Oreet Ashery's Party for Freedom
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Oreet Ashery Party for Freedom 07.09. - 27.10.2013 Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom | An Audiovisual Album: Geert Wilders Triptych, 2013, video still The Unfinished Revolution: Oreet Ashery’s Party for Freedom By TJ Demos In ”Geert Wilders Triptych”, track 8 of Oreet extreme-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party Ashery’s hour-long video Party for Freedom for Freedom). As such, her moving-image | An Audiovisual Album (2013), a man is work, constituting ten interconnected tracks, shown chasing a woman around the grass, reveals what Fredric Jameson would call the grunting “Geert” as they go. Both are naked “political unconscious” of rightwing political and on all fours. Tracking his female prey in discourse, exposing its underlying “proble- this bizarre tale of sexual experimentation matics of ideology, of the unconscious and and political theatre – “Geert” references of desire, of representation, of history, and Dutch rightwing politician Geert Wilders – of cultural production.”1 the man kicks like a donkey, and eventually succeeds in grabbing her leg and bringing Coming after two years of research, As- her down face-first on the ground, as a dog hery’s video interweaves complex elements looks on and appears miffed by the curio- of experimental performance, nude theatre us display. Reminiscent of the scene of the and political satire, punk music and trash nude chase in The Idiots, Lars von Trier’s aesthetics, in order to deconstruct, via cut- 1998 comedy-drama film in which characters ting parody, the paradoxical ideology that attempt to get in touch with their inner-idiot joins the freedoms of sexual transgression to in a related critical acting-out of European the xenophobic and murderous intolerance libertarianism-become-libertinage, Ashery’s of outsiders. Some of these concerns follow ribald allegory of humans-become-animals Ashery’s related recent performances and in- offers a subversive mimicry of Wilders’ terventions, including her Naked as a Jaybird (2011) for which a group of figures stripped ties to vengeful intolerance, especially as naked in a supermarket in London, exploring they come together in the Party for Freedom, connections between biopolitics and bare founded in 2005 by Geert Wilders and now life in relation to migration, citizenship, and the third largest in the Netherlands. Wilders outsider status; and her Monkey Bum Fac- developed his model of populist neolibera- tory (2011) which continued this engage- lism and anti-multiculturalism following the ment in Bourges, France, through further highly mediatised murders of van Gogh and public displays of nudity and bodily abjecti- Fortuyn, who had recently joined libertaria- on, doing so in relation to diverse historical nism, nationalism, and anti-immigrant (and precedents of body art, the use of humans particularly anti-Islamic) ideology in an agen- as paint brushes, and sexual politics by such da that has defined Dutch politics in the era artists as Yves Klein and Annie Sprinkle. of “War on Terror” globalization. The video’s track 3, for instance, includes appropriated One key reference for this cycle of works, media footage of Fortuyn speaking at a pub- and which is particularly significant for As- licity event in Almere (a planned city near hery’s Party for Freedom video, is Vladimir Amsterdam), where he discusses his com- Mayakovsky’s 1918/1921 play Mystery-Bouf- mitment to “fighting Islam” and his support fe, which relays the story of the Clean and for “enlightenment” and “humanism.” “Ima- the Unclean, updated by Ashery, as per the gine the army of Ali Baba, here in Europe!,” Russian playwright’s wishes, to the political he explains to a roaring crowd of supporters. context of the moment. In her creative ap- As a response, he contends that the “guest propriation, the play is made to respond to cannot take over the house,” which has the current-day struggle between European become a motto of the Dutch right, as its neo-conservativism and the perceived threat position neatly summarises anti-immigrant of the influx of Islam, contextualized by the legislation and the fantasy of controlling populist demagoguery of racist nationa- Holland’s and Europe’s borders in the name lism, and the recent murders of outspoken of its rightful property owners. As Dutch an- politico Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo thropologist Peter van der Veer points out, van Gogh, events definitional to Holland in “the Dutch feel that they have recently freed the years following 9/11 and the politicized themselves from Christian conservativism rhetoric around terrorism, western valu- [during struggles in the 1960s] only to be es, and the clash of civilizations. The video confronted again by Islamic injunctions [in also explores connections between the cur- the 1990s and 2000s].”2 That said, it was the rent-day defense of freedom and its relati- politically-motivated murders that brought on to earlier twentieth-century movements this discourse to national attention: Fortuyn around nudism and sexual emancipation. It was killed in 2002 in Hilversum by animal does so by drawing together a diverse range and environmental rights activist Volkert van of references, recalling the history of coun- der Graaf (who wanted to stop Fortuyn from ter-cultural naturalist movements, select treating Muslims as scapegoats), and his moments in body art (such as that of the violent death, a week before the elections, Viennese Actionists, who worked through catalyzed a huge win for the right. Although the trauma of WWII via controversial, staged Fortuyn was a staunch Marxist in the 1960s rituals of bodily punishment), and visceral (his first job was lecturer in Marxist socio- musical forms like punk, introduced in the vi- logy at University of Groningen), his later deo by those parts of the soundtrack written transformation into a vocal neoconservati- and performed by the all-girl band Woolf. In ve spokesman against the perceived threat each case, aesthetic forms – such as DIY vi- of foreigners contributed to the rightwing deo, avant-garde nude performance, natura- surge that has spread across Europe, led by list photography, and hardcore music – are such analogues as Jörg Haider in Austria, shown to be highly unstable politically, all Filip de Winter in Belgium, and Jean-Marie overdetermined sites of paradoxical values. Le Pen in France. The discourse of freedom is one such con- Rather than rely on direct footage of the flicted site, which can join individual liber- likes of Fortuyn, Wilders, and van Gogh, rer Asherys video deres sammenflettede hollandske højreorienterede kulturelle og politiske positioner ved hjælp af spøgeful- politiske diskurs.4 I hendes værk bliver krop- de allegorier og performative fremstillinger pen – som et territorium med grænser og af psyko-seksuelle dramaer og lege. Disse overgange mellem inde og ude – selektivt fremstillinger afslører dybtliggende aspek- åbnet og reguleret samt krænket seksuelt ter af den højreekstremistiske ideologi, som, og politisk. I forskellige dele af videoen ser på én og samme tid, hylder individuel sek- man fx skikkelser, som leger nøgne i grupper suel frihed (retten til at være homoseksuel, i det grønne område bagved landsbykirken at være nøgen, at dyrke ukonventionel sex) i Suffolk fra det 12. århundrede, der tjener samt udtrykker en racistisk harme over im- som kulisse for størstedelen af værket. De migranter og deres påståede forsøg på at opfører en psykedelisk udendørs “love-in” “overtage huset” og indføre deres egen teo- og en nøgen-seance i forsøget på at kom- kratiske kultur baseret på islamisk sharialov. munikere med van Gogh og Fortuyns ånder Dette paradoks af frihed og undertrykkelse ved hjælp af et ouijabræt. Parvis og i grup- dramatiseres igennem hele Asherys video. per af tre indtager de seksuelle softcore- “Frihed” fremstår her som en relationel og stillinger såvel som stillinger og bevægelser, dybt konfliktfyldt praksis, ifølge hvilken fri- der antyder dyreagtige transformationer af hed for nogle er uløseligt forbundet med den menneskelige krop. Disse scener med ufrihed for andre. Den pointe, som Ashery animalisme, primitive ritualer, gruppesex, udvikler i værket, præciseres af den politiske børnelege og vanvidsteater udtrykker en fri- teoretiker Wendy Brown: “Frihed er hverken gjorthed fra kropslige konventioner og over- en filosofisk absoluthed eller en håndgribe- skrider heteronormativ, pardomineret seksu- lig enhed, men en relationel og kontekstu- alitet såvel som profan eller religionsbaseret el praksis, der dannes i opposition til, hvad etik. “Piano Rim”-sekvensen i spor 6 er den der lokalt og ideologisk måtte opfattes som mest avantgardistiske og seksuelt eksplicit- “ufrihed”.3 te. Den viser en ung mand, der spiller klaver stående, mens han slikker røv på en andro- I Asherys video udfolder denne spænding gyn skikkelse, der er placeret foran ham på sig i relation til kroppen og tilnærmer sig, alle fire, mens en ung kvinde, der er optaget hvad van der Veer kalder for “modsæt- af sin lap-top, sidder henslængt på klaveret i ningsfyldt begærspolitik” i forhold til den baggrunden. I denne frihedsakt overskrides Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom | Audiovisual Album: Posing Improvising, 2013, videostill occupied with her laptop on the piano in the of freedom and unfreedom, the one built on background. Boundaries between human the other.5 The contradictory politics of de- and animal, self and other, public and pri- sire ascribed to the Party for Freedom exists vate, normative and unconventional sexua- in the sense that one type of freedom (indivi- lity, are here violated in this act of freedom. dualist, liberal, sexual) excludes other kinds of freedoms (those of migration, multicul- Meanwhile, a corresponding and opposite turalism, religious freedom), yet each ap- desire for the annihilation of the body of the pears constituted by the exclusion of its Other – approximating the phantom-object other. As a result, sexual freedom, toleran- of rightwing resentment regarding the ce of difference, and democratic principles non-western Islamic immigrant – transpi- are revealed to inspire an opposing state res in scenes such as the fourth vignette, of control, flipping into intolerance, repres- “Untitled |Fantasy|”.