Abstract
Have artistic interventions in public space run out of power? Following a first wave in the 1970s, public interventionist art re-emerged in the mid-90s outside the mainstream of the art world as the method of choice for artists with strong intentions to induce real changes in society. Most of them have very little impact since they either address very specific milieus that are confined to local communities or they get absorbed by the self-enclosed art world. In the present chapter, we ask to what extent the strong media resonance generated by the 2015 intervention art action “The Dead are Coming” by of the Center for Political Beauty (CPB, Zentrum für politische Schönheit) can be understood as by the quasi-argumentative power of this action. This intervention is especially interesting because it generated considerable coverage in the media and mobilised and polarised thousands of citizens as well as politicians, thereby making a noticeable impact on public policy in the context of what became framed as Germany’s “refugee crisis”. We explain how we understand “discursive power”, rhetorical forces and the “forces of good reasons” within the framework of a discourse theory: Discursive power refers to forms of power of actors to deliberately change convictions of correctness through communicative means. Convictions of correctness are those opinions of persons of whose correctness they are convinced because they consider their reasons for these opinions to be so good that the persons concerned identify with these reasons personally, and also publicly.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
In 2000, theater director and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief installed a container during the Wiener Festwochen in an allusion to the television show “Big Brother”. Inside the container asylum seekers were placed. By voting, the audience could decide which participant had to leave the container and the country. The project was launched under the title Foreigners Out! Schlingensief's Container. Film-director Paul Poet documented the entire event. The “container” mentioned in the title is a polemical allusion to the containers that figure in the trashy TV show “Big Brother” for housing the candidates. For documentation cf. Lilienthal and Philipp (2000).
- 2.
By “normatively desirable,” we mean desirable not merely in the way of subjective preferences but for normative reasons, i.e. for reasons that carry intersubjectively shareable convictions how one ought (or ought not) do something one actually does or could intend to do.
- 3.
Allegedly, the artist group on their way had to endure chicanery from Bavarian police on accusation of consumption of illegal drugs.
- 4.
- 5.
Quoting Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Sonja Zekri (Center for Political Beauty, n.d.).
- 6.
- 7.
This point is, of course, contested. We hold that postulates of “structural” power and similar non-agent views of power and power-relations confuse potentials of forces with actual power.
- 8.
- 9.
Two caveats: (1) In the above formulation, “person” includes all persons who exercises good sense or have reason. (2) Recognition of some reason as so-and-so good may be bounded recognition: a reason can be a good reason in relation to some finite community of rational evaluators and a bad reason in relation to other some finite community of rational evaluators.
- 10.
To illustrate: if for more or less all my friends the fear of a Covid-19 infection has come to count as a good enough reason to carefully evade this topic in conversation, and if someone from “outside” is puzzled by how I talk round Covid-19 in conversation then I will perhaps justify with utter conviction my comportment by pointing out that “since we find the whole thing very disquieting” we would prefer not to talk about it at all.
- 11.
The normative notion of argumentative discourse as in “discourse ethics” (cf. Kettner 2006).
- 12.
That good reasons bear these four structural relations can partly be explained in inferential role semantic accounts of meaning, e.g. in Robert Brandom’s inferentialism (Brandom 2000).
- 13.
CPB describes itself as “an assault team that establishes moral beauty, political poetry and human greatness while aiming to preserve humanitarianism. The group’s basic understanding is that the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and cowardice. It believes that Germany should not only learn from its history but also take action. The Center for Political Beauty engages in the most innovative forms of political performance art—an expanded approach to theatre: art must hurt, provoke, and rise in revolt. In one basic alliance of terms: aggressive humanism” (Center for Political Beauty About, n.d..). For observations on aggressive humanism see also Honnacker 2016.
- 14.
Quoting Ruch: “The term aggressive humanism merges two concepts that have commonly been deemed incompatible: European humanism and aggression. Occidental humanism was the epitome of human love, benevolence and friendliness. It vindicated the position of education, love and benevolentia with decidedly friendly means” (Zentrum für politische Schönheit 2015).
References
Beger, Karl-Leontin. 2016. Wir bergen moralische Größe aus der Geschichte. Das Zentrum für politische Schönheit und seine Strategien zur Generierung von öffentlicher Aufmerksamkeit und politischer Partizipation. m&z 3/2016, 64–77.
Brandom, Robert. 2000. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Center for Political Beauty. n.d. The Dead are Coming. https://politicalbeauty.com/dead.html. Accessed: 29 April 2020.
Center for Political Beauty About. n.d. About. https://politicalbeauty.com/dead.html. Accessed: 20 April 2020.
Crouch, Colin. 2004. Post-Democracy. London: Polity Press.
Gehlen, Arnold. 1969. Moral und Hypermoral. Eine pluralistische Ethik. Frankfurt: Athenäum.
Goffman, Erving. 1978. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Harmondsworth.
Green, Mitchell. 2017. Speech Acts. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2017 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/speech-acts/. Accessed: 10 September 2020.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1. Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon Press.
Harris, Errol. 1969. The Power of Reason. The Review of Metaphysics 22(4), 621–639.
Haugaard, Mark and Matthias Kettner. 2020. Theorising Noumenal Power. London: Routledge.
Honnaker, Ana. 2016. Absolute Helden? Anmerkungen zum “aggressiven Humanismus”. Philosophie InDebate. https://philosophie-indebate.de/tag/zentrum-fuer-politische-schoenheit. Accessed: 29 April 2020.
Hume, David. 1975 [1739]. A Treatise of Human Nature (book 2, part 3, section 3) edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kester, Grant. 1995. Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art. Afterimage, 22(5), 5–11.
Kettner, Matthias. 2006. Discourse Ethics. Apel, Habermas, and beyond. In Bioethics in Cultural Contexts. Reflections on Methods and Finitude, ed. C. Rehmann-Sutter, M. Düwell, D. Mieth, 299–318. Berlin: Springer.
Kettner, Matthias. 2012. Gründe und Affekte. In Welt der Gründe. Deutsches Jahrbuch Philosophie Nr. 4, ed. J.Nida-Rümelin, E. Özmen, 444–454. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
Kettner, Matthias. 2017. Argumentative Discourse: The Transcendental Starting Point of Apelian Discourse Ethics. In Transcendental Arguments in Moral Theory, ed. J. P. Brune, R. Stern, M. Werner, 325-347. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Kettner, Matthias. 2018. The Forstian Bargain. Overrationalizing the Power of Reasons. Journal of Political Power 11(2), 139–150.
Kettner, Matthias and Wolfgang Mertens. 2010. Reflexionen über das Unbewusste. Philosophie und Psychologie im Dialog. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Lewicki, Aleksandra. 2017. “The Dead are Coming”: Acts of Citizenship at Europe’s Borders. Citizenship Studies 21(3), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1252717.
Lilienthal, Matthias and Philipp, Claus, 2000. Schlingensiefs Ausländer raus. Dokumentation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Malzacher, Florian. 2018. Aktivismus als Aufführung. Das agonistische Theater des Zentrums für Politische Schönheit. In Haltung als Handlung. Das Zentrum für Politische Schönheit, ed. M. Rummel, R. Stange, F. Waldvogel, 321–329. München: Metzel.
Mouffe, Chantal. 2013. Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. London: Verso.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rancière, Jacques. 2016. Politik und Ästhetik. Im Gespräch mit Peter Engelmann. Wien: Passagen.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1973. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. New Literary History, 5(1), 91–117.
Ruch, Philipp. 2015. Wenn nicht wir, wer dann? Ein politisches Manifest. München: Ludwig.
Ruch, Philipp. 2019. Schluss mit der Geduld. Jeder kann etwas bewirken. Eine Anleitung für kompromisslose Demokraten. München: Ludwig.
Scharp, Kevin, Brandom, Robert (eds.). 2007. In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ullrich, Wolfgang. 2015. Das Erdbeben der Schönheit. DIE ZEIT Nr. 48. https://www.zeit.de/2015/48/philipp-ruch-kunst-politik-manifest-antimodernismus. Accessed: 29 April 2020.
Ullrich, Wolfgang. 2017. Die Wiederkehr der Schönheit. Über einige unangenehme Begegnungen. Pop-Zeitschrift. https://pop-zeitschrift.de/2017/11/07/die-wiederkehr-der-schoenheit-ueber-einige-unangenehme-begegnungenvon-wolfgang-ullrich07-11-2017/. Accessed: 29 April 2020.
Zentrum für Politische Schönheit. 2015. Aggressive Humanism. Of democracy’s inability to generate great human rights activists. Medium. https://medium.com/@politicalbeauty/aggressive-humanism-bbff64cf4296. Accessed: 29 April 2020.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bertrand-Höttcke, A., Kettner, M. (2022). “The Dead are Coming”. Contemporary Interventionist Art, Political Beauty, and the Power of Reason. In: Gaupp, L., Barber-Kersovan, A., Kirchberg, V. (eds) Arts and Power. Kunst und Gesellschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37429-7_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37429-7_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-37428-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-37429-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)