Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 34

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
difference between playing a game and the spirit of play was fundamental in this con-
text. The performance (titled pUN General Assembly) functioned not as a self-contained
game, in which only one participant can win to the detriment of his opponents, but as
a playful platform. This allowed the participants to identify, even if provocatively, with
the representatives of their nation state at the UN (taking the role of “citizen-delegates”)
as well as to speculate on the form that the institution would take if it served its mission
without being influenced by politics and other constraints. As the artist stated,
one of the main differences between pUN and the UN is that delegates
at the UN represent their government. And governments have an agen-
da which is, first, their national interest; second, the interest of the [sic]
their people; and third, the interest of the planet. In pUN, I think that
the delegates are not concerned with representing their governments—
they represent their nation-states, their people [...]. So they can take a
stand with [sic] having a more global perspective. But I don’t think pUN
is in itself a critique of the UN. (Brooks and Reyes 2013)
Mediation: Linking International Affairs and Contemporary Art
I will discuss this idea (i.e. to what extent pUN can be understood as a critique of the UN)
later in this article. Before doing so, I want to briefly reflect on the idea of visual mediation
as a connector between international affairs and contemporary art that makes possible a
focused reflection on the structuring consequences of mediating devices. Reyes’ refer-
ences to the UN took the form of visual references and tropes associated with the organ-
isation, rather than direct references to specific deliberations, resolutions, treaty ratifica-
tions or to the UN’s work on the ground. pUN can hence be understood as an artwork
that is broadly aligned with discussions of visual mediation 5 and its role in legitimising
the current geopolitical order. Indeed, as international relations scholars François De-
brix and Cynthia Weber define it in Rituals Of Mediation: International Politics And Social
Meaning (2003), mediation “is a site of representation, transformation, and pluralization
where cultural and international rituals are performed. These rituals, in turn, perform
what are taken to be culturals and internationals” (2003:vii). As we will see, by appropri-
ating its images, pUN made the case that there are several breakages in the processes of
mediation between the peoples in whose name the UN was founded, the functioning of
the UN as an institution, its images, and the artistic appropriation of the latter.
5
The concept of mediation (Roger Silverstone 2002, 2005) should not be confused with that of
mediatisation. Nick Couldry discusses the differences between these two terms in detail in a piece that
focuses on digital storytelling (2008, including their histories and definitions by key authors:4–9; see
also Couldry and Hepp 2013). His argument is that mediatisation, in broad terms, refers to ‘an essentially
linear transformation from “pre-media” [...] to mediatized social states (2008:3) whilst mediation refers
to the “heterogeneity of the transformations to which media give rise across a complex and divided social
space rather than a single ‘media logic’ that is simultaneously transforming the whole of social space at
once” (2008:3).
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