What happens after the emotional and collective climax of the revolt
when it comes to reordering the future? When revolution is replaced by
a process of negotiating very different social interests? What, then,
when the time of uprising is over and now faces a process of supposed
normalisation? What negotiations are conducted when, after a phase of
collective rebellion, social injustices are unchanged and need to be
transformed by newly elected players? How does this transformation take
place, the profound change of society when patriarchy, gender and
generation relations come under scrutiny? In times of upheaval, how
strong are the forces that – for want of alternative structures
and models, among other things – necessarily fall back on
supposedly well-established systems, running the risk of reproducing
existing power structures? Although these questions refer to the
situation of the world at large, they are just as relevant when we take
a look closer to home, concerning, as they do, the fundamental
questions of political, social and private action: what alliances, old
boy networks, coalitions, compromises are entered into in order to
carry through visions and goals?
In 2013 again, steirischer herbst will continue on its familiar tack
through the web of art, politics and society, asking questions as to
(relational) systems undergoing change and the vicissitudes of power.
For the “gravity of relations” can be observed nowhere as
clearly as in people’s relationships with themselves, with
others, with their work, the public, and criticism of the same, as well
as in the coalitions, misalliances, compromises, pacts and elective
affinities that they enter into. What alliances do we seek and with
what goal? But Liaisons Dangereuses are also unions that are aware of
the potential of the moment, that are passionate and explosive,
destructive and potent. Fragile relationships not made for eternity.
Unions full of emotion that comprise forms of love, hatred, religious,
moral and political enthusiasm, forged in the dynamic context of social
norms and ethics.
At the same time, Liaisons Dangereuses can be conceived very
differently – as strategic alliances of very different social and
political forces, as dangerous coalitions founded on reason, as a
balancing act between strategy and realpolitik and collective utopias.
Belgian political scientist Chantal Mouffe, for example, argues against
the possibility of a universal rational consensus and in favour of the
antagonistic nature of politics. In her critical analysis of the
current situation of western democracies, in this sense Mouffe
describes consensus and the principle of coalition, that have long been
the maxim of European politics, as a source of danger for democracy, as
it levels down social differences, sacrificing them to the consensus of
the major parties, and thus rendering themno longer visible and
negotiable. Seen like this, consensus would be a species of a political
liaison dangereuse which, once contracted for supposedly good
reasons, has now become a danger for political coexistence as a result
of lethargy and inflexibility (thus paving the way ipso facto for a
radicalisation of a society’s antagonisms).
But what if we begin to lose sight of the other party, if it becomes
increasingly unclear how our private lives, work, and politics actually
blend into one? If we can no longer tell how “marriages of
convenience”, alliances and coalitions which we enter into for
what is perceived to be a “good cause” turn against
themselves? What scales and disparities are reflected in old boy
networks, “forced marriages” of all kinds? What capital is
created by and in these unions? And what if the line between coalition
and corruption gets thinner and thinner?
But what are the opportunities and the emancipatory potential of
alliances? Is the yearning for relevance and the ability to act
actually practicable in everyday dealings? Are collective movements fed
by individual crises, and vice versa? As always, it is more questions
than answers that move us. While the foregoing steirischer herbst was a
group photo and a long shot, in 2013 it will focus on close-ups: views
of relational systems in motion.