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The art of unsettling: mobile
architecture and its
political surplus value
Gijs van Oenen
The 20th century is no more, and
the last
remaining grass lots between motorways and railway tracks in the
Netherlands
have been designated ‘Vinex’ locations– target areas for new urban
development
planning. The small Dutch territory is now entirely caught in a matrix
of land
use plans, procedures and permits. Entirely? Well no, a handful of
small unruly
pockets of land are still stubbornly resisting colonization by the
planning
culture. It is round these indeterminate domains that my narrative
unfolds.
Stacked containers, dismantled masts; mobile architectures as undefined
encampments, temporary refuges from the imperatives of public-private
regulation. The question is: what is the potential surplus value of
these
artistic havens? How can they hold their own within PPP, the empire of
Public
Private Planning – that is to say, how can they survive without
becoming
permanently alienated from PPP society, while simultaneously resisting
its
assimilating tendencies? How can we voice the feeling that these final
indigestible
remains of Dutch soil are of vital importance for the political,
cultural and
social metabolism of a Netherlands otherwise planned to capacity?
This
feeling – that mobile-architectural artworks enable counterpunching in
times of
PPP – is not without problems; the history of artistic intervention in
political plan-making has always been a touchy business. Take the
Italian poet
Gabriele D’Annunzio who in 1919 set sail with a small band of
adventurers to
capture the town of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia), where he proclaimed
a ‘free
state’ that lasted a year or so (anyway, longer than the average
post-WWII
Italian government). Then there are artists who are not actually on a
political
mission, limiting themselves instead to producing politically engaged
art;
right or left, these also appear somewhat suspect. Think of Leni
Riefenstahl’s
film Triumph des Willens or Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Lehrstücke’
(learning
plays). Of course more appealing examples also exist, such as the
Social-Realist murals of Diego Rivera in Mexico, Picasso’s Guernica,
or AVL-Ville,
the anarchistic free state founded by the Dutch artist Joep van
Lieshout in
Rotterdam’s former docklands. It’s a difficult genre – but not an
impossible
one.
The
notion of ‘free state’ as wielded by Van Lieshout actually reflects
very well
both the strength and the problematic side of the mildly anarchistic
order he
aspired to in AVL-Ville (a free state that, like D’Annunzio’s,
lasted
for about a year). On the one hand, this is a domain where normal laws
and
rules are momentarily suspended – a moderately transgressive zone where
tinkering on is more important than measuring off, and improvisation
takes
precedence over permits. The accent in free state is on ‘free’: free
from the
bureaucratic propensity to intervene and regulate, from planners,
allocators
and inspectors. Once the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland (Free
Netherlands -
what’s in a name?) published an interview with an escapologist who for years had plied
his trade
in a travelling circus. He enjoyed his work, but preferred to let his
wife deal
with the red tape his self-employed business often ran into. ‘I’d
rather hang
upside-down in handcuffs ten metres above the ground on a burning rope
than
have to discuss matters with a civil servant’, he confided with the
reporter.
That is the true spirit of the
free state: a place without civil servants, where you are free to drop
dead
unsupervised – undisturbed, yes, but also uninsured and uncared for.
Not
everyone is cut out for this kind of freedom. But the free state has
another
obverse, which becomes apparent if we shift the accent to the second
term:
‘state’. Van Lieshout latched onto this as well, which is why he has
commissioned his own constitution and fitted a machine gun on a
Mercedes
pick-up truck, warlord style – deterring potential enemies all the way
to the
Heyplaat across the Maas river. The free state is a state too, with its
own
rules, borders and means of enforcing order.
AVL-Ville was a state of its own that
militated against what Van Lieshout was wont to describe as ‘the state
monopolies’ – not just monopolies on violence but also on more mundane
matters
such as waste disposal, the provision of energy and sewerage. However,
this
political notion rests for many reasons on wishful thinking, reasons
that are
of interest to devisers of new humane game parks - or parasites.
Firstly,
political alliances, even regular nation-states like the Netherlands,
have no
further need of anti-aircraft guns. Unquestionably the Netherlands is a
sovereign state, yet during the entire 20th century it has
not been
able or willing to seriously defy hostile forces. In the War against
Terror it
dispatched ships in the direction of Afghanistan, but first made sure
that ‘no
heightened risk’ was to be expected (but then what is the point of
going?), and
sent fighter planes on condition that they wouldn’t have to fight.
‘Leaving
church before the sermon’, as the old Dutch expression goes. Cowardly?
Maybe,
but the valuable lesson here is that firepower is no longer a condition
for
sovereignty. Old-fashioned defence of national borders has been out of
the
question in our particular western dominions. These days Schiphol
airport (and
not the Rhine) is the main port of entry, or perhaps even more to the
point:
the service windows of social services departments, housing
corporations,
schools and hospitals.
This brings me to my second
footnote to the political pretences of today’s ‘free states’. These
days,
institutions such as those named above are no longer just part of ‘the
state’.
They have either become independent or gone commercial, having been
commodified
in the interests of efficiency operations, liberalization and a unified
Europe.
It is therefore no longer possible to engage in politics by taking over
vital
state organs, as one would have done in good old revolutionary times.
Those
organs have in fact already been taken over, that is to say, they have
been
outsourced and commodified in the name of PPP. These days, you can’t
simply
proclaim an independent state; you have to ‘repossess’ it from a
Kafkaesque
network of public-private collaboration, driven by the liberalized
eroticisms
of deregulation and competition.
And that’s a best case scenario. If we are not so lucky, we will be faced not with public-private collaboration but with their conflict instead. On the one hand we find an increasing proclivity to rules and regulations, by a government that is lured by the prospect of strict enforcement rather than toleration; on the other hand, we encounter a market system that seems to falter more than function. With the economy faltering and stock markets crashing, many dreams of public-private services go up in smoke.
How in these circumstances can we
continue to project the contours of a free state within the tight
building
alignments and meticulously calibrated sight lines of the PPP-imbued
Vinex
areas? What are the parameters for practices of artistic freedom in the
monocultural life of newly bred neighbourhoods? Well, these parameters
can
perhaps be found in ‘parasites’: unstable places, mobile fixations,
nomadic
nests, artists’ impressions in the true sense of the word: no more –
but
equally no less – than ‘impressions’, that can be swept away over time,
artistic markings acting as temporary stations for local facilities,
from youth
centre to local café, from billboard house to airstream caravan.
Here the ‘state’ in ‘free state’
refers less to public governance or national territorial borders than
to a way
of being, a condition or characteristic of living and dwelling in the
new
frontier of the polder. It is here that art must make use of what is
locally
available, what is vacant or disused, what has slipped through the
cracks of
the PPP matrix. In the absence of abandoned industrial heritage, such
as we
encounter in former dockland areas in cities such as Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, or
London, it makes sense at locations like Leidsche Rijn to take those
domains
yet to be appropriated and have them temporarily function as free
territory. We
should take the word ‘function’ literally, as it is a less a question
of
establishing than of inciting, of having something happen, of setting
the pace
instead of pinning in place.
The aspect of incitement
illustrates the fundamentally Utopian nature of free states or
independent
territories. Unlike ideologies, which reflect dominant ideas and seek
to
enforce existing order, Utopias are attempts to conjure up alternatives
to the
status quo. According to the sociologist Karl Mannheim, who introduced
this
distinction, a world without Utopianism would be horrendous, a society
of
individuals only concerned with their own interests. He feared this
would lead
to a social science limited to techniques for adapting people, to a
socialism
that replaces the broad Utopian perspective with the narrow-minded view
of
councils advising parliament and trade unions focused on mere details.
Indeed,
something resembling the political-administrative environment (Umwelt)
in which we live today, and pretty much the reason why free territories
-
whether AVL-Ville, Leidsche Rijn or the anarchistic Free Radio
100 in
Amsterdam – seek to achieve an autonomous state within a state.
Common to practical utopianism
and mobile architecture is that they construct tangible, serious yet
not
top-heavy parameters/parasites for alternative habitats. In that sense,
they
are both light: like modern life generally they have moved beyond
ideology, are
fleeting, indicative and suggestive rather than normative or binding.
This
could be called conformist, and perhaps even opportunist. But on the
other hand
it means that the modern utopia does not feel the need to isolate
itself from
civil society and its emancipatory tendencies. Utopians are modern,
emancipated
citizens too – not least because the government (read the hypercomplex
totality
of public-private networks, or PPP) literally and metaphorically
provokes it.
Utopians apply for subsidies, engage in fundraising, or work from a
commercial
basis the way Van Lieshout does. This is where ‘state art’ meets
‘street art’;
social recognition and artistic or philosophic pretence attain common
ground
and shared social objectives.
Apart from being light, utopian free states can be educational. This, again, derives from the nature of utopia as a direct, socially oriented way of life. A basic facet of utopian free territories is not so much the right to do as you please regardless of the welfare of others, as the experience that in the event of setbacks, problems or conflicts you have to look for a solution yourself without the support of priest, policeman or insurer. At times this leads to chaos, indifference and even disaster – see the recent ‘free states’ of Enschede (the fireworks explosions) and Volendam (the café fire). But there market ideology rather than Utopia held sway. In less commerce-prone utopias, the ability to manage for oneself and with others takes precedence over filing claims, or settling up. This can only be done in a culture which in and through its very transgression and relativism towards rules is able to develop self-regulating and self-restricting capacities. What our society needs above all is to restore, not clear-cut standards but the capacity to put up with deficient standards. And this for me is the essence of the much-discussed ‘gedogen’ – ‘tolerance practices’, or ‘forbearance’ – in the Netherlands: not spineless or lax, but resilient and creative.
Too little is it recognized that
an unruly legal order may well imply a strong sense of standards.
Indeed, legal
orders are well served by people who master the art of colonizing
contumacious
places, ‘informal areas’ and ambiguous zones in such a way that they do
not
turn illegal, chaotic or fundamentalist. It is exactly this colonizing
that
teaches one to develop ways of dealing with the wildness of daily life,
ways
that are more productive than the categorical rejection of unruly
practices as
illegal, or the commonplace rhetoric of ‘the law’s the law’ and ‘we’ll
just
have to stick to the rules’.
This brings me to the
legal-philosophical core of free territories and more generally of
practices
that are, shall we say, worthy of toleration, or forbearance – which to
me is
no disqualification but very much an honorary title. The point here is
that
illegal practices conducted within a legal order have a chance of
success, that
they get on speaking terms with that order though without immediately
adopting
the law’s particular speech and accent. This, then, is the surplus
value of
‘mobile architecture light’ in Vinex times: not occupying, retaining
and
prescribing but provoking, exploring and ‘standing out’ (Ex-istenz,
in
the Heideggerian sense). In an article in the contemporary arts
magazine Parachute
Patricia van Ulzen pinpoints a factor common to the work of both Rem
Koolhaas
and Atelier van Lieshout, that it performs ‘according to the rules of
efficiency
and functionality and yet remains wide open for the bizarre and the
intangible.’ That for me is the most relevant parallel to be drawn
between
aesthetics and ethics, artists’ workplace and political free state;
creating
and maintaining openness within the given order, advancing unruly
order,
learning to embrace wildness.
References
Jennifer Allen, ‘Up the Organization’, in: Artforum,
April 2001
Atelier van Lieshout, The Good, the Bad +
the Ugly
(Rotterdam 1998)
Frank Manuel and Fritzie Manuel, Utopian
Thought in
the Western World (Harvard 1979)
Gijs van Oenen, Het surplus van
illegaliteit
(Amsterdam 2002)
Gijs van Oenen (ed.), Ongeregelde orde
(Amsterdam
2002)
Saskia Poldervaart, Tegen conventioneel
fatsoen en
zekerheid (Amsterdam 1993)
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