Lecture: Imaginary Maps, Global Solidarities

Introductory Lecture | Brian Holmes | 11th April, 2003

The thesis is twofold. First, that each major historical period imposes a dominant map of the earth, a cartographic expression of the articulations of power. This map conditions the ways people imagine the world, the ways they move through it and communicate with others, but also the ways they are assigned to specific functions, specific places. It can be related to what Deleuze (in his book on Michel Foucault) calls a "diagram of power." Second, this dominant map may be challenged, transformed, undone, in the realm of the imaginary through artistic experiments, and in reality through social and political action. A dissenting map may be understood as an emergent, constitutive force, in the sense of Toni Negri (but also of Cornelius Castoriadis, who speaks of a "constitutive imaginary"). Both history and today's experience show that even in the artistic realm, a dissenting map of the world only tears itself free of the dominant one when new solidarities emerge between distant individuals, classes, peoples.

Brian Holmes

Brian Holmes is an art and cultural critic, activist and translator, living in Paris, interested primarily in the intersections of artistic and political practice. He holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley. He was the English editor of publications for Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, 1997, was a member of the graphic arts group Ne pas plier from 1999 to 2001, and has recently worked with the French conceptual art group Bureau d'études. He is a frequent contributor to the international mailinglist Nettime, a member of the editorial committee of the art magazine "Springerin" and the political-economy journal "Multitudes", a regular contributor to the magazine Parachute, and a founder of the new journal "Autonomie Artistique". He is currently preparing a book in French, entitled "La personnalité flexible: Pour une nouvelle critique de la culture."