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powers of politics, conflicts, and economics — will always demand human material
in order to function, and they will interfere, positively or negatively, in the course of
individual living. This situation calls for developed tools of thinking that may comprise
collective subjectivities and recognise forms of surplus such as conversation, play, and
sympathy. Just like the humorist is a tragic figure, so is the ‘solidaritist’ in particular,
since solidarity about something is a sign of the impossible fullness of society. 3
‘The religious’ may also be that, among the phenomena, that has no name as yet,
but which still addresses one. When Tony Smith, as a preamble to minimalist art,
went for a drive on the not yet completed New Jersey Turnpike, he experienced a
sense of presence that was ‘socially unrecognised’, and had not yet found its
expression within art. Likewise one might see, with Haaning, how the actual situation
of the works transgress the established media of art and ideological superstructures.
It is as if the ambition is here to let something ‘socially unrecognised’ — some
dynamic, cultural transitional forms — arise within the overlappings between the
various spheres of civilisation. To be able to, or wanting to, look further than what
has been recorded in history or mapped by socialisation, one can write into a tradition
of avantgarde. In Haaning’s case one must, however, be careful about embracing
this without reserve. For although the forms and strategies that his works invoke
are unconventional, seen from the linear, art historical point of view, he is basically
an artist working with the fundamental conditions of the subject. At a time when the
changing of terms pertaining to our lives take place at such speed that one can
hardly speak of a common ground for any length of time, Haaning’s works challenge
the sustainability of our representational systems.
The human rights declarations of modernism, proclaiming a global freedom, equality,
and fraternity for all, arose in cultures that — despite all declared intentions to the
contrary — often retained specific markings regarding gender, ethnicity, the insane,
etc. Janet Lyon wrote that manifestoes appear historically near political crises and
moments of social transition involving the definitions of citizenship and political
subjectivity. For the political and artistic avantgarde movements have made
manifest the function of anchoring a certain vocabulary and creating certainty
regarding the justification of collective movements. In this way, the manifesto aspires
to a concrete form of cultural work, although it rarely keeps its promises:
“The manifesto is not always — indeed, not often — to be understood as a causal
agent in history, and though it assumes the voice of vatic authority, it does not create
new social conditions by fiat. My claim for the genre is considerably more modest:
the manifesto occupies a distinct generic space in the arena of public discourse,