclusion, does that not undermine the very foundations of one’s aim, which is to acknowledge the existence of a discussion? Where does that leave us: in an ecclesia or on a battleground? Is the field in which we are striving to participate consensual, automatically allowing participation, or conflictive, meaning participation can only ne conceived as a kind of violence?”[iv]

Despite the fact that the Athens Biennale grew fast, it is still totally independent, administered by the same three people. It is true that the sway between formal obligations to sponsors, government authorities and media, and the self-organised, small but enormously rude team that we are, is sometimes nauseating. But after having directed two large-scale shows and moving on to a third, I can’t help thinking that the strongest asset in the arsenal of a cultural event such as a biennale is the refusal to let go of the contradictions.

This is the era of conventional wisdom. A terrible time to try to resolve matters. We should be desperately trying to preserve any space where they can remain unresolved. At the very least, we are buying time.

[i] The conference took place on the occasion of the 1st Brussels Biennial, in the Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren, on October 19th 2008.

[ii] “Exhibition and Museum Attendance Figures 2009″, The Art Newspaper, No 212, April 2010

[iii] Boris Groys, “The Weak Universalism”, E-flux Journal # 15, April 2010

[iv] Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, Augustine Zenakos, Theophilos Tramboulis, eds, Prayer for (Passive?) Resistance, Athens Biennale & Futura Publications, Athens 2007, p. 11

This text is included in Atlantis. Hidden Histories – New Identities: European Art 20 Years After the Iron Curtain, edited by Inka Thunecke for Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brandenburg, Argo Books, Berlin 2010, just published.

So, this blog has been idle for a while. I never intended it to be a full-time job, but long silences are hardly ever a good thing.

You know, when you are very hungry – or gluttonous – and you do not want to wait until the food cools down a little, and you are staring, say, at a sizzling piece of saganaki (that is fried goat’s cheese, so non-Greeks can follow), and you can’t help yourself, so you shove a piece in your mouth, a big, chunky piece; a couple of seconds go by and you realise it is absolutely scalding hot, impossible to bite down on, and you start making sounds like “umrl”, and you are working your tongue around it, you are blowing and you are sucking, one cheek sends the chunk over to the other, and you really wish you could just spit it out in front of everybody, or just swallow it like a pill, but you must stay with it and that’s that.

That’s more or less how it’s been in the last few months. But at last, several things are done. So, now, I will be writing here more.

* Hugo Williams, “Message Not Left on an Answerphone”, Dock Leaves, Faber and Faber, 1994