Rana Dasgupta in conversation with Denis Maksimov: multiculturalism, hegemony and nation state
Rana Dasgupta, image source
Conversation between Denis Maksimov and Rana Dasgupta took place in the context of the event “Now is the Time of Monsters. What Comes After Nations?” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany, on March 24, 2017.
How the global hegemony is shifting in the currents? What are the possible futures of multiculturalism?
Some quotes from the conversation:
“There is a vacuum on the level of internationalism, nation state being too small and too big at the same time”
“We talk about homogeneity, but we actually leave in a very fragmented space… The fact that the world is far more strange than it was 30-40 years ago”
“Multiculturalism is a nationalist project: there is French, American, British, etc. It is a state technology, that is designed for avoiding conflicts inside of the nation”
“The world is electing leaders, that are declaring war on liberalism”
Rana Dasgupta is a novelist and essayist. His texts focus on issues of home and homelessness as well as rootedness and motion in a globalized world. His novel Solo won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. His latest book, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (2014), is a non-fiction exploration of his adopted city of Delhi, and, in particular, the changes and personalities brought about there by globalization. Dasgupta is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
We have hardly yet begun
We have hardly yet begun, 2015, Joseph Popper
Originally produced for The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
© The V&A
Can you begin to remember the futures? Every single moment of the present creates potential and desirable scenarios. The history of progress is a continuous endless race from the point of ultimate uncertainty towards a fictional finish line of total predictability. Today, we enjoy the possibility of keeping in touch with people across the planet, crossing vast terrains and oceans, while simultaneously gluing a sticker on the web camera of laptops, afraid of being spied upon by Big Brother. The idea of the technological panopticon* as an instrument of an omnipresent observation system is therefore sublime: both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
There are many ways of dreaming about the future. For some, it can be an escape into individual reality as a consequence of an unwillingness to face the currents. The realm of aesthetic freedom seduces science when non-hierarchical thinking is evolving faster than the institutions of knowledge verification within the field of science will allow. Scientific thinking enters the mode that it appears to despise in our present-day: fiction, which can be considered the result of an extrapolative doodle about the potential application of something the scientists haven’t even closely approached.
Today, knowledge creation and its verification mechanisms are still predominantly separated by disciplines: economics, literature, physics, history and so on. This separation of knowledge limits the speed of human pace towards possible progress. The mental gap between the image of a possible future and the institutional restrictions of its arrival becomes unbearable. The frontier between the ‘fictional’ and the ‘real’, so evidently uncrossable before, is violently penetrated in the moments when formerly fictional ideas become suddenly materialized: air flight, voyage into space, etc. These moments liberate the mind into free float. We have been finally heading into the future of infinite possibilities and abandoned restrictions. When will we arrive there and if it happens – how is it to live there?
There is a Soviet anecdote: “the future is certain, it is only the past that is unpredictable”. The ultimate certainty of the future is plain: it is going to come regardless of whether we have a place in it. The future is a flimsy construction subjected to anthropological gravity at a certain point of intersection between time and space. The strength of the pull towards the usual ground is defined by human-centrism in acting, thinking and dreaming. And we have hardly yet begun to depart from fundamental egoism behind the conviction that the Universe is turning around us. The future is fascinating, merciless and situated within the perfect chaos of storms.
*A panopticon is a proposed architectural model for the most effective prison. Developed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the structure requires one single guard in a central observation tower who is able to watch any prisoner at any moment of time. This creates the feeling for the prisoners that they are indeed being watched at all times, effectively constantly controlling their own behaviour.
– text by Denis Maksimov
original publication via Node Centre for Curatorial Studies, Prophecies
Berlin Biennale 9: shiny, but not deep
Sculptural element ‘L'Avalee des avales (The Swallower Swallowed) Iguana/Sloth’ of Jon Rafman’s 'View of Parizer Platz’ (2016)
I was going to Berlin with some degree of anticipation to see the strong statement: philosophies in total visuality are irrelevant. But DIS, curatorial collective/fashion online magazine team went half-way there: being not radical enough to emphasise the nakedness of the king and at the same time providing seemingly unnecessary layer of pseudo-intellectualism. It appears to breath the same cold air as 'connecting with your inner self’ iPhone covers, produced in South Asian sweatshops in 'limited edition’ royal navy blue colour to be sold in Colette at Parisian Rue St Honore.
While society of spectacle is in urgent need of strong slap on the face amidst growing apathy and absenteeism, the Biennial doesn’t go further than demonstrate or, at its strongest moments, proclaim what we have been seeing for more than decade: continuous mass delusion and enchantment with carpet bombardment of shiny, glossy and hyperreal imagery. I had hard time to distinguish difference between 'visual things’ shown at the Biennale from my Instagram feed.
Another unrealised expectation: the issue of digital identification and the gap between 'digital me’ and 'empirical me’ haven’t been addressed critically. Rather, like in Jon Rafman installation on the terrace of Akademie der Kunste, it was spectacularly demonstrated. Attention wasn’t paid as well to reflecting on the possible consequences of further evolvement of identity politics, actualisation of possible space for thinking and placing you in position of environmental discomfort, where the expected magic of immersing into the world of contemporary art could actually happen. Criticism of reality in this context is not criticism per se: it falls in the trap of being part of ideologised environment while trying to appear outside of it.
Camille Henrot, installation view of 'Office of Unreplied Animals’, 2016
Biennale, which I expected to be a slap on the face of the hierarchies of contemporary (f)art world, in fact tried to sit on several chairs at the same time. 'Fuck you we are not even curators’ attitude doesn’t go far enough when those pronouncing rock-and-roll spirited mantras words are entering the very same mode of talking with the audience. Philosophic inquiry seems like it was based on purchased in the Urban Outfitters tome of 'All Philosophy in Cat Pictures’.
Absence of the theme or any point is felt in the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Akademie der Kunst the most. Adrian Piper familiar critical reflections on 'everything being taken away’ are shown next to poorly produced AirBnB-lifestyle devoted installation. Rather neutral in their appeal (and therefore not very much provoking in any sense) but very Instagram-friendly Anna Uddenberg hommages to self-obsession and packable light travel lifestyle talk to less than 1% of bubble-inhabiting jet-set golden youth. Hito Steyerl video installation which is shedding the light and dissecting Saddam Hussein project of building modern tower of Babel in Akademie der Kunste fall somehow out of the general LOLism and emojis, but because of it’s outstanding quality and depth seems to be out of place.
What appears to be strategic, however, is the choice of the locations for the exhibition. The KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin European School of Management, The Feuerle Collection and touristic Blue Boat ensemble suggest a proper dialogue about overarching penetration by the fashionable 'contemporary art’ into anything and everything - in many cases to hide emptiness, ridicule and unjustified hierarchies. The Fuerle Collection appears to be the most coherent in terms of addressing the subject of advancing 'pastichisation’ in contemporaneity. The former military bunker as the space of escapism and complete abandonment is the only platform that is available for critical reflection and thinking in today’s environment of over-arching totality.
All in all, Berlin Biennale succeeds to demonstrate how 'Present’ appears like, just like the spread of fashion magazine. However, for instance, 'Martha Rosler reads Vogue’ (1982) is standalone the work and not only encompasses what the Biennale should have, but suggests much more. Visiting sites feels like browsing through Instagram or Facebook feed - rather an activity to 'kill the time’ in the public transport commute or queue in supermarket to the cashier, than a space to formulate actual inquiries about the problematics within modern way of living.