#artstrike

artwork for ZWÖLF VORTRÄGE ZU 1968. VON KÜNSTLERISCHEN PRAKTIKEN UND VERTRACKTEN UTOPIEN // lecture series @ Universität Hamburg, 2018 – organized by Petra Lange-Berndt & Isabelle Lindermann

At six o'clock on a Saturday morning in the Parc de la Ciutadella, we were running from the sudden heavy downpour of rain, finding shelter under that typical octagonal park building where you would have an orchestra playing if there'd be an event. As we got up the stairs, we saw - smack in the center of it, curled up in a sleeping bag like a caterpillar, no-one else but Luther Blissett himself.

Our steps woke him up as the sounds of our feet echoed in the acoustical structure we had entered. He recognised us and invited us to take a seat on the floor. He cleared his throat and said "Glad you could drop by, just the people I wanted to see. I heard you guys organised an Art Strike recently, during the Night of Museums. An Art Strike, is that so?” We nodded while sitting down next to him. He looked at us with an expression of total indifference. “Hmmm yeah. How original. This has happened before. Done and done. As you well know. Still, you repeated it”, he blurred out with no emotion. But then his face changed, lit up with a smile we had never seen before in our lives. “By the way, do you have any tobacco to spare?” he asked, with sparkling eyes big as plates. We handed him a tobacco pouch, and he continued talking while rolling a cigarette.

“So, guys, our ability to imagine makes us social beings, it's the basis of art, language, science, religion, all that stuff we start doing and learning about from the moment we are born into this world. Each and every one of us have their our reality in a sense, the contexts we are born into, pass through, bring with us, create and so on. And yet we are part of the same social and artistic texture. We do not stand separate from the continuous process of sociocultural weaving, the forming of realities. For we are both the weavers and the threads, forming textures, patterns and uncontrollable bolts of colour. And this has nothing to do with the idea, role, concept, identity of the “artist”, this is how the world works. If I may be so presumptuous to say that I know how the world works,” he paused, taking a long in-breath lighting the cigarette.

“What we find in our hands,” he continued, blowing smoke straight into our faces, as if wanting to share it with us, “Where we find ourselves entangled in might not always be pretty, but there is no stepping out. To say we share some sort of collective imagination as social beings in nothing pretty,” he continued, waving his cigarette towards us. “Then again, this collective imaginary could be approached poetically, I guess”, leaning back and taking another drag.

”But can we change the images we are projecting, and those being projected onto us? How this collective imagination is created, is it created by museums, cultural and social institutions in general, or by the crisis, or is it created by artists, or the people going to a free night at the museum? We should be all part of the same artistic and cultural texture... right?” He fell silent and raised his head, looking at the octagonal roof above us. A mysterious grin appeared on his lips, his finger pointing up, signalling us to raise our eyes as well. We looked up, and there it was, written in fat black maker “Looking at the ceiling you won't see the solution”.

“Well,” he said, lowering his eyes,“one thing is for sure – Art Strike is now part of your reality. Going out together to the streets, to the people waiting in the endless waiting lines of the Night of the Museums, and saying “We are a bunch of confused artists, we are not quite sure what we could do for society at this moment of precariousness, would you tell me what you think, while you are standing and waiting here? And why are you here in this endless line tonight? Am I supposed to be producing art so you could stand in such a line once a year? Or if I choose not to produce, will this strike last forever?”. Reflexion starts by asking ourselves and the person next to us what we are doing here. Are we actually a community, and could we be a multitude?

You gave your uncertainties a form of inaction in action. Stop producing does not mean stop doing or creating, but stop following the “set” ways of capitalistic production/consumption cycles without thinking. And of course thinking does not “happen” in our heads, thinking emerges from action, when our bodies are involved with the environment, in activity with other bodies and materials. Honestly admitting that the effects of our actions are unpredictable, and most likely with little impact on the large scheme of things, does not need to bring about a sense of despair. It brings about the focus on the affective potential and social value of poetic inaction. In action. Are you following me?” he asked, noticing our pensive looks. While he was talking, every one of us had gone down the road of internal pondering, where we all encountered the same issue. Luther knew what it was, as the doubts we were having had been voiced before in the multitude. “You are worried if you can actually listen and communicate with the context you find yourself in... what was the first thing I said – imagination makes us social beings. Feed the imagination. When something changes within, everything changes without.