Doing Art Politically (A Summary)

In 2008, in a talk at the Royal Academy of Arts (London), Thomas Hirschhorn outlined a thesis for "Doing Art Politically". In it, he distinguishes between making political art (in terms of subject matter, or having a political effect) and doing art politically. For Hirschhorn where you stand, what your position is and how this relates to others is central to making art and for Hirschhorn this is making art politically - it is the political. This position is compatible with Ranciere's "aesthetic regime" of art, where "aesthetic art" has a politics of its own (politics of aesthetics) and although it might look similar to everyday objects (indeed, it might be appropriated objects from everyday life) the fact that it is art separates it from everyday life (and materials). Aesthetic art does not need to adopt political themes, because it is already political. It is political because it questions and alters what can be seen and said (and who can see or say what). So, while art and non-art overlap, they retain their essential differences. At the same time, because aesthetic art is innately political, it is impossible to separate the political from the aesthetic.

Hirschhorn divides his thesis into ten points, which I will now summarise in turn.

Doing art politically means giving form

This is very confusing. He is clear that this is distinct from making a form, but what “giving form” actually means is unclear, and yet he declares that the question of form is the most important question for an artist. If it is intelligible at all, perhaps it is really simple: Hirschhorn is talking about making art, and by making he includes art practices that do not “make” anything… hence “giving form”.

Doing art politically means creating something

Art is always an action, never a reaction.  Making art (politically?) means taking a position, beyond mere criticism… staking a claim. Therefore, to create something is to take a risk. This does not mean that art is uncritical – it can be critical, but must not become neutralised by being critical.

Doing art politically means deciding in favour of something

Hirschhorn believes that an artist has to make decisions.  Not choices like 'A' or 'B', 'Left' or 'Right' but "decisions".  Hirschhorn has decided that his work should 'touch' the four following areas at the same time:

1.       Love

2.       Esthetics

3.       Philosophy

4.       Politics

Note the similarity to Badiou’s four truth procedures… and that Hirschhorn often speaks of creating an “event” (small e though). He claims that while Love and Philosophy are positive, Aesthetics and Politics could be negative.  He talks about "touching the negative" (subject matter) and how, therefore it is important for an artist to remain positive: there's no point an artist complaining when they can "make a creation" (why contribute negativity?). It is unlikely that any one work of art will touch all four with the same intensity, but all four fields should be touched. Hirschhorn hints at making a universal art when he claims that he aims to “create a new truth beyond negativity, beyond current issues, beyond commentaries, beyond opinions, and beyond evaluations”. These aims set his art apart from politics, which is concerned with real action in the here and now, rather than eternal statements or truths. And yet…

Doing art politically means using art as a tool

For Hirschhorn Art is a tool used to confront reality, encounter the world we live in: a tool (or a weapon).  Hirschhorn declares that he wants to address and confront universal concerns. Although he feels he can only make art with what surrounds him in his own history and milieu, he aims to reach out beyond these by avoiding the particular and trying to touch the universal. In this way, he declares that art can be used as a tool to confront reality and encounter the world. Potentially, art can touch somebody, or something can be touched through art.

Doing art politically means building a platform with the work

He considers his art to be a platform that provides a site for dialogue or confrontation with the other. How do you reach the other? By using a door, a window or a hole. This gives us a clue as to how we might read his work. Hirschhorn aims to create holes in reality with the potential for a “breakthrough”.

Doing art politically means loving the material with which one works

Hirschhorn emphasises the importance of materials: he says that the artist makes the decision to use their materials and therefore must love their materials (without becoming kitsch, sentimental or obsessive). The decision about the materials is Political.

Doing art politically means inventing oneself guidelines for oneself

Hirschhorn employs enigmatic guidelines.  Examples include:

·       Less is less, more is more

·       Quality no, energy yes

·       Panic is the solution

·       Better is always less good

·       To be responsible for everything that touches his artwork

·       To be the first who has to pay for his artwork

·       Never won, but never completely lost

Doing art politically means working for the other

He claims that he makes work for "the other" (not for the majority).  For Hirschhorn "the other" could be someone you don't know, someone you're afraid of or the other self that you have and he claims not to make art for himself but "for Art first" and then for "his art".

Doing art politically does not mean working for or against the market

Art can only exist beyond the laws of the market by maintaining its autonomy. Artists need support and assistance, but they must never become dependent on them.

Doing art politically means being a warrior.

He gives no explanation here – but note that connection between the warrior and militant (another nod to Badiou?) 

Why Leaving the EU is not Inherently Racist

It is almost four years now since Britain voted to leave the European Union. The UK remains divided and so called "remoaners" continue to dispute the result on a number of levels - some more legitimate than others. Since the result in 2016, Remain voters immediately accused Leave voters of being racists: they continue this accusation today - is it true?

The main argument against the accusation goes like this: 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU; how can Remain voters possibly know all of their motives? A subsidiary argument questions whether that many Britons (representing 52% of the country) are really racist. It is inconceivable that Remainers could know the motives of half the country (and no substantial research has been carried out), so they then concede that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave". Let us analyse this oft repeated slogan. If "all the racists" voted Leave, then all Remain voters are necessarily not racist.

Freedom of Movement

The main reason given for implying that Remain voters could not be racist, is that they voted for freedom of movement and that Vote Leave centred on ending freedom of movement - thereby limiting immigration to the UK. This seems a logical and plausible argument, but does the EU really have freedom of movement? Here are five reasons why EU freedom of movement is not all it seems. 

1. Turning the Mediterranean into a "Cemetery for Refugees"

When Remain voters declare that they are not racist because they support freedom of movement, it is worth remembering that freedom of movement only applies to citizens from EU member states. What about the rights of non-EU citizens? Donald Trump's wall is rightly condemned as racist, but the EU already has its "wall" in the form of a sea. While migrants and refugees drowned in the Mediterranean sea, the EU (as an institution) did nothing. This led Turkey's president to accuse the EU of turning the Mediterranean into a "cemetery for refugees". 

2. EU Failure to Share Refugees (once they are on EU soil). 

During the migrant crisis, the EU left individual member States to act (alone). This led to the farcical situation where Greece (one of the EU's poorer countries and currently in severe financial difficulties) was left to process huge numbers of refugees - with no help from its EU family. Germany was one of the few countries to come out of the situation with any credit. Angela Merkel acted independently of the EU and against popular opinion to welcome in more than 1 million refugees. This led to a situation where Budapest’s Keleti railway station became overwhelmed with refugees bound for Germany - creating a scene reminiscent of Jews being forcibly put onto trains bound for concentration camps. Was this a case of freedom of movement (the refugees can go where they like), or a case where the refugees had to go to Germany, because nobody else wanted them? The evidence points to the latter, as Hungary was also allowed to reject all asylum requests at its border and in the Czech Republic the police wrote numbers on refugees hands. Far right governments in Poland, Austria and France all took measures to "protect" their boarders and limit migrants' ability to enter their counties: the EU failed to stop all this. 

3. The EU-Turkey Migrant Deal. 

The body of Alan Kurdi, September 2015 (Turkey)

The EU did nothing about the deaths in the Mediterranean... until the body of a toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey in September 2015. Alan Kurdi has been bound for Lesbos, but he never made it. What was the EU's response? In March 2016, the EU paid Turkey €3 billion and in March 2018 the EU agreed to give Turkey an additional €3 billion. In return, Turkey had to curb migrants crossing the Aegean sea to Greece; assess their refugees status; and return them to their country of origin if deemed to be not "in need of international protection". Additionally, the deal guaranteed that "every person arriving irregularly [...] to the Greek islands – including asylum-seekers – would be returned to Turkey" for processing. Where is the freedom of movement for refugees here? They have no choice; the EU does not want them and obliges them to return to Turkey. Putting asylum seekers back on boats resembles Australia's immigration policy that is so widely condemned as heartless. While the deal supposedly included an EU commitment to accept an equivalent number of refugees to those returned to Turkey, Amnesty International commented that deal damaged the EU's "commitment to upholding the basic principles of refugee protection and the lives of the tens of thousands it has trapped on Greek islands". Furthermore, Turkey rejected 2/3 non-Syrian asylum applications and deported them to their countries of origin: often zones of conflict (the common being Afghanistan). Amnesty International also note that the deal is being touted as a blueprint for further deals with other countries on the other side of the Med (Libya, Sudan, Niger and many others). The deal prevents refugees from making asylum applications in EU countries and pays other countries to deal with the problem. In effect, the deal keeps all the brown migrants outside the EU, and it is therefore fair to question whether a vote to remain inside the EU is intrinsically non-racist. 
The first three examples focus on how the EU restricts migration from outside its borders. This alone casts doubts about the credibility of claims that a vote to remain within the EU is inherently non-racist. How, you might ask, is preventing the freedom of movement of non-European black and brown people who are often Muslims progressive? This is to assume that the EU allows freedom of movement for its mainly white, Christian, European citizens, but this is not necessarily the case, as the next examples make clear. 

4. Bulgaria and Romania

Many people are surprised to hear that Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007. This is because the EU put restrictions on their freedom of movement that were not lifted until 2014, leading many people to falsely believe that these countries joined the EU then (rather than in 2007). The policy was driven by the fear of mass immigration from poorer countries into richer ones. The very principle of EU freedom of movement comes with restrictions. This policy discriminated against 29 million people based on their country of origin, regardless of their individuals' wealth. Discriminating against people based on where they come from seems like racism. The argument here is that EU freedom of movement was not universal between 2007-2014, and yet "EU Freedom of Movement" is lauded as a reason why Remain voters are not racist.

5. The Collective Deportation of Roma people

The collective deportation of Roma people (mainly from France and Italy) makes a mockery of EU claims to Freedom of Movement - even for its own citizens. As with the treatment of Romanian and Bulgarian EU citizens, this example undermines the EU principle of the right to equal treatment. Not only is the EU happy to discriminate based on your country of origin (in the case of Bulgaria and Romania), but it is also happy to discriminate on the grounds of ethnicity (in the case of the Roma). It is diffident to argue that this is not racist - let alone progressive. 

Why are Remain voters necessarily not racist?

The Remainer slogan that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave" is often accompanied by the assertion that if you voted Leave, you are tainted by the company that you keep. This converts the concession that "not all Leave voters are racist" back into "all Leave are racist"... this time because of their association with racists (who all voted Leave). If we accept the logic of this position, then all Remain voters are tainted by the association with the five points above, which demonstrate that the EU is not so progressive when it comes to freedom of movement (or indeed racism) as Remain voters would like to think. 

When a remained puts an EU flag filter on their social media profile picture - to virtue signal that they are on the right side, the non-racist side - they are effectively saying that they are okay with the EU policies described above: restriction of freedom of movement if you come from a poor country; deportation of Roma; inaction when migrants drown in the Med; leaving individual States to act alone and bear the brunt of asylum applications; and a deal to prevent non-European refugees from even making asylum applications in the EU. 

The logical, evidenced-based, argument that EU freedom of movement is not as progressive as Remainers like to think has been given (at length) to make a simple point: that it is plausible that some Remain voters might be racist, and therefore it is untrue to assert that "all the racists voted Leave". But all this ignores the fact that we cannot know how many racists there are in Britain, who they are and how they voted. The argument - that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave" fails on the same level that "everybody who voted Leave is racist": lack of evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: let us next examine what evidence is given to support claims that Leave voters are racist. 

Vote Leave was Racist

Unable to substantiate the claim that "all the racists voted Leave" (how could they? How is it possible to know how many racists are in Britain, who they are and who they voted for?), Remainers change tack and provide evidence, instead, that Vote Leave was racist. One of the most deplorable images that comes to mind is Nigel Farage's anti-immigration poster (pictured above). The implication is that if we remain in the EU, at a later date Turkey will join and subsequently the UK will be powerless to stop millions of Turks coming to live in Britain. The first point to note is that Nigel Farage was not part of Vote Leave. This is a semantic point, because Farage and UKIP were certainly on the same side as Vote Leave and Farage was able to appeal to fears about immigration and link these to the referendum. Furthermore, Vote Leave did play on similar fears, as reported in The Guardian, and has been accused of racism, as reported in The Observer. Even if Vote Leave was racist, the argument that voting Leave becomes racist by association falls down, for the reasons given above. 

The sleight of hand that shifted the argument from leaver voters being racist to Vote Leave being racist quickly slides into examples of Vote Leave lying, misleading, Cambridge Analytica, and so on: all perfectly good reasons to discredit Vote Leave, but not evidence that Vote Leave was racist, and certainly not evidence that all racists voted Leave. 

All this belies the point that it is obviously possible for Remain voters to be racist (there were more than 16 million of them, statistically it is probably that some were racist) Racists are perfectly capable of voting for their economic interests over their preferences to limit immigration. In some cases, they will even benefit from cheap EU labour - this does not mean that they cease to be racist. Consequently, not all racists voted Leave (if some voted Remain).

It is Possible to Vote Leave for Reasons Unrelated to Immigration and Racism

It seems almost surreal to have to make this point, but the case for Brexit has mainly been made by those on the right - from Farage to Boris, Gove, Cummings and so on. Those who argue that "all the racists voted Leave" often refuse to accept that there is any credible, non-racist, argument in favour of Brexit. There is a left-wing case for Brexit (known as Lexit) that was barely reported during the campaign - and when it was reported it was usually to discredit it. The point in summarising this position is not to convince anybody that it is right - the point is to assert that it is possible to have voted Leave for reasons other than racism. It goes something like this:

1.    The EU is an undemocratic technocracy. 

2.    The EU imposes privatisation and market liberalisation. It is possible to have State-owned industries, but we could not reinstate British Rail as an integrated, monopoly public service, under EU law. Article 107 TFEU allows for state aid only if it is compatible with the internal market and does not distort competition. The EU TTIP deal with the USA demonstrates how the EU could force the UK to open up the NHS to "competition" (effectively privatising the NHS). TTIP (now lying low) would have been a corporate raid sanctioned by an unelected government. 

3.    The EU imposes austerity on its members - the treatment of Greece is given as a key example and also evidence that the EU is hostile to left-wing governments. The EU also imposed austerity on Ireland, Cyprus and Portugal. The banks come before citizens when push comes to shove. 

4.    The single currency has had devastating effects on EU citizens. It prevented Greece from devaluing, resulted in Cypriots having to surrender their savings and it raised the cost of living for many. 

5.    Youth unemployment is high (43% in Greece, 39% in Spain and 35% in Italy) as a result of the Euro and EU austerity measures. 

6.    The UK currently exceeds EU Workers' rights: The vast majority of our rights belong to the labour movement, not the EU.

7.    The market is placed above the worker: the EU has served metropolitan business elites better than it has served the working classes. 

8.    The EU is, primarily, a neoliberal, free market, trade block: leaving it would allow us to pursue a more socialist agenda (if we voted for that). 

While this list is selective, it does provide eight reasons to vote for Brexit - none of which are racist (or stupid, ignorant, bigoted etc). This, coupled with the indictment of EU policies on freedom of movement and asylum application processes demonstrates why voting to leave the EU is not inherently racist.