Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Stella, how encouraging to read your post. I like this insight that
understanding and conviviality are the basis of resistance. You're talking
about a whole way of living in our tragic times.

I used to make a lot of resistance actions in the street, which I could do
in the day, I had the context for it. Now I gotta say that what really
matters to me is inviting people into the home that I share with my partner
Claire. We were able to get an old building with a small gym in the back
that we have transformed into a gallery, plus a guest apartment and a spare
couch to boot. We show people's art, we put folks up for a night or a
month, we have big dinners, we collaborate with our friends at a similar,
but more collectively organized space called Co-Prosperity. We run a
reading group and do public walks in Chicago and the surrounding region. We
have been doing these things for many years - mapping out the territory, a
lot like what you are talking about - but now we can make this fully public
and meet lots of new people. Both of us have been into art and theory for a
long time, and now we see our activism in holding this safe and uncensored
space for conversation.

You are right that authority crushes creativity, and really, any form of
autonomy. It's not just the authority of the state and public powers, but
also the authority of careerist competition and corporate-style
institutions. Sure I would like to be able to plot a whole revolution
instead of having another art show. But a revolution is not the spectacular
thing people imagine. What you would need is a broadly shared sense of how
to change the shape of everyday existence. And where does that come from?
People do have to make it themselves.

I feel powerless against Trump and his goons. Any individual does. I also
feel quite powerless in the sea of news, social media, fashion and the
like. Over the last years there have been a lot of snide remarks about safe
spaces, but damn, that need is real. I am not talking about a bunch of
rules governing what you can and can't say. I am talking about a place
where you can engage in experimental discussions, face to face, without
having to police yourself, and of course, without policing others. All the
big issues being discussed here are fundamentally important, and I hold on
to social theory and ecological science in order to get some sense of what
the future holds. But the future looks desolate, people are afraid, and
there is no use at all for art, theory and activism if you can't share them
in a way that builds trust.

Sure, I didn't say stuff like this when I lived in Paris and was part of
the journal Multitudes. I had more abstract and global ideas. Because life
was a lot easier back then. Resistance is different now. It really is a
whole way of living. The hardest part of resistance is getting people, or
even yourself, to understand why it is necessary, and with whom it could be
somehow successful.

warmly, Brian





On Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 12:53 PM Stella Aster via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Hi Brian, list,
>
> After a lot of work over the last few years, I have started to describe
> myself as "an artist, social researcher, and activist from Leyland,
> Central Lancashire". I do this because I see a need to weave together
> art, research, activism, and local communities.
>
> Our current situation is contingent on a few key factors. One of these
> is "authority at distance", that there are people who are geographically
> and relationally removed from us, but who feel they have the right to
> make decisions for us, and we feel we have to accept these decisions.
> This mechanism itself is contingent on both fear, and a defeatist lack
> of creativity. The fear is that if we don't do what we're told, or if we
> do something different without prior approval, then we will be punished
> or sanctioned. The defeatist lack of creativity is that when we are
> subjected to authority, we give in to a feeling that there is nothing we
> can do, and we accept it, instead of trying to think of ways we can do
> things differently, perhaps even resist.
>
> I invite everyone on this list to take 10 minutes out of your day and
> ask yourself "when was I subjected to authority at distance?"
>
> Here are some of my own answers:
>
> - When my GP kept stonewalling me for 18 months, refusing to do my blood
> tests or prescribe my hormones for my transition, because they were
> afraid of being accused of malpractice, because of a lack of formal
> approval by the next layer up of our health system.
>
> - Getting my ID checked when buying beer, even though the cashier was a
> friend, because they have to comply with the company's policy or risk
> being fired.
>
> - Having to scan a train ticket to get through the automated barriers at
> stations.
>
> - Struggling to get my bicycle through 'modal filters' on the footpaths
> and cycleways around me, because someone at the council decided that
> every cyclist should have to dismount there.
>
> - Arguing with private security at Manchester Pride that, no, they don't
> have a right to search my bag, and I don't have to let them, because
> it's a public street and I have a right of access.
>
> I could go on. I believe that once you start to look for where you are
> affected by authority in your day to day life, you will start to see:
> that it is pervasive; that it has negative impacts on ourselves and
> other people; that a lot of it is distant; that a lot of it depends on a
> chain of people all playing along; and that a lot of it is mediated by
> fear at each step in that chain.
>
> It is from making these observations and understandings over the last 20
> years that have led me to an anti-authoritarian ethos: a belief that
> authority itself is a problem and that authority in all its forms must
> be destroyed.
>
> I think there are at least three different components to
> anti-authoritarian praxis, and things we can do to respond to authority
> when we encounter it.
>
> The first is to try and understand. We should seek to know who has made
> a decision, why they have made that decision, and why the people closest
> to us in the chain feel they have to enforce that decision.
>
> The second is to build convivial and informal relationships with people
> in those chains. It's easy to get pissed off with people who are trying
> to tell you want to do, and to just tell them to fuck off. But the vast
> majority of people in the chain of authority are also powerless, and
> acting out of either a fear of sanction, or an inability or
> unwillingness to see how things could be different. If we can relate to
> each other sincerely as fellow humans, and not as subjects and
> enforcers, then we build a desire to help each other and to overcome the
> fear, and to work together in solidarity to resist authority at multiple
> links in these chains.
>
> The third is to resist. Find ways to avoid authority, and ways to
> actively participate in dismantling it. We talk about this step too much
> without putting understanding and conviviality in place first.
>
> We must also recognise that the current problems we are facing are not
> just problems of authority, they are problems of authority _at
> distance_. Recognising that distance as part of the problem, and working
> to reduce distance, is an important part of solving these problems.
> Everyone is so concerned with their national executive and legislature,
> but when are you ever going to meet any of these people face to face and
> build a relationship or friendship with them? We will never usurp these
> authorities from a distance, because their entire principle of
> operation, honed over hundreds of years, is to enact authority at a
> distance.
>
> Instead, we should focus on rebuilding our local communities in
> anti-authoritarian ways. Strong local units are able to materially and
> discursively resist the imposition of authority from outside. Here are
> some of the things I am doing, plan to do, and might do, which are part
> of my praxis/practice:
>
> - I have people in my town who I consider my chosen family. We spend
> time together, we check in via instant messages, we cook for each other
> and we eat together, we lend each other money when we need to. We help
> each other do things. We actively create a culture where asking for help
> is encouraged.
>
> - When the weather is better, I'm going to invite all my neighbours out
> for a cup of tea in the street. We barely see each other except when
> going to and from our houses in the street, and there is an expectation
> of privacy and not wanting to invite the entire street round to one
> person's house. So I thought, well why don't we just each make a coffee
> and come out into the street for a chat one Saturday afternoon? That's a
> very low pressure and low effort way to get us all spending time with
> each other.
>
> - I'm mapping out the cultural and community landscape of Central
> Lancashire, with a focus on the interconnections between different
> people, groups, and places, and drawing attention to art, research, and
> activist practices, and local community spaces. This will help people to
> find these things, and help me see how we can bring different groups of
> people together.
>
> - My PhD research examines higher weight people's experiences of weight
> stigma in healthcare in Central Lancashire. As part of this work, I'll
> be offering to connect participants with each other so they can form a
> peer support or social group. This is one example of how research
> practices can be used to achieve non-research affects.
>
> - I volunteer at a local community centre and help manage bookings for
> different family and community events. It's not what most people would
> consider 'activism', but it helps us get enough money to keep the lights
> on so that we can run a café and do a big community lunch once a month,
> where everyone can get a cheap, hot meal, and sit down with other people
> to eat together.
>
> - I set up a group for trans people in my town. I made a poster based on
> the trans pride flag, wrote an email address on there and a bit of
> blurb, and stuck it up on community notice boards in supermarkets. 10 of
> us have now found each other.
>
> - I want to set up a local Food Not Bombs group. These groups take food
> waste and cook vegetarian meals, served for free on the street. The
> practice is both a protest against war, and can be used as a way to
> build conviviality and support other protest and activist groups. Food
> is really fucking important and powerful, and there is a lot of
> potential to be explored by getting groups of people together to cook,
> eat, and wash up together.
>
> So I haven't answered your question directly, Brian. But I hope you can
> see from what I have written how there is a lot we can do locally to put
> theory into action, live by our values, and work against authority.
> Sometimes this work can be clearly seen as art, or social research, or
> activism, or community organising, or volunteering, or social or
> relational practice. Other times it's just 'doing stuff (together)',
> being human, or it crosses over and complicates the delineations between
> these different practices. But I think there is a lot of use in all
> these things, especially when we direct it locally, and focus that
> energy on our own experiences, the people around us, and the places we
> live. We need to act where we are.
>
> Stella ✨
>
>
> On 22/01/2025 22:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> > Anyone involved in the headliners of this post - or in teaching, free
> > software, and dozens of other idealistic pursuits - can well ask
> themselves
> > the question. What's the use, if the world is going to climate-change
> hell,
> > tech has poisoned people's brains and hearts, and your local fascist
> party
> > is about to get elected, or has just taken power?
> >
> > I am in Stuttgart right now to install an art show, and while exiting a
> > restaurant I leaned over for a closer look at the Trump stickers
> plastered
> > on the computer of the guy seating customers. "Oh, it's just for fun," he
> > said to me. This is the beauty of the world that social media has made.
> >
> > When Millei was elected in Argentina, people on the left were struck
> > speechless for months. With my collaborators at Casa Rio, we were
> involved
> > in a complex project trying to sketch out the rising influence of China
> on
> > the country's political ecology. But the public sphere in which such a
> > project could be meaningful had just collapsed into savage rhetoric
> > underwritten by a clear intent to use violence for a libertarian
> > transformation of the social contract. At one point we all basically had
> to
> > admit our despair. We resolved to go back to the basics, to the things we
> > believe in so deeply that we can't abandon them.
> >
> > Now in the USA we are again struck speechless, for the second time. The
> > difference is, this time we on the progressive left have been betrayed by
> > those who claimed to represent us. Neoliberalism gradually made the
> culture
> > that we produce into a mask over a corrupt political system. Then on
> > October 7 the mask fell. We saw that the center-left elites, the masters
> of
> > cognitive creativity, were imperialists ready to kill for the defense of
> > global capitalism. Their first concern at home was to fire the radical
> > professors and beat back the student protests with the truncheons of the
> > police. When you have to fear your supposed friends, what to expect from
> > your sworn enemies?
> >
> > I don't have the answers. It's why I don't post so much anymore. The
> themes
> > that animated this list over some thirty years are all in tatters. The
> > possibility of a more open and egalitarian world in which we all
> believed,
> > in one way or another, has been smashed by gigantic wrecking balls.
> Anyone
> > who looks back, and does not see the mistakes they themselves made on the
> > path to this disaster, is not really looking at all, in my humble
> opinion.
> >
> > Yet I still hold to my deepest beliefs. And I am now an elder, who must
> > turn experience - even the experience of failures - into something
> valuable
> > for present and coming generations. Resistance happens in the streets,
> but
> > not only. It happens in the way that you live, the way that you change
> your
> > life without abandoning your past.
> >
> > I write today because someone wrote to me offlist. I no longer say a word
> > about what I am doing, I can't promote myself, I'm not on social media,
> but
> > I invite you all to the Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, and more
> substantially,
> > to Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago where I live. I invite you to
> > correspond, to think and feel together, to carry on into the future.
> >
> > warmly, Brian
> >
> > https://kuenstlerhaus.de
> > https//watershed-art.org
> --
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