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August 15th – 30th
The project “If your future is not mine” reviews the possibility of forming a new revolutionary subject in today’s time. The project was developed during the residency at the 23rd International Studio Program “Romanze mit der Revolution” of the ACC Gallery and the city of Weimar in Germany running throughout 2017 and 2018.
On 19 April 2016, Fidel Castro (1926-2016) addressed the public at the closing of the Communist Party’s congress in Havana for the last time. The smooth transfer of leadership was carried out to his brother Raúl, who introduced the new direction of the state toward market oriented neoliberalism. One can conclude that Fidel’s appearance in an Adidas tracksuit supported this new path, which abandoned the military uniform.
However, different interpretations of his appearance can arise. It could be interpreted as a subversive act in which Fidel intentionally tries to cajole to younger generations, also known as the ‘underclass’ (a term used to minder social exclusion and avoid the term ‘poor’), which today engage in different forms of activities such as demonstrations, protests or riots, by which they reflect their interests, ideals and values, thereby giving an answer to the society in which they feel marginalized from the political process; all supported with the promotional slogan of Adidas “Your future is not mine”.
The mentioned Adidas campaign from 2016/17, which implies a decisive resistance to the dystopian future – powerful marching through the depressing and disturbing scenarios of the future – is just one of many examples of the commercialization of people’s need for (global, political) change. The commodification of counterculture is the primary drive of modern ideological regimes of cultural production, leaving behind Homo Poseur, who will give one of the many options for survival with the lifestyle. Counterculture is the dominant culture today. But one can argue that this campaign could be the evidence that Adidas didn’t forget its anti-fascist principles and to act in accordance with them.
Analysing the meaning of Fidel’s Adidas tracksuit, I created a uniform for the new revolutionary subject from the original Adidas tracksuits, thereby adding the inevitable premise of Adidas and the role of corporate power in forming virtue (based on the role of the Temple of Reason in French revolution), which by using the economic motivation that capitalism inspires, absorbs humanistic movements as a strategy.
The act of sewing the uniform for the new revolutionary subject assumes that the revolutionary subject exists. The uniform is not there for the purpose of uniformity, but to set off the state of action and overcome the impossibility of political subjectivization, which would result in the transition from the social to political sphere of operation and amplify that the political subjectivization is actually collective. The uniform, sewed together from parts of Adidas tracksuits, indicates that a newly established system inevitably inherits the premise of a previous one, where its development should be perceived as a process of becoming. By adding the word ‘if’, the question of ‘when’ should also be stressed.
Photo: N. Ivanović