Populism and Subjectivism

By Dias & Riedweg

What we particularly enjoyed about our participation in the "Populism Project" was finding out that the curators really did not try to illustrate populist strategies or facts within contemporary times but rather tried to question what populism, in fact, is and how broad and subtle it may really be. Their choice of pieces left us a strong impression that they treated populism as something as related to human desire, to human perception as much as it is related to our political history. Before understanding populism as a strategy, as a certain manner of perceiving and co-acting in political spheres, this show made possible to visualize populism as well as an inherent condition of the human being. Before seeing populism as political phenomena, here we might see it as a consequence of human subjectivism. How far could populism be caught in sight within this show? It was evident to see it in ourselves, in all of us, through the photographs of people attending pop concerts, rave parties, queen's day’s celebrations and delightful day-trips to Euro-Disney. How spontaneous we all act! This exhibition managed to poetically quote some of the subtle populist ways through which our society behaves, where individuals desperately search for existential rescue in the “mediatized” average. We all celebrate our egos in an insane alterity with the mediatized structures of power, silent lambs of our own subjective desire. The "Populism" exhibitions did make visible many of these ways in which our subjective expressions of desire affect and constitute the realm of contemporary politics.