Hui After Occupy CAJKorean

8/13/2019 Hui After Occupy CAJKorean

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machetes in Cuban art. The national labels were flagsof convenience for marketers, useful in neatly andsimply identifying under-exploited tracts of art for newspeculators unschooled in the history of avant-gardeand contemporary art. Since those labels were so muchinsisted upon, they had a deep effect upon the way thatart was made, seen and written about.

Internationally, if yBa was the first example ofa revamped national art made for a global stage that

had been transformed by the end of the Cold War andthe collapse of Eastern European communism, thenthe very thing that assured its notoriety also eventuallykilled it. Nations with more dramatic stories and ex-treme political conditions and far more dynamic eco-nomically and important politically started to produceart that fitted the global model, driving Britain to thesidelines. For how could the depredations even of theBritish working class, and the oppressive character of aregime that remained nominally democratic compareto the sweeping transformations of, say, China with itsprecipitate economic growth and urbanisation, and itscrucial role in sustaining the economy of the US andthe West as a whole; or of Russia with the misery of its vast mass es, contra sted with the flau nted wealt h of atiny few, and the ruthlessness, corruption and ambitionof its dictatorship?

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(1) http://www.doxacollective.org/2011/03/26/creative-space

DOXA , Creative SpaceArt and Spatial Resistance in Asia , 2012, http://www .doxacollective.org

Yuk Hui, After Occupy, in Contemporary rt Journal, 2013, vol.15,Korea


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(4) Henry Lefebvre,The Urban Revolution, University ofMinnesota Press, 2003, p.18

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(7) The Structure of World History (Chinese translation), 2012


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A er Occupy

Ill begin with the following hypothesis: society hasbeen completely urbanized. This hypothesis impliesa definition: An urban society is a society thatresults from a process of complete urbanization.This urbanization is virtual today, but will becomereal in the future.

Urban Revolution , Henri Lefebvre

Urbanisation is actual today. All spaces haveto become productive. Even those ruins of abandonedindustrial sites are modified into galleries, hotels. Spaceis no longer a place where man dwells, but ratherbecomes a prosthetic support of human productivity.In view of this condition, four years ago, I proposed aproject called Creative Space(1), which looks into the

problematics of urbanisation and we come out withan edited volume titledCreative Space: Art and Spatial Resistance i n East Asia(2013). The chapters from artistsand theorists were originally written in 4 languages(Korean, Chinese, Japanese, English) and finally alltranslated into Chinese. The audience was supposed tobe Chinese, since I think China has the most seriousproblem with urbanisation compared to other East

Asian count ries. It is not only becau se that resistancein China is illegal, but also the economic developmentmake people blind to most of the consequences ofurbanisation that are taking place now. The urbanisa -tion process in East Asia is rigorous and aggressive, andit appears to be irreversible due to the homogenisationof political and historical thoughts. Thinking about artand culture, people always see Europe as the future ofEast Asia a historical question but maybe in termsof neoliberal development and urbanisation, East Asia will be the f uture of Europe, thoug h this time, a totallydark one.

Future of Urbanism At the very beg inning I wanted to discuss the

possibility of space, to look at how our life is condi-tioned by the construction of space especially in thecontext of urban development and new technologies. I wanted to do a theoretical study f rom Immanuel Kantto Peter Sloterdijk; I wanted to look at intuitions, me-dia rich environment, etc. The turning point happened when Rem Koolhass wa s pitching a project in HongKong to build one of the largest art centres in East

Yuk Hui / eDoctorofphilosophy, ArtCritic Special Feature

(1) http://www.doxacollective.org/2011/03/26/creative-space

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gives us experience of beauty and communities as it was in ancient t ime, but taste that governs our bodyand takes individualisation as its goal. As Thierry deDuve showed that in contemporary art, the noun artreplaces the noun beauty of the 18th century proposedby thinkers such as Kant(3). Art becomes the generic,becomes a surface on which new forms of accumula-tion happens. Functionalism has been long bypassedin the aesthetic dimension of the culture industry,discussed by Adorno and Horkheimer in their Dialecticsof Enlightenment , the new combination of aesthetics andfunctionalism concretised, for example in a MacBook Air, constitutes a new politics o f aesthet ics and experi-ence. It would be intriguing for us today to think ofHenri Lefebvre and urbanists of his generations critiqueof Le Corbusier, as Lefebvre wrote the street containsfunctions that were overlooked by Le Corbusier: theinformative function, the symbolic function, the ludicfunction. The street is a place to play and learn. Thestreet is disorder(4). The story goes, when we see howthe whole discourse of Richard Florida becomes aparadigm for urban development. How can more play-ful, art-and-design-enriched neighbourhood be moreproductive than others?

Productivity of ResistanceThe second move comes from the occupy

movement started globally on the 15th October 2011.I went back to Hong Kong and I was immediatelyabsorbed in the movement for more than 3 monthsbefore I went back to work. During these three months,I tried to read and discuss together with the partici-pants about alternative economies, especially topicsaround gift economy, potlatch, etc. It happened thatDavid Graeber became a figure of the occupy move-ment, and it also happened that I translated his worksbefore. During the occupy, he was updating me aboutthe situation in New York. We went through the works

of Graeber, Simmel, Bernard Stiegler, Marx, Smith etcin order to think through a critical history of economy. At the same time , it seems clearer and clearer to methat in Hong Kong the occupy is not about fighting anabstract entity called capitalism but rather a concreteproblem concerning space. The global financial crisisis not simply the stock market, but urbanisation andgentrification. It is evident when we think of the bubble

of mortgages firstly happened in England and in theUSA. Financialisation is not completely virtual, it just wants to make land s widely virtual so it can specu lateon them. Like Financialisation, urbanisation is not aconcrete substance, it is clear that it is a process of cre-ative destruction, firstly urbanisation of rural areas, andthen constant gentrification of urban areas to increasethe property price through sales of life-styles.

The specific problem in East Asia, especially inHong Kong is that free market has been always a mythof its economical triumph and there exists a confusionbetween the Chinese Communist Party and socialismand communism, any intervention will be consideredas a move towards socialism. Ideology creates greatfear and threat to any alternative form of living andeconomic development, though sadly people dontreally look into the true meaning of this word. The rentcan be doubled in a year time, the property price keepson soaring every 3 months. People of my generation arecondemned to be slaves who work all life long for buy-ing a small apartment. But attention here, gentrificationis not a program that targets only at residential areas,but also penetrates into all public spaces. Gentrificationis pervasive. In Tokyo, in the Miyahita park, Nike wastrying to work with the Shibuya ward to rename thepark as Nike Park, build skate park and climbing wall,and then Nike will become the management authorityof the park. Homeless people and artists were kickedout. There is virtually no space for us. There is onlyadaptation of spaces, and these spaces become limita-tions and or technics of control. They can always doother things to make a living no matter what it is, butthe fact is that they are deprived of their rights, theirefforts to live. The ironic side is that there seems to bea narcissistic proud in the ability of human beings: theycan always find ways to survive, though they becomemore and more like bare life.

The occupy movement changed somewhat the

direction of this book: if art is already the organon ofgentrification, then what else can we do? What canhappen when we use spectacle against spectacle? Occu-py, is always to occupy space, to reclaim public spaces.But the problem is not that occupy is unproductive, butprobably because it is too productive. This productiv-ity makes it easily become an spectacle. A spectacle issomething that have the ability of reproduction. It has

(3) Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, The MIT Press, 1998

(4) Henry Lefebvre,The Urban Revolution, University ofMinnesota Press, 2003, p.18

Asia, and I was involved in certain ex tent. It was at thatmoment, I felt things are turning a bit insane. I askedmyself: how can these people who know nothing of thisplace to gentrify the city, especially an architect who isfamous for his proposal of the generic city? A genericcity is one that only gives difference through homo-geneity, that makes differentiations on the surface. Ageneric city is no longer one to come, but a globalphenomenon. Surprisingly those critical theorists thatI encountered seem to agree that the development ofthese art facilities are necessary for the region.

For Koolhass, urbanism is no longer a ques-tion, but rather an illusion, as he has written in hisbook: urbanism doesnt exist. It is only an ideology in Marxs sense of the word. Architectu re really exists, l ikeCoca-Cola: Though coated with ideology, it is a realproduction, falsely satisfying a falsified need. Urbanismis comparable to the advertising propagated aroundCoca-Cola - pure spectacular ideology. Modern capital-ism which organised the reduction of all social life to aspectacle, is incapable of presenting any spectacle otherthan that of our own alienation. Its urbanistic dream isits masterpiece. In fact this quote doesnt come fromKoolhaas but from a manifesto titled Basic Program o fthe Bureau of Unitary Urbanism appeared in Internationale Situationniste #6 , 1961. But Koolhaas kind of hijackedit, and as the founding stone of his architectural works.It could be true that urbanism doesnt exist, but it mayalso be true that architecture doesnt exist as well. I amnot sure if a Coca-Cola would still be Coca-Cola ifthere were no advertisements, in the same token, I amnot sure if architecture would be still architecture with-out urbanism, sure enough there will be buildings madeof wood, of concrete, of all type of materials as theGreek word arkhitekton means master of building, butmaybe not the word architecture that we understandtoday. Funny enough, Kojin Karatani recognized thatKoolhaas is a real Marxist, his proposal is to destroy

global capitalism through the generic city (2)

. I havenever been sure of this proposition, I think Karatanimixed up the different notion of creative destructionof Marx and Joseph Schumpeter, for Schumpeter thesuccess of capitalism is a step closer to its own destruc-tion, while for Marx creatively destroying its owncondition of existence in order to create a new condi-tion of survival, this is the slow revolution of capitalism.

From this perspective, we can understand that FernandBraudels longue dure was important for the analysis ofcapitalism.

Art and cultural industry are becoming , if I

can say, organons of gentrification. Artists play a moreand more important role in creating social milieu ofliving, one finds oneself through engaging with art, notthrough the production and reproduction of art, buttaste and style, like food, wine, cloths, cars, furnitures.Tetsuo Ogawa, a Japanese activist who involved inthe past decades in fighting for the right of homelesspeople wrote In Japan an artist-in-residence programmeans an art event for the sake of area rehabilitation, which is typically lead by the aut horities in collabora-tion with local businesses, and supported by the fund-ing of corporations. The sad story of gentrificationis the same everywhere, often habitants were kickedout of their old neighbourhood by police, then talland gated residential buildings are build, next to them will be cozy restau rants and galleries, museums, a rtistsand designers are invited to rent those galleries for arelatively reasonable price for the first few years. Thenthe high property price is justified, middle class or high-income family will move in.

Art and cultural industry is taking a newrole not only in the organization of urban life, butalso in the organization of urban space. It was 2012a few days before Christmas, when I was walking onKurfrstendamm, I saw two hand-written slogans insidea display box made of glass. On one side we read: Emancipationon Materiellen Sein; on the other side: Freiheit d urch den Geist . Was they not direct referencesto Marx and Hegel? Both historical materialism anddialectics of the spirit? The person who has designedit must have studied some Marx and Hegel, or at leastread from Wikipedia. Lets be kind, we assume that heor she may want to create an irony by juxtaposing Marx

and Hegel with the consumerism of Berlins largestshopping street. But didnt this irony finally remain asad one? Because all gestures can be easily absorbedby the aesthetics of consumerism, and finally those who had the will to resistant find themselve s like foolsamong commodities. In fact, we are right in the time ofthe society of spectacles.

It is no longer art as techne that creates and

(2)In Kojin Karatanis prefaceto the Chinese translationof Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number , Money


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be too ambitious to give a new image of revolutionhere, but I think to in order to think beyond occupy to-day, it is necessary to confront this question of silence. When David Graeber described the anarc hic organisa-tion of small villages in Madagascar, he was not describ-ing an organized resistance, but the everyday life of thehabitants. How are we going to re-imagine everyday lifeand revolution? Maybe we should become numb, noth-ing to lament and nothing to celebrate. Let me end this with anot her quote from the Programme l mentairedu Bureau dUrbanisme Unitaire, and maybe today wecan take the idea of the revolution of everyday life in aquite different sense, if not even reversed:

We are not contending that people must returnto some stage previous to the era of conditioning,but rather that they must go beyond it. We haveinvented the architecture and the urbanism thatcannot be realized without the revolution ofeveryday life without the appropriation ofconditioning by everyone, its endless enrichmentand fulfilment.

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Hui After Occupy CAJKorean

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