A Sign or Measure of Something: Silent Activism

by Jane Rendell

Index the fore-finger: so called because used in pointing; a piece of wood, metal, or the like, which serves as a pointer; esp. in scientific instruments, a pointer which moves along a graduated scale (or which is itself fixed while a graduated scale moves across its extremity) so as to indicate movements or measurements; the arm of a surveying instrument; an alidade; the hand of a clock or watch; also, the style or gnomon of a sun-dial; that which serves to direct or point to a particular fact or conclusion; a guiding principle; a sign, token, or indication of something; a table of contents prefixed to a book, a brief list or summary of the matters treated in it, an argument; also, a preface, prologue; an alphabetical list, placed (usually) at the end of a book, of the names, subjects, etc. occurring in it, with indication of the places in which they occur.1 1. (in a book or set of books) an alphabetical list of names, subjects, etc. with reference to the pages on which they are mentioned. 2. a sign or measure of something.2 absence PP. 21–2 then silence turns into a form of non-existence, into the experience of understanding one’s own presence as synonymous with. accumulation P. 24 this, and clustering, are most evident in Holub’s non-hierarchical public WORLD CONGRESSES OF THE MISSING THINGS (2014 and 2021). across PP. 63, 50 the channel between the city of Valletta and Manoel Island in Valletta, Malta, where, for TIMES OF DILEMMA (2018), għannejja performed scripted texts about their concerns with urban development and other pressing social matters in Maltese society, these two locations prompting the memory of a time when leprosy patients were quarantined on the island and a priest would hold his prayers for the hospital from across the channel; the borders of public and private properties, connecting citizens of diverse social backgrounds, which, in WE PARAPOM!, the parade of apple trees crosses. act, the emancipatory PP. 20, 113 consists of hearing silence, the not-being-heard, the experience of being left alone with a problem or having been forgotten; in the urban contexts to which she is invited, Holub identifies thorny or uncomfortable issues and proposes, in discussion and collaboration with the people concerned, to give them an aesthetic form (in the broadest possible sense). action PP. 112, 228 the concept of direct; extending the invitation for direct with a future imaginary. activism PP. 220, 113 the four well-trodden tenets— advocacy, subversion, facilitation and healing— are constantly embroiled in a convoluted tension between the artist’s desire for poetic forms of social resistance and the need for more direct approaches to imminent structural change; more focused on the search for an agreed and shared experience in a certain time and place than on the production of a particular object or the achievement of a specific goal. activism, silent PP. 164, 166, 113, 21 is neither silent nor merely activist; as a method of creating platforms for art to channel social change while keeping artistic independence and integrity; a vision that might even manage to resist the ideals of stupidity and futility which signify the time we live in; is deployed to broaden the spectrum of the possible, or simply revive confidence in the ability to transform reality; would lead to a slow but irrepressible spread of awareness of the values of solidarity, sharing, egalitarianism and respect for the environment (in the broadest sense, i.e. respect for living things); is not about being silent or secretive, but rather a mode of articulation—an expression of the encounter with discriminatory structures that do not provide a right to, nor a place for, rebuttal and reply unless adhering to the difference of Us and You, One and the Other, not equating a notion of the public arena and democracy with the notion of the majority. activistically P. 19 in hearing the concerns of others, the artistic approach starts off from the reception and subsequently transforms this itself into an act of participation, of sharing and attempting to proactively communicate this sharing to others. advocacy P. 220 with subversion, facilitation and healing, the four well-trodden tenets of activism.

“amateur” PP. 222, 220 Holub situates herself often as a dedicated; as non-expert, as an important intellectual figure of our times, someone who doesn’t know yet; following Edward Said: what today the intellectual ought to be, someone who considers that to be a thinking and concerned member of a society one is entitled to raise moral issues at the heart of even the most technical and professionalised activity as it involves one’s country, its power, its mode of interacting with its citizens as well as other societies. In addition, the intellectual’s spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thought.3 apple P. 50 trees, a European parade of, for WE PARAPOM! (2021–2025, European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025). approaches P. 282 direct, to imminent structural change. architecture P. 82 before the arrival of, a wild area next to the future Lake-City Aspern – the habitat of THE BLUE FROG SOCIETY. art PP. 20, 23, 224 the, begins with hearing and the awareness of the need to be heard; in public space, does not mean confronting a public with or familiarizing it with outside of an institutional framework, rather regarding itself as a public agenda; the work of, configured as a cluster of interventions and interactions over time to result in more dispersed forms of distribution. artist-curator P. 222 as intellectual amateur in the context of predetermined, inflexible or overprofessionalized processes, aiming to create a non-hierarchical setting for different kinds of questions to be asked of urban space, its residents and its future social use. authorities P. 112 public, although transparadiso’s projects are usually realized with the support of an art center, they aim to highlight what the public authorities neglect, conceal or cannot manage. bet PP. 69, 76 the winning—“Revaluation contributes to the prosperity of this quarter”—an urban intervention gilding a gully cover on the corner of Treskower Allee and Am Carlsgarten as part of ON THE SLIM PROBABILITY (2014). bets P. 76 these free, that symbolically revived the potential of these informal spaces for community for ON THE SLIM PROBABILITY (2014). between PP. 20, 206, 40, 230 artist and audience, Holub works on an art without spectators—not to keep her art hidden nor to keep it secret, but to reject the “uncanny” division of roles between the artist and audience; the city of Valletta and Manoel Island in Malta in TIMES OF DILEMMA (2018); the Hellbrunner Park and the Monatsschlössl (Folklore Museum) in JE SUIS ARABE— THE RIGHT TO POETRY (2015); Vienna and Istanbul in WHAT I AM PROUD OF; art and architecture, public and privat, and theory and practice the triple cross-roads of “critical spatial practices” as described by Jane Rendell.4 bonnets P. 40 golden, of gilded satellite dishes connected by CB radio and worn by Holub and Akram al Halabi for JE SUIS ARABE—A RIGHT TO POETRY (2015); traditionally an item of head-dress dating back to the 13th century that remains a part of women’s traditional costume in Salzburg and Upper Austria today; since 1975, a word for the Austrian air defense system.

BambooKazas PP. 226, 266 fold-out awnings, held together with bamboo supports—specially designed for THE THIRD WORLD CONGRESS OF THE MISSING THINGS, Eisteichsiedlung, Graz (2021), and donated to the district afterwards, for future events based on topics of conflict.

BAKCHICH, DU, POUR LAMPEDUSA P. 40 a garbage container transformed into an oversized savings box placed as a monumental sculpture placed right in front of the Big Mosque in the Medina in Sousse, in which residents of Sousse were called to donate 10% of their irregular income from the last three years—an equivalent percentage was spent on bribery.

BORDER, CALL AGAINST THE PP. 20, 206 for which people could shout out their concerns or demands across a river to the other bank using a giant megaphone.

284 borders PP. 163, 206 contravening between socalled “high” and “folk” culture for TIMES OF DILEMMA (2018). breathing P. 220 of, of porosity. collective P. 223 form of public exhibition— bringing amateurs and professionals together in the hope of creating new forms of as-yet unknown knowledge, and questioning the parameters of the authorship of public space through co-operative and post-autonomous modes of production. commonality P. 24 as a horizon of. commonplace P. 165 her understanding of, Holub’s supplement, as something far from mediocre. community P. 22 a silenced – a community that pretends to be the public in order to conceal the diversity and contradictions inherent in the concept.

“catchers, moment” P. 266 previously overlooked qualities of public space, reversing the dictum of efficiency that typifies urban planning by alerting us to the redundancy of things that were once functional, discovered by two dérives through the Eisteichsiedlung, a neighborhood with social housing from the 1960s, for THE THIRD WORLD CONGRESS OF THE MISSING THINGS (2021).

“Charter of Missing Things, The” P. 250 a list handed to the Mayor of Baltimore on the evening of 8 June and read out publicly during THE FIRST WORLD CONGRESS OF THE MISSING THINGS (2014).

CONFIDENTIALLY, HANDLED P. 178 in which Holub invited employees of the office furniture company Bene to stage a series of images of “under-the-table-activities.” control P. 220 and non-control, a fine balancing act. conversation P. 220 sometimes in, mostly not, standing or sitting. conversations P. 221 help structure temporary architecture or built spaces act as physical and conceptual frameworks towards what can be done. conviviality P. 220 some kind of relationality, intersectionality. co-operation P. 223 projects involve varying degrees of, with many different artists, architects, urbanists, curators and critics, where these multiple levels of social participation allow for divergent intellectual positions to co-exist, often in contradiction to one another. co-production P. 223 as part of a growing list—“conversational art” (Homi Bhabha), “dialogical art” (Grant Kester), “new genre public art” (Suzanne Lacy), “new situationism” (Claire Doherty), “connective aesthetics” (Suzi Gablik), “critical spatial practice” (Jane Rendell), “participatory art” (Claire Bishop), “social practice art” (Gregory Sholette), “communitybased practice” (Nato Thompson), “Arte Útil” (Tania Bruguera), “durational-specific” (Paul O’Neill/Dave Beech), “curatorial activism” (Maura Reilly), or “activist art”—that frames an illustrative history of the expansion and diversification of the range of co-productive practices in which multiple participants are involved. co-productivity P. 223 this approach has the aspiration of overcoming, transgressing, evading, renegotiating or bypassing the dominant status in many small gestural ways as part of an accumulation of positions, reactions and propositions.