Names and Trademarks

In contrast to expectations it has become clear that there is nothing liberating about the breaking of state authority—on the contrary: we are consigned to corruption and the impervious game of local interests which are no longer restricted by a formal legal framework.

In a certain sense Bosnia is merely a metaphor for Europe as a whole. Europe is coming closer and closer to a state of non-statehood where state mechanisms are losing their binding character. The authority of the state is being eroded from the top by the trans-European regulations from Brussels and the international economic ties and from the bottom by local and ethnic interests, while none of these elements are strong enough to fully replace state authority.

—Slavoj Žižek, "Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa," Irwin: Retroprinzip: 1883-1993 (2003)

The erosion of the state mentioned by Slavoj Žižek has a thousand faces. The traces can be detected in many unlikely places, but they are particularly evident in culture. What do web messages such as "Wir sprechen Europäisch" actually mean? Who are the addressees of ethnic, geographical, and political designations? Is the expression "European theatre" primarily a (trendy) trademark or an identificatory mirror? In 1990, just before the outbreak of the bloody war, there were as many as 35 theatres in the territory of former Yugoslavia whose names included the term "national." What does this qualifier signify? Isn't it a clear sign of decentralization and the strengthening of regional and local structures—a sign that the genie has already escaped from the bottle?

Contemporary political configurations that are suspended between ethnic demands and trans-nationalism have various remarkable consequences. Conflicts that once appeared as confrontations between social and economic systems are today masked as the cultivation of geographical, linguistic, and cultural differences. On the surface, this type of politics frequently takes the form of a struggle for the appropriation of names, symbols, and trademarks. The contended issues are diverse, ranging from champagne and the Lipizzaner horse to state emblems. The mainstream art of today is the art of erasing and creating trademarks. Contemporary European politics is fundamentally identity politics addressing the individual with a simple question: What are you? Points of view and beliefs are of secondary importance. The global approach to terrorism can well illuminate this tendency. Proclamations of war on terrorism are in essence directed against terrorism "as such" and against the (mili-tary) tactics without asking questions about the motives, ideology, or social antagonisms that create or sustain it.

In the 20th century, art was frequently critical of the authority of the state. A dissident, a national enemy, and a revolutionary were typical positive heroes of the time. The state was perceived as a formation employing an oppressive ideological apparatus to discipline individuals and stifle their freedoms: a foreign body standing between society and the individual. New political developments compel us to re-open the question of whether the state is still a key repressive formation against which art should direct its revolutionary power. Isn't a radical turn needed at this point?

The utopia of the future is a state without nation, organized as an abstract structure of authorities and principles and no longer based on an ethnic community or territory. Such a state will need a new kind of art. Or, as Slavoj Žižek says: "As far as art, according to definition, is subversive in relation to the existing establishment, any art that today wants to be up to the level of its assignment Provocation must be a state art in the service of a still nonexistent country" (2003).