Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 44

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
to model subjectivity” (Kester 2004:112). This idea (of discourse as key in avoiding
the assumption and the reinforcement of preexisting identities) leads me to pUN’s own
modelling of alternative modes of problem-solving within the UN—which it does, how-
ever, without questioning the centrality of the nation state as the institution’s organising
principle.
It is helpful to briefly return to the work of Jacques Derrida to clarify the significance
of this point. As is well known, Derrida argues that both representation and meaning
emerge through différance, a process of continuous reinscription and alteration. Specifi-
cally, in “The Parergon” (1978), the French philosopher engages with a painting by Van
Gogh, questioning the assumption developed by Kant in Critique of Judgment (1790)
regarding the existence of an a priori essence of beauty. Particularly important for the
analysis of pUN is Derrida’s examination of a footnote in the third Critique—in which
Kant defines the “parerga” as that which lies outside the artistic work. While Kant de-
fines it as an “ornament”, i.e. as a supplement to the “ergon” (the work), Derrida discusses
the term as a “frame” or “edge” (Derrida 1978), i.e. as a supplement that is both outside
and inside the work itself. In short, Derrida concludes that there is always an excess of
meaning within any representational attempt. In this view, painting (as well as arguably
all other artistic mediums) emerges as a manifestation of the notion of iterability or rep-
etition with a difference.
I see Reyes’ intervention as not only appropriating such an excess, but as also doing so
in a way that stressed that which the images and the official rhetoric of the UN reject: its
lack of internal coherence, its exclusions, the tension between its cosmopolitan aspira-
tions and the crucial role of the nation state within it. To put it clearly, the UN’s edge (to
use Derrida’s term) is, in fact, internal to the organisation. This is why it is so significant
that pUN didn’t reject the important role of the nation state within the UN’s modus ope-
randi—rather, it foregrounded it as a process of exclusion.
To conclude, it is precisely because it placed at its centre the instability of the images
and the rhetoric of the UN in an anti-exclusionary gesture that the artwork was able
to suggest a conversation regarding its mission and modus operandi. That is, the inter-
vention did more than simply manifesting the complexity of the rhetoric of the UN,
which it appropriated or to which it referred. Rather, by inhabiting such a rhetoric, Reyes
highlighted its exclusions and, consequently, the potentially dialectical character of me-
diation that, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, is identified—albeit in dif-
ferent ways—by both Silverstone (2002) and Couldry (2008). In doing so, the project
foregrounded possible forms of—not emancipated, but, rather—activated viewership
vis-à-vis the UN.
At the same time, although pUN aimed to interrupt the model of involvement without
interference of the viewers regarding the UN, its examination made evident the project’s
inability to deliver the logical consequence of what it suggests: the need for institutional
42