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Art, society & politics: contemporary ‘soft power’ &
Russia Denis Maksimov
political strategist, business consultant, art theorist www.denismaksimov.com
KU Leuven December 10, 2014
1Denis Maksimov, (c), 2014
Structure of the lecture
• Art & politics, aesthetics & power: origins
• ‘Smart power’ = ‘Hard power’ + ‘Soft power’
• US vs. USSR: the Cold War case-study
• Contemporary ‘market of realities’
• Agents and tools of ‘soft power’ today
• Russian vision of reality: SWOT analysis
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Art and politics: a brief history of intercourse • Mesopotamia: first recorded employment of art in political purposes - artistic
strategies in political communication
• Augustus: perfection in mystification of power and deception of opponents
• Hadrian and example of beauty standard imposition
• Elizabeth I: living goddess
• Louis XIV: epic personification of power and centralisation (Academy of Arts)
• Napoleon III: architecture of boulevards as anti-riot design
• Propaganda & kitsch: specialisation in mass culture & political communication
• Contemporary art & postmodernity: acceptance of infinite realities
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Denis Maksimov, (c), 2014 4
Aesthetics and Power
• Aesthetics & political power as one
• Separation of religion and Church in the West as separate actor: uses aesthetics and art as the medium of mass communication
• Renaissance: conscious employment of aesthetics by political power (glorification, legitimisation, monumentalisation)
• Friedrich Nietzsche - the God is dead
• Country as a ‘masterpiece of art’ - nazism (with all it’s mystifications) as a culmination, conceptualisation of aesthetics provided basis for upgrade from fascism = aestheticisation of political power (Walter Benjamin)
• Multilayered realities of contemporary art, mass media and scattered institutions in modernity: easiness of construction/communication of truths; non-state and anti-institutional actors
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‘Smart power’ = ‘hard power’ + ‘soft power’ + ?
• Pharaohs: blending all in one - sacred, aesthetic and political
• Machiavelli: fear + love
• Joseph Nye: ‘smart power’
• Francis Fukuyama: end of concepts and ideologies?
• Simon Anholt: ‘reputation’, ‘goodness’, ‘attractiveness’ of countries and regions
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USA vs. USSR: art in the Cold War
• Soviet realism vs. abstract expressionism and contemporary art
• Think tank aesthetics
• CIA & art dealers, museums and travelling exhibitions of American art = establishment of cultural hegemony and contemporary art
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Formula of hegemony
• Cultural = the US, leading ‘the Global West’ (European world conceptualised by the US)
• Economic = ‘the Global West’, led by the US
• Military = ‘the Global West’, led by the US
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‘Western’ reality solidly dominates now
Contemporary art period (1960s-…): chief conductor of ‘the market of realities’
• End of ‘-isms’
• Expanded field of culture: escapism, new religion, or?
• Alternative discourses
• Decolonisation and recolonisation: ‘internationalised’ concept of white walls cubes, museums and biennales as cultural colonialism
• Ultra-capitalism
• Culture in general and arts in particular as a sublime and subtle weaponry of domination
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‘Soft power’ now• Rebirth of geopolitics; growing irrelevance, failing legitimacy and increasing
outdatedness of international mediation institutions
• Return of religion and dogmatism
• Bursting mediums of multimedia: role of the Internet
• Democratisation of discourse creation channels
• Crisis of the West and multipolarisation
• Media technologies, atomisation and more direct connection and control
• Contemporary art as the medium of discursive freedom: migration of innovations and new paradigmatic ideas from political science, sociology, etc.
• Spillover: new tools
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Actors & arsenal
Actors & arsenal
Actors & arsenal
‘West’ / ‘Conservatives International’ / …
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Global West
EU, US, Canada, Australia,
Japan, New Zealand,
South Africa…
Conservatives
International
Russia, Turkey,
Hungary, Iran
Ancient wisdom
& harmony
China
Bizarre ideological outsiders
North Korea
Confused/no vision yet
Brazil, India…
New dogmatism
ISIS
Conceptualisation of Russian ‘soft power’
• Russian foreign policy concept (2012 update): ‘Russia as an island of stability in the world’
• Reintegration of post-Soviet space
• Return of ideology
• Main ‘soft power’ resource: diaspora
• President-National leader-messiah (‘No Putin - no Russia’)
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Agents of Russian ‘soft power’
• RT & Russian-speaking TV (post-Soviet area)
• Embassies and cultural centres
• ‘Invisible agents’: higher efficiency?
• Russkiy Mir (‘compatriots’)
• International institutions tribunes (the UN, UNESCO…)
• Geopolitical allies tribunes
• Communities abroad
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Strengths/opportunities of Russian ‘soft power’
• Strong traditions and immensely rich culture
• Positive image and role history (anti-Mongol, anti-Napoleon, WWII)
• Large Russian-speaking community abroad
• Raising dissatisfaction with rising inequality, stagnating standards of living, etc. in the West; loss of glueing outline and goal
• Growing fatigue of developing world from neocolonial approach in culture, economy, etc.; accumulation of what is perceived as broken promises
• Increasing tension in cleavages inside Western societies (LGBT divide, religious divide, feminist divide, etc.)
• Sense of uncertainly, loss of holistic picture of the World, etc.
• Hypocrisy, sarcasm and ‘society of control’/distrust overdose in dominating discourse
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Weaknesses of Russian ‘soft power’• weak fundamental economic/social and contemporary cultural basis
• following trends, not defining them
• domination of negativism and criticism, lack of vision for alternative positive agenda
• lack of holistic vision for alternative narrative
• persistent image of ‘historically offended’, growing irrelevance and ostracism
• lack of ‘internationalisable’ sophistication in cultural production
• lack of innovation and creativity in communication of marketable’ image in detail and as a system of values and views
• one-dimensional, outdated collection of tools
• weak solidarity among Russian-speaking communities abroad (no ‘Russia-towns’)
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Denis Maksimov [email protected]
www.denismaksimov.com
Thank you for attention
Denis Maksimov, (c), 2014 20
