Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?

[Stella Aster via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hi Brian, list,

After a lot of work over the last few years, I have started to describe 
myself as "an artist, social researcher, and activist from Leyland, 
Central Lancashire". I do this because I see a need to weave together 
art, research, activism, and local communities.
Our current situation is contingent on a few key factors. One of these 
is "authority at distance", that there are people who are geographically 
and relationally removed from us, but who feel they have the right to 
make decisions for us, and we feel we have to accept these decisions. 
This mechanism itself is contingent on both fear, and a defeatist lack 
of creativity. The fear is that if we don't do what we're told, or if we 
do something different without prior approval, then we will be punished 
or sanctioned. The defeatist lack of creativity is that when we are 
subjected to authority, we give in to a feeling that there is nothing we 
can do, and we accept it, instead of trying to think of ways we can do 
things differently, perhaps even resist.
I invite everyone on this list to take 10 minutes out of your day and 
ask yourself "when was I subjected to authority at distance?"
Here are some of my own answers:

- When my GP kept stonewalling me for 18 months, refusing to do my blood 
tests or prescribe my hormones for my transition, because they were 
afraid of being accused of malpractice, because of a lack of formal 
approval by the next layer up of our health system.
- Getting my ID checked when buying beer, even though the cashier was a 
friend, because they have to comply with the company's policy or risk 
being fired.
- Having to scan a train ticket to get through the automated barriers at 
stations.
- Struggling to get my bicycle through 'modal filters' on the footpaths 
and cycleways around me, because someone at the council decided that 
every cyclist should have to dismount there.
- Arguing with private security at Manchester Pride that, no, they don't 
have a right to search my bag, and I don't have to let them, because 
it's a public street and I have a right of access.
I could go on. I believe that once you start to look for where you are 
affected by authority in your day to day life, you will start to see: 
that it is pervasive; that it has negative impacts on ourselves and 
other people; that a lot of it is distant; that a lot of it depends on a 
chain of people all playing along; and that a lot of it is mediated by 
fear at each step in that chain.
It is from making these observations and understandings over the last 20 
years that have led me to an anti-authoritarian ethos: a belief that 
authority itself is a problem and that authority in all its forms must 
be destroyed.
I think there are at least three different components to 
anti-authoritarian praxis, and things we can do to respond to authority 
when we encounter it.
The first is to try and understand. We should seek to know who has made 
a decision, why they have made that decision, and why the people closest 
to us in the chain feel they have to enforce that decision.
The second is to build convivial and informal relationships with people 
in those chains. It's easy to get pissed off with people who are trying 
to tell you want to do, and to just tell them to fuck off. But the vast 
majority of people in the chain of authority are also powerless, and 
acting out of either a fear of sanction, or an inability or 
unwillingness to see how things could be different. If we can relate to 
each other sincerely as fellow humans, and not as subjects and 
enforcers, then we build a desire to help each other and to overcome the 
fear, and to work together in solidarity to resist authority at multiple 
links in these chains.
The third is to resist. Find ways to avoid authority, and ways to 
actively participate in dismantling it. We talk about this step too much 
without putting understanding and conviviality in place first.
We must also recognise that the current problems we are facing are not 
just problems of authority, they are problems of authority _at 
distance_. Recognising that distance as part of the problem, and working 
to reduce distance, is an important part of solving these problems. 
Everyone is so concerned with their national executive and legislature, 
but when are you ever going to meet any of these people face to face and 
build a relationship or friendship with them? We will never usurp these 
authorities from a distance, because their entire principle of 
operation, honed over hundreds of years, is to enact authority at a 
distance.
Instead, we should focus on rebuilding our local communities in 
anti-authoritarian ways. Strong local units are able to materially and 
discursively resist the imposition of authority from outside. Here are 
some of the things I am doing, plan to do, and might do, which are part 
of my praxis/practice:
- I have people in my town who I consider my chosen family. We spend 
time together, we check in via instant messages, we cook for each other 
and we eat together, we lend each other money when we need to. We help 
each other do things. We actively create a culture where asking for help 
is encouraged.
- When the weather is better, I'm going to invite all my neighbours out 
for a cup of tea in the street. We barely see each other except when 
going to and from our houses in the street, and there is an expectation 
of privacy and not wanting to invite the entire street round to one 
person's house. So I thought, well why don't we just each make a coffee 
and come out into the street for a chat one Saturday afternoon? That's a 
very low pressure and low effort way to get us all spending time with 
each other.
- I'm mapping out the cultural and community landscape of Central 
Lancashire, with a focus on the interconnections between different 
people, groups, and places, and drawing attention to art, research, and 
activist practices, and local community spaces. This will help people to 
find these things, and help me see how we can bring different groups of 
people together.
- My PhD research examines higher weight people's experiences of weight 
stigma in healthcare in Central Lancashire. As part of this work, I'll 
be offering to connect participants with each other so they can form a 
peer support or social group. This is one example of how research 
practices can be used to achieve non-research affects.
- I volunteer at a local community centre and help manage bookings for 
different family and community events. It's not what most people would 
consider 'activism', but it helps us get enough money to keep the lights 
on so that we can run a café and do a big community lunch once a month, 
where everyone can get a cheap, hot meal, and sit down with other people 
to eat together.
- I set up a group for trans people in my town. I made a poster based on 
the trans pride flag, wrote an email address on there and a bit of 
blurb, and stuck it up on community notice boards in supermarkets. 10 of 
us have now found each other.
- I want to set up a local Food Not Bombs group. These groups take food 
waste and cook vegetarian meals, served for free on the street. The 
practice is both a protest against war, and can be used as a way to 
build conviviality and support other protest and activist groups. Food 
is really fucking important and powerful, and there is a lot of 
potential to be explored by getting groups of people together to cook, 
eat, and wash up together.
So I haven't answered your question directly, Brian. But I hope you can 
see from what I have written how there is a lot we can do locally to put 
theory into action, live by our values, and work against authority. 
Sometimes this work can be clearly seen as art, or social research, or 
activism, or community organising, or volunteering, or social or 
relational practice. Other times it's just 'doing stuff (together)', 
being human, or it crosses over and complicates the delineations between 
these different practices. But I think there is a lot of use in all 
these things, especially when we direct it locally, and focus that 
energy on our own experiences, the people around us, and the places we 
live. We need to act where we are.
Stella ✨


On 22/01/2025 22:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> Anyone involved in the headliners of this post - or in teaching, free
> software, and dozens of other idealistic pursuits - can well ask themselves
> the question. What's the use, if the world is going to climate-change hell,
> tech has poisoned people's brains and hearts, and your local fascist party
> is about to get elected, or has just taken power?
>
> I am in Stuttgart right now to install an art show, and while exiting a
> restaurant I leaned over for a closer look at the Trump stickers plastered
> on the computer of the guy seating customers. "Oh, it's just for fun," he
> said to me. This is the beauty of the world that social media has made.
>
> When Millei was elected in Argentina, people on the left were struck
> speechless for months. With my collaborators at Casa Rio, we were involved
> in a complex project trying to sketch out the rising influence of China on
> the country's political ecology. But the public sphere in which such a
> project could be meaningful had just collapsed into savage rhetoric
> underwritten by a clear intent to use violence for a libertarian
> transformation of the social contract. At one point we all basically had to
> admit our despair. We resolved to go back to the basics, to the things we
> believe in so deeply that we can't abandon them.
>
> Now in the USA we are again struck speechless, for the second time. The
> difference is, this time we on the progressive left have been betrayed by
> those who claimed to represent us. Neoliberalism gradually made the culture
> that we produce into a mask over a corrupt political system. Then on
> October 7 the mask fell. We saw that the center-left elites, the masters of
> cognitive creativity, were imperialists ready to kill for the defense of
> global capitalism. Their first concern at home was to fire the radical
> professors and beat back the student protests with the truncheons of the
> police. When you have to fear your supposed friends, what to expect from
> your sworn enemies?
>
> I don't have the answers. It's why I don't post so much anymore. The themes
> that animated this list over some thirty years are all in tatters. The
> possibility of a more open and egalitarian world in which we all believed,
> in one way or another, has been smashed by gigantic wrecking balls. Anyone
> who looks back, and does not see the mistakes they themselves made on the
> path to this disaster, is not really looking at all, in my humble opinion.
>
> Yet I still hold to my deepest beliefs. And I am now an elder, who must
> turn experience - even the experience of failures - into something valuable
> for present and coming generations. Resistance happens in the streets, but
> not only. It happens in the way that you live, the way that you change your
> life without abandoning your past.
>
> I write today because someone wrote to me offlist. I no longer say a word
> about what I am doing, I can't promote myself, I'm not on social media, but
> I invite you all to the Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, and more substantially,
> to Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago where I live. I invite you to
> correspond, to think and feel together, to carry on into the future.
>
> warmly, Brian
>
> https://kuenstlerhaus.de
> https//watershed-art.org
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