Imperial Violence
A shattered chandelier, the tubular glass pieces scattered in fragments on the floor. The cover image of this issue is emblematic of the complex of imperial and military violence to which art and culture around the world are increasingly exposed. The story behind the image is a more complex one, which can be read here.1 Nevertheless, in this installation by the Ukrainian collective DE NE DE, exhibited at this year’s Kyiv Biennial, much of what originally motivated this issue comes to bear: the brute force with which armed conflicts in various locations break out over civilian life; the inevitability with which cultural contexts (and artefacts!) are subject to this violence; and finally, the reference to the fact that artistic endeavors are usually more committed to uniting and cooperating than to dividing. All of this is currently being increasingly called into question. Nevertheless, we want to face up to this situation – and hold on to the belief in a potential, community-building non-violence.
From today’s perspective, it appears that the hope for global political pacification which emerged with the end of the Cold War was somewhat premature, not to say futile. This also applied to the cultural field: with the establishment of the “new world order” from 1989 onwards, it seemed as if art and culture were no longer under direct threat from state violence. Although the dissolution of the bipolar world system by no means meant the end of political crises or violent confrontations, the cultural milieu was mostly dominated by the perspective of a largely peaceful coexistence from this point onwards. If there were expressions to the contrary in art – and there have been plenty of them over the last 30 years – they mainly stemmed from former colonial struggles or unresolved local conflicts. Nonetheless, artistic and cultural practice saw itself in a kind of safe, protected harbor that was not really affected by such violence.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught everyone otherwise. All of a sudden, cultural affairs, especially in the Ukrainian and Russian context, but also beyond, are once again deeply entangled in the spell of military or authoritarian state violence. Propagandistic cloaking and excessive threats of punishment are the most obvious ways in which art and civilian life are feeling the effects of imperial machinations today.
This issue aims to explore the wider context behind this upsurge of imperial violence. Were warlike aspirations perhaps present on a subtle level all along while culturally, one imagined oneself to exist in a thoroughly pacifist sphere? Can revealing lessons be drawn from other global contexts about the extent to which artistic practice is confronted with violence, while at the same time attempting to undermine it? And finally: Which models of resistance are currently viable when it comes to confronting the neo-imperial machinations of the present?
This issue explores all of this by incorporating internationalist perspectives. In her article, the historian Lauren Benton explains how the domestic and private sphere has always been determined by factors of violence in a wide variety of historical contexts. Benton’s bleak findings are supported by the explanations of social scientist Fazil Moradi, who sheds light on a cultural dimension of imperial campaigns that continues to have a strong impact to this day: that of looted art or what Moradi calls “catastrophic art” – cultural production in which the violent traces of its origin and sometimes forceful dissemination are inevitably inscribed.
That the final word in these matters has not yet been spoken is underlined by artistic approaches that seek to resist colonial schemes. Macarena Gómez-Barris, for example, explains the basic constituents that characterize decolonial art, especially from indigenous contexts. In this regard, Gómez-Barris emphasizes the momentum of “submerged perspectives”, which is frequently encountered in artistic resistance to imperial striving for power. Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman attempt to trace this perspective back to the elementary level of the mineral and particulate. As they emphasize in conversation about their new film work, the search – and the resistance against all oppressive violence – must be for a form of “mineral solidarity”: the pursuit of connections with all possible forms of life around us, both human and non-human.
In addition to the superficiality of the Italian commemoration of fascism (Olga Bubich), the complexity of the Russia-Ukraine relationship receives special attention here. Several image contributions – for example by Anna Engelhardt/Mark Cinkevich, Yarema Malashchuk/Rōman Khimey, and the aforementioned DE NE DE collective – are dedicated to different levels of the war. The kind of cultural complicity that has developed over the years in Russia with regard to the Putin regime is also critically examined (Herwig G. Höller). Finally, Ievgeniia Gubkina uses the example of Odessa and the increasing war damage there to recapitulate the kind of “imperialist language” that has shaped the local architecture. Gubkina also addresses the emotional complexities that the language of the oppressor generates. Which leads back to the shattered chandelier, whose shards are perhaps also splinters of a possible resistance against all forms of imperial violence.
1 https://www.springerin.at/en/2023/4/impressum/