Just the naked truth changing reality

Abstract

This paper examines the critical potential of the strategy of subversive affirmation in contemporary Western performances. It builds on the article “Subversive Affirmation: On Mimesis as a Strategy of Resistance” (2006) by German theorists Inke Arns and Sylvia Sasse. In the first chapter, a theoretical reflection of the concept subversive affirmation will be given by a discussion of multiple examples of subversive affirmation from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and The United States in chronological order between the 1920s until the year 2010. In this discussion the concept of over-identification, first posed by Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, will be integrated to discuss the examples. Over-identification is understood by Arns and Sasse as a form of subversive affirmation and is extensively discussed by the Flemish research collective BAVO. In this discussion of the performances that make use of subversive affirmation, in which the definition provided by Arns and Sasse is guiding, four components of subversive affirmation stand out: affirmation, subversion, distancing and exposure. The observations of chapter one are further clarified by the notion of hegemony, posed by Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe. In the second chapter, these four components are elaborated on, in order to present their effectivity as means of artistic resistance, and to provide a lens through which one can look at those performative actions using the strategy of subversive affirmation. In this chapter the four components are further divided. Regarding the components observed in the first chapter, each one is distinguished into two sub-methods. In the third chapter these components – and their sub-methods – are being used as analytical tools in the dramaturgical analysis of two performative actions: Enjoy Poverty by Renzo Martens (2008) and The Federal Emergency Programme (2014) by the Center for Political Beauty. This paper presents the position that the strategy of subversive affirmation has a high critical potential in contemporary performances, because it enables artists to be critical about large topics regarding the current society (e.g. representative democracy, climate change and the refugee crisis), without their work being solely understood as commercial or capitalist art. Through the insider’s position, they force large institutions or influential people to justify, and reconsider, their own policies and responsibilities regarding these large topics.