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Φυλλο

Πέμπτη 10 Μαρτίου 2016

Reseting Modernity and negotiating with the others

In AIME, one of the big themes was "preparing the negotiation with the others"

It is bizzare how current history seems to be conversing with this project! For in the way western and central Europeans deal with Syrian refugees they express in a very clear way how strongly they do not want to negotiate with others. Or rather that they prefer distant negotiations (like distant wars with airplanes).

Even Reset Modernity, in my non-modern eyes is very strongly modern: These people gather, supposedly facing very big challenges and ... they don't pray. They feel so much in control: they will put down their art, their sciences, their political institutions and hopss! the solutions will start pooring out.
As the fox said to the woodcutter in Aesop's myth: "the words do not fit with the dids". For all its turn to the arts, the manner of going around is the modern way. (Who is it, Christian, or Muslim, or Jew that would not start such a serious endeavour with a prayer? I guess Budhist and Taoists and Hindus too would not start just by the first step of a subproject. If I am wrong, if there is something equivalent to a prayer here, what is it?)

Has the modernization front stopped? To me it seems that what we experience is a really expansive movement of modernizing. In the Arab world the moderns use a combination of soft and hard power to push modernization really deep down. The kindling of the different fractions combined with the sealing of European borders creates varieties of hellish experience which are attributed to the lack of modernity in the popoulations that are afflicted ("arab culture does not fit well with democracy").

So the moderns stand like the judges in Judgement day: "Do you have the proper memes? Will you be allowed the priviledge to live with us? Do you hate vehemently enough the aspects of the culture that you come from that do not fit with us?"

To me it seems that Reseting Modernity, in the current context of massive migration looks body-less. The body (the weirdness of meeting with the other, the cunning of finding ways around, in real time, with real consequences), is delegated for the contemplative experience that will cup passing through the different parts of the exhibit.


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