Kunst Museum Bern 30.04.2021 – 05.09.2021 The title of the new exhibition, “Border Crossings”, reflects the fact that the Korean border is a prohibited zone for Korean citizens from both sides. Crossing this border means making a long detour, usually via China – or, in this case, via Bern. The exhibition allows the public a close look at the Korean Peninsula, divided since 1953. A 250-kilometre border of barbed-wire fences and anti-tank barriers divides Korea into two states which could not be more different from one another. Equally divergent is the art produced simultaneously in the two countries. What makes the Korean situation special from an art-historical perspective is the concurrent existence of the vital contemporary art scene in South Korea and an undiminished cultivation of the tradition of socialist-realist painting in North Korea. Diametrically opposed artistic attitudes are able to coexist, reflecting the irreconcilability of the political systems and striking differences in the two populations‘ way of life.
The story takes us into the everyday lives of five former employees of the industrial giants in Zrenjanin, Serbia. Created in the form of a documentary drama the film gives a fresh insight into the fates of the forgotten heroes of the working class – people, who have overcome time, the system, the transition and poverty, and whose tragic life stories are new, modern, authentic and lasting.
Svetlana Kana Radević portait Kana on the Montenegrin coast, above Jaz – personal archive
“Svetlana Kana Radević, a socialist Yugoslav architect who effortlessly moved between and drew influence from Philadelphia, Tokyo, and the Montenegrin capital city of Podgorica over the course of her celebrated career is the subject of a comprehensive exhibition opening May 22 at the Palazzo Palumbo Fossati as one of 17 collateral events at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.”
Architect Svetlana Kana Radević, architectural drawing, Hotel Zlatibor, Užice, architect’s archiveHotel Podgorica drawing, architect Svetlana Kana Radević, drawing from architect’s personal archive owned by the family
Artistic, Programmatic, Aesthetic, Political and Existential Critique of the World
The journal Zenit (Zenith) was a Yugoslav avant-garde review of new art and culture, initiated in 1921 by the poet and critic Ljubomir Micić. Until 1923, it was published in Zagreb, and subsequently in Belgrade. Zenit was sharply criticised, prohibited even, and accused of being Bolshevik propaganda agitating for social revolution. In 1926 after forty-three issues, the review was proscribed by the authorities.
During its relatively brief and controversial history, Zenit sought to convert negation into affirmation, to introduce experimental artistic creation, and to exploit all forms of contradiction and antinomies – described by Micić as “abstract metacosmic expressionism.” All of his ideas were summarized in the manifesto centred on the figure of the Balkanic/Slavic barbarogenius who defies the decadence of Western Europe. Its use of the term ‘revolutionary’, and antibourgeois, antitraditional, anticlerical, and antiacademic stance were the means by which Zenitism demanded total change in art and the world. This revolt against traditional middle-class values and their restrictive cultural and social criteria was a feature it shared with the European avant-garde. Zenit attempted to articulate a program that would lead to the formation of a movement with distinctly sociopolitical implications. By publishing articles in their original languages – Russian, German, French, English, Hungarian, Flemish, Italian, Czech, Bulgarian and Esperanto – Zenit was operating in an international context as a recognised member of the European reviews that promoted the idea of “Zenitism as a Balkan totalizer” of a new life and new art.
“Europe can only be born again, fertilized by raw power and new seeds, and certainly not be reborn itself from itself. […] Balkanization of Europe, in brief, means: the formation of a new type of culture and man with the stamp of Balkan ethics and Balkan direct humanity – which still means: creating a culture of life and not a culture of lies and paper – creating new life and in that life a new culture for all and not for the privileged, not for libraries, galleries and museums. […] Barbarogenije is a carrier of no sentiment, but of raw vitality – pure faith – unadulterated soul – with an open and good heart, which is full of all-human love, we and Russians introduce into the new life of the new humanity.” Ljubomir Micić – Zenit. no. 21. (Feb. 1923)
As consumers, capitalism grooms us to live in the present. Contemporary electoral politics — especially as practiced in the United States — and contemporary twenty-four-hour news media also try and trap our imagination in the present. The past and future, history and long-term imagination, are all obliterated or obscured — crushed by short-term thinking. William Gibson has begun calling the combined onslaught of catastrophes — ecological, pathogenic, military, economic, etc. — that will come raining down in the twenty-first century “The Jackpot” — a slot-machine future that comes up all skulls. Once you see the growing world crisis gathering momentum around us, it’s hard to avoid asking where today’s conditions lead. Boomers may only have a few years left among us, but the generation entering adulthood now will see most of the century. For people who have a strong chance of being here mid-century, this is personal. As an artist, I’m equally as interested in describing and depicting our own era as I am in speculating about where it might lead. I’m not fixated on realism. My work is firmly situated across the border in the world of fiction. Grappling with how people in the future will view our present when it becomes their past is a very useful exercise — especially for Americans. The present moment will end and become something else.
Possibly for the first time since the fall of the Berlin wall, there is serious global debate on why and how neoliberalism has failed us, and on what alternatives lay ahead. What we have learned beyond doubt form the present crisis is that the neoliberal rule amounts to power without responsibility: if there is a shipwreck, the commander uses his/her privilege to step down first, not last, from the sinking boat. And that the safe spaces of the happy few are guaranteed, and eventually paid by, the personal risk and sacrifice of the most vulnerable and marginal. This is not just what happens in the outside world, though. The safe space of the art institution itself, again, is not equally safe for everybody working in it, as eloquently shown by the massive layoffs of museum professionals and workers, instantly deployed even by museums with huge financial endowments for which no concrete issue of financial meltdown was at stake. This opens up a dilemma: can art really keep on reasoning in terms of safe spaces in times like these? Can it afford to dwell on issues of social injustice, violence and abuse without taking any commitment or responsibility toward the victims? Can art institutions maintain their social credibility when they mechanically apply to their own employees the same brutal neoliberal logic they customarily attack when it comes to the practices and choices of the political or corporate world? The social relevance and credibility of contemporary art institutions today eventually relies upon their capacity to transform themselves from safe spaces for privileged minorities to inclusive spaces. But what does this mean in practice? For instance, it means escaping from what one could call the philanthropy trap. In many circles, arts patronage is an exquisite form of philanthropy that pays well in terms of promotion of social image, savvy fiscal management and sophisticated lobbying. Before the crisis, global competition among major contemporary art museums worldwide increasingly looked like a global arms race, where securing the latest, biggest productions from blue chip names was the only way to stay on the cutting edge. In this context, falling into the philanthropy trap is not an option, it is a necessity if one wants to stay in the race. The consequence is that any kind of social critique taken from such a position of complacency toward big donors sounds completely groundless, paves the way to innumerable conflicts of interest, and reinforces the conviction that, at the end of the day, art and its institutions are basically the objective correlative of privilege. Moving toward inclusion does not mean inviting more people into the club for a quick sneak peek, to offer them a unique opportunity of illumination. It rather means changing the hierarchy of the priorities, and putting social relevance and responsibility at the top.
Pier Luigi Sacco – https://flash—art.com/2020/11/circling-the-square-art-and-inequality-taken-seriously/
Christopher Wool, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (The Show Is Over)
Unlike the formal economy, this missing mass or dark matter consists of informal systems of exchange, cooperative networks; communal leisure practices; conduits for sharing gossip, fantasy anger, and resentments; and even the occasional self-organized collective that may or not be politically motivated. Within this dark universe, services, goods, information, and in some cases outright contraband are duplicated and distributed, sometimes in the form of bartered exchange and occasionally as gifts that circulate freely, thus always moving and benefiting a particular network or informally defined community. All of this is disconnected, or only partially connected, from the mainstream market. For capitalism to acknowledge this missing mass would require a radical re-definition of the concept of productivity.
Gregory Sholette – ‘Swampwalls Dark Matter & The Lumpen Army of Art’, Proximity, no 1
§
No public image should benefit from impunity, for whatever reason: alogo belongs to public space, since it exists in the streets and appears on the objects we use. A legal battle is underway that places artists at the forefront: no sign must remain inert, no image must remain untouchable.Art represents a counter-power. Not that the task of artists consists in denouncing, mobilizing or protesting: all art is engaged, whatever its nature and goals. Today there is a quarrel over representation that sets art and the official image of reality against each other.
Nicolas Bourriaud – Postproduction
§
Our power of resistance and invention requires that we renounce our delights in the margins, in obliqueness, in infinite deconstruction, in the fragment, in the trembling exposition of mortality, in finitude, and the body. For the sake of the poor century which is opening, we must, and thus we will, declare the existence of what no longer exists in art: the monumental construction, the project, the creative force of the weak, the destruction of established powers.
We should oppose all those who only want the end, those cohorts of the burned-out and parasitical last men. The end of art, of metaphysics, of representation, of imitation, of transcendence, of the oeuvre, of spirit: enough! Let us declare at once the End of all the ends and the possible beginning of all that is, of all that was and will be.
Against its present decline into inconsistent multiplicity and an energy which is immoral, uncontrolled, and-if it succeeds-fundamentally non-human, the vocation of art, in all its forms, is to reaffirm affirmation.
Let us declare again, on behalf of humanity, the artistic rights of the truly non-human. Let us again accept being transfixed by a truth (or a beauty: it’s the same thing), rather than calculating to the nearest penny the minor modes of our expression.
It’s a matter of affirming. And this is why this draft is a manifesto of Affirmationism.
Alain Badiou – ‘Third Sketch of a Manifesto of Affirmationist Art’, in Polemics (translated by Barbara P. Fulks)
Manifesto of the Paris Commune’s Federation of Artists
Assembly of artists
Yesterday, at two o’clock, the meeting of artists brought about by Mr. Courbet with the permission of the Commune took place in the grand lecture hall of the School of Medicine. The hall was absolutely full up, and all the arts were amply represented. Among the painters we noticed Messrs Feyen-Perrin and Héreau; among the sculptors, Messrs Moulin and Delaplanche; cartooning sent Bertall; engraving, Mr. Michelin; and criticism Mr. Philippe Burty – many architects and ornamentalists. An assembly of more than four hundred persons.
Mr. Courbet presiding, assisted by Messrs Moulin and Pottier. The latter, first and foremost, read a report drawn up by a preparatory committee and edited by him. This very interesting document contained truly lofty considerations of the needs and the destinies of contemporary art.
Entrust to artists alone the management of their interests.
It was this idea that appeared to prevail in the spirit of the subcommittee’s report. It was a question of establishing a federation of Paris artists, comprising under that title all who exhibit their works to Paris.
Federation of Paris artists
The artists of Paris, in adhering to the principles of the Communal Republic, have formed a federation.
This uniting of all the artistic intellects has as its bases:
“The free expansion of art, free from all governmental supervision and from all privileges.”
“Equality of rights among all the members of the federation.”
“The independence and dignity of every artist taken under the protection of all through the creation of a committee elected by the universal suffrage of artists.” This committee strengthened the bonds of solidarity and achieved unity of action.
Composition of the committee
The committee is composed of 47 members representing various faculties, namely:
16 painters;
10 sculptors;
5 architects;
6 engravers; and
10 members representing the decorative arts, incorrectly called the industrial arts.
They were appointed by the list system and by secret vote.
Citizens of both sexes who proved their position as artists – whether through the fame of their works, or through an exhibitor’s card, or through a written attestation from two sponsor artists – had the right to take part in the vote.
Committee members were elected for one year.
Upon the expiration of the mandate, fifteen members designated by a secret vote of the committee will remain in office over the following year; the other thirty-two members will be replaced.
The outgoing members may only be re-elected at the end of an interval of one year.
The right of recall may be exercised against a member who is not fulfilling their mandate. This recall may only be pronounced one month after the demand for it has been made, and – if voted on in general assembly – on a majority of two thirds of the voters.
Establishing mandate
This government of the world of the arts by the artists has as its mission:
Preserving of the treasures of the past;
Implementing and illuminating all the elements of the present; and
Regenerating the future through education.
Monuments, museums.
Monuments, from the artistic point of view, museums and Paris establishments containing galleries, collections, and libraries of works of art not belonging to private individuals, are entrusted to the keeping and the administrative supervision of the committee.
It will erect them, preserve them, and adjust them, and it will complete plans, inventories, indexes and catalogues.
It will place these at the disposal of the public in order to encourage studies and satisfy the curiosity of visitors.
It will note the state of preservation of buildings, indicate urgent repairs, and present the Commune with a frequent account of its works.
After examination of their capacity and inquiry into their morality, it will appoint administrators, a secretary, archivists and wardens, in order to assure the service needs of these establishments and for exhibitions, which will be spoken of later.
Exhibitions
The committee will organize communal, national and international exhibitions taking place in Paris.
For national and international exhibitions not taking place in Paris, it will delegate a commission in charge of the interests of Parisian artists.
It will only admit works signed by their authors, original creations or translations from one art to another, such as engravings rendering paintings, etc.
It rejects absolutely all mercenary exhibitions that tend to substitute the name of the editor or the manufacturer for that of the real creator.
It has not been given awards.
Ordinary works commissioned by the Commune will be distributed among the artists that the votes of all the exhibitors will have designated.
Extraordinary works will be submitted to competition.
Education
The committee will supervise the teaching of drawing and modeling in the communal primary and professional schools, in which the teachers are appointed through competition; it encourages the introduction of attractive, logical methods; it stamps models; and it designs the subjects among which a higher spirit is revealed, and the studies of which must be completed at the expense of the Commune.
It prompts and encourages the construction of vast halls for higher education, for conferences on the aesthetics, history, and philosophy of art.
Publicity
It will create a publicity organ entitled: Officiel des arts.
Under the control and the responsibility of the committee, this journal will publish events concerning the world of the arts and useful information for artists.
It will publish accounts of the committee’s works, the minutes of its meetings, the budget of receipts and expenditures, and all the statistical works that bring light and prepare order.
The literary section, dedicated to essays on aesthetics, will be a neutral field open to all opinions and all systems.
Progressive, independent, dignified and sincere, Officiel des arts will be the most serious statement of our regeneration.
Arbitrations
For all contentious disputes relating to the arts, the committee – upon the request of the interested parties (artists or others) – will appoint conciliating arbiters.
On issues of principle and general interest, the committee will form into an arbitral council, and its decisions will be inserted into Officiel des arts.
Individual initiative
The committee invites all citizens to send it all proposals, projects, reports, and opinions having the progress of art, the moral or intellectual emancipation of artists, or the material improvement of their lot as a goal.
It will give an account of this to the Commune and lend its moral support and its collaboration to everything it judges feasible.
It calls public opinion to sanction all attempts at progress, giving these proposals the publicity of Officiel des arts.
Lastly, by the word, by the pen, by the pencil, through popular reproduction of masterpieces, and through intelligent and edifying images that can be spread in profusion and displayed in the town halls of the most humble villages in France, the committee will work towards our regeneration, the inauguration of communal wealth, the splendors of the future and the Universal Republic.
G. COURBET, MOULINET, STEPHEN MARTIN, ALEXANDRE JOUSSE, ROSZEZENCH, TRICHON, DALOU, JULES HÉREAU, C. CHABERT, H. DUBOIS, A. FALEYNIÈRE, EUGÈNE POTTIER, PERRIN, A. MOUILLIARD.
Source: Red Wedge, April 15th, 2016; Translated: by Jeff Skinner.
From a new materialist perspective, literature is never mute but always a part of the voice of the world, its physicality impresses our memory and sculpts our emotions. For a materialist thinker, the moment of collapse is always a moment of immanence, that is to say the attack and the destruction of a form of transcendence. Consequently, language, as any “thing” else, is material.
The Communist Manifesto (Nordica libros) By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Illustrated by Fernando Vicente Translated by Jacobo Muñoz
For a new Spanish edition of The Communist Manifesto, Madrid-based artist Fernando Vicente created a series of striking, chromatically appropriate black-white-and-red illustrations that capture the message and sensibility of the Marx and Engels classic work.
One of the most important and influential political theories ever formulated, The Communist Manifesto is a revolutionary summons to the working class-an incisive account of a new theory of communism that would be brought about by a proletarian revolution. Arguing that increasing exploitation of industrial workers will eventually lead to a rebellion in which capitalism will be overthrown, Marx and Engels propose a vision of a society without classes, private property, or a state. The theoretical basis of political systems in Russia, China, Cuba, and Eastern Europe, The Communist Manifesto continues to influence and provoke debate on capitalism and class.
Manifesto of the Communist Party (excerpt)
A SPECTRE is haunting Europe–the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS*
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master* and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
The MIT Press By Bini Adamczak Translated by Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis Communism, capitalism, work, crisis, and the market, described in simple storybook terms and illustrated by drawings of adorable little revolutionaries.
Summary Communism, capitalism, work, crisis, and the market, described in simple storybook terms and illustrated by drawings of adorable little revolutionaries. Once upon a time, people yearned to be free of the misery of capitalism. How could their dreams come true? This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism. Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children’s story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening. It all unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers–not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called “the state.” Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more. Finally, competition between two factories leads to a crisis that the workers attempt to solve in six different ways (most of them borrowed from historic models of communist or socialist change). Each attempt fails, since true communism is not so easy after all. But it’s also not that hard. At last, the people take everything into their own hands and decide for themselves how to continue. Happy ending? Only the future will tell. With an epilogue that goes deeper into the theoretical issues behind the story, this book is perfect for all ages and all who desire a better world.
“Communism—the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute—this is the only way of human life… In the end communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.” – W.E.B. Du Bois
Revised Post Soviet Tools to be Used Against the Unslakeable Thirst of 21st Century Capitalism by Mel Chin “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” – Karl Marx
What Is To Be Done? A Dialogue on Communism, Capitalism, and the Future of Democracy – Alain Badiou and Marcel Gauchet
I maintain that the historical experience of communism, which was incidentally multifaceted and fragmented, does not provide a conclusive argument against the Idea itself. There’s no reason to turn that experience into a historical trial of the communist perspective. We’re talking about a sequence that extends roughly from 1917 to 1989. Seventy years: that’s much shorter than the Spanish Inquisition, which also used means that were incompatible with Christian belief but has never been considered, as far as I’m aware, as an experience that wholly and definitively encompassed and discredited that religion. History can’t be used to disqualify the Idea forever.
My approach involves distinguishing between three stages. There’s the communism of the nineteenth century, when the Idea was formulated, by Marx and others. There’s the communism of the twentieth century, when, having been put into practice under state control, it was tenuous or distorted. We need to write our own assessment of this perversion, and the lesson to be learned from such an error can be summed up in one sentence: communism is an Idea that’s too grand to be entrusted to a state. As Marx himself said, the overall disposition of communism is incompatible with the methods, existence, and development of a state power that is moreover militarized and despotic due to its insurrectional, revolutionary, and violent origins. Finally, there’s the third stage of the periodization: a new sequence, still in its infancy, is beginning in the early years of the twenty-first century. We’re at a crossroads, in a period of great ferment that’s strongly reminiscent of the late 1840s. In this general context, as often happens, a very big step backward is needed in order to make a new leap forward. This means going back to the original communism and salvaging the basic characteristics of the Idea itself so as to adapt it appropriately to the modern world. Now more than ever, we can, we must, and we will reactivate the communist hypothesis.
I give the word “hypothesis” a technical meaning, similar to the one it has in epistemology. A hypothesis, in this instance, isn’t a more or less fanciful assumption of the mind, a more or less credible invention of the imagination. No, I mean “hypothesis” in the experimental sense, as a general scheme of thought that can give rise to concrete experiences and can thus be gradually embodied and verified. This meaning is closely akin to another part of my culture, my militant commitment. The communist hypothesis thus refers to the possibility and testing out of a scheme provided by the Idea – the communist Idea.
First, “communism” is the name of the conviction that it’s possible to extricate the becoming of all humanity from the evil grip of capitalism. The still absolutely critical importance of private property, the uncontrolled interplay of competing interests, the frantic pursuit of profit as the sole law of economic activity, the diktats of economic and financial monopolies: all this has spawned inequalities as undeniable as they are monstrous. We were talking about the pathological nature of “totalitarian” societies, but isn’t the current neoliberal world just as pathological? Today, 10 percent of the world’s population possesses 86 percent of the resources. One percent of the world’s population owns 46 percent of those same resources. Those are the official figures, and they will continue to grow. Is a world like that tolerable? No. Accepting it is out of the question. Freeing the collective space from capital’s pernicious control would be the first level of the definition. Second, “communism” denotes the hypothesis that the state, a coercive apparatus distinct from society but allowed by it into its existence and reproduction, is not a natural, inevitable form of the structuration of human societies. We can and we must do without it. This is related to the notion of the withering away of the state in the classical Marxist tradition. Third, “communism” means that the division of labour (with the divisions it implies between tasks of execution and management, between manual and intellectual labour, and so on) is in no way an absolute necessity for organizing economic production.
When combined, these three points make up a comprehensive alternative to the development of human history up to the present. Thus, “communism” will denote the possibility and pursuit of the unification, in a real historical process, of these three dimensions: the deprivatization of the production process, the withering away of the state, and the reunification and polymorphism of labour.
The bearers of the communist Idea are characterized by an ability to communicate what the next step is. This is a tactical issue in that communists are responsible for saying what the immediate future might look like. It’s not their job to present great rapturous scenes of the coming paradise or to hold forth at every opportunity on the ideal society that may never come to pass . . . Let’s leave that to utopians of all persuasions. No, communists must define what political forms are possible with regard to the current situation. If there’s a failure to present a credible picture of the next step, then every revolutionary movement will lead to a dead end.
Untitled VI (Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought), 2018 – Kudzanai Chiurai
Communism, the Word – Jean-Luc Nancy
Not the word before the notion, but the word as notion and as historical agent.“Communism” is a word with a strange story. It is very difficult to rigorously trace its origin. Nevertheless, it is sure that the word “communist” existed already in the XIVth century, with the meaning of “people having in common a property belonging to the category of main morte – that is, not being submitted to the law of heritage”: a monastery belongs to the community of the Monks, which is, as community, independent from the individuals. It seems that at the same time and even before, from the XIIth century, the same word designated some aspects of communal law and was linked to the communal movement which expanded as the beginning of a bourgeoisie. Later, namely in the XVIIIth century, the word appears in a text written by Victor d’Hupay de Fuveau in 1785 – four years before the French revolution. It designates the project or the dream to found a community of life – which precisely is supposed to replace that of the Monks.
The post-communist condition is often associated with post-politics: general consensus upon the only remaining path of history agreed beyond any ideological differences. It implies one essential feature, an all-encompassing notion of culture,or more precisely, the ability of culture to translate all conflicts into its own language. Having in mind our general inability to translate in reverse, all efforts to retrace the conflicts that have been shattering post-communism to their social causes were doomed to failure from the very beginning. They have been perceived and dealt with as basically rooted in cultural differences. In this way also the old Cold War divide has survived—as a boundary between two identity blocks, the West and the East. Even the very political event that created the condition of post-communism, the toppling down of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989/90, was defined as a “catching-up revolution”, whose goal was to readjust the East to its normative telos, embodied in the actually existing West. This, how-ever, degraded all the sublime ideals in whose name people in the East revolted against their oppressors. Freedom, justice and equality have turned into a set of culturally particular “western” values.
A sort of cultural desublimation of the political and generally social causes of historical change is an essential quality of the post-communist condition. It has prevented the utopian surplus that is inherent in any genuine claim to freedom from transgressing cultural boundaries and affecting the actual social relations and political reality, which are imperfect no matter where they exist. At stake is, concretely, a missed opportunity for a change of the world for the better, in the sense which Kant spoke of French revolution. Only if such a change is recognized as a “tendency within the human race as a whole”—and not as a need of a culturally inferior and historically belated part of the world to catch up with its superior and advanced counter-part—a political event will acquire the meaning of revolution. To put it more concretely: nuclear arms have survived the Cold War and continue to threaten “the human race as a whole”not because of the catching-up revolution that has not yet succeeded in the East, but because of the revolution that was missed in the West.
Chapter III:Art and Communism Out of History
Isn’t it curious how contemporary art after 1989 opportunistically followed the logic of area studies that has been haunting the western humanities since the end of the WWII? A case in point: only within twelve months, from October 2001 until November 2003, there were three large and quite ambitious exhibitions of art from the Balkans in Austria and Germany: In Search of Balkania at Neue Galerie Graz; Blood & Honey: The Future’s in the Balkans, at Sammlung Essl in Klosterneuburgnear Vienna and finally In the Gorges of the Balkans at Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel. Needless to say, the notion of an“East European art” was at that time already massively in use. A “Balkan art” was a short but intensely lived subspecies of it. One of most striking effects of the general reconceptualization of actual art production and art history in terms of area representation was an overall intensification of the so-called struggle for recognition. To be included in or excluded from the powerful western art system, its canons and its financial re-sources has become for the artists and art institutions of the post-communist East a matter of their survival. In paraphrasing the famous slogan of Mladen Stilinović on the hegemony of the English language in the art field one could say that in Eastern Europe after 1989 “an artist who does not represent an area is not artist.”
Another closely connected and no less striking effect of the introduction of area logic into the field of art and cultural production and in more general terms into the entire sphere of socio-political relations was the interesting fact that post-communism as a historical condition has never generated its own art, say a “post-communist art”. Every art produced, collected or canonized under this historical condition has been immediately recast into an “eastern art”. Only through its absence was communism still able to enclose an area and provide a specific(cultural) identity. Yet, it was already unable to tell its own history or at least to be seen within one. In post-communism it is already too late to follow that famous advice given by Fredric Jameson at the beginning of the 1980s: “Always historicize!”
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