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NEW TENSIONS, NEW OPPORTUNITIES |
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Sensorama, the series of activities organized
by the artists’ collective El Perro, sets out to look at
different forms of political commitment in art. Commitment in art,
and political commitment in particular, and its possible effectiveness
is a desire that runs through art practices right from the start
of the 20th century. This commitment is alive and well in terms
of actions, but is not doing so well in terms of effectiveness,
and in any case needs to be posited anew, rethought and revised.
Or, as Albert Martínez López-Amor proposes in the
article we publish here, it needs to offer new and more forceful
lines of actuation that entail a genuine structuring of the feeble
schemas that are worked with in art.
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ALBERT MARTÍNEZ
LÓPEZ-AMOR
‘Dear colleagues, dear friends, Manifesta 6 had been defined as a temporary
school of art (...) inspired by such historic examples as the Black Mountain
College and the Bauhaus (...), with the aim of playing a modest role in developing
new forms of cultural partnerships. Such cultural partnerships in the context
of Nicosia, a city located on the furthermost edge of the European Community
and divided into Greek and Turkish Cypriot sectors, specifically implies engagement
and presence in both communities inhabiting this city.’
The open letter that the curators of Manifesta 6, Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle
and Florian Waldvogel, put out on the 6th of June goes on to say:
‘Unfortunately, on June 1st, we received a letter from the Mayor of Nicosia,
Cyprus, effectively terminating our contracts to organize Manifesta 6, the European
Biennial
of Contemporary Art in Nicosia. On June 2nd, Nicosia for Art Ltd. (the non-profit
organization set up and owned by the Municipality of Nicosia to run the project)
made a public announcement and circulated it internationally defining a variety
of alleged breaches of contract by the curators. […] Nicosia for Art based
its allegations on the charge that ‘Recently and contrary to the original
concept of the Manifesta 6 programme the curatorial team insisted on the establishment
and operation of an essential part of the Manifesta 6 School in the occupied
part of Nicosia’.
The three curators conclude their open letter regretting the decision
of the local authorities and stressing the support they have received: ‘Numerous
artists, writers and academics who live on both sides of the island
have sent us letters of support, protesting arbitrary action […]’.
The recent case of Manifesta 6 —we must wait and see how the
situation evolves in the immediate future— brings out with
almost shocking clarity certain aspects of the nature of the relationship
between contemporary art and politics. In the first place, it reminds
us that there are as many relations as there are ways of practising
politics. On this occasion, when I say ‘politics’ I am
referring to the institutional expression of power; and when I say ‘power’ I
mean structure, monolithic unity and the instinct of pre-eminence
over any cultural and, by extension, social manifestation. It is
a banging on the table, a ‘this is as how far as we are prepared
to go’: the interests of power, above all when that power is
questioned, are not a subject for representation or debate.
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At the same time,
however, this whole episode should really come as no
surprise. The right to freedom of expression is still
a fairly recent phenomenon, and above all in the countries
that have lived under dictatorial regimes within the
last few decades there are still traces of despotic
abuse. Not only Cyprus, but also in Spain: a case in
this country is not far removed from the example of
Manifesta 6. At the end of May this year the technological
crimes unit of the National Police asked the artist
Daniel García Andújar for data on the
users of the project www.e-valencia.org,
in relation to a hypothetical complaint about this
website by someone ‘high
up’ in the Ministry of Culture of the Generalitat
Valenciana. Since then, nothing more has been heard
about the complaint: no official notification, no formal
communication, and |
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no comment from the
authority making the accusation. The affair reveals a clumsiness
that, if it were not so serious, would seem straight out
of a comic opera. Why, in the year 2006, is there a
return of the tendency to fire ‘warning shots’ across
the bows of artists and cultural initiatives? As García
Andújar himself says, ‘we are continually
redefining parcels of power, and this inevitably creates
misunderstandings and tensions. The claiming of a public
space is a historical constant that is in a permanent
process of redefinition; it is a question of not lowering
one’s guard when it comes to facing new challenges
and finding new avenues that enable society to express
itself with absolute freedom. Right now we are working
in a very tight space, subject to continual pressures,
that needs to be expanded. So there is no avoiding
the tension.’ The collective El Perro elevates
that tension to the category of ‘combat in the
area of the “general politics of truth” that
every society has defined’.
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New strategies
If we assume, then, that the conflict emerges with
a renewed vehemence and, on the side of power, revives a
certain aggressiveness of an authoritarian cast, perhaps
it is time for the art field to propose new strategies fir
influencing politics. New and more effective approaches,
in the sense of going beyond the limited and sectorial support —’artists,
writers and academics’— that the three Manifesta
curators and García Andújar have received.
The old questions of the visibility and the public significance
of art take on a new importance that we have to see as consubstantial
with the new, expanded and heterogeneous scenario. The galleries,
the museums, the traditional exhibition formats, the usual
round tables… are still valid possibilities, but they
are not the only ones. As far as public profile is concerned,
we have to stop bending over backwards to attract people.
And as far as creation is concerned, it is not just a matter
of questioning the dominant elites with parody, irony, decoding
or the representation of activism. It is high time that visual
art practices assumed the commitment that the performing
arts embraced back in the 1960s, forming part of a socio-economic
reality that they can help transform by means of transversal
actions and at the same time opening up the art scene from
its roots, from its points of contact with the real world.
Three proposals and an affirmation:
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1.
Emphasize the economic dimension of culture, and put
this across above all to new interlocutors, both public
and private. With the added bonus of the surprise factor:
imagine a concerted action —5, 10, 20 coordinated
cultural producers— asking for funding from areas
of the administration nominally not connected with
art, such as the Department responsible for trade or
the Ministry that deals with tourism. The perplexity
of the interlocutor would be considerable, and the
first response, obviously, would be negative. But perhaps
in this way —and reiterating the request for
support time and again— we would start to question
certain preconceived ideas about what public support
should be available to the processes of art and culture,
above all in places such as Barcelona where ‘culture
fuels the economy and cultural policies today respond
directly to the interests of urban and commercial promotion’,
as Jorge Luis Marzo has made clear.
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| Photo from Nicosia
of Manifesta 6 web |
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2.
Bring together this vast, elastic and growing group of freelance
workers. The producers of art —in the first instance
the artists, critics, independent curators and part-time
managers— need to join together in a common front or
pressure group with all those who share some feature of their
working conditions: precariousness, flexibility, insecurity,
irregular income, risk, informality and so on, and in special
a way with other producers of visual culture such as are
graphic designers, programmers, freelance copywriters. This
alliance could be strong enough to petition for tax breaks
and even more ambitious measures such as the possibility
of establishing a ‘basic income for non-formal production’ for
those in need — who, in the context of art, would be
not a few.
3. Develop
efficient strategies for the insertion of art
in society. All of the conjunctures, scenarios
and situations that involve reflection and
representation in relation to social practices
and concerns are susceptible to receiving funding
proposals from contemporary art: working sessions
on new perspectives in the fishing industry,
a TV series, a meeting of finance executives,
a Primary School class, a jazz festival, a
two-day walk on GR 92 or an ordinary day in
a factory. How to interact there? By showing
artworks, tracing out the relations that can
be established with the subjects under discussion,
routing the information that is generated through
specially created channels, setting up participative
projects that involve people from the context
in question, etc.
The panorama is broad and may well contain
more opportunities than we can imagine. The
final affirmation is that the precondition
for a new action that can contribute to the
constructing of ‘new realities’ is
that the art field decide to work collectively.
Another important condition would consist in
furthering involvement with other sectors of
society.
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| Daniel García
Andujar. Technologies to the people |
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