Art (and) Politics

“The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically” – Jean-Luc Godard

Art is not political because of its messages, or because of the way it represents something. According to Ranciere, art is political because it participates in the division of the sensible – (re)distribution of times and spaces, places and identities, the way of (re)framing the visible and the invisible, of telling speech from noise etc. Art is politics.

What about art politics then? Whether we speak about art as art – art as/in institution, or art as life – art as a creative process/skill employed or placed in public space and outside institutional socio-economic frames, potentiality for (social) emancipation lies in the procedures of making art, not simply in its content or form.

Case study A: Art politically inside the institution

Politics, derived from the Greek politikos (meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens”), is not simply the exercise of, or struggle for, power. Politics is, first of all, the configuration of a space as political. Aristotle said that contrary to animals, which only have voice to express pleasure or pain, human beings are political because they own the power of speech and through it reveal what is good and bad, just and unjust. But politics is not the public discussion about justice and injustice among speaking people. How do you recognise that the person who is mouthing a voice in front of you is discussing matters of justice rather than expressing private pain? Politics is in fact about that question: who has the power to decide this?

After 2000, Serbia entered a painful and, what has now been proven, illegal process of privatisation. Many factories which had been socially governed were forced into bankruptcy and sold to private entrepreneurship. New owners ceased production or changed the factories’ primary industrial function. Workers lost their jobs and went on strike – the only political tool for resistance they possessed. The workers’ struggle was not recognised by the state or the media.

Ignorant Schoolmaster is a project developed by a group of artists and activists. It is hosted by the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade. In a self-educational format, the project organises discussions in which intellectuals, experts and workers take part by articulating their experience and thought. Politics begins when those who have ‘no time’ to do anything else apart from work, make time, in order to become visible and capable of voicing their experience as a common experience in the universal language of public argumentation. It is an emancipatory potential that art as art can enable, but only by following emancipatory procedures.

Although placed within the cultural institution, the project does not help raise the visibility of workers’ issues. Rather, it endorses workers’ empowerment by offering context and infrastructure. Periphery is chosen as a political position, the only one that can bring political subjectivation. This takes time.

Earlier, similar projects are not unknown to the global art scene, though, what is important to notice here is not the form or the content but the procedures this project employs. What matters is the way it is being performed. Ignorant Schoolmaster is not activism in the system of art, nor is it engaged art. The project itself does not represent workers’ subjectification. Workers are not objects of artist’s research that will be conveyed in an art product and will address the system of art. Other artists, or elites, cannot consume it in museums or galleries.

Thus, the possibility of cultural capital for the organisers has been diminished. The frame of self-education rules out hierarchical division between workers and artists/intellectuals. Both artists/activists and the workers undertake a process of self-education. This art does not represent – it performs politics, enabling the participants to engage in a process of defining their political subjectivity.

The questions remain: could emancipatory procedures performed within the art institution bring social emancipation or does the context of an institution nullify the potential? Does an issue placed in the sphere of art and culture diminish the possibility of a real impact on political structures? And, does this mean that social emancipation is only immanent to the performance outside the institution so, in the case of art as life, procedures are not even needed?

Case study B: Art politically outside the institution

Like all crises in history, the Greek situation has inspired a lot of local artists. Political artworks of critical, informational or emotional value are popping up in galleries, museums and art forums within and outside of Greece. Even in spaces which trade in art as commodity, the crisis has spread its shadow. Many artists have been happy to use the free ride of the art scene of Northern Europe that this crisis has offered them, seeking safety and recognition. Meanwhile, in the local art scene, the crisis has birthed a flush of networks with libertarian and self-organised characteristics.

I am Greek and I am an artist. So, when returning home after having spent some years abroad, I had elaborated on my practices as an artist and as a political subject. It was quite clear to me that in such crisis situations, political artworks are not enough to accelerate the pace of radicalisation. As long as they are contextualised in the art world, they simply reproduce its elitist relation to the public sphere and its dominant character[1]. If artistic language is to be used for the conveyance of a political message related with social emancipation, it has to be reflected within the way it will be contextualised and not only expressed: it is not only a matter of what, but also a matter of how.

In the Greek context, art can be used for the enrichment of conscious and directed social struggles that do not seek an eventuality, but really investigate and exert the alternatives for a possible insurrection. The artistic perspective and creative process can be of an important value in the attempt to convey a political message and broaden the potential of political practices.

But let’s discard the division between artists and “the others”. We need to abandon the feeling of safety we once had; there is no such thing anymore. To move the struggles forward we need to practice applied resistance through structural changes in our lives, such as self-organised projects, enrichment of educational processes, applied solidarity, mutual empowerment and collective fermentations. The end goal is not a short-term social relief, but social emancipation.

I cannot and will not be specific to definitive individual practices which will guarantee our future. I have only pointed to a handful of possibilities here, as I don’t consider myself as “the enlightened” that can give solid suggestions of how this is going to be done in each case (and I tend to think that “how” is sometimes even more important than “what”). We all have different needs and surroundings, possibilities and potentialities that we should all elaborate on. How are we going to transform utopia into reality?

By Isidora Ilic & Eleni F

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[1] As Andrea Fraser bravely admits, “We are the institution of art: the object of our critiques, our attacks, is always also inside ourselves.” What is Institutional Critique, from Institutional Critique and After, JRP|Ringier, Zurich, 2006