Riots: Slow Cancellation of the Future. On Riots and Resistance

About

The riot is an extra-ordinary setting that has played a pivotal role in the permanent confrontation between dissent and power over centuries. The deeper crises of capitalism, racial violence, and communal tensions have convulsed us into "an age of riots" [1]. As master fictions of the sovereign nation-state implode and hegemonic silencing of the dispossessed only serves to reveal the cracks in governability, the exhibition "Riots: Slow Cancellation of the Future" brings together artistic works and research positions from across the world in an endeavour to "sense" and chronicle recent riots and uprisings – evoking a phenomenology of the multitude.[2]

In 1960 Elias Canetti wrote, "One of the most striking traits of the inner life of a crowd is the feeling of being persecuted." [3] However, what happens when state forces instigate persecution from within the crowd? The riot is a transformative ground that often becomes a decisive sequence within prolonged conflict – in the shape of mass rebellions, anti-colonial struggle, civil war, and genocide. And yet the riot has tended to remain that unresolved chapter, strategically buried in the subconscious of divided cities.