New nationalisms, toxic patriotisms and systems of exclusion have been on the rise for the last decade, reinforced by technology and rooted in colonialism, slavery and class oppression. Our time offers a unique twist on these age-old structures: rhetorics of decolonization are now weaponized by autocratic regimes, just as they are normalized in the phantasmagoria of cultural practices.
Neue Nationalismen, toxische Patriotismen und Ausgrenzungssysteme sind auf dem Vormarsch, verstärkt durch Technologien und verwurzelt in Kolonialismus, Sklaverei und Klassismus. Unsere Gegenwart stellt eine einzigartige Verdrehung dieser uralten Strukturen dar. Die Rhetorik der Dekolonisierung wird heute von autokratischen Regimen missbraucht und durch immer gespenstischere kulturelle Praktiken normalisiert.
Instead of passing off art as a model for a better politics, we wish to test it for the signatures, the markers and forms of these deeply antagonistic relations of which art itself is a material part: we are concerned with art as a class language, as well as with class languages in art; with art’s room for maneuver as well as with its limits and restrictions, curatorially, in writing and debate.