There is an urgent need for us to free ourselves of scientific references and metaphors: to forge new paradigms which are instead ethico-aesthetic in inspiration. FÊlix Guattari, The Three Ecologies 1 Ever since the Enlightenment demoted God to a moral background radiation in the cosmos, or declared Him an outright fiction, the moderns have shifted the experience of the sublime from ethics to aesthetics. Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life 2 Traces of the Camp Let's assume for a moment that Giorgio Agamben's bold proposition that the camp is the matrix of the politica! space we live in today 3 is true. Then social scientists, sociologists, urban planners and architects are very much mistaken if they stili use the city as the model for life in the West. On the contrary, it is the camp that defines the measure of our cohabitation. One consequence of this is that politics are reduced to biopower: the subject of sovereign power is no longer the public civilian; instead, it is the zoè, life itself. Stated differently: for those who live in a camp, the pri\'ate zone and public space completely coincide. The separation between domestic life in a safe home base and politica! life in the polis evaporates, Indeed, within the logic of the camp, the Judeo-Christian and liberai tradition in which a free spirit may escape the body is renounced. Here, body and spirit, nature and culture are inextricably bound to each other. Politics accordingly becomes a form of eugenics or biopower that makes both the physical and mental body the subjects ofthe exercise ofpower. Camps do not originate in regular law, claims the Italian philosopher, but in a state of exception and martiallaw. lt is only because a state of war is declared that spaces can be generated in which the law - and even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations- can be put aside. According to Agamben, this is possible because these universal rights can stili only be enforced within the borders of the naj:ien state and then only for those who have obtained their cjti-ze'nship by birth (nation = nascere = birth). As we all know, the viability of the nation state is nowadays being threatÊned by globalization,
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multinational corporations and transnational politica! institutes. The growing numbers of migrants, nomads, stateless people and both economie and politica! refugees generated by this development puts a lot of pressure on the direct link between one's existence as a human being and as a civilian, between birth and nationality. This also means that the myth of the modern nation ~te is being debunked, gradually but quite certainly. The refugee drives the statesman to distraction, causing him, in a reactionary spasm, to constantly resort to neo-nationalist responses. At least this may bring him some electoral benefits, even as he himself often knows only too well that it is only a rhetorical gesture that is utterly unable to stop the human flood. The massive presence of the refugees, their bare appearance without paper 'clothes' (sans papiers), and therefore without citizenship, inevitably means the bankruptcy of the state . .<\t the very least, these 'stripped' people make every nation look into the abyss, at which point it is no longer capable of anything but a rather hysterical and spasmodic zesponse. In such circumstances, the iliegal alien may- paradoxically - be taken into custody to protect personal freedom. It will not come as a complete surprise that Agamben's analysis met with considerable indignation. His proclamation that modern society is a state of exception was not only considered a gross exaggeration, but also a trivialization of the degrading conditions of the Nazi camps. On the other hand, seven years after he first published his proposition in 1995, his defenders were able to produce pretty convincing arguments. The US response to the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York were presented as the ultimate proof of the state of exception that Agamben had proclaimed. The detention center in GuanUmamo Bay is of course a perfect example of a state that manages to sidestep its own regular rules oflaw. Was Agamben's portrayal of the bare man the work of a visionary, after ali? Did the Italian thinker present to us, as some artists have also previously done, a realistic vision of the future? Perhaps we may assign the same status to Homo Sacer- the book containing Agamben's frightening analysis of society - as that of George Orwell's 1984. That book predicted a bleak future as well, a dystopia from which it was hard to escape. And although Agamben, contrary to Orwell, doesn't write fiction but philosophy and, what's more, doesn't write about a possible future but claims to describe a present-day reality, both authors apply the same writ-
S ituationa l Ae sthet ics
ing strategy. They radically think through real, even empirically demonstrable tendencies, applying techniques that are similar to those used by artists, especially metaphor, exaggeration and sometimes hyperbole, to hold up a mirror to the world. In doing so, they reveal tendencies in society to which we were previously less sensitive. As yet, we are not living under the totalitarian regime of Big Brother, but the empirica! reality of the all-seeing camera and the NSA is a fact today nonetheless. Likewise, although the majority ofthe world's population may not (yet) live in the degrading circumstances of a camp, there are developments tending in that direction which are difficult to deny on an empirica! basis. Agamben's description of the impact of refugees is perhaps the most striking. Several democracies seem to unblushingly implement an asylum policy that seeks the very limits of human dignity and even comes close to ignoring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But also, the 'farce' that followed in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11, as Slavoj Zizek characterized the financial crisis of 2008, 4 seems to disseminate a state of exception in a qui te different manner. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk says it thusly: The only authority that stili is in a position to say: 'You must change your life!' is the global crisis, which - as everyone has been noticing for some time - has begun to send out its apostles. lts authority is real because it is based on something unimaginable ofwhich it is the harbinger: the global catastrophe. 5 In Europe, anyway, severa! nation states now find themselves in a sort of state of economie siege. Sovereign nations are being put under legal restraint by troikas laying down the law without any democratic mandate. (By the way, it is rather funny that serious institutions such as the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund an d the European Centrai bank are referred to as the 'troika,' which is also an amusement park ride.) Because nation states would rather shield those who cause the problem than help the real victims, they are leading their own subjects into a situation of generic insecurity. The state is showing its true colors, resolutely opting for having liquid asset{and in the process 'liquefying' its own politica!, electoral and legislative foundation. As the politica! right finally gets to live out its wet
The Ethics of Art
dream, the politicalleft is not offering much more than a consuiiier protection policy. Socialist parties are acting as consumer police, likewise resigning themselves to the only truth of the free market, which during the 1990s was converted into a financial merry-go-round or global casino. This perhaps doesn't take the entire politica! system within the walls ofthe camp, but it does position it within a regressive policy of a repressive liberalism which .J declares the individuai to be free but at the same time drives that same individuai into a corner by demolishing legal securities. Th~ achievements of the welfare state are casually being swept aside~ in favor ofthe one true reality ofDarwinist competition. The onlyÏ ideai labor agreement that governments stili wish to promote is that ofthefreelancer, that time-honored mercenary without ideol-; ogy or morals who is willing to wield a sword against any enemy, l as long as the pay is good. Like refugees, it is all but open season' on these freelancers. Governments are devaluating citizenship not so much by the massive denaturalization and denatiònalization described by Agamben, but rather by the dismantlement of state guarantees (including social security). They are stripping their citizens more and more, and bare bodies are gradually beginning to appear everywhere. These are the very real consequences of the transition from a continental Rhineland economy to the Anglo-Saxon market model. lt is a development in which politics will side-line itself more an d more in the long run, of course.)Vith the dismantlement of citizenship, the nation state is simultaneously diminishing its own poiitical grip on the 'human zoo.' Whether under pressure from 'Europe' or not, we are also seeing how nation states, with increasing ease, are exchanging their stable legal frameworks for a succession of fast-changing measures. Whereas originally the state - via the constitution and a rather rigid judsdiction - guaranteed security, safety and order, today it seems more like it is applying liquid laws. Rules are being discarded an d replaced by temporary 'made-to-measure' rules, rules that are fitted to the measure of constantly emerging crisis situations and that can be changed time and again. Primarily, measures are there to be taken in both meanings of the word, but they also serve to flexibly adjust the unit of measurement. It is not just the prevailing 'change management' in companies, schools and hospitals; even entire government policies are applying less and less legislation and rules, but ali the more measures. For example, Europe's dictate to Greece to include a mandatory
i.e.
Situational Aest hetic s
balanced budget in its constitution is in fact an intervention to melt down the constitution, the legai bedrock of the nation, into a wet and liquid mass. This forces a nation state to liquefy its own Iegislation. The constitution is subjugated to the economie situation, thereby reducing law and rule to units of measurement. That is indeed the real meaning of a measure, which in the permanent state of exception must be allowed to set the standard time and again. At the same time, in the name of the state of exception people are tortured, refugees are thrown back into the sea, social securities are dismantled, the sick are denied access to healthcare, the democratization of education is diminished and cultura! subsidies are abolished. After ali, these ali fall outside the calculable measure of repressive liberalism, which, in order to minimize its own risks, shifts ali responsibility to individuals who drift about rudderless. This system produces one big carousel of responsibilities that are continuously passed on. The continuing financial crisis seems to be steering us toward the brink of Agamben's state of exception. Governments may not yet be obliged to denationalize large parts of their own populations, but they are placing them in increasingly precarious conditions. We don't yet live in a camp, but the current working condi4 tions of often highly trained creative knowledge workers demon-\ strate, as Agamben proclaimed, that the boundary between private and public life is becoming blurred. The current post-Fordist working conditions make the distinction between the spheres of j home and work extremely vague. People who do mental work, such as those in the creative industry and the knowledge economy, can after ali work at any time, in any piace. They can hardly, leave their heads in the workplace when they go home. They have no qualms about switching on their computers in the middle of the night, and even on vacation they can be reached on their mobile phones. Especially the freelancer mentioned earlier had better stay permanently online, so as not to miss the next assignment. An d even if the knowledge worker has a fixed workplace, it is eas: ily converted into an ambience in which the distinction between informality and formality, between play and work, love and comradeship is difficult to maintain. The ideai workplace for this new breed of workers is not the factory or the sterile office with.strip lighting; it is the 'scene.'6 The urban art, fashion and desi.gfiscenes are the appropriate labor compounds where deals are made in trendy pubs, assignments are given in restaurants; where, in short,
private and public life fade into each other and where bare life itself is often exposed to the gaze of potential employers, clients or policymakers. Even those who are allergie to teamwork, parties, recep~: tions and other such hyper-social functions and even those who would rather stay home alone are confronted with a connection to the world through the Internet. Introverted, reclusive creative people and timid intellectuals nowadays find their way to the 'club' as well, albeit from the safety of their own homes. They are drawn to the screen, looking for even more knowledge and creativity, a serious debate, a new assignment or a casual chat. They seem to completely suppress their off-line social awkwardness in an almost obscene self-exposure. Nowadays we come across more bare lives in virtual reality than ever before in real life. At the very least, one can observe that private lives are being flung into public space with remarkable recklessness. This careless public life makes the Internaut vulnerable to any sovereign agent with either good or bad intentions. Anyone who objectifies his or her own actions, realizations, intimacies, medicai and psychic symptoms on the World Wide Web potentially surrenders to powers that may exercise external contro!. That power need not necessarily be exercised from a politica! body, whether legitimized or not, but lies within reach of anyone willing to click and look. Thus the bare body is included in social relations of mutuai arbitrariness and sometimes terror. What's more, the obligation to display one's body in public doesn't seem to be enforced from the outside or from above, as with Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, but seems to be everyone's free will. Agamben's camp, in short, displays the characteristics of a camp with voluntary inmates. These social phenomena perhaps do not fully prove Agamben right, but we might cautiously conclude that there are tendencies and traces in the current social and politicallandscape that point in the direction of the camp. Less elegantly put: they indicate a 'campanization' of our social models. Should these developments continue, it is not unimaginable that in due course we will find it hard to avoid the radicalism of Agamben's state of exception. lt is therefore crucial to know what to do so that we won't actually find ourselves in the dystopia he described. How should we deal with social tendencies that might lead to this? How, for instance, should we approach the blurring of the boundary between private and public life and what should we do about short-sighted
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S ituational Ae sthetics
l
politics that offer increasingly less (legai) security and citizenship? Also, what stand should we take with regard to governments who in their short-sightedness don't even bave the courage to face scientifically proven environmental scenarios? What kind of ethics is best suited to this new way of !ife? Based on the knowledge of the past, ethics concerns itself with avoiding evil in an as yet unknown future, in the hope of contributing to a good way of !ife. lt provides an answer to the question of how to live in a good way now, so that tomorrow will not bring evil, or ecological, mora!, social, politica! or economie ruin. Ethics points to a possible, absolute evil without that evil necessarily taking piace, or at least not to that degree. Rather, it serves as a safeguard against such a radically thought-through future of Badness. A correct moral science therefore depends upon that which we cannot actually really know, especially a conclusive empirica! proof ofthe future. Untilfuturology provides scientifically verifiable methods, ethics depends on artists, philosophers and other speculative minds to radically think this future through for us. In other words, it continues to depend on the power of imagination and fiction created in the present, based on the empirica! certainties and historical knowledge we presume are valid today. In order to design the rules of a good life, moral science therefore depends upon the persuasive power of images such as 'Big Brother,' the 'camp,' or, to take another example, 'The Matrix.' Ethical guidelines, in other words, lean heavily on fiction or on our imagination of the future. Furthermore, following or not following these guidelines works as a self-fulfilling or self-destroying prophecy. The design and the following of ethics in the present also help determine whether the philosopher or artist's vision of the future shortly becomes reality. This applies to what we are ab le to control ourselves, in any case. After all, ifa com et enters the atmosphere tomorrow, nobody knows what will come next, and therefore such an event is outside the realm of ethics. What is important is that both art and speculative thinking bave an impact on what passes for 'doing the right thing' today. This immediately reveals an important link between art and ethics, but it does not yet say anything about how art might shap.e·· ethics. Before discussing such a design of ethics, it seerns-useful to shine a light on a number of remarkable pathologies of a 'campunder-construction.'
It is little wonder that there is such an appetite for ethics nowadays. Leading politicians - mainly from conservative and/or neoliberal quarters - complain about the deterioration of values, an d argue for a new morale when faced with meaningless vandalism and senseless violence. When virile young men in the banlieus ofParis or in a London suburb let out their pent-up adrenalin in blind rage, the mass media and politicians are quick to mount their moral high horses. And while these politicians are often themselves responsible for dismantling the structures of social solidarity, for the 'un-democratization' of education, for the devaluation ofterms of employment and work security, they nevertheless don't hesitate to pointout the 'antisocial' behavior oftoday's youngsters and the lack of public spirit among some of the newcomers in our society. While governments are systematically reducing civil rights and undermining time-honored institutional securities, ·they paradoxically remind citizens of their obligations. The latter' -are supposed to be aware of their own responsibilities, take their fate into their own hands, demonstrate independence and entrepreneurial zest. Citizens are to voluntarily subscribe to lifelong learning processes in order to always stay up-to-date. After all, keeping a job is in the first piace their own individuai responsibility and not that of a patronizing government. Knowing full well that citizeris increasingly bave to rely on their own individuai bodies, policymakers and mass media urge them to lead healthy lives, impose smoking bans, declare war on obesity and prod people to exercise more. While inspections serve to fightthe excesses of the free market in the food chain, citizens are surrounded by 'àhèalth ~ morality and bioethics aimed at keeping thèir-mini:fS"afìa·ootltesin shape, and productive. After all, in a shrinking welfare statè, that body is increasingly dependent upon itself to secure its own quality of !ife, now and in the future. While a rigid environmental ethics is stili busy trying to get rid- of the pernicious side effects of the Industriai Revolution, there is already a pressing urge to deal with the new, additional effects of the post-industrial era via biopower. Stress, burnout, depression, binge eating and drinking are treated by therapists, sweated out in wellness treatments and battled with mediatized ideai pictures of the bodies of athletes. Environmental, social and mental ecology are in line bere. Or, as Félix Guattari says:
Th e Ethics of Art
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External Trauma and Global Hysteria
l
'"-
1t is quite simply wrong to regard action on the psyche,
Nature, culture, the body and the brain are therefore inextricably intertwined. Not only tbe old witticism that 'we are what we eat' holds true. We also eat what we tbink and we think wbat we smell, breathe, read, see and bear. Not to mention the effect of climate change on our brainstem or on the politica! systems we believe in. Biodiversity, interculturality, democratic pluralism, dissonant tones and polyphonic music may yet be more interrelated than we had thought up till now. One thing is certain, though, according to Guattari: nature, socius and psycbe are today exposed to the same principle: all tbree are thoroughly 'de-territorialized.' Post-industrial capitalism- or 'integrated world capitalism,' as h e calls it- displaces not only individuals and societies but also complete ecosystems. In relation to Agamben's state of exception, we can indeed say that the decoupling of individuals and citizensbip and the liquefying of legislation generates bottomlessness. Tbe devaluation of citizenship leads to an existence tbat both mentally and socio-politically is without a base. Because of this, people in the camp.unoer-construction are responsible only for themselves and their own survival. Tbe responsibility for one's immediate environment, social
context or circle becomes dysfunctional wben one basto continuously move, eitber mentally or physically, in arder to survive. Furtbermore, those wbo become disengaged from solidarity structures are at the mercy of the bere and now. Tbey have to resort to sbort-term thinking, as they are obliged to quickly, flexibly an dopportunistically anticipate constantly changing and unpredictable opportunities. Certainly for illegal aliens, but also for freelancers, a long-term perspective becomes difficult to achieve. Tbeir experience of time becomes tbat of an almost 'instantaneous time,' to quote the sociologist John Urry. 8 This at once clarifies how piace and time are related witbin post-industrial capitalism. Bottomlessness or de-territorialization generates time tbat is instantly experienced. Witb Mikhail Bakthin,9 we could !abel the chronotopy of the current, globally organized free-market economy as instant bottomlessness or bottomless \ instantaneity. Time and space sort of implode in tbe permanent bere-and-now culture, a global present. Witbin tbis chronotopy, pollution of the soil, social disintegration and mental bottomlessness, detachment disorder or borderline syndrome come together in a curious way. A first patbology of instant bottomlessness, or bottomless instantaneity, has to do with the fact that it flourisbes in a bypernetworked world, aided by bigb-tecb digitai information systems. In this world, a kind of 'timeless time' breaks free from the former 'clock time' as we know it from the industriai era.~This means tbat time, for tbe first time, goes 'beyond the feasible reà lrri of buman consciousness.' 10 One of the characteristics of sucb computer networks is that they have incredibly buge amounts of memory. Also, we know from our own personal computer that it stores indelible traces of all our activities, every query we ever made and all images we have ever uploaded. Tbis capacity in itself profoundly cbanges our relationsbip with time. Combined with techniques that make it possible to find and retrieve files very quickly, this has tbe effect that the World Wide Web is almost incapable offorgetting anytbing. Stored histories, dane deals, including recorded miscbief, may be catapulted back into the present in a matter of nanoseconds. Memory, in other words, can be continuously rèfreshed and the past can easily infiltrate tbe present. History itself thus becomes 'instantaneous.' The same goes for personal bistories. l'he possibilities of digitai memory make forgetting.s.emHmpossible. In other words, people can of course repress and forget
The Ethics of Art
Situational Aesthetics
the socius, and the environment as separate. Indeed, if we continue - as the media would have us do - to refuse squarely to confront the .simultaneous degradation of these three areas, we will in effect be acquiescing in a generai infantilization of opinion, a destruction and neutralization of democracy. We need to 'kick the habit' of sedative consumption, of television discourse in particular; we need to apprehend tbe world througb the intercbangeable lenses of tbe tbree ecologies .... More tban ever today, nature bas become inseparable from culture; and if we are to understand tbe interactions between ecosystems, the mecbanospbere, and tbe social an d individuai universes of reference, we bave to learn to tbink 'transversally.' As tbe waters ofVenice are invaded by monstrous, mutant algae, so our television screens are peopled and saturated by 'degenerate' images and utterances .... We live in a time wben it is not only animai species wbicb are disappearing; so too are tbe words, expressions, an d gestures of human solidarity.7
tbings, but tbere is aiways tbe possibiiity of retrieving their digitai biograpby, which others may bappiiy do as well. However, psychoanaiysis has taught us that repression and seiective amnesia are functionai defense mechanisms for dealing with traumatic experiences. Tbe potentiai of an instantiy retrievabie digitai Seifbiocks this functionaiity. Moreover, activities that were not experienced as traumatic in the past can yet become painfully confronting when they appear on-screen in tbe present. Our individuai waik tbrough life - quite literally in tbe case of tbe memory in GPS devices or mobile pbones- becomes increasingiy easy to register, trace, consuit and reconstruct. Combined witb tbe lifting of the separation between private and public appearance in botb work and tbe digitai domain mentioned earlier, a ,so-called external trauma emerges. Tbis is not a social trauma, such as an unforgettable event tbat baunts a collective. Nor does it bave tbe cbaracteristics of a psycbopatbology in whicb a traumatic incident constantly tbreatens to intrude upon an individuai's consciousness. In tbis case, tbe traumatic memory exists as a potential tbat is externaliy - digitaliy - recorded and can be reinserted into tbe present by botb tbe individuai and by anyone else. In sbort, not oniy bave our private lives become increasingly public, our digitai pasts are evoiving towards a public portfolio. Tbis turns everyone's past into a potentially irrepressible present. 1t is a possibility tbat needs a new etbics to reguiate botb tbe tecbnical and mentai management of our personailife history. Cali it the need for a techno-mental ecology. The second patbology bas to do witb tbe devaluation of ~abor security and the dismantling of state guarantees mentioned earlier, wbich make workers increasingiy dependent lipon real and virtuai networks. In a post-Fordist economy oftemporary employment contracts, fleeting assignments and projects in rapid succes-: siou, workers bave to stay constantly 'connected' in arder to sur-路 vive. Tbis byper-connectivity also maintains a cbronotopy of bottomiess instantaneity. Creative knowledge workers - especially if tbey are freelancers - always bave to rely on tbeir environment to acquire new projects. After eacb sent email tbey nervously await tbe answer. If it doesn't come witbin two days, they start to worry. Have tbey read my mail? Did sometbing go wrong? Or )V<)tse, ' did I say sometbing wrong? D id tbey bear a bad tbing aoout me or bave they dug it up via one of tbe social media? Is tbere perbaps a totally unfounded rumor about me doing tbe rounds in tbe
network? Was the latest job I did far tbem perhaps not as good as I tbougbt? And, worst of all, wbat if tbey bave found someone better tban me? Tbe project worker is in a permanent state of doubt. A deiay in answer could be a sign that tbe next assignment is not fortbcoming. Within this context they are always dependent on otbers and on what tbey tbink otbers tbink about them. Such working circumstances in turn are tbe ultimate breeding ground far a patbology tbat bad all but vanisbed from tbe medicai dictionary, i.e. bysteria. According to Slavoj Ziiek, bysteria is defined by tbe questi on: What kind of object am I in the eyes of the Other? lt is a question that confronts post-Fordist workers witb 1 their permanent state of being potentially interchangeable. Ali of a sudden, tbe creativity or knowledge tbey bave to offer turns out to be not ali tbat unique or authentic. Replaceability confronts creative people with their own potential futility or insignificance. Says Ziiek: 'Wbat the bysterical subject is unable to accept, what gives rise to an unbearable anxiety in bim, is tbe presentiment tbat tbe Otber(s) perceive bim in tbe passivity of bis Being, as an object to be exchanged ... .' 11 In globally operating networks, this patbology also spreads itself on a macroeconomic level. Project workers are not the only ones to fall into a more or less serious state of hysteria wben tbey miss aut on an assignment and discover tbat tbey are replaceable. Companies, educational institutes, researcb groups, bospitals or路 art organizations also tend to become bysterical wben tbey don't get an assignment, wben grant applications are turned down or wben investors casually take tbeir money elsewhere. Even nation states, wben confronted witb multinationals tbat tbreaten to move tbeir operation to a country wbere labor is cbeap, often start to rule and regulate in bysterical mode. Tbis explains tbeir preference for measures, as noted earlier. And, as is common knowledge by now, tbe stilllingering f矛nancial crisis of 2008 can ~ be blamed on tbe bysteria of tbe speculating multitudes, wbicb seem impossible to reassure. Within global networks, individuals and organizations as well as nation states bave become largely dependent upon an environment that is obscure and difficuit to judge. Wbile we systematicaliy aliow fossil materials, plants and animai species to disappear, laboring un der tbe delusian that tbey are somebow replaceable, we bumans ali sbare a fear tbat tomorrow we may be replaced by someone else. Perbaps tbis is one of tbe, most important results of a market competitiveness tbat is being
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introduced as an overall social model, and even as a philosophy of life. In such a view of society, everyone is replaceable, which generates a constant dread of potential futility. O n a global scale this results in hysterical subjects who suffer from tunnel vision and short-term thinking and who act blindly. The contemporary predilection for slowness, slow food, slow living, slow time, slow art may well be the ethical response to this. However, deceleration as such may bring down the fever somewhat but it doesn't cure the cause of the disease. In a hyper-connected world in which market competition is the model for social interaction, the hysteria infection sneaks in with the fear of replaceability. Resistance can therefore only be built up by cutting oneself completely or partially out of the web, but that is another story. Point is that over the past fĂŹfteen years a growing number of artists have begun to feel increasingly ill at ease within the described chronotopy of bottomless instantaneity in a camp-like atmosphere with peculiar pathologies. More and more of them are therefore looking for satisfying alternatives, which takes them on an artistic path that follows ever more ethical routes.
The Ethics of Art It is remarkable how, after the boom of community art of the 1970s and the recession of the 1980s, the socially engaged artist is currently making a comeback. Artistic initiatives are clearly interested again in social issues. But we also see a resurgence of ecologica! projects with an artistic slant (or vice versa), including the 'slow art' mentioned earlier. There are even artists getting involved in the ecology of our brain, such as the American Warren Neidich. The Third Paradise by the Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, the ecologica! manifesto by the Belgian artist Benjamin Verdonck, the Bfauwe Huis ('Blue House') by the Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk - these are all direct responses to social and mental malfunctions or environmental problems. In addition, more and more artists are launching direct politica! attacks, such as Jonas Staal and Hans van Houwelingen in the Netherlands or Oliver Ressler in Austria. Nowadays, radical politics are fashionable themes for biennials and theatre festivals. Between classic categories ~).!eh as 'Artists from A to Z,' 'Photography,' 'Design,' etc., the'sllelves in the bookshop of London's Tate Modern also offer a theoretical school: 'Criticai Social Theory.' In short, on many levels - eco-
The Ethics of Art
logica!, politica!, social, mental - artistic engagement is making a glorious comeback and in some cases it has even become commercially successful. On the other hand, there is some resistance from critics, artists and other art professionals. Perhaps not by coincidence, a large part of the professional art world that was making waves in the 1980s and early 1990s dismisses the new engagement in particular. Young artists are judged as naive or downright 'politically correct'; they bargain away the artisti c autonomy acquired in the past, and some are even accused of 'eco-fascism.' Read Benjamin Verdonck's story in this book and you get a taste of the criticism that socially engaged artists are confronted with these days. In the aversion and resistance against the new engagement, the weapon of artistic autonomy is often wielded. However, if an artist freely decides to make ecologica!, politica! or social work, such attacks are unconvincing. On the contrary, this criticism in the name of autonomy shows little respect for the engaged artist's autonomy. In other words, it is a criticism that contradicts itself in defending its view. Artistic autonomy nowadays means after all that individuai artists or an artists' collective can determine both their own subject and medium. As the German philosopher Boris Groys states more precisely: It is not until one recognises that art has no originai relationship to reality that one tries to establish such a relationship in an artificial way. In doing so, art reaches its climax as art, because its relation to reality is artificially chosen or established. And so one engages oneself with something that one is not, and thus perfects oneself as a free artistP A more convincing criticism is the one that questions the intention and effectiveness of this new engagement. Is the displayed activism deployed to further a personal career, or to really save the world? Does the artist get involved in social, politica! or ecologica! issues because they 'sell' nowadays and policymakers are more willing to subsidize such projects? Or is the artist's action indeed based on integrity and an intrinsic conviction? However, even when this last question can be answered affirmatively, the tricky question remains whether the applied artistic actions use the right strategy and method to effectively make a difference.
Situational Aesthet i cs
Paradoxically, socially engaged projects often turn out to in fact supporting and even strengthening the regimes they intend to fightY The question is whether art, as a socially safely-delineated realm of fiction, is a suitable domain at all for dealing with ethical issues. Isn't politica!, ecologica! or social engagement automatically stripped of all claims to reality and thereby socially neutralized as soon as it takes place within the walls of a museum, on a stage or on the pages of a novel? Artists who make their statements outside the walls of institutions may perhaps also be applauded, but the social position from which they speak stili robs them of any realism. The enthusiastic members of the audience - wholeheartedly agreeing with the exposure ofthe abuse in question- have had their therapeutic sublimation and can now return to the order of the day. They enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake after watching an artistic documentary full of starved bodies, severed limbs and blown-up houses; Documenta XI was a fine example of how easily these things can be combined. Aren't there many ruthless and exploitative big capitalists who collect a few socially engaged works in order to sooth their own conscience? And, how many artists refuse to sell their activist artifacts when they know that the money they are being offered isn't all that 'clean'? In short, ethical art is riddled with ambivalences and deficiencies. The ethics of the artistic statement doesn't always match the everyday practice of the artist or curator proclaiming that same ethics. Such inconsistencies, however, take nothing away from the sincere efforts of many other artists. They do seem to indicate that artists who have ethical aspirations have to surmount many obstacles if they wish to be credible and have any effect at all. But perhaps the ethical power of artists lies elsewhere. The potential for real change, instead ofbeing part of explicit ecologica!, politica! or social statements, is sometimes lost there. As proposed earlier, art definitely has a relation with ethics. Exactly because they work with fiction, composers, directors, choreographers, image makers an d writers can radically think through an empirically unverifiable future and make it already be felt, seen and l}~rd in the here and now. Topically significant artists are v.enr1ntimate with the world around them, enabling them to combine memory and imagination in an affective vision of the future. The emphatic
persuasive power of art works - rather than scientific facts - may be more decisive in defining the design of a contemporary ethics. That's how this exposition began. Take, for instance, Al Gore's An I~convenien: Truth. Was ~t the scientific facts that were so persuas1ve or was 1t the dramat1c pathos with which the whole thing was presented that seemed to make prominent politicians waver for a moment there? Apart from its direct ecologica!, social or politica! engagement and apart from its sense of empathy (which, by the way, has been copied by the mass media for some time now) art, since the modern era, has offered a quite specific, artistic ethics that might indeed be fruitful in countering the foreshadowing of Agamben's state of exception. In the first place, the art world has been characterized since the 'late 19th century by an ethics of singularity, even an almost dogmatic belief in its power. Unique and exceptional ideas, whether from an individuai or a collective, are considered fertile soil for transgression, transposition and modern art production. Such a doxa also implies the right to a multitude of expressions and artistic subjects and to a kaleidoscope of speculative, coexisting views of the world. Simply put: just about any artist has the right, and is even obliged, to design their own ethics, an auto-normative dispositive within which they set their own norms, possibilities and boundaries. This means that, since the modern era, the art world has declared that all claims to a universal ethical system of rules are implausible. Every artist has the right to posit an individuai system of rules, but its universality reaches no further than their own creative life and ability. A good art work, but also the life of an artist who lives in a good way, is judged on the possibility that it autonomously sets itself a framework that is independent ofuniversal rules, truths, et cetera. Or, paradoxically but more correctly: the only universal ethical rule in the modern art world is that a universal ethics for making an art work or realising an. image cannot and should not exist. , Ethical rules therefore can only be situational. This refers only partially to the situation ethics designed by Joseph Fletcher. 14 This American priest specifically said that any commandment of God may be violated as long as it serves Love (for Him). Fletcher's moral science states that decisions should depend upon the situation one finds oneself in and not upon some immutable Law. Such an ethics, however, easily gives rise to opportunistic practices, as long as the situation 'approves' of them. Apart from the fact that
The Ethic s of Art
Situational Aesthetics
f
1
l" l
the situational ethics of the art world intended h ere has a secular character it is also rather different from that of Fletcher in that its core ~eaning is certainly not to adapt oneself to situations. On the contrary, like the Situationists in the 1950s and 1960s, artists constantly produce situations. In the more precise words of the Viennese philosopher Gerald Raunig: 'The situation does not . exclude coincidence, but tries to regain it.' 15 In other words, artists test the me ntal, social an d ecologica! reality for its imaginary potential. They don't concern themselves with measuring, quantifying, categorizing, systematizing and representing a reality (as potestas) like science does, but with performatively constructing and actively taking ~har~e of the situation or temporal-spatial context they occupy. S1tuat10nal ethics therefore implies the 'active formation of an environment' 16 which presumes a free interaction with social, politica! and ecologica! circumstances. This is exactly what Guattari, quoted earlier, means with his 'e~h足 ico-aesthetic inspiration.' The constant de-territorialization or mstant liquidity caused by integrated world capitalism can no lo~g足 er be understood or countered by scientific formulas that w1sh to 'determine' things again or by paradigms that make us hark back in a reactionary fashion to the 'laws of nature' (as quite a lot of the romantic and reactionary rhetoric of ecologica! mov_ements tends to do). As opposed to a science that tries to explam things in terms of cause and effect and tries to describe them i~ a linear fashion and calculate them in a rational way, Guattan places his hope on a nonlinear, affective, transversal and viscer~l knowledge for taking the ethical temperature. However, de-te~n足 torialization can only be countered effectively by an alternative process of de-territorialization. It is in generating .new situations that artists break with what was up till then cons1dered nor~al. Whereas nowadays it is considered 'natural' to express everythmg in measurable figures and cost-effectiveness - rendering natures and cultures comparable in quantitative terms and making th~m interchangeable and thus permanently liquid - artists create situations that de-territorialize cultures (and, very rarely, natures) by making them internally lively (and therefore dyna~ic). ~r,1ists c~e足 ate !ife in creative repetitions, rehearsals and exe~c1ses-11iat c.o~~lst of constantly retelling, rearticulating, reconfigunng and revlSltm.g fixed habits or self-evident cultures. In other words, through theu
The Ethics of Art
de-territ~rialization, artists nourish and differentiate a culture, whereas mtegrated world ~apitalism, as pointed out by Guattari, ?nly replaces .a. culture w1th a homogeneous one of permanent mte:cha~geab1~1ty ~nd liquidity. Creative capitalism generates the lllus10n of m~~1te changeability within a dispositive of rigid ~ame.ness. 9uant1t1es and figures can indeed be combined in mfimte va.nety, but in doing so they hide the status quo of the mathematlcal formulae behind them. Whereas artists make the ~ental, c~ltur~l ~nd biologica! diversity grow in quality by cont~n_u?us~y 1m~gm.m~ and affirming new singularities and subjectlv~tles m a Vltahstlc manner, scientific rationalism and universallsm reduces this diversity to monotonous categories in name of unconditional exchangeability. . The situational process approach to a culture by artists descnbed here means that they don't have to concern themselves exp.licitly with ecolo?ical issues in order to inspire an ecologica! eth1cs. At least, that 1s how we may interpret Guattari: Process, which I here counterpose to system and structure, seeks to grasp existence in the very act of its constitution, definition, and deterritorialization, it is a process. of 'setting into being', instituted by subjects of expressiVe ensembles which break with their totalizing fram.e an? set .to w?rk on their own account... . Ecologica! prax1s m1ght, m th1s light, be defined as a search to identify in each partiallocus of existence the potential vectors of subjectification and singularisation .... At the heart of a~l eco~ogical praxes is an a-signifying rupture, in a context m wh1ch the catalysts of existential change are present, but lack expressive support from the enunciative assemblage which frames them. In the absence of ecologica! praxis, those catalysts remain inactive and tend towards inconsistency; they produce anxiety, guilt, other forms of psychopathological repetition. But when expressive rupture takes piace, repetition becomes a pr~cess of creative assemblages, forging new incorporea! objects, abstract machines and universes ofvalueY How can we interpret the above within the context of the
pres~nt exposition? Uno: the situational ethics of the modern art
prax1s can serve as a model for an ecology that intervenes in Situational Ae sthetics
situations in a vital manner, thus producing new situations itself. This also presupposes that these ethics apply artisti c imagination or fiction to think outside traditional economie and ideologica! models - to 'deterritorialize' them, as Guattari would put it. Secundo: an ecologica! praxis can apply artistic means of expression to design this ethics. Only then will ecologica! principles become effectively meaningful and influential. Within Guattari's logic, deterritorialization always also presupposes a movement of reterritorialization. Modern art especially carries within it the historically accumulated expertise to topple cultural habits, traditions and canons and then consolidate newcustoms or cultural assemblages by grounding them. For this re-grounding exercise, art makes use of, among other things, expressive means such as an exhibition, a novel, a musical concert, a theatre or dance performance. Through public performances, art attempts to generate social support in order to then establish a cultural foun18 dation beneath its own idiosyncrasy. As noted elsewhere, the artfulness of art since the modern era specifically has consisted of generating a broader collective basis for a singular, sometimes highly idiosyncratic idea. The point of this is not to conquer a market or gather votes, but to time and again initiate a processlike movement from a singular ideato a collectiveness, be it large or small. It is important to note h ere that this movement is a completely different one from that of mass media, which, by contrast, try to determine the greatest common denominator within the collective in order to ventilate and capitalize it once more. The success of artistic 'collectivization,' on the contrary, depends on the performativity that can be developed to institute a hitherto unknown situation or event (deterritorialization) and to then stabilize it, give it a collective ground, or, in Guattari's terms, to reterritorialize it. In such a movement, the singular 'institutioning' is converted into a communal 'con-stitutioning,' a more or less collectively supported culture. The artistic ethics rests precisely on this continuous zigzagging between positing and constituting, singularity and collectivity, subjectification and socialization, between unique art and generally supported culture. At t~e same time, within this movement, artists create the opportumty to rewrite and rethink themselves whilst staying loyal to the,.wselves. To summarize: the situational ethics of art applies--ifiiagination to produce new situations (or new singularity and subjectivity). It then uses expressive means to disseminate these among the
The Ethic s of Art
collective. Any ethics that states that we must change our lives fundamentally in order to protect ourselves against the camp or other ~ysto~ia_s can make good use of the knowledge and skills that th1s art1st1c moral science has been accumulating for over a century now. . The strength of the situational ethics outlined here para?oxically also rests on the fact that, since the modern era, art~st~ have been well acquainted with the Agamben camp from the ms1de out. Not only are they 'hands-on' experts, they also feel ~ompletely at h?me within the conditions of the state of exceptron. The machmery deployed by integrated world capitalism to ~eclare a state of siege - the already mentioned denationalizat~on,_ 'de-naturalization,' the hybridization of private and public llfe.' m short: 'campanization' - has, paradoxically, been used by artrsts _throu~hout the modern era, only then from their singular potentlal: artlsts prefer to work as self-proclaimed freelancers so they can _c_ontrol_a ~it~a~ion _autonomously; they are wary of any type. of ~1t1zensh~p 1f 1t 1mp1Ies that their artistic activities might ?e d1sm1ssed as state art' or be suspected of having a nationalIst slant. And, ever since the Romantic era, artists have always roade attempts to piace themselves outside the world, or in any case abo_ve the existing, norma! order. In other words, they have voluntanly entered the camp in order to subject their bodies and minds to their own artistic will. Or, as Dutch art theorist Camiel van Winkel describes the autonomous artistic domain: A camp is a semi-autonomous settlement of a temporary an d often mobile nature. It is a piace with a distinct status and its own rules. It is situated in a non-urban environment while maintaining a sort of model relatĂŹo~s.hip to the_ city. A camp may be used as a facility for t~a~~m?, exerc1se and learning or for discipline and 1mt1atwn. It can be a work camp, a prison camp, a caravan camp or a refugee camp. I would like to preserve ali these connotations for the metaphor of autonomous art as a camp. Given the hybrid artist DNA contemporary art is a cross between a romantic caravan ' camp, a modernist work camp and a beaux-arts training ca~p. Despite its relative autonomy, the camp conducts a llvely exchange with the world around it. Ali kinds of commodities, raw materials and resources are sent to the
Situational Aesthetics
camp or are imported by artists. Artists are merchants, hagglers, collectors and thieves. 19 While Agamben's 'campanization' of society started, enlightened artists armed themselves by establishing their own camp. There, they took the initiative to experiment with life as outlaws, but also as mercenaries, thieves and charlatans who steal fr~m their own cultura! embedding to create something monstrously new out of it. Also, artists bave sin ce long willfully abolished the division between private and public life and even the one between body and mind. Within the auto-normative camp, the culture that artists generate is their second nature; they manipulate their own nature into culture, very much like dancers or actors do with their bodies, actors or singers with their voices, visual artists with their retina! capacity and writers with their visceral powers. In sbort, they take their own bodies as the starting point for artistic transgression. Within this artistic chronotopy, time is determined by the rhythm of the beating heart, and space by tbe physical and mentallimits of the body. The artistic chronotopy is simply called 'body.' The physical an? materia! .embedding of creations determine the rules for a v1sceral eth1cs and ecology. The action undertaken by artists from within the camp against the biopower noted earlier is called biopolitical self-care (epimeleia heautou), to paraphrase Miche! Foucault. 20 Their over a century-long stay in the training camp offers artĂŹsts the chance to speak about any subject spontaneously and triumphantly. 21 The nature and limits of the artist's body determine the outlines of the menta!, social an d environmental ecology that can be charted within a situation. Against the chronotopy of bottomless instantaneity, the artists' camp posits the personal lime that the body always needs in order to create its own foundation or bottom. lt is the time that is needed to be able to narrate oneself, so that artists can build and maintain their own identity. Por good reason, the American sociologist Richard Sennett calls such a narrative a value that is criticai in connecting events over time, in accumulating experiences. 22 Narration is helpful in (re)integrating abrupt interruptions into a consistent story. Only those who can tell and retell themselves and their piace in the world, only those ~ho take the time for this and take up their own piace and thefĂŠby relate and define themselves with regard to their social and natura! environment are capable of generating a 'sustainable Self.' Opposite
The Ethics of Art
~h~ above de~cri?ed external trauma of the sudden memory that mterrupts dally hfe througb digitai media, artists posit a narrative ~emory in which sudden events can be reinterpreted; literally, be giV~n a piace, a bottom. Together with the situation, artists create the1r own spatial-temporal momentum, an intense event in which they can ground themselves. l~ this ~ense, present-day artists are fighting Agamben's camp Wlth thetr own encampment. Because of the social weakness of artists, this may be a fight of David against Goliath or Don Qu~xote against the windmills, but, to paraphrase stdterdljk, mankmd can only achieve progress by aiming for tbe im23 possible. Ever since the modern era, an d perhaps already long before then;artists bave been doing exactly that. Their bodies are therefi5fel.ĂŹmque1y trained to fight the present-day realism doxa of the only human camp that is possible - because it's calculable - from within.
O\
Situational Aesthetics