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REPUBLICART MANIFESTO


REPUBLICart

"An effective concept of postmodern republicanism must be defined au milieu
on the basis of the lived experience of the global multitude." (Michael
Hardt/Antonio Negri)

Republic is not about reforming a form of state, nor countering the crisis
of the nation-state, nor transforming it into one or several super-states.
Our investigations focus on the concrete experiences of
non-representationist practices, the constituent activities particularly in
the movements against economic globalization. Yet, the art of res publica
does not imply acclaiming a new global community with revolutionary pathos.
It is about experimental forms of organizing, which develop in precarious
micro-situations for a limited period of time, testing new modes of
self-organization and interplays with other experiments. The "organizing
function" of art (Walter Benjamin) creates new spaces in the overlapping
zones of art practices, political activism and theory production.


rePUBLICart

"We are experiencing a politicization that is much more radical than any we
have known before, because it tends to dissolve the distinction between the
public and the private sphere - not in the sense of an invasion into the
private sphere by a unified public space, but rather in the sense of a
multiplication of radically new and different political spaces." (Ernesto
Laclau/Chantal Mouffe)

Public is neither preexistent substance nor immutable terrain. What counts
is not claiming or conceptualizing a single public sphere (whether it is one
exclusively for privileged classes or for an all encompassing meta-public),
but rather permanently constituting plural public spheres corresponding to
the many facets of the multitude: a multiplicity of public spheres, not
imagined statically, but rather as the  becomings of articulatory and
emancipatory practices.

Such space-time situations create the preconditions for mutually exchanging
different positions, for the different relating to the different. Their
boundaries are permeable, they themselves are neither exclusive-excluding,
nor inclusive-uniforming.

It is not a matter of consensually unifying public spheres, but rather of
conflictually opening them. It is not a matter of homogenization and total
transparency, but rather of permanent conflict, the constant renegotiation
of different positions. Public as a consuming voyeuristic figure is
unthinkable here; the reception of the spectacle is countered by producing
singular events, "public man" is countered by plural modes of
subjectification.


rePUBLICART

Public Art was already booming in the early 90s in manifold variations:
participatory practices, community arts, new genre public art, communication
guerilla, concrete interventions, activism, etc. introduced a shift in
artistic interests from questions of perception to social and political
activities. Temporary projects prevailed over objects, communities over
individual artists, participation over art consumption.

Beginning in the mid-90s, more and more critical voices accused these
political art practices of depoliticizing or even endorsing the
implementation of neoliberal expansion. Arguments given in support of this
included the dubious function of art projects in processes of gentrification
or in disguising the reduction of social state structures, the appropriation
of the projects as a means of tourism marketing on behalf of enhancing city
images, the instrumentalization of the difference of marginal themes and
groups, a return of the "artist-father" through the back door. As a partial
aspect/effect of this wave of criticism, there was a noticeable backlash in
mainstream art as well, a retreat into the old spaces, a return to issues of
perception and experience in reception.

Now, however, there are signs of a certain change again. What was lacking in
the practices of the 90s seems to be given in a new situation: being
embedded in a larger context, being cross-connected with social movements.
Joining the heterogeneous activities against economic globalization, the old
forms of intervention art are being transformed and new ones are emerging.
In the context of  current political movements, art is becoming public
again. Around the issues and activist strands of globalization, border
regimes and migration, the conditions are being created to get
"revolutionary machine, artistic machine and analytical machine working as
mutual components and gears of one another" (Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari).


Gerald Raunig, 07/08 2002
Translated by Aileen Derieg

http://republicart.net/manifesto.htm

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