Towards a non-binary island: on the NIMAC exhibition and other demons
Rahme Veziroglu & Panayiotis Achniotis This text comes from a polyphonic space in which we have a yearslong practice of having difficult conversations with one another safely. Our spectrum ranges from building archetypes for horizontal organizing practices, to the best way of making tarhana/τραχανά. We consider using this space particularly meaningful in addressing the concerns we share about the debate going on about the exhibition at NiMAC. In it, we recognise a political reflex much older than this exhibition and larger than one artist: what does being against occupation mean in Cyprus? Who gets to decide who is a collaborationist of what occupation? And more importantly, how can we keep the struggle alive to find the words and the languages to speak about Cyprus beyond the imposed binary thinking that has trapped us in the same maze for decades now? For those who did not follow, the main reason for the protest at NiMAC and online campaign was the participation of Emin Çizenel in an exhibition, based on the fact that he designed the TRNC flag in 1984. The Ecologists Party lobbied against the exhibition and two people protested at the opening night with a placard that read “stop normalising the occupation #artwashing”. The demands are the cancellation of the exhibition or removal of Çizenel’s work and an apology and statement from Çizenel, from the curator Esra Plümer Bardak and the NiMAC administration. Çizenel’s work in the exhibition is part of the Republic of Cyprus State Collection and temporarily on loan. The campaign continues online. Before getting into the thorny jungle of political terminology, we say it plainly and clearly from the beginning: the protest may appear to use a language that on paper sides with liberation and anti-colonialism, but the trouble lies exactly in this ‘on paper’ aspect of it which overlooks and erases context and reproduces the same binary, punitive, status-quo logic that has kept Cyprus politically and imaginatively trapped. We recognise ‘normalising occupation’ as a serious concern. We are deeply troubled by the material forms of normalisation: the unlawful greed economy built on GC properties in the north and the relentless culture of plunder that is deteriorating every fiber of the moral and political compass of the community. We are mobilising against the hardening of the border regime, increased surveillance, institutional separation, the everyday reproduction of partition, and the political/financial investments that make reunification less possible. Here’s where we consider the problem begins: political concepts lose their gravity when they become metaphors, moral badges or slogans detached from material histories, intention, practice and consequence. Here these concepts are not approached as situated political questions but as ‘copy-paste’ accusations derived from liberation movements that have strong support and credibility. This repeats a colonial reflex: importing a moral vocabulary while avoiding the difficult work of embodied political understanding. We need to remind ourselves that the so-called “Cyprus problem” is not just a case of “invasion and occupation” and that it didn’t start in 1974; it started even before 1963. We need to remind ourselves why positioning in this way has been of crucial importance for imagining a future beyond nationalist division and imperialist domination in Cyprus. This is not to deny the Turkish army’s occupation nor the struggles that comrades in the north are waging against it. It is to say though that, amid the deepening division of our country, we cannot afford to buy into narratives and actions that contribute to further entrenching nationalist domination and status quo—be it in the name of anti-occupation, of anti-imperialism, of the nation, or whatever else. We need more than ever to build a vocabulary of our own that goes beyond buzzwords. There are two interconnected angles from which we are going to approach these claims: methodology of the protest and the political imagination derived from it. We will look into methodology from the lens of a) conceptual appropriation and b) symbolic gesture. We will then address the general context: what does the wider political horizon of the protestors reveal in relation to their current narrative. Today we observe on a global scale that the critical vocabulary of anti-capitalism/nationalism/colonialism/authoritarianism is methodically taken out of context and utilised in the service of maintaining, deepening and/or capitalising on these very hegemonic structures. It functions as a semantic trap. It is important to address and dismantle these systemic strategies that not only serve this purpose but also, perhaps more importantly, hijack the intellectual and physical labour of the people working on the ground who meticulously lay the building blocks of (re)unification of communities, collectives, sectors and classes. But this is not at all an easy task. The trap is sneaky, ready at all times to take advantage of stigma, categorise, divide and adjudicate. We are more familiar with this methodology when utilised by institutions and people holding political power. A much more troubling impact of the trap is achieved when it is internalised and adopted as a legitimate method of political debate by people seemingly closer to the grassroots level. The danger here is that hegemony no longer comes from above, from the institutional level. It begins to circulate and reproduce itself through people. Reproduction operates in several directions. Firstly, decontextualised concepts generate an obscure communication zone from the start through selective erasure and reduction. This obscurity is instrumental in making wider ideological investments harder to see. Secondly and consequently: demands voiced from a place of erasure, force a defensive response and a start from absolute zero at that, a journey laced with many other traps. Needless to say, life itself does not have space in this debate, only one-dimensional interpretations of macro structures. Those few who take on this exhausting task and engage are categorised in the either/or binary, the remaining majority are pushed into silence simply because they want to avoid the trap or into giving more space to damaging arguments. The claim of the protestors operates as if what happened before 1974 can be set aside for the sake of the
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