Nicoline van Harskamp - DeLVe | Institute for Duration, Location and ...

which Empire already recognises as existent.” For, “[s]ince it is sure of its ability to control
the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial
circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art,
and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate
and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.” 18
Thing
Finally, it is necessary at the end to say why Bosnia-Herzegovina, in spite of the fact that
it is the point of departure for the project, the place of happening and debate, “does not
exist” in this exhibition of the first chapter of the project Where Everything Is Yet to Happen.
It really is not present, either via theme, or via an artist that would “represent” it.
The reason for this is, among other things, the fact that the project refuses to promote
a discouraging, existing state of affairs that is of course reflected in the contemporary
art scene in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and will, after the opening chapter, be dedicated to the
development of new projects with artists, who will endeavour, instead, to set up guidelines
for the consideration of the future, a model of being-with, and ways of negating
an imposed situation, which promotes a passivising and deceitful catchword that in
fact nothing different is possible. On the other hand, although not a single work at the
exhibition deals directly with the complex situation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is in fact
all-pervasively present, distinct and hyperbolised, as something about which there is a
thunderous silence, which can be read in all the works shown at the exhibition. It is like
Cosa (Thing) in the work of Judi Werthein, a vast “elephant in the room”, a blatant and immense
truth that all reject, or simply fail, to see.
It is also at the end, present as Agamben’s Bartleby, the scribe who “would prefer not to”
write, because he embodies pure potentiality. This potentiality, we hope, will be articulated
in the next phases of the project, immediately after the close of the first chapter,
which coincides in time with the expectation of a new chapter in the social and political
reality of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is currently ever closer, judging from the announcements
of a so-called “little Dayton”, a meeting of the representatives of the three
nations and the “international community” (a meeting which at long last is supposed
to modify the devastating “big Dayton” and draft a new constitution) - but also judging
from the recent escalations of the conflicts and the instability in the country (embodied
in the clashes of football fans) that, whether accidentally or not, accompany these announcements.
By accepting the invitation to do the project in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we decided to believe
that we could find methodological and tactical ways of subverting all the mentioned
complex dynamics and paradigms as well as the challenges of the “political incorrectness”
of “collaborating with” Banja Luka, one of the epicentres of political manipulation
and the perpetuation of the status quo in Bosnia-Herzegovina today; the possibility of
finding ourselves and the “results” of our work instrumentalised for the purposes of a
“culturalisation of politics” and of “representing” the milieu as a civilised and decent
“republic” the government of which - as the project would show - does not only toler-
GDJE SE SVE TEK TREBA DOGODITI / WHERE EVERYTHING IS YET TO HAPPEN