Issues at Stake

Issues at Stake

What effects does the coronavirus pandemic have on real living conditions worldwide? How does the global function in the local? Under the title Issues at Stake and in cooperation with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) brings together texts on the worldwide situation since early 2020 written by its members. The ADKDW is a Cologne-based non-profit cultural institution that moves beyond the Eurocentric doctrines of cultural history; it initiates, produces and organizes events in various artistic and discursive fields. The members – national and international artists, curators, authors and scholars – function as a think tank and provide the framework for the ADKDW‘s artistic program.

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Issues at Stake Author: MADHUSREE DUTTA Proofreading: ROMY FURSLAND Translation: KATHARINA FREISINGER

Sunset Repellant, public installation by 2020 group, Mumbai in 2018

It is impossible for any public institution to remain unaffected by the fragility of these times.

For an institution such as ADKDW (Akademie der Künste der Welt / Academy of the Arts of the World), which was founded in 2012 to “activate the capacities of art and public discourse to highlight the potentials of an intercultural urban society”, the effect of the pandemic could be particularly far-reaching and multifaceted. The pandemic has threatened the fundamental base of what is popularly understood as globalisation, in terms of economic opportunity and worldwide exchanges. Public life seems to be coiling back into the smallest of social units. In order to understand the various issues at stake, and to find some clues as to the way forward, we have collated several observations from fellow travellers. As part of the series Issues at Stake, we will publish texts by members of ADKDW. The members of the board of ADKDW are cultural producers working in a wide range of niches and disciplines, who live and practise in different

places across the globe. The members are the think tank of the institution. In the following editions, five of them will map different aspects of the pandemic crisis from where they are located – geographically, culturally and politically.

MADHUSREE DUTTA is a filmmaker, author and curator. She has been the artistic director of the ADKDW since 2018. From 1998 to 2016, she was the director of Majlis, a center for women’s rights and interdisciplinary art initiatives in Mumbai. In 2019 she was named Cultural Manager of the Year by the Cologne Cultural Council.

Photography: Dörthe Boxberg

Ironically, the pandemic of 2020 appears to be the first such crisis to turn every human being on the planet (we do not yet know its effect on other living beings) into a potential victim. Past wars, epidemics, catastrophes, economic meltdowns etc. have all had some sort of regional characteristics – one group’s crisis has often been a source of opportunity for another group; at best, one group’s crisis has awakened another group’s compassion or conscience, leading to calls for solidarity or aid. But this virus seems to be a great leveller. Its planetary expanse has reached a scale which, until now, has existed only in mythological imagination.

Since medical science has run out of depth the only viable option is a social one – control the spread of the virus by distancing from other people and objects. Contrary to the convention of call for mobilisation of people for protection of one’s rights this time around the call for survival and for being responsible towards others is to remain isolated. But isolation is not

Issues at Stake

‘normal’ and so it needs to be facilitated, imposed, orchestrated or even guarded by laws, governance and force. And through those cracks, the larger crisis is getting fragmented into familiar socio-political brackets and into territorial dimensions. Known issues of political anxieties – border controls, state surveillance, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalist and pro-normative fervour, anti-poor policies, labour retrenchment, racial hostility, gender violence, the collapse of the welfare state, the muting of opposition voices – are rearing their heads again around the pandemic crisis.

Everyone has been asked to stay at home to avoid contamination. But not everyone is safe at home – there has been a 60% rise in reported cases of domestic violence in Europe alone since April this year (Hans Kluge, Regional Director – WHO). Not everyone has a safe home – many people live in dense ghettos, overpopulated camps, makeshift arrangements, on the streets or in various pockets of no man’s land. And this time, density-related mortality is occurring not only in the countries of the Global South but predominantly in the cities of America and Europe. Not everyone can reach the safety of home – in India, roughly estimated, 600,000 internal migrant workers have walked distances ranging from 600 to 1800 km from their workplaces in the metropolises to their homes following the countrywide lockdown, and some have died on the way. Not everyone is allowed the safety of home – in many authoritarian states the government is taking advantage of the collapse of public life to crack down on political activists and ideological opponents. Many of them are imprisoned without fair trial on the pretext of preserving national security. And then, quite simply, not everyone can afford to stay safe at home – some people’s livelihoods demand their presence in public places.

Some of these side effects are likely to outlive the virus. The people who fall off the grid of safe homes and state provisions are the ones who are precarious and who live in a grey zone of citizenship. It is often said that coronavirus is the biggest blow capitalism has ever suffered. If so, then the system that nurtures and protects capitalism is likely to find drastic ways to cut down its own liabilities. We may not have to speculate

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for long as to who and what will come under that ‘cutting down’ agenda. Some of these precarious people form a substantial part of ADKDW’s constituency of protagonists, artists and audience. We need to stay connected to think together through this time of isolation.

Summary of the texts that will follow: Safety is the core issue, but the rhetoric of war is still the popular rallying call. Stefan Weidner, author, translator and Arabic literature scholar, discusses how policy measures to combat the virus crisis, and the post-9/11 cry of War on Terror mirror and complement each other.

Restrictions on travel are understood to be crucial for safety. Theatre director Monika Gintersdorfer reflects upon the implications for transnational cultural co-operation and for artists’ non-normative, non-conformist and non-territorial way of life.

A health emergency may simply highlight the existing political emergency. Percy Zvomuya, author and journalist from Harare, writes a caustic piece on how public institutions and the welfare system have been systematically destroyed in Zimbabwe, an oft-repeated symptom in many post-colonial nation states.

Theatre scholar and rights activist Adriana Schneider Alcure writes from Rio De Janeiro informing us that even after the lowest of the lows, ushered in by the twin viruses of corona and the xenophobic politics of the big boys, there will be a new humanity – and artists are forming networks to play the ‘midwife’.

Yet, beyond the state machinery and related power games, civil society can still rise to the new challenges and invent new methodologies for solidarity and action. Cultural scientist Mi You discusses some such initiatives in China that took place at the beginning of the corona outbreak in January-February.