Fortunately, it seems, I won’t have to answer the usual questions. I founded the Office for Anti-Propaganda, which should make it clear to anyone that this talk is about politics. Many won’t recognize any art in my activities with the Office. And some expect more political commitment from me. Still others are interested in learning “terrible things” about the dictatorial regime in Belarus: it provides one with the comforting feeling that hell is elsewhere.
However, Belarusian- or Russian-style democracies are wonderfully integrated into global politics and the world economy, so that one is driven to wonder whether their systems are one and the same with other forms of democracy in the world at large.
I do not know where my occupation is leading me. I have learned not to care so much about abstract definitions, for language is but one of many media. The question that is engaging me more and more is how one might combine artistic and activist practices and apply them to focused political work. The more difficult question is related to the “infrastructure” for politics and art when the model of representative democracy is no longer able to prove itself, when policies tailored to the interests of the nation-state increasingly exclude many citizens, and when art is losing its potential in the realm of institutions. If it is neither the state nor art institutions, then who is it that will implement the changes and how? The survival of the state or even art itself as we know them may be completely unimportant. It is a process of emancipation and when this process has reached its conclusion, we will also have changed and have rid ourselves of the dominating fear of socioeconomic and political upheaval and change.