Mesch introduces the structure and motivation behind her book. She states that politics and art have always been intertwined, but the actual influence and involvement of art in politics has gained over the time due to globalization. She continues by explaining the history of political thinking and how we arrived at artist being the avant-garde/ elite that hold the power of political and social change. Both against (socialism/nationalism) or for (cold war) the state. As the last stage op art and politics, we see a shift: “the notion of collectivity based on nationhood shifted into a more fragmented and individualized landscape in which identity was based less on social and economic class than on personal traits.” (mesch p. 7) aka the grassroot politics she was talking about earlier. Solidarity could also be founded from a shared personality and believes. What art saw it could do and thus also started to do, was trying to bring to light certain issues. To rally those who find the issues important enough to rally, because if you don’t know who is on the same side there is no community. Art can help you recognize likeminded people. She quotes that this type of aimed art can be found in the public space instead of the museum, emphasizing the process of art as oppose to the object of art. thus adding this to modern art as we know it today. In this introduction Mesch basically discusses all the overlapping information on art an politics linked to a particular topic, which in the chapters themselves are illustrated by examples of artworks and artists.
Last year in the course Artivism taught by Eliza I had to discuss and explain the artwork Shibboleth (2007) by Doris Salcedo. It is basically a long stretched crack in the concrete of the Turbine Hall in the Tate Museum. By breaking open this monument of grandeur and monumentality she exposes a wired fence, laying bare the structure and architecture of this hall. There were much more connotations on racism and colonialism underlying our modernity, but we decided to focus on the relation of object, structure and space. As does Mouffe in explaining the distinction between politics and the political. In that presentation I used a drawing to illustrate how politics are a system, a structure, a set of rules and regulations and everything that happens in establishing them. The political is an invironment in which all those rules are made. The political is a place where chaos ensues or order prospers, depending on the politics in place. She argues that the problems lie with failing to approach issues from a “political” way. She explains that community is relational because you cannot get around the we/they binary. However, she uses Schmitt’s friend/enemy relation (to that) to explain that it is democratic politics’ job to go from antagonism to agonism; acknowledging that we need both sides to keep the balance. In (political) binary choices, there is always something to say for both sides and we should see that. she invokes Freud and Zizek to emphasize the role of ‘libidinal investment’ and collective ‘identification’ in partisan conflicts.
To me this was a necessary read, as I was not excited for this course. I saw politics as all those parties and endless debates, but politics is everything. Or maybe, the political is everything and how we deal with is it politics.