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

[Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On 1/22/25 23:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:

> 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


On 1/25/25 00:12, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:

> 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.

Maybe we can take these two points together. We -- people in the 
cultural field doing exhibitions, publications, workshops and events 
"open to all" -- have held out for this notion of a public sphere until 
the very end, longer than almost everyone else. The hard right never 
believed in it. For them, the public has always been something to be 
molded in the pursuit of power.

The political center abandoned the notion of the public sphere in the 
1990s. Analyses of "post-democracy" around the turn of the millennium 
tracked the rise of technocratic leadership and spin-doctoring closely, 
but it did so --  writing books and making rational arguments -- by 
appealing to the very thing its dissolution it was tracking. Many of our 
"critical interventions" did the same.

Now the dissolution has become so complete, it cannot be ignored, and 
doing more of the same feels like feeding a zombie machine.

I absolutely continue to see the value of art, theory and education. 
They are part of the human condition and aspiration. But we need to 
reimagine them beyond the notion of the public sphere, yet without 
reverting to nativist tribalism (now "accelerated" by technology, as 
Frédéric and others pointed out).

The under-commons, fugitive forms of trust, solidarity and togetherness, 
point to a way of living inside the ruins. But beyond that? There is 
only so much that rhizomatic structures can hold. Another hard lesson 
from the digital experience.










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