An exhibition at ZKM Karslruhe March 2005 http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de

Curators: Peter Weibel & Bruno Latour

SCENARIO OF THE SHOW (list as of February 2005)
Contact press: Andrea Buddensieg <buddensieg@zkm.de>

Niceron's machine: realization Olivier Vallet,ZKM

 

1. No Politics Please
Contrary to Aristotles’ assertion, man does not seem to be a political animal. To assemble in order to form a Body Politic is not a natural and universal reflex. Before renewing the ways to practice politics in our climates, it’s important to fathom the complexity of other types of assembling. It’s not only the case that people might disagree on which position to take inside their representative assemblies, not only that they might contest the right of this or that person to represent their will, not only that they wish to modify the institutional setting of politics, it’s also that people disagree on what it is to assemble, or even on the very necessity of assembling. If for several centuries Europeans had the feeling that they were enlightened enough to welcome the whole humanity inside their own definition of politics, they had not considered the many dissembling ways of assembling. To represent, to argue, to dissent, to be a citizen, might not offer that much of a common ground. Entire empires have survived without isolating politics as a specific sphere of activity. There might be atmospheres of democracy even in the absence of the European based types of institutions. So, before imagining any possible renewal of the conditions for democracy, it’s very important to realize under which conditions some of the concepts taken to be at the foundation of political assemblies are allowed to travel and to be translated. The first lesson is not to rush into expanding politics everywhere.

Raymond Depardon “Yanomami Indians. Watoriki Camp“ 2002
Capt. W.A.D. Acland “H.M.S. Miranda” 1883, selected by Elizabeth Edwards
“Taonga and Gifts“ selected by Anita Herle and Amiria Henare
Pierre Lemonnier “Elections Enkave“
Thomas Locher “Allegorien des Politischen“ 2005
Anne-Christine Taylor and Philippe Descola “The Aujmartin Dialogue and The Anemartin Dialogue“

2. The Puzzle of Composite Bodies
In spite of centuries of social theory, of economics, of psychology, the problem remains intact: when we assemble, how is it possible to form a collective person, a corporate body, a super-organism, a being that is sometimes more, and sometimes less, than the sum of its parts? This problem of composition is not theoretical but also artistic: through which devices and visual tricks, through which original medium, with which metaphors, in which language can you produce the simultaneous presence of those that are assembled and of the new bizarre entity that is generated out of the assembling? Since the early fable of the members and the stomach all the way to the modern notion of organization, through the powerful myth of the invisible hand, this problem of composition has been shifted to biological metaphors. There exist, we are told, a body politic. But it’s also possible to stress another tradition, the pragmatic one, that considers the political assembly not as a body, but rather as a phantom, that is, as a shifting and barely visible tracing of the unintended consequences of collective action. What if politics was made of a multitude of issues, much like a digital image is made of pixels? The phantom public would look a lot different from the body politic. It’s fascinating to see that new media can try to tackle again the same question as those of early engravers and natural philosophers, but that in all the cases the artistic solution possesses the same degree of complexity as the very political assembling that they try to represent.

Dario Gamboni “Composing the Body“ presents works of art by (among others) Honoré Daumier, Sir Francis Galton, Francisco de Goya, John Heartfield, Bruno Paul, Robert Silvers, Zhuang Hui
Simon Schaffer “Optic Games”
Simon Schaffer “Assembly of Stars“

3. The Good and the Bad Government
Politics is even more tellingly visible in the famous fresco painted by Lorenzetti in Siena’s city hall. Many scholars have deciphered for us the complex meaning of the emblems representing the Good and the Bad Government, and have traced their complex genealogy. But what is most striking for a contemporary eye is the massive presence of cities, landscapes, animals, merchants, dancers, and the ubiquitous rendering of light and space. The Bad Government is not simply illustrated by the devilish figure of Discordia, but also through the dark light, the destructed city, the ravaged landscape, and the suffocating people. The Good Government is not simply personified by the various emblems of Virtue and Concordia, but also through the transparency of light, its well-kept architecture, its well-tended landscape, its diversity of animals, the ease of its commercial relations, its thriving arts. Far from being simply a décor for the emblems, the fresco requests us to become attentive to a subtle ecology of Good and Bad Government. And modern visitors, attuned to the new issues of bad air, hazy lights, destroyed ecosystems, ruined architecture, abandoned industry, and delocalized trades are certainly ready to include in their definition of politics a whole new ecology loaded with things. Where has political philosophy turned its distracted gaze while so many objects were drawn under its very nose?

Selection from the exhibition “The Good and the Bad Government,“ Cini Foundation, Venice
Joseph Leo Koerner “The Individual/Collective Portrait“ and “Church to Temples“ presents works of art by (among others) Pieter Bruegel d.Ä., Daniel Chodowiecki, Lucas Cranach d.J., Albrecht Dürer, Johann Dürr, Matthias Gerung, Johann Oswald Harms, Hans Kreutter, Matthias Merian, Meister des Sforza-Gebetbuches, Leonhard Christoph Sturm

4. From Objects to Things
What is a thing? First of all an assembly. There is some danger in resurrecting the oldest etymology in many languages especially the European ones of the word for ‘thing’ meaning a gathering around a disputed state of affairs. This etymology has been used and abused, especially by Heidegger, in order to strike an opposition with ‘object’, that is, what is thrown out of any human group, what is the dream of scientific mastery. And yet, once we reopen the question of composition and representation, once we bring the cosmos back into politics, there is some wisdom in rejuvenating the old meaning for things. Yes, politics is also Dingpolitik, not because it goes back to its archaic foundation against the movement of modern life, but precisely for the opposite reason: because the ‘objects’ that had been thrown out of assemblies by the tradition of political philosophy are now back inside them. There is thus a crucial interest in shifting the centre of gravity of politics from an assembly of people, to an assembly of matters of concern. After all, the prestigious word Res-publica includes the word ‘res’, thing, in its very definition and the pragmatic tradition has centered around ‘pragmata’, that is, things again. Whether in Latin or in Greek, the same question is raised: what would politics look like if it becomes a politics of things?

Harun Farocki “Videogramme einer Revolution“ 1991/92
Ana Miljacki “Other Parliaments. Mass Ornament - Mass Protest“ 2005
Eden Medina “Allende Cybernetic Room“ 2005
Otto Neurath “Pictogramme“
Lisa Pon “Printed Presence“ presents works of art by (among others) Baltasare Castiglione, Albrecht Dürer, Raimondi Marcantonio, Giorgio Vasari
Sammlung Karl Frölich „Thingstätten“, selected by Barbara Dölemeyer
Sir Benjamin Stone “Parliamentary” 1897-1908, selected by Elizabeth Edwards and Peter James
Tom Fürstner “Narrative Device IV” 2005

5. No Mediation, No Representation
What has completely modified the divide between objects and things, science and politics, is the very development of modern sciences. Whereas, for the three last centuries, the great idea was to replace the uncertainty of political arenas by the certainty coming out of scientific laboratories, there has been recently a tide change. The very extension of scientific laboratories to the whole of the human activities has made their complex techniques of representation and of validation part and parcel of daily life. Scientific practice has become the best example of public things. We are now all entangled into the sciences. The great advantage is that we share some of their vocations, of their equipment, of their requirements. The down side is that the sciences no longer seat as a court of appeal for the vagaries of politics. We are all embarked into controversies dealing with indirect and sometimes incomplete proofs. The objects of science are still objective, but they have become things, in great need of an assembly. Some people see this deep change as dimming the hopes of the Enlightenment, others take it as the best occasion to redefine what it means to be enlightened by the scientific instrumentarium.

Peter Galison “The Wall of Science” 2005
Pablo Jensen “Making Electrons Public” 2004

6. Which Assembly for those Assemblages
If we continue to compare assemblies with one another without being limited to those who look like bona fide parliaments, the most ubiquitous ones are probably the complex of technological networks inside which we find ourselves constantly intertwined. All of us live in an artificial landscape generated by the crisscrossing of endless number of artifacts each of which has been the result of a plan, a decision, a discussion about a certain order of the world. Each object has first been a project. The problem is that those assemblages have no assembly to represent them. This is the reason why they look like a rather dull, mechanical, autonomous force exerting power without anyone exerting power. And yet, when looked at more closely, there is not a single technology around which, very quickly, you don’t find a swarm of different people which have indeed assembled around it to make it come into existence. As Diego de Rivera fresco of Ford plants indicate so well, even an industrial plant deploys a whole cosmopolitics. What is especially important for the comparison between assemblies is that those informal and sometimes virtual groups are very well equipped and instrumented in order to visualize in advance their projects and their plans. Technological networks are extremely rich in drafts, drawings, scale models, representation techniques of all sorts. Doesn’t that make a lot of sense to bring some of those techniques to bear on politics?

Richard Aczel, Marton Fernezelyi, Robert Koch, Zoltan Szegedy-Maszak, “Reflections on A Table” 2004/05
Wiebe Bijker and Emilie Gomart “Politics of Water”
Bruno Latour “Controverses” 2004
Armin Linke
Henning Schmidgen, Hans Jörg Rheinberger “A Virtual Laboratory for the History of Life Science”
Hanna Rose Shell “Locomotion in Water” 2005

7. The Parliament of Nature
It might seem odd at first to consider natural sites just after having considered religious assemblies. But if the great Pan is dead, it means that natural sites are no longer those peaceful and well ordered groupings which could be used as a pattern for public life. On the contrary, the more we move into ecological controversies, the more important it becomes to consider an ecosystem as a sort of assembly without walls inside which many types of ‘speakers’ are allowed to ‘have a voice’. Not because we want to imitate the usual parliamentary settings, but, on the contrary, because it’s obvious that the traditional sites of politics have to move toward the centre of gravity of ecology. Ecology is not about a naturalization of politics —as if one wanted to ‘treat humans like plants and animals’— but about the recognition of the immense complexity of what it is for any entity —human or non-human— to have a voice, to take a stand, to be counted, to be represented, to be connected with others. From the beginning of modern science to the contemporary engineering of rivers, landscape and agriculture, it’s clear that the number of speech-apparatus and instruments have immensely increased. Without those many mediations, no representation would be possible. If we have to live from now on in the assemblies of nature, we better be aware of the procedures that make them livable or tyrannical.

Didier Demorcy, Anne Frézard in collaboration with Vincianne Despret and Gille Le Pape “Wolves as Individuals – The Enclosure” 2005
Didier Demorcy, Isabelle Mauz, Studio Plo in collaboration with Julien Gravelle and Vincianne Despret “Wolves Valley” 2005
Vincianne Despret and Didier Demorcy “Thelma Rowell” 2005
Olafur Eliasson “Fault Series” 2001
Matthias Gommel, Christelle Gramaglia, Jean-Pierre Le Bourhis “Riverphonics” 2004
Chris Herzfeld “What is it like to be face-to-face with a Great Ape?”
Alan Sekula “The Lottery of the Sea” 2004/2005

8. Follow the Paper Trails
Intellectual technologies are among the most ubiquitous equipment that allow people and things to get together inside virtual assemblies. The problem is that those techniques are looked down because they are associated with the much despised bureaucrats, technocrats and other paper-shufflers. File, lists, archives, paper-clips, codes don’t look like very promising instrument to make things public. It seems that people would prefer to be rid of all this red tape in order to have a transparent and direct representation. But since there is no such a thing, since politics is always about blind leading blind, we have to rely on those tiny paper trails in order to assemble and to gather our thoughts as well as the concerned parties. This is especially true, when those paper trails are what bring the power of law in the daily occurrences where it’s most needed. If you follow the paper trail, you soon realize how efficient those prosthesis are. Every file, every article of law, every procedure seem to render more opaque and more complicated the course of our lives, but it’s also what protect those very same lives against arbitrary violence. Files can be changed and amended but they can’t be done without. Once again, if there is no mediation, there is no representation. Transparency might not be after all the ideal of politics.

Philippe Geslin, Ellen Hertz in collaboration with Nicolas Yazgi, Patrick Burnier “Public International Indigenes” 2004
Susan S. Silbey “The Common Place of Law: Turning Matters of Concern into Signs and Expectations of Everyday Life” 2004
Anke te Heesen “Paper Theories” presents notebooks by (among others) Eduard Meyer, Wilhelm Ostwald, F.D.E. Schleiermacher, Otto Warburg, F.W.J. Schelling, Hermann von Helmholtz, Enno Poppe

9. The Market Place too is a Parliament
Most of us have probably never been inside any of our national parliaments and if many people vote they rarely penetrate the sphere of what is officially called politics. And yet there exist another ubiquitous set of rallies in which, without realizing it, we vote, we decide, we are influenced, we are voted down, we are coerced, we are excited, we are made to be indignant. Those are the immensely powerful assemblages making up what is called the economy, although they used to be called much more accurately, political economy. And political they are indeed in the sense of assembling people and goods in the most energetic and conflicting ways. The problem is that they are rarely considered as having taken their decisions according to some due process. They rather seem to be some autonomous and irresistible set of forces roaming the world in the wildest manner. Which they are most of the time for those who are submitted to their iron laws. However, some of this violence comes also from the fact that they are not taken as assemblies and not considered in comparison with the other types of assemblies with which they are often in competition. Iron laws, yes, but laws nonetheless. So the question is to detect where those laws are made up and through which procedure. There is thus an immense interest in considering market places as yet another sort of assembly and to detect their many techniques of representation. No matter which effort they might make to look natural and to escape the domain of politics they are fully inside it. So much so that a close inspection of their ways to gather, decide, enforce their edicts might go some ways toward enriching the usual definitions of politics. Especially because they too look like a Dingpolitik, that is, things count dearly in the infinitesimal decisions we constantly take about them.

Ecke Bonk “The New Germany Fund Inc.” 2005
Franck Cochoy, Catherine Grandclément in collaboration with Alexis Bertrand “The Supermarket as a Parliament” 2004
Harun Farocki “Schöpfer der Einkaufswelten” 2001
Antoine Hennion, Geneviève Teil in collaboration with Frédéric Vergnaud “Tasting/Testing/Teasing” 2004
Fabian Muniesa, Daniel Beunza, Alex Preda “The Parliament of Finance” 2004
Guillaume Paris “Cuddly” and “We are the Children (part I + II)” 1999-2000

10. Parliaments too are complex Technologies
So what about parliaments? What about what people have in mind when they talk about the public sphere and the profession of politics? After having visited the assembly of assemblies and bade farewell to the modernist dream of a one encompassing dome, the physical apparatus of government now appears as a stunningly efficient and fragile set of techniques. It’s certainly efficient since those techniques are able to represent in specific sites the swarm of issues that have been labeled political; but they are certainly fragile in the sense that they surely cannot claim to represent all the other assemblies of science, religion, technology, nature, markets, law to which they are connected. This is where the question of Dingpolitik becomes so tricky: parliaments are one technology of representation among many others, and yet they claim to sum up all the others. Nothing guarantee that parliaments are relevant for all the other assemblies. Democracy is not naturally given. It needs to be instrumented. So before parliaments expand, it’s crucial to explore how their architecture has evolved, what types of equipment they have developed to express voices, what kind of techniques are necessary for casting a vote, what sort of qualities they have to endow those they designate as their representatives. One is not born a citizen with a voice and an opinion. We become able to argue, elect and vote only if we are well equipped to do so.

Cyrille Latour “Getting Together in Cinema” 2004
Jean-Noel Ferrié, Baudouin Dupret, “Délibérations parlementaires dans le monde arabe” 2004
Steve Hilgartner, Javier Lezaun and Michael Lynch “Voting Machinery Counting and Public Proofs in the 2000 US Presidential” 2004
Ben Rubin “Dark Source” 2005
Ludger Schwarte, Hütten & Paläste und Felix Forthmeijer “The Public of Parliaments” 2005
Peter Sloterdijk “Inflatable Parliament - Instant Democracy” 2005
Carey Young “I Am a Revolutionary” 2001 and “Everything You’ve Heard is Wrong” 1999

11. The Obscure Objects of Politics
Political expression is always disappointing. In terms of the transfer of exact undistorted information on the social or natural world, we could say that it always seems to be totally inadequate : truisms, clichés, handshakes, half-truths, half-lies, windy words, repetitions mostly, ad nauseam. That is the ordinary, banal, daily, limp, tautological character of this form of discourse that shocks the brilliant, the upright, the fast, the organized, the lively, the informed, the great, the decided. When one says that someone or something is ‘political’, one signals above all this fundamental disappointment, as if it were no longer possible to move forwards in a straight line, reasonably, quickly, efficiently, but necessary to ‘take into account’, ‘a whole lot of’ ‘extra-rational factors’ of which one fails to clearly understand all the ins and outs but which form an obscure, soft, heavy, round mass that sticks to those with the best intentions and, judging by what they say, seems to slow them down. The expression ‘that's political’ means first and foremost ‘it doesn't move straight’, ‘it doesn't move fast’; it always implies that ‘if only we didn't have this load, we'd achieve our goal more directly’.

Andrew Barry, Lucy Kimbell “Pindices: Demonstrating Matters of Public Concern” 2005
Carbon Defense League “MapHub: HEARD and MapMover” 2005
Peter Galison “Making Things Secret” 2005
Michael Light “100 Suns” 2003
Lorenza Mondada “Doing be(com)ing Collective” 2004
Jean-Luc Moulène “NO FOTO” 2004
Warren Sack “Agonistics: A Language Game” 2004
Brian Springer “Spin” 1995
Nigel Thrift and Amin Ash “Politics Beyond State Boundaries” 2004

12. A New Eloquence
There is no way to expand politics if we are not able to extend the equipment that would allow to present the issues that matters, to designate the people who may argue about them, to draw the sites where they have to be gathered. Eloquence is the word that best designates the common ground for what is being at issue and who is to be convinced. Eloquence has been somewhat despised because it seemed that there was a way to do entirely without it and jump directly into absolute, indisputable and incontrovertible proofs. But once the issues that have to be brought to bear in the assemblies are as vast as they are remote, the proofs of what is said about them are of necessity indirect and always mediated through complicated apparatus. This is where a new eloquence has to be explored, not the one that would add flowers of rhetoric to the hard obvious facts, but one that would learn to vividly present anew what it is to argue about matters of concern. This is where all of the meanings of representation have to converge, the artistic, the political, the technical. Can issues be again eloquently articulated?

Bureau d’Etudes “The World Government” 2004
Futurefarmers (Amy Franceschini, Josh On and Brain Won), “Communiculture” 2004
Natalie Jeremijenko “OneTrees” and “Bird Perches” 2005
Golan Levin “JJ” 2002
Graham Harwood/Mongrel “Lungs: Slave Labour” 2005
Noortje Marres, Richard Rogers “Issue Crawler” and “Issue Ticker” 2004/05
Christian Nold “Crowd Compiler” 2005

13. New Politic Passions
By definition a thing is what in which we are forced to gather because there exist strong conflicts. Politics is not about agreement, cohesion, unanimity, sociability, but about practical and sometimes humble ways to deal with dissent, sometimes extreme dissent. The atmospheres of democracy do not rely only on the cold circuitry of reason but also on the violent draughts of passions. But passions too evolve and have to be cultivated. They are in many ways habits of thought. They can be channeled along different lines. It’s clear from the elements assembled in this book —and what is a collective book if not a Thing of some sort?— that we have not finished exploring the repertoire of political passions. Each time techniques of representation change, so do the passions we associate with politics. It’s still uncertain at this point how much of the new techniques can renew the vocabulary, procedures and feelings necessary for a political life.

Ieva Auzina, Esther Polak in collaboration with RIXC – Riga Centre for New Media Culture “Milk“ 2004/05
Xperiment “What is a Person and a Body?“ 2005
Michel Jaffrennou in collaboration with Thierry Coduys “Phantom Public” 2005Dated January 21, 2005. List subject to change.