Cultural activism today: strategies of over-identification

Published in Stedelijk Museum Bulletin, February 2006

On January 19, 2006 the symposium Cultural Activism Today: Strategies of over-identification was organised by the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, in the SMCS. The programme was led by BAVO, a Rotterdam-based collective that studies architecture and urban planning through philosophy and psychoanalysis. BAVO opened the programme with citing the thesis on the end of history and all arts by Francis Fukuyama. In his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Fukuyama predicted the end of ideological conflicts and the triumph of political and economic liberalism. From this perspective, Fukuyama considered socially engaged art and activism as “struggle for the sake of struggle.” Out of sheer boredom with the perfection of society, artists and activists struggle against the good, “for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle.”1

BAVO asserts that socially engaged art has reached an impasse with the rise of the Third Way, a concept made popular by the social theorist Anthony Giddens. The Third Way is a rejection of what is considered as outdated left-wing ideals as well as right-wing sensationalism and inaccuracy. It stands for a broader political agenda that gives voice to idealists and activists. From this viewpoint, the current zeitgeist could be characterized as: Make way for idealism, but remember that society will always return to neo-liberalism! This could mean a dead end for activism or socially engaged art. In the introduction to the event, Bavo states that: “Most activisms today are either too cultural (and therefore become politically harmless) or, inversely, too political (and do not stand out against the bulk of socio-political actions). This deadlock is directly related to the dominance of the Third Way ideology that holds the imagination of cultural forces in a suffocating grip”2.

Notably, over recent years, socially engaged art in the Netherlands has become hugely popular. Artists like Jeanne van Heeswijk and Martijn Engelbregt stand out in integrating art into society, where equal input and democratic decisions prevail. BAVO calls this type of ‘input-art’ a new genre, and speaks of Tamagotchi activism. According to BAVO its impact often doesn’t extend allowing the local people to play about on a website, clicking and voting, and thus nourishing their neighbourhood.
And it isn’t only activist art that is flourishing in the Netherlands; the number of seminars on the subject is increasing.3 Furthermore, Dutch popular culture shows numerous examples of neo-activism such as PREMtime, Milieuridders, De Keuringsdienst van Waarden, as well as films and music videos ridiculing consumer society.

The seminar Cultural Activism Today was aimed at finding out the extent to which the over-identification strategy lends itself to shake off this Third Way-ism that, according to BAVO, is led by political correctness be it populist, idealist, conservative, patriotic, totalitarian or free-thinking. The collective is of the opinion that there is potential in the subversion of (the prevailing social) subversity. BAVO offers a striking example with the Ausländer Raus project by Austrian artist Christoph Schlingensief, who placed ten asylum seekers in a Big Brother house. Viewers could vote on the ‘least integrated’ Austrian asylum seekers, sending them home. The winner was awarded a residence permit. The artist presented the asylum procedure in a tasteless fashion, antagonising both left and right wing Austria. For the symposium, BAVO invited Joep van Lieshout, Alexei Monroe, Dieter Lesage, Jens Haaning and Boris Groys.

Political philosopher Dieter Lesage adds a second strategy to the theme of cultural activism through over-identification: that of the overstatement. Lesage states that the barcode flag Rem Koolhaas developed for the EU4 demonstrates his understanding of politics as product in need of marketing strategies. According to Lesage, Koolhaas works from the premise of the popularity of the market. Lesage states that by aestheticising the market, Koolhaas tries to make neo-liberalism popular for left-wing intellectuals, to whom Koolhaas is an example. When talking about Koolhaas, Lesage speaks of ‘Globoisie’, the global citizenry carrying a Prada handbag, and ‘Digitarians’, the fictional glamour proletariat that combines ‘precarious labour’ with lavish taste.5 For the ‘strategies of over-statement’ Lesage presented the example of the curators (headed by Okwui Enwezor) of Documenta XI, also critically dubbed TJs (theory jockeys) because of their ‘criticless sampling of all types of hip theory”, which Lesage also referred to as “academic creole”.

Next, the film Pulverous (2003) by Aernout Mik was shown, a follow-up to the performance In Two Minds (2003). Glassy-eyed and confused, what looked like psychiatric patients destroy the stock and contents of a supermarket. The poor quality of the screening and the particular conference setting did not do justice to the work, despite the accompanying statement by BAVO. Better chosen was the presentation of the Danish artist Jens Haaning, who could be typecast simplistically as the pioneer of the supermarket price war.6

Finally, Joep van Lieshout discussed new ways of exploiting people. His older, well-known projects (like AVL-ville) pale beside his latest, grimmest endeavour. Van Lieshout created a design for a completely self-reliant work camp/call centre for 200,000 persons, aimed at making maximum profit. The camp is governed by innumerable regulations: employees work for seven hours in the call centre followed by another seven hours on the land or in other supporting activities. The grounds include farms, brothels and so on. It is the largest settlement with zero energy use and the lowest CO2 emissions. The estimated profits would total some 7.5 billion a year. (Which would mean that the settlement would have the wealthiest art institution according to the Dutch 1% scheme, with a budget of at least 750,000 per annum.)

The artists and theorists who spoke during the seminar had very different approaches. The artists took a strikingly pragmatic approach, compared to the theoretical approach of the organisation. Bas Heijne was probably right when, in his essay Engagement – Which engagement?7, he argues that artists shouldn’t attempt to be political. In the age of entertainment, the role of the artist has, after all, been relegated to the periphery. Heijne sees the dawn of the logo culture as the symbol of “both economic totalitarianism and the deliberate numbing of our consciousness” and believes it is up to the artist to reinvigorate this banal reality with the powers of the imagination. These imaginative powers fit in perfectly with the examples presented by Cultural activism today. No input for the sake of it, but politics as product, museums as discount outlets and artists as camp commandants.