Can art speak out about current political issues, religious tolerance or the power of capitalism? Redefine the Enemy investigated the political potential of art in a changing society. Where artists previously took the position of independent observer, they now realise that they, like their audience, are part of a larger political-economic system that guides and influences us. Does social criticism still have a place in contemporary art?
The artists in the exhibition challenged the public's perceptions with works that undermine, deny and invert established norms and values.
In the door Sea Urchin Editions (Ben Schot) compiled presentation Kingdom Come focused on utopia as an alternative to the ever-expanding consumer society. Since 2000, the independent publisher Sea Urchin has focused on works from the historical avant-garde and counterculture, movements that were not only aimed at destroying existing power structures but were also a mixture of all kinds of utopian movements. Sea Urchin attempts to reposition the counterculture through the publication of printed matter (including André Breton & Philippe Soupault) and by distributing the pamphlets of the collective The Buggers.
For Kingdom Come, Sea Urchin invited a number of independent publishers, thinkers, and artists to respond to the concept of utopia. Gerard Bellaart (Cold Turkey Press), for example, presented a selection from his archive. Former Provo and Kabouter leader Roel van Duijn made a selection from his private archive (housed at the International Institute of Social History Amsterdam). Cary Loren (The Bookbeat/The End Is Here) presented the science fiction film Aelita (1924) by Yakov Protazanov. René van der Voort (Any Record) put together a presentation on communes. The Buggers produced a flag and a pamphlet. And The Somniloquy Institute presented a utopian slideshow.
The total installation 'Forty Years of Boredom 1968-2008' by Vincent WJ van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal functioned as a three-dimensional manifesto. The heart of this project was the film pamphlet 'Follow Us or Die'. Staal and Van Gerven Oei collected images from the internet and from film archives, in which, among others, perpetrators of well-known violent incidents (such as the 'high school shootings' in Columbine and Virginia Tech) speak out. An image of aggressive and existential resistance emerges from the staccato-edited film. Guy Debord's film pamphlet 'Réfutation de tous les jugements' (1975) was shown as a counterpart. In it, he counters the criticism of his controversial film 'La société du spectacle' with an argument about the myth of the involved spectator. The artists concluded with 'Against Irony': in hard stone slabs they chiselled a flaming protest against the use of irony in art and theory.
Daniele Pario Perra presented 'Twenty Questions to Baron Montesquieu'. In this video, contact is made with the eighteenth-century statesman via a medium. A scientific committee posed a number of pressing questions to which Montesquieu answers. Montesquieu published 'De l'esprit des lois' in 1748, in which he introduced the trias politica (separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers). Current Western democracies are based on this. Pario Perra believes it is essential to turn to political leaders from the past in the absence of contemporary visionary leadership.
Mostafa Heravi made a film based on the famous fresco 'The Last Supper' by Leonardo Da Vinci. In 'The Supper' the twelve male apostles have become twelve women. They sit at the table dressed in chador around a figure of Jesus. In slow images Heravi presents us two versions of a wordless story in which the mutual relationships are sharply highlighted.
Anne Scheffer showed the installation 'Ordnung ist das halbe leben', in which money and weapons are attributes of the good guys, or the bad guys. In this she built on her research into the connection between social hierarchy and the use of associated status symbols. In particular, she was interested in the difference between winners and losers, between accepted and unacceptable behavior. In her work she addresses the bankruptcy of great ideologies by showing what we are really governed by: the power of money.
Justin Wijers showed drawings of images of victims of violent crimes and traffic accidents that he finds on the internet. With great dedication and attention he portrays the anonymous victims that can be found in abundance on morbid internet sites. With a thin felt-tip pen he depicts the battered bodies in thin, precise lines. Due to the colorful patterns of the felt-tip pen, the unrecognizably mutilated bodies are reminiscent of a map with contour lines or a flowering field with plants.