love that makes a thought real, the dream manifest through compromise and work. What we both know is that we want a family. We want to have kids and to give them everything that the circumstances of our families did not allow for us. And so, the political is personal here as well, as we encounter very real questions, shared by our generation: what kind of world would we be bringing kids into? What kind of world are we shaping for them? If responsibility is the product of one’s “responsiveness” and one’s “ability,” then to become actively responsible to these questions I have to strike a balance between the obeying of history and aggressive and real-time creation. I must remember, but if I want to change something, I must also be willing to instigate, to design an alternative and put it into play. I will address what White’s students had to tell me, but the panel preceding that one directly tackles the tension I just described. 3:15 p.m. Activism through Art Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock are German artists whose practice, they state, is devoted to “making history visible, tracing complex relationships between society, art and artifacts comprise [their] vision of institutional critique, shaped by studies about how memory functions in the social sphere and how it is reflected symbolically in the space of museums and the city.” It only makes sense that in Germany the focus of art is remembrance. One of their projects is titled Bus Stop. Designed to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the project uses transit as “social sculpture” to “follow the traces of National Socialism in Germany and Europe.” The project creates the sense of memorial as a map rather than a destination, a product of national narrative rather than a random episode. Roger Berkowitz, mostly overseeing the conversation, moderates this panel along with Nelly Ben Hayoun, founder of the International Space Orchestra and the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate university based in underground urban spaces in London and Amsterdam and supporting unconventional research practices. Ben Hayoun defines herself as a designer of experiences, not as an artist. “I think through experiences and practice. I make things happen,” she says. Art is part of her arsenal, but she defines the role of design as something that “reacts to social trends.” Like art, it creates an experience, but unlike art the experience must always be directly experienced. Much of Stih and Schnock’s practice orients us to the past, toying with memory, while Ben Hayoun’s more often builds the immediate future. This match was meant to generate tension. After giving a lengthy and rather dry presentation of their otherwise very thoughtful work, Stih and Schnock sat down for questioning. Immediately, Ben Hayoun launched into the question of biography, asking the duo how they contextualize themselves within the work. Stih brushes this off. In her view, the artist is absent from the art. She and Schnock create what is needed.
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In this way they are craftsmen—keepers of history rather than visionaries. I would argue that for Ben Hayoun, the creation of experience and thinking requires personal perspective, as a reaction has no velocity without the designer’s own perspective or style. Stih interprets this question as diverting the audience’s attention from the art itself, and counters by highlighting America’s obsession with identity and the overeager messaging of its art, a more common characteristic of marketing. She punctuates this by stating that the 9/11 memorial was created too soon, before reflection could take place. This argument accuses (and I am paraphrasing here) the memorial of being market art rather than art for history. Due to its eagerness, the memorial edits out the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Already peeved at what she perceives in Ben Hayoun as instigation (it is important to note here that Ben Hayoun is French and not American), Stih looks to the audience and states loudly, “They’re your refugees. Your war!” In that moment I feel like the error of our entire foreign policy is exposed, by this less-than-graceful artist of history. It’s not that she’s right about art and the artist—that the artist only reflects the world rather than shapes it into being by the mere effect of making. But she’s right about us. We don’t reflect. Our symbols of remembrance serve us, not history itself. We don’t know how to, or do not want to, talk about the trauma we cause. We much prefer to talk only about the trauma we feel. No wonder facts have become products of opinion. To have truth one must remember history, the building blocks that have brought us to our current state. But we, here, in part because of our power and in part because we have been so isolated for so long, have been divorced from this act of accounting, reflection, and remembrance. Of course the world is ticked off with us. We are arrogant, and our vision of history is self-serving and thus globally divorced, untrue. We fancied ourselves leaders, when really, we’ve become the perpetrators of a self-serving amnesia. 4:30 p.m. Where Do We Go from Here? With this on my mind I watch Micah White and Chiara Ricciardone’s students take the stage. The students have been enrolled in Micah’s pilot course, How to Change the World: Theories and Practices. These kids are a perfect slice of America, representative across gender and race. Ricciardone and White oversee as the kids present their solutions for the world, a theoretic practice in activist campaigning. The repercussions of “campaigning” do not escape me here. Again I interpret this conversation on activism and the building of movements as a type of marketing. In his book, White argues for the power of memes as political warfare to be adopted by the Left. I see the tactical benefit of this but it rubs up against my basic beliefs, which may, in fact, be impossible to adhere to in the real world. Again it feels like a match between elite adversaries waging a war by marketing. I feel like I am being sold a vision, my idea of democracy and equality trapped again in the abstract battlefield
The Shared World of Adversaries
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