The ”Revolution” has been one of the key words in social and political thinking of the last two centuries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the closure of an era of political utopias (for many, the point of reference would be 1968 in Paris or in Prague) the word seemed to have vanished from the everyday vocabulary. However, nowadays we are witnessing the return of the idea of Revolution – on political scene, in media discourse, in social theory and in art. During last few years protest movements became global and have turned to be the real “festivals of resistance”, and this has been perceived as the symptom of the new ”revolutionary situation”. Leaving aside the political scenarios for the future development of the situation, I will focus in my lecture on the convergence of theoretical discourses on revolution, the new forms of political actionism (“Occupy Wall Street” movement, flash-mobs, silent protests, etc.) and contemporary aesthetic praxis. The history of modern art and cinema has provided us rich iconography of the Revolution as Event (from Delacroix to Eisenstein and further), however contemporary art, all together with political actionism, tend to follow entirely different strategy, which consists in the circumspect resistance towards the logic of representation and is based on the concept of revolution as perpetual nomadic movement, “becoming” and evasion. |
