Photo Replay

This is a bit out of my normal range of interest, but I found these images of the women's Olympic figure skating - lifted from this story at The New York Times - pretty amazing.  And they made the judge's decision pretty self-evident too.

The Pussy Riot Media Campaign ~ From Infotainment to Politics

Over the past month or so Pussy Riot has been in the news in various sorts of way. First, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, recently released from prison, made a media tour of the US as reported here at The New York Times. During that tour The Guardian reported here that  letter purported from other members of the group had released a public letter announcing that Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova no longer were affiliated with them. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, in turn, more or less ridiculed the letter. All of this had an infotainment flavor.

But shortly thereafter, Pussy Riot - including the putatively purged Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova - turned up in Sochi during the Olympics and were not only harassed by local police (accused here of theft from their hotel) and subsequently attacked by whip-wielding Cossacks (report here). This last episode is one Pussy Riot could not have made up. Chatting with Colbert is amusing, fending off Police and Cossacks focuses attention on precisely the matters Pussy Riot aims to subvert. As the MasterCard advert says, for a group protesting ( among other things) religiously based patriarchy, being set upon by uniformed Cossacks is "priceless."

Peter Norman

My friend Gissur Erlingsson sent me a link to this story at The Independent about the fallout to the late Australian Olympian Peter Norman for his role in the famous black power protest at the 1968 Mexico City games. I'd written on the image some time ago but focused on Carlos and Smith. Norman paid a heavy price for his participation in this event. It seems like the Australian government might be ready to try to rectify that somewhat. Too late.

Why We Can't Leave Discussions of Art & Politics to the Art Historians (With Apologies to my Friends and Colleagues in the Field)

Over at The Boston Review you can find this interview with Art Historian Claire Bishop on the politics of so-called "participatory" or "socially engaged" art. The interview follows on the appearance of Bishop's recent book on the subject.*

On the basic point - that art world spectacle is no substitute for actual community or effective politics - I could hardly agree with Bishop more. Sham participation is just that - a sham. But on point after point I thought ... "This is misguided or banal or both." And here, I think, Bishop is held hostage to the terms of debate in those art world circles where she lives and works. No surprise. This is what comes from leaving the discussion of art and politics to curators, art historians and such like folks.

Here is a 'for instance' (actually a few):

(1) Misguided:

"One of the main criticisms that I make in the book is that the discussion of social practice has developed around a set of ethical criteria: has the artist behaved well toward his or her participants? Does the work offer a good model for society? At the moment, good intentions are viewed as sufficient to make a fine work of art. This produces an overly earnest framework for discussing art, as well as projects that are safe, timid and predictable—organizing film screenings, going for hikes, cooking meals, and so on. This approach precludes the appreciation of other productions, especially ones that are more aggressive, disturbing, or perverse; more indirect or subversive approaches to the social are dismissed as exploitative and excluded. But these more radical projects might be telling us something more truthful and honest about social relations. This ethical perspective tends to infantilize participants, presuming they are unable to make their own judgments about a work." 

The basic judgement about good intentions and timidity seems fair enough. But why accede to the tendency to reduce ethics to the intentions of actors? We need not be Kantians, right? Why not challenge the reduction? There are several alternatives available. Bishop simply accepts the liberal individualism of her art world friends to set the terms of debate. But if we insist that ethics is Kantian we are half way (at least) to the sort of self-absorbed enterprise (say, by various Marina Abramović performances that Bishop rightly disparages) that seem to be at issue. And Bishop deflates the possibility of effective politics by insisting that at bottom all politics is grounded in ethics "(because at the end of the day ethics underpins all political beliefs)." The upshot is that effectiveness or success amounts to maintaining a clean conscience, not to effecting consequences in the world in however distant or indirect a way.

(2) Banal:

"By doing this research, I learned that it was during moments of political upheaval—1917, 1968, 1989—that artists intensely questioned the function of an artist and the function of a work of art."

Really? Really? With a PhD in Art History in hand and a tenured faculty position too, you just learned this?

(3) Banal:

"Ideally we should always read art dually, in relation to its artistic context and to its political context."

Really? Really? This changes everything.

(4) Misguided:

"At the same time, the main artistic icon of the London Olympics was a grotesque Anish Kapoor sculpture outside the main stadium, made from £19 million of monstrous, contorted steel. It looks like [Vladimir] Tatlin on crack. This is the epitome of art under the Conservative-Liberal coalition: an overinflated celebration of Lakshmi Mittal, the private individual who funded 85 percent of its construction and after whom the sculpture is named."

Let's set aside the fact that I tend to like Kapoor's work. (You can see some of the sketches and models and so forth for the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the sculpture that incurs Bishop's wrath, here at Kapoor's web page.) It simply cannot be that the funding source for a project is sufficient to condemn it. Here Bishop simply reverts to the infantilizing ethical fretting that she rightly criticized earlier. Sure, Mittal is a filthy-rich industrialist. How does that differentiate him from other patrons of the art world? As Rebecca Solnit reminds us (see sidebar): "Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways." Sure, the sculpture Bishop criticizes here is part of the Olympic spectacle with all its nationalist fervor. (Did the U.S. beat out the Chinese in the medal count?) How is that spectacle less problematic than those that surround the various corporate sponsored museums (those monuments to wealth and national greatness) and biennales and festivals that Bishop frequents?
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* Claire Bishop. 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso.

Annals of Private Enterprise

Here is a story that, as Susan suggested to me, is a sharp stick in the eye to those who think privatization of "everything" is a ducky idea. As this report in The Guardian points out, the private company contacted to provide security during the Olympics (read they hire and deploy mercenaries) has basically fallen flat on its face. And - libertarians take note - who other than the state has stepped in to cover their lame entrepreneurial butts.

The Olympics are Over. Could the Wheaties Boxes Be Far Behind?

Regular readers will know that I complained about the flag waving American (mostly) medalists in Vancouver [1] [2] [3]. Well, just as I suspected, the commercial train has left the station - see the report here.

And Another ...

Great Britain's Amy Williams celebrates her gold medal.
Photograph © Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters.

Well, I suppose I should be happy that it is not just US medalists [1] [2] who are trained well. I just came across this rarity - a gold medalist from Great Britain at the Winter games - at The Guardian.

Yet Another Wheaties cliche ...

Just in case you thought the spontaneous patriotic pose was really that, here is an image from the home town Chicago Sun Times after Evan Lysacek won the gold medal in men's figure skating. In my earlier post I asked who taught the kids to pose like this. The question was facetious - they need to conform to the cliche in order to attract the sponsors and endorsements. And - I suppose - they deserve to cash in some on years of hard work. Here I'd like to ask what self-respecting photographer would make an image of this fabrication. (This one won't do because the medal is hanging outside the frame.

Repeat After Me ~ It is Wholly, Totally, Completely Inappropriate to Politicize the Olympics!

Just ask Lyndsey Vonn or Shaun White who, by sheer coincidence, managed to strike the exact same pose as they spontaneously celebrated their respective gold medals yesterday. I've not noticed this particular pose before - but that is surely my inattentiveness. Who teaches the kids how to get ready for the Wheaties box cover? And, of course, flag waving jingoism is not political. Athletes are only political when they mention such unpleasantness as racism or human rights violations [*].

What Were Your Concerns While in Beijing? Human Rights in Tibet? Genocide in Darfur? Massive Environmental Threats in China? ... No. Wearing Fur!

There they go again! I have posted on "animal rights" generally and the antics of PETA several times before [1] [2] [3] [4]. Somehow, until today I'd managed to miss this story on U.S. Olympian Amanda Beard's self-promotion in Beijing. The news release from PETA is here.

On "Playing for Human Rights"

I had heard about, then forgotten to track down, this statement by Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, et. al.; I came across it just this evening. The authors voice concern that "the Beijing Olympics might simply become a giant spectacle to distract the attention of the international public from the violations of human and civil rights in China and in other countries with the Chinese government’s significant influence." I think they are right to speak out. I think they are right too in calling on the International Olympic Committee to insure that participants in the games are free to speak out. (I've said as much here repeatedly - click the Olympic label for earlier posts.) But I think they are simply mistaken when they attempt to square the circle by rendering this demand a moral duty so that it would not entail any conflict with the putatively apolitical stance established in the Olympic Charter. Here is what they say:

"An interpretation of the Olympic Charter according to which human rights would be a political topic not to be discussed in the Olympic venues is alien to us. Human rights are a universal and inalienable topic, enshrined in international human rights documents that China has also signed onto, transcending international as well as domestic politics, and all cultures, religions and civilizations.

To speak of the conditions of human rights therefore cannot be in violation of the Olympic Charter. To speak of human rights is not politics; only authoritarian and totalitarian regimes try to make it so. To speak of human rights is a duty" (stress added).

Anyone who thinks that human rights are not political, that they inhere in our status as human beings, and do not presuppose monitoring and enforcement by political agencies (states , international organizations, and NGOs) needs to read Hannah Arendt's essay "The Perplexities of the Rights of Man" from her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Simply put, Arendt rightly claims that we have rights only and as long as there is some state willing and able to enforce them. Absent such a state - an entity against whom claims for protection can be lodged - human rights in the abstract simply evaporate.

Arendt reminds us that speaking out about human rights and the ways they are protected or abrogated, means speaking to states, to government officials. We use rights (and other principles) to make claims on political entities (states) and the agents who occupy them. The sort of moralism to which the authors of this little manifesto resort is simply wrongheaded because it neglects to stay focused on the audience to whom we address claims of "human rights." It neglects, in other words, to stay focused on politics.

Finally, and more broadly, if we follow the lead of Havel and the others here, we are going to cede the terrain of politics to those who depict in purely "realist" terms. That will only further disable us from rising up and using the language of rights or consent or consequences to press claims on the politicians and their lackeys.

Olympic Politics (2)

I always find it difficult to believe that anyone can say with a straight face that the Olympics are, or ought to be, "apolitical." I've said several things here [1] [2] [3] [4] over the past few months on the imminent games in Beijing and what a proper engagement with the politics of the event might look like. In any case, here is a typically insightful essay by Rebecca Solnit on the theme of the "apolitical" Olympics.

Philip Glass on the Olympics

“I think that we should pull out . . . The Chinese are supposed to be taking care of human rights; they haven’t done it. The only reason we don’t pull out is that people are more interested in money than they are in human rights. I think the Olympic Committee should really pull the plug on it. . . . Basically, the Chinese commies have been isolated for 50 years; they have no idea what the rest of the world is like. They think that we’re just another province of China and that they can do what they damn well want to. And they’re a bunch of losers. They make a distinction: As long as you’re not political, you can do whatever you want in China. But politics is about the way we live! They’re drawing the line on the very things that matter to us most.” ~ Phillip Glass (9 April '08)

Composer Philip Glass recently has offered his views on the complex politics central to the upcoming Olympics. As I have noted here several times, the Beijing games are not idiosyncratic in being political [1] [2] [3].

Glass is right and wrong. He is wrong to think that it is vaguely possible to "pull the plug." It simply will never happen. In part that is because of the money. In part it is because of the sheer hypocrisy - the U.S., for example, surely cannot speak with any credibility on the need to censure countries that violate civil and political rights. At a more fundamental level, though, Glass also is right - "politics is about the way we live!" And so the question is how one might mount a political - rather than a moralistic - response to the Chinese on human rights. And, of course, the same is needed here at home too.
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P.S.: Word has it that Glass describes himself as "a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist." On re-reading his remarks I began to wonder. Which of those traditions would embrace his dismissive comment "they're a bunch of losers?"

Amnesty International Takes Aim on the Beijing Olympics

These are posters made by the Slovakian section of Amnesty International to protest the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics. My friend Lynn Vavreck sent me the top image. The second, I found on-line. The text reads: “In the name of ensuring stability and harmony in the country during the 2008 Olympic Games, the Chinese Government continues to detain and harass political activists, journalists, lawyers and human rights workers. Get involved." According to this story in the Sydney Morning Herald the top poster has been withdrawn by AI but does not offer details.

Olympics Politics

I find the notion that the Olympics are a politics free zone pretty much completely absurd. After all, the entire enterprise (oops! did I use the wrong word?) is organized around nations competing with one another. Sure, the athletes and teams compete individually, but their performance contributes to the all-important "medal count." And they march behind their national flag. And there always are questions about whether the games should be held in this or that location, given this or that reprehensible practice or policy of the host country. Those questions are completely legitimate. The difficulty is how one ought to respond.

There already has been talk of boycotts with respect to the upcoming summer Olympics in Beijing. Nicolas Sarkozy, he who now accompanies the beautiful wife, has suggested that the French might boycott the opening ceremonies. German Chancellor Angela Merkle has announced she will not attend the opening. I wonder, though, if the strategy being pushed by Reporters without Borders might not be a more useful one. They are asking those planning to attend the Olympics to wear one of these badges - inscribed with the Chinese characters spelling "Freedom." I suspect that actual politicians like Sarkozy or Merkle would find speaking out in even this muted way more strenuous than staying away. But imagine if thousands and more visitors began wearing the badges around Beijing this summer. Of course, the Chinese authorities might simply ignore the buttons, thereby seeking to display their political openness and tolerance. I doubt they could keep up the charade with any consistency. And there is always the problem that they could point back at those visiting from countries whose governments sanction practices like torture and secret rendition or that flaunt international law in all sorts of ways.

Looking Back?

This is a now iconic image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at Men's 200 meter Medal Ceremony the 1968 Olympics. Smith won the Gold Medal and Carlos the Bronze. Australian Peter Norman won the Silver Medal and wore a human rights badge in solidarity with the two Americans. Smith and Carlos have been in the news several times recently here and here. Forty years later the pervasive racism these athletes were protesting persists in the United States.
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P.S.: A comment from Stan Banos prompts me to add this afterthought. I mostly grew up in a small, quiet, insulated, mostly white working class city in Western Massachusetts that was dominated by a single employer. I was barely a teenager when this picture was taken. I recall seeing it and thinking that Smith and Carlos were acting outrageously, not in the sense that their protest was despicable or inappropriate, but rather in the sense that it was extra-ordinary. I no more knew what to make of this than I knew what to make of Rosa Parks or Muhammad Ali or Ella Baker or Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. It is a shame that Smith and Carlos have not been recognized as American heroes in the way these other men and women have been.

I look back on this photograph now and think Smith and Carlos were incredibly courageous and, indeed, patriotic. Their protest called attention to the outrage of racism in the U.S. and, by doing so in a venue suffused with nationalism, they called attention to the massive discrepancy between American ideals and American reality, a discrepancy that rendered the former mere platitudes. That discrepancy remains and our ideals remain platitudes. We needn't look back, we only need to look around.