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The Politics of Shibboleth
Ruben Yepes
VCS- December 2012
Doris Salcedo is Colombias most outstanding contemporary artist. Part of Salcedos
international resonance has to do with the appraisal of her work as the prototype of
contemporary political art. Her celebrated installation Shibboleth (October 2007-April
2008), in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern Gallery in London had already meant her
international consecration. However, despite the international praise that Salcedo
received for this piece well deserved from the point of view of the formal and
conceptual rigor of her work, I want to critically assess its political scope. Thus, in this
paper, I will examine Shibboleths political dimension, that is, its relevance as a form of
political intervention.
Shibboleth was a 167 metre- long crack that trailed the floor of most of the Tate
Moderns Turbine Hall. Thecrack was initially no more than a hairline, but it gradually
widened as it ran down the hall, eventually turning into a 40 cm wide ditch with some
two metres in depth that branched in two towards its end. I visited the Tate Modern in
December 2007; surely, the installation provided an impressive experience, although it
is significant to mention that what struck me about the piece was not so much its
conceptor its politics, but the technical prowess that slashing a huge cut in a concrete
floor represented. What was most impressive was the fact that the surrounding concrete
remained unscathed. Even though I have artistic training, it took me quite a while to
understand how it was made: close inspection eventually revealed that the original
concrete blocks were removed while new blocks, each with a section of the crack cast
into it, were fit into the spaces left by the originals.
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Even though Shibboleth is a piece of conceptual art and that, as such, it
primordially appeals to the intellecti, it also managed to produce an affective response.
Above all, there was a sense of solemnity in the hall, a feeling of being before
something that required a grave approach and serious consideration. Such a feeling did
not merely result from the crack in the floor, but from the entire spatial character of the
installation: the fact that the Turbine Hall which is five storeys tall with 3,400 square
metres of floorspacewas in itself essentially empty, the crack being more a negative
than a positive presence. This emptiness had the paradoxical effect of making the
negativity of the crack more present, as if it were some sort of sacrilegious profanation
of a space meant for a spiritual experience. I must say, however, that I am referring
these affects from personal experience; other spectators did not seem to be having the
same encounter with the work.
Fascinated by the installation, I spent quite some time thinking about my
experience of it, about its technical prowess and then about its meaning and what it
signified in the context of Salcedos work. Eventually, I began to observe other
spectators reactions to it. There were indeed a lot of people present; many of them
exhibited the allured naivet that accompanies the faces of tourists when visiting a
museum. I observed and heard how, just like myself, many of the visitors took their
time to speculate about how the piece was made. Most of them would have their
photograph taken at some point, either with the crack in front or behind them. I also
witnessed how somewhat more endeavoring visitors would introduce their hands and
feet into the crack to get their picture taken, as proof, I assume, that it was not merely a
well-achieved illusion, a sort of trompe-o-leil. Snapshots taken and the enigma solved,
most visitors continued their way to the see the gallerys collections.
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Shibboleth (2007-2008). Tate Modern Art Gallery, London. The artist. Photograph: Stephen
White. Courtesy White Cube.
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Framing Shibboleth
How may we understand the term frame? If anything, the different uses that have been
given to it demonstrate that this is a broad and loose term.iii
I am interested in an
ontological definition, one that will allow me to conceptually describe Salcedos
Shibboleth as an aesthetic event. Throughout this paper, I will use the term frame in
two different manners. One of them is perhaps related to notions of discourse and
context. I will, however, emphasize Martin Heideggers use of the term. Heidegger
(1971) proposes the term enframing(Ge-Stell) ro refer, on one hand, to technology as
a form of relation to nature that compels man to conceive of the prior as reserve and, on
the other, to art as a particular techne, one that produces a placing and setting itself into
being of the artwork, that is, a mode of relation by which the work of art occurs and
opens a particular place.
I will relate Heideggers conceptto the way that Jacques Rancire uses the term
to refer to the relation between art and politics. According to Rancire, the political
potential of art derives, not from the relation between form and content, but from the
frame of the autonomous aesthetic experience that subtends and encompasses both the
artwork and the artists endeavors. In Rancires view, the autonomy of the aesthetic
experience frames the politics of art, in such a way that it is the very condition of
possibility of any form of political art. I will highlight this in relation to Shibboleth in
the final section of this paper.
If art is an event, then we may say that political art produces a political event.
That is, political art serves as a catalyst that precipitates a bringing into relation in such
a way that it may produce a singularity amidst the habitual coordinates of the world.
Correspondingly, I offer the following general definition of frameas is used in this
paper: a spatial and temporal bonding of a set of discourses, practices and affectsiv
.
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Through this definition, I want to emphasize the mobile, processual and relational
character, not merely of the frame, but of art as enframing, the fact that the frame is not
a fixed or given delimitation or structure, but a relation that, as such, is always in the
process of happening. By this definition, the political in art is not a given, but an event
that is always in the process of occurring.
Under the umbrella of this broad definition, I will explore different framing
devices and discourses in relation to Salcedos Shibboleth, with the intention of
analytically relating them as to assess the installations political scope. It is important to
note that, if frames are mobile and relational, it means that the political dimension of
Salcedos piece if it indeed has a political dimension in any relevant senseis not fixed
and consistent; on the contraryand just as in any art-event of a political character, the
nature of the installation is such that it produces a space, an opening, in which different
discourses and affects may be brought into relation in such a way that they may trigger
a shift in the spectator-subject, a modification, not only in the habitual conceptions of
her/himself, but also, in the way that the spectator-subject positions her/himself in the
world she/he inhabits.
Political Shibboleth
Even though Salcedo hardly ever uses the word politics in her discourse, it is quite
clear from her declarations in interviews and conferences that she considers her
installation and her art in general to be political. Indeed, her recurring themes
Colombia`s political violence, the displaced and disappeared, the memory of the
conflicts victims are rendered through her work with a sense of denouncement,
remembrance and intervention. I will take a close look at Salcedos declarations about
Shibboleth later; for now, it is sufficient to say that Salcedos installation is intended as
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political art. But, in this context, what may we understand by the term politics?
Clearly, we are not talking about partisanship or ideological allegiance to a political
project. Nor are we talking about participation through political institutions. If the
notion of politics may be applicable to Salcedos installation in a way that distinguishes
it from any propagandistic use of art, it must establish a fundamental link between art
and politics, one that will go beyond the model of form and content.
I consider that such a concept is to be found in Rancire, who has, over the last
decade or so, developed a very profitable theory of politics and its relation to aesthetics.
Rancire reconceptualizes the habitual sense of the term politics, in order to avoid an
understanding of it that may be used to refer to the practices through which a
metropolis or a nations order is produced and procured. Instead of politics, Rancire
(2004) uses the term police to refer to these discourses and practices. The police
participates in the creation, legitimization and sustainment of the premises of individual
and collective experience and positions within the social corpus; in this sense, it is an
aesthetic regime.
Rancire calls this regime the distribution of the sensible, that is, the system of
self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of
something in common and the delimitations that define the receptive parts and positions
within it (2009:12).The distribution of the sensible is a system that configures habitual
ways of seeing, of saying, of feeling and doing in one word, habitual ways of being
that determine individuals possibilities for political participation and, in consequence,
the position that they occupy within the community.
The concept of policeallows us to reserve the word politics to refer to the
heterogeneous processes that oppose the consensus concerning the ways of
participating, doing, perceiving, feeling and relating to others that appear as
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unquestionable, which the habitual conception of politics obscures. In Rancires words,
politics names a well- determined activity, antagonic of the first (the police): that
which breaks with the sensible configuration through which the parts and its parts or
their absence, by a premise that by definition has no place within it: that of a part of
those who do not have a part (1999: 29-30). Politics in this sense emerges as the
dimension of dissensus and disagreement; it is the interruption or the redistribution of
the sensible. In this view, the emergence of the heterogeneous must not be seen as a
constant or a finality: the nature of politics is that of the event, in the sense of an
irruption that alters the forms and practices of domination.v
This definition of politics has the enormous advantage of steering the relation
between politics and aesthetics away from the model of form and content by relating the
two concepts on a fundamental level: insofar as the interruption in the distribution of the
sensible reconfigures possible experience, it is a fundamentally aesthetic operation.
Therefore, if Shibboleth may be seen as political in a fundamental sense, it is because,
in one way or another, it configured an event that produced a hiatus in the space of
consensus, a disagreement with the habitual distribution of parts and positions, an
autonomous experience; indeed, this is what both Salcedos discourse and her artistic
themes suggest.
Given these two general conceptual frameworks, let us now take a look at the
different frames at work in Salcedos installation. The analytical operation I will
perform involves taking a preliminary set of elements that, in relation to art, have come
to be understood as frame by contemporary art theorythe artworks title, gallery notes,
the artists discourses, the curatorial discourses, the museum and the discourses
embedded in it, the spectators frame of mind and rendering them anew as
constitutive elements of the artwork as enframing. It is important to note that, while in
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the first case, the notion of frame relies on an objectual notion of art, as enframing, the
artwork is understood as work-of-art, that is, the techne that art is, the process of
fashioning, of wroughting, that brings into relation diverse elements.
A Framing Name
The most obvious frameto start with is that of the installationstitle. Salcedo took the
title from a homonymous poem by Paul Celan. The word shibboleth, as we know,
refers to a particularity in pronunciation or behavior that gives away a foreigner. The
word landed in English via the Hebrew language, in which the term originated. In the
Bible, there is a passage in which the members of the Tribe of Ephraim use a particular
phoneme to distinguish themselves from the Gileadites, who did not use that sound in
their dialect. The sense of the word is that of a sort of password, one that allows one
group to be distinguished from another.
In Celans poem, the poet pronounces the word while imprisoned by the Nazis.
Far away from his beloved Rumania, the word stands for a conjuring sound, one that
invokes his motherland, the lost sense of security and bearing. The word is for the poet
the symbol of a personal benefit: it is the symbol of an original sound, a token of
identity, a beacon that signals home, thus countering the effacing violence and
savageness of his Nazi captors. In the context of Celans striking poem, a shibboleth is
not only a code and a password; it becomes a signal of hope, a depository of an
inalienable humanity.
It is clear that, in choosing this word for the title, there is a very explicit
intention on behalf of the artist. If we were to say, in the usual sense, that the title
frames the artwork by placing it in a particular perspective, then we might say that it is
the key that the artist hands us in order to interpret her installation. In this sense, we
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here is, of course, that these ideas and representations may come into play with the
materiality of the installation, as well as with the other affects and discourses that are
brought into relation by it, in order to produce an event of a political nature, an
interruption in the distribution of the sensible by which the spectator becomes a political
subject. While the reference to Celans poem dependson the spectators knowledge and
associative cunningness, the reference to the biblical story came prompt to hand for
most visitors, for it was mentioned in the exhibition leaflet.
Leaflet Frames
As in many contemporary art exhibitions, the visitor who entered the Turbine Hall was
not left to their own devices. Watchful invigilators diligently approached visitors with
leaflets containing two things: first, a warning to watch your step and to keep
accompanying children under supervision (indeed, a warning not without purpose:
reportedly, several people suffered minor injuries, and four reports to the Health and
Safety Executive were filed).vii
More importantly, the leaflet featured an introductory
text by curator Martin Herbert, who gently led the reader through a somewhat
schematized explanation of the installation. Three topics are briefly presented in the
text: the already mentioned reference to the biblical origins of the installations title, the
reference to the past of the Tate Moderns building as a powerplant and the more
general reference to Modernity as represented by the Tate Gallerys collection of
modern art, seen as a civilizational project that has the production of separation and
difference at its core. Let us take a look at the latter two of these discursive frames.
The Tate Modern is housed in a former power station, the Turbine Hall being the
setting of the main generator turbine. In a brief paragraph, Herbert informs that the
Banskside Power Station was commissioned in 1947 to assist the reconstruction of
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London after the Second World War. It was also a moment, he continues, of increasing
multiculturalism resulting from migration from the former British colonies of people
with different backgrounds who arrived to London seeking work. Herbert insists that
these events were occurring at the hinge between the twilight of the British Empire and
the start of the schisms and exclusions of postcolonialism. Employing many foreign
workers, the building housed such a multicultural blend until it was decommissioned in
1981. It sat derelict until 2000, when it reopened as an art gallery.
Herbert then asserts that digging beneath the surface, Salcedo reconnects the
building to these colonial and postcolonial histories, to the operations of power and the
ideological creation of artificial notions of difference and otherness. This assertion is in
tone with his previous insistence on the divisions played out by colonialism and its
aftermaths. A connection that any mildly cunning spectator would deduce from the fact
that a crack is always a crack in something is thus laid out plainly by the curator.
Indeed, the crack integrates with the Turbine Halls floor in such a way that omitting a
consideration of the building as part of the artwork would be nave. However, this is
precisely the condition in which Herberts introductory text places the spectator: like a
child, they must, not only be protected from tripping on a crack in the floor, but also, be
given all the information necessary in order to make the very effort of interpretation
unnecessary.
Modernity is implicated as well, albeit in a reductionist fashion. The powerful
critique and deconstruction of Modernity undertaken by postcolonial studies is rendered
as a simplified diatribe in which the complex production of spatial and temporal
distance at the heart of Modernitys civilizational project is converted into a stereotyped
notion of separation and difference. The indication quickly turns into a diffuse
denunciation of Modern Art, which comes across as a depository of beauty and ideal
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form that, due to its very restrictedness, excludes non-Europeans from its ideal. While,
of course, the exclusions of modern art are readily evident to our postcolonial frame of
mind, unquestionably holding on to concepts of beauty, frame ideal form and
rationalityis to simplify the complex cultural and historical logics at play in it, in such
a way that the European reader can always excuse the excesses of Modernity by the
perfectness of the artworks it has fashioned.
These references to colonialism, postcolonialism and to the dividing operations
of power were underpinned in the leaflet by quotes from the artist herselfindeed, these
quotes occupy a large portion of the leaflet text, to the point that one might say that
Herberts informative passages merely frame the artists discourse. Salcedo
declared, for instance, that the history of racism runs parallel to the history of
modernity, and is its untold dark side. These words sound almost like a slogan. In
using them the artist is, of course, playing into well-known critiques of modernity,
albeit in a reductive and almost nave manner: the history of racism has in fact been
told; the darker side of modernity (an expression first used by the Argentinian
decolonial semiologist Walter Mignolo, now somewhat hackneyed) refers to coloniality,
the complex tripartite cultural domination created and enforced by the production of
juridical, epistemological and subjective difference between Europe and its colonial
territories.
In any case, the discourses deposited in the leaflet framed the spectators
experience, in a way that, given the exhibition invigilators eagerness to promptly
provide the leaflet, was far from subtle. While it would be difficult to assert that
Salcedos intention was touse the leaflet as one of her plastic materials (even though,
on the other hand, it is easy to imagine that the artist was at the very least consulted by
gallery officials on the pertinence of the leaflet), it is clear from the leaflets text that the
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Tate Gallerys officials syntonized with Salcedos political discourse: not only did
Herbert take his cue from the artists words, but also, the gallery agreed to avidly
distribute the leaflet amongst the enthusiastic visitors.
A notion of art as event allows us to see that the exhibition indeed brought into
relation the discourses the leaflet carried with the other semantic and affective elements
related by the installation, and that such a bringing into relation worked to shape the
spectators experience. To what extent does this bringing into relation of discourses
related to the divisions provoked by modernity create a political event in the sense we
have construed following Rancire? That is, do the discourses in the leaflet, placed in
relation to the installations materiality, its title and the affects it produces, contribute to
the creation of a hiatus in the police, an interruption in the distribution of the sensible? I
will refer to these questions towards the end of this paper.
A TouristsFrame of Mind
I have already mentioned that, during the time I spent observing and listening to
peoples attitudes and expressions in the Turbine Hall, I had the feeling that most of
them were tourists. Which makes perfect sense: after all, it was December in London,
and any tourist would have a visit to one of the most famous art galleries in the world
on their itinerary; I, for one, certainly did. We live in a time in which culturehas been
rendered an attraction, a spectacle and a product to be consumed. However, by saying
here that the visitors were tourists, I am not merely referring to the modern practice of
travel for leisure or recreation; rather, I wish to use the term to refer to a particular
frame of mind, one in which, on one hand, spatial trajectory is associated to
disinterested contemplation while, on the other, an activity in which one is invested in
accruing cultural capital.
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the transit through an art gallery is one of heightened receptivity and sensitive
awareness.
Of course, there are further investments involved in spectatorship. In their
compelling study of the public of European art museums, Pierre Bourdieu and Alain
Darbel (1997) examine the practices of spectatorship, sustaining that our inclination to
visiting such museums is mediated by social factors concerning cultural and social
capital. Borudieu and Darbel hold that visiting museums and having a taste for Western
art are not natural dispositions. Neither are they typically acquired and fixed through
regular education; on the contrary, they are trades by which certain groups distinguish
themselves through their love of art from others who do not belong to the social groups
in which such a taste and disposition is cultivated and encouraged. In other words, our
love of art mediates a form of identity.
In this sense, at least part of the ritual of visiting a gallery such as the Tate
Modern is the reaffirming a particular social identity; in other words, the transit through
the gallery is a reaffirmation of a subjectivity through which one sees oneself as an
educated, sensitive modern individual. This investment in social identity is certainly the
reason why, as Bourdieu (1996)points out, expressions such as what is this about? or
why is this important? are all but proscribed. Perhaps itis also the reason why, for a
tourist, taking a picture of the featured artworks is of high importance: it is the evidence
that the person was there, that she/he did undertake the ritual and has therefore met the
social expectation.
Both as flneur and as a reaffirming ritual of cultural and social capital, what is
clear is that the spectator approaches art from a particular subject position, one that has
been encoded long before their encounter with the artwork. Here, we are no longer
talking about a frame in Heideggers and Kalas sense; no longer are we referring to
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enframing, to the structuring of diverse materials that the artist wrights and fashions and
that is always in the process of being actualized. Even though it is plausible to argue
that a contemporary art shows visitors approach it with a different frame of mind
compared to those visiting the treasures of the great European museums, it is
nevertheless possible to sustain that those visiting the Turbine Hall are invested in
attitudes and interests concerning both flnerie and cultural capital, for the main
attractions continue to be the Tate Moderns classical and modern art collections.
Does this dual frame of mind enhance the political scope of Salcedos
installation, or does it hinder it instead? Insofar as the political operates a suspension in
the police, it indeed appears that the frame of mind produced by the practice of cultural
tourism obstructs the emergence of an experience of otherness, of dissensus, since the
subject position that the cultural tourist embodies is a typical product of late capitalism
and its hegemonic social order. In this sense, approaching Shibboleth as a tourist means
complying to an activity that is a product of the very Modernity whose divisions and
separations Salcedo purports to criticize. At the same time, however, the attitude of
flnerie with which one approached the installation allows for a heightened sensitivity
and a transformed experience of space and time, one that seems to invite rather than
hinder the political event. A tourists frame of mind is the product of a tension, in which
the activity of transiting is simultaneously shaped and conditioned by social expectation
and an expectation of the unexpected; the political event, therefore, depends on how this
tension is resolved.
This tourist is a subject invested in accruing cultural and symbolic capital, for
whom, nevertheless, the experience of flnerie allows for an opening; thus, the
artworks transformative potential remains as possibility. Indeed, the production of a
radical otherness, of a sense of estrangement, is part of the opening of a world that
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Heidegger attributes to the work of art as enframing. Following Heidegger, we may say
that art suspends the habitual relations that constitute the world of common experience,
in order to install a new relation that configures a new world. This is what Gianni
Vattimo (2010), commenting on Heidegger, calls the Stoss (shock)viii
of the work of art:
the clearing of a space amidst the habitual world in order for the work of art to occur,
the opening of a hiatus, the reconfiguration of parts and positions within the social
distribution of hierarchies, agency and power. In this sense, the political event of the
work of art would involve an abandoning of the subjective position that the tourist
embodies, and this abandonment, together with the subsequent opening of the subject,
would in itself be a political event. Does such an event occur in the case of Shibboleth?
Before answering this question, let us look at one last frame, one which we may call
Shibboleths structural condition of possibility.
Unilever: The Structural Frame
Since 2001, Unilever has been commissioning contemporary art installations for the
Turbine Hall, at a rate of one per year. The commissions are given to outstanding
contemporary artists, and they signify the artists consecration.Salcedo received nearly
300,000 for to make her piece. Colombian artist and scholar Carlos Salazar (2008) has
strongly criticized the association between Salcedos political art and the Unilever
corporation, arguing that the nature of the artists work is incompatible with the fact that
Unilever has pending matters in several parts of the world regarding issues such as child
labor, contract infringement, unjustified release of workers, collaboration with
oppressive regimes, massive environment polluting and monopoly, amongst others.
Unilever has a lot to answer for; it is not for granted that a visitor to their
webpage will find that the corporations environmental, sanitary and humanitarian
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campaigns are given greater display than their products and share values. The
corporation needs to wash its face to public opinion. One of the ways in which Unilever
does this, Salazar purports, is by commissioning contemporary art; if it is of the political
kind, all the better. Bad press affects business, while standing on the side of the victims
helps it. While Salazar emphasizes the ethical aspect of Salcedos acceptance of the
Unilever commission, I want to purport that this episode is merely symptomatic of the
more general dynamics that give high-end contemporary art its condition of possibility.
We may always give Salcedo the benefit of the doubt: perhaps she really does
think that arts healing effects are greater than Unilevers efforts at cooptation and that
the corporations offer was well worth taking advantage of. Perhaps Salcedo deems it
fair to take the corporationsmoney in order to denounce the wrongs of the world, in a
sort of quid pro quo; or perhaps, more simply, she was not aware of the corporations
human rights and environmental issues. Whatever the case is, Salcedos ethical
ponderings are ultimately irrelevant here, for what we have is a demonstration of how
art that purports to be political has turned into a merchandise, but also, of how
contemporary production as embodied by Unilever knows very well that, not only
does this type of art (and cultural resistance in general) not affect its interests, but it
actually benefits it. Cultural tourists and museum goers may have marveled at the
technical prowess of an installation such as Shibboleth; they may have engaged in the
conceptual puzzle it proposed, had their mock pictures taken and even taken part in the
flashmob that danced over it,ix
but it is unlikely that the installation spurred them into
political agency. After its function as a tourist attraction and a form of cultural
entertainment had been fulfilled, the crack in the Tate floor was diligently filled with
concrete, and it now remains as a scar of an event that, in this sense, died wanting.
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sensitive approach that invites rather than hinders the political event. Neither was it
hindered by the structural frame represented by Unilever: the analysis of this frame may
lead to a critical assessment of the politics of art in general, one that reveals its
structurally flawed nature, but it does not prohibit the possibility for a (modest) political
experience.
Ultimately, the political event was hindered by the fact that the spectator was
never autonomous. It was hindered by the leaflet frame. That aesthetic experience is
autonomous means, amongst other things, that it cannot be forced upon the spectator; as
in the detached involvement of the flneur, the autonomous aesthetic experience must
come about through an unintended process of discovering. The Stoss of the work of art
cannot be prescribed; it can merely be staged, for the opening of a world is also the
opening of the spectator-subject. As Heidegger asserts, this opening is a becoming, not
a final result; it is not about what is produced, it is about what is procured into
occurrence. It is about the event, not its outcome.
In this sense, the autonomy of the aesthetic experience is also the autonomy of
the spectator-subject; however, with Shibboleth, the spectators attention was so
diligently directed that the subject recoiled back into the type of cultural consumerism
that an institution such as the Tate Modern sets up, with its connotations of leisure and
entertainment. Confronted with violence, the subject recoils into its habitual forms. The
flneur is thereby cut short. In the extent to which the spectators experience was
heavily prescribed by the text in the leaflet, Shibboleth remained an unoccupied stage,
having the performance become hackneyed even before it began. In loading the artwork
with prescriptive frames, its operation of enframing has receded, leading the subject to
suture its affective opening, thereby recoiling into the habitual forms of the police.
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Notes
iI refer to the piece in present tense because, in a sense, it still exists: the crack was filled-in
with cement after the end of the exhibition, remaining as a mark that scars the Turbine Halls
floor.iiSee: Bal (2007; 2010); Brea (2010); Riao (2010).
iiiThe amount of academic writing that resorts to the term is staggering, and its uses across
fields and disciplines such as socialogy, anthropology, art history, psychology and philosophy
range from the merely synonymic and metaphorical to the ontological.
ivI am taking my cue from Gregory Bateson, who in his 1972 book Steps to an Ecology of Mind
wrote that a frame is "a spatial and temporal bonding of a set of interactive messages."
vAgainst those to whom this somewhat unexpected definition of politics as transformative
action might seem whimsical, we must note that Rancire derives it from a rigorousetymological genealogy that goes back to Aristotles Politica.
viWriting about poetry in the English Renaissance, Ralna Kalas has bequeathed us with a useful
interpretation of Heideggers concept of enframing. Kalas provides several examples frompoetry and literary theory of the English Renaissance in which the word frame is used to referthe making or molding of something. Words, in this sense, are not mere conveyors of fixed
meaning but the poets material, available to be wrought and tempered into the shape that thepoet needs. Kalas stresses that the fact that Heideggers concept Ges-Tell is typicallytranslated to English as enframing (be it accurate or not) restitutes the ontological linkbetween technology and poetry that, in Heideggers discourse, is blocked by the overpoweringcompelling of modern technology that turns the Earth into mere reserve. To restitute this link is
to insist that techne is an enframing because it is a poiesis, that is, because it is the founding of aworld. In other words, that which is related through enframing does not constitute an external
frame; rather it is part of the materials that the poet, or the artist, works with.
viiSee: Crowds are suffering for their art at the Tate Modern, The Times, 26 November 2007.
Retrieved October 13 2012.
https://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2F
visualarts%2F
viiiVattimo (2010) attributes the term stoss (shock) to Heidggersessay, although the German
philosopher does not in fact use it. In any case, it is evident that what Vattimo is getting at is
Heideggers notion of the radical originality of the art work. Indeed, for Heidegger, what theartist does is remove [the work] from all relations to something other than itself, in order to letit stand on its own for itself alone (40). The work is the suspension of all relations, which arehereby replaced with the relations it produces; insofar as these relations effectively constitute
the world, it is indeed legitimate for Vattimo to say that a shock is exerted through the
experience of the work of art.
ixSee: Flashmob en la Tate. October 21, 2007. [esferapblica]. Available at:
http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=1047. Retrieved: October 20, 2012.
https://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2Fvisualarts%2Fhttps://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2Fvisualarts%2Fhttps://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2Fvisualarts%2Fhttp://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=1047http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=1047http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=1047https://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2Fvisualarts%2Fhttps://acs.thetimes.co.uk/?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.co.uk%2Ftto%2Farts%2Fvisualarts%2F8/12/2019 The Politics of Shibboleth
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