There is no single dominant consciousness or belief system.

Interviewee: Grant Kester

I think that’s what you are describing with this sculpture project (Transforming the Lueger Monument) in Vienna. That’s a great example. There is no single dominant consciousness or belief system, there are multiple hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces at work in Vienna around the issues of racism and anti-Semitism. This doesn’t mean that we ignore the obvious forms of ideological domination that operate in the world, but that we develop a more nuanced account of how they operate to encourage belief, and that we question any model of artistic subjectivity in which a single, enlightened agent claims to have transcended these systems in order to show everyone else the truth. There is a homeopathic element to this belief, that a tincture of alienation in the work of art will allow us to somehow overcome the far more pervasive experience of alienation and disruption that defines capitalist modernity. There are elements of this in Benjamin, when he talks about the dialectical image in the Arcades Project, but at the same time he is sympathetic to Brecht’s collaborative theatrical projects with workers.