“Documenta 15’s framework suggests the massive exhibition as an attempt to showcase egalitarian survival strategies and community initiatives from the Global South … The concept of ‘lumbung’ is offered as a resource to ‘heal today’s injuries, especially ones rooted in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal structures.’

And yet … the types of initiatives most celebrated here … are just more or less the accepted aesthetic preferences of international NGO culture, which values tangible deliverables and loves to produce texts with the word ‘community’ in them. Indeed, almost all these works come with a label that explains what government agency or foundation has helped support them. …

Much of the justificatory text here about sharing and cooperation as a new model of co-habitation that challenges neoliberalism and colonialism seems to me to mistake effects for causes. Things aren’t unsustainable, either in art or more broadly, because of a bad mindset. … [They are because] … a tiny group of the world’s population controls a vast majority of its wealth and resources, and has it in its interests to keep it that way.

The major problem is not an abstract ‘Western’ habit of thought, like ‘hierarchy’ or ‘individualism,’ which you can fix by turning to collaboration. These are deflections of the kind that the non-profit world inculcates, as Anand Giridharadas argues in Winners Take All, because non-profit culture functions by reframing the ‘political as personal,’ turning systemic problems into things that can be solved via workshops, at the level of interpersonal dynamics or clever bootstrap initiatives …”

aus: Ben Davis: Documenta 15’s Focus on Populist Art Opens the Door to Art Worlds You Don’t Otherwise See—and May Not Always Want to, Artnet, 6.7.22, im Internet

08/22

“… In einem großen deutschen Fluss sterben Abertausende von Fischen und Krebsen an einem unbekannten Gift; Atomkraft gilt plötzlich wieder als Versprechen für die Zukunft; Fluggesellschaften planen 20 Jahre nach dem Desaster der Concorde einen neuen Überschalljet; die Müllberge wachsen weiter; das Waldsterben ist zurück, weil es eigentlich nie weg war; Bauern dürfen Ökokriterien wieder vergessen; der Staat plant neue fossile Kraftwerke; die Russen sind wieder die Gefahr aus dem Osten und arbeiten auch noch kräftig am nächsten nuklearen Super-GAU.

Das ist alles so was von Eighties! Und wir dachten doch, es sei vorbei. Tja. …

Aber erinnern wir uns richtig: Unser ‘No Future’ von 1982 zwischen Ozonloch, Waldsterben und Rheinvergiftung ist heute die gute alte Zeit: Damals lag der CO2-Gehalt in der Luft bei 340 Molekülen pro Million, heute sind es gefährliche 420, die globale Überhitzung ging mit 0,3 Grad gerade richtig los, heute sind es 1,2 Grad: fast ein ganzes Grad Celsius mehr seit meiner Jugend! Das Baumsterben konnte man mit Filtern auf Kohlekraftwerken bekämpfen, aber keiner stellte die Kohle infrage; das ewige Eis auf Grönland und in den Alpen war noch ewig, auf Meeresströmungen konnte man sich verlassen.

… Der weltweite Ölverbrauch lag bei 2,8 Milliarden Tonnen, heute sind es 4 Milliarden, die Ozonschicht ließ sich ein paar Jahre später mit viel Glück und einem ziemlich simplen Vertrag wieder kitten. Als wir Wohlstandskinder in den Achtzigern hemmungslos konsumierten, lag trotzdem der ‘Welt-Erschöpfungstag’, an dem die nachwachsenden Ressourcen für ein Jahr aufgebraucht sind, erst im November – heute, wo wir alle ach so bio, vegan, nachhaltig und achtsam sind, ist das bereits im Juli. …”

aus: Bernhard Pötter: Retro, aber richtig, taz online, 23.8.22, im Internet

Abb.: Ana Alenso: Medusa’s fossil addiction 2, 2017, im Internet.

08/22

“‘If there is a class war – and there is – it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill,’ wrote Maurice Cowling, the influential rightwing historian, in the late 1970s. ‘It is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.’ The nature of Conservatism has altered very little since, but the class on whose behalf the Tory party fights has changed dramatically: where once it was doctors and lawyers, businessmen, ‘respectable people’, it is now hedge fund managers and property developers, the filthy, the super, the Croesus rich. If you’re less wealthy than Jacob Rees-Mogg, the party has fought a 12-year war against you, and – newsflash – it won.

Some statistics need animating, and some animate themselves … a 40-year high of 10.1% inflation … a 4.1% drop in regular pay …

In fact, the class war wasn’t fought with subtlety and skill, it was fought in a more modern fashion, with misinformation. The argument for austerity was built on complementary, nonsensical narratives: most disabled people were faking it; most people on benefits were too lazy to work; most waste in the benefits system was lost to fraud; a class of the workshy had been created by benefits; the ‘big society’ was good, because it was much nicer to get your neighbour’s help than to have properly funded public services; parents know more about education than local authorities; and so on.

… It was just one diversionary talking point after another, as the first offensive wave proceeded…, and the destruction of the social safety net was achieved.

With Brexit, … the escapade was there to deliver only one outcome: the destruction of regulation by which workers and citizens protect and assert themselves against the interests of capital. It was just the second wave of the war.

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, prime ministerial hopefuls, approach the coming crisis with another patchwork of absolute nonsense. The cost of living crisis is all down to the war in Ukraine. We head into recession because we don’t work hard enough. … But it’s different … [this time]: they’re not trying to divert us from some smart new move – they have no moves. If you look at the level of public debt, the high inflation, the low growth and the tax burden, we’re already in a postwar economy. It was just a different kind of war, a class war masquerading as a kulturkampf, and we lost. …

You cannot rebuild anything on fictional foundations. … You cannot organise if you don’t know what side you’re on, and so many of the narratives of the past 12 years have been tailored to mask exactly that. Are you a striver or a shirker? A net contributor or a net recipient? A patriot or a migrant? Metropolitan elite or left behind? Latte sipper or bitter drinker? Woke or anti-woke? Leaver or remainer? We’ve been trapped in this endless cycle of meaningless divisions to mask what’s incredibly plain: we’re all on the same side and we’re all under attack.”

aus: Zoe Williams: Inflation at 10%? This is class war – and it was years in the making, The Guardian online, 18.8.22, im Internet

Abb.: “Congrats team, the company made record profits this year and we wanted to do something special for you guys”, CVS Health, 2023, im Internet.

08/22

“Sehr viele Menschen sind der Ansicht, der wirklich strafwürdige Bereich von Korruption und Untreue beginne knapp oberhalb der eigenen Lebenspraxis.”

aus: Thomas Fischer: RBB-Skandal um Patricia Schlesinger: Gemach, verehrte Jagdgesellschaft, Spiegel online, 12.8.22, im Internet

Abb.: Taring Padi: Flamme der Solidarität, Installation, Documenta15, 2022, Detail.

08/22

“… une statistique interpelle, et qui indique de manière indubitable que c’est aux mieux nantis de fournir l’essentiel de l’effort. Elle est la suivante : aux États-Unis comme en France, les 50 % les moins nantis de la population ont une empreinte qui est compatible avec les objectifs de réduction à atteindre en 2030, ou quasi (2). Ce n’est donc pas à eux de se mobiliser en premier, ou de l’être au travers de mesures contraignantes, mais à l’autre moitié de la population de s’activer !”

aus: Étienne de Callataÿ: Face au défi environnemental, c’est aux mieux nantis de fournir l’essentiel de l’effort, La Libre Belgique en ligne, 11.8.22, im Internet

Abb.: World Inequality Report 2022, im Internet

08/22

“The global culture … militates against … African unity. It serves the purpose of the multinationals. It is a postmodern application of the old adage ‘divide and rule’.

The movement towards a global culture … [and] this postmodern tendency towards cultural fragmentation and identity struggles … are two faces of the same coin. …

There should be no African unity. People should remain divided, fragmented, confused. And new slogans, new catchwords, new worthy causes must be found to hide this truth. ‘Identity‘, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘respect for other cultures’, ‘cultural studies‘, the list will go on proliferating, so as soon as we unveil one world another is found to replace it, so that our African peoples remain perpetually confused, so that our African intellectuals and thinkers and writers are drawn into the noose. … They forget that there is no culture without an economy to support it, without political institutions to defend it, without a land in which it can strike its roots. That ‘cultures’ and ‘identities’ are doomed without a material base, condemned to whither away. …

Otherwise, culture, identity, multiculturalism become an exhibition, a spectacle for the pleasure of others to see, to consume. Like the festivals of African culture I have seen in London, or Copenhagen or New York. Like the visibility of African-Americans in music, dance and sports and their almost total exclusion from the decisive levels of banking, production, business and other areas linked to intellectual or administrative or economic power.”

aus: Nawal El Saadawi: Why keep asking me about my identity? Rede, New York, März 1996, hier in: The Nawal El Saadawi Reader, London/New York: Zed 1997, S.121/122.

Abb.: Riri Suheri: Bhineka (diversity?), 2017, indoartnow, im Internet.

08/22

“Wir müssen uns im Lockdown nicht mehr mit Menschen herumschlagen, die anderer Meinung sind, und davon wird man dumm.”

aus: Marjane Satrapi: Ich hab gern Angst, Interview durch Susan Vahabzadeh, Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, 8.2.21, im Internet

08/22