(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
“When was the moment you chose to go from being a passive spectator to a politically engaged actor? Did anyone give you a pamphlet? Did you read an academic article? And tweet? Or did it tie into a personal experience? ”The questions were asked to the public by New York University professor and longtime activist Stephen Duncombe during the conference Public Calling, which took place at the National Theater in early November. The event was organized by the state professional body Art in Public Spaces (KORO) and the Fritt Ord Foundation, and was about the conditions for freedom of expression in public space, in both physical and mediated terms, and about the possibilities of art under these conditions.
The question of the affective nature of politics – and by extension, the political art – is central today, both in view of the more or less spontaneous protest movements in the last five years, from Tahrir Square to Ferguson, and on the emerging nationalism that is emerging. all over Europe.
The point of Duncombe and his Danish partner Silas Harrebye was that political engagement is rarely rationally justified, but has affective and emotional causes – therefore a truly mobilizing activist art should also be "affectively effective" as they put it.
Public Calling was in many ways itself an answer to Duncombe's and Harreby's call: of the more than 20 speakers, the majority were personal and occasionally outrageous testimonies, so to speak from the front lines. Among them was Turkish artist Pinar Ögrenci, who can wait many years in prison after participating in peace marches in Turkey. Another was British activist Lisa Robinson, who told about brutal treatment by police during Black Lives Matter UK's demonstrations.
People Enemies. Also the title itself Public Calling implies a mobilization from spectators to actors. Both the speakers and the audience were seated in a circle at the top of the main stage, among stage scaffolds and scenes, and the conference was divided into five thematic "acts" with Ibsen's En folkefiende as a narrative framework. The most talked-about Dr. Stockmann of the time, Edward Snowden, was present indirectly through an actor who read a letter signed by the American whistleblower.
Another prominent "enemy of the people" is the passionate defense lawyer Nancy Hollander, who counts Chelsea Manning and the former Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi among his clients. She presented a status report that is probably well known to New Age readers: The world is a global battle zone, where the overarching political principle is national security, and where the individual's demands for privacy pose a potential threat to the authorities. Just as important as freedom of expression is the right to let one's statements be private. If the authorities know more about the citizens than the citizens know about the authorities' activities, we no longer have a democracy, she pointed out.
How do artists and cultural producers view such a reality? Media and the cultural sector are vital to making fictitious enemies real, according to Dutch artist Jonas Staal, another of the conference participants. He gave examples of how Hollywood's disaster films have normalized exceptional states since the Cold War. Moreover, he pointed out, it is pervasive that such films highlight and consolidate a particular social order by showing its extinction. Staal calls the latest version of this War On Terror Propaganda Art. Also large-scale security exercises, such as the US TOPOFF 2 in 2003, in which an attack by a fictitious Islamist terrorist organization played out with over 8000 participants, becomes a kind of spectacular mass theater in which citizens practice their own downfall. The "propaganda art" also causes us to forget about real existential threats, such as class suppression, surveillance and the climate crisis.
Steel's call for art is similar to Duncombes: Art itself has little political power, but it has power over society's collective notions. The task is thus to create alternative narratives that can challenge the "propaganda".
Wounds that cannot be healed. The memorials for the massacres of July 22, 2011 cannot be expected to act as mobilizing, but they exist within the same political horizon that was recorded on Public Calling. Therefore, it was important that one of the "acts" during the conference dealt with precisely these works. They naturally arouse strong emotions, and none of them
them more than Jonas Dahlberg's Memory Wound, the winning proposal
By giving the memorial a form that recreates the loss, it becomes impossible to heal the wound, both for the relatives and for the civil society.
to the planned memorial on Sørbråten. As known, the work consists of a three and a half meter long cut in a narrow islet in the Tyrifjord, and the Government recently announced that they are considering drawing the project after strong reactions from neighbors and relatives.
During the conference, critic Kjetil Røed gave his assessment of the memorials, and he reacted very negatively to Dahlberg's proposal. According to Røed, this "majestic and sublime" memorializes the loss of the dead. By giving it a form that recreates the loss it becomes impossible to heal the wound, both for the relatives and for the civil society. Against Memory Wound Roed particularly emphasized the memorial Improvements on Utøya, a hanging metal ring with the names of the perished engraved. It is the aesthetically weakest of the two memorials, but the most emotionally strong, according to Røed, because it allows "visitors to tell their own stories". But this seemingly radical democratic ideal is, in reality, a zero point, a screen where anything can be projected.
Improvements was deliberately designed without any political or symbolic content, said artist Marianne Heier, who sat in the memorial working group with AUF members and relatives. In Dahlberg's absence, Heier gave an indirect answer to Roed's criticism: The different memorials serve different functions and address different groups. While Improvements is for those relatives who carry the loss in their own body and who do not need anything to symbolize this pain, the national memorial is also meant for all of us who are not directly affected by the terrorist acts of July 22. This is a very important point that is easy to lose sight of: the different memorials complement each other.
One can also ask what a national memorial should remind the population. Memory Wound is far from a political work, but precisely its unforgiving nature emphasizes that it is a wound that may not be healed. It was also a point that philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen made in the subsequent discussion at the conference. He added that the fact that the process has taken so long suggests that it will not be realized. If that is the case, then it is remarkable that a work of art that exists only as a sketch and an idea can provoke such strong emotions in both advocates and critics. It shows that the "wound" has an effect that exceeds the purely symbolic.
