vladimir bulat on Tue, 15 Feb 2005 10:09:27 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-ro] David Riff - o analiza occidentala asupra Bienalei de la Moscova



Un punct de vedere detaliat asupra situatiei [confuze si dupa deschidere]
din jurul Bienalei de arta de la Moscova, dezvoltat de un specialist
occidental, criticul de arta & traducatorul & jurnalistul de la Berlin -
David Riff. 




David Riff

The Dialectics of Hopelessness
Visions and Visibility Around the Moscow Biennale

In Russia, the last three years have passed under the banner of economic
and political consolidation. This banner does not just symbolize "unity",
presented as an abstract concept of the consolidated, federalized State.
Instead, it flies above all areas of socio-cultural production, heralding
the artificial construction of a new (Russian) "way of life", modelled on a
fusion of bureacratic socialism and crypto-fascist hodge-podge life-style
patriotism. Yet despite all of the comprehensive talk of security,
administrative rationalization, controlled work conditions (offices rather
than black-markets), and domestic comfort ("Mother knows best"), this "way
of life", this seemingly self-perpetuating stability, always looks
artificial, much like a monkey in a suit of armor. All hell is breaking
loose everywhere, Russia included, as the old infrastructure seems to be
heading for a serious crisis. "Time is out of joint" on "The Planet of the
Apes", full of ruptures and breaks, taking on increasingly monstrous forms,
and no amount of make-up can make a monkey into a man. 

Still, most politicians and business-people seem to believe that true
reforms begin with cosmetics. This does not simply amount to an
image-campaign but a redefinition of visibility. Actors and agents
(tinkers, tailors, soliders, spies) that were previously kept backstage,
now become the main protagonists of the political drama. Their visibility
is a weapon. These organizations and agencies – including former "secret
services" – are led onto the stage wearing a human face. This mask is meant
to be reassuring: things, obviously, are not as bad as they seem. (This is
why they show Putin's cabinet-meetings on Channel 1 and – to a lesser
degree – on RTR...) Reassurance from the State, in turn, needs to be
coupled with another yet another visual stabilization: the unshaven
gentlemen in the tasteless suits need to conform, to look like actors and
agents instead of bufoons. This will lead to a relationship of trust
between consumers and producers, generating (market) confidance, which, as
we know, is one of the global utopia's most frequently visualized
attributes. Symptom: Raf Shakirov was sacked from his post as the editor of
"Izvestija" when Putin saw and discarded the issue with full-page photos of
dead children in Beslan. This was understood as a signal, which travelled
down the channels of the state-corporate interlock and resulted in
Shakirov's dismissal. Result: the cosmetic (often brutally destructive)
restoration of the crumbling facades of Moscow and Petersburg are
undergoing a paranoid radicalization, leading to frightening promises, made
by highly visible politicians: "You won't recognize this country (this
planet) in a couple of years."

But for now, the New Russia, more than anything else, needs to look more
respectable, modern, and even fashionable. Never mind the latent
nationalism and the criminal past. No one really cares except the
foreigners. The main thing is to look good for the global marketplace, to
attract investments, to play at "civil society" – a concept only thinkable
as a spectacle or a farce -, to keep everything firmly under control, to
make sure that "kitchen-maids don't rule the state", and to render all of
the very real social and infrastructural problem-zones invisible. In a
sense, one could describe this period as the Velvet Revolution's
Bonapartist phase: an artificial stabilization after a period of sudden
social change and adventure. Or, as Boris Kagarlitsky put it recently, the
imposition of "Egyptian democracy", firmly controlled, and unfortunately,
corrupt beyond imagination. 


Incidentally, state-capitalism's stablization of visibility is interwoven
with a paradigm-shift in the discourse of visuality of the new Russian
elite. The new Russian elite – Putin's political backbone – is not
completely satisfied with its image, its lifestyle. Enough vodka, enough
steam baths: no more prostitutes, no more fascism, give us a Jaguar instead
of a Jeep Cherokee. All that old, barbaric stuff just isn't slick enough,
although it may be funny sometimes, as works by the Novosibirsk art group
Blue Noses demonstrate. New nouvelle-cuisine restaurants, new boutiques,
new pay-per-view channels, new magazines, new erotica (give us nymphets as
in newer works by the ex-dog-man Oleg Kulik, floating in the amniotic sea
of simulated desire),  and most importantly, do something about the dιcor.
The dιcor, until now, has been marked by a curious absence of "high"
contemporary visual culture. Instead of icons and Faberge eggs, today's
Russian elite finds itself wanting contemporary art as a more modern means
of confirming its own identity. The elite's taste in art has been
"improving", "normalizing", even if, in terms of numbers, the Russian art
market is still dominated by the corrupted ex-official artists and their
snow-covered landscapes, their cheap copies of Modigliani or Picasso, their
megalomaniac statues of Peter the Great (Tseriteli). So what if even
Yuppies still prefer antiquities or designer-suits to buying a painting or
two to spiff up their homes? This is about to change. And if it doesn't,
the State will help. 

+++

One of the biggest problems facing the (political) visibility of
"Russo-Egyptian democracy" and the visuality of its new elite is that it
has not yet transcended the phase of normalizing gloss and selective
revelation, demonstration of "business as usual" and "dirty PR". Since
almost all poetics are based on such selective strategies of visibility,
the chances are that this fundamental paradox will remain. In any case, the
poetics of the mass-medial language used in Russia today are designed to
simulate "democracy" and "transparency", but actually pursue the dual
strategy of "hiding" problematic areas (withholding visibility) and
providing temporary visibility, effecting selective revelations of
ugliness, as arguments for counterstrategy or affirmations of complexity.
In the best case scenario, complexity is simplified (more or less
drastically), while the argument for counterstrategy is criminalized, to be
eliminated or erased by cosmetic surgery, or subordinated to a
power-vertical at the very least. The only real weapon against these
terrifying revelations is their transformation into positive visibility,
their re-visualization. If Putinism ever finds the means to effect this
re-visualization, to perfect the means of representation (as did Reaganism,
however briefly, by tapping into the primal motives of paradisical greed
and apocalyptic fear), it will have succeeded.

But for now, the problem is that the poetics of selective revelation are
very difficult to control. When they run amuck, the desire for political
visibility – coupled to the stylistic improvement of costumes and
stage-props – is frustrated by grotesque, pseudo-pornographic images of
corruption, by negative propaganda, mudslinging, filth. Positive and
negative figures overlap in simulatory diaramas, leading to complete
confusion and ultimate passivity: things are never as they seem, so why
even try to change them? 

As such, most selective revelations reveal the melancholy trivia of
failure. Such failures of political visibility usually leads from the
glossy veneer of highlife to the banality and lowlife triviality of the
everyday. 

+++

Take, for an example, the discourses and controversies surrounding "the big
project for Russia", the First Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art. The
source of many a pseudo-utopian dream, carried to reality on an optmistic
upwind, the Biennale was meant to supply form to all of this new interest
in visuality and visibility, a provincial market stimulator, vibrating
across the (newly stabilized) erogenous-optical zones that connect
visuality and visibility, reclaiming at least some of its political
importance in forming visual language by reaching more massive, popular
exposure. But now, after more than a year of concrete planning, the Moscow
Biennale is in the process of recovering from a paranoid crisis, after
certain things – embarassments - inevitably became visible. None of these
things were very pleasant; they revealed the petty details of corruption
that, perhaps, are better left unseen.

For the purposes of this essay, this petty little story begins with a
rhetorical fragment from the web-site of the Moscow Biennale, unsigned
although attributed to one of the Biennale's chief lobbyists, Viktor
Misiano:

One of the most obvious consequences of political and economical
stabilisation in Russia is the growing interest of the Russian society in
contemporary culture, and more precisely in contemporary art. As a result a
totally new Russian art infrastructure has emerged through art fairs,
commercial galleries, non-profit exhibition spaces, festivals and
conferences. A new Russian public, as well as the new Russian media, have
become especially sensitive to everything that is new and current in
contemporary culture. The Russian art world is developing fast and there is
a certain opinion, conviction, vision and understanding that the country
needs to organise a major international art event, which would be able to
introduce current and relevant art movements to a Russian audience by
presenting the most interesting examples of contemporary art. It is the
right time in Moscow to create a major international art event, the first
of this kind for our country. Visual art is the only art form which does
not have a major international forum in our national capital. The Moscow
Biennale of Contemporary Art would build on the success of other events
like the famous Tchaikovsky Musical Festival, Moscow International Film
Festival and "The Golden Mask" Theater Festival. 

To briefly rearticulate Misiano's logic, pushing aside the canned
enthusiasm of his rhetoric: as both economy and politics stabilize, Russian
society takes an interest in art, both as spectators and consumers. In
order to stimulate the consumer's interest, which is still provincial, one
needs a "big event", a biennale. Never mind that big events are under
constant criticism for being spaces for the agents of globalization: These
"no-wheres" need to be reclaimed now-and-here, as forums for genuine social
exchange, less mediated, less visible (more visual), cleared of elitist
exclusion and bureacratic corruption. Of course, a certain degree of
compromise with representative visibility (the famous Tchaikovsky Musical
Festival, Moscow International Film Festival and "The Golden Mask" Theater
Festival etc.)  is necessary but...: newflash....: 

21.05.2004. The Moscow Biennale Will Open Without Viktor Misiano. It has
come to light that Viktor Misiano, the deputy director of the State
Museum-Exhibition Center ROSIZO, editor in chief of the "Moscow Art
Journal", and one of Russia's prominent curators, well-known in the West,
has been removed from the curatorial group entrusted with organizing the
First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. According to the delicate
formulation of the Ministry of Culture, under whose aegis the Biennale is
being organized, Misiano was relieved of his duties in order concentrate on
other important exhibition-projects: at present, he is curating Russia's
contributions to the Biennales in Sao Paolo and Venice. But according to
our source, the reason for Misiano's removal lies in a conflict that
neither the Ministry of Culture nor the curators themselves are very eager
to talk about.
The international collective of curators includes famous names such as
Robert Storr of the MoMA, Rosa Martinez and Jara Bubnova, authors of the
"Manifesta", Nicolas Bourriaud, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who made a sensation
last year in Venice, and others. As far as artists are concerned, the
organizers are counting on the participation of Western "stars" such as
Maurizio Catalan, Rirkrit Tiravania, Sergio Vega, Monika Sosnowska, and
Isaac Julian. The list of Russian participants has yet to be confirmed, but
almost certainly will include Oleg Kulik, the group AES+F, and the "Blue
Noses" as well as the radical performance artist Elena Kovylina.  

Like most newspaper clippings, this little announcement is outdated. Times
are changing so quickly, that by today, the entire story has changed. Don't
panic. The Biennale is to feature young artists (i.e. under 35) from both
Russia and abroad. In the following selective revelation, we find out why. 

9.7.2004. The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art  is Presented to the
Press. The guests invited to the press conference at Moscow's luxurious
"Mariott" had to shuffle their feet in the corridors for quite some time,
awaiting the arrival of the assembly's chairman, the head of the Federal
Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydkoi. [...] Other
"attendants" included the members of the Biennale's organizational
comittee: the head of the department for visual art of the Federal Agency
for Culture and Cinematography, Maia Kobakhidze, the comissioner of the
Biennale and general director of ROSIZO, Evgeny Zyablov, and last but not
least, the assistant director of ROSIZO and Curator-Coordinator of the
Biennale, Joseph Backstein. The only absentee was Victor Misiano, who is
the other assistant director and one of the main  inspirators of  the idea
of the Biennale. To put it lightly, the reason for his absence can be
explained by a certain ideological rift with certain contemporary artists
who have become popular lately, some of them through Misiano's efforts and
those of the "Moscow Art Magazine", which he edits. His colleague Joseph
Backstein explains Misiano's absence even more diplomatically: "Viktor is
in high demand all over the world. Sadly, he has no time left for the
preparations of the Moscow Biennale."  

It seems obvious that all of this doesn't quite correspond to reality. Let
us demonstrate or reveal, albeit selectively.
	
4.8.2004. "An open discussion on the Moscow Biennale and its organizational
methods has been opened on the site artinfo.ru. The site has published two
documents, which previously only circulated behind the scenes" , which show
that Misiano was removed as the result of a bureaucratic intrigue. These
documents show that Backstein was able to effect Misiano's unconditional
removal by writing a denunciatory letter, reminiscent of the Stalin-era. By
claiming that Misiano had taken "a destructive position", was creating "an
obstruction" by "intriguing" and "spreading disinformation", and was not
displaying enough "loyalty", both to his fellow Russians and his
international colleagues, Backstein made the recommendation – albeit with a
"broken heart" - that Misiano be removed for good.  
While such intrigues are unfortunate, they are nothing special; in fact,
they probably happen all of the time. The real "sensation" consists in the
following: although the letter was written "in the name" of the curatorial
group, it did not include any of the co-curator's signatures, even though
they had visited Moscow and should have been informed or consulted, signing
the letter as a show of their consent. Instead, Backstein's denunciatory
memorandum was co-signed by four of Moscow's most well-known artists,
namely Oleg Kulik and the AES group. The reason for their signature was
supposedly to corroborate Backstein's claim that Misiano had been spreading
the rumor that they would not participate in the Biennale. After a month's
deliberation, Misiano was removed, notwithstanding all of his contributions
to the project of the Biennale.

This gave rise to the fear that the removal of Misiano as "an official
face" would lead to the re-appropriation, destruction or
state-privatization of the "Moscow Art Magazine", the art-community's main
open forum. These fears are not unfounded. There are rumors that the
Ministry of Culture has cut all funding for Moscow's only
discursive-artistic publication. The editorial board, whose salaries were
paid by the Ministry of Culture, have been withheld for months. As one says
in America, you'll never work in this town again.)

Answering the fears raised and the problems posed by these selective
revelations, which demonstrate an unethical rupture in an art-scene long
since divided by intrigues and squabbles, an informal group of artists,
critics and other cultural figures published an open letter with the demand
for transparance around the Biennale. This demand is interesting because it
reflects the problematique of the relationship between visibility (of
public personae) and selective revelation quite concisely and can be used
as a point of departure in beginning a critique of its discourse, both
negative and positive.

+++

The partially visible intrigues and maneuvers around the project of the
Moscow Biennale reveal a deep rift within the artistic community, which
cannot agree on which model of visibility and transparence the new Russian
elite actually wants. 

So what kind of art does the new Russian elite actually want? Maybe it
wants spectacular events, Glamorama and fame, feather-light provocations,
burlesques and carnivals, glossed-over eroticism, and obvious visual
opulence, befitting of its luxurious new offices and villas? Or perhaps it
would prefer an edited version of history, painted in deeply satisfied
timbres, aged with the patina of authenticity, confirming the international
value of Russia's pre- and post-Soviet cultural legacy?

Take, for an example, artists like Kulik, AES+F, or the Blue Nose. Just
like the post-conceptual irony of Brit-Pop, the irony or mystery of these
prominent artists of the 1990s wears thin when it becomes clear that their
art can be easily used in a pseudo-global advertising campaign (cf. Kulik
and "Blue Noses" as advertising-figures for "Absolut"), ironically playing
with the deeply rooted cultural stereotypes of Russian identity, as it is
perceived in the West. In an international context, they function as
ethno-pop (and not like post-national Brit pop): no-one really cares about
their complex background; most people simply enjoy their carnivalesque,
life-confirming images of the new "Russian bear", loveably tamed by the
consumption of vodka and other attractive goods. In this sense, they
represent the "new quality" of their age, largely because they are so
visible all over the world. Their art is conciously (visibly) designed for
consumption by a new elite, but this is actually its fatal flaw. To put it
in plainer language, many people are already sick of their open cynicism,
the (equally transparent) image of their corrupt monopoly over visibility,
which seems to be coming true. The logic of the tussovka has changed,
losing the last vestiges of its dissident shame. (Take, for an example, the
Klyazma festival's first time inclusion of a big bronze bear by Tseriteli,
as well as a photo-series that culminated in the selective revelation of a
beautiful model's cute little vagina, by his grandson. How adorable!) But
at the same time, the obviously bio-political program of this transparence
- its sterility – make it difficult to imagine its lasting dominance.
Transparent neo-pop, in terms of art-history, is probably doomed to
failure, simply because it is not very interesting. 

This gives rise to a serious question that – again – can be related back to
the visibility politics of (artificial) stability: perhaps the new Russian
elite does need a dose of social-critical art, art that captures or avoids
the spectacle, art that documents reality in all of its sordid (and
splendid) details, art that considers its main goal as communication over
the Common, rather than auto-canonizing discourses on social
representation? Perhaps people need a dose of utopia once in a while,
especially if it somehow – however vaguely – belongs to the domain of the
forbidden, the invisible. Call this resistance, if you may, notwithstanding
all of the skepticism toward radical chic , or better yet, call it
resistance with revolutionary potential, whose obscurity (non-transparence)
questions and overthrows the elitist assumptions of visibility and
representation, attempting to imagine a world defined by complex visions
rather than simplifying (representative) visualizations. 

This kind of art is hardly compatible to the commercializing mindset of the
other group. Why dwell on the eye-sores of the every-day? And why engage in
experiments whose results are consciously ephemeral or ugly? The new elite
has little use for "nonspectacular" art or psychoanalytical performance
(e.g. the ESCAPE Program, or the St. Petersburg collective Factory of Found
Clothes [Glucklya and Tsaplya]), nor can it really accept the
"neo-Communist realism" (or "post-dissident art") of Dmitry Gutov and his
Lifshitz Institute. It also will have trouble integrating socially critical
documentalism and situationism (e.g. Dmitry Vilensky and the workgroup
"What is to be done?"), just to name a few key positions. In other words,
it will eventually discard the entire artistic Left, shutting down many of
the off-spaces that have resisted the "privatization" free-for-all and the
more recent trend toward globalized stability according to plan. The
official-vulgar version is that no-one really cares about the Left and its
Marxian theorizing, just as no-one really care about the war in Chechnya or
the reduction of benefits for pensioners who are already well below the
poverty line. No-one really cares about democracy either, so if the
cultural Left is "shut down" or marginalized programmatically, its
disappearance will go unnoticed, much like the exit of liberalism from the
stage of parliamentary politics. 

Yet then again, any negative attitude – ranging from refusal to see to the
acceptance of being invisible – can be negated with yet another negation,
namely with the global nature of today's Left, which has been slowly
seeping into the art-world for quite some time. While one can argue that
the artworld always either valorizes or discards political poetics,
according the mode of the moment, one can counter that revolutionary
resistance in the arts are, by now, beyond the discourses of
commodification, which have – in any case – become infinitely more complex
than they were 25 some-odd years ago. At some point, they began to give
rise to new modalities of communication, where "big art show" and "social
forum" can be imagined in one and the same breath. In other words, the
Cultural Left's visibility as a multitude is undiminished and will continue
to grow, especially to the roving eye of the Curator, who is far more
interested in multitudes and  immanent visions than personalities and their
transcendent visibility anyway, simply because it has trouble remembering
all of the names. 

To recapitulate and simplify: the conflicts around the Moscow Biennale
selectively reveal two "camps" who do not only differ upon what kind of art
to produce, but how to utilize the global and the local in order to produce
it. 

+++

Thus, the goal of the First Moscow Biennale is to negotiate between these
two conceptions, in order to a) selectively reveal their productive
conflict, and b) to afford (respectable) visibility to contemporary art
from Russia as a whole, notwithstanding all of the differences in (ethical,
aesthetic, and political) opinion. The name of the Biennale, "The
Dialectics of Hope", comes from a book titlte by the sociologist, activist,
and director of the Moscow Center for Globalization Studies Boris
Kagarlitsky. This could be understood as a concession, a peace offering, a
provision of visibility, promising that the Biennale would have an
inclusive character and reflect different positions, including the critical
view of contemporary capitalism. This conception (still created with rather
than without Viktor Misiano, who is far more familiar with the Cultural
Left that Backstein) was somehow synchronized to the widespread movements
toward politicization as a form of "resistance" against alienation, sadness
and hopelessness, in the full understanding that the age of utopias has
expired. In other words, this conception grudgingly accepts the emotional
integrity of art from the Left, although it fails to understand its inner
significance and its necessary consequences.

However, the press conference of July 8th seemed to redefine the hopes
placed on the Biennale as a point of inclusive consensus between different
aestetico-political models. At the press-conference, the announcement of
its title led to the question of whether the Biennale would be a "left-wing
event". Now, however, it was Evgenij Zyablov, the commissar of the
Biennale, who answered that the project would definitively not come "from
the Left", although "art cannot be seen in isolation for engagement", and
"contemporary art reflects social problems". Another unnamed member of the
press conference said that the Biennale would reflect a kind of
"monitoring" of left-wing ideas. Here, it is clear that social
responsibility is a kind of nuisance that needs to be justified, if at all.
Criticism of social reality is really only excusable if it can be subsumed
as a strategy of (State/corporate) representation, as a form of (federal)
"monitoring". As such, it can documented and revealed selectively, in order
to fit the needs of the projected (and increasingly real) new Russian
elite.  But does the Cultural Left really want to "be seen" (and used) in
this way? As Boris Kagarlitsky writes in his letter of protest, published
on www.gif.ru:

All of this gives rise to a paradoxical situation: the context of my work
legitimates a project that enjoys the support of the Russian elites, who
were hardly ever noted for their sympathy to the theory and praxis of the
Left. Of course, "Leftist" and "progressive" rhetorics are in fashion again
– we see, for an example, how they accompany any legal project focused on
depriving the working class yet another privilege. The same thing seems to
be happening in culture: it seems quite natural and timely for official
culture to appeal to discourse from the Left. However, for progressive,
independent art, this use of words is inadmissable, even fatal. 

Along with these general political implications, the artistic Left – if one
can even apply this term to the multitude of non-glamorous approaches to
art – was far more disconcerted by the fact that the removal of Misiano
through Backstein took place with the support of Kulik and AES+F, which was
already partially revealed (by Misiano) before the press-conference might
be an attempted coupe d'etat. The aesthetic programme announced at the
Biennale's first press conference seemed to confirm this idea. Throughout
July and August, it seemed as though Kulik and AES+F might have succeeded,
ensuring the inclusion of the superstars that legitimate their presence
(Catalan for Kulik, Viola for AES) as well as their own coronation in the
pantheon of superstardom. Perhaps the most articulate formulation of this
fear comes from Bogdan Mamonov, re-presenting the age-old choice visibility
and vision, between becoming an official face or being an artist. The real
cultural-political basis of this superstructural formulation is
overdetermined by the liklihood that Kulik, Dubbosarsky and Vinogradov, or
AES+F, might, at some point, become the representative-artistic face of a
new state and a new elite, in some surreal blend of Putin meets
Saatchi-Pop. Is it so very difficult to imagine Kulik or Dubbosarsky as
professors of art academies, like Lόpertz or Immendorf in Germany? It
remains to be seen whether this is or is not a paranoid projection. 

+++
In this sense, one can speak of two factions, whose latent conflict seemed
about to implode. But then, just after Boris Kagarlitsky had written his
letter of solidarity, another newsflash.

2.09.2004. At a press-luncheon, the organizers of the Moscow Biennale of
Contemporary Art announced that the main venue for the Biennale would be
the former Museum of Lenin, the Historical Museum, instead of the Central
House of Artist. The main curatorial project hosted here would only consist
of young artists (20-30 years of age) and unknown figure, who's names
"won't tell you anything...yet". [...] Now, the Biennale's central project
will include artists from different countries (a model geography might
include Europe, China, Korea, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Puerto
Rico, the USA etc.) Let us remind the reader that this exhibition does not
have more than 45 participants. And if the organizers had announced that
they were going to invite Oleg Kulik, AES, or Anatoly Osmolovsky and other
Russian "stars", this announcement has been now rendered null and void. Not
one name of the new artist list has been confirmed and will only be
announced 2 weeks in advance of the vernissage. 

These announcements temporarily eclipsed all other issues  and replaced the
various letters of protest on www.gif.ru for the first ten days of
September. Backstein's change in direction does not only demostrate how
effective or healthy – how problematic – a little transparency can be but
it also shows that there is, as of yet, absolutely no consensus as to which
forms of visibility and visuality the new Russian elite really wants. I
suppose it was difficult not to realize that the Biennale's image was in
danger of being corrupted, becoming some kind of virus of dissent among the
artists, a revolt or uprising against the superstars. Thus, Backstein
changed the Biennale's image, redefining its visibility: he announced a
great variety of fringe programs, in addition to the Solomonic judgement of
an age-limit. In this sense, the investigative journalism was a success,
but of course, the means of representation, of providing visibility haven't
changed hands, even if their rules have been revised. 

Yet, even if one agrees that the battle for the means of representation (of
producing visibility) sometimes justifies such stratagems, one can't help
but feel that one is being manipulated by yet another visibility strategy,
another political-technological ploy. This manipulation only hides some
fundamental indecisiveness: the suit of armor doesn't fit somehow – first
glamor, then "Wunderkinder", what's next in the "Dialectics of Hope"? – and
each further move is less comfortable than the last. 
 



 



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