A Conversation With Artist Jonas Staal
The killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh triggered an attitude and a methodology that Staal has been developing ever since: ‘Is the imagination of art, our capacity to think, stage, compose, choreograph, and construct the world differently not of crucial importance for the opposition to the construction of ultranationalist social reality? And should our task as artists, as those who have trained and specialized in representation, not be to join forces with those who demand a different conception of society: a society not divided by ethnic or class warfare, but assembled through a common imagination of equity? To contribute to a defiant imagination of a different world, a world as real as we are able to imagine it to be – this is what began to crystallize for me as the clear artistic task ahead. It took the body of a murdered artist for me to realize that these words had to be uttered: I am a propaganda artist.’
A defiant imagination of a different world. The people’s parliament in Rojava is a proud example. ‘Its circular form emphasizes a communal politics, the surrounding pillars mention key terms from the Social Contract and the rooftop consists of fragments of flags of local political and social organizations. As such, the parliament is both a spatial manifesto of the Rojava Revolution, as well as a concrete space where its ideals are practiced on a day to day basis.’
And in the cultural institutions of this country, he not only deconstructs paranoid and destructive propaganda art such as Steve Bannon’s, as he does here at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Elsewhere, he also creates its radical opposite. Recently, the Van Abbe Museum opened the Museum as Parliament: a translation of the Rojava people’s parliament to the Studio in Eindhoven: ‘The parliament combines art and politics to transform the Studio of the museum into a new democratic space. Considering the crises that our existing Western democracies are facing, this provides a chance to imagine and practice new models of democracy through art.’
All too often, history leads us to believe that propaganda stems exclusively from dictatorships, says Staal. He is trying to open up this narrative. ‘Every system of power produces its own propaganda. Whether this is good or bad depends on what kind of power we’re dealing with. I have become interested in the question: does something like emancipatory propaganda exist – the language for an imagination of a society that is emerging, that is still in the making? That is what I aim to contribute to: movements working towards a new commonality across and beyond established boundaries. I believe in the potential of not just one, but many propagandas.’