[-empyre-] the artist in conflict

Thu Feb 10 09:06:05 EST 2011

The introductory texts by Horit, Nat and Eliot are incredibly insightful and I am so delighted to learn more of your practices and perspectives. 

Horit's reflection on the political systems in the Middle East is quite poignant. I would include that the situation is grim in regards to democracy, freedoms and human rights in the entire area including Maghreb, Israel, the Gulf, Iran, Asia, etc. Personnel in office are a combination of military generals in cooperation with businessmen who are akin contemporary feuds. I suspect that soon Egypt, after Mubarak, will arrive at a democratic multi party parliamentary government. However, it will eventually again be encircled with tycoon businessmen (empowered through demagogy and platforms focusing on representation of identity politics, sectarian, ethnic, religious divisions). Albeit different ones, and limited by terms in office, the new peoples will practice favoritism, corruption, economic self-interest, and all the rest that comes along with the state of a "country in transition". I am making this assumption by generalizing from the situation in the
 Balkans. In reference, it was also interesting to watch the processes a couple of years ago in the "Western Liberal Democracies", as recession sunk markets and economic criminal activities practiced by investors and bankers were exposed. These were more sanitized and seemingly transparent processes, therefore somehow acceptable. There is a set of procedural steps: public embarrassment, punishment, at times symbolic incarceration (for example ENRON), polemic with the television pundits, then stimulus packages and bonuses.

That said, there is a spirit among young people of being tired and fed up of old people and their old world traditions and old world money. Despite being unorganized and without apparent figureheads (all the better) this is the reason why Tahrir square galvanized into one of the most important events in the region's recent history.

Isak Berbic
February 10, 2011.

Please check out updates on the blog for a new series on politicians / pundits mouths: these include Christiane Amanpour, Shimon Peres, Jon Stewart, Hosni Mubarak, Gretchen Carlson and more:

http://isakb.blogspot.com

Thank you for reading

From: Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2011 5:39 PM
Subject: [-empyre-] the artist in conflict

> Thank you ever so much Horit and Nat for your forceful and compelling statements about your work and the challenges faced by artists and teachers in the throws of conflict.    I'm particularly thankful to Nat for honoring the memory of Ahmed Bassiouny, the sound and media artist who as killed during the events of January 28.

I can't help but note the commonality of Horit and Nat's posts given their emphasis on "the situatedness of media" and how  "the politics and aesthetics of mediation" impact, as Nat puts it, "accountability and affect within an artistic context."   I can't think of a better way of describing the interventionist work of Horit, which I've been following and admiring for years as she has worked perilously with other feminist artists at the Israeli Palestinian checkpoints, checkpoints that imprint the very ontology of 'mediation' on those passing through it.

I welcome more thoughts by Horit and Nat (and certainly by members of the list-- recently subscribed members should know that they are free to join in the conversation, and can do so by replying to this e-mail) about how they understand the interrelatedness of accountability and affect within the artistic context.  One wonders whether such interrelatedness wasn't being practiced by Ahmed Bassiouny on the day of January 28, when his capture of sound and media would have been so crucial for the rearticulation of events happening so rapidly.  Or perhaps, in this instance, his very presence on Tahrir Square provided corporeal media through which such capture was itself an expression of resistance.

> Then there's the flip side expressed by Nat, how to "teach a class on this topic
> without the class becoming a seminar in political history or a lesson
in activism only. " I must admit to having fallen under suspicion at times over the years by students who have felt that both my choice of artists under discussion and my emphasis on political topics crossed the line into activism.  From my point of view, I feel that we are imprinted with the ideological framework of our working conditions, which in and of themselves might constitute the very political histories or lessons of activism.  Conversely, I was recently speaking with an American graduate who wishes to work on tactical performance but whose professors urge her to select the oeuvre of "artists" for evaluation.  Couldn't the performance of Tahrir Square stand-in for such an artist?  Might mediation come into play when the public stands-in for the private, in a way in which creative approaches to social media might stand-in for more traditional means of artistic expression?

Tim
> 

-- Timothy Murray
Director, Society for the Humanities
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
27 East Avenue
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
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