The Second Person - DRAFT

Please note that this is only a draft version.

It does not exactly correspond to the final german version.

Since several individuals from the audience asked me for an english version, I provide this draft as a courtesy, but it has not been updated with respect to the german reference version used in the live performance.

A couple of months ago, I bought this beautiful video edition. It is based on interviews with  women who pioneered performance art since the 60ies.

A couple of days ago, Andrea called me up and asked me if I could replace one of the invited performers tonight, who called off. I decided to recall some memories from the interviews, I have listened to a couple of months ago. For example, I remember a fragment from an interview with Martha Rossler:

(Martha)

But who is we and who is they, what did they win, what did we loose ?

To where have they switched back. What was changed ?

Change. What does this mean. Consider a political artist at the beginning of the 21 century, who wants to change things. What would be an appropriate form of change. And indeed, I was wondering why there were so many people protesting against the war in Irak, without preventing the war. These demonstrations, why didn't they change things ?

Ok, so I want to change something, how do I do that ?

In order to get an answer, I set up an experiment. I decided to  file a complaint. A couple of months ago, several football games took place in Basel, a small town in Switzerland. At this time, I found a newspaper article in a tram in Basel. The article was about an advertisement campaign, that covered entire trams with comic-style pictures of young women almost naked, dressed up as football mascots that were desperately asking for sex, because all the men in town were supposedely completely absorbed by football. The article says, that the ad was forbidden in Zurich, another small town in Switzerland. Zurich prohibited the ad because they considered it to be indecent.

I believed, that this would be a good case study  for an experiment in change and I filed a complaint with the city council of Basel that authorized the ad.

Dear Council

You will find hereafter a complaint against the current advertissment campaign on the tramways of Basel. I am protesting not because of indecency but rather because of backwardness. The ad is a regression to the post-world war II period, in which there were more women than men in Europe. The survivors had their choice of women. The ad is ruining the efforts of women who worked in the 60ies to question the structures of sexual identity.

Please help us to switch forward again. Please help us to win back the city for women and for men. For this purpose, let me suggest the following winning-back campaign: The council should provide one tram for one day and the tram shall be covered with the work of women artists living in Basel. The people shall be allowed to use the tram at no charge to symbollically demonstrate that the war is over and that we are switching forward and that we will win back the city.

Again, please make note that I am complaining because I consider the ad to be backwards, not indecent. I know, in Zurich, the advertisment has been prohibited for this reason, but this is because Zurich is even more backwards than Basel. Please help us to switch forward again by making  a single tram available for the purpose of winning back the city.

Yours sincerely

The next day, I already had the response:

Dear Mr. Vittali

Thank you for your complaint concerning the current advertisement campaign on the trams of Basel. I assure you, we do not like the ad either and we classified them as being sexually discriminating. Therefore, if at least two people would have complained about the campaign, we would have banned it. But because you were the only person who complained - and not even because of sexual discrimination - we decided not to intervene. As for your proposal concerning the tram art project, we suggest that you contact either the House of Literatur in Basel, the night cafe of the theater or the Roxy (which is a small place for various events in Basel).
I assume, that your response would be, that in the context of an art space, not as many people would be attracted as there would be in a public space.
But then, we believe, that even in a public space only those people would notice the action who are already interested in art and who would also be interested to visit one of the institutions mentioned above.

Yours sincereley,

So what are the conclusions of this experiment ?

First, you cannot change things on your one, you need at least a second person.

Second, my complaint about them switching back, has been classified as an art project.

But then, did they really switch back ?

I was wondering if they really switched back.

I remember some other fragment from youtube.com, that I discovered a couple of years ago.

(bombardement).

The annoucement of the beginning of the war against Irak. It is refering to the first preemptive war in history. But being preemptiv implies that they are switching forwards , not backwards. They win by anticipating the future, so may be it is us who are backwards, because we did not succeed in stopping them being forward.

So how did they succeed in switching forward ?

I remember yet another fragment from youtube.com, that I discovered a couple of years ago.

(powell)

This was part of a speech that Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, gave at the United Nations in order to justify the war in Irak. He based his argument on a secret document provided by the CIA. I wanted to know more about this secret document and found the following information on Wikipedia.com:
(Atem, Pause fuer komplexe Dinge)
Back in February 2003, a document appeared on the Downing Street website under Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was supposed to support the argument that weapons inspections in Irak did not work and that a military action was justified. A faculty member at Cambridge University, Glen Rangwala, was reminded of a document that he had recently seen at the library. He discovered that large sections of the text had been lifted from an article published in September 2002, by Ibrahin al-Marashi, a graduate student in the Unites States. The text had been clearly cut and pasted form the orginal work, as evidenced by grammatical errors of the author being carried through the dossier. Some sentences had been modified, for example the word "opposition" had been replaced with "terrorist" and the word "monitoring" with "spying". None of the text was attributed to the original author. The report of such blatant plagarism caught the attention of Richard Smith in the United States. He noticed that the document on the Downing Street website was a Microsoft Word document. He happened to know, that these documents contain a hidden revision log that represents its history, which includes the names of the people who worked on it. He extracted the history of the document.

(umdrehen)  cic22 is a government office called the Communications Information Centre. Alison Blackshaw was the personal assistant to Blair's press secretary and Murtaza Khan was a junior press officer in Downing Street. The document was a manipulated copy from another text and it was  prepared by Tony Blairs press office, not by the secret service.

Ok, you might say, nice story, but so what ?

Well, the story has not yet begun. It rather begins here, with those enigmatics signs A:. A: is usually the computers floppy drive. Obviously, the document has been transfered to another individual. Since this dossier gave rise to hearings in the House of Commons, we know who he was. In fact, the recipient of this document was none other than Colin Powell, who used the dossier in his address to the United Nations that we heard before. So the first hand evidence Colin talked about is really a manipulated copy of a student work form the preceding year.

To me, those signs A: look like fingerprints. I am absolutely convinced that they are fingerprints. This means, that somebody was there, but has already left. And this is the reason why demonstrations were pointless. Demonstrations are signs to people who are there, but they already left.

But how could they leave unnoticed ?

Lets carry on with my little experiment and the complaint I filed with the city of Basel, a small town in Switzerland. You remember, I asked for one tram during one day, on which the indecent advertissement would have been overwritten with material from women artists working in Basel.

Now lets suppose, that they would have accepted my proposal and the tram has been covered with art. It is ready to go. What would have happened. Consider me being a citizen who takes this tram for a journey from Basel to Zurich, a small city in Switzerland that has prohibited the advertissement in the first place, not because Zurich is more decent but because it is even more backwards than Basel. So now I get on tram

(einschalten)

 Its a rainy night, (wasser spruehen) I always travel at night, because this is my favorite moment to change things. The night is the time for internal protest, the kind of protest that is flowing from I to me. This is the most dangerous protest, because there is nobody to share it. And I always travel when its rainy because this is the best moment to make a film. There is no second person on the tramway. The second person is required  to listen to protest, not to share opinions. This is why demonstrations are so popular: there is always a second person around. Protesting is like writing letters, where you do not know if the content is heard or only expedited.This is why self-protest is impossible: the second person is permantently unavailable while sending the protest that it supposed to be received.

Now, my tram gets to central station, and I immediately understand why there is nobody on the tram.

(Knoepfe drehen , applaus )

There is an election going on and everybody is watching the election on big screens all over the small city. It seems to be very emotional. My tram leaves Basel on the way to Zurich.

There are many tunnels between Basel and Zurich.

All over the country, people participate in elections. And all off sudden, in the middle of a tunnel, I understand when they leave.  And how the leave.

(Obama)

The leave during the elections. And then change comes. This is the same kind of change as low tide and high tide. The tide comes and all our protest is washed away to the open sea. Election day is laundry day (bespruehen). Election day is where they wash the history of their documents. Everything we collected to prove their betrayal is cleaned up in the washing kitchen. After the washing day, we have to start all over again. The elections is a system, um die Geschichte scheibchenweise servieren zu koeenen. Eine Wahltorte. Die Geschichte als Historette.

Finally, I arrived at Zurich, another small town inn Switzerland. Here, the ad was prohibited, because Zurich is even more backwards than Bern and Basel. I decided to leave Zurich immediately. At central station, there was a huge video screen and thousands of people were watching the elections. Nobody was looking at my tram. Now I understood, that the guy from the city council,  was perfectly right. My tramproject was an art project that should go directly to the Museum. Any art project will be obsolete by the time it is finished, because of new elections. Any protest is overmatched by a simple election. Gerhard Richter hat das damals genau verstanden, deswegen hat er die toten Terroristen gemalt, nicht die lebendigen.

When I got back to Basel with the tram, it was still raining. There was still nobody in the tram, neither was there somebody outside to watch the tram. So I stopped the tram and got back home to listen to some fragments.

OK, you might ask, so what was the result of your experiments ?

Our problem are the elections because they spoil our protest. This is what artists never understood. Change, that is their most important weapon. Each time they change, we have to start all over again. All resistance that we built up, becomes void after the election. Jede Wahl ist eine Ausloeschung. Die Wahl loescht unser Logbuch. Each time they elect, we loose, because they claim to change the world significantly every 4 years or so, must faster than we can. And each time they claim change, we loose, you see, they know how to prevent our changes because they always change first. And when they change, they switch back, they say that was has happened is now history and the people start to cry of joy and emotions. They switch back every couple of years because they simply claim that the last couple of years are now, by definition , only history.

But then , how could we change things ?

Well, its simple, since our problem are the elections, we must abolish elections. Since there will be no change as long as there are elections, political art must abolish elections. We need to get rid of elections. Because the election is the moment where they leave. Consequently, in order to change the world, we have to prevent the world from changing. 

But even better, we could simply stop them from disappearing by remembering some fragments.

So when I hear the word "change", than I will remember their departure is imminent again.

And my departure is now imminent as well.