Online Symposium / Walkingwith the enemy: Affirmation as subversion in the postsocialist, postmodern, and post-truth eras Online Symposium / Walking with the enemy: Affirmation as subver
Trang 1Online Symposium / Walking
with the enemy: Affirmation
as subversion in the
(post)socialist, postmodern,
and post-truth eras
Online Symposium / Walking with the enemy: Affirmation as
subversion in the (post)socialist, postmodern, and
post-truth eras
WALKING WITH THE E
Online Symposium on 2
Register here to attend the Symposiu
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Online Symposium / Walking with the enemy: Affirmation as sub https://vizlaboratory.org/online-symposium-walking-with-the-en
Trang 2DATE
Friday, November 20th, 18:00-21:00 UTC+2 (Athens)
WEB LINKS (FOR REGISTRATION)
‣
https://vizlaboratory.org/online-symposium-walking-with-the- enemy-affirmation-as-subversion-in-the-postsocialist-postmodern-and-post-truth-eras/
‣ https://www.onassis.org/news/walking-enemy-online-symposium-viz-laboratory-visual-culture
‣ https://www.facebook.com/events/657034154839630
THEME
In 1982, the Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach declared “All art is subject to political manipulation… except for that which speaks the language of this same manipulation.” Accused of being “enemies of the people” for appropriating imagery and rhetoric of contrasting
totalitarian regimes, Laibach was censored and banned in Slovenia (then part of socialist Yugoslavia) But their work became emblematic of
a new mode of political engagement In the years that have followed, artists and activists as varied as Franco & Eva Mattes, Nikhil Chopra, Santiago Sierra, The Yes Men and numerous others have echoed the group’s tactics of performing in character and freely mixing totalitarian, nationalist, militarist, and corporate symbols Described as “radically ambiguous” for the audacious mixture, this aesthetic has mostly been adapted by countercultural artists and activists opposing the dominant status quo or ideology But in recent years this approach has been taken
up by groups advancing far right, Nazi, and neo-nationalist ideas, too The tactic of rejecting political manipulation by reclaiming its language seems particularly evocative in the post-truth era, just as it was in the times of late socialism
This symposium attempts to address art practices that have embraced mimicry rather than opposition as a subversive political strategy Going
by the names of “overidentification,” “subversive affirmation,” or
“exacerbated mimesis,” this tactic appropriates both the spectacle and stereotypes of socio-political power and by doing so exposes its animus, contradictions, and will to power These modes of artistic engagement have strong associations with the ideological regimes of late socialism, but this kind of “walking with the enemy” has become one of the key
Trang 3artistic responses (both a symptom and counter-offensive) to our own era of ideological confusion and authoritarian resurgence
Organized by Gediminas Gasparavičius, Kostis Stafylakis, Maia
Toteva, and Tom Williams
Presented by The Onassis Foundation (Athens) and Viz Laboratory for Visual Culture (Athens)
PROGRAM
PART I
Welcome Subversive Affirmation: Historical and Critical Perspectives (5-10 min)
Maia Toteva, Texas Tech University, United States
Introduction Revisionist Histories (5-10 min)
Gediminas Gasparavičius, University of Akron, United States
The Second NSK Folk Art Biennale: A Case Study in Subversive
Affirmation (20-25 min)
Conor McGrady, Burren College of Art, Ireland
A Spectre is Haunting Spectre: Laibach, the Right and the Spectre of Ultra-Identification (20-25 min)
Alexei Monroe, Burren College of Art, Ireland
Discussion (20 min)
BREAK (15 MINUTES)
PART II
Introduction Disseminations and (Mis)Interpretations (5-10 min)
Tom Williams, Belmont University, United States
Over-Identification and Race in Contemporary South African Political Art and Culture (20-25 min)
Matthias Pauwels, North-West University, South Africa
Hypermimesis, Unsettling Mimesis and Non-Cathartic Subversion in Post-Digital Peripheries: Reflections on the 6th Athens Biennale (20-25
Trang 4Kostis Stafylakis, VizLaboratory for Visual Culture, Greece
Discussion (20 min)
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
CONOR MCGRADY
Conor McGrady is an artist and Dean of Academic Affairs at Burren College of Art He has exhibited internationally, with one-person
exhibitions in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago and Zagreb, Croatia Group exhibitions include the 2002 Whitney Biennial in New York, The Jerusalem Show VII: Fractures (Qalandiya International Biennale), Biennale of Contemporary Art, D-0 Ark Underground, Sarajevo-Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina Editor of Curated Spaces in the journal
Radical History Review, his writing has appeared in Ruminations on Violence (Waveland Press, 2007) State of Emergence (Plottner Verlag,
2011), State in Time (Drustvo NSK Informativni Center, Ljubljana, 2012), Manchevski Monograph (Ars Lamina, Macedonia, 2015)
and The Design of Frontier Spaces (Ashgate/Routledge, 2015) He was a
member of the organizing committee for the Second NSK Folk Art
Biennale in 2016
ALEXEI MONROE
Alexei Monroe is Research Fellow at Burren College of Art, Ireland He
is author of the book Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK and of many other texts addressing the Slovenian art collective Neue
Slowenische Kunst (NSK) He edited the book State of Emergence: A Documentary of the First NSK Citizens’ Congress He has written widely
on industrial music and culture and was co-editor of the book Test Dept: Total State Machine and author of the monograph Autopsia:
Thanatopolis Other research interests include the cultural history of the stag, electronic music and dystopian science-fiction His work has
appeared in Contemporary Music Review, Central Europe Review,
Kinoeye, Maska, The Wire, New Moment, Third Text, Trebuchet
Magazine and many other publications
MATTHIAS PAUWELS
Matthias Pauwels is a Research Fellow at North West University, South Africa His recent publications focus on the entanglement of aesthetics and politics in contemporary art practices, popular protest movements and radical decolonial politics in South Africa He ran the Dutch
theoretical-activist group BAVO together with Gideon Boie from 2002
Trang 5to 2012 BAVO’s key publications include the monograph Too Active to Act: Cultural Activism after the End of History and the edited volume Cultural Activism Today: The Art of Over-Identification With BAVO, he conducted several artivist projects that subversively affirm neoliberal and neoconservative tendencies within contemporary art, architecture and urban planning
KOSTIS STAFYLAKIS
Kostis Stafylakis is an art theorist and visual artist with a Phd in
Political Science He has taught “Research-based Art” at the Unit of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Athens School of Fine Arts, and “Fine Arts” and “Art theory” as adjunct at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras He was co-curator of the 6th Athens Biennale
ANTI, the 4th Athens Biennale AGORA, Weasel Dance at
Goethe-Institut Athen, “Twisting C(r)ash” at the Batiment d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, “The Suspension of Litanies” at ViZ Laboratory for Visual
Culture, and more He is the author of various essays on the intersection between contemporary art and the Political, focusing on the adventures
of the mimetic in contemporary art He is Artistic Director of ViZ
Laboratory for Visual Culture With Vana Kostayola, he runs ΚavecS (www.kavecs.com), an artistic experiment with mimetic subversion In
2017, KavecS presented a retrospective of their work at the Neue
Ravensburger Kunstverein Some of his recent artistic participations include Enter: New Commissions, Onassis 2020, Kultursymposium Weimar 2019, the “Festival of Democracy”, Geneva (2017), Waiting for the Barbarians, Athens Biennale (2017), “Omonoia” 5th to 6th Athens Biennial (2016), 1st NSK Biennial of Folk Art (2014), Hell as Pavillion, Palais de Tokyo (2013), Truth is Concrete, Steirischer Herbst, Graz
(2012), 3d Athens Biennale (2011), Media Impact at the 4th Moscow Biennial (2011)
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS AND DISCUSSANTS
GEDIMINAS GASPARAVIČIUS
Gediminas Gasparavičius is associate professor of art history at
University of Akron in the United States His research focuses on
collective and participatory art in Eastern Europe in late socialism and early postsocialism His writings appeared in Public Art Dialogue, MIT Press publications, and elsewhere He curated and co-curated several exhibitions focusing on political aspects of contemporary art at venues
in Ohio, New York, and Lithuania He is co-founder and vice president
of Rubicon Cinema, a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to
Trang 6screening and exploration of experimental film and moving-image art in Akron, Ohio
MAIA TOTEVA
Maia Toteva is an art historian whose research and scholarship focus on the intersections of art, ideology, language, and identity in Russia and Eastern Europe Her most recent projects place the Russian conceptual and post-conceptual movements in a global context She has published and presented on the work of the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, on
conceptual art in Russia and in the US, and on pedagogical issues She is
an assistant professor at Texas Tech University in the United States
TOM WILLIAMS
Tom Williams is currently teaching at Belmont University He has also taught at Vanderbilt University, the Museum of Modern Art, and
Watkins College of Art Since 2013, he has co-organized an arts program with prisoners on death row in Tennessee He has co-organized a
number of exhibitions related to this prison work, including Life After Death and Elsewhere at Apexart in New York City His publications have appeared in Grey Room, Art in America, and others venues
Image on cover:
Conor McGrady
Domain
Oil on canvas
153 x 183cm
2007
Courtesy of the artist