Interview
with Marion von Osten, Susanna Perin and Peter Spillmann
by Ursa Jurman
Ursa Jurman (UJ): EuroVision2000 is a media-activist network which focuses on political, social and economical restructuring of EUrope in the context of processes of a globalization and within this pays special attention to the questions about borders, migration and asylum politics. What is the notion of the political today for you and where and how do you see the position and role of arts and culture in relation to possible and/or needed political act/ing, specially with regard to possible political implications and consequences which could improve, change existing situations and not just satisfy with symbolical, manifestative level?
Susanna Perin (SP): The notion of politics as an absolute "power" and "bigness" has changed and splitted in a lot of possible political actions and actors. (You can get a good overwiev about the notion of the political today, if you look, for example, how heterogeneous the composition of the anti-globalisation movement is, for which different groups fight in different ways.) Being an artist or working on the cultural field you have to make the same choice like every other person working in any other field; on a base of your ideals and believes you have to choose which part you'll take in your society. So, it happens that if you are concerned about what's going on around you, you will try to work on that, to change reality with the instruments and the knowledge you have. Working on a micro-political level (as we do) it is difficult to speak about concrete results and consequences, about changes and improvements you can make with your work. Of course we see results of our work: discussions are going on, new productions of videos and publications are happening, people are coming toghether, they are collaborating, exchanging, but still it's difficult to say in wich direction and to wich result this will lead. We are trying to find out new forms, new ways of acting and resistence.
Marion von Osten (MvO): I agree with Susanna, as I think that the notion of the political went through several transformations in the last centuries. Today very different groups in society use the term political to signify their specific strategies. In the more general understanding the political seems to be the tool to govern people. This is mostly what state politics and political parties represent. This politics of governing the "Other" and to be the representative of the"Other" is what one could still call the notion of the mainstream politics. But when we talk about politics in the sense of self-articulation we have to keep in mind the history of micropolitics: the gay and lesbian movement, feminism, housing projects, peace movement, the struggle of the "Sans Papiers" etc. These micropolitical movements - instead that representatives speak for/in the name of "Them" - build up networks, places and discourses of self-representation, which have a great effect on the notion of the political today. These particular instead of universalizing articulations changed also the modernist concept of the Left, which tried to empower and govern most of all the working class. We can see that politics today are to be viewed as everyday life practices as well, - like the Birmingham School of Contemporary Cultural Studies did - who took a close look on youth- and popculture to understand how this practices have been productive for reformulation and transformation of marginality. This means that today the political is not a universal category anymore, but a practice which can build up (temporary) spaces for (self)articulation, beyond normative concepts of identity.
But still, all political (mainstream or micropolitical) movements and strategies teach us a lesson that political articulations on the one hand speak about something specific (exploitation, unequality, marginalization) and on the other hand create a fiction of the political, of the political actions and of the political subjects. For example, the proletarian was conceptualized, constructed (especially in Engel's translation of Marx) as a white male, muscle power (industrial) worker even though this notion/image spoke only for very few people in society (not for woman or non-white people i.e.), still this image has been a signifier, a code for THE political subject. And this process of fictionalizing the political subject (a construction of a common, normative image of the political subject) is imbeded in micropolitical struggles and movements as well. This is a closure I've always been interested in; is there a practice possible, which can go beyond this closure of categorizing? To make this point mor clear: Identity politics speaks for a specific group of people, and it creates also a collective identity which can very fast switch into a normative category - like, for example, the feminist movement in the West which fought for equal woman rights and created a specific notion of a Woman (white middle class woman) as a pre-given. Black feminism and post-structuralist feminism brought into a discussion that this is a normative, because there are as well black, lesbian, working class, house wives, exploited, rich etc. woman and not just one category. But even this list that ends with "etc." shows how much constructed the particularity is in itslef. You will never name them all. As a feminist today you definetly identify more with the particular narrations of the movement as a differenciated whole and you recontextualize this events, theories and actions into nowadays experiences. But even in this act of recontextualizing - to quote Rosi Braidotti - you cannot take equality as your political aim. You only can take it as a strategy. What Braidotti describes is that we, as women of all ages i.e., should fight for equal opportunity, we should stop being raped, we should have women in every sphere of life, but that is only a strategy. It cannot be the goal because to really achieve that you need is to change the system; the system of representation, the notion of political, the theoretical apparatus, the sexist logic of work etc. "You cannot simply hope that you put women in the club and not change the rules of the club," Braidotti argued furthermore (and I agree with her completly). So I do believe that the practice of just showing injustice or inequality in society in a movie, video or in an exhibition might be still a stragegy, but will not change something structurtally. So for me, as a conclusion, it is not the consequence because of the imbededness in the representational of political practices or issues that they are exhibited in an art space. But, may be the other way round: the art space as a stage can be productive for a political debate, as the political can be adressed in the ambiguity of beeing symbolic and real, fiction and every day life practice the same time, before it gets a presstext or petition. And in this way the political might help to restructure the notion and structure of the stage, the Art Spaces as well.
So, for me the good thing about the shift of the notion of the political is, that it does not easily give answers but it maps more questions of what is actually the political action. Is it real, is it symbolic, what is the strategy, what is the aim, where do we gonna go with it and what for?
Peter Spillmann (PSP): In my view traditional political institutions like the national state and parties are no longer central in the notion about the political. Neither are certain rituals or formats which are closelly connected to them - like public debating, arguing, voting, demonstrating or "classical" forms of political fights. I think today the political in a society is much more linked with the social itself, with the rituals of communication and interaction, everyday behaviour; taste, distinction, consumer commodities, knowledge are also notions of the political. In that sense for me processes of introduction hierarchies and normalization often have very strong antipolitical gesture, while the act of self legitimation an independent appropriation of competence often turns out as a heavy political act. For me those cultural or artistic projects which interest me, always have a certain political relevance in a sense that they provide tools of self empowerment for specific individuals, scenes and situation, they introduce partially and/or temporary new values and become relevant tools of identification for a specific community.
UJ: Maybe one of the ways how to overcome the manifestative, symbolical level can be also work in progress and continuity in ones work regarding the issues one deals with. You are working already for some years (in projects like: MoneyNationTV, Zurich,1998; EuroVision2000; MoneyNation2, Vienna, 2000) on the questions of political, social and economical restructuring of EUrope, on processes of a globalization and specially on questions about borders and migration. Can you tell something more about that; what was your starting point to engage in these issues?
MvO: I would propose here, and may be Peter and Susanna can react on this view, that the continuty of a debate is not only a result of the collaborative format. First: It is also one of collective consciousness, as neoliberal societies produces hugh spaces to affirm the ideology of beeing the fittest personally and economically. Awarness and a critical discourse has been the side effect of this ideological process. Second : The closing of EU-borders, the Schengen agreement produced a shock inside the West-european societies as well, as we were just have beeing invited to percieve the opening of borders and former Block States. I like this image of turning the State structure of Europe before 89 upside down. Than you come to the conclusion that just sides changed. You have a EU Blockstate in the West today instead of "Eastblock" before 89 and national entities on the East side now, like beforehand in the west european reality. But something did actually not change: This ideotic rigid border line. But on the other hand the socialization in both parts, east and west (to stay in this stupid dualistic tune) produced desires of merging, exchange, opening, couriosity. This is what I experienced when I moved to Berlin in 1991. I have been so curious and have been engaged in a lot of cultural activities, where I got into close contact with cultural actors and theorists from Leipzig, Dresden and East-Berlin. To my astonishment the socalled (cultural) "Left" in the western part of germany has not been very interested in that process and nobody took really care what my experiences have been. This is why a few years later I organized the <MoneyNations> project in the Shedhalle 1998 as their had been still a hugh blind spot in the perception of this very specific transformation processes. For <Moneynations 2> it has been much more complicated, as two years later we have been confronted with the Nato -bombarding and Haider in Austria. This changed the whole attitude and focus of the project in terms of state-rassism, hegemony, every day discrimination practice inside and outside the Schengen Border.
UJ: In connection to the first two questions - about the possible political implications which could overcome just symbolical level - I would also like to refer to the notion of a ghetto or even a "safe pool" which is often a critique of socially and politically concerned cultural or artistic projects
and which came up also in a discussion which followed your presentation in Ljubljana, mainly because of your stressing that you are not interested in reaching a broader public and that you are not interested in presenting the videos in mass media. How do you perceive the notion of a ghetto - specially in relation to your
project?
MvO: Yes, I agree that this question is to be seen in connection to that question, but first of all I do not agree with a negative notion of the ghetto in general, but I will come back to that point later. I would say that the EuroVision2000 is not the best example for talking about the <ghetto> in a negative sense, as a closure (as a symbolical act within the art world only i.e.). A closure, an exclusion neither by the process of building up the producers network nor by distributing the material happened in the case of the EuroVision2000. One of the projects aims has been that video producers from all over the Europe got into an exchange, to form a network of friendships of those who are concerned (beyond Schengen Borders) about racist and reactionary practices in the EU-transformation process and to initiate local and specific inventions, artistically and politically. The videos which have been produced or send to us for screening, have been used to create the climate for discussions and debates, i.e. In Prague (just before the WTO demonstrations started in October 2000) we tried to establish a dialog between leftist and autonomous scenes from the "West" and critical intellectuals from the local scene. This does usally not happen and during the whole Anti-WTO Campaign also did not happen, because most of the Westerners thought the political means the same where ever you go. In Brussels we organized a regularization campagne with the "Sans Papiers Office Antwerp", as this was highly on the political agenda in Belgium at that time. We used spaces and places on very different symbolic levels for this positioning, actaully that haven't been artspaces, but media spaces, spaces for screeings and cultural events. The regularization campaign i.e. took place in the Brussel 2000 main hall, meanwhile a discussion about production conditions of cultural producers had been placed in an unemployment office in Saint Josse. But concerning the ghetto in another sense I would agree with connection of a notion of a ghetto with the EuroVision2000. I just read a wonderful article of my friend Marc Siegel a queer film critic from Los Angeles, now living in Berlin, about the homosexual ghetto. From the perspective of the homosexual life and it's subculture the ghetto always has been a possibility to exist and survive. The knowledge and codes about localities and events (clubs, bars, parks), sexual desires of persons, dress codes and styles are shared in the ghetto and establish temporary spaces of articulation. I do believe that self-expression cannot be understood without specifity and particularity of a scene and individual desires that are articulated in it. In this understanding of a ghetto social activity maps the urban space as a temporary experience, but as well as productive for none-normative living conditions. In this way the ghetto can also be understood as a cumulating point to build up a very local surrounding in which a broader community (of minorities) is able to communicate and where one can live without total control. For EuroVision2000 it was our aim to build up a heterogenous space of exchange and interests, charing problems and fun. In building up a community which is not closed but specific.
PSP: Saying that I am not interested in presenting videos in mass media does not mean, that some of the videos and reports which are part of EuroVision2000 program would not fit well in that context. But I'm personally no longer interested in making deals and compromises, convincing - or what happens more often these days - advice and coach mass media people how to become political correct. This is a job professionals in that field have to do. My intention is not a kind of a media reform or institutional improvement. I would like to concentrate my energy more on the side of production and invention, creating new situations, connections and networks among cultural activists and of course also for our self, which empowers new constellations of work and exchange, own ways of looking at reality, experimental crossovers of disciplines an knowledge. As far as I can see almost every cultural, critical and theoretical content which is sooner or later successfully distributed and in the end mainly commercialized as mainstream in mass media or in a broader context of society, was in one way or the other way developed in a "kind of a ghetto", often temporary zones of specific interests and social constellation, often in connection with kind of alternative economical structures. So in that sense I see broader distribution as a very different project from initiating or cultivating cultural productive contexts. And it seems to me very difficult to mix those two things up.
SP: The way which we choosed for EV2000 - showing different aspects of the same phenomena (through the videos of different authors), a complex image of reality and providing inputs, starting points for the following discussions - does not fit in the TV "news-documentary-reports" language. In opposition to mass media wich pretend to give you the "real, objective information", but finally hide related effects, we choosed the complexity and effects. I don't have the impression of working in a ghetto, because we are acting and moving in a lot of different cities, contexts and situations. I would feel in a ghetto only working in an art spaces, only inter-acting with other "artists". We are acting in the art and cultural field as well as the political toghether with artist, activist and theorists. Of course we have a same or similar ideology.
UJ: It is interesting that you made in your answers couple of times a division between an art and independent media space while you were talking about the notion of a gheto - it sounded as that ghetto notion is for you appliable just to an art context. By my opinion not just an art space or if I'm more precise - an art system, but also an alternative media space can function as a ghetto in a negative sense, specially if it practice the same approach as mass media often do - informing the "truth", "enlightening" people, just from another point of view than mainstream does. But on the other side independent medias can function also in a positive sense of a ghetto, because they can be constitutive or of survival importance for some comunities, minorities.
How do you in connection to ghetto problem see the position that the task of an "alternative" or "independent" media is to form "a new" audience with spreading "alternative, right" informations which function as an enlightenment and because of which in an audience change in their consciousness will happen and as a result of that also a social-political action and broader change in existing situation?
MvO: My point to your question here is one of intensive conversation and cultural artistic collaboration and against so called objective reporting. I guess EuroVision2000 and me as an artist arguing for dialog instead of monologs, for interculturality instead of multiculturality. In that way, as I mentioned above I do not have a problem with the ghetto how i describe it, and even in the alternative media scene. The ghetto I am talking about is about connectivity and not just about always the same group of people, but about communication between people, if you like even all over the world, but not with everyone. I have really a problem with the ghetto people ask in general about it. It is not so easy that the ghetto is the bad and the broader public the good, as if when the videos would have been broadcasted the problem of the political would have been solved, or the question of public and resulting action. Our point has been a different one. Most of the EuroVision2000 more classical documentary films were broadcasted or even made by Channel 4 money. So a lot of EuroVision2000 videos have been shown on TV already or in other public spaces. The videos in general are distributed by the artist and filmmakers themselves, by galleries as they do not belong to us. They are not our property. Nowadays the whole collection of EuroVision2000 films is distributed by FilmCoopi Vienna i.e., and the Centre Pompidou Paris might take some of them in their collection. But for me that is not the most interesting point of the project, this common idea of success.
What we did is using the videos for debates, discussionrounds about socio-political issues in three complete different political soroundings: Prague, Brussels, Bologna. We tried to find poeple that are locally involved, affected, influenced with this questions EuroVision200 arises, but never because they would have just the same opinion about this complex questions of the globalization process. Our work has been to start a diaolog, an intervention and try to find collaborators in the political and cultural field. That is as I wittness in the media as well as in the art scene already a lot. As documentary filmer and artist, or alternative media people and filmmakers have not so much to do with each other usally expected. That you listen to each other and clarify standpoints, that questions of representation are debated and negotiated, that the political instead of the aesthetic gets to be a topic, that we question our strategies, that we criticise our works, that we are not competitive, that we can articulate even small things not only hugh productions etc. I know from long time experience in that scene that this is a lot, and that this is the good thing about EuroVision2000. But the project never had the idea to be ideal, or an institution. It is a provisorium , a transit space may be, temporary. And that is again a good thing as new things can emerge through the project and can be put in question, also our own activities.
PSP: As a consequence of my remarks above I would no longer believe in the positive effect of an enlightenment or the self explaining truth of the better, more perfect and therefore more effective information. The idea of a better information or bringing the objective truth has in Western media become a kind of an ideology. Counter-information alone will not change any principal power structures in society as long as the position of the enlightened owner of the true information and the right knowledge is based on a hierarchical and paternalistic pattern. Talking for the (or in the name of the) suppressed and marginalized others, the victims of the system, without giving any chance that they formulate their own positions, is a very problematical approach, because proposed solutions often represent projections or even the interests of the speakers and introduces new power structures. We were very aware of that while organizing EuroVision 2000, so we tried to find positions and perspectives that are no longer translated or mediated by any "objective" third party, but which are more subjective and out of the position of being personally involved. The idea of a participation or an engagement describes better a disposition where I would expect some effects on existing situations to happen; something like the appearance of a critical political spectator who is also it's own activist. Namely, in neoliberalism everything is participative and everybody should participate, of course mainly in a commercial sense and with the final consequence of buying something. Participation in a project like EuroVision2000 means something totally different and might be better described with the term "personal engagement". The engagement in such a project includes for example not only the producers of videos, but also critical spectators who become there own activists instead of just being passive viewers. Therefore projects like EuroVision2000 will never address mass public and that's not negative as far as "reaching a mass public" and "initiating personal engagement" are two very different approaches.
MvO: For EuroVision2000 our statement has been that when we talk about racisms it is about the complexitity of questions and viewpoints on rascism and not about a propagandistic use in terms of enlightening others. The question of a critical cultural production starts somewhere else. The question starts how we are used to represent the knowledge about the "Other". One part of enlightenment practices has been that they brought the "world" to us; in the end also over TV sets! For what price? For the price of a colonialism definitely. Enlightenment itself drew the rational mastermind against the naiveness of the "rest of the world", the so called natives, the "naturkinder". If we want to understand how racism is structurally coded in our society today, for my opinion as an artist, there cannot be one story told by some Westerners, who try to bring the "right" light in the case, which than will be shown over broadcasts. I believe much more in subjectification of objectivness and into specifity of narrations, localities and voices: to let speak and to listen, to answer, intervene and to question, to fight and to understand, instead of the aim of making "over voices" and straightness. I believe this actually would be a broader change in an existing situation, with even revolutionary aspects in it, as it would change our notion from abstract, objective information to a relational understanding of it.
UJ/9/2001
