[Nettime-bold] Curating the Coup

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

Intriguing to see how my post “Chile Night’ 

has elided in replies from a concern about 

what is in effect and outcome, if not in 

planning, conception or anticipation, (and 

therefore hardly a conspiracy) a legislative 

but not yet political Coup by very right wing

 forces in the West to an allegory about the 

common experience of traversing borders. 

Indeed, there are few places where we are 

willing to renounce our rights and accept an 

assumption of culpability or guilt before we 

can show ourselves, through document (the 

Passport – which is in any case a property of

 our home states) and self-witness (for 

business or pleasure), to be innocent. The 

quazi-autonomous zone of the 

frontier between states requires this 

temporary abject, subject-less status. It also

 seems to require Nazis to staff it. 
 


Whether the context of responsibility of 

the ‘gatekeeper’ who has personal 

responsibility produces the fascism, or 

whether fascists are attracted to the post of 

state ‘gatekeeper’ is a question that might

 not presently be deferred. It is very urgent

 that we examine the cultures of gate-keeping.


 The constraints of time and resources upon 

the administration, enforcement and execution 

of new legislation concerning ‘national 

security, homeland safety, terrorism or ‘un-

American’ sentiment (whatever that is, can’t 

imagine being sanctioned for being ‘un-

British’ or ‘un-Canadian’ and what would ‘un-

Jamaican’ look like exactly?) mean that only 

the military and/or immigration and 

citizenship ministries are equipped to 

perform the ‘service’.


Given that there are only two structures of 

the state that are able or equipped to manage,

 enforce and administrate the new laws 

concerning ‘national security’ or ‘homeland 

safety’ or ‘terrorism’, the Military, which is

 in any case confined to temporary zones 

declared under military emergency, and 

Citizenship and Immigration, the temporary

 experience we all feel in entering a state 

may well become a general and perhaps 

permanent experience.  


Perhaps we can hone our criticsm of the

gatekeeping culture all of this emergency

legislation points to by focussing on

the behavior, accountability, and longevity 

in their apparently permanent autonomous 

roles as ‘middle managers of meaning’ of 

the ‘cultural gatekeeper’ the curator or the 

editor in the field of cultural production 

will provide a productive point for writers

 and artists to challenge the new borders,

 boundaries and enclosures  and permit 

curators and editors to be even more reflexive

 about their roles, motives and investments 

than they are at present.


I am sure that if or when the National Security

State hauls you in for interrogation over

your 'unCanadian' activities

on the grounds that your art or writing, your

curation or editing, seeks to breach the 

security of the new enclosures  between 

ethnicities, genders and 

classes or castes, the exercise will prepare 

us all to present a good many more questions 

to the interrogators than the inquisition 

expects.





Just a suggestion.




from 



Lachlan Brown
Toronto
crying freedom


btw I edited with Susan Lord the catalogue for 
Nina Czeglady's first western curation in 89 (i think)  a video festival at Toronto's Euclid Theatre: UNBLOCKED - video from
eastern europe 'an explosion of authentic national expression from the Balkans...' 


this way to the gallery, this to the camp










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