In memoriam Pascale Jeannée (1976-2002)

Artistic activisms have not only just started to oscillate in the political field. The history of the overlapping of art and politics is a long one. At the same time, crossing borders into the political has always meant desirable capital of distinction in progressive art discourses. In more recent activist practices in the context of protests against economic globalization, though, it seems more the case that artistic and art-like practices are converging with the political, but without insisting on the terminology and effects of the art field. In this context, the term hybrid?resistance conjoins the anti-essentialist connotations of hybridity with a concept of resistance that is located in the micro-political realm and is characterized by its interrelationships, cross-connections and overlapping neighboring zones.

Demonstrating that these kinds of overlaps do not exist merely in the imaginations of poststructuralist authors, texts by Harald Kuemmer, Robert Foltin, Gini Müller and Gerald Raunig, on border camps, Pink & Silver, and the PublixTheatreCaravan investigate current phenomena in conjunction with the movement against economic globalization. Essays by Oleg Kireev and Marion Hamm reach even farther into the depths of this history, the former dealing with Russian activisms in the 90s, the latter with the beginnings of a form of action in Britain that still insists on understanding public spheres as such: reclaim the streets.

In addition to the analysis of and reflection on projects and practices, this issue assembles critical approaches to the conceptual, historical, and political potentials and problems of the phenomenon and concept of hybridity. Boris Buden inquires the emancipatory and depoliticizing portions of hybrid resistance, Stefan Nowotny the conditions of their possibilities against the background of the inevitable repetition of existing power relations. Hito Steyerl provides an urgent critique of the postcolonial concept of hybridity from the perspective of the subaltern in non-Anglo-Saxon countries, and Ulf Wuggenig points out the danger of a destructive hybridization of art and economy in conjunction with the economization of the cultural, in particular of the field of art.

You will also find some of the texts published here in a printed version in German in:
Kulturrisse 03/02. Available on order from office@igkultur.at

Translated by Aileen Derieg