If everything goes to plan, this darling year of ours will end today at midnight. After trudging along relentlessly, 2009 will finally pass. It will have had twelve months, filleted into fifty-two weeks or, if you prefer it, crumbled into three hundred sixty-five days. Something takes place around this time of year, every year, which gives me a certain degree of pleasure: news programmes have a nostalgic tendency to show footage they have steadily collected over the last year. The images, I have to say, tend to include a high percentage of despair and tragedy, only peppered by a few fortunate incidents. And yet, I sit and watch. Perhaps it is not actual pleasure but rather awe that I experience. What I am sure of is that I enjoy sitting and watching the year go past in images; a rather trivial reminder of the inexorable passage of time, and perhaps a last ditched attempt to understand what has happened. So far I have not been able to get the same high whilst browsing through the 20 events that Hotmail tells me ‘made the decade’, but they served as an appetiser. However, for the first time, I have read something in print which has come close to producing the exhilaration I feel when watching an edited potpourri of news footage. And I believe it is able to do so because it highlights the inevitability and complexities we all face when leaving a decade behind and starting a new one:History doesn’t seem to have a taste for round figures. The decade of the 1980s, for example, began in May 1979 when Margaret Thatcher swept into the British Parliament. The decade of the 1990s also began ahead of its time, just at the moment when the Berlin wall fell, in November 1989. And the first decade of the 21st century truly seemed to get started with the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001.
There are decades that are marked by ideas. Ideas are something different to events. Ideas are often the consequence of events, although they can also be the cause that leads to events. On the one hand, the communist regimes were a product, at least in part, of Marx’s idea that history would end with the triumph of socialism. On the other hand, Francis Fukuyama’s idea that history ended with the triumph of democracy and the free market was the consequence of the event that closed the 20th century: the failure of communism. In the decade of the 1980s the idea that led to events was economic ultraliberalism; and the decade of the 1990s the idea that defined the period was globalisation, the vision of a more interdependent world. The first decade of the 21st century has been defined by the attacks in New York and Washington; attacks that kick-started a period characterised by global terrorism, from London to Bali, passing through Madrid and Istanbul. But this decade has also been dominated by an idea: the so-called global war against terrorism and its first battle started in Afghanistan. The idea that dominated George W. Bush’s presidency was neoconservativism, a maniqueist cosmovision. And the fear and wrath resulting from the 9/11 attacks facilitated that the neo-cons should apply their idea which, amongst other things affirmed that the soviet threat had transfigured into militant Islamism.
The overthrow of the Taliban regime (2001) and Saddam Hussein (2003) marked the unilateral/centralised moment, the period when the USA exhorted its highest level of power. But the neoconservative vision demonstrated that it was incapable to reorganise the world. The Bush Administration pretended to revolutionise, with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the system inherited from the Cold War. The result was a disaster, amongst other things because the war against terrorism did not become an organising principle for the international system. Bush announced the democratisation of the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq, but the Middle East has taken a turn for the worse. The autocracies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, had become harder, which does not necessarily mean they have become stronger; Iraq is total chaos; Iran has become a regional power; new non-govertamental players such as Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Mahdi Army have become consolidated; peace between Palestinians and Israelis provokes general scepticism.
Global terrorism has affected Western societies, but the war against terrorism has relegated to the background the events taking place in South America, where populism doesn’t relent; in Africa, tormented by poverty, illness tribal rivalries, and the tragedy in Darfur; and in Asia, where two emerging superpowers continue to grow: China and India. That is to say, the world has become multifocal/decentred. Bush invested his first term in the search of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam was supposed to have. When he left the American presidency it became known that said weapons rested underneath Wall Street. Then, on a date that was not a round figure either, the unilateral/centralised moment came to an end. Shortly afterwards Obama walked into the White House. It was the beginning of a multifocal/decentred decade in which the world’s organisation will not depend upon the war against terrorism, but on the relationships between the USA, the established superpower, and the emerging powers, beginning with China.
(The text is by Xavier Batalla and I have taken the liberty to translate and edit it myself.)
There are decades that are marked by ideas. Ideas are something different to events. Ideas are often the consequence of events, although they can also be the cause that leads to events. On the one hand, the communist regimes were a product, at least in part, of Marx’s idea that history would end with the triumph of socialism. On the other hand, Francis Fukuyama’s idea that history ended with the triumph of democracy and the free market was the consequence of the event that closed the 20th century: the failure of communism. In the decade of the 1980s the idea that led to events was economic ultraliberalism; and the decade of the 1990s the idea that defined the period was globalisation, the vision of a more interdependent world. The first decade of the 21st century has been defined by the attacks in New York and Washington; attacks that kick-started a period characterised by global terrorism, from London to Bali, passing through Madrid and Istanbul. But this decade has also been dominated by an idea: the so-called global war against terrorism and its first battle started in Afghanistan. The idea that dominated George W. Bush’s presidency was neoconservativism, a maniqueist cosmovision. And the fear and wrath resulting from the 9/11 attacks facilitated that the neo-cons should apply their idea which, amongst other things affirmed that the soviet threat had transfigured into militant Islamism.
The overthrow of the Taliban regime (2001) and Saddam Hussein (2003) marked the unilateral/centralised moment, the period when the USA exhorted its highest level of power. But the neoconservative vision demonstrated that it was incapable to reorganise the world. The Bush Administration pretended to revolutionise, with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the system inherited from the Cold War. The result was a disaster, amongst other things because the war against terrorism did not become an organising principle for the international system. Bush announced the democratisation of the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq, but the Middle East has taken a turn for the worse. The autocracies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, had become harder, which does not necessarily mean they have become stronger; Iraq is total chaos; Iran has become a regional power; new non-govertamental players such as Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Mahdi Army have become consolidated; peace between Palestinians and Israelis provokes general scepticism.
Global terrorism has affected Western societies, but the war against terrorism has relegated to the background the events taking place in South America, where populism doesn’t relent; in Africa, tormented by poverty, illness tribal rivalries, and the tragedy in Darfur; and in Asia, where two emerging superpowers continue to grow: China and India. That is to say, the world has become multifocal/decentred. Bush invested his first term in the search of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam was supposed to have. When he left the American presidency it became known that said weapons rested underneath Wall Street. Then, on a date that was not a round figure either, the unilateral/centralised moment came to an end. Shortly afterwards Obama walked into the White House. It was the beginning of a multifocal/decentred decade in which the world’s organisation will not depend upon the war against terrorism, but on the relationships between the USA, the established superpower, and the emerging powers, beginning with China.
(The text is by Xavier Batalla and I have taken the liberty to translate and edit it myself.)
I prepare myself to greet 2010 and the new decade with a different kind of excitement to the one I experienced ten years ago, on 31st December 1999. This I feel, is a sober excitement, free of the naïve anxieties caused by a possible crash of all computers systems around the globe. A further difference is that back then, as far as I remember, I did not have this sense of waving goodbye. I was so fixated with what as to come that I did not fully register the period we were just leaving behind. Yes, we were also exiting a decade and arguably a century, but somehow I was so busy thinking about the new century that I did not take stock.
Things are different now. Quietly, I am taking stock. This, the decade that is about to slip through our fingers, has been my decade. I have the ‘honour’ to say that I was born in the early 1980, then, the remaining years until the end of the decade came and went in the stupor of childhood. After that, the 1990s came and went in much the same manner, this time muddled by the negotiations and awkwardness of adolescence. For instance, my only memory of the first invasion of Iraq remains this: my mother, standing in front of the television, ironing a pile of clothes, wearing a black and white keffiyeh (at that stage the Palestinian headscarf had not yet become a fashion accessory and retailed its militant aura). The rest is rather hazy.
So… this has been, finally, my decade: I have gone from being 17 to being 27. As far as periods go, this has undoubtedly been the most important to date in personal terms. The narrative of my life coils behind me like a used rope and I prepare for the next tug.
So this is it. And I have only four hours and three minutes left. And as the last twelve seconds of the year rush past I will push the metal bar and open a heavy door with an exit sign glowing above it…
Things are different now. Quietly, I am taking stock. This, the decade that is about to slip through our fingers, has been my decade. I have the ‘honour’ to say that I was born in the early 1980, then, the remaining years until the end of the decade came and went in the stupor of childhood. After that, the 1990s came and went in much the same manner, this time muddled by the negotiations and awkwardness of adolescence. For instance, my only memory of the first invasion of Iraq remains this: my mother, standing in front of the television, ironing a pile of clothes, wearing a black and white keffiyeh (at that stage the Palestinian headscarf had not yet become a fashion accessory and retailed its militant aura). The rest is rather hazy.
So… this has been, finally, my decade: I have gone from being 17 to being 27. As far as periods go, this has undoubtedly been the most important to date in personal terms. The narrative of my life coils behind me like a used rope and I prepare for the next tug.
So this is it. And I have only four hours and three minutes left. And as the last twelve seconds of the year rush past I will push the metal bar and open a heavy door with an exit sign glowing above it…
PS: though of course, things are never as straightforward as that. It is peculiar to think that the new year and the new decade have already commenced, at least numerically, for millions of people living on the landmasses that stretch from India to New Zeeland. And on and on and on and on and on the Earth’s rotation continues...
Pablo
Let me start with the Senate and perhaps later I will get to the duration. For those of you who might not know it, this building is situated in the neuralgic centre of the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus: in front of the library, Eliot and Rutherford Colleges at either side, and a stone throw’s away from The Registry and the Gulbenkian Theatre. This central position, as well as its name, reflects its role: a symbolic seat of power. The Senate’s large upstairs room serves as the meeting place of various university governing bodies (for instance the Humanities’ Faculty Board will be convening there on the day before our project take place). It is a space where statements are made, discussions take place, votes are cast and counted, and decisions are arrived at. I am trying to remember my own impressions of the building whilst I was an undergraduate. It’s proving to be difficult. I had certainly not been inside the Senate, nor did I have any actual knowledge of what happened inside it, but what I find most confusing is that although I was a conscientious student I seemed to lack any curious desire to find out, to sneak in (surprisingly the building is open throughout the day and it would not have been hard to take a peek). So in my mind at least, the Senate was simply an amorphous presence on campus which I loosely associated with power, its mystery and inaccessibility.
So how did we come to choose the Senate as our location? As a principle, when we start a new project we attempt not to get bogged down in practicalities, allowing the concepts to develop freely before exploring how they will be realised. However, as it the case with much of our work, this issue is not as simple and linear as that; the chicken and the egg, the snake biting its own tail. There is a moment -difficult to pinpoint- where the core concept of a project meets the various practicalities involved in its realisation and begins to be shaped by them. Location, of course, is the first of such on the list. Once i am small THE WORLD IS BIG had begun to take shape and the project’s core had been established we reached this moment. Where should it take place? Schengen Smile, the piece we devised last February for WorldFest 2009 took place in a series of teaching spaces: a corridor and two seminar rooms. The starkness of these spaces contributed to the bureaucratic atmosphere we were creating and so the marriage between the site and the piece was easy. Now thou, our desire to produce a more ambitious project was coupled with our conceptual interest in facilitating a coming together. The small and out-of-the-way rooms which had been the setting for the solitary journey the audience took in Schengen Smile would not do. We had to upgrade to a space that was larger, more ‘important’. There are only a few such spaces at the University of Kent’s Canterbury Campus: the large dining halls in Eliot and Rutherford Colleges and the Senate Building’s upstairs meeting room. And so the decision was made. With its substantial dimensions, central location and powerful associations the Senate presented itself as the ideal location.
