I ain’t wanna be your subject!

5.5.2003, London

Thanks to Zeigam Azizov

How to write an essay which is not determination of the subject, in my case of the autonomous but fragmented textural exploration of it?

How to show the relationship between the structure and superstructure which opens up the possibility for reversing an already produced space?

The way I propose to write here could be termed as a perfomativity, which in recent cultural theory has been introduced as a strategy in relation to one’s position in a social space. This performativity will be identified with autonomy and the production of autonomous spaces.

Why there is in the first place the need to "create an autonomous" space?

This emanates from the need for the recognition that performativty allows. However there seems to be no space for the work of this performativity. The way of locating these differences is precisely the way of looking for autonomous space, which seems at times to be the only space where they can be located. Is there still some potential to speak about autonomy now, which for some people might sound obsolete?

Since any notion is about to become obsolete within the tension of time and depending on context, becoming obsolete itself means coming to limits of language and action. However this coming to limits is the moment which creates a surplus or excess for a new reading and acting. Because this process is activated by the work of meaning making. "The world has to be made to mean" as Stuart Hall puts it.Perfomativity is what provides the meaning and action. It is the simultaneous work of theory and practice. Since performativity can wok as a strategy for renewal of previously fixed structures. It is also renewal of theory and practice relationship. During the performance one brings together the model of this performance, which is the production of intellect and the physical action which is the production of the body.

This kind of mediation is often express in the product of art and its form. Adorno considered the good work of art as a creation of life itself, as if one's product substitutes one's existence as an autonomous being.

" As eminently constructed and produced objects, works of art point to a practice from which they abstain: the creation of a just life. The mediation is not a compromise between commitment and autonomy, nor a short of mixture of advance formal elements with an intellectual content inspired by genuinely or supposedly progressive politics."1

Mediating ones autonomy through the work of art is also ones performance of ambivalence. This ambivalence is a crucial point. Performativity provides an ambivalence that helps to escape the categorisation made by power. Giorgio Agamben insists on the relationship between theory and practice by calling the illusion of separation a "dialectical veil".

".... The relationship between structure and superstructure can neither be one of casual determination nor one of dialectical mediation, but one of direct correspondence. The hypocrisy implicit in the separation of economic structure and cultural superstructure remains exactly the same if the economic process is made the determining cause and it is left to mediation to give it a bashful covering with its dialectical veil. The only true materialism is one which radically abolishes this separation, never seeing in concrete historical reality the sum of the structure and superstructure, but the direct unity of the two terms in praxis."2

This passage sheds lights on my view of production of autonomous spaces. By autonomous spaces I mean spaces activated by its own necessity to create the space for differences, which cannot be located within the space defined by power. Since we speak of exessivity emerging at the limits of confrontation within centre and the margins we can also speak of residual and left-over which can be discovered in this excessive field. The confrontation in this field is flashing up what wasn’t there before and alludes to transgression. Can this kind of transgression finds its legitimacy given the fact that it takes place in the conditions of democracy? Or is it a mere challenge, a threat to this legitimacy?

After all the law is not only about the ruling subjects but also giving them rights.3

For example squatting in a city like London is possible since one's rights are also protected by the same rules. In other words, one needs the private space as a rule and as a right. Understanding of this relationship allows squatters to push the rights to its limitations. Like in Derridean differánce, differing and relating becomes possible at the same time (French root of this word:

Difer= deferring, ferance = relation). Articulating the chances is the confrontation of radically different spheres like central and marginal. To find a middle ground and to situate this ambivalence is the way how things are operated here. Since we already spoke about meaning as a something producing forms we can also speak of ambivalent performer as an operator of this production. If it is so, then there is a definite performance which can be performed for someone who wants to perform it. But we should not forget, and this is the most interesting part of it, to do so isn’t a simple thing since it demands the work of intelligence.

The new form of autonomy or new autonomies are more or less based on negotiation rather than refusal, which was characteristic to the previous autonomy. If 1970’s autonomous movements insisted on being outside the space of power, the new autonomy is playing the role of bringing or negotiating poles or differences. And these differences are differences between the dominant power and the power of radicals in their " outsidedeness". In this sense the new autonomist is playing the role of negotiator and strategist.

The failure of the Autonomy movement was due to their not taking the double sidedness of legitimacy which can open possibilities not only for ruling but also for taking rights seriously. The strength of taking this moment seriously would have led to reversibility and shift by articulating elements of rules with elements here.

"The organisations of Autonomy found themselves caught in a dilemma between to a social ghetto and direct confrontation with the State. Autonomy’s "schizophrenia" and its eventual defeat can be traced to the attempt to close this gap, maintaining roots in the social network of the movement while at the same time confronting the state confinement."4

In looking at previous autonomous practices like the ones in Italy, we can see how the attempt to challenge directly the state finished in failure. The pressure/repression/ violence that the State used to counter these subversive acts made the people who started autonomous spaces more militant. The militant people distanced from the people on the ground.

"On the one hand, the political acceleration imposed on the movement in 1977 led to the Autonomy organisations losing contact with the social subjects, who, rejecting traditional politics, followed their own various solutions (sometimes individual, sometimes collective) in order to work less, live better, and maintain their own spaces for freely creative production."5

I think there is a problem once you become visible for the state, the state would think that this can work as an example for other people and will try to repress it by controlling. But then again if the counter-culture remains unseen, its potentiality could be misunderstood or obscured by its own methods or just become elitist for the people able to get the information.

In the tension of time the way events take place also change since the time and different autonomous movements received a new shape because of their alterity. And this is the alterity that brings the forces of transformation into prominence and lets transgressions occur. Speaking of transgression we cannot pass by in silence what Michel Foucault called "techniques of the self". By "techniques of the self" Foucault meant mastering intellgent structures to the degree to be able to put them into practice more of or less autonomously. At one time up to the beginning of 1990’s this practice did not seem as an impossible one. It was possible, mostly in the artworld. But by the increasing institutionalisation the question of wether one can still continue to be as autonomous as was earlier possible, became a very crucial one.

The field of representation, the visual or visible seems to become instrumentalised to maintain relations. This visual is somehow taken for granted as transparent and on the surface. Is there anything that is hidden, invisible beneath this surface? What about other means of perceiving, other ways of saying? Is the voice something what can play this role? Can the sound be considered as vision's other? If it is a possibility then we can, for a moment consider the possibilities of this other. The voice is precisely what plays this double-sided role, the chiasmus by echoing and diffrering a bottomless acoustic performativity.

Let’s look at this question of acoustics as a social product, which is exercise in a social space. Lefebvre argued that social space is a social product. This is done by a double Illusion, while one side is reinforcing the other, another hides behind the other, this is what he called The illusion of Transparency. This gives you the effect that space is natural, free from any "any traps or secret places".6

"Anything hidden or dissimulated- and hence dangerous – is antagonistic to transparency, under whose reign everything can be taken in by a single glance from that mental eye which illuminates whatever it contemplates. Comprehension is thus supposed without meeting any insurmountable obstacles, to conduct what is perceived, i.e. its object, from the shadow into the light; it is supposed to effect this displacement of the object either by piercing it with a ray or converting, after certain precautions have been taken, from a murky to a luminous state".7

In exploring those spaces which are hidden from normal view, those which transgress the idea of transparency takes to the non-transparent sonic sphere.

One of the sonic spheres can be seen in a newly renovated eastern European cities like Tallinn.

19.4.2003 Tallinn

Club culture came to Tallinn in the middle of the nineties in a different way to other Western European countries. Aivar Tonso, famous Dj from Tallinn is organising tonight a party in a disused ex-Soviet toy factory. A group of people managed to get this space and came to agreement with the owners. This is the first event organised here. Aivar is also an experimental musician who uses computers. Perfoming with desktop computers would have not been so cool in the so-called "Western countries" but here it seems up to the minute. The audience on a Saturday night is happy not to dance to a pseudo naive experimental music (with the enchantment of motivation). Here in Tallinn different scenes get mixed up, and people (perhaps by their ignorance) are more receptive to experimental approaches. In a big city like London, the structures for culture seem to be already created and it is difficult to bring new things in. This is to do with the reputation of a big city like London and the illusionary reputation built through being a cool place. However this "coolness" does not mean that everything experimental is possible here. Since this reputation seems often to close the doors to experiments, it is at the same time opening for fragmented eclecticism. Having said that it is not very likely that in a rave you will see music outside the genres that you might expect (usually beat related: breakbeat, gabba, and hard-core techno....). Aivar on the contrary wants to create an eclectic atmosphere, one that cannot be constituted. Perhaps in this case ambivalence, which is seemingly different from self-conciousness of London Djs, can have potential in terms of motivation. The specificity that you might find in underground circuits in London makes it more reluctant to mix.

Often it seems that Dj’s in a big city like London work according to a certain logic, which can be called the logic of the market. The music itself cannot be brought to this logic only , since the articulation of sound is the articulation of differences. That means apart from the market logic there is a logic which can be exercised in a very productive way. The acoustic experiments of Aivar help us to see the sound on the line of the logic of differences. Perhaps for other means of expression like visual and textual, an acoustic experience is hardly possible to reduce to the limits of logics, which does not mean there isn’t any. What is it then? It is the "logic of", the logic of difference that makes the acoustics experience very richly diverse. In Aivar’s work one may see the logic of this difference on the global scale that is both, temporally and spatially differed from the experience of other contemporary spaces, like London for example.

3.5.2003,London.

It takes me to the Freedom of the City Festival, the festival of radical improvised music which took place at the Conway Hall. On this particular day which is mentioned above, three different groups performed here were also the product of three eras. These groups differed no only in their styles, which were radically different from each other, but also represented different generations and their task of performing the radical sound experience of different times. It showed how the hidden potentials of the sound can be articulated in its overcoming because of the elements of the performance and diversity in the use of instruments themselves. This experience was somehow underlined by the temporality and the over-crossing of this temporality. The sonic experience came to the point of grasping through the time difference. The logic of difference performed according to the voice, to the accent that expresses three different times. If Sakada group was perceived by the audience as a more experimental in terms of time, then the performance of the group AMM had clear imprints or echo of the time, which is the 1980’s, and the third gig was very clearly taking from much earlier times, the era of Jazz Music. This differentiation was possible because the each voice came out of it it's time's radical autonomous or even marginal enunciation.

Usually in art, speaking of old forms of expression is considered (very snobbishly) as bad manners. After listening to a group of radical musicians from the 60’s and 80’s one thinks differently. Coming across the new means of expression does not destroy the old forms of expression but allows them to strongly underline the intention by articulating the old with the new. How does the old articulate with the new? The old and new, the past and the present and their intermingling together creates some kind of mixture of different times. Derrida called this kind of intermingling as a trace.

This is the tracing what mediates the differences in between times and negotiates their presence, while not priviledging any of them. However the mediation discovers that the present is the past and the past is the present. In other words, creating a new sphere of performativity very often is translating the old. It is true of such a seemingly old genre like poetry. Having relation to the phonetic expressivity of language and rhythmic fabulation of music, poetry is an example which for some artist remains a strategic moment. After all "every tool is a weapon if you hold it right"8. Two such artists who by using poetry for their struggle in culturally devastated space of Moscow are Alexander Brener & Barbara Schurz.

21.4.2003 Moscow

I met Alexander Brener & Barbara Schurz in London a year and half ago when they were doing Bukuka School at the Austrian Cultural Forum ( lectures seminars about radical politics and art). Today I am meeting them in a cafe in central Moscow (they lived 6 months in Saint Petersburg and for 5 in Moscow). I asked them about their work, audience and interesting people in Russia. They told me that Moscow is a dessert. They tried to create a revolution by doing some seminars in Saint Petersburg with young people interested in radical politics (activist, Anarchist). They told me that these Anarchist where very dogmatic in their politics ( some Trotskyist, who they get their founding from the national Troskyist party to travel abroad to bigger meetings and represent Russian Trotskyism). They do not have access (and perhaps interest) in contemporary theory and politics, they had a clear idea of how activism should be. They got angry with Alexander & Barbara when they heard their poetry full of Irony and self-criticism. They do not realise the power of creativity with in politics. At the moment Alexander & Barbara are focusing on literature as they find the field much more alive than Art (especially in Moscow as young artists do not have a critical education in art). But here in Moscow even literature is starting to be attacked by Government’ censorship. They have to print and distribute their books, themselves. We talk also about the lack of strong individualism in creativity at this moment. There is not room for people to make mistakes. Artists have a clear target in mind and they have to hit it. This target is more towards commodity and spectacle, than towards bringing different perspectives. I find this interesting in relation to the Idea of the multitude. In the different kind of action multitudes are not having a clear strong identity or commitment and perhaps ideology. This makes the action happening between social subjects bland, ephemeral in bad terms. These people don't know what to do and they are afraid of being pointed out as individuals.

But why is it that in the field of representation becoming or wanting to become an individual has narrowed down to the specificity of spectacle and commodity? And if it is so strongly commodified, then what is the chance for an individual to maintain the autonomous expression? Perhaps it is to do with the work of politics that is constantly subjectyfing achievements in the field of culture by reducing cultural endeavors to formal representation. Why is that the documents of culture are so often rendered political monuments? It seems to me that there is a strong connection between the work of politics and culture. At one point it seemed that the goal of cultural workers, once called "organic intellectuals" does not coincide with that of the political power. Today the picture is different. There is a strong connection between politics and culture as there is a strong connection between the practice and the theory.

It is also crucial to remember the intertwining of politics and culture together in their inseperability. If such a thing as a cultural resistance is possible, was is possible because the culture itself became industrialised as was strongly believed by the Frankfurt School critics as well as theorists in Cultural Studies. It seems that culture became industrialised to the degree that to articulate any alternative outside of it is impossible. Does it mean that culture became totally institutionalised? Actually if to believe as we do in theories of surplus in the power of transformation of excess then there is nothing is what can be called total. Any alternative therefore emerges from within the mainstream space. It is also true to say that margins are located within the centre and the centre is nothing but the differences made by these margins. The virtue of affirmation to use Adorno’s term, which we speak of here in the context of autonomous sonic spheres, can be inevitably understood in its relation to the visual and textual ones.

The autonomy of the voice in its relation to its other, visual or textual, provides an insightful opening in which one cannot see but perceive. Because of the multifunctional role of performativity, visual and textual elements are brought together into an equal space with the aural or sonic. It can be said that this process or procedure (as Foucault says) makes visible hidden dimensions or invisible spaces of power relations. In the performance itself, especially one which is associated with the time of the performer, the message is of resistant and creative liberation. This emanates from the moment of the closure, which seems to create the gap between seeing and hearing, visible and aural, depictive and acoustic.

To put it in the language of philosophy and examine it through the work made by Emanuel Levinas and his powerful analysis of grasping the other through the others voice: For Levinas the other can only be heard and seen thought being heard. In other words the other is not visible but present like in face to face relationship. This face to face relationship is possible because the one is always situated or located in the place where he or she is ready for the response to the other’s call. It is the voice of the other that makes my presence visible. What is unseen is made visible in my presence and what is not unseen transformed into the visible through the voice. Therefore the other is the only way of existence, the only way of visibility since there is no self without the other. Can there be vision without the voice? Precisely because of this question we now go back to an understanding of difference that there is no difference without the one which is not present, and if there is no voice in the vision there is no voice and vice versa.

It is very curious now to see after all, if there is an autonomy of the autonomous for its own sake? Or the autonomous of autonomy is a necessity to grasp the other, to relate to the other, to differ from the other. Can anyone speak for the other if one above all can not speak for him/herself? Deleuze announces this form of activity as the indignity of speaking for the other. In our days, speaking of autonomy very often is perceived as speaking about 1970’s alternative movements. But since we believe in transformative power of autonomy, we can say many different connotations of autonomy are always possible. Sound, noise, voice, listening, hearing, the chain of signification’s connected to them, differences acted out, composed and translated and led to their endless decoding resonances. And all of them are nothing but multiplied echoes of the intentionally autonomous single voice.

1. Adorno. Commitment, quoted in Art in Theory 1900-1990, an Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. by Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Blackwall 1992. p. 763.

2.The Prince and the Frog " The Question of Method in Adorno and Benjamin".
Infancy and History- Essays on the Destruction of Experience. Giorgio Agamben.
Published by Verso 1993. London. P.120.

3. According to Hegel:"In relation to the spheres of civil law [Privatrecht] and private welfare, the spheres of the family and civil society, the state is on the one hand an external necessity and the higher power to whose nature their laws and interest are subordinate and on which they depend. But on the other hand, it is their immanent end, and its strength consist in the unity of its universal and ultimate end with the particular interest of individuals, in the fact that they have duties towards the state to the same extent as they also have rights."
Hegel, Elmentes of the Philosophy or Right, 261, p. 283.

4. Virtuosity and Revolution:The Political Theory of Exodus.. Paolo Virno. Radical Thought in Italy, a Potential Politics. Ed. by Paolo Virno & Michael Hardt. 1997. p. 234.

5. Ibid.

6. p. 28. .Plan of the Present Work, The Production of Space. Henry Lefebvre. Blackwell publishers. Oxford. 1991.

7.Ibid.

8. Ani DiFranco from Pop song. Qouated as an epigraph to "Empire".

Bibliography

T. W. Adorno, Commitment, in Art in Theory: An anthology of changing Ideas, Blackwell, 1992.

G. Agamben, Infancy and History, Verso Books, London 1993

J. Attali, Noise :the political economy of music, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1985

G.Deleuze and M.Foucault, Intellectuals and Power, in Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Interviews and Essays, (D. F. Bouchard, Ed.): Cornell University Press New York 1977

C. Harrison & P. Wood (ed.), Art in Theory: An anthology of changing Ideas, Blackwell, 1992.

M. Hart & T. Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, Harvard 2000

M. Hart & Paolo Virno, Radical Thought in Italy. University of Minnesota Press, 1997

S. Hall, J.Donald (Ed) Politics and Ideology: A Reader, Open University Press, London 1986

H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Blackwell, Oxford 1991

E. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, Duquesne University Press, 1998

S. Wright, Storming Heaven, Pluto Press, London 2002