Right-Wing Fringes
Contemporary art’s right-wing periphery? There is an unspoken consensus that contemporary art can to a large extent be ascribed to the left-wing or leftist-liberal end of the political spectrum. Although party-political attempts to instrumentalise art have become more circumspect recently, there does still appear to be a tacit agreement that art serves to foster an enlightened society. Or, in as much as it does not de facto do this, art at least offers the prospect of a more open society with scope for changes.
What is happening on the right-wing peripheries of the political spectrum? What about those ideologies which set store by upholding traditional values and notions of order rather than focusing on the call for democratisation, for more equality and justice? Parties to the right of the political spectrum have begun to enjoy an alarming degree of popularity in recent years in the wake of debates on asylum, values and societal issues and yet – a paradox of the contemporary world – art and culture with a liberal thrust seem helpless in the face of this development. Why does an artistic practice that subscribes to an underlying notion of democracy find it so difficult to address right-wing populist tendencies in greater depth, and indeed to tackle the root of these trends? What are the fears of greater understanding and closer contact that shape responses to a »vox populi« with a political slant that often appears to be anything but cosmopolitan or liberal? What type of artistic methods could be conceived in order to combat a general lurch to the right?
There has long been a general belief that the counter-culture opposition-oriented groupings that sprung up in the wake of the protest culture of the 1960s, be it in the USA or Europe, would automatically gravitate towards the leftist camp. In the meantime, however, there is a growing realisation that counter-cultures may also emerge from a right-wing background. Tracing out the contours of the historical 1960s counter-culture as his point of departure, Lawrence Grossberg seeks to differentiate between movements of dissent on the left and the right of the contemporary political landscape. The findings of this exploration offer a somewhat alarming snap-shot, particularly concerning the political vigour of the right-wing »Tea Party« initiative, which developed as a reaction to Obama’s presidency. Grossberg approaches both this phenomenon, and the fragmentation of groups on the left, with the requisite analytical distance and draws attention to the need to take some time to comprehend this new movement’s »affective potential«. Edit András steers a similar course against the backdrop of the recent lurch to the right in Hungary and addresses the question of ways in which artists explore and respond to reactionary tendencies in former Eastern Bloc states. The sobering picture András draws of the current situation inter alia reveals that contemporary art appears to believe its options are highly constrained when it comes to addressing nationalist tendencies effectively. In this context however the notion of a shared traumatic past could serve as an initial point of departure in seeking to escape the increasingly hardened political atmosphere that currently prevails.
Two further essays reveal how difficult it is to rid oneself once and for all of the phantoms of the past: in his detailed working-through of Italy’s colonialist exploits, Peter Friedl draws attention to the close ties between earlier imperialist undertakings on the African continent and the ideas associated with forward-looking, progressive modernism. Artist Vyacheslav Akhunov has a long history of re-working central Communist symbols in pieces that testify to a highly complex stance vis-à-vis the past; neither nostalgic nor revisionist, these works draw attention to the despotic force of these former state symbols, which is not easy to overcome and which still exerts a strong pull even today.
Finally »Right-wing Peripheries« also addresses a central focus of contemporary security and crime/terrorism prevention policy. In his paper Fadi Toufiq turns his attention to the topos of the »new killer«; in other words, the suicide bomber. This essay once again reveals the challenge that the symptoms triggered by this figure pose for societies that formerly defined themselves as cosmopolitan and liberal and which indeed still subscribe to an underlying view that essentially considers anything peripheral and extremist to be suspect.