For my colleagues, nothing short of complete people-driven management would do. On the other hand, the government colleagues I befriended and worked with perceived participation as a necessary evil.
Living in a perpetual state of fear, people prefer to isolate themselves from what they perceive as the “ineffective” mechanisms of public participation; creating and perpetuating a negative vicious circle.
One could hardly imagine a better illustration than Putin’s regime for the idea that the Presidency is itself a performative performance, ritualized but only too brutally effective, in contrast with the impotence of the demos.
There were so many questions that I had to stop taking them so that the children could finish school on time.
Is there a profound contradiction between subjective expression and effective political deliberation, such that the first type of participation should be described as superficial?
Experimenting with public participation at the Kröller-Müller Museum, 2010-2014.
Occupy is to be assessed, firstly, in terms of the alternative public space that it creates and the mutual recognition between individuals that (in however fragile a fashion) it brings into existence.
