PREVIOUS PAGE

PLZKLME:

Leonhard Emmerling

“And what I feel unites you and me is: we can locate in one another a similar yearning to be in a more just world. So I tried to evoke the idea that if we could come together in that site of desire and longing, it might be a potential place for community-building.” [1]

This quotation comes from an interview with bell hooks, where she discusses the problems of female and Afro-American identity. What I found remarkable in her statement is the idea of an implicitly included universalism around the notion of justice, and of overcoming potential or actual differences (between individuals, members of different genders, different classes, different ethnicities) towards a (utopian) space of yearning and desire as “a potential place for community-building“.

The place of yearning and desire for a more just world can, with some good reason, be juxtaposed to the world as it is today (and, most probably, with little nuances always has been): Divided by ethnical, cultural, religious, economical and political differences, which affect some as the accumulation of economical and political power, and others (in the 20th and in this century) as ongoing economical and cultural depravation, which prolongs colonization and imperialism.
It is easy to discredit the ideas of bell hooks as utopian in the face of the increasing number of violent conflicts, which are and were waged in the name of “justice“ and, like the conflict in the Middle-East, have ended in a merely endless spiral of violence.
And, of course, it is possible to argue against this implicit universalism in the name of cultural diversity and the differing ideas of justice, prevalent in each culture. Female genital mutilation, “honour killing“, forced marriage, the violation of human rights in China, or the caste system in India do not match up with the idea of a more just world from the viewpoint of liberal democracies, but sometimes are defended by referring to a particular cultural identity or to a specific evolutionary situation. [2]
The proposition of the universality of human rights can also be challenged by the argument that it is nothing else than the continuation of colonial expansion in thepursuit of class interests, [3]   in the course of the globalisation of Western principles of Enlightenment, or the realisation of “world domestic politics“, dominated by the West. But this could be contested with the juridical argument that the countries that signed the Declaration of Human Rights should feel obliged to accept and respect it as a common law at least, and that in the process of the drafting by no means only Western delegates, but representatives of a multitude of ethnic and religious groups were involved; [4] which means that the colonial argument fails. This, in turn, could be refuted by stating that Aboriginals, Hopi or Maori, and an infinite number of other ethnic groups and indigenous nations, whose identity has become and still is overarched by a post-colonial government, did not have the option to express their opinion about this document nor had they any influence on it. This means that the colonial argument regains relevance.
And so on.
My text cannot provide a solution for problems thousands and thousands of lawyers, politicians and scholars have been unable to solve. For that reason, I prefer to move on to my core subject, after having outlined this more general framework.

II.
What interests me is to explore how bell hooks’ statement is relevant to the field of visual arts as I am a critic of “identity-art“ which centres with annoying persistence on one’s own particular cultural formation or simply on one’s own biographical background. No examples necessary. At each biennial or triennial, curators compete with each other to present new artistic examples on this topic and to underpin its virulence. Globalisation, migration, identity – these are the central catchwords of the global and migrating art business, and exhibition concepts are built around them.
The underlying and always reiterated scheme can be described as follows: An attempt is made to describe or at least to illuminate and exemplify the loss and reconfiguration of identity and the conflict between different cultural concepts of identity, using “globalisation“ as the slightly diffuse but always looming backdrop. The basic pattern is: There we find the aggressive, global, monolithic capitalism of Western provenance, whose dissemination causes endangerment, colonisation if not destruction of non-European concepts of living, of the self and of the world; here we find an area of different ethnicities, fragmented into innumerable facets, cultural micro systems, individual biographies – a myriad of minorities, fighting against oppression, depravation, levelling and extermination.
The art business dedicates itself to this undoubtedly serious struggle in a kind of preventive and, at the same time, belated admission of guilt. And by doing so, intentionally or unintentionally, it repeats what the colonial West, from which the art business originates, has already done to the rest of the world: assimilation, instrumentalisation, incapacitation and paternalism. The impression that they give of bad conscience does not seem to be without reason. The very same imperialistic and colonial West that caused literally murderous and still ongoing conflicts around the globe, (even long after the end of the era of the historical colonialism) generates a notion of art, especially of modernism, which assimilates what adapts itself to it, and which excludes as local, traditional and “ethnic“ all that is not compatible. The art system is Western, the notion of art is Western, the notion of modernism is Western, the notion of contemporary art is Western. And the big circus of the biennials, which tours around the world, disperses these notions with philanthropic missionarism, with a far-reaching totalitarian determinedness to the good until even the remotest archipelago has been reached.
In the area of the arts which is an area of “As-If”, the West offers platforms to reconstitute and to re-configure identity (and hardly any artist rejects the opportunity to present him- or herself). The West allows here - as an instrument of its own guilt relief - what is denied in reality: having a voice, the actual, especially economical compensation of colonial injustice, equal rights, the realisation of an undamaged life. As room for justice is given here, no justice has to be served there.
The area of “As-If” is the segment of the arts that can be labelled as ‘autonomous art’. It is independent from commissioners, solely following its own rules and laws. With its autonomy, this art leaves the society it criticises undisturbed. [5] But exactly this is the problem of autonomous art (and of politically/ socially committed art which becomes the poorer the more it attempts to demonstrate its involvement more explicitly). The relationship between art and society, between art and the problems it deals with, is reciprocally analogue to a chivalry-fight. [6] While this one, being staged in the area of “As-If”, has consequences in reality, there the confrontation is staged because the lack of consequences is guaranteed. Not even little scandals about elephant’s dung on paintings of the Virgin Mary can hide that. [7] And the fact that provocations are still possible does not refute the statement that art in its autonomy is only loosely related to the reality of society.
Therefore, the game with identities in the art business is precarious, and whoever has decided to play the game has decided to play the game of the West. Identity is a Western idea, central in European philosophy since Aristotle, challenged for the first time by Nietzsche and psychoanalysis, and subsequently efficiently shattered by deconstructivism and post-structuralism. [8] According to Lacan, the rupture splits us right in the centre, and nothing can heal it as nothing can save us from the desire to close it. [9] Without the notion of self, without the notion of identity, no human being can exist. But it is possible to differentiate between the notions of personal, individual identity as an anthropological necessity, and between cultural identity as a system of imprints we experience more or less passively, or which we embrace more or less actively; which we question, criticise, reject or affirm.

III.

If I consider art work as an autonomous system that follows its own rules and objectifies subjectivity following the law of form, then this art work on the one hand contains more than the author could have intended, on the other hand she or he dissolves as the real-world subject in the art work which generates objectifying outcomes. The art work is situated in another framework of references as any statement with non-artistic intentions, even if it is only by being positioned in the context “art“ (the whole institutional framework of art).  [10]

Someone who places his or her work in the context of art (and where else could or should it be placed), cannot go back anymore. The work is out there, contextualised by exhibitions, texts, interpretations. It is from now on – not only as the product of objectification – an object, a fact. The author’s identity as a person – her/ his individual and cultural identity – do not play a part in the work. What counts is the form into which the artistic subject has diffused.
This might sound as if the viewer and the work could enter into a relationship which is not disturbed or blurred by any external (historical, political, cultural) differences and their inherent problems of understanding; as if the pure, completely transparent work would exist on one side, and the completely unconditioned gaze would exist on the other; as if there existed a quasi pure, not contaminated flow of information and perception between the work and the viewer with the absence of any contingency. This is, of course, not my opinion; iconography, iconology and iconic (or what is now called “Bildwissenschaft“ – science of the image) have demonstrated that any available biographical and artist-related information has to be used to place the work against a horizon of understanding in order to decipher it. But this is relevant especially for the arts which have become historical and, with the passing of time, have become records of their time. What is required regarding a contemporary work of art is – besides the efforts of understanding it -, to form an opinion about it. The more it is simply a symptom of its time, the poorer it is. What we can demand with some good reason is, however, that the work of art provides us with an image of our time, or: that it gives us the opportunity to think the present in the modus of the visible. [11] This could almost be a definition of what could be understood as “contemporary art“.  When it comes to the determination of quality, a decisive criterion might be the degree to which this thinking in the mode of the visible succeeds and its achievement of complexity and density. Assessment should not be seen as an authoritarian act but as a natural and permanently required capability of orientation in the present.
To be clear: Works (and this is a quite random collection) like the “Desastres de la Guerra“ (1810 – 1820) by Francisco de Goya, the “Raft of the Medusa“ (1819) by Théodore Géricault, the graphic cycle “The War“ (1924) by Otto Dix, Peter Robinson’s “One lives“ [12]or Michael Parekowhai’s “The Indefinite Article“ (1990) [13] partially gain their strength, their emotional and appellative power from their framework of references. But they owe this power primarily to their formal clarity as autonomous works, because of the density with which they transform the subject matter or the information contained in the framework of references.Contrast this with art to which the catchword “relational aesthetics“ (Nicolas Bourriaud) is often applied. This art gains its legitimisation from completely non- or extra-aesthetical categories like honest political convictions or the protest against economical, political, or cultural grievances. Works like the ones by the Hohenbüchler sisters, by Thomas Hirschhorn [14] or by the Long March Project receive legitimation not as autonomous works, but as “committed art“. It is completely unclear how their work would differ in their form from the hands-on work of a street worker, and there would be hardly any chance of them attracting much attention, had they not used the cheap trick of locating their activities in the arts milieu. [15]The infamy essentially consists in undertaking temporary interventions, dealing with severe minority problems in the form of a funny architecture competition and as exhibition for the notoriously humanistic art audience, and in the end nobody stands to gain but the artist. He or she moves on to the next ‘good cause’, a superficial globetrotter of starry-eyed idealism. Formally trivial and morally dubious, the artist uses what both spheres – the sphere of the arts and the sphere of social and political commitment – can offer as a benefit. He or she acts in the sphere of the arts as an opponent to the idea of art work and as the agent of a new notion of art; in the sphere of politics he or she acts as an honest humanist and fighter for the rights of minorities. I don’t know what else to add except that both – the ethics of the arts and the ethics of sincere social commitment – will be betrayed in the end.

IV.
My objection to identity art is that it all too easily plays the game of the West and all too compliantly accepts the “As-If”-redress offered by the art business. Willingly one plays the trump card of minority-identity with a sorrowful face against the post-colonial backdrop which is painted black by the migrating, global art circus. A discussion about art work as an autonomous one is hardly possible, because the game is already contaminated by a discourse of power.
Not only is it true that the post-colonial discourse suffers (as half the world does) from the fact that colonialism survives in countless disguises (globalisation is surely one of them but now involving new players: nations like India, China, Iran and North Korea are among them and form, in different ways, our perception of the world, while other, older protagonists play only modest roles) and its poison has permeated every zone of contact. But another truth is that this demon is passionately nurtured because in the area of “As-If” nobody has to make a real effort to solve any real problems. The art business is a palliative.
In his re-reading of Freud, Lacan has radically discussed the corrosion of the essentialistic notion of identity, initiated by structural linguistics. For Lacan, desire is motivated by the subject’s insufficient capability of getting hold of itself completely. The rupture between the je and the moi suffered by the subject fuels the never-ending game of longing and desire. And as the desired wholeness of the subject, which could claim identity beyond discourse, is never achieved, the conversation between the je and the moi never stops. It is this inherent difference which tears us apart, forcing us to speak, even if this speaking is only fantasizing and prattling.

The notion of identity used in the art business, however, operates with the ideal of substantiality, not with difference by order, no matter to what extent the post-colonial discourse on identity insists on difference. In identity art, difference, located by Lacan within the subject, can never be found in the individual or cultural subject itself. It is only used to constitute otherness. This otherness is always conceived as substantial, block-like, monolithic and unhistorical. It is unhistorical because it holds on to the idea of a substantial identity, despite making references to historical developments. But substance can only be conceived as not deformable by transformations which occur due to economical, political or cultural changes.

The substantial I is the shrink form of the soul in a secular world; therefore the martyr’s, prophet’s and saviour’s gestures appear in the art world’s “As-If”-area as tales of the world’s problems, grievances and suggestions on how to safe the world.
But if conversation, discourse, language, speech are not only motivated by the difference between the subject and all the others, but moreover by the difference between me and myself, between what I know about myself and what I long to be, between the je and the moi, the pretension to a substantial I in identity art is radically anti-communicative.
The question is how communication could be conceived in this constellation. As a movement of the viewer towards the work in order to listen to it as well as to the subject behind it to find out what they might say? As an opening of borders, transgression of confinements, change of habits of perception, i.e. as scholars have defined the aim of contemporary art for decades: a passepartout which sounds seditious and is nothing but a bourgeois bonmot?
Taken seriously, identity art is not seeking communication but is posting statements. It is conservative as it only outlines and confirms what has already been said, thought and alleged. It is affirmative, hermetical and, despite its pronouncement of substantiality, an art of closed surface and not of depth.
The substance behind this surface is neither visible nor open to discourse. Two surfaces clash, unable to enter into any form of communication, because they are completely closed.
The subject of identity art has always itself, even if it is an endangered one. It is hieratic, lonely, fragile and tragic and asks to be taken seriously. What endangers it never lies within it but is always external, with the Other, to which it pretends to be another, monolithic like the other Other.

V.
What identity art does is to play a game by establishing ambivalence in which the stain of power is always imprinted on the Other. Operating with an essentialistic and substantialistic notion of the I, it establishes a monadic closedness and ideal inviolacy (or evokes it in the image of violacy) in which every threat to its integrity is blamed on the outer world. In a paradox manner it closes itself off from the world and shifts all responsibility to it. Because of this structural attribute, identity art is the perfect medium for the art business as a system of “As-If”. All too willingly it intervenes where it has nothing to contribute (or simply is unable to contribute) to the solution of the problems it struggles with.

Identity art as conservative art, as the manifestation or evocation of “This is me!“ is incapable of opening up the utopian horizon bell hooks as well as Adorno talk about. Utopia not as a state which can be achieved offhand, right here and right now, if only everybody had good intentions and was willing; Utopia rather as a state which to give up as impossible to achieve, even facing the uttermost improbability of its achievement, would simply mean to declare that the world as it is today is the best of all possible worlds.
Identity art insists on difference but does not incorporate it. In this regard, it differs from what contemporary art can do and what can be expected of it with some reason. It affirms existing conditions without opening up the horizon that may lie beyond the actual state of things. And it suffers from a lack of self-reflection which it tries to compensate with an excessive moral appeal. This excessive moral appeal is being justified by making reference to the discourse of power.
By insisting on ‘difference’ it is probably opposed to what Richard Rorty described as an indication of some form of progress, with progress being defined as “an increase in our ability to see more and more differences among people as morally irrelevant.“ [20] When discourse “art“ and discourse “power“ intersect, difference becomes a moral category, and differences become morally relevant. This is the tragic aspect of identity art. Beyond doubt, the West has deprived innumerable nations and people of their right of self-determination, their cultural integrity, their identity and their economical potential, and without doubt, art and cultural practice can be a medium to restore this damaged integrity. But I doubt that art is the appropriate arena to fight the fights which should be fought in the sphere of politics and economics, where the grievances still are to be found.

All my arguments suffer from an underlying universalism, the application of certain criteria, hopes, ideas in connection with the arts, which collide with other criteria, hopes and ideas, which in turn require and deserve, if not universality, then at least unlimited respect. My argument against the essentialism in identity art is also based on a concept of identity (Lacan), which can be crititcized as essentialistic, ahistorical or transhistorical or non-temporal. In its radical criticism of an essentialistic notion of the I and identity, Lacan’s concept of identity is essentialistic itself.
And even if Butler’s concept of performativity [21] offered a solution – how could I be sure that this concept is not essentialistic and, in this context: not colonial and not imperialistic? The same question would arise with regard to Habermas’ concept of discoursive rationality [22], Laclau’s concept of universalities as object of constant negotiation, incomplete per definition and necessary at the same time, [23] or Michael Ignatieff’s concept of deliberation. [24]
To me, the only possible option seems to keep the discourse going, the argument or dialogue between particularism and universalism. It resembles the conversation between the je and the moi, it comes from a desire – the desire to understand, the desire to be at home in a world, which is less characterized by borders and ‘difference’ but more by the search for similarities.

VI.
Assuming that the world travelling curators are right in their sophisticated diagnoses and that we do live in a global world, then their much-favoured identity art is a weird relic. And besides, it is dishonest, sanctimonious and bourgeois. An agent of political correctness in the world of “As-If”, a totalitarian tool for the production of silence. But what is needed is a culture of curiosity, of not-knowing, of constant questioning. Replace the identity cult with a culture of communication, of the insecure, the debatable, of desire. A culture of doubt and asking question, where identity is as precious as the black underneath one’s fingernail: a bit that is left, impossible to get rid off.