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The Art of Resistance: Towards a Concept ofNominalismRasheed AraeenPublished online: 25 Aug 2010.

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1. I was actually a portraitand landscape painteruntil 1959 when Idiscovered my ability togo beyond this amateuractivity and produce workthat situated itself in theradical tradition of theavant-garde.

The Art of Resistance: Towards a Concept of

Nominalism

Rasheed Araeen

During early 1980s, or maybe late 1970s, I was travelling in SouthernBaluchistan, one of the most dry and arid area of Pakistan. As I lookedout of the window of the bus, I was overwhelmed by the landscape. Asan aesthetic experience this was not a new thing for me, as I had alwaysbeen attracted to the raw and crude beauty of this landscape. I hadactually spent my childhood in Baluchistan; and later on when I came tolive in Karachi I would go there to spend weekends or holidays with myparents who still lived there. During these travels, by a bus or car, I oftenfound myself looking at and contemplating this landscape. In fact, thememory of this period has often haunted my imagination. But this timethere was something profoundly different, as I was suddenly struck withan idea. I said to myself: ‘why can’t this be or become a work of art’?

I had in fact been preoccupied with this question for almost twentyyears, but without a satisfactory answer. Painting or photography wasout of question, not only that I had given them up a long time ago butalso because they could not – as specific genres – deal with thecomplexity of what I had in mind in a significant way.1 I could haveturned to art history, as I had been aware of Land Art of the late Sixties(it was perhaps this awareness which also contributed to this experience),and produced something new that went beyond what had already beendone. But there was a very difficult problem: how could I go beyondwhat had been established as historical precedents without consideringthe ideology that had legitimised them as canons of art history?

If for Eurocentric ideology the canons of art history were and areenshrined only in the European subject, didn’t this subject alsorepresent the bourgeois premise of modernity that seemed to have nowreached the limits of its progressive vision? The problem for me,therefore, was not just how to confront this Eurocentric ideology butalso the bourgeois premise within which everything became trappedand reified. If art could not function as a social process oftransformation within this context, then art had to free itself from it inits attempt to find an alternative.

Third Text, Vol. 16, Issue 4, 2002, 451-466

Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online © 2002 Kala Press/Black Umbrellahttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/0952882031000077684

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What I was actually confronted with was not a barren landscape ora wilderness. Wilderness had been – and still is – a favourite subject ofartists, particularly of some of the late 1960s conceptualists who sawthe remote barren land as an escape from the problems ofdehumanising commercialism of the urban space of the modernmetropolis such as New York or London. But, if the metropolis hadbecome a place where only consumer culture could breed and flourish,trapping human imagination in its un-ending seductive demands andrewards, capitalism had also been casting its gaze on what it consideredto be the wilderness. With globalisation this gaze has now turned to thepoverty stricken and deprived areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America,in order to take possession of whatever land it can grab and exploitwith total disregard of the peoples who live there.

For the Land Art conceptualists, landscape in fact offered a fantasywhich they could manipulate conceptually and present it as a work ofart to satisfy a self-centred discourse. If a land appeared, particularlythrough the camera eye, as a wilderness it was only because they didnot want to see or allow their eyes to penetrate beyond what theywanted to see. Thus the people who inhabited the land eitherdisappeared from their gaze or became objects.2

The aridness of the landscape we are now looking at is in factdeceptive. This land may look dry and barren, but it is not always so.

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2. The work of RichardLong, a highly celebratedEnglish artist who walksaround the world takingphotographs of placesthat look un-inhabited orwithout people oranimals, is worthmentioning here.

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This is not a barren land, but an abandoned farm. As there has been no rain for the last three years, men have gone to thecity to work as labourers. You can see some houses among the trees where you will only find women and children – whomay be looking after some animals.

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During the monsoon, when it rains, the arid land is transformed,though briefly, into a lush green pasture. In this pasture we can seedomestic animals, such as goats and camels, grazing. The land is alsocultivated following a rain fall. But this cultivation is for a very limitedperiod as the heat of the summer – the temperature here is usuallyabove 30 degree centigrade – dries up everything. However, whateverlittle is produced and saved from the land do somehow support andsustain the life of its inhabitants.

For some urban romantics this may appear as an unspoiled or idealway of life, away from the problems of consumer culture, but in realityit is a different picture. If we could look beyond what appears to thecamera eye, we would realise that what we are confronting is thepoverty and deprivation of one of the poorest peoples in the world.Milk from goats and camels with some bread of sorghum – whichcommonly grows there – may provide them with something to survive,save them from extreme starvation, but most people there –particularly women and children – also often go hungry. This is not anunusual or unique picture, but can be seen globally. It is a wellrecognised fact that about two billion people live in abject povertytoday in what is called the Third World.

It is unnecessary for me here to go into the historical causes of thishuman predicament, but with globalisation the situation is getting worse.As for the ruling classes of the Third World, most of them havecapitulated to the power of global capitalism and what they now all wantis to share some of its spoils – even when they know full well that this iscausing unbearable misery for most people. The ambition of most artists,critics, historians and curators from the Third World is no different fromthe aspirations of these classes. Although many of these intellectuals arenow part of the global art scene, performing as functionaries of thesystem in pursuit of their careers (in the West), it would be unfair totarget only them with special criticism. With globalisation, and thecollapse of the idea of the Third World offering an ideological oppositionto (Western) imperialism, what remains is just hollow rhetoric of thewesternised middle classes whose objective is only to embarrass theliberal conscience of the big bosses in order to extract some more benefitsfrom them for their own vulgarly selfish life. However, it is important topoint out that self-interest and opportunism are not the prerogatives ofThird Word intellectuals only, but are universally endemic as part of theintellectual life of the globalised world today.

I shall therefore return to my own site. Witnessing the perpetuallyworsening socioeconomic and political conditions of most Third Worldcountries since they achieved their independence after the War II, I hadreached a point in my life when I could no longer justify my positionas an artist or see any significance in art that did not take into accountthis change and responded to it critically. But would this be enough?

Having achieved its global ambition to reach and dominate everycorner of the world, with its ideology of grabbing and exploitinganything it can put its hands on without benefiting the people whoseresources it exploits, capitalism’s subjection of everything to themeasurement of money has not only plunged the world into social,ethical and intellectual crises, but has also paralysed the ability of mostpeople to think of an alternative. This has also made extremely difficult

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for art to function as a critical discourse. As it has become trapped ina self-serving decadent paradigm of the worst kind since its emergenceas an enlightened consciousness, the bourgeois context can no longeroffer a radical solution. Can we, then, pursue a meaningful alternativewithout attacking the roots of this problem? Is it enough to reflectupon this disturbing reality critically, but without suggesting a way tofind a productive and affirmative alternative?

What is fundamental to my suggestion is the idea that it is possibleto perceive or produce art in a radically different context, an art whichlocates itself away from the bourgeois institution and is not necessarilydependent on its mediation and legitimation. If we can recognise thatthere is now a growing resistance, at a global level, against the globalpower of capitalism, then this can provide us with an alternativecontext. I say this following Adorno’s pessimism resulting from hisinability to find social agency in society.3 I would, instead, suggest thatwe do have a way out of what seems to be the paralysis of progressivethinking, or what to Adorno was a ‘hibernation’. If we can stopthinking about the West as the society or the centre of the world, thenit is possible to wake up from this hibernation and think of anddevelop a discourse which posits or recognises a social agency capableof progress, both materially and philosophically, in the struggle ofdeprived peasants and exploited workers around the world.

When I look at the landscape I have invoked here, I cannot avoidthinking of those who inhabit the land. And I have often asked myself:is it possible to do something in terms of art which is meaningful to thepeople there – and without being paternalistic to or patronising them?Can we do anything more beyond looking at the land through theromantic egocentric gaze of the artist? I have already and tentativelyproposed a solution to this question elsewhere, but here I want to lookat it in more detail and explore specifically this proposition with all itsparadoxes and contradictions. There are enormous theoreticaldifficulties and logistic problems, which I do not pretend to resolvehere. Being a practising artist and not a theorist, though I recognisefully the importance of theory, my main concern here is with creativeimagination. The point I am emphasising here is that it is theperceptual experience that has always led me to conceptualise things,and I am therefore weary of things that predetermine the role ofimagination. There are of course theoretical implications in what Ipropose, but they emerge from an artistic imagination rather than froman academic discourse. It is with the imaginative power of art that Iwant to move forward; with a proposition that may lead to a new kindof thinking and produce a new kind of critical practice, out of whichmay also emerge a revolutionary concept of art based on thenominalism of everyday work carried out by people themselves or theirmaterial production.

II

Why nominalism? And what is its importance? The presence of thenominal in art is not new. It can be traced back to the beginning of theavant-garde, particularly in the ready-mades of Duchamp or the use of

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3. Jochen Schulte-Sasse,‘Theory of Modernismversus Theory of theAvant-Garde’, Forward toPeter Bürger, Theory ofthe Avant-Garde,Manchester UniversityPress/University ofMinnesota Press,Minneapolis, 1984, ppxviii - xix

4. See John Roberts,‘Philosophizing theEveryday: The philosophyof praxis and the fate ofcultural studies’, RadicalPhilosophy, 98,November/December1999, London.

5. Having conceived thiswork, and somesubsequent works, whichwas a shift from thehierarchic composition ofthen modernist sculptureto a symmetrical structurewith an egalitarianpotential, I realised thatthis formal strategy mightfreeze this potential bybecoming an aestheticisedobject. In order to dealwith this problem, Iproposed in 1968 a workthat would exist in itsinitial stage as a static,symmetrical structurecomprising 100 cubes (10x10); but then publicwould dismantle thisstructure and re-produceit in their own ways.Other group ofparticipants would followand dismantle the work ofearlier constructions andre-make the whole thingagain; and this way thewhole thing will becomean un-ending continualtransformational process.I mention this herebecause this work was thebeginning of my interestin the self-creativity of thepublic domain.

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the everyday in art. I find very useful the ideasof Russian productivists – particularly thework of Boris Arvatov – who wanted toabolish the division between the material andintellectual production.4 My own experience ofthe nominal goes back to 1965 when Iconceived my first ‘Minimalist’ sculpture,5 butI was not then aware of the ideas of the‘everyday’. Nor did it ever occur to me duringall the last thirty five or so years that the word‘nominal’ could be significant in describing thecharacteristics of some of the works I havesince been pursuing. It was actually during aconversation with some friends last year, withwhom I was discussing my new ideas aboutart, that I realised the significance of thenominal. As I was explaining my recentthinking about art, particularly how a landand what it produces could be considered awork of art, one of them exclaimed: ‘Butwhere is art? What you are talking about isnominal?’ I paused briefly and said: ‘It is agood idea, the nominal’.

Although what underlies this work hereprecedes my awareness of the nominal, myrecent contemplation of the nominal hashelped me a great deal in my understanding ofthe radical potential of what has been knownin art theory as the ‘everyday’. It hasconvinced me that if we could radicalise theidea of the everyday so that it is no longerremoved from life processes and reified as anaestheticised object, then there is a wayforward.

There already exists, in my view,considerable and profound conceptualisationof the nominal within the avant-garde; thework of some Land Art conceptualists of thelate Sixties in particular offers a significantmove towards the nominal. But, as their workwas conceived and realised within the contextof bourgeois individualism and expression,appropriating the nominal from the everydaylife process or collective work, the radicalpotential of the nominal was contained andundermined. The question I then faced washow to locate an experience from a poor ThirdWorld country – considered to be outside themainstream – within the history of the avant-garde but, at the same time, avoid itssubjection to institutional legitimation. Thereare in fact two issues here. If agency of the

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Sculpture No 2, 1965/1987, installation HaywardGallery, London 1989

One Summer Afternoon, St John’s Wood, London,1968

Chakras, 16 discs in the water of St KatherineDocks, London, 1969-70

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artist is located in individualism legitimised by the bourgeoisinstitution, how can an attempt to create a shift from the self-centredactivity of the individual to the collective subject be legitimised? Theanswer seems to lie in the nature of the shift. If this shift could producea collective agency capable of resisting individualism by its self-sustaining creative and productive labour, it would produce its ownlegitimation.

I also realised that it would be necessary to consider the shift ofagency from the affluent society of the West, where the revolutionarypotential of the industrial working class seems to have been assimilatedand pacified by the bourgeois consumer culture, to the resistance of thesuper-exploited and deprived masses of the world; and consider theproduction of art as part of this resistance involving, for example,expropriation of land and its transformation as a creative/productiveact by those who live and work on it.

The implication of this is not that the struggle of the industrialworking class is over or that it is no longer important. Nor am Isuggesting that the workers in the West no longer have a function in arevolutionary process. But it seems that they alone are no longer in aposition historically to play a vanguard role. The workers of theadvanced industrial nations, having more resources than those of therest of the world, can however play a very productive role in thedevelopment of a global network of resistance and struggle. But theirown class aspirations or struggle must integrate, for the long terminterest of all humanity, with the struggle led by those who are the mostexploited and deprived. The scope of this work does not allow me togo further and explore the nature and the framework of such aworldwide alliance, but it is important here to recognise that withoutthis alliance we cannot envisage a successful struggle.

III

I might have so far given an impression of apathy and passivity of thepoor of the world. This was not my intention; indeed, it has never beenso. There is now in fact emerging widespread resistance and protestsagainst the attempt of multinationals to grab the remaining materialresources of the world and use them in their own interest or profit. InPakistan, as in the rest of the Indian subcontinent, for example,multinationals are now being invited to develop the land, among otherthings. They have been offered, in many cases, free access to the land andtax-free concession at least for the first ten years. The response to thisglobalisation has been a widespread debate for a local alternative, analternative which allows land to remain in the hands of the people. Thereare now frequent discussions – even on the government controlledtelevision – about the benefits of collective farming. The individualholdings – which are often as little as three acres – are unable to provideeven a subsistence to a family, and the only solution is either to succumbto the power of multinationals or develop a modern system of collectivefarming by people themselves to increase the efficiency of the land.

This resistance does not always involve protest or confrontation,but people are instead using their creative imagination (fundamental to

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art) to adopt methods that empower them. One example is that offarmers in Central America. In Guatemala and Honduras farmers havediscovered, with the help of NGO’s working there, a ‘magic bean’called mucuna. As a result of the use of mucuna beans to revitalise theland, ‘maize crops have been tripled, erosion [of the land] has beenhalted, destruction of the rain-forest curtailed, and migration to thecities reversed’.6 Many families who twenty years ago had left theirland, because they could not feed themselves, and went to cities wherethey faced the wretchedness of urban poverty, have now returned totheir land and are happy to till it. One of the properties of the mucunabean is that it acts as a natural manure and enriches the land withoutthe use of chemical fertiliser which has to be bought frommultinationals. This example is extremely important because it goesbeyond what Lyotard, while referring to the futility of protestmovements, calls ‘reactional’,7 and produces an alternative discoursewhich is both resisting and self-empowering.

When I was overwhelmed by the landscape in Baluchistan, it wasnot only due to the scenic picturiality of the land or merely by theidea of land as a conceptual work of art. There was something moreto it. Maybe it was the civil engineer in me who was suddenlyawakened.8 What occurred to me then was actually the idea ofbuilding a dam across one of the ravines or dry small rivers, andstoring the water during the rain to be used for the land cultivationthroughout the year. This would not only help the people there, butwould also be a conceptual work of art. My intention was to

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6. Julian Pettifer, ‘“MagicBean” transforms life forpoor Jacks of CentralAmerica’, TheIndependent on Sunday, p26, 10 June 2001.

7. Jean-Francois Lyotard,The PostmodernCondition: A Report onKnowledge, ManchesterUniversity Press, 1986.

8. I am actually a graduatein civil engineering fromNED Engineering College,University of Karachi,1962. I was taught todraw flowers and makeclay toys by my mother, anon-literate peasantwoman, when I was sevenor eight years old; and Isuppose that was thebeginning of my interestin art.

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This photograph was taken from the bridge which is about 30 feet high. During the monsoon flood water sometime flowsover the bridge.

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photograph the whole thing, from beginning to the end, and then topresent it as a new work.

This idea of building a dam as a work of art has stayed with me –unrealised – for all these years because its realisation neededenormous resources. But as the idea grew in my head, it drasticallychanged as a concept. Because, even if I had found the money andbuilt the dam, I began to realise that it would not go far enough as asignificant work of art. It would not offer a radical alternative to theestablished order. The building of a dam for the benefit of peoplewould have of course gone beyond the futile exercises of Land Art, butit would still be another example of bourgeois altruism which couldhelp the poor but would never allow them to eradicate the cause oftheir predicament.

If altruism is a function of power derived from private property thatproduces narcissistic individualism, which is fundamental to theproduction of art in bourgeois society, then it is necessary that the ideaof private property is confronted as part of a process of revolutionisingthe function of art. The main question really is about ownership. Whoshould own the whole thing when it is realised? How should it berecognised and legitimised as a work of art? Whose intellectualproperty should it be? If we cannot find a way of answering thesequestions outside and in confrontation with the prevailing order forwhich private property is fundamental, are we not back to square one?If the work is still a function of altruism, how am I proposing this asanything new or radically different from some already established arthistorical precedents and their status as an expression of enlightenedbourgeois consciousness?

What are these historical precedents? While working on an earlierpaper,9 and reflecting upon the nature of the failure of modern and

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9. As I realised theimpossibility of physicallyrealising this project inBaluchistan, I began tothink, at the end of1990s, of writing it downand develop it as aconcept that wouldtranscend its initial site.This concept was actuallyfirst explored andpresented in the paperentitled ‘Come WhatMay: Beyond theEmperor’s New Clothes’,delivered as the inauguralkeynote speech at the‘Globalisation + Art +Cultural Difference on theedge of change’conference, 27 - 29 July2001, Sydney. In thispaper I suggested thatcultural difference wascritical in the developmentof modernism at thebeginning of 20th century,but this criticality wassuppressed by attributingcultural differenceontologically to, andusing it as the sign of, thepostcolonial ‘other’enunciated by its owncultural traditions.Cultural difference couldagain play a critical roleby locating itself withinthe radical traditions of

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Sixteen Waterdiscs, Jheel Park, Karachi, 1974

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avant-garde movements in the 20th century, I thought it would be agood idea to go through some literature on the late 1960s ConceptualArt. I grabbed the first book that had just come out, and it happenedto comprise interviews with some American conceptual artists.10 Whatsurprised me was a suggestion by Robert Morris, for which heproposed to grow a crop, with the help of a farmer, on a piece of land.And then the whole thing would, I presume, be photographed andpresented as a Conceptual artwork. But he never did this work. As faras I know, he never mentioned this work again, and we know aboutthis suggestion only after his interview of the late 1960s was recentlypublished. Why did he ignore the significance of such an importantconcept? The problem, I think, was the farmer. How could he claimthis to be his work, when it was the farmer and his farm workers whodid the work as they would always do? There was no input fromRobert Morris as far as both the Form and Production of the workwere concerned, and yet he would still claim it solely as his own workmerely on the basis of presenting it as an idea. Would Morris haveshared the property rights of the artwork with the farmer and farmworkers on equal basis and also transferred these rights to them so thatthey could afterward continue with the crop production as acontinuous art process beyond his gaze and control?11

This is indeed an example of the nominal, by which an existingthing is turned into an idea. But this nominal is an appropriatednominal, as it is removed and alienated from its productive base.Because it is the nature of the bourgeois system which, whilerecognising and legitimising the nominal – or any other thing – as awork of art, must alienate it from social process in order to turn it intoa reified commodity.

However, the most interesting example of the way the bourgeoisieappropriates things from life processes and freezes them intoaestheticised objects that I found was not among the Land Artconceptualists, but in a work of Joseph Beuys.12 In 1982, duringDocumenta 7, Beuys launched a project for which he wanted to plant7000 oak trees in Kassel. This work was explained as ‘the first stage inan ongoing scheme of tree planting to be extended throughout theworld as part of a global mission to effect environmental and socialchange’.13 Although this project was completed after his death in 1987,and subsequently some trees were planted – as ‘a symbolic’ act – inNew York city in 1988 and 1996, as well as in Oslo and Sydney, wehave no evidence of any tree being planted as part of his ‘globalmission’.

It would however be unwise to doubt Beuys’ genuine concern forthe environment or his good intention. Beuys did have a vision totransform the world through the imaginative power of art; and the ideaof planting trees all over the world was not only very beautiful but itwas indeed laudable. And by this – which was his last major work – he(re-)affirmed the transformational function of art:

I wish to go more and more outside [the gallery/museum space] tobe among the problems of nature and problems of human beings intheir working places. This will be a regenerative activity; it will be atherapy for all of the problems we are standing before... I wished togo completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my

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the avant-garde, and thusby liberating the avant-garde from its Eurocentricfreeze it could give it anew dynamic in its marchtowards a radical socialfunction.

10. Alexander Alberro andPatricia Norvell (eds),Recording ConceptualArt; early interviews withBarry, Huebler,Kaltenbach, LeWitt,Morris, Oppenheim,Siegelaub, Smithson, andWeiner by PatriciaNorvell, The University ofCalifornia Press, 2001.

11. It is interesting that,instead of treating ‘a crop’as a product of farmers,constitituing humanlabour, Morris perceivesthe whole thing as anatural process: ‘I woulduse nature, really, orfarmers – but basicallynature – to have thethings go’, ibid.

12. Lynne Cooke thinks thatthe ‘works such as Walterde Maria’s The LightningField (1977), JamesTurrell’s ongoing projectat the Roden Crater, andboth Robert Smithson’sand Robert Morris’sinvolvements with landreclamation projects onabandon sites ravaged bystrip mining haveaffinities with Beuys’concurrent activities andinterest’. See LynneCooke, 7000 Oaks,www.diacenter.org.

13. From a statement, ‘7000Oaks by Joseph Beuys’, byDia Centre for the Arts,New York, whichprovided the initialfinancing of 7000 Oaks inKassel, and carried outthe planting of some treesin New York in 1988 and1996. www.diacenter.org

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enterprise of regenerating the life of humankind within the body ofsociety and to prepare a positive future in this context.14

However, at the same time, he failed to ask the most importantquestion. How would it be possible to achieve this objective within thesystem that had been persistently destroying environment andpreventing social change? Although Beuys’ proposition does provide uswith a radically new language that can be subjected to a radicaldeconstruction which is capable of confronting the system, thesignificance of his own actual work remains contained somewherebetween the shamanistic act of a heroic modern artist and theinstitution which legitimates his status as a genius. The failure of thework lies in its altruistic and gestural nature, whose futility becomesevident in the most vulnerable rainforests of the world wherethousands of trees are felled every day by the very system whichbestows power on this heroic bourgeois artist so that he can indulge insuch ‘a symbolic’ gesture.

These historical precedents do though, despite their being reifiedand frozen within the institutional space, represent an inheritedpositive knowledge. The aim here is to salvage the progressive aspects

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14. Joseph Beuys quoted byLynne Cooke, 7000 Oaks,www.diacenter.org.

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7. I Love It: It Loves I, 1978-83, 12 colour photographs with texts in Urdu and English. This photograph shows the final actof a performance (Karachi, 1978), in which I took part, comprising the ritual killing of a goat in memory of Abraham’ssacrifice of lamb in place of his son, and then the family sharing the feast as part of the celebration of the festival of Eid-ul-Azha.

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of this knowledge and deconstruct them with a hope that they wouldrealise their full radical potential. The critical understanding of thisknowledge can thus help us go beyond their contextual limits andmove forward. The significance of these works, for me, really lies intheir ground breaking innovative language that provides us with apotential for its further development. While recognising the importanceof these precedents (and there must be more), both in terms of theirformal and conceptual significance, what has been most important forme however is my understating of the nature of their ultimate failure.Their failure was not a failure of human imagination, but of theimagination that was trapped in a context which had progressivelybecome bankrupt and had no further potential for radical change.Consequently, this context no longer has any value system whichwould recognise human creativity unless it is subjected tocommodification and reification. If I am now climbing over theseprecursors,15 it is to pay homage to creative imagination. It is also torecognise the importance of their contribution to the development ofthe language (of art) beyond its accepted traditions and conventions.This has enabled me to look into these historical precedents beyond thecontext of their failures and subject them to what may produce aradical transformation beyond the remit of bourgeois consciousnessand its individualism.

What I now suggest is not merely a radical advancement on theirwork, but more importantly an exploration of the possibility of aconceptual or paradigm shift both in the content and context of art.The concept of Nominalism is different from the use of the everyday ornominal as an aestheticised object.16 If the past failure of the nominalin art is due to its being appropriated and contained by the idea ofindividualism, then the nominal must be liberated from this bourgeoisprison-house and returned to the life processes from which it has beenalienated. In fact, only when the very idea of individual privateproperty, on which the idea of individualism in art is based, isconfronted, abolished and is dissolved into a collective process ofcreativity and ownership, can a new art of positive and affirmativenature emerge as part of the material production in which people arethemselves involved.

IV

Dams have always been built and will continue to be built, and there areexisting communities who live around hundreds of dams all over theworld. So, what is new about my idea? Without restructuring therelationship of the community with the land and reorganising it so thatit offers an egalitarian alternative, can the idea of merely building adam, or whatever, go far enough to represent a paradigm shift? Thepoint here is not about giving away something to others for theirbenefits, but how can they become involved in a creative/productiveprocess leading to their own collective control of it, self-determinationand self-sufficiency. The imperative, therefore, is to recognise anideological framework in which people’s potential to reorganisethemselves as a community on the basis of common ownership of land

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15. Although these precedentshave been extremelyimportant for me toarticulate this work, Ihave not been fully awareof their ideas until 2001when I began to work onthis project. I can say thatthe idea of the dam as awork of art predates theknowledge of both theseworks by Morris andBeuys. If there was anyinfluence on my thinking,although it is acontinuation of theconcepts I began todevelop in 1968/69, itmust be RobertSmithson’s Spiral Jetty,1970.

16. I have only recentlybecame aware of theexistence of Nominalismin philosophy. However,the historical roots andtrajectory of the conceptof Nominalism in art aredifferent, and it shouldnot be confused withideas in philosophy. Ifthere are any similarities,they are accidental.

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(or any other means of production) becomes a dynamic force of history. But how can this be achieved practically, and as a practice? If giving

up private property in favour of collective ownership is fundamental tomy proposition, then it is not going to be an easy task. In fact privateproperty is the main hurdle in the development of land, and/or othermeans of production, in the poor Third World countries, and whichthus prevents the improvement of the living conditions of people there.The idea of private property, even when it is so small that it isunproductive, is so entrenched in the minds of even poorest sections ofsociety that it is inconceivable that anyone would abandon theindividual rights to property in favour of an idea of collectiveownership unless the alternative is first proven to be more beneficial tothem, in terms of both their material and cultural needs. No outsidepersuasion, on the basis of a promise for a better future wouldconvince people to give up whatever they individually own.

I would therefore take a detour, which puts me back in the contextof art. It is perhaps easy to conceive an idea, but to realise it one needsmaterial resources – that is, money. Couldn’t one raise the money in thesame way art receives money within the prevailing system? If moneycould be raised, say a modest sum of a million pounds – it is a modestsum considering the prices paid for contemporary artworks nowadaysor compared with the amount of public money spent on uselessprojects in the West – it would purchase not only 2000 acres of barrenland around a river or ravine but would also be enough to do the restof the job – such as building a small earthen dam, preparing the landfor cultivation, and providing the people with proper housing.17

However, it is fundamental that the development and execution of theproject is realised with the full participation of people living there. Theymay initially enter the project as wage workers, but during the wholeperiod of development they must be part of the process that allows theirengagement, through consultations and discussion, with the aims andobjectives of the whole project. Once they have realised the benefits ofwhat they are doing, one should not be surprised if their own enthusiasmdraws them in with their full energy and with their own ideas.

A village with modern facilities but in the tradition of the area,including educational and medical provisions, among other things, isthen built to accommodate a community of say two hundred families.The work then, needless to say, should be undertaken on a collectivebasis and its product distributed equally among the community on thebasis of their basic needs. Initially, the management of the project canbe undertaken by a committee or council representing the village, withsome outside experts advising them about modern methods ofproduction and marketing the surplus. However, once the communityhas understood the ideological basis of the work and is able to manageit efficiently by itself, the property rights of the whole thing – both ofthe land and of the artwork – must be transferred to the community.Once everything is turned into the collective property of thecommunity, those ‘artists’ who have initiated the project and havehelped in its realisation must renounce both their property andintellectual rights. The work shall then continue to be produced anddeveloped by the community itself, not only as a material productionbut also as an art concept.

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17. In return or exchange forthis whatever is producedpreliminarily andcomplementarily – such astexts, sketches, drawings,photos, paintings, models,videos, films, etc – as partof what should remain acontinous process, canand will be offered to anyindividual or instititutionwilling to sponsor theproject.

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18. I can also propose here, inaddition to the collectivefarm, if I may as apractising sculptor, acluster of modern wind-mills or solar-panels, notonly as to generateelectricity but also torepresent new forms ofsculpture. These workscan be initiated andpursued by anyone,separately or integratedtogether into a largerproject, but they shouldeventually be constructed,owned, run and managedby and for the interest ofa collective body.

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Once the project has become successful and its benefits to thecommunity have become known, there is no reason why othercommunities would not wish to follow and use it as a model toreorganise and reconstruct themselves. The whole thing could spreadendlessly, both within a specific area and worldwide. The fundamentalaim of this project is in fact to use this project as an starting point forwhat should develop into a world-wide network of similar projectscapable of resistance or struggle against the growing corporate power.

Although I began the whole thing with my personal experience,giving an example of the specific work which could be built as a resultof it, it would be a mistake if this experience is attributed to orconfused with individualism. An individual experience doesn’t have tobe a result of individualism. It can easily be part of a collectiveexperience or perception, depending how one relates and identifieswith it. Without my consciousness of my being part of the collectivestruggle of millions of people across the world, I don’t I think I wouldhave undergone this experience and produced this discourse. However,this meditation on the landscape from a poor Third World country ismeant not only to offer a conceptual model, but also a Concept thatmust transcend this model. It should be applicable universally – even inthe affluent countries of the West. This model can in fact adopt anyform – a farm, an industrial factory, a housing estate, a supermarket,etc, so long as it leads to a collective endeavour, owned and runcollectively by a community of working people themselves.18 This mayimply a withdrawal of labour from the system, but it is not a negativewithdrawal that often produces unemployment and disempowerment.On the contrary, this creative act of withdrawal affirms the creativepower of labour, both physical and intellectual. My proposition maynot change the situation immediately or profoundly, but it is meant tosuggest a process which has the potential to empower people to dealwith their situation themselves, and materially prepare them in the longterm to deal with the dominant system beyond just protesting againstoppression.

V

What we face today are two failures: the failure of the class struggle,and of the avant-garde. Both had aimed at radical change in society.These failures are not so much to do with the nature of ideas ofprogress and human advancement as to the methodologies, strategiesand the context by which the struggle towards an egalitarian worldsociety took place. The strategy to confront the system in order tobring about a radical change within it – so as to improve thecondition of the working class – or to overthrow it altogether failedbecause this strategy of confrontation with the system did not allowthe development of alternative material resources that would haveempowered the struggling classes and freed them from theirdependence on wage-work. It is this failed strategy that is todaycrippling the whole discourse of class struggle, and with it thedevelopment of art as a critical and productive discourse with its ownpower of legitimation.

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Radical art has so far functioned as a form of resistance that wasisolated from the resistance of the working masses, and has thus failed.Art must now return to the masses as part of their resistance. Let theirResistance become Art; and artists (along with scientists, engineers,theorists, and so on) can facilitate this shift from art as resistance toresistance itself becoming art. Those who are concerned with thedisturbing state of art today and are engaged in its critique, ought torealise that this is not enough. What we need is a collective efforttowards new thinking, new theories, new strategies that will help uswake up from hibernation and show us a way forward. We need to jointogether to realise what has always been the aim of art, to achieve theuniversal emancipation and freedom of humanity.

I am aware that my argument for a radical shift which should leadto a revolutionary situation may not be very convincing. There aremany unresolved theoretical issues and logistical problems. Therelationship between the individual – who may conceive and initiate aproject – and a collective body is highly problematic and can only beresolved as part of a continuous and long term revolutionary process.We as artists and theorists can from outside observe, perceive andconceptualise anything as a work of art. But how about those who arethere inside, those who are the real producers? Can they also perceivewhat they do as a work of art? It is not an easy question, and I don’thave a definite answer. Maybe it does not need an answer.

A transference of individual consciousness (blue) to a global network of collective consciousness and social agency (red),2002.

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19. I have been involved, forover forty years, in a kindof critical practice whosefull socio-historicalsignificance can onlyemerge when it is allowedto enter the institutionalspace and it finds a placein the official discourse.But, while struggling tofind an alternative, it isalso important that Icontinue to maintain thethrust of my other worksat all levels.

20. Op cit, see note.

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Although the proposed work does not seek an institutionallegitimation, as it produces its own legitimation, we shall not doanything to prevent the proposed concept entering into theinstitutional space of the art world. On the contrary, it would beextremely necessary for it to intervene in this space and initiate adebate within the art community as a whole.

It would in fact be naive – if not foolish – to underestimate thepower of the bourgeois art world, and dismiss or abandon itsinstitutional space without engaging it critically in the process offinding an alternative. There can be no absolute escape from thebourgeois socioeconomic and political system and its art institution,and that leaves us no choice but to negotiate our position – even whenit is becoming extremely frustrating to maintain one’s criticalposition – ‘within’ it.19 But we don’t have to be the victims of thecontradictions this relationship produces; and then to resort – in thename of self-reflexivity or reflecting a human condition – to pessimism,nihilism, cynicism, self-loathing and self-mutilation (commonphenomena among the young generation of today), and so on. Thefunction of one’s subjectivity is not to probe deep into itself, but toallow itself to grow beyond its body (ethnic. racial, sexual or national)so that it can comprehend the world at large. It is also now self-indulgence to continue producing a discourse which only negates whatAdorno calls ‘ossified language and thought forms’,20 or turn to a so-called avant-garde strategy that only reflects upon the decadence ofbourgeois culture (and how an individual is affected by it). Protestsagainst society, without transforming the language and concepts into aweapon of resistance through a material and intellectual productionthat offers an affirmative alternative, is futile.

We may now in fact declare the end of art as we have known it, asHegel did in the beginning of 19th century. The 20th century beganwith ideas for positive and progressive developments for all humanity.But these ideas collapsed with the growing power of capitalism and itsimperialist ambition to dominate the world, resulting in humanplunder and millions of deaths in its wars; and also thus paralysing theprogressive thinking of many radical intellectuals. But we can beginthis century differently, without repeating past mistakes and failures.

Nominalism offers a positive way forward. Its aim is to open a newwindow on the world, a window that makes us realise that there doesexist an alternative to the dehumanising world of the bourgeoisie.History tells us that this world can no longer be humanised through itsneo-liberal reforms, as it refuses to confront its basic contradictions (Itmay in fact in the end produce total anarchy and chaos leading to aworld catastrophe). This work aims to establish a dialogue with thosewho are concerned with the disturbing state of affairs in general todayand particularly of art. Only through an exchange of ideas beyond theconstraints of the institutional or academic space can we hope to seethe light at the end of the bourgeois tunnel.

Finally, what is most important is not the historicisation of theconcept of Nominalism as a particular work of art, but its underlyingvision. It is a vision of future in which working people themselvesshall collectively and creatively build their own agricultural farms,industrial factories, distribution networks, super markets, eating

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houses, housing estates, transport and communication systems,art/educational institutions, entertainment/sports complexes, etc,scattered around the world but connected together through a globalnetwork of shared ideas and objectives that will not only empowerthem to resist the power of global capitalism but also make them self-sufficient. Art can facilitate and be part of this vision. This may be adaydream or the naive fantasy of an artist, but it is better to daydreamwith a hope for a humane future then allow oneself to be dehumanisedand consumed by the greed for money and individual power. What isimportant is to realise that we can save our planet and its future bythe power of free creative imagination, which by escaping thenarcissism of bourgeois consciousness can transform itself into thecollective power of the people whose resistance today has put them ina position of the new vanguard of revolution. When people becomeaware of their collective power, they themselves can and will changethe world.

A shorter version of this first part of a two-part work in progress was delivered at the‘Marxism and the Visual Arts Now’ conference, University College London, 8 – 10April 2002. The second part will elaborate and elucidate the role of workers from theadvanced industrial societies in the development of the global network of a creativeresistance and productive struggle.

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