metropolis m

Ascribing a certain exceptionalism to the turbulences that are coincidental to one’s lifetime might be a trans-historical feature of the human psyche, or perhaps, it is a peculiar evolutionary trait that has developed out of the entitlement of modern progress and the repressed complexes of its constant failures. Having in the last couple of years been directly affected by a series of geopolitical shifts – albeit, very gently in comparison to many others – I have often asked myself whether my great-grandmother who had suffered the brunt of multiple discombobulating transitions – the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Soviet collectivisation, famines, Stalin’s repressions, the Second World War, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the violence of primitive accumulation in eastern Ukraine in the nineties – equally considered the turbulences of her lifetime to be exceptional. While extreme conditions tend to focus all of one’s efforts on the task of survival, thereby reducing one’s temporal horizons to immediacy, the luxury of relative safety and well-being underwritten by constant exposure to varying degrees of economic precarity, and informational landscapes permeated by large scale tragedies, over-amplified idiocy (however politically functional) and petty social media standoffs, at once allow for an extended temporal horizon to emerge and by the same gesture force upon it a paralysing sense of uncertainty and neurosis.

In recent years, the demand to reclaim the future for progressive aims has been forcefully articulated by such authors as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams in Inventing the Future (2014), and cunningly woven into political campaigns by conservative, right-wing actors across Europe, in the United States and in Russia. The gap between progressive theory and regressive actualisation has seemingly put yet another nail in the coffin of emancipatory politics. I would claim, however, that instead of wilting, the project of affecting governance to better serve societies and the planet that is still enduring us, is highly promising to the extent that it has become so multifaceted, and will bear fruit. Yet, at the most fundamental level, what we need to actively change – to echo some of Benjamin Bratton’s thoughts^[1] – is the temporal scale according to which we judge impact and expect returns, while equally becoming more strategic about the deployment of our situated agencies.

In this sense, the question for me is not so much about a plan for 2017 but a commitment for the next three to four decades given the affordances and limitations of a rather generic tripartite position of a researcher-writer-curator operating in the sphere of contemporary art. Having originally entered this field from human rights in hope of finding more nuanced and flexible means of dealing with questions of social justice, over time I have become interested in operationalising the transnational realm of contemporary art as a platform for future-oriented lobbying. One of the greatest advantages of this field (which in many instances is also its greatest shortcoming) is the fact that it allows for unprecedented synthesis of insights from different disciplines and mutations of most diverse methodological approaches, while at the same time providing institutional leverages to legitimise one’s hybrid offerings. By the same token, contemporary art’s wide-reaching transnationalism means that networked configurations that are looking a couple of steps ahead of today’s geopolitical norms may be constructed.

If to side with Giovanni Arrighi, scholar in the field of political economy and sociology, who has traced the evolution of capitalism via consecutive passing of hegemonic orders from the Italian city-states to the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States, we are currently on the cusp of a fresh transition.^[2] At this juncture, what feels necessary is to at once acknowledge the limitations of the liberal framework to provide the images and templates that would be required for progressive future-oriented praxis, and to recognise and defend the liberal space as a pragmatically essential ingredient in fostering that kind of project. In this regard, the overarching question that is currently driving my praxis and will hopefully continue to do so for a certain number of decades is how could post-human rights citizenship – for example, citizenship that looks beyond the Westphalian model of structuring subject-rights relations and UN-style internationalism, and aims to provide for all – look, work, feel and be managed? What kind of institutional forms and societal norms would be required in order for it to function? How would it be integrated into speculative economic models that are at once aspirational but also depart from possible scenarios? What existing or emerging governance frameworks, digital and analogue socio-cultural phenomena and geopolitical tides may be harnessed as bridges towards a socially embedded vision that will extend beyond our lifetimes?