Political Sorcery 3 – metapolitics
We're more and more captured in algorithmic vortexes of schematic, polarized views on reality. From inside a vortex, one is amazed how the enemies (there are always two sides) can be such idiots, or fascists (now in Romania each side sees the other as fascist). The antagonistic dynamic creates frenetic fundamentalisms, people who anxiously defend dogmatic perspectives, generating anti-thinking, cult-like atmospheres and oppressive realities. If you dare to propose a different perspective, you get fiercely attacked, sometimes by both sides. It's a lot of passion, conflict and drama, but, if you take a bit of distance, it's difficult to see why. The world is getting only worse, no matter which vortex tribe wins, because neither of them addresses the real problems, and no one seems to want to. No side wants degrowth, or to exit the homo economicus mindset, or to question materialism, progress, the techno-scientific worldview and other implicit certainties that enable our ecocides, wars, crises and general decline. Not even an alternative to oligarchic capitalism seems to be wanted. Nothing political is proposed, it's mostly tribalism, different types of identity politics who amplify each other through antagonisms. At every “big change”, after an election for instance, the system goes on, eventually with a different vibe of antagonistic ideology in the background. That's why corporations can actually embrace any of these sides without any problem. There is an impossibility of politics in both of the important senses of the word – no real debates between divergent perspectives, and no attempts to change the real power relations.
In this hopeless atmosphere, Political Sorcery proposes:
-sorcery in attention – to go from vortex, spectacle attention to aesthetic attention – from quickly and predictably reading and interpreting news, facts and images, to an aesthetic sensibility, to a capacity to trace, embody and feel the movements and the processes behind images, facts and discourses.
-sorcery in thinking – to introduce nuances, paradoxes, contradictions and doubts, to complicate things and make zealotry impossible. To complexify – where there are just 2 perspectives, “good” and “evil”, to propose a 3rd, a 4th… and a way of simultaneously holding two or more incompatible ones.
-sorcery in the body – the power to affect and to be affected by (political) reality, through body practices and sorceries in relation to other objects, bodies, events.
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“There are times in which I feel, and I get very scared, that reality is closing, that one is not allowed to think anymore, to have a different opinion. Everything becomes warped by fear towards the norm, towards the official anti-thinking. Reality becomes a powerful vortex towards extreme conformity – a fear generated black hole. I seem to be immune to this fear, but when this happens, I get meta-scared by the phenomenon itself. I get possessed by a counter urge to introduce other perspectives, possible lines of escape. Sorcery is mainly a body capacity, yet, if a sorcery in thinking exists, it must be the capacity of opening reality by holding two incompatible perspectives at the same time.(note, March 28, Somn Bucharest)
“While seeing the exhibitions, from time to time my body is doing some gestures. The movements are mostly subtle, especially when I'm observed by suspicious guards. The body enters in a dialog with the works here, but also with possible ones from the future. And this preparation of the place for the future is the sorcery. Some of the works here help, some not. In one exhibition an artist was complaining about her lack of success and poverty. In another one, a group of 6 artists from 70s Yugoslavia were exhibiting near museums, not having a place in. Yet, here they are now, recognized and validated after their deaths. At another floor there are also works which praise Ceaușescu, shown caged in an exhibited storage, their artists mostly forgotten. So the situation is reversed now. Probably in time, the ideologic, “political” aspects diminish, while the aesthetic, artistic processes gain relevance. I hope so. And this is my sorcery here – to make space for art that goes beyond just exploiting and representing current ideologies, for an art that creates new aesthetic experiences and politics, and not just follows the implicit or explicit political commands of the day. But beyond all this and the works here, my body is somehow touched also by the walls, floors, ceilings, by the biggest ideological work here, this Ceaușist building with its grim heavy past.” (March 5, MNAC Bucharest)
“My body entered some aggressive movements – like trying to attack the attackers, the people that are responsible for wars and violence against other people and nature – a generalized sorcery. My body is possessed by a spirit of revenge. It makes surprising, charged, sharp moves that feel like contorting or even breaking something in distant evil bodies. They feel powerful and effective. A thought crossed my mind that the sorcery might be against many of us, myself included, because the consumerist lifestyles of most of us is somehow at the root of the wars with people and nature. Yet, my body's sorcery feels oriented against the people that are more directly responsible for the killings. Or so I hope. I just feel a vague energy flowing against those criminal bodies. It's very empowering to feel that you can fight evil. I hope all this is not just in my mind, although even then, they say that there is power in visualizations, yet, I prefer the more direct affect-power of the bodies. A collective political sorcery might have a bigger impact, or who knows, maybe I shouldn't entertain this quantitative thinking. Maybe, as it's said, a bit of faith can move even mountains… I just noticed a very bright beautiful rainbow in the sky. A confirmation.” (October 11, Tineretului lake, Bucharest)
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Political Sorcery creates metaphysical tools for fighting specific evils. In proximity and with the support of others, we develop charms, rituals, prayers, curses and other metaphysical ways to affect reality through our bodies, drawings, objects, chants, words. We can draw from different cultures, but we'll mostly create our own sorceries and perform them together for greater effect. Its meta-message is that there are things beyond the power's understanding and control, that they're not untouchable. If “political” is to affect the power relations, Political Sorcery is a direct way of reclaiming its core. It is art that metaphysically acts on the world – art as political sorcery.
When politics are spectacle, when protests and other ways of "resisting" feel pointless, when it seems that they won and there is nothing we can do, maybe we can act from the other end of reality, on the metaphysical plane. No matter how "unscientific" or wacky it sounds, Political Sorcery might be a way to have a saying, an influence, it might be one of the few still possible ways to be political, with a twist. They think that we're powerless, and we might be in the sphere they function and understand, yet we're having power, and it's time to put it to good use. Political Sorcery is a way of acting at the end of hope.
If Sorcery is the power to affect and to be affected, interesting art is at least half-sorcery – it appears in a process of being affected, of being sensible to the world. What is not so much believed in our times is that doing art (image, object, text, performance) can directly affect reality, beyond psychologically influencing the viewers. And probably, if we culturally don't believe in this power, it does not happen, or it happens less. Yet, it might work even if you don't believe – Political Sorcery can generate believe and make itself real through practice.
These zones are still tabu in current art, not only as subjects but also at a level of art function, yet, politically, ecologically and maybe also spiritually (to use another tabu word), being in a full mass extinction event and horrible humanitarian crises, we have to explore uncomfortable zones, to open frames, paradigms, the world. It's time to reclaim metaphysical capacities and put them to good use. We don't know what a body can do when it stops being an empty anatomical mechanism, especially if it starts to believe in its sorcery possibilities.
Political Sorcery 3 took place at SOMN in the frame of Invited Artist 6 – Florin Flueras (Eliza Trefas invites the curators, the hosts to become the invited artists in their own spaces).
