on the occasion of my exhibition Timbuktu at the MAK, vienna

kendell geers, 3 October 2000

 

More than a year has passed since I last exhibited in Vienna during which time the political landscape has so dramatically changed as to necessitate this statement. In the time since that exhibition at the Secession I have watched from both afar and the streets of Vienna, the rise to power, through a democratic election, of Haider's FPÖ party, the resulting protests, demonstrations and of course took note of the vociferous calls for a cultural boycott. I am no stranger to the power of such a boycott having spent my entire childhood and youth in a country that certainly deserved such a blacklisting, perhaps even more than any other, ever. On the other hand I witnessed with great sadness the destruction wreaked upon precisely those people whose interests the boycott was designed to serve. Irrespective of its intentions, a blanket boycott is as destructive and harmful as it is useful, ultimately punishing precisely those very people that need to hear and feel the voices of support and solidarity in their own struggle against the abuse of power. Moreover I believe that those who call for a cultural boycott do not themselves understand, or perhaps have forgotten, the real power of art. Of course if one accepts the current fashion to reduce art to a commodity and believe that it is purely market driven, then a boycott would be most appropriate. As an activist in the Anti-Apartheid struggle I was daily reminded of the power that art has when books, poems, films, plays and works of art were incarcerated or banned along with their creators lest their vision infect the public's imagination. It was clear to me why culture was considered and integral and essential weapon of the struggle. Not only have I decided to exhibit in Austria at this moment in time but I am grateful for the opportunity to do so, to express my position on the situation. I do not subscribe to the Neo-Liberal position that art is above politics nor do I believe them to be separate for I cannot distinguish between the two. As a white African artist I have never been granted the illusion, not even for one second, to believe that what I make and where I have been allowed to show it, is anything but political. Everytime I cross a border or simply invited to exhibit somewhere I am reminded that the world is not flat, that everybody is not born equal. It is always a painful realisation that the global distribution of resources, freedom and even the right to represent oneself is neither equal nor fair. Every space in which I have exhibited and every work of art I have created was both specific and political for the second another person looked upon it both they and I had taken a position in relation to it and each other. The current political situation in Austria has made artists and curators aware of the fact that art is not separate from life and that producing a work of art or having an exhibition is neither neutral nor innocent. For me the real tragedy is that for the first time in many generations in Europe artists and curators are being asked to accept responsibility for what they make and where they show, and that such a responsibility has been reserved for Austria alone. I believe in the power of art, not to collect votes or as propaganda, but in the way it is able to subvert and implode stereotypes and prejudice. The strength of art has always lay in its ability to redefine itself with every new age and value system and the weakness of art has always been those people who have tried to define it, pin it down, control it and then dictate to the rest of us what we are allowed or not allowed to make, think or do. I have fought against great odds for my freedom of expression and even more specifically for my right to simply make art. With these rights I oppose all forms of authoritarianism in whatever form they take. I am opposed to everything that Haider stands for and present my resistance in the form of "The Song of the Pig"- a work of art that is as much about the situation in Austria today as it is about the tyranny of history or the complacency of a market driven art world. And finally I take consolation in knowing that long after Haider is dead "The Song of the Pig" will continue singing a cacophonic song about this specific moment in time, a moment that is as much about Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac as it is about Jorg Haider.