Uncle Sam Hails You; Interpellation (2017), GCGCA(i)

Interpellation

Journey to the Centre of the Study of Truth

Plato’s Cave, Athens

21 Jun - 22 Sep 2017

‘[A]ll ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects … I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’ … But in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing … what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology … It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology … or … I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself.’

- Louis Althusser

This exhibition constitutes three stages of subjection of people in the nearby vicinity for its duration: 

Stage 1: Interpellation
Hail a passer-by; invite them into the gallery.

Stage 2: Deinterpellation
Once inside, take them down a long wooden ladder into a dark cave and restrain them into a seated position facing a wall. Stand behind a screen, light a torch and hold up objects and newspaper cuttings in front of it to project flickering shadows that bear a resemblance to what Wolfgang Tillman lays out on tables in his ongoing Truth Study Centre project.

Stage 3: Reinterpellation
The subject is productively alienated from over-interpellation via The Dadist Detour of Demands (someone will make these demands in a gestural manner from a lectern suspended in the air):

Dadaism demands:

1) The international revolutionary union of all creative and intellectual men and women on the basis of radical Communism;
2) The introduction of progressive unemployment through comprehensive mechanization of every field of activity. Only by unemployment does it become possible for the individual to achieve certainty as to the truth of life and finally become accustomed to experience;
3) The immediate expropriation of property (socialization) and the communal feeding of all; further, the erection of cities of light, and gardens which will belong to society as a whole and prepare [wom/]man for a state of freedom.

Installation view (with wooden ladder leading down to the cave below); Interpellation (2017), GCGCA(i)

Installation view (with wooden ladder leading down to the cave below); Interpellation (2017), GCGCA(i)