Intervene or of "Uninvited Dissent“ Essay by Vera Heimisch

In the magazine “Interventionen“, mainly artistic interventions are examined. But here, too, there is a broad spectrum of what is perceived by whom as an artistic intervention. The term should therefore be kept as open as possible: numerous projects or actions often only reveal themselves as interventions at second glance. Perhaps readers have a different perception or a different perspective on it.

Furthermore, the boundaries between artistic and, for example, activist intervention are often very narrow or merge seamlessly. This can be seen clearly in the fusion of the terms in so-called Artivism. A new form of intervention has emerged here from art and activism.

The Austrian art group Wochenklausur particularly deals with these different forms of intervention. The group around founder Wolfgang Zinggl has been questioning the respective social conditions in international and national projects since 1993 by realizing interventions in society. At the invitation of (art) institutions, the artists develop concrete proposals and strategies, as in their first project, in which they were able to ensure mobile medical care for Viennese homeless people. Zinggl emphasizes the openness in the definition of interventions: "In a very broad understanding, strictly speaking, any form of art can be a kind of intervention"(1). And vice versa, every kind of intervention can also be understood as an art form. The attempt to find a clear definition for activism and the art of intervention is, in Zinggl's view, doomed to failure.

A clear demarcation or assignment as an intervention is not possible in all cases, or rather not every action is named as such. Sruti Bala's research, which Azadeh Sharifi calls in the interview, has made this clear to me: everyday forms of resistance by Indian factory workers are just as much an intervention as the unsolicited speech at the "Mind the Gap" conference at Deutsches Theater Berlin.

I would therefore like to examine more closely who intervenes with what motives and in what forms in order to find out how artistic interventions can contribute to decolonization (of the arts).

One example is the resistance of Kwell Ndume during the first German Kolonialausstellung (colonial exhibition), which took place in Berlin in 1896 in Treptower Park. This exhibition was realized within the framework of the Berlin Trade Exhibition and was primarily intended to help present Germany as a significant colonial power. (2) 106 people from former German colonies were recruited for the exhibition, including complete families, who were instrumentalized as objects of display. Kwell Ndume was one of these people and resisted the role assigned to him. By reversing his gaze, he offered resistance: he put on opera glasses and stared at the visitors of the exhibition. Ndume intervened in the prevailing regime of the gaze and confronted the white visitors with their own actions by mirroring them. Here the Latin origin of the word intervene applies exactly because it describes the intervention in an event, namely the interference (3).

Kwell Ndume's reaction to the audience can also be interpreted as a performative intervention in the event, an intervention through an oppositional gaze, as described by bell hooks. The literary scholar uses this term to draw attention to the colonial gaze regime. White plantation owners forbade the enslaved Black workers in the USA to look at them. hooks understands oppositional gaze as "...a site of resistance of colonized black people globally. Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a critical gaze, one that 'looks' to document, one that is oppositional"(4). The gaze can thus also be a form of resistance in order to exercise criticism and draw attention to oppression and power structures.

From the mid-1980s onwards, the concept of intervention is more frequently used in the field of art. We speak of artistic interventions or intervention art. This moves along the borders between art, politics and economy and usually aims to intervene in social or political conditions through art. Established forms of representation are also questioned and existing structures criticized (5).To give an example, the feminist artist group Guerilla Girls is often cited here, which criticizes institutionalized sexism and racism in the art world using actions and posters. Among other things, the female artists problematize the collecting and exhibition practices of numerous art museums (e.g. Museum Ludwig Cologne, Whitney Museum New York, MOMA New York) and art fairs (e.g. Art Basel). The interventions of this group make it impressively visible how patriarchal and Eurocentric structures are perpetuated in the art world. On banners and posters, which are shown in large-format in public space, the structures of the art world are criticized by provocative statements:

"Dear art gallery: Selling art is so expensive! No wonder you can't pay all your employees a living wage." (6)

What these interventionist projects all have in common is that they take a critical look at the existing social order and discursive conditions. In her analysis with Olaf Berg, the artist and author Anja Steiniger noted that "artistic interventions (have) their place primarily in (often privately controlled) public space. This does not exclude the possibility that they are also carried into the spaces and institutions of art (...)" (7). Thus, institutions are increasingly consciously inviting artists to carry out interventions in their houses, as was the case, for example, with the exhibition titled “Racism“ of the German Hygiene Museum Dresden in 2018.

Rooms often play a central role. Artistic interventions intervene in a dominant cultural space, e.g., in institutions such as museums or state theatres, but also in digital spaces, which are predominantly run by white academics and exclude a certain part of society.

At the same time, interventions are intended to create new (thinking) spaces, i.e., spaces for alternative perception as well as spaces for thinking and acting, which make (self-)empowerment possible.(8)

This self-empowerment enables the performing artists to position themselves as subjects who criticize and intervene in the status quo, the established cultural industry. Or, as for example through Rajkamal Kahlon's intervention in colonial visual material, they empower the depicted and give them a voice.

This form of interventionist art can thus be understood as a form of decolonial resistance. It can serve to make marginalized perspectives visible and thus draw attention to gaps. It can also point out white privileges in the sense of Critical Whiteness and thus intervene against the white norm in the art business.

The gaze regime is also often the focus of interventions; the colonial gaze is criticized. After all, who looks in the museum and who is looked at? Kwell Ndume reacts to this gaze regime with an oppositional gaze. In her performance Unearthing. In conversation, the artist Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski intervenes in this visual reproduction of power relations by interfering with the archive material. She removes the depicted people from the gaze and thus protects them. But interventions also critically address organizational structures and canon questions. The art and theater scholars Sandrine Micossé-Aikins and Bahareh Sharifi describe interventions as a central tool of "uninvited contradiction"(9):

"One of our most important formats is intervention in the cultural field. Interventions allow us to place critical, especially anti-racist perspectives where they are otherwise categorically faded out and prevented. In this way, power relations can be marked with publicity, the exclusivity of cultural institutions scandalized, and the equal access of marginalized communities to the places and resources in the art field demanded. The occupation of spaces and the marking of empty spaces through physical presence delegitimizes the assertion that racialized perspectives cannot represent themselves and are dependent on gatekeepers.“ (10)

In the long term, these disturbances and questioning can lead to shifts within the established structures. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, founder of the discursive art space SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, also calls for an interruption of colonial curatorial practice and for places of dissonance to be set against the established cultural institutions:

"An art space must be a place where a kind of critical mass is built. It must be a space of dissonance, it's not supposed to be a space of harmony, you know, where we just meet and then we drink and then we go home and lie on our comfortable beds. Art must be a space of dissonance. There is nothing wrong with dissonance.“(11)

Even if it is a lengthy process, according to museum director Natalie Bayer, interventions "(...) should be given much more focus, even if they are usually faded out, because in the slightly longer term they have also enabled shifts with varying degrees of effect". (12) It is thus evident that interventions are used in a variety of ways to exercise criticism and break through structures. As a decolonial strategy, this intervention in art and cultural institutions is of central importance and can lead to long-term change.

But the intervention itself must also be critically questioned from a decolonial perspective. I ask myself the question, which artistic and/or activist activity is recognized by whom as intervention. Who can intervene and where? Not all people are heard and seen in the same way. To whom is importance attached by the dominant society and who is legitimized as an intervening person? Whose policies are significant and which positions are excluded?

Here the pitfalls of these disturbances are already apparent because not all artists have the same possibilities and approaches. White artists are much less often perceived as troublemakers when they intervene than artists of color. And even if in certain cases an intervention by artists of Color is welcomed by cultural institutions, there is the problem of instrumentalization and exoticization.

Thus the formation of alliances and forms of allyship (13) among artists is also of central importance in order to break down hierarchies and exclusions and to take joint action against constructed normativity.

For only in this way, in my opinion, can interventions be a decolonial option: By– if necessary – questioning one's own privileges and not reproducing exclusions, but rather pointing to precisely those exclusions and colonial power structures.

Notes

(1) Zinggl, Wolfgang (1999): Kunst als realpolitische Intervention. Die Wochenklausur. In: Kulturpolitische Mitteillungen Nr. 87, IV/99, 36–39 (36) URL: https://www.kupoge.de/kumi/pdf/kumi87/kumi87_36-39.pdf (22.04.2020)

(2) Die Dauerausstellung „ZurückGESCHAUT“ im Museum Treptow Berlin thematisiert die deutsche Kolonialausstellung/ The permanent exhibition "ZurückGESCHAUT" at Museum Treptow Berlin focuses on the German Kolonialausstellung: URL: https://www.berlin.de/museum-treptow-koepenick/ausstellungen/artikel.649851.php (04.06.2020)

(3) Siehe URL: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/intervenieren (15.07.2020)

(4) hooks, bell (2003): The oppositional gaze. Black female spectators. In: Jones, Amelia (Hg.): The Feminism and Visual Culture reader. New York: Routledge. 94–105 (95)

(5) Vgl. Steidinger, Anja, / Berg, Olaf (2016): Künstlerische Intervention (Interventionskunst/kreativer Aktivismus). PERIPHERIE -Politik, Ökonomie, Kultur, 36(3), 522–526. URL https://doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v36i144.25720 (15.07.2020)

(6) Weitere Projekte: URL: https://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects (15.07.2020)

(7) Steidinger, Anja, / Berg, Olaf (2016): Künstlerische Intervention (Interventionskunst/kreativer Aktivismus). PERIPHERIE -Politik, Ökonomie, Kultur, 36(3), 522–526 (523). URL https://doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v36i144.25720 (15.07.2020)

(8) ebd./ ibid.

(9) Vgl. Bayer, Natalie/ Kazeem-Kaminski, Belinda/ Sternfeld, Nora (2008.): Kuratieren als antirassistische Praxis. Inhaltsverzeichnis. Wien: Edition Angewandte. De Gruyter.

(10) Micossé-Aikins, Sandrine/ Sharifi, Bahareh (2018): Widerstand kuratieren. Politische Interventionen in eine elitäre, hegemoniale Kulturlandschaft.  In: Bayer, Natalie/ Kazeem-Kaminski, Belinda/ Sternfeld, Nora  (Hg.): Kuratieren als antirassistische Praxis. Wien: Edition Angewandte. De Gruyter. 135–156 (140)

(11) Flanagan, Rosie (k.A.): Art Must Be a Space Of Dissonance: In Conversation With Bonaventure Ndikung. URL: https://m-bassy.org/journal/art-must-be-a-space-of-dissonance (01.05.2020)

(12) Bayer, Natalie/ Kazeem-Kaminski, Belinda/ Sternfeld, Nora (2018): Wo ist hier die Contact Zone?! Eine Konversation. In: Bayer, Natalie/ Kazeem-Kaminski, Belinda/ Sternfeld, Nora (Hg.): Kuratieren als antirassistische Praxis. Wien: Edition Angewandte. De Gruyter. 23–52 (30)

(13) Ally= Verbündete*r, Unterstützer*in von marginalisierten Communitys, ohne selbst Teil dieser Community zu sein/ = supporters of marginalized communities without being part of that community themselves.

Weitere Literatur/ Further Literature (unter Text listen)

Bratic, Ljubomir (2014): Politischer Antirassismus und Kunstinterventionen. In: Lang, Sieglinde/ Zobl, Elke (Hg.): Intervene! Künstlerische Interventionen. Kollaborative und selbstorganisierte Praxen// Fokus: Antirassistische, feministische und queere Perspektiven. 4. Ausgabe, 35–41. URL: https://www.p-art-icipate.net/intervene-kunstlerische-interventionen/ (21.04.2020)

Castro Varela, María do Mar (2007): Verlernen und Strategie des unsichtbaren Ausbesserns. Bildung und Postkoloniale Kritik. URL: http://www.igbildendekunst.at/ de/bildpunkt/2007/widerstand-macht-wissen/varela.htm (01.05.2020)

Hedditch, Emma u.a. (2014): „Working collaboratively is the essential practice of social change and justice“. An Interview with artist Emma Hedditch by Rosa Reitsamer and Elke Zobel. In: Lang, Sieglinde/ Zobl, Elke (Hg.): Intervene! Künstlerische Interventionen. Kollaborative und selbstorganisierte Praxen// Fokus: Antirassistische, feministische und queere Perspektiven. 4. Ausgabe, 49–53 URL: https://www.p-art-icipate.net/intervene-kunstlerische-interventionen/ (21.04.2020)

Onat, Rena (2015): „I speak, so you don’t speak for me!“ (Queer) of Color-Perspektiven als Voraussetzung für Queering und Dekolonisierung von Kunst_Wissenschaft. In: Greve, Anna (Hg.): Kunst und Politik. Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft. Schwerpunkt: Weißsein und Kunst. Neue postkoloniale Analysen. Band 17/2015. Göttingen: V&R unipress. 101–116

Reitsamer, Rosa/ Zobl, Elke (2014): Introduction. In: Lang, Sieglinde/ Zobl, Elke (Hg.): Intervene! Künstlerische Interventionen. Kollaborative und selbstorganisierte Praxen// Fokus: Antirassistische, feministische und queere Perspektiven. 4. Ausgabe, 2–9. URL: https://www.p-art-icipate.net/intervene-kunstlerische-interventionen/ (21.04.2020)