Exploring the Affective Politics of Political Beauty

Abstract

To understand the intricate interconnection between politics and affects, I examine a performance of the berlin-based artist collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty, ZPS), in which artist activists staged a horseback ride to fasten a manifesto of ten theses of political beauty on the façade of the German Bundestag. Interconnecting theories of political difference (Marchart 2010), which differentiate between the ontological realm of ‘the political’ and ontic realizations of ‘politics’, and political theories of affect, I approach the affective dimensions of political difference as affective politics. Building on Bargetz’s (2014) “political grammar of feelings”, I situate the performance’s temporary institutions and interruptions of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, as well as ‘feeling politics’ and ‘politics of feeling’ respectively, as affective encounters to experience or enact political beauty. Political beauty, in an antagonistic framework that foregrounds contingency, conflict and absence, mobilizes affects as inherently ambivalent and contentious. As a challenge to the diagnosis of an inevitable post-political condition, I discuss the potential of political beauty as affective politics to potentially re-politicize politics. Borrowing from Derrida (1994), I conduct a spectral reading of ZPS’ ten theses and carve out three analytical vignettes – beauty, vitality and longing – to conceptualize political beauty as oscillating between the desire and hope for political change, which can never be fully satisfied, and a dismissal of (political) ugliness and death. In the end, political beauty escapes a definition because it is, after all, nothing but an impossible project for politics and affects of an unknown future.

Competing climate spectacles in the amplified public space

“…What is missing is an understanding of the spatial dimensions of this contestation (Landau, 2019). In particular, we need to examine how these discourses emerge from concerted protest actions in the city and what this might contribute to an wider transformative change, where the 'contemporary rules of the game are eroded; in which the status quo is called into question' (Shove, 2010(Shove, : 1278.…”

“…In a study of environmental protests in the United Kingdom and Romania, Mercea (2012) demonstrates the significance of ‘digital prefigurative participation’ where digital communication technologies facilitate large scale collective action in the streets, echoed by scholars elsewhere (Tremayne, 2014). Using a case study of an activist artist collective, Landau (2019) points to the political potential of affective politics in urban spaces to counter the ‘post-political’ condition.…”

Politics of (dis)assembling – (re)moving borders across Europe

“…This interrelates with my own reflexive positionality within this analysis: I have observed ZPS's activities since 2013, have moved my body in ZPS protest marches, have wrestled with their founding idea(l) of political beauty. 50 In the context of the First Fall, however, I did not actively participate. My attempt to capture the politics of (dis)assembling hence relies on a triangulated approach connecting semi-structured interviews with ZPS activists who organized and participated in the three acts, with extensive analysis of national and international newspaper, blogs, and social media.…”

“…Their interventions have been described as action/performance art, artistic activism or 'aggressive humanism'. 5 As a critique to the inactivity of German and European politicians and citizens, 6 ZPS proclaims the normative idea(l) of political beauty 7 as driver for political action. Sparking controversy in international media outlets, the performance Erster Europäischer Mauerfall (First European Fall of the Wall; hereafter First Fall) intervenes in individual emotional as well as legal-bureaucratic registers of the ongoing global refugee crisis.…”

The Beauty of Feeling

“…In a previous analysis, I have systematically screened of all ten theses of political beauty (Landau, 2019; see Table 2). 1 In that exercise, I distilled three analytical vignettes which evoke ZPS's understanding of political beauty-captured in the codes of BEAUTY, VITALITY, and LONGING.…”