Horizons of the Possible

Abstract

FORMER WEST Research Congress Istanbul Technical University Istanbul, Turkey November 4-6, 2010 The second FORMER WEST Research Congress, On Horizons: Art and Political Imagination, focused on as a motivating and emancipatory concept in aesthetic, political, and philosophical fields. The offers a proposal of what can or cannot be imagined in present conditions and future projections, providing a catalyst to rethink the relationship between art production find the political imagination, while opening new alternatives beyond the totalizing narratives of capitalism. Presented in Istanbul, Turkey, the Congress was the second of five research congresses planned as part of FORMER WEST, a multi-year research, education, publishing, and exhibition project (2008 14 investigating the pivotal aesthetic, economic, and political shifts of 1989, as well as the post-colonial and post-communist histories of our recent past. At the same time, FORMER WEST speculates about a ''post-bloc future founded on the recognition of diversity, equality, and the possibility of one Transnational and multidisciplinary participants in this second Congress engaged in a rich and productive exchange-over three days highlighted by multifaceted approaches and important insights. The Congress began by considering the representation of 1989 as a temporal marker that transformed the world. That year, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Eastern socialist regimes signaled the West's alleged triumph over communism. With no competing ideology contesting the amalgamation of democracy with the free market, it was declared (after Francis Fukuyama) that the world had reached the end of history and had lost the capacity to envision an alternative future. Participants voiced a number of different perspectives, some questioning if 1989 has been fetishized, while others offered alternative dates and events for consideration as pivotal moments. Turkish sociologist Caglar Keyder proposed September 11, 2001. as the critical historic moment when the world's narrative shifted from the clash between capitalism and its alternatives to the clash between the West and ideologically driven Islamists. Keyder saw Europe's increasing alliance with the United States as foreclosing the promise of Turkey's membership in a European Union of open borders, civic participation, and ethnic and religious tolerance. At the same time, he argued, this shift has provided a catalyst for Turkey to explore other more fruitful directions. Peter Osborne's talk drew on Reinhart Koselleck's distinction between the of (events from the past made present) and the horizon of (the future made present). Osborne noted that the of expectation does not necessarily bring a surprise, as modernism expects a temporal continuity of progress. It is, in contrast, the unexpected that punctures the of expectation and opens the future to new possibilities. Also referring to Koselleck, Congress co-curator Simon Sheikh considered how the imagination or imaginaries connect the two categories of the space of experience and the of expectation. Art and art exhibitions partake in and produce these imaginaries. In the realm of the political, he noted, the is staged as an image, both local and concrete. For Sheikh, art functions not just as a metaphor but as a proposal of what can or cannot be imagined. Art punctures the of expectations, bringing the unexpected into the realm of experience and establishing new vectors of the possible. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In contrast, artist and writer Julie Ault questioned art's connection to the larger political stage. …