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The workshop of filthy creation: or do not be alarmed, this is only a test

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2009

BERNADETTE BUCKLEY
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Abstract

In this article I explore the nature of the relationship between art and terror/ism and ask why identifications between the two are so routinely and often insistently made. In so doing, my aim is twofold. Firstly, I explore the possibility of there being a deep-seated structural link that exists between art, terror/ism and creativity. In other words, I ask if terror is a necessary corollary of the ‘creative event’. Secondly, I explore explicit examples in which artists have sought to create or to emphasise this relationship, from the perspective of Contemporary Art practices. In the spirit of experiment rather than of judgment then, this article sets up a series of trials in which art and terror/ism are philosophically, aesthetically and politically blended. It asks where else should such tests be conducted, if not in relation to the artwork and in particular, in relation to those artworks which toy with terror/ism and those artists who claim on some level, to be ‘terrorists’? How is the ‘artist-as-terrorist’ to be interpreted and understood alongside existing definitions of both terrorism and of Art? And finally, what role does imagination play in the construction of experience?

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 835 - 857
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2009

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References

1 Depending on which account of the incident one reads, Stone had explosive fireworks, flammable liquids, a butane gas canister, several fuses, either one or three knives, either seven or eight nail bombs, or none at all, a hatchet and a garrotte. For example, BBC News Northern Ireland reported that Stone had seven nail bombs, three knives, a hatchet and a garrotte. See {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7729744.stm}. accessed 2 February 2009. Owen Boycott, of The Guardian, reported only one knife and no nail bombs. (See Owen Boycott, ‘A Thing of the Past’, The Guardian, Friday 24 November 2006.) The Times reported that he had an axe (See Times Online, 9 December 2008, ‘Michael Stone jailed for “performance” attack on Sinn Fein at Stormont’. Available at {http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5309763.ece} accessed 2 February 2009.

2 John Walsh, ‘Call that art? Michael Stone defends himself’ in The Belfast Telegraph, 21 December, 2006. Online at {http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/call-that-art-michael-stone-defends-himself-13578645.html} accessed on 20 February 2009.

3 ‘Stormont Bomb was Art Says Stone’, BBC News Channel, 22 September 2008. See {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7629417.stm} accessed on 20 February 2009.

4 Ibid.

5 Numerous studies exist of course, which explore the role of ‘terror’ in aesthetic terms. More specifically, the notion of the ‘sublime’ has a long and complex history – ranging from classical theories through to those of the Romantic era and postmodern conceptions of sublimity. The sublime has been the focus of (to name but a few) Burke, Kant, Schiller, Lyotard, Derrida, Lacan, Žižek, Nancy, Rancière). See also Note 14 below. However, here I am referring specifically to the study of terrorism in relation to Modern and Contemporary Art practices. In this respect, the reader is referred to such studies as: 'Graham Coulter-Smith and Maurice Owen (eds), Art in the Age of Terrorism; Paul Holberton, London, 2005; Gene Ray, Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Frank Lentricchia & Jody McAuliffe, Crimes of Art and Terror (University of Chicago Press: London, 2003). It should be noted also here that an increasing amount of studies exist which explore how various cultural media (more broadly defined) from film to literature, have taken ‘terrorism’ as their focus. For example, Norman K Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (eds.), 9/11 in American Culture (Alta Mira Press, Oxford, 2003); Roland Bleiker, ‘Art Emotions and Global Terrorism’ in Social Alternatives, 23:2 (2004), p48–53; and Roland Bleiker (ed.), Social Alternatives, 20:4 (Oct 2001). Similarly, a growing body of research exists which considers the relationship between filmic representation and war. For example here: Michael J Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics (Oxon: Routledge, 2009); David Slocus, (ed.), Hollywood and War: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2006); Cynthia Weber, Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics and Film (London: Routledge, 2006); Bleiker, Roland, ‘Art, Emotions and Global Terrorism’, Social Alternatives (2001), pp. 3–9.

6 In terms of IR's engagement with the sublime, of central important here is Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 34:3 (2006) – a special issue of Millenium which takes as its subject, the relationship between international politics, representation and ‘the Sublime’. See also Richard Devetak, ‘The Gothic Scene of International Relations: Ghosts, Monsters, Terror and the Sublime after September 11’, Review of International Studies, 31:4 (2005), pp. 621–43.

7 For a small selection of such contemporary artists, see Kendell Geers, Khaled D Ramadan, Runa Islam, Xu Bing, Doron Solomons, Rod Dickinson, Walid Raad, Heath Bunting, Damien Hirst, Irational.org, The Cultural Terrorist Agency, Guerrilla Girls, Karlheizen Stockhausen, David Hockney, Hakim Bey, Alexander Brener, Ross Birrell, Brenda Oelbaum, Colin Darke, Shane Cullen, Tomoko Yoneda, Marine Hugonnier, Emilia Telese and many others.

8 Roland Bleiker, ‘The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 30:3 (2001), p. 510.

9 Bleiker, 2001, p. 510. In a similar vein, one could cite here also, the work of Michael Shapiro, whose work similarly builds on Rancière's analysis of the politics of aesthetics. See especially here, Michael Shapiro, ‘The Sublime Today: Re-Partitioning the Global Sensible’ in Millenium: Journal of International Studies, 34:3 (2006), pp. 657–81, and Michael Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics (Oxon: Routledge, 2009).

10 Bleiker, 2001, p. 510.

11 Not only did Plato acknowledge that the form in which stories are conveyed will greatly affect the nature of their influence. Plato, Republic, Book 3 (London: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1997), but he also took very seriously the question of the relation of ‘poesis’ to the political community. Indeed his infamous banishment of the poets from the Republic (in Book 10) amounts to a tacit admission of the powerful affects of art on political, judicial and jurisdictional spheres. Indeed it was precisely because of Poetry's ability to influence and to manipulate our emotions, and thereby, in Platonic reasoning, to make us ‘unjust’, that it was to be understood and feared.

Analogously, it is Walter Benjamin's recognition of the aesthetic principles and of the ‘ritual values’ of war that forces him to take seriously the relationship between art and political life. Walter Benjamin, ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, trans. Harry Zorn in Illuminations (Pimlico, 1999), pp. 211–44. Similarly, Rancière's Politics of Aesthetics has shown that ‘art and politics are contingent notions’ since ‘politics is “a form of experience”’ which ‘revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.’ Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (Continuum, 2004), p. 51, p 13 consecutively.

12 An exhaustive account of seminal works on terrorism cannot of course be given here. However, the reader is directed to the following influential studies: RG Frey and Christopher W Morris (eds), Violence, Terrorism and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (Indigo, London, 1999); Walter Lacquer, Terrorism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977); Walter Lacquer, ‘Postmodern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs (September/October 1996); Yonah Alexander & Richard Latter (eds), Terrorism and the Media (McLean VA: Brassey's 1990); JB Bell, A Time of Terror: How Democratic Societies Respond to Revolutionary Violence (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Richard Clutterbuck, Terrorism in an Unstable World (New York: Routledge, 1994); PC Crederberg, Terrorism, Myths, Illusions, Rhetoric and Reality (Oxford: Prentice Hall, 1989); Ann Gaines, Terrorism (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1998); HH Kushner, Terrorism in American: A Structured Approach to Understanding the Terrorist Threat, (Springfield Illinois: CC Thomas); HH Kushner, The Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium (Thousand Oaks: CA Sage); David J Whittaker, The Terrorism Reader (Oxon: Routledge, 2003); A Schmid, Political Terrorism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983); Martin Shubik, Terrorism, Technology and the Socio-Economics of Death (New Haven, CT: Cowles Foundation, Yale); M Stohl (ed.), The Politics of Terrorism: A Reader in Theory and Practice (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1979); Wilkinson Paul, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London: Macmillan, 1977); JK Campbell, ‘Excerpts from Research Study “Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism: Proliferation by Non-State Actors”’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 9:2 (Summer 1997); David C Rapoport, ‘Fear and Trembling in Three Religious Traditions’, American Political Science Review, 78:3 (September 1984), pp. 658–77; David C Rapoport, ‘The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of Terrorism’, Current History (December 2001), pp. 419–24; David Rapoport, ‘The International World as Some Terrorists Have Seen It: A Look at a Century of Memoirs’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 10:4 (December 1987); Eric Hobsbawn, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism (London: Little, Brown, 2007).

13 Perhaps, Baudrillard articulates this argument most clearly, when in Impossible Exchange, he argues that the image (in parallel with ‘the imagination’ in my argument) ‘is not of the order of reality but of the evil genius of reality, happy or otherwise. It is that which is of the order of the inhuman within us […]’ Jean Baudrillard, The Impossible Exchange (London: Verso, 2001), p. 146.

14 Such a research project – requiring years of dedicated research time and funding – should certainly be undertaken as a matter of urgency in the future.

15 Mary Shelley, MK Joseph (ed.), Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 55.

16 Conventional accounts of the sublime tend to draw upon the following sources: Longinus, On Sublimity, trans. DA Russell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965 (dated to c. 100AD); Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. J H Bernard (New York: Hafner Press, 1951); Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, trans. John Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960 (originally published in 1764) and Edmund Burke, JT Boulton (ed.), Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: Blackwell, 1987). Such seminal texts are usually supplemented with Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Dover, 1995); Jean Francois Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflection of Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Jean Francois Lyotard, Lessons of the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rothenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Jean Luc Nancy, ‘The Sublime Offering’ in Of the Sublime: Presence in Question, trans. Jeffery S Librett (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993). For an exploration of the relationship between Kant's aesthetic of the sublime and his writings on morality, see Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). For a consideration of post World War II artworks in relation to the sublime, see Gene Ray, Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). In terms of the relationship between the sublime and international politics, two excellent sources are Christine Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference (London: Routledge, 2007) and Millennium Journal of International Studies, 34:3 (2006).

17 See especially Gerald Mc Niece's chapter ‘The Literature of Revolution’ in Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 10–41. In 1816, (the year that Mary began writing Frankenstein), the Shelleys had made a tour of several revolutionary landmarks – even going so far as to try to find the chambers where the insurrectionaries had broken in upon the King and Queen.

18 George Levine & U.C Knoepflmacher (eds), The Endurance of Frankenstein (California: University of California Press, 1979), p. 153.

19 Lee Sterrenburg, ‘Mary Shelley's Monster: Politics and Psyche in Frankenstein,’ in Levine & Knoepflmachers, p. 153.

20 Shelley's husband, Percy also had a ‘lifelong engagement’ with the notion of the ‘revolutionary sublime’. Closely echoing Mary's Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus, Percy Shelley's four-act play, Prometheus Unbound, marries politics and poetry with, for example, its allusions to Demogorgon, ‘the people-monster’. See here, Cian Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 260.

21 Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 55.

22 See for example, George Levine, ‘Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism’, in A Forum on Fiction, 7:1 (Autumn 1973), p. 26; Paul Sherwin, ‘Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe’, PMLA, 96:5 (Oct., 1981), pp. 892.

23 Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 55.

24 Ibid., p. 5.

25 Ibid., p. 9.

26 Kant, Critique of Judgement, p. 86. Emphasis added.

27 This use of the term ‘good’ is not to be confused here with the Kantian notion of the Supreme Good as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). (Indeed wherever Kant uses the term ‘good’, it is conditional on the context in which it is used). However I use it here, as it might be understood in ordinary parlance.

28 The question of the relationship between Kant's aesthetical and moral systems has been outlined by Paul Crowther in The Kantian Sublime. Early on in the third Critique, Kant had stressed that the logical grounds of taste were entirely independent of those of the ‘good’. However, as explained by Crowther: ‘[…] in the context of the Introduction (and in relation to the notion of the ‘final end’ in particular) it is clear that the reason why there is such a thing as taste in the first place is to bridge the gulf between nature and freedom in a way that allows the former indirectly to promote the ends of the latter. From the logical viewpoint, taste is independent of morality but in the metaphysical scheme of things, it exists to serve reality.’ Crowther, The Kantian Sublime, p. 68.

29 G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M Knox, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 102.

30 Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 41.

31 Ibid., p. 71.

32 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Reprinted in Clive Cazeaux (ed.), The Continental Aesthetics Reader (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 100.

33 Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, p, 100.

34 Ibid., p. 100. Emphasis added.

35 Connection between creation, creator and creativity – also made by Robert Olorenshaw in his essay ‘Narrating the Monster: From Mary Shelley to Bram Stoker’, cited in Stephen Bann, (ed.), Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity (London: Reaktion, 1994), pp. 158–76. See also, Paul Sherwin, ‘Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe’, in PMLA, 96:5. (October 1981), pp. 883–903.

36 As noted by Bernard Dixon in his editorial to the BMJ. See Dixon, ‘The Paradoxes of Genetically Modified Foods’, in the British Medical Journal, (1999:318), pp. 547–48. See also, ‘Alarm over Frankenstein Foods’ in the Daily Telegraph (12 February 1999); ‘Food Scandal Exposed’ in The Guardian (12 February 1999); ‘Schools Act To Wipe GM Foods Off Menu’, in the Daily Mail (24 February 1999); ‘Frankenstein Food Fiasco’, in the Daily Mail (13 February 1999); Sean Poulter, ‘Alert over the March of the Grey ‘Goo’ in Nanotechnology Frankenfoods’, in the Daily Mail (2 January 2008); 'The Return of Frankenstein Foods, by Mark Breddy, in the New Statesman (25 February 2008).

37 See N. Wilson, ‘Forget steroids and blood doping is the gene genie out the bottle?’ in the Daily Mail (July 28 2004); ‘Genetics and Drugs’, in The Observer (7 May 2000); Alok Jha, ‘First British Human-Animal Hybrid Embryos Created by Scientists’, in The Guardian (2 April 2008).

38 See especially, Jha, ‘Human-Animal Hybrid’ – The team's success comes days after Gordon Brown was forced to give MPs a free vote on the human fertilisation and embryology bill, which has faced condemnation from Catholic bishops. Cardinal Keith O'Brien used his Easter sermon to denounce what he called experiments of ‘Frankenstein proportion’ and called the bill a ‘monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life’.

39 Burke, Philosophical Enquiry; Longinus, On Sublimity.

40 Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, p. 47.

41 The difficulty of defining terrorism has been well documented and sources are too numerous to cite here. However for an overview of the debate, see, Omar Malik, Enough of the Definition of Terrorism (Royal Institute of International Affairs, London: RIIA, 2001); or Alex P. Schmid, Political Terrorism: A Research Guide (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1984). Schmid spends more than 100 pages grappling with the question of a definition, only to conclude that none is universally accepted. In terms of statutory definitions of terrorism, the situation in the UK alone is no clearer. For example, Lord Carlile's review of the statutory definition of terrorism came to a similar conclusion. See 'The Definition of Terrorism: A Report by Lord Carlile of Berriew Q.C. Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation available at {http://d.scribd.com/docs/k5uyv9oesxhr3dpgfj4.pdf} Lord Carlile's report stated that, ‘There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. It remains the subject of continuing debate in international bodies.’ (Report, 2006, p. 5) The review itself was nevertheless quickly followed by a number of objections to the current statutory definition. See for example, the ‘Third Report for the session 2005–2006 of the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ – Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: Terrorism Bill and related matters, Vol. I (HL Paper 75-I, HC 561) and Vol. 2 (HL 75-II/HC 561-II); 5 December 2005 – available at {http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200506/jtselect/jtrights/75/7502.htm} See also, ‘Submission from Scotland Against Criminalising Communities to Lord Carline's Independent Review of the Definition of Terrorism in UK Law’ (2006); Society of Friends: Memorandum to Lord Carlile's ‘Review of the Definition of Terrorism in UK Law’ (2006) – available at {http://www.quaker.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=92046}; CAMPACC's Submission to the Privy Council Review of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001; Amnesty International's United Kingdom Human Rights: A Broken Promise, available at {http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engeur450042006} accessed 23 February 2006 and the Islamic Human Rights Commission's Submission to the Home Office (in response to Discussion Paper, ‘Counter-terrorism powers: Reconciling Security and Liberty in an Open Society’ (August 2004) available at {http://www.ihrc.org.uk/file/HomeOfficeSubmissionFinal.pdf}

42 Stockhausen's original remarks were reported in translation in ‘Attacks Called Great Art’, New York Times, 19 September 2001. Given its significance here, the quotation is worth quoting in full: ‘What happened there, is – now you must all reset your brains – the greatest artwork ever. That in one act, spirits accomplish something that in music we could not dream of; that people rehearse like crazy for ten years, totally fanatically for one concert and then die. That is the greatest artwork for the whole cosmos. Imagine what has happened there. People who are so completely focussed on one performance, and then 5000 people are chased into resurrection, in one moment. I would not be able to that. In comparison, we as composers are nothing. Imagine that I could now create an artwork and all of you would not only be amazed, but you would drop dead on the spot. You would be dead and reborn, because it is simply too insane. Many artists try to do something like that, to go beyond the limit of what is thinkable and possible, so that we wake up, so that we open ourselves for another world.’ The excerpt appeared in Tomassini's article, ‘The Devil Made him do it’, New York Times (30 September 2001).

43 Ibid. Tomassini concludes that ‘Stockhausen has dangerously overblown ambitions for art’. In the article, he describes Stockhausen as ‘losing touch with reality,’ and raises the possibility of Stockhausen being an ‘egomaniac’ or a ‘raving has-been’. The full report is available at {http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E2D8123AF933A0575AC0A9679C8B63&scp=7&sq=stockhausen+tommasini&st=nyt} accessed on12 January 2008. Meanwhile, fellow composer Gyrorgy Ligeti interviewed in The Tagesspiegel accused Stockhausen of ‘having placed himself on the side of the terrorists’ and Ligeti added, ‘If he interprets this treacherous mass murder as an artwork, then unfortunately I must say he belongs confined to a psychiatric clinic.’ As cited in 21st Century Music, 8:11 (November 2001), p. 16.

44 These remarks by Hirst were made in an interview with BBC News Online on the anniversary of the collapse of the WTC. See {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2002/september_11_one_year_on/2229628.stm} accessed on 10 December 2007. Hirst's comments have also been discussed by Gene Ray, op. cit., pp. 73–88.

45 For a short selection of academic discussions about Stockhausen's remarks, see Battersby, op.cit., p. 29; Fredric Jameson, ‘The Dialectics of Disaster’ in Frank Stanley Hauerwas (ed.), Dissent from the Homeland: Essays After September 11 (New York: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 61; Emmanouil Aretoulakis, ‘Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, and 9/11’ in Contemporary Aesthetics, 6 (2008); Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory of the Left (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 73–4; Frank Lentricchia and Jody McAuliffe, 'Groundzeroland (Karlheinz Stockhausen's reaction to the terrorist strikes in the United States) in South Atlantic Quarterly, 101:2 (2002), pp. 350–51; Lee Harris, Civilisation and its Enemies, the Next Stage of History (New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 4; Mary Schmidt Campbell & Randy Martin (eds), Artistic Citizenship – A Public Voice for the Arts (New York: Routledge, 2006); Anthony Fothergill, ‘Connoisseurs of Terror and the Political Aesthetics of Anarchism’ in Carola M. Kaplan, Peter Mallios & Andrea White (eds), Conrad in the Twenty-first Century (London: Routledge, 2005).

46 Literally meaning ‘enjoyment’, the term ‘jouissance’ has been extensively used in post-structuralist writings in the latter half of the 20th century. Here however, ‘jouissance’ is specifically seen in contrast with (if not in opposition to) the notion of ‘pleasure’. The term is commonly associated with the writings of Jacques Lacan. For example, in his seminar, ‘The Ethics of Psychoanalysis’ (1959–1960), Lacan says that the ‘painful principle’ is the result of a transgression from the ‘pleasure principle’. See Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: 1959–1960, trans. Dennis Porter (London: Norton, 1992). The notion is also given central importance in the writings of Roland Barthes. Most notably in The Pleasure of the Text (1973), Barthes divides the notion of ‘plaisir’ from that of ‘jouissance’, by differentiating between the ‘writerly’ and the ‘readerly’ text. The reader of the ‘readerly’ text is characterised as ‘passive’, while that of the ‘writerly’ text – which explodes literary codes and thus creates the conditions for ‘bliss’ – break out of their given subject position. See Barthes, Roland, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975).

47 The ‘event’ is a notoriously elusive and an ambiguous concept and it has not been introduced here with the assumption that its meaning is transparent. For a working ‘definition’ here however, the notion of the event developed above owes much to two readings – that of Deleuze's concept of the event as elaborated in Difference and Repetition; and that of Alain Badiou's concept of the event as developed in Being and Event. While Deleuze sees the event as a self-differing ‘entity’, Badiou reads it as a non-deucible, illegal occurrence in a situation whose consequence may come to bear on the experiences of all. However, given that the aim here is not to define ‘eventness’ but to identify the ways in which the events of art and terrorism might compare with one another, it can only be stated here that the ‘identity’ of the event seems in fact to predetermine a self-differing quality. See Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 1994). See Alain Badiou, Being and Event (London: Continuum, 2005).

48 See n. 21 above.

49 See n. 24 above.

50 Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, p. 23. If Stockhausen's remarks cannot be read as the straightforward attempt to aestheticise terrorism, then those of the Loyalist paramilitary Michael Stone on the other hand, can be read as such. Stone, who planned an attack on parliament buildings at Stormont in Northern Ireland, justified his actions as 'performance art. See {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6193169.stm} accessed on 10 May 2008.

51 Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 96, p. 101.

52 Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, pp. 96–7.

53 Ibid., p. 108.

54 As noted in n. 41 above, the term ‘terrorism’ is notoriously difficult to define. A standard definition as circulated in the media, would typically borrow from the FBI's description of terrorism as the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian populations, of any segment there, in furtherance of political or social objectives. Alternatively, the UK government refers to ‘the use or threat, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, of action which involves serious violence against any person or property’. As cited in David, J Whittaker, The Terrorism Reader, 2nd edition (Routledge, London, 2001).

55 Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (London: Verso, 2005), p. 5.

56 For two ‘classic’ accounts of the theoretical underpinnings of avant-gardism, see Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant Garde, trans. M Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) and Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1968).

57 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 163.

58 Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano (California: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 8.

59 (Emphasis added). Badiou goes on to state that ‘today the avant-gardes have disappeared’. Here, he follows from Peter Bürger's assessment of avant-gardism – that the repetition of the historical avant-garde by the neo-avant-garde can only turn the anti-aesthetic into the artistic, or the transgressive into the institutional. However, this is a point which is disputed by many critics. For example Hal Foster argues in The Return of the Real, that the ‘neo avant-gardes’ are avant-gardes because they have successfully critiqued the institutionalisation of the ‘historical avant-gardes’. See Hal Foster, Return of the Real (Massachusetts: MIT, 1997), p. 11. My point here differs however from that of both Badiou and Foster. I argue that avant-gardism has not disappeared but has become a structuring logic in our understanding of visual art practices. In many ways this is not entirely dissimilar to Badiou's position, in that Badiou has in mind the notion of an avant-garde which still functions transgressively. Where avant-gardism has become a structuring logic, obviously transgressivity is systematic and can therefore no longer operate as transgressivity as such.

60 Paul Virilio, Art and Fear, trans. Julie Rose (London: Continuum), p. 31.

61 Virilio, Art and Fear, pp. 27–65.

62 Ibid., p. 42.

63 Ibid., p. 55.

64 Indeed, he concludes his ‘Silence on Trial’ by anticipating a time in which ‘we will look on helplessly […] as a profaned art emerges in the image of the annihilated corpses of tyranny.’ See Virilio, Art and Fear, p. 95.

65 The emergence of an ‘artistic avant-garde’ from the milieu of revolutionary politics tends to be associated with Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1790–1825). Margaret Rose succinctly synopsises these origins in Marx's Lost Aesthetic. As Rose says, Saint-Simon used the term originally to represent ‘a subversion of the traditional feudal hierarchy of leadership by replacing the leadership of King and Court with that of a union of artists, scientists, and ‘industrialists’. Saint Simon addressed artists and scientists under ‘the standard of the progress of the human mind’ or as 2a ‘vanguard’ of society as a whole.’ In this way the military connotations of that term were not lost, but fused with the notion of a spiritual leadership. See Margaret A Rose, Karl Marx and the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 11–2.

66 See for example, Fred Botting, ‘Virtual Romanticism’ in Edward Larissy (ed.), Romanticism and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 98–112.

67 Boris Groys, ‘The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror’ (2006). A full transcript of this essay is available at {http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/readingroom/Groys_ArtAndTerror.pdf}

68 Groys, ‘The Fate of Art’, p. 5.

69 Cited in Peter Conrad, Creation: Artists Gods and Origins (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), p. 415.

70 As cited by Conrad, Conrad, Creation, p. 415.

71 André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism, trans. Helen R Lane (Michigan: University of Michigan, 1969), p. 125.

72 Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco: The Lapis Press, 1976), p. 76.

73 Cited in Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 27.

74 Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’, in Eric Bentley (ed.), The Theory of the Modern Stag (London: Penguin, 1968), p. 66.

75 Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, trans. Victor Corti (London: Calder & Boyars, 1970), p. 63.

76 Mikail Bakhunin, The Reaction in Germany (1842), reprinted in Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, Arthur Lehning (ed.), (London Jonathan Cape, 1973), pp. 37–58.

77 The Destruction in Art Symposium (or DIAS) was held in London, 9–11 September 1966. Organised by Gustav Metzger, participants included Metzger himself, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Yoko Ono, John Latham and Wolf Vostell. Its central objective was to focus attention on the element of destruction in Happenings and other art forms, and to relate this destruction to society.

78 The works of these of many other artists are typically called upon as examples of so-called ‘sadistic’ or offensive artworks. The Vienna Action Group, whose members include Otto Muehl, Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Kurt Kren and Ernst Schmide Jr, tend to be particularly vilified for actions which included vomiting and starvation; or the works of Otto Muehl whose ‘work’ was considered criminal and resulted in his imprisonment.

79 Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962). The theme runs throughout the text but for one good example of this see p. 44.

80 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Dover, 1995), p. 82.

81 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005), p. 16.

82 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London: Continuum, 2003), p. 105, p. 100 respectively.

83 See Joseph A. Schumpter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Taylor and Francis, 2003).

84 See Bernadette Buckley, ‘Terrible Beauties’ in Graham Coulter-Smith and Maurice Owen (eds), Art in the Age of Terrorism (Southampton: Paul Holberton, 2005), pp. 10–33.

85 See Saul Ostrow, Gregory Green: Terror and Empowerment (Brussels: Cultuurcentrum Brugge, 2002), p. 23.

86 Ostrow, Gregory Green, p. 23.

87 Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati. Description of Geers' Hung Drawn and Quartered exhibition, available at {http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2004/08/27/32311.html} accessed on 3 March 2008.

88 A version of this work was originally made in 1988 during Geers' final year at the University of the Witwatersrand. It was however included, a decade or so later, in a show curated by Okwui Enwezor in New York, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s–1980s, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999).

89 As cited in Ruth Kirkham, ‘There's a Bomb in this Exhibition: Kendall Geers Charged’ in Parachute (July 2000), p. 35.

90 Kirkham, ‘There's a Bomb in this Exhibition’, p. 35.

91 Coulter-Smith & Owen, Art in the Age of Terrorism, pp. 114–29.

92 Ibid., p. 117.

93 David Jhave Johnston, ‘Art, Justice and Epigenetics’ in Aesthetics & Justice (Spring 2008), p. 10.

94 Paul Virilio, Pure War, trans. Sylvère Lottringer (London: Semiotext(e), 1997).

95 Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 30–1.

96 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 20.

97 Ibid., p. 20.

98 Ibid., p. 20. It could be noted that a similar point is made in the artist and writer Tom McCarthy's novel, Remainder. Here the chief protagonist obsessively re-enacts vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past. However as his obsession escalates, his robbery ‘re-enactment’ slides into ‘reality’. Two of his re-enactors are shot and the novel ends with a plane ‘hijack’ in which the plane continually loops around again and again, endlessly repeating the same circuit in the sky. See Tom McCarthy, Remainder (Richmond: Alma Books, 2005).

99 See ‘Gun T-shirt was a security risk’, BBC News Channel, 2 June 2008. Available at {http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7431640.stm} accessed on 2 February 2009.

100 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 16.

101 Matthew Barney & Nancy Spector, Barney/Beuys: All in the Present Must be Transformed (Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2006), p. 44.