The topic of discussion at this symposium might be of an interest to the 
members of Film-Philosophy forum.



These are some of the texts that were presented at the just-concluded 
symposium on POLITICS OF THE IMAGE at Staedelschule Art Academy in 
Frankfurt, which I attended.  Most of these texts were presented there.

Hito Steyerl presented some of her work and thoughts, but this is one of her 
earlier essays.  Migrant-rights group Kanak Attak was represented by friend 
and ally Sandy K (who is moving to NY this week!)-- the text here is from 
some other members of Kanak Attak.  Finally French group Intermittent 
Spectacle could not make it at last minute, due to breaking event/agitations 
in France-- but we have included a text from them.

My own text (on behalf of Visible) is just stream-of-consciousness thoughts 
that were my lecture notes-- not a coherent essay, but some elements may be 
useful for tactical media activists.

Naeem Mohaiemen, Visible Collective
http://www.disappearedinamerica.org
http://www.shobak.org

Jeronimo Voss, Staedelschule
Flo Maak, Staedelschule
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. Voss, Maak, Ostoya (Frankfurt): Opening Statement for POLITICS OF THE 
IMAGE Symposium
2. Hito Steyerl: Articulation of Protest
3. Die Weisse Blatt (Vienna) : Manifesto for Emancipative
Production of Images
4. Intermittent Spectacle (Paris): Social Rights & the Appropriation of 
Public Spaces
5. Jeronimo Voss (Frankfurt/Berlin): Neo-DANDYism
6. Naeem Mohaiemen (New York/Dhaka): Sarah Jessica Parker, Beard is Making 
Ruckus, & Random Thoughts
7. Kanak Attak: Speaking of Autonomy of Migration...

Introduction to:
Politics of the Image  -  Symposium on the Boundaries of the Visible,
6th and 7th of January,
Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main.

Our aim in this conference is to speak about Politics of the Image.
There for we invited different cultural producers from various
professions. We very much welcome:
Linda Bilda and Kristina Haider from vienna, representing the
magazine-project „Die weiße Blatt". A Magazine dealing with politics,
art, economy, emancipatoriy critique and feminism
(www.dieweisseblatt.org).
Berlin based artist Judith Hopf. Who mostly works in collective forms
of production using Video, Drawing, Performance and Installation.
Graphic designer Sandy Kaltenborn as well from Berlin producing images
for posters, books, cards and other print materials in different
political contexts and campaigns, such as "Kein Mensch ist Illegal"
and "Kanak Attak" (www.image-shift.net).
Naeem Mohaiemen, filmmaker and digital-media activist from New York
and Dhaka.  He is (besides many other projects) director of a New York
based collective called VISIBLE dealing with intersection of Migration
Paranoia, Islamophobia, National Security Panic and questions of
Nation-State Identity in North America and Europe
(www.disappearedinamerica.org, www.shobak.org).
Hito Steyerl, documentary filmmaker and author living in Berlin. She
published filmic and written essays centred around questions of
globalisation, racism and postcolonial critique and is involved in the
movement of feminist migrants and women of colour in Germany.

We would like to begin with a short introduction to explain our
understanding of the subject.
First of all we of course consider every image to be political,
meaning that it always stands in a specific context of certain
political power play. These reigning systems of visibility are
constituted through, among other things, the implicitness of
surveillance, normative body images and the reproduction of racist and
sexist stereotypes as well as the aesthetizised self-representations
of corporations, nations and politics in general.
We see the term „Politics of the Image" or "Image Politics" as a
conceptual response to different projects and discourses that occurred
in the last years and which deal with the rise of every-day image
production and image confrontation. Meanwhile most of scientific
disciplines are busy reflecting their own production of images. There
are tons of academic conferences discussing for example the imagery of
medicine, the role of the pixel in biology or the image as source
within sociology.

Whether in these debates image-supported production of truth is
critically reflected shall not be discussed here. But regarding these
projects from a critical perspective certain mistrust appears. What is
most disturbing about all these discussions is (especially in the
german context of visual studies or "Bildwissenschaften") the
dominating question of "What is an Image?"
These ontological attempts of defining the image tends to fade out
political determinations and instrumentalisations within visual
culture; and they barely support any critical image production.
There is as well a reason to be dissatisfied with the Politics of the
Image on the site of visual arts. Exhibitions with politically engaged
titles and contributions (like the last Documenta or the Utopia
Station) have increased within the last years. But what occurs all-to
often is discomfort with different curatorial concepts as well as with
certain artistic strategies. Certain projects become suspect of using
the political sign loaded with social meaning purely as
overaesthetizised abstract radicalism and "radical chic".

A discussion around Image Politics is rather focused on the function
of images and on developing criteria and tools for an emancipatory
image practice.
This debate might be connected to the discussion around image-science
when we ask our selves how the relation between image, text and spoken
word has changed in nowadays times. But our perspective is rather
focused on specific contemporary practices and the conditions of
production, presentation and reception that are inscribed in these images.
- Who produces images for whom?
- How are they functionalised and when do they get out of control?
- How far can its reception be controlled at all?
- How do processes of inclusion/exclusion and outsider/insider work
through images?
Politics of the Image deals with the practice of production as well as
with its reception. A discussion on Image Politics neither can be
fulfilled in debates around image science nor art theory. It should
rather be understood as a discussion beyond fixed discourses like
"autonomous art" vs. "applied image production".

The Artworld is not the priviliged space for this discussion, that's
why so many different positions are gathered here today. Nevertheless
the potentials and limits of the institution of art should be
discussed. Visual artists have always dealt with the constitution of
the visible. They are visual pioneers with the supposedly longest
tradition and are also, as a result of their profession deemed
`experts in seeing'. Since modernity at the latest, the boundaries of
the visible have been of special interest to artistic production.
These boundaries form areas where the represented can no longer be
named without difficulty and where identification can be fallable – so
to speak these areas can be seen as a contact point of artists and
political activists as it concerns both.
Taking a perspective on these edges of visibility is of very
importance for the question: what can `be seen' at all under the
present circumstances and which counter-imagery should it be
confronted by, if any?

Artistic practice has the potential to support a discussion around
politics of the image with relevant contributions.       But at the same
time specific limits of artistic production challenge the attempt to
put this potential into practice.
Regarding this we see two main problems: At first it becomes
increasingly obvious that the art world is more and more structured by
economic criteria. This goes along with a lack of influence of
critical discourses accompanying the evaluation of contemporary art as
well as the eventisation of public exhibition spaces. Furthermore
artistic gestures are basic homages to highly individualistic concepts
of subjectivity. Individualism has to be seen as a critical statement
against collective disciplinary pressure. But why should we as artist
think that our radical individualism would be of any resistant power
when these ideas of life nowadays fit so well with the societal
mainstream of highly individualised subjects. We have to take into
consideration that in certain cases the myth of the starving,
unattached, autonomous artist of modernity rather functions as a
glamorous and legitimizing pendant to the trend for highly insecure
living conditions caused by neoliberal reforms that deregulate social
security systems. These tendencies of individualisation seem to make
any emancipatory organisation nearly impossible - How can we as image
producers face this critically?
We think a discussion on the potentials and limits of strategic
cultural representations focussing on visual image productions might
help answering this question.

Flo Maak, Anna Ostoya, Jeronimo Voß
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hito Steyerl
The Articulation of Protest
[09_2002]
Every articulation is a montage of various elements - voices, images,
colors, passions or dogmas - within a certain period of time and with
a certain expanse in space. The significance of the articulated
moments depends on this. They only make sense within this articulation
and depending on their position. So how is protest articulated? What
does it articulate and what articulates it?

The articulation of protest has two levels: on the one hand, it
indicates finding a language for protest, the vocalization, the
verbalization or the visualization of political protest. On the other,
however, this combination of concepts also designates the structure or
internal organization of protest movements. In other words, there are
two different kinds of concatenations of different elements: one is at
the level of symbols, the other at the level of political forces. The
dynamic of desiring and refusal, attraction and repulsion, the
contradiction and the convergence of different elements unfolds at
both levels. In relation to protest, the question of articulation
applies to the organization of its expression - but also the
expression of its organization.

Naturally, protest movements are articulated at many levels: at the
level of their programs, demands, self-obligations, manifestos and
actions. This also involves montage - in the form of inclusions and
exclusions based on subject matter, priorities and blind spots. In
addition, though, protest movements are also articulated as
concatenations or conjunctions of different interest groups, NGOs,
political parties, associations, individuals or groups. Alliances,
coalitions, fractions, feuds or even indifference are articulated in
this structure. At the political level as well, there is also a form
of montage, combinations of interests, organized in a grammar of the
political that reinvents itself again and again. At this level,
articulation designates the form of the internal organization of
protest movements. According to which rules, though, is this montage
organized? Who does it organize with whom, through whom, and in which
way?
And what does this mean for globalization-critical articulations -
both at the level of the organization of its expression and at the
level of the expression of its organization? How are global
conjunctions repre-sented? How are different protest movements
mediated with one another? Are they placed next to one another, in
other words simply added together, or related to one another in some
other way? What is the image of a protest movement? Is it the sum of
the heads of speakers from the individual groups added together? Is it
pictures of confrontations and marches? Is it new forms of depiction?
Is it the reflection of forms of a protest movement? Or the invention
of new relations between individual elements of political linkages?
With these thoughts about articulation, I refer to a very specific
field of theory, namely the theory of montage or film cuts. This is
also because the thinking about art and politics together is usually
treated in the field of political theory, and art often appears as its
ornament. What happens, though, if we conversely relate a reflection
about a form of artistic production, namely the theory of montage, to
the field of politics? In other words, how is the political field
edited, and which political significance could be derived from this
form of articulation?

Chains of Production
I would like to discuss these issues on the basis of two film segments
- and to address their implicit or explicit political thinking based
on the form of their articulation. The films will be compared from a
very specific perspective: both contain a sequence, in which the
conditions of their own articulation are addressed. Both of these
sequences present the chains of production and production procedures,
through which these films were made. And on the basis of the
self-reflexive discussion of their manner of
producing political significance, the creation of chains and montages
of aesthetic forms and political demands, I would like to explain the
political implications of forms of montage.

The first segment is from the film Showdown in Seattle, produced in
1999 by the Independent Media Center Seattle, broadcast by Deep Dish
Television. The second segment is from a film by Godard/Mieville from
1975 entitled Ici et Ailleurs. Both deal with transnational and
international circumstances of political articulation: Showdown in
Seattle documents the protests against the WTO negotiations in Seattle
and the internal articulation of these protests as the heterogeneous
combination of diverse interests. The theme of Ici et Ailleurs, on the
other hand, are the meanderings of French solidarity with Palestine in
the 70s in particular, and a radical critique of the poses, stagings
and counterproductive linkages of emanci-pation in general. The two
films are not really comparable as such - the first is a quickly
produced utility document that functions in the register of
counter-information. Ici et Ailleurs, on the other hand, mirrors a
long and even embarrassing process of reflection. Information is not
in the foreground there, but rather the analysis of its organization
and staging. The comparison of the two films is therefore not to be
read as a statement on the films per se, but rather illuminates only
one particular aspect, namely their self-reflection on their own
specific forms of articulation.

Showdown in Seattle
The film Showdown in Seattle is an impassioned documentation of the
protests revolving around the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999.1 The
days of protest and their events are edited in chronological form. At
the same time, the developments on the street are grounded with
background information about the work of the WTO. Numerous short
statements are given by a multitude of speakers from the most diverse
political groups, especially unions, but also indigenous groups and
farmers' organizations. The film (which consists of five half-hour
single parts) is extraordinarily stirring and kept in the style of a
conventional reportage. Along with this, there is a notion of filmic
space-time, which could be described in Benjamin's terms as homogenous
and empty, organized by chronological sequences and uniform spaces.
Toward the end of the two and a half-hour film series, there is a
segment, in which the viewer is taken on a tour through the production
site of the film, the studio set up in Seattle. What is seen there is
impres-sive. The entire film was shot and edited during the period of
the protests. A half-hour program was broadcast every evening. This
requires a considerable logistic effort, and the internal organization
of the Indymedia office accordingly does not look principally
different from a commercial TV broadcaster. We see how pictures from
countless video cameras come into the studio, how they are viewed, how
useable sections are excerpted, how they are edited into another shot,
and so forth. Various media are listed, in which and through which
publicizing is carried out, such as fax, telephone, WWW, satellite,
etc. We see how the work of organizing information, in other words
pictures and sound, is conducted: there is a video desk, production
plans, etc. What is presented is the portrayal of a chain of
production of information, or more precisely in the definition of the
producers: counter-information, which is negatively defined by its
distance to the information from the corporate media criticized for
their one-sidedness. What this involves, then, is a mirror-image
replica of the conventional production of information and
representation with all its hierarchies, a faithful reproduction of
the corporate media's manner of production - only apparently for a
different purpose.

This different purpose is described with many metaphors: get the word
across, get the message across, getting the truth out, getting images
out. What is to be disseminated is counter-information that is
described as truth. The ultimate instance that is invoked here is the
voice of the people, and this voice is to be heard. It is conceived as
the unity of differences, different political groups, and it sounds
within the resonator of a filmic space-time, the homogeneity of which
is never called into question.

Yet we must not only ask ourselves how this voice of the people is
articulated and organized, but also what this voice of the people is
supposed to be at all. In Showdown in Seattle, this expression is used
without any problematization: as the addition of voices of individual
speakers from protest groups, NGOs, unions, etc. Their demands and
positions are articulated across broad segments of the film - in the
form of "talking heads". Because the form of the shots is the same,
the positions are standardized and thus made comparable. At the level
of the standardized conventional language of form, the different
state-ments are thus transformed into a chain of formal equivalencies,
which adds the political demands together in the same way that
pictures and sounds are strung together in the conventional chain of
montage in the media chain of production. In this way, the form is
completely analogous to the language of form used by the criticized
corporate media, only the content is different, namely an additive
compila-tion of voices resulting in the voice of the people when taken
together. When all of these articulations are added together, what
comes out as the sum is the voice of the people - regardless of the
fact that the different political demands sometimes radically
contradict one another, such as those from environmen-talists and
unions, different minorities, feminist groups, etc., and it is not at
all clear how these demands can be mediated. What takes the place of
this missing mediation is only a filmic and political addition - of
shots, statements and positions - and an aesthetic form of
concatenation, which takes over the organiza-tional principles of its
adversary unquestioningly.2

In the second film, on the other hand, this method of the mere
addition of demands resulting together in the "voice of the people" is
severely criticized - along with the concept of the voice of the
people itself.
Ici et Ailleurs
The directors, or rather the editors of the film Ici et Ailleurs3,
Godard and Mieville, take a radically critical position with respect
to the terms of the popular. Their film consists of a self-critique of
a self-produced film fragment. The collective Dziga Vertov
(Godard/Morin) shot a commissioned film on the PLO in 1970. The
heroizing propaganda film that blusters about the people's battle was
called "Until Victory" and was never finished. It consisted of several
parts with titles such as: the armed battle, political work, the will
of the people, the extended war - until victory. It showed battle
training, scenes of exercise and shooting, and scenes of PLO
agitation, formally in an almost senseless chain of equivalencies, in
which every image, as it later proved, is forced into the
anti-imperialistic fantasy. Four years later, Godard and Mieville
inspect the material more closely again. They note that parts of the
statements of PLO adherents were never translated or were staged to
begin with. They reflect on the stagings and the blatant lies of the
material - but most of all on their own participation in this, in the
way they organized the pictures and sound. They ask: How did the
adjuring formula of the "voice of the people" function here as
populist noise to eliminate contradictions? What does it mean to edit
the Internationale into any and every picture, rather like the way
butter is smeared on bread? Which political and aesthetic notions are
added together under the pretext of the "voice of the people"? Why did
this equation not work? In general, Godard/Mieville arrive at the
conclusion: the additive "and" of the montage, with which they edit
one picture onto another, is not an innocent one and certainly not
unproblematic.
Today the film is shockingly up to date, but not in the sense of
offering a position on the Middle East conflict. On the contrary, it
is the problematizing of the concepts and patterns, in which conflicts
and solidarity are abridged to binary oppositions of betrayal or
loyalty and reduced to unproblematic additions and pseudo-causalities,
that makes it so topical. For what if the model of addition is wrong?
Or if the additive "and" does not represent an addition, but rather
grounds a subtraction, a division or no relation at all? Specifically,
what if the "and" in this "here and elsewhere", in this France and
Palestine does not represent an addition, but rather a subtraction?4
What if two political movements not only do not join,
but actually hinder, contradict, ignore or even mutually exclude one
another? What if it should be "or" rather than "and", or "because" or
"instead of"? And then what does an empty phrase like "the will of the
people" mean?
Transposed to a political level, the questions are thus: On which
basis can we even draw a political comparison between different
positions or establish equivalencies or even alliances? What is even
made comparable at all? What is added together, edited together, and
which differences and opposites are leveled for the sake of
establishing a chain of equivalencies? What if this "and" of political
montage is functionalized, specifically for the sake of a populist
mobilization? And what does this question mean for the articulation of
protest today, if nationalists, protectionists, anti-Semites,
conspiracy theorists, Nazis, religious groups and reactionaries all
line up in the chain of equivalencies with no problem at
anti-globalization demos? Is this a simple case of the principle of
unproblematic addition, a blind "and", that presumes that if
sufficient numbers of different interests are added up, at some point
the sum will be the people?
Godard and Mieville do not relate their critique solely to the level
of political articulation, in other words the expression of internal
organization, but specifically also to the organization of its
expression. Both are very closely connected. An essential component of
this problematic issue is found in how pictures and sounds are
organized, edited and arranged. A Fordist articulation organized
according to the principles of mass culture will blindly reproduce the
templates of its masters, according to their thesis, so it has to be
cut off and problematized. This is also the reason why Godard/Mieville
are concerned with the chain of production of pictures and sound, but
in comparison with Indymedia, they choose an entirely different scene
- they show a crowd of people holding pictures, wandering past a
camera as though on a conveyor belt and pushing each other aside at
the same time. A row of people carrying pictures of the "battle" is
linked together by machine following the logic of the assembly line
and camera mechanics. Here Godard/Mieville translate the temporal
arrangement of the film images into a spatial arrangement. What
becomes evident here are chains of pictures that do not run one after
the other, but rather are shown at the same time. They place the
pictures next to one another and shift their framing into the focus of
attention. What is revealed is the principle of their concatenation.
What appears in the montage as an often invisible addition is
problematized in this way and set in relation to the logic of machine
production. This reflection on the chain of production of pictures and
sounds in this sequence makes it possible to think about the
conditions of representation on film altogether. The montage results
within an industrial system of pictures and sounds, whose
concatenation is organized from the start - just as the principle of
the production sequence from Showdown in Seattle is marked by its
assumption of conventional schemata of production.
In contrast, Godard/Mieville ask: how do the pictures hang on the
chain, how are they chained together, what organizes their
articulation, and which political significances are generated in this
way? Here we see an experimental situation of concatenation, in which
pictures are relationally organized. Pictures and sounds from Nazi
Germany, Palestine, Latin America, Viet Nam and other places are mixed
wildly together - and added with a number of folk songs or songs that
invoke the people from right-wing and left-wing contexts. First of
all, this much is evident, this results in the impression that the
pictures naturally attain their significance through their
concatenation. But secondly, and this is much more important, we see
that impossible concatenations occur: pictures from the concentration
camp and Vnceremos songs, Hitler's voice and a picture of My Lai,
Hitler's voice and a picture of Golda Meir, My Lai and Lenin. It
becomes clear that the basis of this voice of the people, which we
hear in its diverse articulations and at the level of which the
experiment takes place, is in fact not a basis for creating
equivalencies, but instead brings up the radical political
contradictions that it is striving to cover up. It generates sharp
discrepancies within the silent coercion - as Adorno would say - of
the identity relation-ship. It effects contraries instead of
equations, and beyond the contraries even sheer dread - everything
except an unproblematic addition of political desire. For what this
populist chain of equivalencies mainly displays at this point is the
void that it is structured around, the empty inclusivist AND that just
keeps blindly adding and adding outside the realm of all political
criteria.
In summary we can say that the principle of the voice of the people
assumes an entirely different role in the two films. Although it is
the organizing principle in Seattle, the principle that constitutes
the gaze, it is never problematized itself. The voice of the people
functions here like a blind spot, a lacuna, which constitutes the
entire field of the visible, according to Lacan, but only becomes
visible itself as a kind of cover. It organizes the chain of
equivalencies without allowing breaks and conceals that its political
objective does not go beyond an unquestioned notion of inclusivity.
The voice of the people is thus simultaneously the organizing
principle of both a concatenation and a suppression. Yet what does it
suppress? In an extreme case we can say that the empty topos of the
voice of the people only covers up a lacuna, specifically the lacuna
of the question of the political measures and goals that are supposed
to be legitimized by invoking the people.
So what are the prospects for the articulation of a protest movement
based on the model of an "and" - as though inclusion at any cost were
its primary goal? In relation to what is the political concatenation
organized? Why actually? Which goals and criteria have to be
formulated - even if they might not be so popular? And does there not
have to be a much more radical critique of the articulation of
ideology using pictures and sounds? Does not a conventional form mean
a mimetic clinging to the conditions that are to be critiqued, a
populist form of blind faith in the power of the addition of arbitrary
desires? Is it not therefore sometimes better to break the chains,
than to network everyone with everyone else at all costs?
Addition or Exponentiation
So what turns a movement into an oppositional one? For there are many
movements that call themselves protest movements, which should be
called reactionary, if not outright fascist, or which at least include
such elements easily. The movements this involves are those in which
existing conditions are radicalized in breathless transgression,
scattering fragmented identities like bone splinters along the way.
The energy of the movement glides seamlessly from one element to the
next - traversing the homogeneous empty time like a wave moving
through the crowd. Images, sounds and positions are linked without
reflection in the movement of blind inclusion. A tremendous dynamic
unfolds in these figures - only to leave everything as it was.
Which movement of political montage then results in an oppositional
articulation - instead of a mere addition of elements for the sake of
reproducing the status quo? Or to phrase the question differently:
Which montage between two images/elements could be imagined, that
would result in something different between and outside these two,
which would not represent a compromise, but would instead belong to a
different order - roughly the way someone might tenaciously pound two
dull stones together to create a spark in the darkness? Whether this
spark, which one could also call the spark of the political, can be
created at all is a question of this articulation.
Thanks to Peter Grabher / kinoki for calling attention to the films.
Translated by Aileen Derieg

1Showdown in Seattle, Deep Dish Television. USA 1999. 150 min.
2This is not intended to imply that there is any film that could take
over this work of mediation. However, a film could insist that this
cannot be replaced by simple adjurations.
3Ici et Ailleurs, Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Mieville, France 1975.
52 min.
4And what does "Here and Elsewhere" mean now, if synagogues are
burning in France?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Manifesto for an Emancipative Production of Images
By Die Weisse Blatt (Vienna)


… it is not possible not to see …

The field of visual perception today is the most important space of
production for ideologies, myths and ideas. Aesthetic representations
are open for ideological inputs while image-campaigns, films and
visual strategies are working to invade our perception, to mould and
to manipulate it.

We therefore regard it important to strengthen the emancipative
intentions of visual thinking processes (Beuys).

Images are consumed
Images in large quantities are consumed via TV - channels, movies and
the electronic and other media and the responsible industries, in
their efforts to survey the human mind, reach perfection and
virtuosity of manipulation to approximate the subject i. e. (that is)
the consumer to the object (that is) the product and to create
similarity between those two. The object – e.g. appearing in form of
an image – shall project itself onto the subject and a similar process
will happen to the subject. As a result the consumer starts to
perceive him/herself as a merchandize. Subject and object of
consumption begin to resemble each other efforts to halt this process
weaken continuously. And thus issues of taste become existentially
crucial.

Our capacity to understand the world and society we live in are more
and more defined by the above mentioned processes and have to be
undermined because the gradual turning of the subject into an object
dissolves their human qualities. In other words: in the transforming
process towards becoming an object the legitimacy to be a human being
is at stake in its core and we can state a struggle for life.

The commercials continue even when radios and TV – sets are turned off
The merchandized images produced by film-, media-, entertainment- and
commercial-industries have something in common: they make promises and
set up terms.
The promises are well known: in buying and consuming a product the
subject's lusts, fun, happiness as well as his or her desires, drives,
guilt, minority complexes and hurt feelings etc. shall become satisfied.
The terms are even better known: to own a product the subject must
work and the more urgent the desire or the longer the satisfaction
should last (minutes: a chocolate bar, month: an i-pod, years: a car)
the longer and harder the subject must work to attain those goods and
the longer the real desires have to be harnessed to be able to
transform and bind them into labour. Ha ha.

Destroyed Love
The drives evoked by images cannot be compensated by images. Product
values boosted by images cannot fulfil the desire for an intensely
loving sexuality and a creativity that means a self-reliant life.
Never. The drive of destruction that among other things serves to
destroy unbearable, degrading and immoral circumstances of insults and
guilt is pacified by consumption.
The circular course to boost the needs that can be compensated by
goods with ever more needs into infinity and to create more of that
out of the resource of subdued drives transforms human beings into
ever unsatisfied subjects thus raising the acceptability of unpleasant
and annoying social demands such as more disagreeable labour terms and
more subordination.

Images suggest action
Every image suggests action and consensual options of representation
thrust aside all alternatives. In this sense the image functions as an
ideological tool to secure the thought of the majority within the
dominant order. As Marx states the dominant thoughts are the thoughts
of the dominant.
The objectification of such thought becomes materially manifest in
movies, photos, computer games etc. and thus achieves a dimension of
the real.
The misery of every day life and the suffering evoked by it is muted
by non-representation/imagelessness. Thus the problem becomes
inconceivable and appears to be irrevocable.
Image production as a medium of ideology must not be underestimated
especially since the permanent presence in daily life; the easy access
and the replacement of reality facilitate the progressive
internalisation of convenient messages. Despite the illusionary
superiority of consumers to commercial messages and the media in
general these industries are constantly creating a usually
subconscious and therefore uncontrollable anxiousness to miss
something important.

Are you the solution or part of the problem?
We wish to encourage an effort for a politically emancipative approach
towards image production that extends the above analysis. We thereby
point towards the production of images not in the sense of art but in
the sense of concrete, progressive, controversial image policy
intervening against the highly funded dominance of merchandized
images. Commercial ads aren't art either. The following request are
directed to persons who tackle the problem of image policy critically
and in an emancipative context or wish to do so in the future.
For a social political emancipative image policy the following request
appear essential to us:

1. Art as such cannot carry out the task of an emancipative image
policy all by itself since it is already available for diverse social
functions see for instance image and distinction surplus (Flick
Collection), refinement of taste, opening up of new perspectives of
perception, neutralization of socially deviate subject positions etc.
It is a matter of taking emancipation in our own hands instead of
saddling the task on art.

2. Requesting an image production that takes a pluralistic approach
towards representational options that dissolves both in formal aspects
and in aspects of contents clichés and role models and finds ways of
representing those aspects that are almost never represented – which
means ruling out the blind rehearsals of repertoires of such like as
the drawn fist, the rebellious child, the picturing of flags or flag
processions in public space etc.

3. Opening up a communicative space to facilitate discussions and
analysis beyond subjective and culturally preformed dispositions of
taste in opposing for instance favourite colour with clear assertion
Raising the ability of communicative exchange in matters of
representing and communicating images, depose the subject idolatry
often found within informal hierarchies.

4. Assembling a toolbox containing tools of analysis as well as tools
of production for purposes of emancipative image production. Recording
and promoting successful image policy campaigns and strategies
5. Achieving autonomous image production by linking it to inutilizable
contents whereby the image denies its convertibility into a merchandize.

6. Creating images putting up ethical and categorical issues without
as often in the left presuming upon ones moral superiority in the mere
postulation since that would be unproductive and remain an ambiguous
method.

7. Envisioning corporate identity for political groups as a
possibility for transparent representation of one's self and finding
one's self as a productive process to enlarge (self) knowledge which
may well lead to non corporate identity.

8. Using irony and self-criticism to lay open mechanisms of image
production.

9. Attacking the permanent presence of visual manipulation by
conformist image production by means of juristic measures and a
broadened discussion on the totalising subsumption effected by
commercial ads in public space and on television actually reducing
individual personal private freedom (visual terror).

10. Visual information on the manipulative character and
(in)credibility of images that are able to transport their
manipulative intentions much more unguarded than any text.

We are convinced of the basic success that a social intervention in an
emancipative campaign will obtain because even the most advanced
producers of image policies, even if they work for the industries
depend for their inspirations just as well on ideas from outside those
industries resulting from socially generated cultural achievements
such as trends, subcultures and innovative cooperative accomplishments.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
GlobalProject / Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires d'Ile de
France
Spectacle Inside the State and Out
Social Rights and the Appropriation of Public Spaces: The Battles of
the French Intermittents
[2004]
The strength of a political movement is found not only in its ability
to reach a concrete objective. These kinds of successes depend mostly
on the economy of power relations. The strength of a movement reveals
itself more in its potential for raising new questions and providing
new answers. And this much is certain: the battles of the precariously
employed French cultural workers have raised new questions demanding
new answers.1
A new regulation has been in effect in France since 1 January 2004.
The agreement provides for the cancellation or reduction of the claims
of hundreds of thousands of unemployed people. Those that this applies
to are the so-called intermittents du spectacle, "independent"
cultural workers. Prior to this there was a separate regulation for
them, the so-called "cultural exception". Under this regulation,
cultural workers in between two productions with no income were paid
from the unemployment fund – under the condition (which was already
difficult for many to fulfill) that they could prove 507 hours of
working time for a total of twelve months. This resulted in a
twelve-month claim to unemployment benefits. However, since businesses
and three unions signed the "Protocol Unedic" on a new regulation of
unemployment insurance last summer, the regulation above is no longer
valid since the beginning of this year. Now the same number of working
hours has to be proven in eleven months, and then unemployment
benefits can only be claimed for eight months. This means that 35% of
those who could previously claim benefits are no longer entitled to them.
"We are performers, interpreters, technicians. We are involved in the
production of theater plays, dance and circus performances, concerts,
records, documentary and feature films, TV shows, Reality-TV, the
evening news and advertising. We are behind the camera and in front of
it, on stage and backstage, we are on the street, in classrooms,
prisons and hospitals. The structures we work in range from non-profit
projects to entertainment corporations listed on the stockmarket. As
participants in both art and industry, we are subject to a double
flexibility: flexible working hours and flexible wages. The regulation
on the insurance and unemployment of the Intermittents du spectacle
originally arose from the need to secure a continuous income and
cushion the discontinuity of employment situations. The regulation
made it possible to flexibly arrange production and ensure the
mobility of wage-dependent persons in between different projects,
sectors and employments."2
And ... action!
The Intermittents resisted with demonstrations and spectacular
occupation and strike actions throughout the summer of 2003. Numerous
cultural events had to be canceled or were turned into discussion
forums; one evening, activists even succeeded in interrupting the
broadcast of the evening news from the public television channel
France 2. Organized in local coordinations networked throughout the
country, the Intermittents raise the question of precarious
employment, but also beyond the realm of cultural production. Their
battles are about more than just the demand for payment. They attack
not only a legal or economic relationship of subordination with
regards to a public or private employer. Instead, they show us that it
is a matter of attacking the foundations of the production of public
goods such as education and culture, along with the institutional
procedures and utilization technologies that go with
1Revised and expanded translation of an article from global. Global
Project – Paris: L'Europe est à nous, special edition for the ESF
2003. The Italian newspaper is linked with a transnational Internet
project: www.globalproject.info.
2Quotations in italics are from the declarations of the Intermittents
et Précaires d'Ile de France. Cf. Jungle World 26 and 32/2003.
http://www.republicart.net 1
them: the funding of culture, the distribution of access rights, and
finally the production of consumer-subjectivities through schools,
cultural industries and media.
"For us, this conflict led to a more in-depth reflection about our
professions. In an era when the utilization of labor is increasingly
based on individuals bringing themselves into their work with all
their subjective resources, and in which the space afforded to this
subjectivity is increasingly limited and formatted, this battle
represents an act of resistance: we need to reappropriate the sense of
our work at a personal and collective level."
The cultural and communication industries are not just new fields of
capitalist accumulation, but they also produce desires, beliefs and
emotions in the control societies. Here the Intermittents occupy a
nexus between these industries, the production of the public sphere
and the consumers of the various cultural industries. In principle, it
is no longer possible to speak of a "special position of culture":
first of all, because cultural practices have long since become an
integral component of capitalist production. Secondly, because the
production of emotions precedes material production. The
consumer-subjectivity produced through marketing, advertising,
communication policies and artistic practice is a fundamental
precondition for the cultural industry, and yet it cannot be limited
to utilization by the cultural industry. The unemployment "reform"
with its implicit promotion of corporate art accelerates the
standardization and norming of this generalization of cultural
production and consumption.
"The new regulation only spares one category of wage-dependent
persons, namely the group with regular contracts. Originally the point
was to ensure a continuity of income in the fields, where the logic of
profits does not come first. Now only the most profitable companies –
especially those in the audiovisual industry – are able to continue to
profit from employees, who are under more pressure than ever to accept
the 'contents' and working conditions of the proposed employment."
As both the actors in and those affected by this situation, the
Intermittents raise the question of possibilities for escaping this
capitalist occupation of the emotions and challenge us to more
thoroughly examine contemporary forms of exploitation. As industrial
capitalism appropriates natural raw materials and labor power in order
to exploit them for the production of material goods, contemporary
capitalism seizes cultural and artistic resources to subordinate them
to the logic of profit – yet without bearing the costs of production.
"As an assault on collective rights, this 'reform' introduces a
specific idea of the cultural exception: a showcase art with its
especially promoted exemplary projects on the one hand and an industry
of standardized culture on the other, which is capable of competing in
the world market."
For a Generalization of the "Cultural Exception" ...
In the course of the movement of the Intermittents, hotel and
restaurant owners and merchants from Aix-en-Provence took legal action
against unknown persons. The cancellation of the "festival d'art
lyrique" by its director due to strikes by the Intermittents led to a
30% loss of profits for the local tourist industry. Together with the
cultural and communications industries, the tourist industry is most
desirous of cultural and artistic resources: of traditions, ways of
living, rites, world views, as well as festivals, theater and art
works of all kinds. The tourist industry colonizes public goods such
as art works, architecture, landscapes or historical city centers,
appropriates them at no cost and changes their status: from "human
heritage" to the private inheritance of the industry and tourism. A
walk through the historical city center of any European city suffices
for us to understand how the transformation of the experience of time
and space into commodity form is carried out. This is not only a
tremendous reduction of the social public sphere to the coupled terms
"provider" and "customer". In addition, a huge amount of labor is
utilized without any financial compensation.
"In the strict perspective of accounting on which the new regulation
is based, employment is the only basis for calculation; only the
amount is paid that corresponds to the social security contribution.
The portion of socially produced wealth that goes beyond this is not
taken into consideration."
In principle, it is possible to advocate for social rights as cultural
workers from two directions. One way would be to insist on the
"cultural exception" in the sense of a professional privilege. Another
would be to
http://www.republicart.net 2
understand the insurance of artistic precariousness as an example for
all those precariously employed, thus inscribing one's own, initially
relatively limited demands into the battle for social rights.
"Is it not symptomatic that inroads are systematically being made in
what could be a model for other categories of precariousness?
Developing a model for unemployment insurance based on the reality of
our practices is a basis for an open discussion of all the forms of
reappropriation, of the dissemination and the spread of this battle
into other areas."
The latter perspective additionally makes it possible to separate the
general characteristics of post-fordist working conditions from the
neo-liberal rhetoric of individualization, making this visible as a
terrain of political battles.
"Our demands have nothing to do with a battle for privileges:
flexibility and mobility, which are becoming a general requirement,
must not lead to precariousness and misery. The development of a
concept of unemployment compensation that recognizes the reality of
our work, in other words the continuity of the activities and the
discontinuity of payment, opens the door for forms of reappropriation
and circulation."
... and the Appropriation of the Social
The battles of the Intermittents from last year call on us to raise
new questions and to find new answers. The point is to subvert the
subordination to the conditions of public or private "work", to propel
the production of public goods outside the realm of their utilization
by capital, and finally to decouple productive time from payment and
thus secure access for everyone to segments of life not under
surveillance. It is a matter of canceling out separations: between the
invention and the reproduction of cultural goods, between producers
and users, between experts and amateurs. The Intermittents' battle for
social rights, specifically for a state-guaranteed system of social
security, is a precondition for this, precisely because it goes beyond
this demand, when it rejects the reproduction of state-conform
subjectivities, the division into "artists" and "other precariously
employed persons" and conjoins the assurance of social rights with the
battle for the social appropriation of public goods. The demands posed
to the state thus serve to create a new public sphere: a sphere that
is no longer determined by the state.
"Only collective social rights can guarantee the freedom of persons,
also the continuity of work outside of periods of employment, also the
realization of the most improbable projects, thus guaranteeing
diversity and innovation. Dynamics, inventiveness and daring, which
characterize artistic work, are based on the purposeful independence
attained through interprofessional solidarity and the sustainment of
acceptable living conditions."
English translation by Aileen Derieg based on the German translation
by Michael Sander
http://www.republicart.net 3

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Neo-DANDYism
By Jeronimo Voss

To the bourgeois

You are the majority – in number and intelligence; so you are power,
which is justice. Some of you are learned, some landed; the glorious
day will come when the learned will become landed and the landed
learned. Then your power will be complete, and nobody will protest
against it any longer.
Charles Baudelaire, The salon of 1846


I applied to study communication design, was rejected, subsequently
drew even more avidly, did internships in various advertising
agencies, applied again and was finally accepted a year after my first
attempt. But despite the energy, time and money I had invested, I
broke off my design studies after the first semester. Frustrated by
the overly school manner of teaching and hostility to experimentation,
the permanent stress in the agency, the daily failure to meet the
demands of my effective everyday routine. There may be many reasons to
study art – mine was basically: no more work! And I don't believe I am
alone in that.
I expected to get something else from art. Art was something I saw as
a means of being engaged in something that was removed from the
general utilization dogma, being independent, making my own decisions,
winning recognition with what really interests me and above all never
again doing wage-labour – for any boss, agency, firm or factory.
Ofcourse, I also had reservations about the art world, considered it
to be elitist, exclusive and undemocratic – but I was fairly sure that
here other criteria applied. Though I turned out to be right on
several points, in others I was thoroughly disillusioned.
Studying fine arts really is an extremely relaxing affair: there is no
strict syllabus, hardly any pressure to perform, in fact no reason to
get stressed out – a Bohemian lifestyle at its best. But for all that
there is pressure here too and though it is more subtle it is all the
more efficient. There is nobody to scream at me about deadlines for
submitting the PDF files for the Karstadt shoe ads. Instead, I am the
one to whisper my deadlines to myself: How long will they continue to
pay my grant? How long have you been studying already? What happens
after that? What is with the next project for your portfolio? Etc.
etc. Plus, there are lots of things to deal with - 24 hours a day:
Attending exhibition openings, producing art, making contacts,
cultivating, socialising etc. The toughest amongst us claim they can
manage on five hours' sleep and to be addictive to coffee at least.

Today, art production appears to be like any other freelance job. And
that being the case you are subject to great economic insecurity and
instability thanks to the total lack of regulations with regard to
your rights in uncontinuous work context, such as the existence of a
union. That was always the case for artists. Indeed, those in question
have always demonstrated scant or no enthusiasm for any forms of
organization. Rather, despite all the statistical evidence (to the
contrary) everyone hopes their career will be extraordinary. Those
that fall by the wayside are primarily those who have the greatest
need of protective agreements such as single parents or people whose
age and/or health prevents them from working flat out. And if you fail
as an artist you fail across the board, not only financially on
account of your inadequate social protection; your failure takes in
the entire system you have constructed for yourself comprising 24
hours of art, love of art and living art. But at this point hardly
anyone would admit to failure, but would waiter/ress their way through
life, keep going on part-time jobs and rehabilitate themselves to the
stage when they achieve their deserved success.
If I do what I do with passion, identify with it completely and would
not even consider ever doing anything else, would I talk of that as
`work'? Would I relentlessly negotiate a price for this `work', if I
actually enjoy doing it, because it seems I do it for myself to all
intents and purposes? Would I, if necessary, refuse to `work' in order
to exert pressure? Strike? Against whom? What is the meaning of
leisure time when being an artist is a full-time job – even if those
things that need doing are totally un-artistic such as all those
everyday tasks involved in being a social being - caring for yourself
and caring for others.

It is obvious to see art not only as an opening to a celebrity career
but also as an alternative to wage-labour. The hegemonistic
understanding of artistic production ever since constructed its
practice within distance to its own utilization. In line with such an
interpretation art is viewed as an homage to the free individual's
inventive potential. As such, art continues to be the very own space
of evolvement of the myth of singular authorship even though from time
to time there are isolated attempts to replace it by the myth of its
own abolition.
In their book Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme (The New Spirit of
Capitalism) Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello describe the call for
individual freedom implicit in this artistic model of life to be a
fundamental model of emancipatory critique. As the authors see it, the
indignation-motive of "artistic critique" is rooted in the lifestyle
pursued by the Parisian bohemians of the early 19th century. They cite
Charles Baudelaire as a representative of the unattached intellectual
and artist, "whose embodiment in the figure of the dandy … – with the
exception of self-production - stylizes non-production and the culture
of uncertainty as the highest ideals". As a narcissistic, eccentric
super individualist the dandy despised the bourgeoisie, which
accompanied the rise of capitalism, found its barbaric obsession with
profit to be in poor taste and encountered it with individualized,
aesthetic transgression and aristocratic distinction. The book
ventures to formulate a sociology of the criticism of capitalism since
1968, and follows the transformation of various forms of criticism in
late capitalism. Boltanski and Chiapello describe how the
indignation-motives of artistic critique are reflected in student
movements, during the hippy era as well as in the intellectual and
artistic avant-garde of the post-war period. With demands for
autonomy, authenticity and creativity, as well as through artistic
actions that went beyond the classic concept of artwork they attacked
the consumerist nature of the welfare state, the discipline of the
factory, bureaucratic rigidity and the hierarchy of power in
industrial societies. The political movement of 1968 - particularly as
it occurred in France – is interpreted as the combination of artistic
critique and the social critique of the Labor movement. However, this
social criticique is based more on demands for social justice, or more
precisely the demand for the redistribution of wealth and equality at
a political level. Boltanski and Chiapello then proceed to postulate
the theory that precisely the modification of capitalism in response
to this "artistic critique" increasingly deprived the politization of
life and social criticism of its roots and is the prerequisite for
neo-Liberalism.
Given the obvious analogies between artistic self-identification and
the profile of todays de-regulated network economy together with the
phenomenon of the `cultural turn' confirmed by various quarters it is
difficult to disagree with Boltanski and Chiapello. It is not simply
that the myth of the starving, unattached, autonomous artist of
modernity functions as a glamorous and legitimizing pendant to the
trend for highly insecure living conditions. Artistic practices also
interfuse the economies of knowledge and the social sculpture of
neo-Liberalism. Pictorial competence as the basis for contemporary
entrepreneurial action, gentrification as an urban policy designed to
oust those on the edges of society, artists as "the nation's experts"
on deregulated social cover. In short: artistic critique – developed
in Bohemian circles, consumers of mescaline lamenting the passing of
the Rococo - updated by the neo-dandies of the acid culture, in the
context of a global social movement; integrated within the processes
of the post-1968 reorganization phase to an aestheticized `society of
control'. From the current perspective `artistic critique' is the
productive rhetoric of hippy capitalism's network economy on the one
hand, and on the other effective subversion against Fordism. As such
it contributed decisively to the emancipation from certain methods of
exploitation and discipline to which I would definitely not like to
return to.

Though artistic self-identification is very much intertwined with the
contemporary ideological situation, the societal potentials of
cultural production are not limited within these borders. Progressing
beyond complicity with the regimes of culturalized economy a large
number of interesting issues arise, for instance: what can cultural
representation strategies achieve (and what not) in the context of
social movements? Given that life and work generally become more and
more insecure and `precarious', the virtual impossibility of political
organization is a key problem as regards prospects for resistance. On
the one hand an increasing number of social risks are borne by pseudo
autonomous subjects, on the other hand the problems they have seem to
be theirs alone. How can those involved in the production of culture
draw on their ability to make things visble as a means of supporting
social movements to meet their specific challenges dealing with people
who face seemingly inevitable social fragmentation and isolation? It's
a question of these politics of the image to venture beyond a
selfconstruction as a 24-hour, individualized artist. Re-examining
this ideological identity created in the light of current societal
circumstances would mean to contribute ones own conditions of life and
the potential skills of imageproduction to the process of resistant
organization in order to establish new solidary relations.

"Our culture is run on carefully crafted words and images. They are
given tremendous authority, and have the power to shape society's
responses."
~ Gran Fury, Good Luck ... Miss You

Jeronimo Voß

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Politics Of Image: Discussion Points for Staedelschule, January 7, 2006
Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaiemen

Project 1: Disappeared In America
Sarah Jessica Parker
Advertising is hypervisible, and forces itself into our mental space.
It seems, therefore, to be the appropriate tool for making visible
the most invisible segment of society.  One of our inspiration moments
was looking at the giant banners for the GAP Casual Fresh American
Style campaign.  For a brief year, the Sex & The City star was
everywhere in the New York landscape.  The sheer size of the banners
(yet even at that magnified scale, no wrinkles were visible!) made us
think of the scale of visual representations for migrant populations.
Typically the visual for these workers are the vendor licenses for
newspaper sellers, bagel, and fruit carts.  Another variation is the
hack license in the cloudy, scratched glass partition of a taxi.  The
maximum size of a photo in these licenses is usually a few inches.
The one variation to this is when an immigrant is killed, especially
if the alleged protagonist is Black, which allows a set of racial
codes to be deployed.  In that case, there will be a reprinted black &
white grainy photograph, or a family photograph.

Our idea was to take those migrants (mainly Muslim and men) who were
particular targets for post 9/11 security sweeps and make them
larger-than-life.  The focus was first on images, then text in form of
names and laws, and finally composites.  The fact that there were
lawyers, activists and academics associated with our collective pushed
us towards the text, and especially laws.  There was often a feeling
that we had to focus on "hard facts" so that audiences would "believe"
us and not dismiss it as "art."  The experience of being curated by,
and showing with, Walid Raad/Atlas Group was an interesting
experience.  Our monomaniacal focus on facts contrasted at these
venues with Atlas Group's questioning of what is, or is not, a fact.

The Cricket Test
Another area we are exploring in this project is the issue of Identity
and Citizenship.  National Identity, hyphenated or otherwise, is a
charged conversation in North America and Europe.  Questions of
"loyalty", "belonging" and "core values" are expressed in instruments
like the proposed test of "Britishness" and German Citizenship test in
Baden-wurthemberg.  Norman Tebbitt's "cricket test" has returned in
new forms. There is of course dissent, as when BBC viewers proposed
the following satirical "Britishness" questions:
What side should the port be passed on? Which breed of dog does the
Queen favour? What's in a chip butty?  If you bump into someone, and
it's not your fault, do you still say sorry?
What we note however is that, actions that may be characterized as
racist can now be cloaked within national-security conversations.
Xenophobes of the past can rebrand themselves as super-patriots who
want to protect borders.

Non-representational Authors
One of the issues in image production is the need to locate the lived
experience of the work in the author.  For this project, some
audiences needed to see the Collective as representing the group that
is most vulnerable in post 9/11 security panic—that is Migrants and/or
Muslims.  First, on an objective level, this definition does not apply
to all members of the Collective.  Second, even if it did, our level
of vulnerability is mediated by class privilege and access.  In fact,
the group most affected is unable to speak up precisely because of the
issue of legality and citizenship.  In this context, I quote from my
essay Protesting While Immigrant:
If a protester is arrested for any reason, no matter how minor, this
will affect their naturalization application.  In fact, even if the
arrested person is not convicted, the arrest alone is enough to
sabotage their citizenship.  On the Citizenship (Naturalization)
application, there is a page of questions the applicant has to answer.
The relevant question here is: "Have you ever been arrested?"  The
question does not ask for more details-- what were you arrested for,
were you convicted, etc?  Being arrested for any reason, even if it is
wrongful arrest, would result in a refusal of citizenship.  The
applicant would have to wait five years after the arrest to reapply.

Collective Dynamics
Finally we come to the dynamic of working in a collective, and here
there are interesting dynamics between the styles of those who are
working in visual arts, and those coming from a grassroots activist
background.  There are sometimes debates about whether the project is
becoming overly aestheticized and losing its political "bite."
Another area of concern is the open-ended questions that are
engendered by this medium and context.  For example, even though the
title of the project is "Disappeared In America", some of our recent
work and essays have looked at the context of Europe and Middle East.
This is sometimes seen as taking away the pressure from the current
US administration.  But of course, we are not constructed as a
"pressure group."  Our work is more along the line of the "butterfly
wing" effect.


Project 2: Muslims Or Heretics?

The Beard Is Making A Ruckus
This project started a year ago from a simple premise.  It was a human
rights project, intending to protect the rights of a minority sect
inside Islam, In addition to the more commonly known variations such
as Sunni, Shi'a, Sufi, Aga Khani, Ismaili, etc., the Ahmadiyas are a
relatively recent sect within Islam that started during British India.
Because they call their leader a prophet, some mainstream Muslim
groups consider them heretical.  In Pakistan, they were banned in
1974, and in Bangladesh, a movement to ban them was started in 2003.
This film looked at the ways in which this issue was primarily about
political power games, not about theology.

On the surface, this was an uncomplicated project.  However, within
the post 9/11 political conversation, it was impossible for this film
to be "just about" human rights.  Audiences inside Bangladesh were
concerned that this film would invite US meddling in some form or
another.  Muslim audiences outside the US expressed similar concerns
that, regardless of our intention, the images here could easily be
appropriated by those wishing to stereotype Muslims.  A Pakistani man
at a New York screening summed it up when he said:
You can say what you like at the introduction to the film—how this is
not about religion, but politics.  But I am still left with those
images of angry mobs, and what I see there is that "the beard is
making a ruckus".

It is not enough to state what the intentions of the author are.  Nor
is being from the community itself any defense from unconscious or
conscious stereotypes.  I was recently re-reading Edward Said's
critique of Bernard Lewis in Orientalism:
Lewis goes on to proclaim that Islam is an irrational herd or mass
phenomenon, ruling Muslims by passions, instincts, and unreflecting
hatred…According to Lewis, Islam does not develop, and neither do
Muslims: they merely are, and they are to be watched, on account of
that pure essence of theirs (according to Lewis), which happens to
include a long-standing hatred of Christians and Jews…Lewis always
takes care to say that of course Muslims are not anti-Semitic the way
the Nazis were, but their religion can too easily accommodate itself
to anti-Semitism and has done so.
And I was struck by some of these phrases could as easily be applied
to the visual impact of the mob scenes in Muslims Or Heretics?

Who Is Filming Who?
In the first version of Muslims Or Heretics?, there is a great deal of
grainy, out of focus footage shot from a great distance.  These were
the footage of the anti-Ahmadiya rallies organized by militant
Islamist groups.  The impact on the viewer is to think of all this as
clandestine work, with a subject so ferocious that they can only be
viewed at a distance.  But when I returned to the project after a
year's gap, and went to film a militant rally, I discovered this was
far from the truth.  The rally organizers welcomed the press, in fact
they embraced the presence of cameras.  The footage this time is up
close and personal, filmed sometimes from a distance of a few feet.
Repeatedly, the militant leaders would form a human chain, and then
when I would approach, would yell, "Let the journalist brother
through, let him through!"  Similarly, at one point there were ten
photographers taking pictures of the same "ferocious" protesters, and
they obligingly held their poses long enough for photos to be taken.
At this point, the challenge became filming anything where there was
not another photographer also in the frame.  Nor was this welcome
limited to "local" photographers.  A photographer from Reuters
brusquely asked a maulvi giving a speech to lower his microphone so
his face would be visible, and the man interrupted his speech to oblige.

This time I also noticed, as I had not previously, that there was a
camera on the truck of the rally organizers.  It was filming the
speeches, but at times it was also filming us, Where was that tape
going, who was its intended audience?  Without intending to downplay
any potential threat, I became conscious of the highly theatrical
nature of the enterprise of militant Islamist politics.  The New York
Times once described plane hijacking as auteur filmmaking with real
people.  Here too, the militant groups are in control of their own
image production, and at times it feels that I am playing along with
the script.  That day, I left the rally at 4 PM, exhausted after a day
of filming.  But there was still an hour of daylight, enough time to
take some photographs, and nothing "dramatic" had happened.  The
militants obliged by staging a confrontation with the police, and the
next day all the newspaper photographs were from that last hour.
Pictures of pitched battles, rocks being thrown and bloody faces were
obligingly laid out.  The militants are now very savvy about the news
cycle—they know very well that speeches and marches won't be enough to
get on the news and newspapers.

Of course, those of us working on these issues will continue to make
films on these themes, but there needs to be more awareness of where
"perceptions" and "realities" bleed into each other.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Speaking of Autonomy of Migration...
Racism and Struggles of Migration
Kanak Attak
http://www.kanak-attak.de/ka/text/esf04.html

No one right in his or her mind would argue that migration takes place
in a realm of peace and freedom. No one imagines a migrant calculating
the degree of utilization on the global labour market in the morning,
deciding on a country of immigration in the afternoon and enjoying the
fruits of mobility ever since. That's how racist and fascists would
like to see it when they call us the parasites of the European welfare
system. The opposite is true: The process of privileging certain
migrants goes together with the exclusion of others. Whether they
appear as Acts and policy statements or through checks in pedestrian
precincts, in train stations and on the streets, they all steal time
and space from the people. To say nothing of the attacks on life and
limb, that are an increasingly everyday reality everywhere in Europe.
This is not only the business of jungle law on the streets, but also
one of state asylum and deportation centres. Recently it has been
critized that the concept of Autonomy of migration ignores this misery
and the conditions of migration. Is this true? Can we not critise
racist, postcolonial and capitalist structures when we talk about
Autonomy of Migration? How can we fight those who white wash and tell
us that racism has watered down in modern societies? What role does
racism play in Europe today?

Throughout Europe, for quite some time, the current configuration of
European racism is an anti-immigrant racism. Of course, we find
different aspects and traditions in European states. But they ground -
more or less - on two ideological schemes: the colonial and the
antisemitic. This anti-immigrant-racism, also known as Neo-Racism, is
far more flexible than the traditional racism that grounds on absolute
categories of race and segregation. Through Neo-Racism ethnic groups
are being gradually differentiated and hierarchised in everyday life
practices and discourses. Far from working purely on culturalist
grounds it shifts between biological and cultural patterns of
explanation, ascriptions and stigmatisations. Superiority and
inferiority, inclusion and exclusion are being aligned on cultural
norms and then biologically essentialised - and vice versa. In this
sense any configuration of racism in history is a projective
conception that attempts to explain social differences, social
hierachies and domination. These 'explanations' are inscribed in
everyday life practices or in state regulations of populations.

In the case of anti-islamism the colonial and the antisemitic scheme
join perfectly: here notions of racist superiority flash in with
cultural and relgious rivalry. Of course, Anti-Islamism is not a new
phenomenon. For quite some decades, even centuries, it has its base in
Europe. Cultural ascriptions are central here as they are aiming at
the immediate visibilisation of racist defined differences. Since 9/11
the veil has become the visible sign of talk about immigration, of
talk about terrorism and when they fuse one with the other. One might
add that whilst Islam historically was Europe's outside enemy, jews
represented the inner. In both cases the conjunction of religion and
citizenship helped drawing the line between inclusion and exclusion.

But racism doesn't exist without its counterpart, the struggles
against it. This is not to downplay the dreadful impacts of racism,
but to understand both the way racism changes throughout history and
the way it constitutes the subjects of the struggles against racism.

Migrants and their descendants always resisted discrimination and
disfranchisement. They still do. Whether it was the struggles of
housing and labour in the 1960ies and 70ies in Britain, Germany and
France or struggles for payment for "sans papiers", against
deportation and for Legalization from the 1990ies until today. Often,
new forms of oppression against migrants can be seen as reactions to
these struggles, like the administrative regulations in the 1970ies in
Germany that would ban migrants from moving to certain neighbourhoods,
just because these neighbourhoods were considered to be uncontrollable
due to their big migrant communities. When after the end of
guest-worker-recruitment in the 1970ies legal entry to Europe seemed
impossible, migrants organized it nonetheless through marriage and
family reunion. Migrants fake their papers, states invent new alleged
fraud-resistance documents and so on. These struggles imply a certain
concept of autonomy, although not in the traditional, emphatic sense.
Autonomy of migration is not supposed to mean sovereignty of migrants,
but rather that migrants are not simply objects of state control -
that migrants defy controls and resist racist discrimination. Autonomy
of migration represents the rather complicated fact that struggles of
migration constitute a specific level of the political.

Autonomy is thus not a tale about the new revolutionary subject called
migrants, but tries to handle the contradictions related to racism and
migration. By doing so we can perhaps create a third option beyond
universalism and difference. Let us exemplify. One of the problems we
face when fighting against racism are our own communities and identity
politics. After the (re)unification of the two Germanies in 1990, the
uprise of nationalism and racist attacks - hundreds of migrants or
their offspring were killed, even more were injured - led to a trauma
within the migrant communities. The attacks also provoked nationalist
attitudes within these communities. More recently, the effects of
Anti-Islamism on our communities and struggles can not be brushed
aside. To cut a long story short: How to deal with veils or e.g.
turkish flags, if they are part of a struggle against discrimination?
In our struggles against racism we have to aim the criticism at both
sides: at the racist regime of those in power and at the ethnic
identity policy of those ruled over. Since racism and ethnicising have
always had the function of supporting an authoritarian, homogenising
formation of collectives. Would it not be possible to find a link
between the autonomous tactics and struggles we have listed and an
extended social, individual and collective Autonomy in this
perspective of double criticism?

This can not be an abstract critic from behind a desk as to how people
may or may not conduct their lives. The identity policy of those ruled
over always is a strategy of self-authorisation under the conditions
of a misery stratified in consequence of racism. When we refer to
migrant communities, we are well aware that they provide migrants with
protection under the conditions of the racist regime, and that this
improves their conditions of survival. This aspect is often withheld,
but it is very important. However, it does not mean that everything
should remain as it is in these communities.

By autonomous tactics we understand something which takes place in
everyday life anyway. The tactics can never be fully reduced to
identity politics. Rather they have materiality in the concrete
political and social living conditions. The shaping of identity and
its fetters can only be set aside if internal aspects in the
reproduction of living conditions are altered. That's why we plead in
favour of practical criticism which uses what is already inherent in
the present practices and articulates this use politically and in
favour of a better life.

When we talk of the Autonomy of Migration we point to the
transgression of borders and a life on the base and by means of
networks of migration. Just as racism can not be fought directly, we
can only gain autonomy by fighting for changes in our everyday lives
and against the patronising and killing at or between the borders. Be
it the combat for payment of illegalized workers on a construction
site in Berlin and Hamburg, be it the campaigning against racist and
anti-islamic laws in Paris, be it the disappearance of a whole
handball team in the south of Germany, be it the struggle for better
housing conditions in Trieste, be it the support for health care of
illegalised migrants in Barcelona and Tel Aviv, be it the contesting
of disenfranchisment and detention camps in Ljubljana, be it the fight
for insurance of houseworkers in London, be it the squatting of
churches or embassies for papers in Brussels and Paris. Thus for the
Autonomy of Migration an understanding of historical and current
Struggles of Migration is inevitable.

+++++++END SHOBAK+++++++++++







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