Syndicate: deep europe: letter from home

[lisa@lisa.demon.co.uk (Lisa Haskel) (by way of Andreas Broeckmann)]

Tunnelling to Deep Europe: A letter from my Island home



Dear Syndicalists,

Now home in London from the "Deep Europe" workshop in Kassel, but still in
something of a transitional mode, the time seems right for some reflections.
Responses would be welcome.

When the Channel Tunnel opened a few years ago my excitement was
almost uncontainable: finally connected, finally perhaps we could turn away
from looking across the atlantic towards the USA - our most influential
economic and linguistic neighbour - and instead turn to face Europe.

But what Europe are we looking towards?   Like approaching the ever-receeding
horizon, as Britain turned to look, the centre of Europe moved East, leaving
us connected, but increasingly peripheral.

To be a liberal, left-leaning type in England (lets not be shy about naming
the west-european context for socially and politically engaged art-making,
media practice and critique), means to embrace the European Union like a
religion.  One may argue with points of detail but its existence and
essential good must never be questionned.  It will sound surprising to
my "continental" colleagues, but the EU represents a turn away
from the total free-market doctrines of the Thatcher/Reagan years, from the
xenophobia of the British establishment, and from primary relationships with
ex-colonies.  It represents socially responsible government, new cultural
alliances and influences, post-war reconciliation.  But for the most part:
our sights still stop at the cold-war border; with war in the countries
of former Yugoslavia, breakdown of government in Albania, and the profound
social and economic upheavals in the former communist states treated at best
with far-away detachment, at worst as a troublesome source of refugees.
Perhaps its most influential and well documented, but arguably its most
inward-looking effect, has been its challenge to our formerly held belief
that some form of socialism could pave the way to social transformation in
our own country. As the post-1989 political drift continues, Central and
Eastern Europe increasingly become a willful blind-spot.

For me, the Syndicate is a form of connectedness with the deeper, Eastern
centre of Europe.  It helps to address the question of what kind of Europe
we are joining, and what kind of Europe do we want. When you live on an island
you live with certainty about one's borders, a strong sense of defensibility,
and of communication and connectedness as a luxury.  England is a country of
old insitutions and a fixed sense of heritage which 17 years of Conservative
government has entrenched and reinforced with startling effectiveness.  And
yet here, as anywhere, the idea of a homogeneous national culture is a total
myth: a fiction mobilised for political purposes, to promote stability and
maintain political and economic power.  Cracks, fissures and the possibility
of conflict are never far from the surface.  The post-colonial legacy has
given us a rich, vibrant, hybrid popular culture, influenced especially by
African, Indian and Celtic diasporas; but still deeply and undeniably
marked by colonial power relations and lived out in tension, injustice and
often violence. Social class continues to drive its wedge through British
society turning every individual into a walking, talking signifier, masking
and justifying unacceptable levels of economic and social inequality.  We are
even waging a post-colonial war which is so efficiently news-managed on the
"mainland" that it is never named as such, and brushes most people's everyday
life in a most incidental fashion.

Western europe - especially perhaps my island state - has a stability that
continues to allow art and media culture to maintain an illusion of autonomy,
or which assumes, enjoys and requires such knowing readership that
self-reflexivity becomes entertainment in itself, mobilising the pleasure and
satisfaction of being able to read all the signs.  There is just enough risk,
together with just enough enjoyment to be embraced by the art market.
Yes, there are there are extremely good, active and interesting artists making
critical work that is extremely socially engaged and politically
reflective, but their work tends to be pushed to the margins and (dis)regarded
as "mere" social comment, just a short step from either journalism or therapy.

At Hybrid Workspace, Andreas spoke about Vuc Cocic's characteristically
ironic and revealingly playful suggestion for a lud_west mailing list - a
forum for west european media practitioners to learn from the east.  Well: for
me this is a process that is already taking place. Artists's working out of
the fast-transforming countries of Central and East Europe seem to be
working from a sense of necessity and urgency, with a deep understanding and
a willingness to articulate the context for their practice and their images,
with an approach to technology and media which is more instrumental and
irreverent than fetishistic.  The overwhelming desire is to communicate,
rather than veil and code meanings for the appreciation of an elite peer
group.  On top of the opportunity that seeing and discussing eachothers work
presents to become more aware of the world in which we live, and more
sensitised to our position and responsibility, the committment of
intention and sophistication of execution of the work is an inspiration and
an intense learning experience, sharing objectives and strategies with
many arts and media practitioners here.

I am writing from England.  This society is transforming too: not so fast,
not so dramatically, not, compared to some cases, nearly so violently.  I
do not presume to make a comparison, but just to highlight areas of affinity,
as what is so often at stake is the articulation and mobilisation of the
relationship between location, nation states and the application of fixed,
essential notions of identity.  Some of us desire change and connection
that takes into account, that enjoys, that learns from a broader sense of
Europe than that presented to us as a given structure in the form of
the fortress EU. Eurocentricism, anyway, holds little attraction for my many
friends, neighbours and colleagues whose connections lie ouside Europe,
especially in Africa, the Caribbean and India.

My position at the Deep Europe workshop was a constantly challenging one:
both peripheral and central. I found myself from the most peripheral nation,
and the one least engaged with the transformations going on in the vast
majority of the European landmass.  Simultaneously, my position was central
as a native speaker of the meetings' common language (a geopolitical sleight-
of-hand allows English people to assume this position when actually it belongs
to Americans).  This made me think of my grandparents who spoke a private and
incomprehensible polyglot of yiddish, lithuanian and russian - a linguistic
mish-mash marked by specificities of migration, location and history. (I was
not encouraged to learn languages in case to undermine my ability to
assimilate).  This reminded me that I should be aware that my responsibility
in my lazy position as a monoglot should be seen as equally determined by
economic and political relationships.

But the "Deep Europe" workshop, especially the "Visa Department" event,
allowed me to work together with colleagues in a collaborative way, to find a
common voice indicative of differences between us but speaking - with a good
measure of irony and humour - of a shared desire: a desire for connection,
for free movement, for the opportunity to speak and be heard, for fair
treatment and understanding beyond that meted out by our various nation states,
and all this with recognition of cultural differences and the realities of
cultural, political, economic and linguistic influences.  The atmosphere and
working practice of the workshop was open, generous, accomodating and
respectful, that looked for and valued points of contact above all else.

So perhaps, this is what Deep Europe is all about.  Not a political position,
a utopia or a manifesto, but rather a digging, excavating, tunnelling process
toward greater understanding and connection, but which fully recognises
different starting points and possible directions: a collaborative process
with a shared desire for making connection.  There may be hold-ups and some
frustrations, quite a bit of hard work is required, but we can perhaps be
aided by some machinary. The result is a channel for exchange for use by both
ourselves and others with common aims and interests.


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L i s a  H a s k e l
lisa@lisa.demon.co.uk