Jonas Staal: “Assemblism”

The power of artists in assemblism:  “As artists, we are not in power, but through morphology we give power: we give form to power. The practice of assemblism that we can derive from [Judith Butler’s Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly] opens up the possibility of a new collectivity arising from the precariat—a new Us with the potential to shatter the Us/Them divide that has brought the new authoritarian world order into being. Embedding our artistic practice within social movements, we can help formulate the new campaigns, the new symbols, and the popular poetry needed to bolster the emergence of a radical collective imaginary. In that process, we can also begin to devise the new infrastructures—the parallel parliaments, the stateless embassies, the transdemocratic unions—needed to establish the institutions that will make a new emancipatory governance a reality.  Our time as assemblists is now.”