Abstract from the platform 1 “Democracy unrealised”, Documenta 11, 2002, Kassel.

 

Democracy is usually defined as the expression of a general will – or at least as the expression of a will of the majority. That is why different political viewpoints and programs are united under the conditions of democracy by the same political strategy – namely by seeking to bring the majority on their side with the means of propaganda. This quest for the majority constitutes the modern, democratic political field.

But since the emergence of the historical avantgarde at the beginning of the 20th Century the modern artists have chosen to pursue a different strategy – the strategy of creating minorities, instead of winning majorities. The politics of the artistic avantgardes is neither the politics of representing an existing majority, nor one of building a new majority. Rather, it is the politics of splitting, differentiation, fragmentation of all possible majorities. In this sense the politics of the avant-garde is a counterpolitics.