Art and Political Conflict
A public debate at Framer Framed, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, Sunday July 6, 14.00
- 17.00hrs
The relationship between art and political conflict has been significantly
reshaped by the proliferation of digital media and the internet as a means of
instant dissemination of images, texts, and audiovisual expressions. Artistic
/activist actions intervene via these digital means into an expanded symbolical
space that is no longer the sole sanctuary of artists and art audiences, but
instead has become the ‘neural fibre’ of everyday life.
At first sight this seems to have simplified the task enormously of art that
wants to intervene in daily life, not least in urgent political affairs.
However, the intervention of art in political conflict has turned out anything
but uncomplicated in recent years. The idea that art can address pressing
social, ecological and material issues in a wider public domain to some extent
presupposes a democratic context that is willing to absorb and respond to this
criticism. When this context is absent, in the face of authoritarian rule,
amidst tightening ideological domination, the efficacy of artistic/activist
intervention is called into question, while unpredictable detrimental results
of actions further complicate the situation.
Recent outpourings of artistic/activist protest for instance in Turkey and
Russia seem to have amplified the tightening of authoritarian rule. The hopeful
beginnings of the uprising in Syria (once dubbed the “Syrian Cyber-Revolution”,
suggesting the image of a bloodless revolution) have descended into a
nightmare. The rise of violent sectarian religious fundamentalist movements in
the wake of the various crises in the Middle East have rendered the arts all
but speechless. How can artists respond to such extreme deployments of brutal
political force, and what are responsibilities do they face in staging
political dissent? How can art, as a predominantly secular ideology, produce a
counter-weight to the ideological closures of fundamentalist religious
(mass-)movements?
This public debate is organised at the occasion of the Tactical Media
Connections research meeting at the Tolhuistuin, which marks the start of a
public research trajectory tracing the legacies of Tactical Media and its
connections to current forms of artistic / activist media practices. Tactical
Media had been identified in the 1990s as an emerging practice at the
intersection of art, media, political activism and technological
experimentation. Tactical Media are media of crisis and opposition. Tactical
Media crack open the media, cultural, and political landscape. Completely
without innocence their operations are never uncontroversial or straightforward.
The debate will be staged inside the exhibition Crisis of History (
www.crisisofhistory.nl ), which presents the works of young artists from the
Middle East that investigate the Modernist dream and what is left of it. The
exhibition includes, inter alia, the provocative Jihadi Gangster series by Aman
Mojadidi (Afghanistan), the video Children of the Left by Urok Shirhan (Iraq),
and the demolition of Mecca in the installation Ground Zero by Ahmed Mater
(Saudi-Arabia).
With:
Brian Holmes (writer, art critic, translator, activist), Robert Kluijver
(Curator of Crisis of History), Paolo Gerbaudo (Researcher, writer, lecturer
King's College London), Simona Lodi (director Share Festival Torino), Ozge
Celikaslan (Video Vortex Istanbul)
Moderators: David Garcia (artist, researcher, co-founder Next 5 Minutes) & Eric
Kluitenberg (writer, theorist, editor in chief Tactical Media Files).
Location:
Framer Framed at the Tolhuistuin
Buiksloterweg 5c, Amsterdam.
Sunday, July 6, 2014 - 14.00 - 17.00 hrs.
Admission: free
Resources:
For updates on the Tactical Media Connections public research please refer to
our blogs:
http://blog.tacticalmediafiles.net
http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/
Documentation of the evolving practices of Tactical Media is collected at:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net
Further materials are collected in the website of Brian Holmes' 'Tactical Media
Generation' project:
http://autonomousuniversity.org/content/tactical-media-generation
Support:
This debate is organised in collaboration with Framer Framed (
http://framerframed.nl/en/ ) and the Tolhuistuin (www.tolhuistuin.nl/english).
Tactical Media Connections is supported by the e-culture program of the
Creative Industries Fund NL.
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