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D MENDE PHD the Itinerant Library Version Nov2014 THE ITINERANT On the delayed arrival of images of socialist internationalism that confound contemporary exhibiting processes By Doreen Mende A practice-based thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Curatorial/Knowlegde Department of Visual Cultures Goldsmiths College University of London Supervised by Irit Rogoff Berlin/London, June, 2013 1 I hereby declare that the following work is my own. Doreen Mende Berlin/London, June 28, 2013 2 ABSTRACT This practice-based PhD, titled The Itinerant, proposes a concept for exhibiting processes, detected along a route thought through various frames of geopolitical relations. Its point of departure is framed by a declaration of solidarity via state- socialist institutions, of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in particular, with revolutionary independence movements, such as the P.L.O. (Palestinian Liberation Organization), manifested in educational collaborations around image production. The project is built around the micro-political potency of a non-institutional archive of photographic images arriving from the GDR and P.L.O. in the 1980s, and therefore intends to enact the emergence of a vocabulary for deconstructing macro- political narratives of global Cold War histories. The work of deconstruction thus begins within the micro-political dimension of an archive whose mode of existence may even be limiting our ability to speak of an 'archive' in the common sense. Hence, the inherent archival function of the photographic image transforms the materiality at stake; it may decompose itself, or end up working against itself. Such work is absolutely necessary for the possibility of undoing the exhibition as a territorial and synchronic entity, as a major responsibility in exhibiting making in the early 21st century, when globalisation takes place in capital and data. The focus of investigation inhabits the actual working conditions of making and exhibiting photographs as rehearsed in a series of educational gatherings around photography, which unfolded throughout the 1980s in Beirut, East Berlin and Tunis between the East German photographer Horst Sturm and former fedayeen / then photographers of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (P.L.O.), and which helped place the call for the liberation of Palestine on an international and public display. The Itinerant is the first project attempting to complicate the support for the Palestinian liberation movement by discussing image/exhibition production based in geopolitically defined ideologies of a socialist internationalism during the global Cold War. The collapse of the socialist project in 1989 that spilled into world-fracturing events demands that we situate ourselves within the changing geopolitical and economic order of the world. This project resonates deeply in an intergenerational contract along the continuities and discontinuities of that kind of internationalism, and thus takes a position within the realms of knowledge embodied by members of societies that experienced and are experiencing in everyday life the collapsed or as yet-unfinished project of becoming independent in relation to globalising powers of capitalism or from Western narratives of history. Such investigation results in the necessity to conceive photography as a network of practices, which activates a spatiality between ‘here and elsewhere,’ the two being, simultaneously, the conditions of production. In other words, photography can be mobilised here through a deep questioning of its entangled practices, processes and conditions: firstly, as the continuation of a militant struggle by other means including a discussion on the question of solidarity, violence and economics; and secondly, as complex exhibiting processes in geopolitics, which demands to take position, not on-behalf of, but to speak from one’s own position for a Cause emerging today out of the problems of exhibition making in the field of contemporary art. I speculate about this network of practices as being constitutive of a concept of exhibiting in the geopolitics of the 21st century. The thesis is repeatedly framed by a single sentence by Jean Genet, whose book Un Captif amoureux (1986) has provided a crucial resonating body and interlocutor throughout the entire research process. The multiple returns demonstrate a possibility to labour the complex set of layers that such geopolitical relations 3 constitute. In my attempt to dedicate the practice-based and theory-driven research to anti-colonial thinking, the thesis takes distance from producing a ready-to-use or copy/paste manual for ‘curatorial practice’ commonly understood as placing objects and/or images on public display. This contextualisation demands situating this research within a trans-disciplinary setting, i.e., The Itinerant entangles concepts from theory, lived experience, living memory, from travelling and teaching, from academia, the means of art, and from the militant struggle. My approach wishes to open up towards a thinking that affords the possibilities of transversing disciplines, regions, geographies, time-zones, borders, generations and economic systems from which a geopolitics emerges. Such possibilities shift from space to spatiality in exhibition-making. This geopolitical concern implicates us today in the prolonged conflicting wills in the Middle East, in which taking a binary position would perpetuate two strong forces of European enlightenment: representation and individualism. In this frame, an exhibition can only be a symptom as it insists on being interpreted, this being, in itself, a symptom of the limits of European modernity. The thesis discusses in seven chapters and two inserts (Transit A and Transit B) the projects, practices, proposals and positions by Ariella Azoulay, Bruno Barbey, Heike Behrend, Berthold Beiler, Jacques Derrida, Richard Dindo, Dziga Vertov Group, Tarek Elhaik, Okwui Enwezor, Kodwo Eshun/Ros Gray, Frantz Fanon, Subversive Film (Reem Shilleh/Mohanad Yaqubi), Mark Fisher, Jean Genet, Iris Gusner, Joachim Hellwig, Tariq Ibrahim, Youssef Khotoub, Armin Linke, Achille Mbembe, Reinhard Mende, Heiner Müller, The Otolith Group, Griselda Pollock, Evelyn Richter, Irit Rogoff, Suely Rolnik, Abderrahmane Sissako, Terry Smith, Susan Sontag, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Hito Steyerl, Horst Sturm, Clemens von Wedemeyer, a.o. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At this pause in the journey, I wish to thank a range of travel companions who have been essential throughout. First of all, I am deeply obliged to my advisor Irit Rogoff for believing, over years, in my ability to produce the conditions for thinking new vocabularies that implicate geopolitics within exhibiting processes. Equally, I am grateful indeed to Kodwo Eshun who re-appeared over and over again along the long lonely roads as a great friend, fellow traveller, and generous interlocutor. By all the means that I have, I am eager to thank Horst Sturm, cordially and sincerely, for his private photographic archive and the many conversations since we first met at the end of the 1990s—for this, along with his unlimited trust, has allowed me to investigate all these geopolitical dimensions and friendships from the Cold War period. In this context, I wish to thank Ali Hussein and Youssef Khotoub in Ramallah, and Tariq Ibrahim in Beirut for their generosity in sharing thoughts and time. It is also along the paths of friendship that my fellow researchers at the PhD- think tank programme Curatorial/Knowlegde at Goldsmiths – Joshua Simon, Sarah Pierce, Grant Watson, Aneta Szyłak and Inês Moreira as well as Cihat Arınç, Bassam El Baroni, Pascale Beausse, Anshuman Dasgupta, Janna Graham, Hyunjin Kim, Ji Yoon Moon, and Leire Vergara – have supported this project with an enduring collective spirit. My deep appreciation addresses also the thinking and support of Jean-Paul Martinon and Stefan Nowotny. Moreover, thanks indeed for support, critical ears, eyes or pens to Adania Shibli, Mark Fisher, Ele Carpenter, Kerstin Stakemeier, Eyal Weizman, Anjalika Sagar, Emily Pethick, Ebadur Rahman, Smadar Dreyfus, and Johannes Kuehn. I wish to express appreciation also for Branimir Stojanović and Milica Tomić for numerous conversations on violence, war and exhibiting processes. Armin Linke took many photographs in Ramallah and Berlin that appear in this project—I am grateful for his support as an artist and true friend. Thankfulness also embraces Laure Giletti’s conceptual graphic contribution in form of the second visual essay of this thesis. Yazan Khalili and Hisham Awad translated from Arabic to English at any point, thanks for that. Moreover, The Otolith Collective in London offered solidarity and hospitality over the years without expecting anything in return, which is not self-evident. Thanks also must include the wonderful students at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) who engaged in the reading of texts that have become relevant in this research; and in this line, Gabriëlle Schleijpen profoundly supported my research through her vision and collectively driven DAI’s direction, even in moments when this project risked to limit my teaching obligations. The external readers of this PhD for my Viva in February 2014, Griselda Pollock and Elizabeth Cowie, provided invaluably helpful, encouraging and close- read responses. Last but not least at all, I am deeply obliged to Michelle Speidel’s and Vanessa Vasić-Janeković’s commitment, as well as patience and precision in making my English and writing understood. My research gained concrete substance through the support of the Arab Image Foundation
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