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 , 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|”. The passage shows a sion, and illiberal governance. In terms of group of bloodied Arabs, one wearing a tra- that fantasy of control, Ashery’s political ditional keffiyeh headdress, others with re- allegory echoes other contemporary artistic ligious skullcaps, all lying dead on a public projects that have critically taken up Euro- bench outdoors. As if victims of neo-fascist pean populist politics to critical ends, such violence, they are objectified in a state of as Jonas Staal’s Art, Property of Politics III: complete domination, a scene resonant with Closed Architecture (2011).6 The design-ba- the anti-immigrant brutality that has taken sed and conceptualist piece reconstructs hold in European countries from Holland the prison architecture of Dutch politician to Greece, France to Italy, in recent years. and Geert Wilders-confidant Fleur Agema, A few moments later, the actors emerge who dedicated herself to designing the ideal from their lifeless slumber and wash off penal complex for her MA thesis in Interior the fake blood, revealing themselves to be Design at Utrecht School of Arts. Reprodu- white European-looking actors dressed in cing a visual model of Agema’s prison that costume, thereby exposing the constructed draws out its logic of the biopolitical control basis of the fantasy. In this regard, Ashery’s of subjects who fail to integrate into Dutch engagement with migration and politically-​ social conventions, Staal writes of it: “the attuned performance recalls the artist’s past whole of society” becomes “a model for work, for instance, Portrait Sketch (2006) for detention: everyone is trapped in their own which she inhabited stereotypes of Jewish social conditions, poor and rich alike.” Sha- and Islamic identities and had herself drawn ring the ambition to deconstruct rightwing by street-based portrait artists in Delhi. Si- political ideology, Ashery’s project distin- milarly, her concern for immigration and dis- guishes itself by animating the psychosexual placement continues her past investigations imaginary of the Freedom Party’s fears and into the politics of citizenship and border re- fantasies of transgressed boundaries, par- gimes in her native Middle-Eastern context, ticularly when such a carceral society of con- as in A Gathering (2006) for which she held trol breaks down and engenders ever greater a banquet in London for Palestinians preven- urges for control and domination. ted from returning home by Israeli restric- ​tions; and Welcome Home | Memorial Ser- Providing a response to Jameson’s call to vice (2006) a collaborative performance historicize the political unconscious of con- project for which three Palestinian voices temporary ideological formations, Ashery’s recited the names of 369 Palestinian villages video locates the precedents of contempo- that were destroyed during the war around rary freedom discourse in nineteenth- and 1948 when Israel was created. twentieth-century liberation movements, communes, and experimental sexual prac- As in these works, and especially in the tices. The genealogy is relayed explicitly in related projects of Naked as a Jaybird and track 10, “I Can’t Bring You Back,” even whi- Monkey Bum Factory, it is the body that is le this complex history’s legacy is present shown to be one of bare life: a site where throughout the video. There, Ashery’s group sexual de-politicization and political exclusi- of nude actors are shown attempting to on collide, exposing an oscillating paradox communicate with the spirits of Fortuyn and Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom | Audiovisual Album: Don’t Take over the House Now, 2013, video still

van Gogh, as the video adds a pedagogical, revolt adopted to post-60s capitalist libera- male voice-over beginning with a descripti- lism. As Ashery’s narrative points out, the on of the Nachtkulture (naked culture) and vicissitudes of freedom discourse ended up Lebensreform (life reform) movements in not only in commercial spectacle, but also modern Germany. The embrace of nudism in in the perverse violence of rightwing hate, rural nature, we learn, was once viewed as as exemplified in Norwegian mass murde- an antidote to industrialization and urbaniza- rer Anders Behring Breivik’s act of killing tion, initially seen as a progressive departure 77 Labour Party supporters. He justified the from Christian prohibitions and conservative rampage in his militant creed, 2083: A Euro- cultural restrictions. As such, it was approa- pean Declaration of Independence, the an- ched as initially suspect by the Nazis when ti-Islam, anti-feminist, and anti-Marxist text they came to power in the 1930s, although he distributed over the Internet on the day they eventually embraced naturalism under of the attacks. Here, the necropolitical basis the state-controlled leisure organization of far-right extremist claims on freedom, as Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) – allegorized in Ashery’s video, is concretely as long as communists and Jews were exclu- glimpsed.7 ded. German naturalism underwent further ideological revaluing as it migrated to Cali- Focused on these political and aesthetic fornia, sparking groups like the Nature Boys, contradictions, Party for Freedom offers a a 1940s subculture of proto-hippies that pre- tale of dreamworld and catastrophe, utopia pared the ground for later counter-cultural and tragedy, radicalism and recuperation. formations in the 1960s, formations that On the one hand, sexual freedom was part- were further inverted in a post-emancipatory ly emancipated from oppressive traditions return-to-order in subsequent decades. The of monogamy, pro-creation sexuality, and magazine Jaybird, for instance, begun in Christian intolerance, although even twen- Southern California during the 1960s, initial- tieth-century counter-cultural movements ly dedicated itself to carefree family nudism, tended to reaffirm patriarchal and hetero- aligned with the counter-culture movement, normative structures, as Ashery is keen to but increasingly took to supplying softcore point out. On the other hand, the outgrowth porn to the erotica market, replacing nudists of emancipatory body politics has come, in with paid models, its anti-establishment some extreme forms, to correspond to the repressive, racist, and murderous politics of Ashery’s psycho-political dramas of objecti- current-day neoliberal freedom crusaders.8 fied Asian women, murdered and bloodied In Ashery’s video, we witness nudism be- Arabs, and bestiality and zoophilia stage va- come commodified sex and pornography; rious binaries between self and Other that feminism become patriarchy; socialism be- oscillate between sexual desire and murde- come authoritarianism; liberation become rous loathing. As such, the video explicitly xenophobic repression – contradictions play- calls up the hysterical structuring of the ed out as well in further scenes of parodic rightwing cultural imaginary as displayed allegory. In track 3’s “Don’t Take over the in Submission (2004), van Gogh and Aayan House Now,” a “house wife” played by an Hirsi Ali’s video that presents their stilted Asian woman dressed in a sexually objectify- and one-sided view of Islam. In one section ing maid outfit swats flies in her kitchen, in- of the short, infamous video that has been timating in the artist’s coded sign language broadcast on Dutch TV, a topless woman is that immigrants are no better than filthy and shown in transparent clothing and a black invasive insects in need of extermination. veil standing on an oriental rug in a dark Yet the video’s gaudy depiction of the host lusty boudoir, praying to Allah. The clichéd exercising her right to walk around naked in set is complimented by an autobiographical her own house – and more broadly the right commentary in which the woman narrates of the Dutch to sexual freedom in their own her life of subjection to her violent husband, country – resonates with tawdry scenarios the fruit of an arranged marriage, as Middle of pornography. As such, sexual “liberati- Eastern music and the sounds of a cracking on” connects with the “freedoms” of sexist whip play in the background. Shots of her exploitation, calling up Holland’s infamy as bleeding, violated body, intercut with views European capital for sex tourism. The wo- of her skin covered in calligraphic inscrip- man’s Asian appearance, furthermore, raises tions of the Koran describing the necessity the spectre of trafficked women from -out of submission, relay her savage treatment, side Europe, whereby non-Dutch others are based also on tales of repeated rapes at the accepted as long as they keep to their allot- hands of her husband’s brother. The horrid ted place and accept Dutch values. In this stories make the fact that the character at- sense, sexual liberation and the blackmarket tempts to justify her self-hating obedience enslavement of women explosively connect. via religious conviction all the more hor-

Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom | An Audiovisual Album: Geert Wilders Triptych, 2013, video still rendous – a kneejerk response that is the narcissistic hedonism and loathing abjecti- ideological effect of the video. As such, the on – that Ashery’s film locates as the struc- work articulates a propagandistic condem- turing political unconscious of the Party for nation of Islam, swinging between a neo-ori- Freedom, expressing its underlying desires, entalist lasciviousness and a punishing its unacknowledged fears and fantasies. racist contempt, its script written by Hirsi Ali, who herself fled Somalia to escape an Infamously, van Gogh referred to Muslims arranged marriage and landing up in Holland as that “secret column of goat-fuckers,” and as a staunch critic of Islam and eventual po- Fortuyn confessed “he liked fucking young ster-child of the far-right. In referencing the Moroccan boys but did not want to be re- video, Ashery’s Party for Freedom points out strained by backward imams”.10 This ten- that Hirsi Ali’s partner is the British conserva- dency to animalize and sexualize the Other tive economic historian Niall Ferguson, who- informs the emphasis in Party for Freedom se 2011 book Civilisation: The West and the on the becoming-animal of humans. Consi- Rest, dedicated to his wife (just as Ashery’s der the shot of the naked woman dressed first track, also called ”Civilisation”, is dedi- like a roasting pig, and the frequent inclusi- cated to Ferguson), has been attacked for ons of images of nonhuman primates, dogs, its neoliberal triumphalism, Western-centric and insects. In addition, the video’s frequent chauvinism, and implicit racism.9 The refe- shots of human bums – revealed for the rence is also important in that it shows how camera, displayed often from below, and rightwing populism extends throughout dutifully held in place for inspection – posi- Europe, even if its particular instantiations tion its subjects in so many animal postures, are not identical (Ferguson’s homophobia, whereby the piece develops a conflictual po- for which he recently apologized in the me- litics of anality. In Ashery’s scatological tale, dia, for instance, conflicts with some Dutch the human backside figures as indetermina- rightwing discourse). te signifier – as the object of sexual desire; the suspect site of the biopolitics of security Ashery’s video responds to Hirsi Ali and (particularly in the strip and cavity search van Gogh’s provocation with her own ima- scene, intercut with shots of incandescently gined scenario of pleasure and disgust, par- coloured clown faces expressing disgust); ticularly in track 8’s “Geert Wilders Triptych”. and the orifice for the excrescence of wret- The scene is set outdoors amidst trees and ched substances (food expelled from the greenery, with a young woman shown sit- anus-mouth, implying the ejection of outsi- ting on a swing, attended by a young man, ders from the country). In this way, bodily proposing something of a Fragonardian desublimation flips into political expulsion, pleasure garden à la Marquis de Sade. As and sexualisation correlates with fantasized the woman’s libertine partner feeds her extermination. some sort of raspberry mush, he smears the substance on her bare chest. She con- While Ashery’s critical mimicry clearly at- sumes the food to excess, only to vomit it tacks the Party for Freedom, it is not simply, out, followed by a self-satisfying smile. The in my view, a deconstructive dramatization abject material consequently functions as a of the underlying psychology that drives transitional object, at once outside and in- rightwing ideology. Ultimately, by inhabiting side the body, part and not-part of the self, past forms of avant-garde transgression and provoking alternating signs of desire and emancipatory politics, the project returns repulsion. Translating van Gogh and Hirsi to sexual liberation and multiculturalism as Ali’s propagandistic video act into a dismal unfinished revolutions, which await an even- display of shit-spewing logorrhoea, the pas- tual reckoning, if not ultimate resolution. sage also recalls Pasolini’s notorious scene Its transgressive elements – particularly its of coprophagia in his 1975 film Salò, or the sexual experimentation and gender-questio- 120 Days of Sodom, a like-minded allegorical ning playfulness – might yet be re-radicalized, drama of fascist sado-masochistic excess the video suggests by re-animating these set in the late-stages of WWII Italy. It is ul- forms, which points toward the embrace of timately that psycho-sexual state – between a post-heteronormative, pro-polymorphous perversity. As such, the project identifies and repulsion, as s/he witnesses the spec- the progressive elements of a potential state tacle whereby the illusion of nude abandon of pluralist living-together, albeit in a non- reveals how the body is situated within programmatic way, although it provides no relations of power, and where freedom it- answer to the thorny question of what a self crumbles as an innocent pleasure or reconciliation between the freedoms of essentialized category. Sexuality is thereby sexual liberation and religion would mean or denaturalized, becomes radically unstable, look like, or even if the artist would support and as a result, viewers experience a state such a reconciliation. of estrangement from their own body, and that of others, which precipitates a powerful A further key is the project’s grassroots di- questioning – at once critically conceptual stribution form, according to which instituti- and viscerally affective – of sexual dynamics, ons, businesses, and groups of a minimum nudity, and their relations to freedom claims, of ten people are invited to host Party for especially as the final track delivers the short Freedom’s live performance event, Party history of the modern transformations of for Hire, which includes nude displays and that discourse. screenings of the video. Ashery describes the project as “somewhere between a tra- Reliant upon and encouraging the self-orga- velling cinema and theatre troupe, a kiss- nising capacity of audiences and supporters a-gram and a takeaway delivery service.”11 of the project, the Party also proposes and The one-hour event comprises the display of provokes an informal network of activity and select parts of the video, during which nude resistance, which constitutes a further poli- actors, both women and men, complement tically progressive element, however modest on-screen passages by performing various and undefined. Additionally, the launch of live vignettes, including cavorting around Ashery’s project occurred on the symbolical- the room, wrestling in an inflatable boat, ly significant date of May 1st – International caressing a paint-splattered pig sculpture, Workers Day – and at the site of Millbank and riding each other like animals. (One of Tower, the location of the Tory headquarters the more memorable scenes from the per- and of the massive anti-government protest formance at UCL’s Centre for the Study of in 2010 that saw a flood of demonstrators Contemporary Art on May 15th, was of a (including the artist) break into the building woman posing on all fours holding a banana in a spectacular act of anti-austerity-budget in her mouth that sprouted a lit sparkler, with rebellion (another unfinished revolution). As another such pyrotechnic device inserted in Ashery writes, “holding the event in Mill- her bum, creating a spectacular display of bank is another way of reclaiming the space, sexual objectification and animalization). re-visiting the building and asking what new strategies of resistance are available to us. The performance exerts a seductive invitati- When does intervention become cooption? on to the audience to join in and get naked Can art resist cooption now?”12 Including themselves, even while the video reveals live musical performances, naked body art, the over-determination of the body as a and the screening of the Party for Freedom contradictory and unstable site of freedom video, the launch resonated with the carni- – both as a white, heteronormative, and valesque energies of recent political protests, youthful privilege (exemplified in Ashery’s which, in the era of alter-globalization de- typological determination of the actors’ mos sparked by the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” body-types and identities to correspond to anti-WTO uprising, have increasingly offered a select range of appearances), and coded a mixture of the creative visual aesthetics of within radically divergent ideological for- resistance, performative displays, and thea- mations, including emancipatory libertari- trical activism.13 anism, counter-cultural subversiveness, fa- scist purity, neo-nationalist xenophobia, and On that opening night, the audience was murderous hate speech. The viewer, then, introduced to what Ashery terms a “de- comes to inhabit the affective site that ro- mocracy of sound”, comprising diverse tates between desire and disgust, attraction approaches to music, including the cham- Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom | Party for Hire, 2013, performance at Asylum, Peckham

ber-orchestral modernism of Finnish com- zed multiculturalism.17 It does so by taking poser Timo-Juhani Kyllönen, the experimen- into account and expressing the unconsci- tal sounds of Yakutian-Russian musician ous of subjects, rather than repressing those Chyskyyrai, the punk noise music of the fantasy and fears and thereby inviting vio- four-piece band Woolf, and the hardco- lent forms of acting-out. If there is a utopian re-jazz fusion of Morgan Quaintance’s band. element in Ashery’s approach, then, it is lo- These constituted a diversity of approaches cated in the project’s implicit emancipatory to sonic experimentation that one finds as proposals that decline to systematize their well on the video’s soundtrack.14 As such, practice or codify their procedures. Rather, Ashery’s project advances further its positi- the project defines spaces where the inevi- ve proposal: Turning away from the failures table differences between people and social of multiculturalism and its problematic “to- groups are negotiated in informal, spontane- lerance” for difference, which all-too-often ous, and collectivist ways, reliant on a sha- dissembles discriminatory views15, it sug- red commitment to creativity. gests a modelling of cultural co-existence that acknowledges both strangeness within Finally, Ashery’s project includes a month all (rejecting the very opposition between of related discursive events during May-Ju- self and other), and the ever-potential ma- ne 2013, such as “People vs. Freedom on nifestations of social antagonisms between land, animals and women” at the Sweden- subjects. It also invites the reinvention of borg Society with feminist-activist Silvia socio-sexual organization in ways not bound Federici; “People vs. Freedom on being of- to the conventions of heteronormativity, ap- fensive, UK visas, immigration profiteering propriative desire, and couple-dominated, and state control” with Shaista Aziz, Manick monogamous relations.16 In this regard, the Govinda, and Kenan Malik, Corporate Watch, Party cultivates practices below and outside and Precarious Workers; and “People vs. the all-encompassing policy directives and Freedom in conversation,” with Tirdad totalizing governmentality of institutionali- Zolghadr. As much as Party for Freedom attempts to reproduce and thereby negate Populism in its Mediascape”, the 2012 exhibition the political unconscious of recent forms of project at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, cura- far-right extremism, it also presents us with ted by Matteo Lucchetti, which Ashery references in Party for Freedom. a principle of hope that such people-centred 7. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics”, Public Culture creativity, grassroots cooperation, and ar- 15:1 (Winter 2003), 11-40. tist-activist networks will not only subject 8. See David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: the populist discourse of intolerance to cri- Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (London: tical scrutiny and discussion, but also invent Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). future ways to move beyond such a repressi- 9. See Pankaj Mishra, “Watch This Man”, review of ve politics, reconnecting with and advancing Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: The West and the Rest (London: Allen Lane, 2011), in London Review of further the unfinished revolutions of the past. Books, vol. 33 no. 21, (3 November 2011), 10-12. 10. Peter van der Veer, “Pim Fortuyn”, 111 and 120. TJ Demos is an art historian, writer and critic. The In addition, Ashery points out that Wilders has essay is written on occasion of the presentation of acknowledged forming his low opinion of Arab cul- Party for Freedom | People vs Freedom in London tures after visiting Israel and Egypt as a child. Du- ring the trip he contracted a stomach bug in Egypt, in May/June 2013, an Artangel commission. and this childhood trauma allegedly determined his adult political views – a story that informs the sentence “How can such a small thing get so big” found in Ashery’s video. 11. See the artist’s website: www.oreetashery.net. 12. Email to author, 24 April, 2013. 13. See Claire Tancons, “Occupy Wall Street: Carni- val Against Capital? Carnivalesque as Protest Sen- sibility”, e-flux 30 (December 2011). 14. Conversation with the artist, 2 May, 2013. 15. For Brown, “tolerance discourse” – as a form of governmentality that regulates social, cultural, and political groupings – often works to “restore the hegemony that state-sponsored egalitarianism threatens to undermine.” See Wendy Brown, Re- gulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), nt. 2, 208. 16. For diverse theorizations of such recent possi- 1. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Nar- bilities of non-normative sexual practice, see Leo rative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies (Chicago: University Press, 1981), 13. University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Dossie Ea- 2. Peter van der Veer, “Pim Fortuyn, Theo van ston, Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Gogh, and the Politics of Tolerance in the Nether- Open Relationships & Other Adventures (Berkeley: lands”, Public Culture 18:1 (2006), 120. He writes Celestial Arts, 2011). further: “the main issue in the murder of van Gogh 17. See Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley, The Crises of is not Islam but Dutch culture” and the paradox Multiculturalism (London: Zed Books, 2011), which of tolerance and liberal values. He points out that offers a complex reading of the highly complex va- Dutch tolerance discourse goes back to Spinoza, a lences, practices, and effects of multiculturalism. history increasingly forgotten owning to right-wing They write: “The idea that too much relativism financial cuts to the Dutch educational system has allowed culturally regressive minorities to en- (112-13). danger the fight against sexism and homophobia 3. Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and suggests that these are purely struggles between Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University the West – the birthplace of democracy, human Press, 1995), 6. rights, and singular achievements in gender equ- 4. Peter van der Veer, “Pim Fortuyn”. Also see: Ian ality and sexual freedom – and the rest, most pro- Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo blematically those illiberal subjects who have been van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (New York: allowed to live among us. Multiculturalism – not Penguin Press, 2006). the institutionalised sexism, patriarchal structures 5. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign or homophobia that affects all societies – can be Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen blamed for the persistence of domestic violence, (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998). or the violation of gay rights.” http://www.opende- 6. For further artistic models that critically examine mocracy.net/ourkingdom/alana-lentin-gavan-titley/ political populism in Europe today, see “Enacting crises-of-multiculturalism. CV UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Oreet Ashery (b. 1966, Jerusalem) is a Lon- Friday 15 November 2013 Overgaden pre- don based artist. She recently presented a sents the exhibition Ice Script – Meltingtime major commission by Artangel, titled Party #17 by Kirsten Justesen. The last day of the for Freedom | People vs Freedom. Her work exhibition is 25 December 2013. has been shown at the Biennial; Venice Biennial; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Tate Mo- dern, London; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Pompidou Centre, Paris; , London; DEPO, and the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow. Publications in- clude The Novel of Nonel and Vovel, a grap- hic novel in collaboration with Larissa San- sour published by Charta, the monograph Dancing with Men published by the Live Art Development Agency and Staying, publis- hed by Artangel. Ashery is represented by the Other Gallery, and , and she is an Honorary Research Fellow at QMU, and a lecturer in Art at Goldsmiths.

EVENTS

Sunday 15 September 3-4pm Guided tour Overgaden invites you to a guided tour of the current exhibitions in the company of Thomas Ladeby, a member of Overgaden’s curatorial staff. Afterwards we serve coffee and cake. The event will be in Danish.

Saturday 26 October 3-4.30pm Talk This afternoon, Oreet Ashery will be joined by writer and curator Omar Kholief and art historian and critic Mathias Danbolt to discuss the show and related themes.

THANK YOU

Oreet Ashery would like to thank Laura God- frey Isaacs for the use of Rishangles Old Church and everyone who took part in this project and those who relentlessly helped it from the outset and throughout.

This exhibition folder can be downloaded from: www.overgaden.org The exhibition is supported by:

Artangel (commission), Art Council England, Kone Foundation, Performance Matters (A collaboration between Goldsmiths University of London, Univer- sity of Roehampton, and the Live Art Development Agency, financially assisted by the Arts & Humani- ties Research Council).

Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art Overgaden neden vandet 17 DK-1414 K Overgaden is supported by the Danish Arts Coun- cil’s Committee for Visual Arts and the Obel Family www.overgaden.org Foundation. +45 32 57 72 73