Re/aktion: Sporadic resistance to the war

text by Jakob Jakobsen and Simon Sheikh
Sporadic resistance to the war on Iraq

In the lead-up to the start of the Iraq war, the Young Artists’ and Art Workers’ website (www.ukk.dk) conducted a debate about the organization’s possible participation in the anti-war protest. There was no consensus on whether it should take part in the protests or indeed whether a professional organization should pronounce on political issues outside its sphere of professional competence. Nor was there agreement as to whether there was good reason to be against the war, with or without a UN mandate. Members’ attitudes arguably reflected those of the Danish population as a whole: both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (for and against the war).

An upshot of these discussions was the emergence of an anti-war platform for art workers: Art Workers against the War – an umbrella organization for a number of groups and individuals who wanted to manifest their opposition. But what does it mean to say a group is founded, a platform constituted? What has been agreed? What political ends and strategies have been defined? What forms of internal organization set up? What does the forging of a particular constituency amount to? Isn’t there a risk of forfeiting individual subjectivity, traditionally an essential ingredient of the artist’s role? Is it even possible for artists to act concertedly?

It was decided that we should take as our starting point our background as art workers and cultural producers. We would work with the politics of representation. Which forms of visual representations of resistance and activism might aptly be articulated, or re-articulated? We decided to use the international slogan ‘NOT IN OUR NAME’ as an indication of the fact that we were part of a global protest against the war in Iraq. Its counterpart was delivered in the tag line ‘IN OUR NAME’ – an attempt to deliver constructive alternatives to capitalism and its wars.

Our protests were addressed to two publics. One involved the reinstatement of the demonstration qua form and social space and was directed to the broad public sphere. The other, involving the politicization of the art scene, addressed a more specific public. A huge banner with the text NOT IN OUR NAME was pinned across the facade of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts on Kongens Nytorv. It could be seen by both demonstrators and passers-by in the square, as well as by visitors on their way to Charlottenborg’s Spring Exhibition 2003.

To develop the argument two placards were set up, one bearing a list of claims that we endorsed (IN OUR NAME) while the other listed claims with which we disagreed (NOT IN OUR NAME). Passers-by were invited to sign whichever poster best represented their views, and did so until the posters were covered with names. Fliers too were distributed on a number of days including the last day of the Spring Exhibition – symbol, as it is, of the bourgeois public sphere and its culture.

The fliers carried the same text as the posters – the ten claims IN OUR NAME and the ten claims NOT IN OUR NAME. There was lively discussion within the group about these claims and about relevant political goals generally. Consequently, the regimented claims represented only the common points of agreement and not members’ wider political views in all their diversity. But it was important to articulate a stance and participate in active communication without figuring as a political party. The war got under way and our discussions went on and on while the ’68 generation, normally intent on changing the world, remained ensconced in their leafy suburban homes watching TV2. (The national TV networks don’t only deliver a particular set of values in their entertainment programming, the news coverage too is direct propaganda for the Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen & Co.)

The other aspect of our activities had to do with re-inventing the demonstration template: injecting more energy and expressiveness into protest. Using sound pictures, slogans and flags we sought to invest it with greater sociality – making it more interactive and less anchored in the stereotype where a single speaker addresses a crowd. Our communication was predicated on dialogue and the disruption of public order. Order in the streets produces disorder in our heads.

For the human chain demonstrations around the American, Spanish and British embassies, the No to War initiative placed a van equipped with an audio system at our disposal. It was our intention to create a direct intervention in public space by blasting out sound pictures across the district in which the embassies lay. Both the neighbours to the embassies and police complained about the noise levels, so disturbance there manifestly was.

We were clear, however, that we hadn’t founded a peace movement as such and that humanistic indignation was not our starting point. Rather, we sought to emphasize the ‘critique of capitalism’ aspect, viewing the war AGAINST Iraq as a part of a larger war FOR the spread and reinforcement of capitalism and its insatiable drive towards expansion. This phenomenon goes by the respectable or, rather, disrespectable name of neo-liberalism: which is to say the commodification of everything from production and the powers of production to the emotional life, sexuality, indeed, every conceivable or inconceivable (social) nexus.

The banner slapped across the Art Academy’s façade was only allowed to hang for ten days before being removed on the orders of the Ministry of Culture. It was perhaps no accident that its removal coincided with the fact that the cream of the Danish establishment were due to attend an official function several days later. Prince Henrik, the Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen and the top echelons of the popular Danish art scene were on the guest list. And these distinguished gentlemen were apparently to be spared confrontation with the protest statement. Also at that time, the Minister of Culture wrote a piece for the national broadsheet Jyllands Posten expressing his unreserved support for the war. In other words, the highest ranking Danish art worker has no scruples about pronouncing on political topics outside his sphere of competence. Once again we saw ourselves outflanked by the Right.

All in all, Denmark can be said to have distinguished itself internationally – and this is not a reference to the Sælhund submarine’s heroic trajectory under the sea in the Persian Gulf, but to the fact that the Danish population supported the war to a far greater degree than the rest of Europe and the world generally. Whereas prior to the outbreak of the war, levels of popular support Europe-wide ran at around 10-20%, in Denmark they were about 50%. A factor that may have played in was that the war was not only for capitalism and liberalism but also against Muslims (thinking here of the Danish immigration policy). A similar lack of support for the demonstrations could be registered among artists and cultural producers. In connection with the last of the demonstrations (12 April), we sought to mobilize art workers in a joint demonstration, but participation was minimal. This may be variously interpreted, but one reading might be that it isn’t perceived by our confrères as relevant, cool or meaningful to attend a demonstration, and that most feel themselves to be more individualist than collectivist.

The struggle, then, is not just about forms of representation, but also about mental processes. And how to get neo-liberalism out of our heads.

Critical comment:
Jakob Jakobsen and Simon Sheikh
Photo:
Andrea Geyer et al.