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THE ARTISTIC CONTRACT

SPRING IN GWANGJU CLAIRE TANCONS

Mario Benjamin (Haiti), The Banquet, in SPRING, May 18 Democratic Plaza, Gwangju, September 5, 2008. Curated by Claire Tancons for Gwangju Biennale ’08. 200 participants, 90 minutes. Photo: Akiko OTA.

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1. Can a Masquerade Salvage Humanity’s The Adoration of Hiroshima had first been per- cle sold out to the diktat of entertainment. Indeed, becoming a lingua franca—not least because of Declining Star in the Era of Spectacular formed earlier that year during the annual it should come as no surprise that a the opposing yet concomitant currents of accrued Power? Trinidad Carnival. As a proponent of Mas’, the designer whose first carnival band was Paradise individual freedom on one hand and increased artistic component of the island’s national festival, Lost (1976) would question the strategies of the state media control on the other. To Washington’s Feathers for Smoke Peter Minshall was the leading masman of the spectacle. His approach was much like the San posthumous nuclear guilt, Minshall offered a In 1985, a group of Trinidadian artists calling 1980s and 1990s. His mas’ were characterized by Francisco-based activist group Retort, whose book buoyant parade of sins. To Bush’s purported anti- themselves “Project MAS” (referring to both an unabashed critique of society rooted in the tra- rallying against spectacular politics, Afflicted nuclear crusade against Iraq, Washington antiwar “Masquerade” and “Mutually Assured Survival”) dition of old-time carnival characters and Ole Powers, also borrows its title from the verses of the protesters retaliated with placards and banners contributed a carnival procession to the peace Mas, brought up to contemporary relevance seventeenth-century English poet John Milton.1 bearing threatening messages of peace. To the march organized in Washington, D.C., commemo- through the choice of topical subject matter and Discussing the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World masquerade of the Iraq war, suburban recruits rating the fortieth anniversary of the atomic the use of innovative techniques. Minshall’s The Trade Center in New York, an updated iteration of turned American soldiers, responded with the the- bombing of Hiroshima. Designed by Peter Adoration of Hiroshima at the Washington Anti- spectacular power perpetrated against—rather ater of horror of Abu Ghraib. Taking their uni- Minshall, The Adoration of Hiroshima seeks to Nuclear Peace March signaled the possibility of than by—the West, Retort advanced the state- forms for mere costumes of G.I. Joe dolls, and dis- admonish humankind for its deadly worship of successfully combining Carnival and political ment, “We do not believe that one can destroy the guising their POWs as hooded penitents in one of nuclear weapons through the artistic idiom of demonstration, of marrying the ver- society of the spectacle by producing the spectacle the darkest farces of the beginning of the twenty- Mas’, a carnival tradition native to the Caribbean nacular of resistance with the Western language of of its destruction.” But isn’t what Minshall had first century, America’s soldiers staged a carnival islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The procession’s political propaganda against spectacular power, of accomplished with Madame Hiroshima, by trans- of war grotesques where torture became enter- masterpiece, Madame Hiroshima, is a grotesque which the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was one forming the costume into carnivalesque, in itself tainment—The Disasters of War brought on by embodiment of the nuclear threat, a baroque of the first examples. grotesque? In Minshall’s words, the 18-foot-tall, The Sleep of Reason. Madonna whose aureola is a cloud of feathers rem- If, with Madame Hiroshima, Minshall has cre- 120-pound costume is “a purposeful vulgarity of iniscent of the atomic mushroom that signaled the ated an icon that partook of the spectacular, the glitter and ostrich feathers,”a “Folies-Bergère non- 2. If Debordian Spectacle Is To Be Rejected, destruction of Hiroshima on June 6, 1945. procession as a whole was far from a cheap specta- sense.” Shall Bakhtinian Carnival Be Allowed Back In?

Bacchanal and Parangolé Sleep and Dream Peter Minshall, Sketch for The Adoration of Hiroshima, 1985. Ink on paper. Far from being meaningless, Minshall’s Can Can The monsters in Francisco Goya’s famous etching Courtesy of The Callaloo Company, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. figure is agitprop theater and nonsense is fruitful El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos foolishness, bearing the blooms of an alternative (1797–1798) could have been born out of the carnivalesque ideology that opposes senses to sleep of reason as much as out of the dream of rea- sense and reverses the age of the Encyclopedia to son—the Spanish word sueño can translate into that of the Bacchanalia. “Bacchanal!” exclaims the either “sleep” or “dream.” For these monsters—a Trinidadian when unexpected events erupt, which cat, owls, and bats with iridescent eyes—can be outcome cannot be predicted. “Parangolé,” pro- seen as both the last specimens of the not-yet-van- posed Hélio Oiticica at the height of the military ished folkloric substrate of Europe upon which its dictatorship in Brazil. Almost synonymously, the were bred and the metaphorical mon- Greek vocable turned Caribbean vernacular in sters that the mechanical and nuclear ages would typical Walcottian fashion2 and the Brazilian near- bear out of Man’s blind reliance on logic and sci- neologism of the Tropicália era signals a New ence—the cremation chambers, the atomic bomb. World strategy by which carnivalesque excess dis- There is only a short step between the sleep of rea- arms spectacular conflict and the grotesque son and war, which disasters Goya rendered with gauges power. rhetorical excess and eloquent violence. The unre- If the carnivalesque strategy of antispectacular lenting darkness of The Disasters of War spectacle thrived as the native colonial language of (1810–1812) is further deepened in the portrayal the Americas, it was only disrupted in Europe, of the killings of the 3rd of May 1808 (1814), where unmediated popular undercurrents of which would inspire Picasso’s Massacre in Korea resistance were kept alive after the festival van- (1951). The genealogy of erring reason from the ished. It now plays a central role in Asia, where the first modern artist (Goya) to the icon of mod- democratic movements of the 1980s are finding a ernism (Picasso) reads like an alternative chronol- new breadth on the global stage. Indeed they are ogy to mainstream art-historical trends, with

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Goya’s insane nightmares and Picasso’s primitive printmaker Pieter Bruegel gives a long-lasting fantasies defying the cool, linear ideology of mystique with The Fight Between Carnival and progress. Lent (1559). But by the time dawn came upon the Indeed, Picasso’s affinity with ancient and non- seventeenth century, Europe had not yet lost its modern civilizations helped reframe art-historical Shrovetide festivals. In , under the impulse of discourse away from the univocal Western narra- King Louis XIV (1638–1715), whose love of danc- tive of modernism. His soldiers in Massacre in ing and costuming is well documented, carnival Korea are naked barbarians wearing rustic helmets masquerades flourished and slowly gave way to a and antique, three-pronged weapons, grotesque formalized type of spectacle that was to engender warriors whose crude nudity leaves them as the grand classical tradition of ballet. During that exposed as their victims. In the 1983 Trinidad same period, and other Catholic European

Peter Minshall, River, Trinidad Carnival, 1983. Courtesy of The Callaloo Company, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. Photo: Derek Gay.

Carnival, the king of Minshall’s band River was nations that celebrated Carnival were engaged in Mancrab, a river-polluting crab and genocidal the colonial enterprise. Goya’s bats flew to the criminal of the River People. Though more elabo- Indies. (The Bat is, in fact, one of the oldest tradi- rate than Picasso’s crude warriors, Mancrab bears tional characters in the Trinidad Carnival.) resemblance to them in their metallic harnessing As Carnival withdrew from Europe as a major and embodies the line of development from primi- popular manifestation, giving way instead to the tive modernism to carnivalesque sophistication rarefied enjoyments of the few, it surged in the along a path of history still too often left unbeaten. New World, where and colonization replaced servitude and feudalism. Europe’s grow- Peter Minshall, Mancrab from River, Trinidad Carnival, 1983. Capital and Carnival ing, and soon excessive, consumption of spices Courtesy of The Callaloo Company, Chaguaramas, Trinidad. Photo: Noel Norton. The Middle Ages were the times of the grand and sugar, cocoa, and cotton announced the European carnivals to which the painter and beginning of capital accumulation and stood in

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contrast to the famishment of the naked masses of the streets of Fort-de-France by the tens of thou- racism and discrimination. But they also did so to slaves and indentured laborers, breeders of its sands for a daylong march that ended in the integrate and assimilate in a new environment. material pleasures. To their masters’ materialist Dillon/Pierre Aliker stadium. Whether following The Notting Hill Carnival is a case in point. pleasure, the newly oppressed opposed the physi- the call of the procession’s organizers or because Recognizing Creole carnivals and festivals as a cal and spiritual experience of transient existen- of their own choice, most participants wore white major, if not the main, field of artistic creation in tialism. and held a red balisier, symbol of Césaire’s politi- the Caribbean world is not just about going If the accumulation of capital is the condition cal party, but also simply, a flower—a traditional against the grain of current scholarship about of the Spectacle, the cancellation of capital is the element in a funeral. The polysemic nature of Caribbean arts that too often merely follows the condition of Carnival. If capital excess breeds symbols is in accord with the complexity of mean- trend of European academism that has befallen Spectacle, the lack of capital engenders Carnival. ing that different crowd organizations, or indeed, the islands in the more traditional mediums of Lack, however, is not absence, but presence the same crowd organization, can have. painting, sculpture, and drawing. It is also denied, the nullification of excess by an excess of In the New Orleans Jazz Funeral, for example, sec- attempting to delineate an alternative art-histori- excess. In “Orphée Noir,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s intro- ond-liners carrying umbrellas are followed by cal narrative that did not engender modernism duction to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s L’Anthologie brass-band musicians surrounded by followers but a form that is neither subservient to it nor, for de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948), whose number is commensurate with the reputa- lack of taking part in it, alien to the refinements of Sartre uses a similar figure of annulment to define tion of the deceased being led to his or her final high art. Paying tribute to the resistance ethos of Négritude as the “negation of the negation of the repose. Emanating from the so-called Social Aids Carnival is also recognizing the extent to which black man,” a form of despectacularization of the and Pleasure Clubs, with roots reaching back into carnival processions and political manifestations black man (a barrier to the bulimia of the gaze)— the slavery era, the Jazz Funeral, more than any often collide and converge as expressions of popu- a rhetorical figure and conceptual tool in keeping other type of funeral procession, has undeniable lar angst against real and perceived abuses of with Retort’s own double negative theme of the artistic aspects that, ultimately, concur to serve the power. destruction of the Spectacle / the spectacle of needs of the community, much like African mas- destruction. querading traditions. 4. A Democratic Coup? Césaire, the proponent of the black-conscious- 3. Is a Funeral Procession a Carnival or Is ness movement Négritude, which has been seen as Itinerary of Aimé Césaire’s funeral procession in Fort-de-France Torch and Candlelight on April 20, 2008. Carnival a Funeral Procession? the French West Indian equivalent of the African The Olympic torch relay of 2008 often turned into American Harlem Renaissance, would not have of the African origins of the Diables Rouges (Red a political rally as pro- and anti-China protesters The Balisier and the Red Devils contested the African origins of many Caribbean Devils) masquerade of the Martinican Carnival. many times outnumbered and sometimes outdid On April 20, 2008, on the occasion of the national socio-artistic practices. Witnessing a masquerade athletes in their display of global sportsmanship. funeral of Martinican poet-politician Aimé in Senegal along with Négritude cofounder Colonial Burial Following the Olympic torch on its world tour was Césaire, the people of Martinique convened in Léopold Sédar Senghor, Césaire had the revelation Carnival in New World Creole societies—from like holding the thermometer of freedom. And in New Orleans to Martinique, Brazil to Trinidad— this freedom world tour, cool was greater than Funeral procession for Aimé Césaire through the streets of has evolved as a major field of artistic practice warm in indicating a nation’s freedom tempera- Texaco, Fort-de-France, Martinique, April 20, 2008. Jazz funeral for John Brunious, Preservation Hall, New Orleans, during the last three centuries and, more specifi- ture. In Paris, which was gearing up for the forti- Photo by and courtesy of Mike Irasque. February 24, 2008. Photo: Claire Tancons. cally, over the course of the nineteenth century, eth-anniversary celebration of the May 1968 stu- becoming a national festival in the twentieth cen- dent movement—an event remembered to this tury in the case of the Trinidad Carnival. day as an example of freedom of expression—the Continuing into the twenty-first century, Carnival flame was extinguished. In San Francisco and has exported itself to American and European London it had some cold moments as pro-Tibet metropolitan centers such as New York with the demonstrators tried to get hold of it. In Seoul it Brooklyn West Indian Labor Day Parade, London could have frozen, had protesters against the with the Notting Hill Carnival, and Toronto with Chinese, for the return of North Korean refugees, Caribana in a movement of retro-colonization managed to spray water on it with a fire extin- where globalization meets diasporization. Much guisher. But then it was noticed that it would burn like in the Trinidadian motherland, diasporic car- high in Pyongyang, the capital of the North nivals carved themselves a piece of urban space Korean dictatorship (and world capital of the out of the necessity to resist and exist, to assess Mass Games, large-scale performances based on and assert West Indian identity in the face of group dynamics often depicting a living tableau of

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a patriotic scene or national leader). China, the forums and given awards for human rights activi- 2008 Olympic host country that is under scrutiny ties. One of its most emblematic events is Red for various human rights violations, offered a con- Festa, a street festival hosted by the Youth trasting picture. The torch left Tiananmen Square Committee for the May 18 Festival, which reenacts under the warm auspices of Chinese officials and scenes of the uprising. The year 2008 celebrated returned to Hong Kong to muffled protests by the fifth Red Festa and comprised mock battles activists for Tibet and Darfur who had not been between youths splashed in red paint and armed barred entry to the former British territory. with sponge sticks instead of the paratroopers’ It is in Hong Kong rather than Tiananmen billy clubs, and reenactment of the iconic scene of Square that the massacre of June 4, 1989, officially May 20, 1980, in which a protestor, standing on a referred to as “riots,” is remembered by public bus, led a demonstration of public transportation commemorations. As the flame from Olympia workers, including dozens of buses and thousands continues its tour of China, it is a different fire that of taxis. will burn in the streets of Hong Kong, the fire of memory set alight in a candlelight vigil on the 5. Korean Carnivalesque, Korean Spectacular anniversary day of the students’ killings following so-called “patriotic pro-democracy marches,” Mad Cow as Bœuf Gras organized by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support According to one of its disputed etymologies, the of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. celebration of a farewell to the flesh (from the Latin carne levare, to take away meat), Carnival Red Festa has staged the parade of a fattened ox or Boeuf In contrast, the Gwangju Democratic movement Gras to be sacrificed before the strictures of Lent. of the 1980s, which started with a coup d’état in Popular in Paris throughout the nineteenth centu- 1979 and only truly ended in 1993 with the elec- ry, when it also became a fixture of the Rex Parade Image of the contemporary reenactment of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising by the Youth Committee of the May 18 Foundation as tion of the nation’s fourteenth president and the in New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Boeuf Gras, origi- part of the annual Red Festa festival. launch of the “Civilian Government,” has become nally a live ox, was eventually replaced by a papier- an official celebration as the cornerstone of mâché representation. tions spanning over a month. The motif of a Destroyed Tower (South) Korea’s democracy. Since being estab- The 2008 manifestations in Seoul were carni- healthy fattened ox, the Boeuf Gras, had been By contrast to South Korea’s carnivalesque lished in 1994, the May 18 Memorial Foundation valesque in nature. Started as protests against the replaced by that of a sick bovine, the Mad Cow, the demonstration of popular strength brought about (named after May 18, 1980, the first day of the government’s reopening of the American beef symbol of happy consumption traded for fear of by its hard-fought democratic struggle, and sup- Gwangju uprising) has hosted youth festivals, trade, the manifestations escalated into wide- global consumerist strategies. ported by its competitive media industry, stood commemorative events, and international peace spread, large-scale, antigovernmental demonstra- For the beef protests in Korea were as much a North Korea’s exhibition of spectacular power product of a carnivalesque spirit as they were the with the destruction of a cooling tower at the SPRING, May 18 Democratic Plaza, Gwangju, September 5, result of extreme mediatization. Indeed, the pop- Yongbyon nuclear complex near Pyongyang. A 2008. Curated by Claire Tancons for Gwangju Biennale ’08. 200 Historical image of the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising in participants, 90 minutes. Courtesy of Gwangju Biennale ular manifestation was a media revolution, the symbol of North Korea’s nuclear power, the tower, front of the Former Provincial Office. Photo: Kyungtaek Na. Foundation. Photo: Cheolhong Mo. coming together of interest groups through however, had since long been disaffected. Its protest organizations relayed by Internet servers, destruction was thus seen more as a spectacular blogs, e-mails, text messages, and so forth. It also gesticulation than as a real commitment to represented the dramatic leap that the country nuclear disarmament, for which many steps still had taken toward democratization of and through have to be taken. the media since the 1980s. Where, in the Gwangju Over just a couple of months, in the divided Democratic uprisings, the protesters set fire to Korean peninsula, the two opposing tendencies of broadcast stations to prevent the spread of wrong- the Carnival and the Spectacle were brought to cli- ful official information, in the 2008 beef protests, mactic heights—in popular manifestations in the media—digital media in particular—proved a South Korea and in the theatrical staging of powerful tool in organizing the manifestations, a destruction in North Korea—once again asserting tribute to the country’s unprecedented success that the two never cease to coexist and are the with the digital technology. function of diverging political systems. In this way,

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they definitely demonstrate that the carnivalesque artwork, as carnival bands only exist insofar as differing meaning and intent. While parades are was a formal experiment with an itinerary that still has contemporary relevance and may, in light potential revelers are willing to join in and literal- spectacles first and foremost destined to passive combined linear and circular properties that of other popular manifestations worldwide, pose a ly, play the game, or rather, play their mas’. visual consumption (spectacle comes from the impacted, quite literally, on the turns and shifts, serious threat to spectacular politics. Latin spectare, to look), processions (from the both physical and emotional, of the procession Latin procedere, to move forward) implies the idea and its participants. Leading the procession was 6. Of the Idea of the Social Contract Applied 7. SPRING in Gwangju of motion that epitomizes the progressive (both visual artist, sambista and carnavalesco Jarbas to Artistic Practice literally and metaphorically) nature of Carnival (à Lopes with an unlikely float of Styrofoam, the The Fall of SPRING la Peter Minshall). The live and recorded music reconstruction of a vessel of discontent (in its The Artistic Contract The biennale project SPRING paid homage to the played and mixed by Jin Won Lee (a.k.a. GAZAE- original context, the 2006 Rio de Janeiro Carnival, The idea of the social contract, upon which mod- Gwangju Democratic movement and to the spirit BAL) during the procession and used as the score with the polluting effect of carbon dioxide emis- ern democracy rests, stipulates that citizens must of May. Spring is a season that, throughout histo- of Tripp’s film, reflected the in-progress nature of sions). Coming next was Karyn Olivier’s investiga- abide by mutually coercive laws if they are to ry, coming on the heel of harvest-celebrating pre- the performance through the use of repetitive tion of the very ethos of ancient sacred festivals remain within the bonds of society, in exchange Lenten carnivals, has always been fertile in revolu- structures exponentially expanded along with the out of which carnivals grew, with the presentation for which they are guaranteed fundamental rights. tionary movements such as the Gwangju procession itself. of body prostheses such as additional limbs, With overpopulation looming and the idea of Democratic movements. The word “spring” also SPRING was part carnival, part demonstra- wings, stilts, and other such things, designed to democracy being challenged, the problem of the calls to mind the idea of sudden motion and con- tion, and part funeral procession, a diurnal and confer godlike powers on their wearers. Marlon twenty-first century might well be about how to stant tension that is at the core of popular mani- nocturnal performance of revelers, revolters, and Griffith followed at dawn with an embodiment of organize the crowds of the world’s corners into festation. Although SPRING was inspired by wanderers. Unfolding along one of the main the spirit of the Canboulay riots waged by the peo- global citizens and to give them agency. Recent Gwangju’s own May 1980 street uprisings, it was avenues leading to the roundabout across from the ple of Trinidad against the British attempts to sup- worldwide manifestations, of which the June 2008 more concerned about re-creating the conditions Former Provincial Office, the location of the pro- press Carnival in 1881. Mario Benjamin’s work Seoul manifestations are the paragon, show that in for the release of the emancipatory energy, which cession, where the students’ uprisings took place illuminated the night with a son et lumière (sound- the Information Age, popular assemblies remain a is at the root of popular organization, as it was more than two decades ago, was as much of an and-light) mobile sculpture that was also a spirit- powerful mode of communicating content or dis- about offering a narrative critique of a particular homage paid to the democratic movement as it ed vehicle. Closing the procession was a MAP sent, and that humankind has not reached, not historical moment—critique that is usually inher- Jarbas Lopes (Brazil), Demolition Now, in SPRING, May 18 Democratic Plaza, Gwangju, September 5, 2008. Curated by Claire Tancons that it should have, the Age of Reason that was ent in street manifestations. SPRING thus mani- for Gwangju Biennale ’08. 200 participants, 90 minutes. Photo: Akiko OTA. supposed to crush its instincts. fested itself as a procession borrowing from vari- There may then be something to learn from ous processional models from carnival parades, to processional traditions which, having escaped the funeral processions, to political demonstrations. anesthetic power of reason, the hygienization of Refusing the constricted space of the gallery, modernism, and the clarion call of individualism, SPRING sought to experiment with the proces- organize people in a way that binds them together sional format as an alternative curatorial model as well as frees them of the bonds of daily life, col- for the organization of an exhibition in motion, a onized by false images and empty slogans dissem- space of active social participation, best suited for inated by deceitful leaders. the understanding of self-government and coop- If the avant-garde—as an actual position of eration toward which street demonstrations and leadership as opposed to a metaphorical one, long human participation tend. derided by the proponents of postmodernism—is As the only element exhibited in Annual the strategic and ethical position in which artists Report: A Year in Exhibitions will be an experi- should always strive to be, they should all become mental film by Caecilia Tripp, her own Spring in masmen, leaders of carnival bands or public Gwangju—shot in the spirit of Rainer Werner demonstrations of thousands to whom liberatory, Fassbinder’s Germany in Autumn—it was only fit- if temporary, power would be conferred through ting that the following be but a teaser of this fea- collective artistic creation. Through Carnival and ture-to-be. SPRING was a procession rather than other similar public manifestations, the social a parade, a Carnival rather than a Spectacle, the contract is constantly renegotiated, turned into an ideas of procession and Carnival being under- artistic contract between the artist-leader and the stood here in relation of contradistinction with viewer-participant that, ironically, best realizes the parade and Spectacle in accordance with their ety- postmodernist ideal of the viewer completing the mological roots, which might best attest to their

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Karyn Olivier (USA), Grey Hope, in SPRING, May 18 Democratic Plaza, Gwangju, September 5, 2008. Curated by Claire Tancons for Gwangju Biennale ’08. 200 participants, 90 minutes. Photo: Akiko OTA.

Office funeral procession of chariots of offering, Claire Tancons is a , writer, and researcher which borrowed as much from a Southern based in New Orleans, focusing on Carnival, proces- Chinese custom (according to which the dead are sional art, and popular protest. She has experiment- to be accompanied by everyday objects as a ed with the procession as a curatorial medium at viaticum for the travel to the afterlife) as it did Gwangju Biennale ‘08 and CAPE ‘09 and is current- from the carnival tradition of setting an effigy on ly working on a project about Carnival and contem- fire at the end of the revels. porary art as well as a book tentatively entitled SPRING’s premise and success relied on the Carnival, Procession, and Protest: Art, Agency, and artistic contract between a handful of artists and a the Possession of Perception from the Atlantic multitude of people. Each artist became the head World to the Global Stage. of a rhizomatic experiment in artistic collabora- tion within his or her own workshop, during which skills were shared, knowledge disseminated, Notes human bonds sealed. At the core of this rhizomat- 1 Retort includes Iain Boal, T. J. Clark, Joseph Matthews, and ic dissemination of knowledge there soon became Michael Watts. The full title of their book is Afflicted Powers: not one but several leaders, as each workshop par- Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (London and New ticipant took over control of the production York: Verso Press, 2005). The book is an expanded version of process from the artist. The artist was to diffuse the group’s highly successful 2003 broadsheet, “Neither Their War Nor Their Peace.” artistic authority and authorial power as the peo- 2 In Omeros (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), ple gained ownership of the artistic process in a Derek Walcott relocates Homer’s ancient tale The Odyssey to joint enterprise of collective self-definition. the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

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