[D66] Deserting from the Culture Wars

[R.O.]

https://www.bakonline.org/basics/deserting-from-the-culture-wars/

Deserting from the Culture Wars

By Maria Hlavajova, Sven Lütticken, Bini Adamczak, Kader Attia, Rose 
Hammer, Tom Holert, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarty, Dan McQuillan, Johannes 
Paul Raether, Andreas Siekmann, Esmee Schoutens, Natascha Sadr 
Haghighian, Jonas Staal	


BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and 
London present Deserting from the Culture Wars, the second reader in 
BAK’s BASICS series, edited by Maria Hlavajova and Sven Lütticken.

Deserting from the Culture Wars reflects upon and intervenes in our 
current moment of ever-more polarizing ideological combat, often seen as 
the return of the “culture wars.” How are these culture wars defined and 
waged? Engaging in a theater of war that has been delineated by the 
enemy is a shortcut to defeat. Getting out of the reactive mode that 
produces little but a series of Pavlovian responses, this book proposes 
a tactical desertion from the culture wars as they are being waged 
today—a refusal to play the other side’s war games, an unwillingness to 
be distracted.

The volunteer troops in the culture wars are often given marching orders 
by professional masters of propaganda. What, then, might artists and 
others who are professionally engaged with images and imaginaries, with 
narratives and assemblies, have to contribute to the collective 
discovery of different modes of living culture? Far from limiting the 
performance of culture to a one-sided speech act, an emancipatory 
understanding of culture needs to conceive of speech as embodied and 
intersubjective—as a collective performance.

The publication is available from October 2020, and can now be 
pre-ordered via the MIT press website. Save the date: the launch of the 
book takes place during the (re-)opening of Tony Cokes: To Live as 
Equals (16 October 2020–10 January 2021), on Friday 16 October, from 
19.00 till 21.00 hrs!

Deserting from the Culture Wars includes contributions by Bini Adamczak, 
Kader Attia, Rose Hammer, Tom Holert, Geert lovink, Sven Lütticken, 
Diana McCarty, Dan McQuillan, Johannes Paul Raether, Natascha Sadr 
Haghighian, Esmee Schoutens, Andreas Siekmann, and Jonas Staal.