Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.
— Alain Badiou, ‘Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art’
As the New York Times has reported, the last few years have seen a dramatic rise in politically motivated art vandalism.1 Acts of ‘eco-vandalism’ — a rather telling term deployed by the New York Times that more appropriately names the object of protest (the destruction of the natural environment) rather than the protests themselves — typically involve protestors gluing themselves to gallery walls and artworks, or throwing food at famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa, and have exploded in response to the relative inaction evinced by Western powers in response to mass environmental destruction and extinction. While such tactics are hardly new, and instead draw on a rich and varied legacy as has been shown by the Boorloo based art critic and activist Max Vickery, 2022 alone saw thirty eight separate incidents of artworks vandalised in the attempt to draw attention to climate inaction and the urgent need for radical economic transformation. 2
In response to this renewed interest in the art institution as a space for direct action, journalists, politicians, activists, artists and curators have attempted to understand the meaning of these tactics. In particular, the question of whether art vandalism is morally justifiable or whether it is counterproductive, have dominated discussions. For many, it is simply indefensible to attack priceless works of art when the cultural sphere is already so besieged and while art institutions are relatively absent from the rogue’s gallery or true eco-vandals such as BP, ExxonMobil and Taylor Swift. Defenders of the tactic point out that a range of major art institutions have strong ties to fossil fuel and minerals companies, and that such institutions play an ideological role in entrenching a kind of neoliberal individualism, which thereby makes them fair game for political disruption. Similarly, those debating the question of the efficacy of such tactics argue over how much agitation the general public will endure. On the one side, supporters of the tactic insist that our proximity to catastrophe means that the risk of alienating some is outweighed by the value of educating and agitating others. On the other side, critics argue that art vandalism gives many a kind of moral permission to be politically passive, as if the just cause of fighting for a liveable earth has been so thoroughly co-opted by misguided fanatics and unserious stunts that one has no choice other than to remain inactive.
While the proponents, supporters and critics of the tactic of art vandalism appear to hold irreconcilable views, on closer inspection they share key assumptions about the character of the public. Presupposed in these discussions is a framing of the public as composed of passive spectator-consumers who must be steered, if not entirely managed, towards specific political ends. How are we to account for the inaction of the public? Why do they allow the planet to be destroyed and for their lives to be dominated by destructive logics of extraction and profit? Attempts to answer these questions typically rely on a public subject similar to that of the badaud — the passive bystander or gawker who is totally immersed, or perhaps even trapped, in the circulation of commodities and images that comprises modern culture. Absent-minded, easily fooled, passively consuming, the badaud is too busy engaging in rage-bait social media pile-ons or watching TikTok brain poison to engage in political action. For supporters of art vandalism, the badaud must be awoken from their consumer slumber through a kind of avant-garde shock. For critics of this form of activism, the badaud's shock is always perilously close to anger and resentment, with the risk that the larger political questions surrounding environmental crises will be displaced by confusion — ‘what does the Mona Lisa have to do with the environment?’
As if debating the dangers of waking a sleepwalker, it is far too often the case that discussions of political tactics ignore the passive and stage-managed roles that are offered to the public in political processes. As such, the passivity of the badaud is often viewed through the lenses of moralism or technological determinism, as if the public’s unwillingness to act can be attributed to the extra-political influence of TikTok or video games (pick your poison) or to the simple fact that people are selfish and must be cajoled into doing the right thing. But, as sociologists like Theda Skocpol, Marshall Ganz and Hahrie Han have pointed out, political parties, civil society organisations and trade unions — the institutional forms through which political action was organised in the modern period — long ago moved away from organising and developing organic community and workplace leaders, and moved towards mass-communication-based forms of mobilisation that aimed at coordinating atomised individuals.
Given the rarity of institutional forms that allow for the possibility of politics as a radically free and open form of speech and action — that is, the capacity to experiment with the creation of new norms of conduct and new visions of self and society — is it possible that the figure of the badaud functions as a means of avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable work of fostering distributed leadership and power? Put differently, could it be the case that the ‘problem’ of the badaud, at least insofar as it can be invoked in discussions of political tactics, emerges most prominently in contexts where there is an unwillingness to ask how political institutions could be reconfigured to allow for truly democratic representation and participation? To paraphrase union negotiator and labour lawyer Joe Burns, perhaps the avant-garde shock of tactics like art vandalism is only necessary when the political solutions on offer to regular people do not make sense.
If this is the case, and following Yancey Strickler’s ‘dark forest theory of the internet,’, we should consider a dark forest theory of politics.3 Strickler develops his analysis of the contemporary internet by adapting Liu Cixin’s ‘dark forest theory of the universe,’ taken from his The Three Body Problem.4 Liu’s work argues that, rather than viewing the lack of evidence of extraterrestrial life as proof of the uniqueness of human existence, we should view it as evidence that it is simply not safe to reveal oneself given the likelihood of threats and predators. Like a forest at night, the universe is teeming with life that must stay hidden for fear of attack. Along this line, Strickler argues the internet is increasingly following a ‘dark forest’ logic, with exclusive and secret WhatsApp groups, Discord servers, and Patreons replacing the openness of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From this perspective, the apparent absence of sustained political activism could be viewed, not as the badaud’s passive immersion in the circulation of images and commodities but as a purposeful, albeit unconscious, strategy; one of withdrawal in the face of seemingly inescapable beneficent manipulation and management.
For this reason, we should perhaps put aside the interrogation of the ethics of defacing the Mona Lisa, so as to more urgently engage with the question of the assumed subject of ‘eco-vandalism’s’ message. That is to ask, while it could be the case that the badaud is simply too submerged in debt and consumption to realise that ecological collapse is a very real threat, is it not possible that the badaud simply lacks faith in — due to having a weak connection to — the addressors of today’s calls for revolutionary action? Without forging meaningful relationships with the public it so desperately wants to activate, is there the risk that the attempt to awaken the people will produce, not anger and hostility, but a disastrous feigned sleep? If we can take this line of questioning seriously, the problem changes; no longer the dilemma of how to shake the badauds away from their screens — especially since, by the criteria of immersion in image and commodity circulation, we are today all badauds — but one of how to build institutions, including art institutions, that produce the confidence required for all of us to stop playing dumb.
[1] Farah Nayeri, ‘The Conflict Over Vandalizing Art as a Way to Protest’, The New York Times, 2 May 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/arts/design/vandalizing-art-protests.html (accessed 14 May 2024).
[2] Giovanni Aloi, ‘After 38 attacks on art, climate protesters have fallen into big oil’s trap – it’s time to change tack’ , The Guardian, 6 Februrary 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/feb/06/after-38-attacks-on-art-climate-protesters-have-fallen-into-big-oils-trap-its-time-to-change-tack (accessed 14 May 2024); Max Vickery, ‘Art Thugs & Humbugs Towards a Theory of Vandalism’, Dispatch, 9 June 2023, https://dispatchreview.info/Art-Thugs-Humbugs (accessed 14 May 2024).
[3] Yancey Strickler, ‘The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet’, personal blog, May 26 2019, https://www.ystrickler.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet/ (accessed 14 May 2024).
[4] See in particular the second installment of the trilogy: Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest, Trans. Joel Martinsen, Bloomsbury, New York, 2016.
