Handlung. On Producing Possibilities

BB4 takes the ambiguity of the German term "Handlung" – that is impossible to translate in all its levels of meaning, but it is somehow located between action, activity, agency and participation, but at the same time it could also mean story or even narration – as a starting point to examine diverse practices, which are proposing various forms of action. BB4 attempts to scrutinize and to exhaust the promise – that might just be a supposition – of art taking place in the public sphere and is it thus creating possibilities for (political) action or does the artwork itself has already inherited this moment of action? Therefore, the exhibition rather tries to articulate questions and suggests different prospects than to formulate answers. The biennial aims to intensify the interaction with the urban and political context in Bucharest by inviting participants, coming from different fields like arts, architecture, politics, anthropology etc.

You can read more about Felix Vogel's ideas in this interview

Producing Possibilities
Markus Miessen in conversation with Felix Vogel (July 2008)

MM You were born in 1987 and grew up in the first generation after the fall of the Wall. One could imagine that the weight of history in your case was transformed into a light and productive optimism. Is this the case?

FV I would not call it a ‘light’ optimism but I do think it is time for optimism regarding these issues. It is not the case that I do not care about 1989 or the Iron Curtain just because I have not witnessed it with my own eyes and I do not have any personal experience related to this event. I think that I can examine this change from a more objective and therefore more critical point of view. I am aware that this was fairly recently one of the most significant changes and that the fall of the Wall questions a long tradition of thinking that can be dated back to at least the 19th century where the issues of today have their roots. Nevertheless, there are a lot of things that are happening now in relation to this change and especially in Romania, societies are still struggling and stuck with this problem. Even young artists of my age who did not have any personal relation to this are occupied with it and working with it in a very productive and yet different way than their older colleagues did. It seems that there is a shadow of ‘89 that still lasts; even if ‘89 itself vanished, it might be described as a spectre. I would like to try to translate these issues – not to mention more recent issues like all those massive changes in the aftermath of 9/11 – into an optimistic and productive setting, but still one has to analyse why it is still a problem and why we are still living with this configuration of East and West, communist and capitalist ideologies and how both systems are merging into each other or migrating.

MM You were recently announced as the youngest curator of a biennial ever. As curator of the upcoming Bucharest Biennial, how do you think the issue of age, generation, and lack of legacy – in the most positive sense of the term – will affect your decision-making?

FV I guess this lack of legacy was one of the reasons why the Biennial appointed me as curator. Being less ‘contaminated’ by the art system, I take this as a productive chance to examine different approaches to such an exhibition. For me, neither age nor generation play a significant role in decision making and I would rather like to speak in terms of the German term ‘Zeitgenossenschaft’ – it could be translated very badly with the noun ‘contemporary’. It seems to have a more universal meaning, because it is less concentrated on one subject and closer to something like ‘Zeitgeist’. Also I would not be able to characterise what this is – ‘my generation’. First and foremost, I do not want to give my own personal setting an important part in conceptualizing and putting together an exhibition, because I think that authorship is less important than collectivism. Also, concentrating on the urban and socio-political context seems to be more interesting and productive than placing my personal background and experience too much in the foreground. Maybe during the exhibition people might say that this is a special approach for my generation, but I am not expecting this and I am not working with this as a supposition.

MM Could you please elaborate on your interest in the socio-political?

FV When I am talking about the socio-political I understand this as the conglomerate of all processes and actions that are taking place to structure (social) life. This has pretty much to do with practices of regulations through modes of inclusion and exclusion. What I call the socio-political cannot be equated with the political. I am speaking with Jacques Rancière, who has influenced me a lot, when I am saying that the political is something rare and something that is not happening very often, whereas the socio-political is always there, although it is something different than what Rancière calls ‘police’, since this term is a more active one. My self-conception as a curator along with my self-conception as an actor in today’s society is based on an active role in analysing and critically questioning what the socio-political is and how it can be changed. I am sure that art exhibitions can play an active role in intervening in and making visible processes in the socio-political.

MM What are the most important and exciting fields of investigation for you right now?

FV I am very interested in the connection between the public and the aesthetic sphere: how is the public structured today and what can possible interventions in it look like? What does it mean to act and react on site? I understand this in the broader sense of the meaning of ‘site-specificity’ that is producing something not only through spatial parameters but also connecting it to the political, social, urban and audience related issues. Basically, everything centres around the question of living: in what way are we living together? And – even if this sounds a bit out-dated – can art play an active and emancipating role here? Bucharest really asks for something different, because the setting is distinct from other European cities and I see my role as curator to act within this special setting and try to behave in the least ‘colonial’ way possible.

MM How are you planning to deal with some of those concerns in Bucharest? What is the role of ‘audience’?

FV Another issue in Bucharest is that I have to handle multiple publicity campaigns and also multiple audiences. Before this, I mostly worked with very small and easy to define audiences that mostly existed out of students and art professionals, so I am aware that I have to reconsider or at least think in slightly different directions for this project. I do not want to produce yet another self-referential exhibition for the art world that could take place everywhere in the world, but rather highlight local issues with a global meaning.

MM This sounds very interesting and promising. Could you please explain this a little further?

FV Right now I am scrutinising how the term  - borrowed from Roland Barthes’ inaugural lecture ‘Comment Vivre Ensemble’ at the College de France in 1979 -   ‘idiorrythmic’ can help in examining these issues. The term describes an almost utopian form of living together and having a common structure but being at the same time totally independent and autonomous, to put in briefly. I am trying to connect this with my main topic of research that is also the title of the Bucharest Biennial: ‘Handlung. On Producing Possibilities.’ I am taking the ambiguity of the German term "Handlung" – that is impossible to translate in all its levels of meaning, but it is somehow located between action, activity, agency and participation, but at the same time it could also mean story or even narration – because I think it can be made productive in many different ways. With this I want to critically question how art is producing action or even agency as well as concentrating on the distinction and the threshold of action and narration. I am working with the hypothesis that the whole public sphere is structured through different kinds of actions. In my research I am concentrating on particular actions and how their normal way of functioning is being organised, changed and interrupted through aesthetic manifestations. I believe it is more interesting, if you have a closer look at the connections and the processes taking place between actor, action and outcome than to examine already concluded outcomes.

MM How does this tie in with your idea of participation? How can one produce surprising and constructive formats of participation today?

FV I am aware that the idea of participation has been used too often recently, both in art and in other fields such as political science. One has to rethink its roots and its meaning and make it productive and I am trying to include these thoughts in conceptualising the Bucharest Biennial 2010. What I already know is that there are different and opposing ways of action, agency, participation and narration – different ways of how ‘Handlungen’ are taking place – and I would rather juxtapose them than to make a decision for one way or one format.

MM How are you planning to do this?

FV I am researching not only in the artistic fields but also in architecture, contemporary philosophy, anthropology and sociology. There are also very interesting and surprising links that I would never bring together with the topic of this biennial. An example of this are the political think tanks in the US during the Cold War and what kind of visual material – texts as well as diagrams – they produced and how this really affected social living. Another example is different architectural faculties like the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm in the 1950s and how they started with something that could be described as social planning by going away from a more utopian to a more pragmatic understanding of architecture. These examples are not only interesting as a historical reference point, but also there are artists and theoreticians working with them and transforming them into something new.

MM What does Europe represent for you?

FV I would count myself among the declining group of European optimists. I still believe in the ideas of Europe and of the ideas of cosmopolitan thinking that tried to develop a multiple European identity that is ultimately based on the values of the Enlightenment. I do think that these values and ideas are important but one has to critically re-evaluate and update them in order to overcome a nostalgic notion of Europe that has not ever had anything to do with the real conditions.

MM Do you have a spatial perception of Europe that differs from the traditional depiction of the road atlas?

FV I do not think too much in these categories and therefore the spatial definition does not play such a significant role, although the territorial construction of Europe is responsible for all the socio-political implications we have and how Europeans and non-Europeans living together is structured. If you have just this ‘road map atlas’ perception and you are only changing it according to changes on this particular map you are just reproducing today’s political discourses. I would rather continue to differ from this and produce personal as opposed to spatial and political border-related maps, which could have the possibility to overcome these strict and more or less random ‘atlases’.

MM I totally agree. In regards to a point of view from which one speaks, how do you judge or value the significance of transitional territories such as the Gulf or the Middle East at large?

FV These transitional territories are characterised by the very form of their threshold, that implies an indecision in its parameters of self-assertion. In Europe we have difficulties in understanding this. You would already recognize this when it comes to all those different proposals for ‘one’ European identity, which are just too far away from each other; it is almost impossible to get them all into one common denominator. Actually, I almost feel like saying that we have the same indecision in Europe that could be found in those transitional territories, even if this is taking place on a meta-level. Therefore, we should think about what the self-assertion of a state or of a loose confederation like the EU looks like and move away from the out-dated idea of a fixed identity and instead think how all the influences and changes can be included. Transitional territories could play an example here – even if in the example of the states you mentioned they are mostly structured through numerous conflicts – they could play a more significant role than a process that goes the other way, meaning the almost daily violent export of so-called Western values.

MM Can shows still be unique today?

FV I do not value uniqueness all that much. There are too many people in the world whose main idea is to create something new, innovative and unique at any cost. Most of the time I have the feeling that the outcome is just about the gesture of trying to be unique than actually producing something interesting. Still, I do think that shows can be contemporary – in the sense that they are only possible in a special temporal, spatial and political context – whereas the term ‘unique’ is still very much connected with the nineteenth century genius discourse. Since art is always reflecting on these parameters I would argue that it is more important to analyse how each show is connected to its context and how contemporary a show is than concentrating on its uniqueness.

MM What is your general view as to the inflation of biennials and fairs?

FV I have a feeling that the discussion about this particular inflation is itself inflationary and I would rather suggest critically rethinking this discourse and its roots. Of course, the very idea of the biennial as it started in Venice with its nationalistic and more or less competitive setting as well as its status as the almost only space for contemporary art is outdated.

MM What would you consider a more relevant format?

FV I think the development of biennials went away from this competitive format and instead helped to make a global network and to more or less include art from different cultural backgrounds, even if this is to be seen critically, since this is often connected to exoticism and the exhibition of otherness. But this mirroring of the ‘global village’ within our small art village – it is rather a village than a world – does have it disadvantages, too. I am afraid that there is an assimilation taking place right now – everywhere you go things are looking the same and you cannot really decide if you are in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the United States or in Asia. Things are getting more and more exchangeable and thus the potential of having different biennials in different contexts would become redundant. I would advocate for more concentration and dedication to local contexts – that does not mean local art or any nationalistic impetus – but it means a closer examination of urban and political facts; settings that are not exchangeable and cannot be transported from one city to another.

MM So there is hope.

FV I think that a biennial is still a format that can act and react more independently than other exhibitions formats, I would just appreciate it if the distinction between museum exhibition, biennial and art fair could be worked out more precisely that it actually is at the moment.

MM What are your thoughts regarding art fairs?

FV Fairs I would evaluate totally differently, since they are still more regulated by the market, although there is the tendency to look like a fashionable biennal, if you think about the ideas behind concepts like ‘Art Basel Unlimited’. Still, these want to be exchangeable and they benefit from this – yet another reason why biennials could and should play a counter-role to this solely market-regulated consumerist exhibiting of art.

MM As I understand it, one of the objectives for the selection of artists is that they would, in some capacity, represent a European unity in diversity and develop strategies for mutual understanding. To a certain extent, this reads like a politically correct proclamation from a New Labour brochure about migration. Do you think it would make sense to extrapolate differences rather than trying to find the lowest common denominator?

FV Personally, I am of the opinion that dissent is more important than consent. We are already living in a society that tries to structure everything around consensus decisions and consent almost became a synonym for democracy, but it is actually the opposite. The lowest common denominator is kind of a politics of the middle that means staying as it is and just taking care of the average – everything that is not located there will not get any attention. If an art exhibition would look like this it would be the perfect mirroring of today’s neo-capitalist society that tries to look social-democratic. If official politics – Rancière’s ‘police’, as I mentioned earlier –  does not take care of this real democratic configuration of dissent, it still has the potential to play a significant role in other political fields, such as art. And this is definitely not only about progressing through introducing something different and thus claiming to have an active input on the emancipation of the society. The question would also be what possibilities are still left, if you are always acting with the same kind of stuff, which is satisfying everyone. I would not do exhibitions, if I did not see any potential to act against these common forms of consent.

MM Over the past two years, I have been having an ongoing conversation with Chantal Mouffe about these issues. Chantal has written extensively on the struggle of politics and the radical heart of democratic life, trying to understand why in the kind of society we are living today, which she calls a post-political society, there is an increasing disaffection with democratic institutions. Her main thesis, if I may say so, is that the dimension of the political is something that is linked to the dimension of conflict that exists in human societies: an ever-present possibility of antagonism. The reason why I have been very interested in this exchange was to understand how this agonistic struggle could be imagined and tested in spatial settings, frameworks, which would allow us to envisage a struggle between different interpretations of shared principles, a conflictual consensus, as Chantal says. Agonism as a constructive form of political conflict might offer an opportunity for constructive expression of disagreements. From my point of view, this becomes most interesting on an institutional scale, a microcosm, which essentially could reflect society at large. The post-political society that Chantal refers to is one in which we are constantly being told that the partisan model of politics has been overcome, that there is no more Left and Right: there is, as you say, this kind of consensus at the centre, in which there is really no possibility for an alternative. This is precisely why there is a serious need for the creation of agonistic publics and public spaces. When I say public space, I refer to a ‘becoming spatial’ of political forms of exchange. One could argue that any form of participation is already a form of conflict. In order to participate in an environment or a given situation, one needs to understand the forces of conflict that act upon that environment. How can one move away from romanticised notions of participation into more pro-active, conflictual models of engagement? Can you please elaborate on this in the context of what you are trying to achieve.

FV Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on our post-political society have been important for my work and the understanding of ‘what is going on’. I think her argument for agonism instead of antagonism is very interesting and can also be made productive as a very good description for the role of artistic or aesthetic manifestations. As I stated earlier I do think it is important to concentrate on conflicts and therefore disagreement is most important and goes together with my very understanding of art’s role today. I do not have an answer yet as to what productive approaches to a conflictual model of engagement would look like and I would be against any methodological approach. What could count as an answer and what has been influential to my work recently are many architectural groups that concentrate on the conflictual potential of social groups and tried to make the conflict – that does not have to be necessarily a spatial one – visible and productive through creating alternative and non-regulated structures that allowed a different living together. And thus touching the ground of the very idea of politics. Of course I see a major problem in the romanticisation of the notion of participation. First of all I think one has to concentrate on trying to break out of the self-referential system of the white cube, but I think it is still a very thin borderline between getting romantic – in the more daily use of the word, which is almost the opposite of the Romantic movement in the nineteenth century – and being to close to political agitation, which is not the right way for art, since this would still be located in the ‘police’.

MM What constitutes the public sphere in relation to the art world today?

FV I understand the art world as a mirrored microcosm of society at large or at least of similar processes. Because of its relatively clear size and ways of functioning it can describe processes that are more complicated to make visible in the ‘real world’. This also draws from the art world, being a sign system that is just based on sign and symbols.

Shortened excerpt from: East Coast Europe, edited by Markus Miessen, Sternberg Press 2008.
Interview in corelation to the appoitment of Felix Vogel as curator of Bucharest Biennale 4.