Eyes on: Parolen. Slogans

PS Parolen.Slogans
Theater Nestroyhof Hamakom
Montag, 1. November 2010

Künstler/innen
Nora Denes (H), Francois Dufrêne (F), G.R.A.M. (A), Raimond Hains (F), Robert Kummer (A), Lichtfaktor (D), Anna Mitterer (A), Pipilotti Rist (CH), Klaus Staeck (D), Graffiti Analysis by Evan Roth & Chris Sugue (AUS), Jacques Villeglé (F), Christa Zauner (A)

“Yes, we can”–three words Barack Obama used to mobilize his voters. Who would not have heard, via television or the Internet (e.g. on YouTube), one of the voters’ choruses of thousands and thousands of Americans who intoned the mantra “Yes, we can” again and again before the last U.S. presidential elections to proclaim their collective will–and their determination–to change the prevailing political situation. Twenty years earlier, citizens of East Germany rallied ceanting the four words “Wir sind das Volk” [We are the people] to bring about a political transformation in the Eastern Bloc. And fifty years before these Monday demonstrations, the Nazis used “Sieg Heil!” [Hail victory!] and “Juda verrecke!” [Perish Judah!] to trigger a wave of hatred, aggression, and murderous violence that swept the German Reich. In the more recent past, Austria’s FPÖ sought to draw political profit from slogans such as “Daham statt Islam” [Homeland instead of Islam].

These are only a few examples of how political mass movements avail themselves of powerful slogans and buzzwords that can be loaded with pathos and, in each instance, influence the audience.
Their very pithiness, which admits of no more differentiated view, sometimes renders them enormously effective.

The impulse for this photography project came from the chorus of Obama voters: our point of departure was to think about what comes into view when we take the claim that “Yes, we can” at its word. When we ask: Well, what can we actually do? Is “Yes, we can” just a phrase that–like the myth of the American Dream–serves for a while to sedate those who are dissatisfied, underpaid, or poor? That is to say, must we read these rallying cries with Wittgenstein, who said that “language is bedevilment of the mind”?