Μπιενάλε της Αθήνας :: It's far too intellectual to have an impact on me

"It" is the Athens Biennial.

The intention that lies in the heart of these thoughts, however, is not to orchestrate a one-dimensional critique on an existing situation, but to achieve the very questioning of our desire to have an impact on things. Therefore, the stages through which one goes when negotiating feelings of entrapment and impotence, when one, in their quest to discover a mode of articulation and a sense of participation, attempts to turn to a series of alternatives and is confronted by a series of dead-ends, will be explored. (italics added)

"...to achieve the very questioning of our desire to have an impact on things." Good grief. Are they so bored in Europe that they must make a virtue of not being able to cope? (Coping being shorthand for having an "impact on things.") It seems pretty obvious that our "desire to cope" is part of our desire for food, shelter, & pleasure. Why would one want to question such a desire? Unless one somehow thought it fashionable to question life itself. I can see questioning the quality and environmental impact of our manifesting, our coping, our civilization; I do it all the time. A good question in that vein might be How can people tune out the ugly, the foul, the inhumane? Is that yet another survival skill? Albeit one with some negative impacts. But I am lost as to how one could write a sentence which calls on us to question our desire to "make a difference," to achieve some immortality, even though we know that at the very very best, we are Ozymandias.

I don't know how I got on their mailing list but boy, they sure got the wrong American. Of course maybe the text is just an inept translation and it makes sense in the original (modern) Greek. But I received the translation.

Comments

[Rodya]

I am not an expert on the Athens Biennial, but - forgive me for saying so - I don't think you are making much of an effort to understand what they mean. Sure, it might be a translation problem, but it doesn't really seem that way. I think that what they mean by "desire to have an impact" is a "desire to be political". "Politics" - a very Greek or, rather, Athenian concept, in that sense - is exactly "participating in common affairs". The "questioning" bit makes a reference to the current metapolitical situation, where "impacts" have in most real respects become a conceptual impossibility. Our "desire to make a difference", as you phrase it, is perhaps the first and foremost thing that needs questioning, in a metapolitical world, where "making a difference" is regulated by exactly the same systemic processes as "not making a difference".

Respectfully,
Rodya