Conference: Un-titled: Affirming Negations - Negating AffirmationsJuly 1-3, 2010ICI Kulturlabor BerlinPaper title: Inclusion as Exclusion: Obscured Crimes in the Manifesta Archive
Manifesta – European Biennial of Contemporary Art was created after the
fall of Berlin wall by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a way to
accommodate newly discovered art brothers and sisters from the East. On
the rhetorical level, it was there to promote democracy and
transparency, while bringing the logic of the art market into new
territories. I decided to start my research into contemporary modes of
censorship in this institution, but at the very beginning was denied
access to most of the documents of their democratic and open archive.
Instead, I was sold a monograph publication of their ten-year history to
perform my research on. Very soon, a particular gesture revealed itself
on the pages. In the part entitled “Manifesta Archive”, I have
discovered a being I have not encountered until then. Under numerous
photographs, one or more of the participants in this history has been
given the name 'unidentified.' Having in mind the short course of
Manifesta history, as well as the geographical closeness and new modes
of communication, this gesture becomes even more absurd. Nevertheless,
through this detail, it became possible to locate the blind spots of
Manifesta archive and history. As it turned out, the unidentified ones
always belong to the community of the former East that hosted this
'European' art manifestation.
In my presentation, I want to bring
this new being into discussion as a way to demonstrate the existing
practices of exclusion through the rhetorical inclusion of the Other.
Instead of censoring its presence, this strange creature will remain on
the photograph, carrying a new name to cover the otherwise unpleasant
blank space in the signature. Through this analysis, I hope we will be
able to define better current practices of deletion happening under the
guise of inclusion. In its own way, the discovery of the unidentified
questions the true democracy of democracy itself. On the formal level, I
would attempt to read this situation in relation to the paraconsistent
system of negation. Following Alain Badiou, this might allow us to
define the fall of the communism as a simulacrum of an event from the
perspective of the former West. Therefore, we might even be able to talk
about the new rule of included middle as a replacement for the excluded
middle within this new logical framework.
