Complicity: New Perspectives on Collectivity 9783839435175

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity – from Criminal Law to Media Discourse
1.1 Criminal Law
1.2 Films and Literature: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (USA, Dir.: Arthur Penn), Komplizinnen (1987) (Germany, Dir.: Margit Czenki) and Les Complices (Georges Simenon, 1956)
1.3 Illegality and Innovation
2. Everyday: Changed Social and Political Figures
2.1 From the Collective to the Connective
2.2 Situational Socialities: The Unforeseen Voting Out of a Politician
2.3 Friendship in Relation to Complicity
3. Work: Transformed Work Environments
3.1 Failed Complicities (By Example of Radical Innovation)
3.2 Complicity in Relation to Teams, Alliances, Networks and other Pacts, such as the Mafia
3.3 Life Tactics and Survival Tactics
4. Authorship: Complicit Collectivity
4.1 Conspiratorial Artist-Accomplices: Konspirative KüchenKonzerte, Situationists, geheimagentur, Beat Bag Bohemia
4.2 A New Form of Collectivity: The Project NAME readymade by Janez Janša
4.3 Complicitous Authorship (with the Audience)
5. The Research Film Komplizenschaften (2007) (Switzerland, Dir.: Barbara Weber/Gesa Ziemer)
6. Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity
6.1 Playfully: 15 Indicators
6.2 Remarks on the Indicators
6.3 Surprising (Urban) Public Spheres: Art in Complicity with Not-Art
Bibliography

Citation preview

Gesa Ziemer Complicity

This book is dedicated to all my accomplices, who know who they are.

Gesa Ziemer (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor of Cultural Theory and Vice President of Research at the HafenCity University in Hamburg. She is Director of the City Science Lab, a cooperation with the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, and Spokesperson of the post-graduate program “Performing Citizenship”.

Gesa Ziemer

Complicity New Perspectives on Collectivity

The research project was supported by the Commission for Technology and Innovation Bern and the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland. I thank Vanessa Weber and Ellen Mey for their cooperation.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2016 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Translated by Ehren Fordyce Typeset by Francisco Bragança, Bielefeld Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3517-1 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3517-5

Table of Contents

Introduction | 7 1 Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity – from Criminal Law to Media Discourse | 15



1.1 1.2 1.3

Criminal Law | 19 Films and Literature: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (USA, Dir.: Arthur Penn), Komplizinnen (1987) (Germany, Dir.: Margit Czenki) and Les Complices (Georges Simenon, 1956) | 29 Illegality and Innovation | 42

2 Everyday: Changed Social and Political Figures | 57

2.1 2.2 2.3

From the Collective to the Connective | 58 Situational Socialities: The Unforeseen Voting Out of a Politician | 64 Friendship in Relation to Complicity | 68

3 Work: Transformed Work Environments | 81

3.1 3.2 3.3

Failed Complicities (By Example of Radical Innovation) | 88 Complicity in Relation to Teams, Alliances, Networks and other Pacts, such as the Mafia | 96 Life Tactics and Survival Tactics | 107

4 Authorship: Complicit Collectivity | 117 4.1 Conspiratorial Artist-Accomplices: Konspirative KüchenKonzerte, Situationists, geheimagentur, Beat Bag Bohemia | 125



4.2 A New Form of Collectivity: The Project NAME readymade by Janez Janša | 138 4.3 Complicitous Authorship (with the Audience) | 143

5 The Research Film Komplizenschaften (2007) (Switzerland, Dir.: Barbara Weber/Gesa Ziemer) | 151 6 Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity | 153 6.1 6.2 6.3

Playfully: 15 Indicators | 153 Remarks on the Indicators | 154 Surprising (Urban) Public Spheres: Art in Complicity with Not-Art | 158

Bibliography | 169

Introduction

In 1997, five men drove in broad daylight in an inconspicuous car to the Zurich Fraumünsterpost and carried off 56 million francs in cash, with which, packed in moneyboxes, they then disappeared. This robbery, which even internationally is considered among the most spectacular and which produced huge media publicity, took place of all things in the global and secure financial center of Switzerland. The perpetrators were caught and pronounced guilty of complicity. They are at large again, meanwhile, with some already relapsing into crime. A major portion of the loot is still missing without a trace. In 2008, the artist group Bitnik succeeded in attaching bugging devices under the chairs in the auditorium of the Zurich Opera House. Through these bugs, the public outside the opera house, unable to afford the high ticket-price, was given access to the elite world of opera music. In the Dada House, the performances could be followed over headphones. Additionally, telephone numbers of city residents were dialed by a random chance generator on a server so that the opera rang, so to speak, out of one’s own telephone at home. In total, over 90 hours of live opera were broadcast to 4,363 households. The opera house’s reaction to this artistic intervention was hardly relaxed, and they requested the accomplices to end the project Opera Calling and immediately remove the bugs. In the late 1980s, some politically engaged people gathered repeatedly in a private house in East Germany. They not only discussed the unsatisfactory living conditions in the then GDR; they also wanted to concretely change something. Only insiders knew about these meetings, which initially took place conspiratorially and from which the founding of the Neues Forum emerged. The New Forum comprised artists, scientists, doctors, students, theologians and others. This complicity was a germ cell for the

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subsequent, very large and peaceful citizen’s movement that helped lead to the fall of the Wall between East and West Germany in 1989 and hence to the emergence of a completely new political constellation in Europe and worldwide. In 2013, a young female computer scientist begins work at a company, following her studies. She is well trained, distinguishes herself through a tech-savvy lifestyle, and has a critical relation to fixed hierarchies. She gladly works; would, nonetheless, like to have enough time for family, friends and private life. The company brands itself externally as creative and innovative, which corresponds to her ideas of an attractive workplace; but the day-to-day shows that old, rigid structures still prevail in the company internally. She is only marginally awed by this and instead seeks out allies within the company, which she finds quickly and with whom she generates products and also new ideas for alternative processes that avoid hierarchy. Will the company permit the complicity or prevent it? These cases, as different as they may be, have one thing in common: A small group of engaged people succeeds in doing something seemingly impossible and as a result in producing a surprising and active publicness. To achieve this, they create anew for themselves their structures of collaboration. Since the cases are unique and unrepeatable, their protagonists cannot rely on already existing organizational structures. Wherein lies the secret of such ostensibly perfect, target-oriented, and always only temporary collective activity? Such examples have provoked me to research the qualitative core of today’s forms of collaboration. In current fragile, particularly creative working environments, one has – in changing social constellations, with people from different cultures, as well as under time pressure and shortage of money – to invent and carry out many projects; to produce publics; and to generate as much possible discursive acceptance in the respective scene. Additionally, a small group of creative, inspired people is necessary, with whom ideas can be developed and projects implemented. In such constellations, I had initially, quite personally, a very irritating experience, which was nonetheless also a social one. I found mostly very quick people, with whom I wanted to work, gladly and closely, for a certain time. Yet then the limited timeframe became problematic for me when the project ended and many of these people disappeared abruptly from my life. These were people with whom I had worked exceptionally intensely and through whom I had learned a great deal on the basis

Introduction

of common experience. I tried unsuccessfully to keep up contact across countries and even continents, because my conceptual repertoire put at my disposal such termini as friendship, teamwork, colleagues, collaboration or collective. But none of these forms of relationship tallied with what I had experienced, because these social forms of bonding are invested in more long-term timeframes and nurturing of relationships. The dayto-day of work offered me high mobility; quick establishing of contacts with rapid generation of intensity; and an equally high competence for the quick farewell. Mostly I wrangled with the idea that it was not a matter of friendships, for I frequently assumed these on the basis of high affectivity and bonding. Concurrent to these personal experiences, I observed on a social level that in this sphere, work in common and questions about how to organize this and how it could generate a public effect were essentially more important than the expression of individual skills and positions. A range of collective movements in art, science or other creative areas have succeeded publicly in drawing attention to themselves with effective actions: large collective art projects, citizen initiatives, mobile academies, creative artistic activism – or commons and the Occupy movement, as well – are only a few of such examples. It was striking that these were extremely heterogeneous in their composition and that despite all differences, the people joined forces on short notice for a limited period of time and with a clear goal. Their engagement gave expression to a certain dissatisfaction with social relations, which was not primarily manifested in antagonistic protest, however, but in fanciful, playful and constructive formats. They acted pragmatically, nimbly and full of ideas and put social connections into practice for which no apposite concepts existed. In all cases, a major concern was the production of unexpected public spheres, which pursued a particular goal and in which people across social milieus or disciplines were mobilized. What kind of relationships are at stake in these examples if not those based on familiar categories such as friendship, teamwork or basic networking? What are the reasons for the abrupt breaking off of contact, although the projects have run successfully? For a long time I observed these forms of collaboration and questioned their connotations until the concept of complicity came into focus for me. To what extent is this now suitable for analyzing such affective and simultaneously creative, but always-temporary common work practices? Fluid formations with changing

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and also oppositional actors trace an extremely fragile form of sociality, which lies on the margins of what one classically understands as society. The fleetingness of such forms does not, however, have to be a disadvantageous state of exception, but may also be a life reality that initially enables an alternative collective formation. Complicity signifies the “quality of doing with” [Mittäterschaft] and is defined in criminal law as an act’s three steps of resolution, planning and execution. The concept is related to illegal behavior and almost exclusively endowed with negative connotations. In this sense, accomplices are – mostly male – white-collar criminals, con men, bank robbers or other criminals, who carry out crimes without a “return address.” Since many states are afraid of criminal collectives, because these can develop and unleash uncontrollable destructive powers, high penalties are assigned to criminal complicity. If one abstracts this concept, however, and abandons morally untenable goals such as murder, fraud, theft or others, then another perspective on collectivity opens. If one observes complicity not in destructive, but rather in constructive-creative fields of work, it can be asked whether this term is suited to analyzing temporary, goal-oriented and self-determined modes of work, which are currently of increasing relevance given social changes. How can a new perspective on collectivity be developed qua complicity? Complicity – so my thesis – is a specific work-form, which reinterpreted from a destructive to a constructive, pleasureful mode of work leads to alternative structures being developed that lead to innovations. Complicity lives on a double-structure: it is composed of illegal, destructive activity, on the one hand; and yet, on the other, it also bears within itself constructive, energetic, and even glamorous traits. Although they are criminal, cases of complicity often, nevertheless, trigger something like admiration and understanding, reflected in films, books and everyday stories in daily newspapers. Prominent examples are the Great Train Robbery (1963) in England, the Zurich Post Office Robbery (1997) or the great Antwerp Diamond Heist (2003) because in each case the accomplices were captured, but a portion of the considerable spoils remains missing today. Even above and beyond the prison punishments, the strong bond of the complicity appears to endure. Such cases point to the power of the collective, which qua complicity has made possible something impossible, something individuals could not have achieved singly. Particular to such plots is that the tendentially somewhat weak join together uncompromisingly, which is why these perpetrators – often romantically elevated – can

Introduction

have a quite sympathetic effect. The illegality of this form of action is marked by boundary transgression – whether this be conceived of legally, socially, aesthetically or economically. Yet not only criminals, but also creatives carry out boundary transgressions. Neutrally stated, one could thus speak of a small interest-community, active and able to assert itself, which defines a goal for itself and for which it must first create a work-structure. Par excellence, complicity joins theory and praxis because it encompasses the entire path from resolution to realization. Only someone actively participating in all three steps is convicted of genuine complicity. The particular thing about complicity is that each person must also assume responsibility for the actions of others. In criminal law, the focus lies on the structure of the group and not on the individual. This is also the case in innovative fields of work in the context of collective authorship: the group is praised or criticized for the result; the group has success or failure and not only the individual author. Complicity is thus used when handling structures creatively, when these are altered, adapted or even reinvented. It is hence mainly the expression of creative work and in the process crops up across all fields of work and social milieus and not only in those ascribed a high level of creativity, such as art or other creative branches. The use of the terms creativity and innovation have, nevertheless, been strongly criticized in the last decades in the humanities and cultural studies. No one would like to be considered uncreative today so that the concept of creativity is used in an inflationary manner; on this account, too, there are grounds for the boom in the complicity concept. In the course of debates critical of capitalism, both concepts have been identified as a demand that everyone has to fulfill today in his or her1 work and which will lead ultimately 1 | Translator’s note: In translating gendered nouns and pronouns in the text, an attempt has been made to render these in a cross-gender or gender-neutral way. However, it should also be noted – as the author remarks in the initial footnote in the original, adapted here for the purposes of the translation – that “Complicity is a masculinely-cast phenomenon.” Thus, at times in the translation, a gendered reading of a passage is highlighted, either masculinely or femininely, to make explicit a perceived assumption about gender in the text. Additionally, all translations of citations in the text are by the present translator unless a common or well-known English version is available; reference to this is then given in the citation.

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to exhaustion or even depression. Creativity is said to have thereby lost its potential for subversion and resistance – so the critics – because it is propagated mainly on behalf of management literature and practice only as a performance-oriented and efficiency-enhancing principle. Above all, artists, who admittedly often still feed on the mythos that they possess the privilege of maximal creativity, are afraid of this appropriation. This research hence proposes a certain rehabilitation of both terms, for we cannot avoid being creatively active if we wish to be engaged and proactive and to produce new public spheres. More openly formulated, creativity enables transitions from something known to something unknown; it is a risky and vulnerable state, where irrationality, excess, and idealism play a major role before pragmatism applies and implementation begins. Complicity allows precisely such dynamics, for the shelter of the group facilitates withstanding the unknown. In the process – and this must be emphasized – the principle of non-transparency is repeatedly invoked. In order to confront a possible critique regarding this assertion: it is not a question here of propagating corruption, nepotism, old boy networks or other non-transparent forms of preferential treatment in the economy, politics or society. Complicity is examined exclusively as a specific relational phenomenon in innovative contexts. For innovative processes – so my observation – are always sustained by the free space of anonymity and unconventionality, as well as of clandestine thinking and acting. Complicity emphasizes exactly these aspects, and it enables – apart from transparent structures – the pursuit of other paths. Were the lack of transparency to pass too quickly into transparency, dialogues from the complicity would have to be driven out, which would in turn restrict alternative or even radical thinking at too early a point in time. In complicity, this necessarily indeterminate state is easier to sustain than by oneself. For this reason, too, people ally in order to produce alternative orders together, which effectively realize their impact by virtue of conspiratorial energy. As a result, the model of complicity does not fit into the present demand for absolutely comprehensive transparency in working environments and organizational structures, but rather contrasts to this the productivity and necessity of non-transparency in innovative structures. This book summarizes the results of an interdisciplinary research project in which a range of actors from the fields of (performing) arts, (cultural) science, politics and (creative) economy were interviewed, as well as filmed for the purpose of visual research. Approximately 60 interviews

Introduction

were conducted, which were recorded by auditory or visual means. Some of the interviews can be seen in the research film Komplizenschaften [Complicities] (available at https://vimeo.com/167702376); others can be read, with examples from practice, in the brochure Komplizenschaft – Andere Arbeitsformen. (K)ein Leitfaden [Complicity – Other Forms of Work. (Not) A Guide] (Notroff/Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007); still others remain unpublished on grounds of discretion. In the research film, we hear and see the dancer Anna Huber and percussionist Fritz Hauser; the sustainability consultant and board director Paola Ghillani; the curator, artistic director and entrepreneur Martin Heller; the criminal law professor and politician Daniel Jositsch; and the percussion quartet Beat Bag Bohemia with Lucas Niggli, Kesivan Naidoo, Rolando Lamussene and Peter Conradin Zumthor. Alongside the spoken word, the film directs focus particularly to the relevance of the sensory level of complicity, since this can be understood in the initial stage substantially as an aesthetic phenomenon. Whether or not one allies with someone else in an expressly complicit manner has essentially to do with how our senses react. Physical skills based on use of eyes, ears or movements lead, despite the high autonomy of the actors, to being able to institute a temporary synchronization according to their own principles. In the process, language often retreats into the background. This physical interplay can be as significant during a conference-room meeting as during an on-stage music improvisation or bank robbery. Many of us are familiar with the situation in meetings or juries where the moment of the benevolent exchange of glances, creating a feeling of being connected, is more important for the assertion of interests than simultaneously running official verbal statements. A look, a gesture, a code – we all act as accomplices more or less consciously, old or young, male or female, when we want to create something new with others. Complicity can correspondingly be understood as omnipresent and everyday. The center of the research is hence formed not by spectacular cases, but by everyday practice. In the process, deeper looks into artistic practices such as improvisation, choreography or performances are helpful for other social contexts. The research hence draws equally on art and science for information, inspiration and knowledge and for this reason is located in the field of artistic research. Pathfinding artists always contravene rules; they form innovative products or perform alternative processes, whereby a core concern of complicity is formulated. The drive behind the artistic production consists precisely in the non-fulfillment of rules, which is

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why interesting artists are often experts in complicity. It is hence sensible to research with them and not about them. This joint research was also demonstrated in the three Kurzen Nächten der Komplizen [Short Nights of the Accomplices] (2006/2007), which were presented at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. There, performers, researchers and audiences made complicity tangible in terms of performative research in different settings and so made it able to be reflected upon differently anew. The model of complicity is integrated into larger, current social transformations. Accordingly, the book is structured into six chapters: following the analysis of examples from film and literature in the first chapter, complicity is interpreted in the second chapter as an everyday phenomenon with regard to changed social and political configurations, from which a new – namely more fragile and yet more binding – handling of collectivity emerges. In the third chapter, the transformations of working environments make clear why we need – along with familiar organizational forms such as the network, teamwork or alliance-formation – other terms for current collective labor practices. A range of interesting collective authorship models from art demonstrates in the fourth chapter how these can become unexpectedly positive in effect today. The film constitutes the fifth chapter and can be understood not only as a visual supplement, but also as an elementary building block of the argumentation, since it thematizes the sensory level. This leads into the sixth chapter, which introduces the essential defining features of complicity in 15 indicators. After this research I can say: many of my work relationships, which have often also led into private areas, were and are de facto complicities. To know this is reassuring. Nevertheless, the concept remains an ambivalent and disconcerting one, which can trigger something destructive in the wrong moment with ill-suited allies. Yet in contrast, complicity can also create something constructive at the right moment with well-suited allies. This ambivalence constitutes the attractiveness of the concept: accomplices are confederates, both positively and negatively, who step into action tightly intertwined with one another. This form of sociality can always be examined on the level of action because it results in a deed and therefore never remains only concept. Whether this action be legal or illegal, energy, fantasy and subversive power adhere to complicity.

1 Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity – from Criminal Law to Media Discourse

The concept of complicity is defined in criminal law, but it is also frequently used in art (here film and crime fiction), in the everyday and in crime reports. The use of the concept across this wide cultural spectrum, outlined in the first chapter, accounts for its attractiveness and contradictoriness. The criminal-law definition, by means of which transgressions of the law by conspiratorial groups are evaluated, lays the basis for my analysis. For the moment, however, whether these boundary transgressions are classified as morally acceptable or unacceptable, thus wrong or right, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, plays no role. Rather, it is a matter first of precisely describing the mechanisms of complicity by reference to case examples so that these can be understood and differentiated from others as a specific social form of bonding. The economist Christa Muth takes up the following typology in an interview1: “How one judges what is destructive or constructive depends, of course, on one’s personal value system, but I work on the assumption that we share a few common views: What lies within the rules of the game of a liberal society and within a general feeling for ethics is constructive for me. What lies beyond such

1 | The research project “Complicity – Work in the Future” began in 2006 at the Institute for Theory at the Zurich University of the Arts. It was supported by the Commission for Technology and Innovation. The documentation can be seen under: ht tp://www.ith-z.ch/for schung /abgeschlossene-forschungsprojek te/kompl izenschaft/, visited 3 April 2013.

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a boundary, however diffuse, falls under mean tricks, on to the most vile and dangerous villainies.” (Notroff/Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 28)

Leaving aside ethical debates, this typology can serve as a guideline, for the character of the specific relational form of complicity stands in focus and less its goal-setting, which has to be negotiated from case to case. How then must complicities be designed on the social level so that they succeed? For the following outline of criminal law, examples from media discourse are posed on the side. In films and literature, three forms of depiction appear frequently: complicities that are emancipatory; lead to dependencies; or function in a romanticizing and often myth-forming fashion. Additionally, all three aspects resonate in everyday complicities, which while couched pragmatically and in a goal-oriented way, are nonetheless sustained by passion and often irrationality as well. At stake is a collective form of action that oscillates between calculation and unpredictability. The first chapter’s sources highlight the semantic origins and reinterpret the concept from its primarily destructive form into a constructive one. They emphasize the concept’s potentials and problems, which lie particularly in the ambiguity between the legal/creative and illegal/criminal aspects of complicity. The reinterpretation of concepts has a tradition in philosophy, shaped, for example, by Judith Butler or Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. They point out that negatively connotative concepts can obtain a new meaning, indicating the re-appropriation of an expression that has become an insult and hence suggestive of a marginalized group’s self-determination. In doing so, they emphasize the emancipatory aspect of this approach2 and observe that it is not a matter of 2 | So, by way of example, the term queer has managed to undergo an emancipatory reinterpretation. Queer, as an insult for homosexual persons, became the groundwork for Queer Theory, an independent field of research, which assumes that gender identities are not biological, but social and cultural: “Should one assay access via the meaning of ‘queer,’ then ‘queer’ as an adjective in the Englishspeaking space was and is found in use as an insult against lesbians and gays. At the same time, however, these groups have also appropriated the term with pride since the late 1980s” (Degele 2008: 42). Even today, the term nigger, by contrast, could only in part be reclaimed for self-determined movements. This may lie in a quantitatively greater degree of injury being associated with the racist use of the

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

a simple discursive inversion that introduces the affirmation of a concept and thereby “dialectically reinstalls the version it seeks to overcome“ (Butler 1993: 21). Pursuant to this view, it is also an issue with complicity of revaluing a relational form as legitimate that is considered illegitimate, strengthened by those who understand themselves to be working complicitly. Especially the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari is stamped by the creation of new concepts, which not only describe, but also produce new realities, through which conceptual work not only comes to settle in the field of thought, but is also understood as concretely changing society. Stated briefly: If there are no terms for something, it also does not exist in reality.3 Whoever would like to change society, must also create alternative concepts; the creative act of thought4 lies in this, and pertinent here as well is formulating the unspeakable and unexpected – in the case of complicity, conditions already implicitly given. Complicitous action is not a new form of action; due to changed relations, however, it is more broadly practiced socially and therefore requires a more nuanced representation. Before we turn to criminal law and examples from film and literature in more detail, it should be pointed out that examples from printjournalism show an almost continuously negative and frequently also cliché-ridden use of the concept of complicity. Complicity is used in these as an expression of criminal and opaque connections, in which immoral aims are pursued.5 The topos of amusing and abstruse accomplice-stories term nigger. The reappropriation of nigger as an act of self-empowerment is thus far more difficult. 3 | Speech-act theory describes a foundational theory regarding the efficacy of producing new social realities through language, already formulated by John L. Austin in the 1960s. As opposed to constative utterances, which denominate either what is true or false, performative utterance allows the subject to put into effect through speech. With this, Austin shows that to say something may also mean to do something, whereby the link is produced between words (here verbs) and actions that are reality-shaping. (Cf. Austin 1979: 29f.) 4 | For Gilles Deleuze, philosophy is neither reflection, nor communication, nor contemplation, for these activities “are not disciplines but machines for constituting Universals in every discipline” (Deleuze/Guattari 1994: 6), which is to be avoided. Thinking means creation; that is, the creation of ideas. 5 | In daily newspapers, we read articles with titles like “Treusorgende Komplizen” [“Devoted Accomplices”] (Leyendecker 2012), in which the networking of the

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poses an exception that surfaces repeatedly. In the article “Komplizen aus Versehen” (2010) [“Accomplices by Accident”], for example, the anecdote of a 70-year-old retiree from the USA is recounted, who was involuntarily involved in a curious bank robbery. He drove his neighbor, who wanted to pay her apartment rent, in his car to the bank. When she came back out of the bank, she told her driver that he could drive off, that the rent was paid. Shortly afterwards, however, the car was stopped by the police because the woman had not paid her rent, as she told her neighbor, but held up the bank at gun-point. The man convinced the police that he had known nothing of this and thus was an accomplice by accident, whereupon he was released. Interestingly, many such examples describe ‘success stories’ in the sense that the respectively defined goals were achieved in unusual ways, even if these were criminal. Complicity is described as an effective combining of different individuals, where unpacking the question of guilt is frequently complicated since it does not involve single perpetrators. At first take, one finds no obvious return address that could be held accountable. Rather, the intensity of the collaboration is at issue, as well as the question of who cooperated with whom on behalf of what interest. With the exception of the story of the retiree, these cases lead us into criminal law and hence to the legal evaluation of complicity. radical-right Zwickau terror cell is described with other neo-Nazi groups that have committed a series of racist-motivated murders in Germany. Or there is talk of “Kontrolleuren und Komplizen” [“Controllers and Accomplices”] (Strittmatter 2010), where the failure of the media during the crisis in Greece is criticized in connection with the murder of a journalist. The Athens-based professor for media studies Roy Panagiotopoulou formulates the complicit interrelationship thus: “The media here are part of the establishment. They have taken part in the game of corruption, and they were involved in the destruction of the social fabric in the country.” (ibid.) Under the headline “Putin und seine Komplizen” [“Putin and his Accomplices”] (Förster 2012), there is a book review in which the structure of Gazprom, a Russian state-owned company that principally supplies gas and oil, is criticized as accomplices of the President of the Russian Federation. The company Gazprom, which maintains its own banks, news services, television broadcasts, insurance companies, construction firms etc., has meanwhile become part of Putin’s private project, which enables him to erect non-democratic and nontransparent systems of control in the country.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

1.1 C riminal L aw A relatively high level of penalty is imposed on complicity, for a number of states fear, based on history, offenses carried out by groups. Many governments have had to experience that even small groups can unleash forces difficult to control and for this reason can overturn security systems of all kinds. Resistance organizations such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany, Red Brigades (BR) in Italy, Basque Country and Freedom (ETA) in the Basque region or the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland are European examples of collectively organized resistance, which over long periods of time can damage and destabilize the functioning of governments. Even if the emergence of such groups is quite comprehensible historically, since they are based primarily on resistance to a dominant state system that does not take into account the needs of the marginalized, groupings thus develop that generate violence in their attempts to turn from reality.6 In relation to individual perpetration of an offense, the criminal law expert Daniel Jositsch describes this dynamic in the research film 7 in this way: “We know from experience that a single bank robber more frequently turns around in front of a bank than a group of bank robbers.” (Komplizenschaften, 2007, Switzerland, Dir.: Weber/Ziemer)

On psychological grounds, a crime can be performed more easily together than alone. One feels protected and sustained by the group, which reduces the individual fear. Along with the psychological and historical grounds, Jositsch mentions a further reason for the high level of penalty: the tendency is for those socially lowest in group hierarchies to have to perform the crime. The powerless position – whether socially, economically or ethnically based – makes defenseless; it compels 6 | From the perspective of postcolonial theory, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points out that quite justified uprisings are not militant, but are defined as militant: “the cultural constructions that are allowed to exist within subalternity, removed as it is from other lines of mobility, are changed into militancy” (Spivak/Landry/MacLean 1996: 289). 7 | The research film Komplizenschaften (https://vimeo.com/167702376) by Barbara Weber and Gesa Ziemer (2007) is outlined in Chapter 5.

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performance and presumably protects the powerful from punishment. Those who shoot or rob are often those who do not pierce the structures in the background and who merely perform. They alone would be punished if the cooperative element of complicity were not anchored in criminal law in a differentiated manner. For the powerful are those who pull the strings in the background and create criminal structures, who circumvent regulations over the long term and lead to violence. Yet, they keep themselves to the background and let the powerless work for them. In legal language, such a situation sounds like this: “A gang leader provides (in the preparation stage) the directives from headquarters, yet leaves the performance of the crime to others.” (Peter 1984: 10) The ringleader is absent during the actual performance, but is substantially involved in the organization. In film, we can track this variant clearly in The Godfather (1972) (USA, Dir.: Francis Ford Coppola). Right at the start of the film, the powerful mafia boss, Don Vito Corleone, is organizing a large wedding for his daughter. While the many guests are boisterously celebrating, he sits in a dimly lit backroom and receives certain guests separately, whom he asks to do small ‘favors’ for him – meaning acts of revenge or extortions. Corleone is rich and influential and engaged in expanding his good relations in the economy and politics into a thoroughly corrupt network. The active implementation of murder and extortion lies far below his level, which is why he lets these ‘dirty’ activities be performed by others, who in turn are dependent on him. In order to oppose this type – stylized in the film into a glamorous underworld boss, ready to use violence – the law is interested, in cases of complicity, in not only the individual behavior of the perpetrators, but especially the backgrounds of collective structures. It proceeds on the assumption that particularly these systemic structures are sustainable and represent a basis for further offenses. How then does one define complicity? A concise definition is supplied by criminal law’s teaching on felonies, whose Swiss and German variants provide the foundation here. Complicity means the quality of acting with [Mittäterschaft], which presupposes intent: “Complicity can be characterized as joint perpetration of a criminal offense in conscious and deliberate cooperation” (Donatsch/Rehberg 2001: 138). It involves a group crime, whose conscious and intentional collective form of interaction leads to a criminal offense. The quotation emphasizes that the responsibility and guilt of merely one person is not primarily the focus, but rather the analysis of the ‘with-ness’ [Mit] of the complicity [Mittäterschaft]. How is

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

this with-ness practiced? How is it structured? Why is this with-ness, which usually has to function under adverse circumstances, so effective? In crimes of complicity, questions are posed about the group structure and its cooperative-acting [Miteinander-Agierens], for the force of the complicity lies precisely in the fact that a group can develop tremendous, opaque and unpredictable powers here in a manner that would not be possible for a single person. While group hierarchies are assumed in the process, these do not yield only one culprit. On the contrary: It is assumed that all were actively involved in the crime, and hence the degree of involvement is legally categorized. This core idea already suggests that this form of collectivization is apposite for transferring to legal forms of creative work since, as we will see later, joint responsibility is also at stake in instances of collective authorship, sustained ultimately to achieve the result shown during presentation. Complicity can be subdivided into three phases: Accomplices jointly make a resolution; plan a crime with each other; and perform this together (cf. Donatsch/Rehberg 2001: 140). Classic accomplices jointly traverse these three phases as a group. However, when it is proven that the offender has substantially collaborated with the others in at least one of these three phases, he can already be convicted of complicity. However, in most of those cases that were carried out and thus tried before a court, the individuals were actively involved in at least two phases and frequently in all three. Collaborative action can be multiform in the process, as the following case shows: “A and B decide to commit a burglary together; force entry into a villa; and steal a safe by carrying it out together” (Peter 1984: 9). Everyone executes everything together, and the interplay can be appraised as being of equal weight. The defense will try to prove in the trial that the individuals participated actively as little as possible, for example by the claim of ignorance or of an early-stage exit from the circumstances of the offense. Here the question arises of how exactly conscious or intentional collaboration is structured. Frequently, the defense argues to the effect that the accused simply did not know what their collaboration would be tantamount to. Critically for this three-step process, the entire development of an offense is described – from the idea, through the planning, to the concrete realization in practice. While the resolution is settled upon in what is still a strongly visionary area, possible real facts are weighed during the planning phase and decisions made. The realization finally implements the planning into deed and is thoroughly practical.

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Accomplices are accordingly not only thinkers-with [Mitdenker]; they are always doers-with [Mittäter, tr. note: i.e., “accomplices”]. And the course of action hence joins theory and practice par excellence. Since the threestep process is taken as a succession of idea – possibility – realization, this can – neutrally stated – also be transferred to forms of legal projectbased work. In trials, the collective forms of interaction within the group of perpetrators are examined according to this three-step process, and the intensity of the collective involvement provides the level of the sentence. This involvement can also be recovered etymologically in the sense of com-plectere as “to entwine with one another” or “to fit into one another.” The participation in an ‘intertwining’ must, however, occur intentionally, which is why complicity is precluded in the case of negligence. Whoever accidentally becomes involved in a complicity is not pronounced guilty of complicity in the narrow sense, as the story of the ‘accidental bank robbery’ of the two neighbors offers by example. That does not mean, however, that accomplices cannot also act negligently; nonetheless, their inclusion in the group must be an intended one. The legal language clarifies that complicity is always based on common planning, even if this frequently is not realized as originally intended. Additionally, a crucial role is played by the question of perpetration [Tatherrschaft, tr. note: i.e., literally “command over the deed” as opposed to being an abettor or accessory]. This exists if “the party concerned must decide with others together about the actual committing of the offense” (Donatsch/Rehberg 2001: 140). If complicity is to be redefined, then the concept of the offense [Tat, tr. note: “offense” in a criminological sense, but also implying in a non-criminological one more generally a “deed” or “act”] must consequently also be explained in more detail and redefined. For the offense/deed represents the product – both in destructive and constructive respects. And the offense is defined negatively since it is understood as illegal or culpable activity. In this context, there needs to be some clarification regarding which legal concept of action one starts from and how the will to act is defined. “There where one speaks in law of ‘action,’ it depends at any rate on the meaning of the particular clause whether only the positive commission of an act […] or also the omission is meant” (Schönke/Schröder 2010: 143f.). This commentary from the criminal code makes clear that the strength or weakness of action is located on a broad scale between passivity and activity. Is omission to be assessed in equal measure in comparison to active commission? Or is

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

it a less intense activity? This assessment is invariably connected to the question of participation in the perpetration since even an omission can also be assessed as an offense. Essentially, criminal law proceeds on the assumption of three doctrines of action – the causal, final and social. All three doctrines are of significance in relation to the reinterpretation of the deed from an unlawful into a productive form of work. The causal is based on the causation of an action, and there it is assumed that an action is an “intended physical movement or, respectively, the intended motionlessness” (ibid.: 143). The doctrine of finality is oriented towards the purposefulness of the action; and that of the social, towards the “social relevance of human commission or omission” (ibid.: 145). These doctrines of action make it possible in the case of complicity to analyze and evaluate the will to act more precisely; and to clarify in what form of act an underlying will exists. Is such motivated by a reason or oriented toward an end or socially relevant? The three doctrines of action can also be transferred without further ado to legal creative project-based work, for here as well motifs of intensity of movement, intentionality and meaningfulness of social reality can be recovered. Moreover, a broad scale of passivity and activity is revealed here. By way of example, intended motionlessness is a common movement element in experimental dance, which – purposefully deployed – creates a strong aesthetic effect and can touch the audience’s life-sphere. As well, strength of purposefulness and social relevance are of significance in collectives. So all three elements are present here, too, on the basis of which one can gauge the will to participation in the perpetration. Offense in legal terms would now mean presentation, hence the moment in which the collective steps on stage in front of the audience and starts its exhibition or begins the concert. A joint perpetration can thus be shown in various facets, and the resolution, too, must refer to the joint realization of the undertaking during both the offense and the project-work. In the classic case of complicity, all participants repeatedly have possibilities for decision and can co-determine the course of the action. In doing so, the functions of the individuals in the process are so specific that the action could not be executed without their yea or nay. An authority would be lacking, reducing the quality of the action or even completely prohibiting the project. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that a person can also subsequently accede to a decision and can thus make another person’s intent his or her own. The point in time of entry into the process is thus also to be considered, which frequently does

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not simplify assessment. Free-riders would not be accomplices; someone who afterwards really makes something his or her own would be, however. How difficult such delimitations may be to draw in reality can be shown by the following example: A person observes a robbery and during this spontaneously decides to support the perpetrators and take the wallet from a victim’s pocket. While this person has accidentally observed the robbery, he or she has, nonetheless, consciously decided during the course of the action to become an accomplice in order to be able to have a share in the prize. This person becomes guilty of complicity, although not involved in the first phase – the ideation – and also not in the second – the planning. He or she has waited for an opportune moment, where the ‘success’ of the project can already be glimpsed, and has then latched onto the activity. This situation can also be translated without problem to legal project-based work: one can be affected by an already existing idea and, for example, enter in only at the beginning of the second phase. If entry occurs willingly, one becomes an accomplice. In legal or illegal project-based work, people conduct themselves afterwards, as a rule, in accordance with the success or failure of the action. So, in front of a court, they plead coincidence in order to keep the sentence as lows as possible; during the success of an art project, they plead intentional participation in order to receive the largest possible part of the prize – namely fame, money, authors’ rights. In reality, gray zones are frequently at stake in which, according to the situation, arguments lean in one or the other direction. The current strongly waged debates concerning copyright 8 show how difficult it can be to retrospectively reconstruct the participation in the phases of development. In the process, an important role belongs to the issue of copyright in regard to financial and social participation. Intellectual property in particular often arises in these gray zones, and the shares in the ‘perpetration’ can be difficult to assign in collective processes. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it is stated with regard to copyright 8 | The controversy about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as an international trade agreement for defense against counterfeiting occupies a prominent place in this regard. In particular, the statements on the planned measures for copyright infringements in the Internet have for months led to vehement protests by its opponents (cf. under http://www.bpb.de/politik/ hintergrund-aktuell/68580/diskussion-um-acta-03-02-2012, visited 30 Oct. 2012).

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

that knowledge and information count as a public good, hence neither is knowledge reduced through its use or reproduction, nor is the distribution of information through its technological reproducibility preventable: “The current controversy concerning copyright is characterized by a drawing of fronts between authors and internet users. A look at the contributions of various scientific disciplines on this topic shows that neither digitalization nor ‘for free’ culture [Umsonstkultur] are the only causes for the loss of acceptance in copyright. The internet has rather revealed dilemmas that are already laid out in its construction.” (Hofmann 2012: 11)

With regard to the third phase, the realization of the offense, another particularity should be pointed out: In complicities, it is not usually a matter of the pooling of specialists who undertake quite set functions within the group. Usually they are invested with different roles during the actual crime; some of these roles, observed individually, are judged as more serious misdemeanors or crimes than others. Thus a theft, as isolated act, is less weighty than murder. In a complicity, on the other hand, all participants can be punished equally severely, regardless of who carried out a deed. Thus Daniel Jositsch in the research film Komplizenschaften (2007) (CH, Dir: Weber/Ziemer): “If we two agree to hold up a bank and plan it, and we both take a weapon, and I shoot, then you are also responsible for this, although you yourself have not shot. That is what is special, for complicity considers everyone as a group, and if something happens, they are all responsible to the same extent.” These circumstances can also be transferred to legal project-based work: a light designer is, for example, equally responsible for the quality of the performance as a dancer, the choreographer or the scenic designer. At the end, not only the choreographer and the solo dancer step on stage to receive the audience’s applause, but the whole group. Those who are part of a complicit interaction take on responsibility for the whole product. They have deep trust in the others, because they know that the actions of the others weigh just as heavily as their own and that these consequently can extremely strengthen or weaken their own position. Even more: “People become accomplices, if they facilitate the action of another person in that they do not impede it although they are aware of the questionability of this action” (Mazza/Moritz 2012: 25). If the motivation behind a complicity is not compulsion, but free will, then one must be in a position

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– with the knowledge of the questionability of the action – to act for a common concern without knowing the outcome, which is why trust is a fundamental prerequisite of complicity. “Trust is like the instruments on Holbein’s table: you are willing to use them even though you don’t quite know how they work.” (Sennett 2012: 153). The steering of the collective is accordingly influenced by itself and not only by individuals, whereby one can assume that very contradictory personal positions come to bear. Accomplices lay their destiny in the hands of others. More radically expressed, that person is just as responsible for me as I am for myself, and conversely, I am as responsible for the other as for myself. This commitment to others, which forms the core of complicity, is something very existential and does not always occur voluntarily. While it can occur voluntarily, it can, nevertheless, also be caused by an emergency situation in which the individual person is so weakened that survival options exist only in the collective. For the concept’s rigor, it is helpful to delimit complicity from incitement, abetment and the status of being an isolated perpetrator in a crime unintentionally performed jointly [Nebentäterschaft], which are also anchored in criminal law. The distinguishing features are assessed on the basis of the steepness or flatness of the group hierarchy and the intensity of the participation in the crime. All three forms function with stronger hierarchies and weaker participation in the crime than is the case in associations by complicity. Incitement is limited to provoking others to a punishable crime. It is then dependent solely on the others whether they perform the crime or not. The level of penalty is milder since the inciters were not actively involved in the planning and execution of the crime. The delimiting of abetment is more difficult because the abettors do not possess command over the perpetration and consequently provide only a subordinate contribution to the crime. Nevertheless, they are always present even if they merely help during the performance of the three phases. While they are quite knowledgeable, they act only weakly. This relatively weak acting is frequently difficult to trace in criminal proceedings retrospectively, since the abetment can occur in all three phases in differing intensities. Perpetrators often try in hindsight to downplay their activities as abetment in order to obtain a lighter sentence. Meanwhile, the third delimitation, isolated perpetration, is spoken of when several people independently from one another perform similar crimes, which do not, however, relate to each other. An example: At the same time in three places

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

in the world, three suicide attacks take place as terrorist attacks using the same means. Is there a connection or not? Do the performers belong to the same ideological network or not? If not, it is a question of isolated perpetration, in which – unlike complicity – conscious collaboration does not exist during the performance of the crime. Nebentäter, even if these appear quite rarely, are therefore legally subject in all respects to the laws concerning the solo offender.9 “Personal characteristics,” too, can play a role, or an even weaker form of participation, namely the attempt at complicity (cf. Fischer 2012: 234ff.). These discriminations provide – like theories of action – information about the micromechanics of complicity. Here, the will to action stands less in the foreground than the intensity of cooperation, which can also be so marginal that it is no longer a question of complicity, but of an isolated act. More interesting than legal details, which could still be delved into at this point, is a relatively fundamental observation regarding legal language. Whoever has experience in group-work knows how difficult such precise evaluations of intensity, intention, engagement or conscious will are. Legal language gives us to believe in this putative clarity, however. The language of the court has “the enlightened sound of the public sphere, information and democratic control” (Wessel 2000: 165). In the process, we know that the terminology is often imprecise, unintelligible and ideological. “No law can be so precisely formulated that all disputes that surface later can be effortlessly resolved in on or the other sense” (ibid.). While legal language provides important formulations to apprehend the concept of complicity, when one dives deeper into its semantics, gray zones appear in which the respective circumstances can no longer be clearly apprehended and interpretations applied. While law and morality both belong together, they are not always the same: “Something that is morally repugnant can be fine legally” (ibid.: 194). The question of the accordance of morality and law must be clarified in the particular case and appears, precisely in the case of complicity, to sometimes not be answered simply. If we look at the resistance organizations in European states, mentioned at the beginning, then it becomes clear that motives often initially concern defending oneself against different forms of discrimination, which is thoroughly legitimate. If this understandable defense then tips into violence, because 9 | On the delimitation of complicity from incitement, abetment, and Nebentäterschaft, see Donatsch/Rehberg 2001: 147ff.

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the hoped-for success does not ensue, whereby both sides are involved, then the opposition is assessed as morally bad.10 Frequently, complicity arises as collective opposition by the weak against the strong. On this basis, the emergence of complicity frequently remains comprehensible up to a certain point and is even glorified as a heroic story. It circumvents the hegemonic knowledge of jurisprudence and provides for sympathy on the side of the accomplices because the weak appear to defeat the strong. In summary, the core legal points of definition that enable a translation to legal project-based work are stated again as follows: First, in complicity, it is always a matter of an implementation of theory into practice, as described in the three-step process of resolution, planning and realization. Second, we are dealing with a model of intensive embedding of the individual into collective structures, which likewise is valid in reverse fashion: Not only do individuals constitute the collective, but the collective also constitutes the individual. In a deeply interwoven structure of interaction, individual abilities are permeated by collective structures. In doing so, individuality, which is marked in this context mainly by specialization, and collectivity do not stand in opposition to each other, but rather determine each other. Third, complicity is not a hierarchy-free model of action. It is selforganized and also structured to a high degree. In moments of activity, the hierarchies are clearly defined, yet they change from phase to phase. Individual competence can be important in one phase and play only a subordinate role in a second. Accordingly, accomplices must act by leading and also serving, and the roles can quickly change. In the course of a complicity, the accomplices modify their positions continuously and prescribe for themselves the hierarchies, which is why this ability for rapid role-change is so important. A smart interplay of individual qualities replaces a static model of leadership from above and makes hierarchies more permeable and mobile. Fourth, in stories of complicity, a special relation is often indicated between the resolution and realization of the crime and hence between theory and practice. The theories of action of criminal law emphasize the directionality of the action, which underlies the willing and conscious participation in the three steps. Reality shows, 10 | Sabine Müller-Mall shows that the creation of law is equally a performative act of language by pointing out “that the criteria of linguisticality must also determine the conditions of possibility of the creation of law” (Müller-Mall 2012: 18).

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

however, that the crime, despite will and consciousness, often deviates from the plan – equally the case in the creative area and in crime. What is striking is namely that accomplices are often no longer in a position after the crime to fairly divide the loot and to elegantly disappear. They appear overwhelmed by themselves and their own crime and plan nothing beyond that. On this point, Daniel Jositsch says: “If one were to advise criminals, one would have to say to them: Be cautious about whom you get into the same bed with, since what the other person does is also relevant for you. In this respect, they must theoretically exhibit a high relationship of trust. Practice shows that that is not always the case, perhaps because criminals do consider in advance how they could arrange this in the most optimal way.” (Komplizenschaften, 2007)

In most cases, complicities end in a correspondingly quick manner before the court. In creative branches, the directionality of work processes is frequently not so clear at the start. In many cases, a rupture thus exists between theory and practice, which points out how both do not relate to each other linearly, even if they are tightly coupled together. Complicity shows that theory does not get along without practice or practice without theory, that both theory and practice are only complexly and often indirectly related to each other, which is why questions about the immediate gain of a theory for practice can also only be answered complexly. Without resolution and plan, no deed. Without the vision of a bold deed, no resolution or plan. The deed can alter the resolution; and in turn the planning, the deed. In all three phases, the relations are repeatedly negotiated anew. What remains, however, is the fact that only the three-step process leads to a true complicity.

1.2

F ilms and L iter ature : B onnie and C lyde (1967) (USA, D ir .: A rthur P enn), K omplizinnen (1987) (G ermany, D ir .: M argit C zenki) and L es C omplices (G eorges S imenon , 1956)

From a media perspective, the two films and the literary work throw a different light on complicity. The three examples do not contradict the legal definition, but rather broaden it, since complicity in particular is

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a vagrant concept, bound into both legal and diverse media discourses. Fundamentally, three approaches and forms of expression can be observed: the romantic idealizing of complicity; an emancipatory aspiration for complicity; and the motif of a strong dependency of the actors upon one another. Depending on how it is implemented, complicity may display more or less sharp characteristics of all three aspects, through which the ambivalence of the concept can be more precisely described.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (USA, Dir.: Arthur Penn) “Well, why not? Say I earned my share! Same as everybody. I coulda got killed same as everybody, and I’m wanted by the law same as everybody.”11 Blanche in Bonnie and Clyde

Arthur Penn presented a classic filmic treatment of complicity in the feature film Bonnie and Clyde, produced in 1967. The film represents the first aspect of romanticization, showing the amour fou of a gangster couple, played by Faye Dunaway in the role of Bonnie Parker and Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow. In my interviews in the research project, Bonnie and Clyde was the film most often mentioned spontaneously, evoking Hollywood-oriented associations about the theme of complicity, such as beauty, heroism, passion, rebellion or happiness. The fact that the gangster couple commits continuously brutal murders is displaced in memory onto an attractive love couple that unyieldingly asserts its devotion against all obstacles of the time. Based on facts, the story is told of the two folk heroes who drifted across the country in the 1930s in the southwestern United States, in order to hold up stores and gas stations, rob banks and steal cars, in the process also shooting roughly 14 people. In doing so, they do not act only as a couple, but also in the course of the film form a gang that acts together and in the process creates a huge media presence in the American dailies of the period. The role of the victim is never occupied, for the film concerns exclusively the group, whose members hope for social prestige and advancement through their crimes. 11 | The film quotations cited come from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (USA, Dir.: Arthur Penn). Cf. here in script at http://www.lc.ncu.edu.tw/learneng/script/ BonnieandClyde.pdf: 105, visited 24 May 2016.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

The romantic glorification of complicity is generated through the representation of individual passion, media attention and the euphorically emotional building of the gang. The initial scene of the film shows the first encounter of Bonnie and Clyde, in which the strong attraction of the two to each other is immediately recognizable. This is particularly supported by the desire to depart the small-town milieu and become part of a greater story: “But you’re worth more’n that, a lot more” (ibid.: 16), so Clyde to Bonnie, who is far too attractive for a life in the provinces. It quickly becomes clear that Bonnie feels strongly drawn to Clyde, with his pettycriminal biography. The step from “I” to “we” is quickly accomplished when the two do their first shooting practice together in the garden of an abandoned house. Weapons are represented as attractive accessories, which are effectively staged in poses for photos; both protagonists are well-dressed throughout – she in pretty summer dresses, he in elegant suits; the sun shines, and the cars have the matching design according to the period. The first holdup is carried out with Clyde in charge, who possesses greater criminal experience, and Bonnie irreversibly becomes an accomplice without fully being aware of this. Interesting in this amour fou is the non-consummation of sexual fulfillment in the relationship, since Clyde is only able at the end of the film to enter into a physical relationship with Bonne. He suffers – without any pronounced disclosures of reasons – from sexual disinterest, which provokes great irritation for the extremely attractive Bonnie. “Look, I don’t do that. It’s not that I can’t – it’s just that I don’t see no percentage in it” (ibid.: 15), so Clyde says immediately in the first section of the film. This aspect is central for the complicity, because it emphasizes the vulnerability of this connection, contributing in the film to the bond between the two being tied more tightly. Precisely the fact that something else is going on in the interior of the figure than what is played on the exterior strengthens the solidarity. Loneliness is an oft-repeated connecting motif in complicity. In the film, this motif is sharpened as it becomes foreseeable that the solving of the crime is moving ever closer and that the gang is soon likely to be apprehended: “[…] it’s fancy and in public, but we’re alone somehow. We’re separate from everybody else, and they know it,” so Bonnie. “I always feel like we’re separate from everybody else,” Clyde says in reply (ibid.: 75). Often, it is individual fears or collective secrets that only the couple or group is aware of that strengthen the bond. Sworn fellowships protect themselves from outside by protecting

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their secrets inside, whereby the power of attraction in the relationship increases. Bonnie and Clyde are not only a pair of lovers; they are also above all accomplices, because they hope for a benefit from their relationship. This instrumental orientation may not stand at the center in their love, for this may be less target-oriented or at least also have strongly irrational parts. Along with the desire for social advancement, which is not fulfilled ultimately, however, since both are shot at the end, the need exists for media presence, glamour and publicity. In this regard, the film, which entered cinemas in 1967, is visionary, for it shows the role of the media in identity-formation and the hope for social advancement tied to this. There is a series of scenes in which the group takes note with pleasure of the reports in the daily newspapers about the brutal Barrow Gang. The desire for fame climaxes in the staging of a photo with a policeman, who wants to blow the cover on the gang. The band succeeds in forcing the policeman – who ultimately will get them shot at the end – into a group photo, in which Bonnie exuberantly plants a kiss on his mouth. The policeman finds this act to be an intolerable humiliation so that he radicalizes his fight against the two from this moment and prevails at the end. Part of enhancing their media presence includes Bonnie’s composing a poem about her time with Clyde, which was actually printed in the newspapers at the time and till today forms the basis of many treatments of the story. In this poem, Bonnie transfigures the relationship to Clyde by describing him not as brutal, but as “honest and clean,”12 which is also depicted in the relationship from the inside. The brutality is never addressed to the interior of the partnership, but rather only towards the outside. This, too, is a typical indication for the psychological constitution of complicity: The relationship can be affectionate and caring amongst one another in the group, while the reference to outside reality completely tears apart and an absolutely contrary behavior is practiced. Infatuation, love and complicity are naturally mixed in the story of Bonnie and Clyde. And naturally we are involved here with an example of complicity. This becomes clear if we reflect the actions of the protagonists onto the legal definition: The three12 | An excerpt from the poem “The Trail’s End” goes: “They call them coldblooded killers / they say they are heartless and mean. / But I say this with pride / that I once knew Clyde, / when he was honest and upright and clean.” (Cf. http:// texashideout.tripod.com/poem.html, visited 23 Mar. 2013.)

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

step process of resolution, planning and realization is continuously present in the film, since no idea remains an idea; everything is implemented into practice as though in a frenzy of heroic attitudes. This compulsion to realization must, of course, always also be contextualized, for the revolutionary movements of the 1960s were already underway. Bonnie and Clyde’s campaign against an enemy power, embodying conservative US society as such, can be inferred in this context. A stylization of the gangster couple as victim takes place without concrete threats from outside being shown in the film. Here the mood resonates with a period in which the revolt of a generation is coming to bear against the US political and economic system. This interpretation is underlined by the murder victims being almost exclusively police, who represent the enemy state power par excellence. A third aspect central to the film is the euphoric building of the gang, as the two act only as a pair at the beginning, soon joining with others: C.W. Moss, a naïve hobby mechanic, who is engaged as driver and “go-to guy”; Clyde’s brother Buck; and his wife, the minister’s daughter Blanche, who from the start does not fit into the group, immediately commented upon critically by Bonnie in particular: “She’s what’s the matter with me, a damn stupid backcountry hick without a brain in her head. She ain’t nothin’ but prunes and proverbs” (op. cit.: 83). The group constellation is anything but optimal since C.W. Moss soon proves himself to be miscast; his deficient driving skills lead to a delayed escape and hence the first murder. The spell is broken, and the holdups become more brutal. Daniel Jositsch comments upon this phenomenon in the following terms: “Most gangster groups are organized to some degree up until the crime and do not consider what they are going to do afterwards with the loot. Then the crime is usually exposed.” (Komplizenschaften, 2007)

In this regard, the role of Blanche especially is significant: During the film, she repeatedly pulls out of the group constellation; panic-stricken, she wants to get out, is afraid for her husband, sees herself put at a disadvantage in the divvying up of the loot, and feels stigmatized as a minister’s daughter, as well as gauche and oafish in contrast to Bonnie. At the end, she is arrested and betrays to the police the name of C.W. as a gang member, which accelerates the end of the story and again generates

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tension. For plots about complicity, this figure is typical, for any such group sees itself confronted with potential traitors, whom one never fully trusts and to whom one imputes the disclosure of group secrets. The motives can be quite varied; they can be based on individual fear, for example, or staged as willful damage to the group because one thereby hopes for some advantage. There is hardly a complicity that is not confronted with ex-accomplices and their threat for the group after departure. Blanche’s motive is, on the one hand, fear for herself and, on the other, fear for her husband, for she does not wish to injure the group given that the fraternal blood tie between Clyde and Buck is paramount for them. The film shows an inseparable and beautiful couple, who stick together even under the most adverse circumstances and fight against the rest of the world. While the members of the gang have different skills, they are poorly organized. It is a matter of social ties in which the protagonists develop great powers because they share secrets that are existential for the relationships. The tender and passionate connection of the couple to each other stands in stark opposition to the underhanded murders. Violence is glorified, whereby the production of glamour is used as an ambivalent form of staging, for this has “in the past and present repeatedly been the reference point of subcultural, bohemian, dissident connections […]. Glamour – especially a historically emergent glamour and its archive – can serve as a resource for acts of resistance” (Holert 2004: 224). Bonnie and Clyde are an instance of this observation. In memory, a couple remains on the lam, in rebellion against all conventions and in assertion of its independence. Their life has become a mythos for passionate stubbornness, powerful thirst for action, and the inseparable connection of a couple – as accomplices.

Komplizinnen (1987) (Germany, Dir.: Margit Czenki) “Micha! Micha! I’m being released! They’re throwing me out! But me too! Tomorrow already. […] Will you pick me up the day after tomorrow? Where can I find you? Outside we won’t have a lot to do with each other any more. You just don’t know that yet.” Barbara to Micha in Komplizinnen

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

In the film Komplizinnen, the second aspect of the emancipation of the actors through complicity is represented quite differently. Margit Czenki’s film plays in a German women’s prison. The director reinterprets the destructive use of the word into a constructive sense as both an inventive, but often also desperate survival tactic of prisoners. The film recounts the tale of bank robber and mother Barbara (Pola Kinski), who is sentenced to six years imprisonment. The plot is based on the personal history of the filmmaker, who in 1971 during an urban-guerrilla action with a group of accomplices robbed a Munich bank and was sentenced in turn to six years imprisonment. The “anticapitalist practice” (Bruns/Habersetzer, n.d.) practice of the group consisted in taking money, which they needed for their political actions, from those who – in their view – possessed it unfairly and in excess: the banks. Margit Czenki describes complicity as an effective counter-strategy to existing power relations, which she, as an artist and concerned party herself, cannot accept. In the film, the bank holdup is not retold, but rather the daily survival tactics of women during their stay in prison. With this, the director also opens up gender-analytic inquiry on the phenomenon, for complicity is a male-dominated practice. Daniel Jositsch points out in the film that in criminal law, he is not aware of any major accomplice-based cases that were staged by women’s collectives. In cases with women, they acted rather in the classic role of helpers. Czenki breaks this traditional image of women and managed as the “banklady of the revolution” (ibid.) to make it into the headlines. In the film, there is no linear narration; rather, we see the microcosmos of the prison with its hierarchies, relationships, conversations and particularly emotional states. Barbara meets murderesses there, who have killed their husbands or children and who tell their stories with emotional inner turmoil, grief and anger. These tales encourage us to see that the living conditions of these women once led into degrading dependencies and that the crimes can therefore be understood as acts of desperation. The committing of a crime appears for many of these women to be the last possibility to stand up in one’s defense. Questions of justice and power are, thus, not primarily sought within the individual life stories; instead, these are posed from a feminist perspective mainly on the basis of women’s social living conditions. In the prison – which depicts a space of extreme isolation, abjection and social pressure – these women connect to each other in order to arrange the everyday life behind bars in as dignified a manner as possible. These alliances – and this makes the film especially

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interesting – are never represented in an idealizing way as with Bonnie and Clyde, but almost always in their fragility, sustained on the one hand by intense affection and on the other by great despair and aggression, whereby an essentially more realistic variant of complicity is represented. The film shows the self-confident figure of Barbara, who does not want to waste the valuable years of her life in a small, dark cell, simply subject to direction by others through an absurd prison administration and under supervision of the strict personnel. Documentarily inflected memoryand dream-sequences that show her family and children and that bring her back into a sensory life, are contrasted by hard cuts ushering in the brutal and cold everyday life of prison. Her impulse to a life in dignity and self-determination stamps the entire film. “The six years are still my time, I don’t want to serve them, I want to live them,”13 the filmmaker has her protagonist say. Unobserved and tirelessly, Barbara searches for gaps in the powerful administrative apparatus and finds them. On unofficial paths, she succeeds – even in the first years of solitary confinement – to establish contact with the other prisoners. She makes eye contact in the yard when walks together are allowed every now and then. She screams loudly and desperately out the window; raises her hand in a fighting gesture at the end of a threadbare church ceremony organized by the prison administration; or gets notes circulated secretly. In these moments, she finds the way back to her old strength and develops her visions of a self-determined and fulfilled life. A significant portion of the story entails the sequences in which Barbara succeeds in making contact qua complicity with her enemies, the prison officers. The prison officers are women who move on the secure side of innocence and of the dispensation of justice. They follow strict rules, punish the individual articulations of the inmates, and try to prevent any personal or even intimate contact among the convicted. They exert their power, which is legitimated by the judiciary, in an often harsh tone and without irritations. Barbara does not let herself be intimidated by this, but rather establishes deliberate contact with her opponents, whereby the imbalance in power increasingly becomes unstable. She succeeds in temporarily drawing some of the guards to her side and in communicating to them a deeper insight into her situation 13 | The quotation cited comes from the film described here, Komplizinnen (1987) (Germany, Dir: Margit Czenki).

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

and even to generate understanding for her wishes, even if these lie far removed from the reality of prison. Precisely at these points, the clear imbalance of powers tips, breaking open the rigid polarization of guilt and innocence. For moments, the actually cold and hard guards earn sympathy, and as a recipient, it is unclear on which side one should pose oneself both emotionally and rationally. The alliance between the prison inmates and guards triggers major irritations on both sides in equal measure. Complicity is depicted simultaneously as intense and fragile, and here it overcomes strict social hierarchies. The realities of life of the prisoners and guards are brought closer to the film audience in this way, whereby reflection begins on guilt and innocence. One intention of this film is to take from the imprisoned women their individual guilt and instead to consider the structures of their living conditions that compelled them to their crimes. In this respect Margit Czenki demonstrates a reappropriation and emancipatory significance of the concept through the marginalized group of prisoners. Complicity is produced not only among the prisoners, but also with the adversary when the imbalance of power is broken by a temporary solidarity and mutual insight established. The film shows a collective form of interaction between people that exists under powerful social pressure and which raises the making of pacts – even with the enemy – to a life-supporting principle. The three-step process of resolution, planning and realization is put into practice daily and not as a grand coup, but in many microinteractions. Despite an extremely narrow margin for action, the women succeed in accomplishing small actions that outwit the total surveillance system and open up at least small free spaces. These moments break open the dependencies and clearly defined social hierarchies and enable temporary alternative orders. Complicity is not romanticized here as in the case of Bonnie and Clyde by recounting a heroic story. In contrast: Several small tales, inconspicuous from the outside, but existential from the inside, stand in focus. The film opens up new facets of complicity as a survival tactic: First, complicity is not thematized before the horizon of a grand coup, but understood rather as everyday practice, effective in small, often initially inconspicuous interactions in unobserved situations between the performers. The goal of the complicity is not a great deed, but the preservation of individual dignity through sociality, which is supposed to be prevented in the prison. These temporary bonds are achieved through small gestures, fleeting glances, brief verbal exchanges, or embraces and not through great actions

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or pledges. With this, the film shows a central quality of complicity, which is reflected as micropractice, where physical expressions play a major role, and which is also applied among accomplices in its particularities beyond daily prison life. Eye-contacts in conversations, touches in encounters or seemingly insignificant exchanges of words can be interpreted as signs of complicity in everyday situations. Precisely under great social pressure do such signs gain high significance. Second, Margit Czenki reflects that precisely an extremely narrow margin for action enables complicity or even makes it necessary. The plot suggests the supposition that, above all, adverse conditions arouse very strong and active alliances, because they represent the only form of survival, with no other alternative. At some points, the jailed women even develop a positive relationship to the guards in order to survive the time of imprisonment. One gets the impression that these situations are consciously generated so that a tolerable feeling of sociality arises. Based on the marked repressions in this environment, the formation of groups is strongly forced here, whereby the film’s author poses the question of whether complicity is primarily a survival- and less a life-tactic. Does this happen most of all when one must react to extreme pressure from outside or can it emerge equally as voluntary alliance? The results of my research show that both models are possible. In some cases, complicity can be understood as acting against something or someone. In other cases, however, a clear opponent can no longer be identified, and a complicity is implemented, nonetheless. Third, complicity is practiced here above and beyond the boundaries of socially defined groups. Connections spilling across milieus take place, on the one hand, among prisoners who come from very different classes and, on the other, with the overseers. Through short-term and ambivalent solidarities with the guards, the imbalance of power is temporarily overturned. The emancipatory content becomes clear by the complicity’s making rigid power relationships dynamic and its enabling for the women, despite heavy repression, self-determined options for action and hence freedom. In comparison to Bonnie and Clyde, these women destabilize the entire imbalance of power, in which they are involved, from the inside and do not act as an autonomous group against something. The clear drawing of boundaries between the self and other are put into question, whereby the women win a little independence and self-liberation for themselves.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

Les Complices (Georges Simenon, 1955) “It was brutal, instantaneous. And yet he was neither surprised nor resentful, as if he had been always expecting it.” Georges Simenon, The Accomplices14

The legal definitions find their echoes in literary works, too. In contrast to Arthur Penn and Margit Czenki, Georges Simenon in his novel The Accomplices tells of neither heroes nor rebels, but losers. A model of social dependency is formulated in which power relations are hardened and the cliché is reproduced of the woman as subordinate to the man. Complicity arises here through passivity, drawing an arc in the process to the theories of action underlying jurisprudence. These have shown that complicity can also consist of non-activity. The plot of the book, too, makes clear how passivity can lead to complicity’s befalling someone and do so with devastating consequences. The protagonist is the successful building contractor Joseph Lambert, who causes a traffic accident in which a completely full school bus catches fire and all the children meet fatal ends. Simenon describes the circumstances of the accident in such a way that Lambert’s guilt is clear. His female secretary, Edmonde, who has for a long time been having an affair with Lambert, is sitting in the passenger seat and unintentionally becomes an eye-witness of this appalling accident. The couple, who had disguised their secret meeting as a sightseeing tour to a construction site, continue driving, although they see the burning bus in the rearview mirror. Edmonde and Lambert keep their silence; without articulating it, they become accomplices and make themselves guilty of hit and run. At no time does Lambert think of turning around, and Edmonde also does not ask him to provide help. They leave the victims to their fate, as a result of which all the school bus passengers burn. In the car, terse conversations follow that make clear that in this moment their complicity is sealed and that they are willing to maintain their parts in this secret. The fear of getting caught in their affair is greater than the fear of being convicted as the cause of the accident. Lambert fears for his reputation as businessman; Edmonde, her position as secretary. So they drive quietly on, and Lambert immediately begins to consider how he can best wipe 14 | Simenon 1965: 7.

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out his tracks. “They were not lovers like other people, they were not lovers at all, they were and had always been two accomplices.” (ibid.: 115) It appears as though both have already become accomplices through their affair, since they have acted in secrecy, as well as in social dependence, as Lambert is Edmonde’s superior. Nevertheless, the accident strengthens their complicity, in which they are both more bindingly involved from this point on. The next days in the small town are shaped by gossip about the accident. Who could have been the perpetrator of this crime? The children came from Paris and were on the way back from a holiday camp to their parents. Lambert takes part in the investigation of the accident as an observer and is racked by remorse. The situation is exceedingly unpleasant for the respected businessman, and in the meantime Edmonde gives herself over to her role as subservient mistress, who has nothing to decide about. But does one have sympathy for Lambert? Actually not. At no moment is he concerned with the suffering of the children and parents. Soon enough it comes out that it must have been a black convertible that caused the accident. There are not that many of these in the region so Lambert knows that he will soon be questioned about his alibi. Feeling pressed into a corner, he begins to drink; he runs riot and draws attention to himself, which does not make him exactly inconspicuous. The evidence mounts. In desperation, he commits suicide near the end of the novel, writing a note beforehand: “I am not guilty” (ibid.: 125). However, he crumples up the piece of paper and throws it into the wastepaper basket before he puts a bullet in his head with his pistol. What becomes of Edmonde remains open. In the novel, it is described how the couple builds up a world of appearances, although all external developments point clearly to their being identified as the cause of the accident. The mood is stamped by dependencies and stark imbalances in power, which were already present prior to the accident and now become reinforced. The secretary, who is simultaneously the lover, is in trepidation about her work position; Lambert, principally about his reputation and freedom. It is plainly Lambert who is in charge, who has caused the accident, albeit unwillingly, and who has committed hit and run in silence. In comparison to Arthur Penn’s or Margit Czenki’s versions of accomplices, this case possess no heroic or emancipatory potential. This alliance produces nothing glamorous, nor does it break up any adverse power-constellations to

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

the benefit of the protagonists. Rather, fear and social dependence, already present beforehand, are bolstered. In this case, too, the three phases of complicity are reflected: the first proceeds atypically, for no conscious decision about a crime is taken since the accident is caused unintentionally. Yet both immediately decide not to take action. For this reason, precisely the failure to provide assistance could be interpreted as a form of resolution. Remaining silent would then be the crime, and indeed, this was a considered decision. In the second phase, how the clues can be removed is planned in a very knowing and structured fashion. The third phase proceeds agonizingly and is not characterized by bringing a crime to realization, but rather by concealing it. The crime here is based on the omission of an action, and Simenon asks whether it would have at all been possible for the two to act differently. They found themselves already in one complicity based on dependency and have become embroiled in another. It is a thus an issue here of a complicity within a complicity. The criterion of perpetration especially displays the imbalance of power. Could the secretary have persuaded the married Lambert, simultaneously her superior and lover, to even offer assistance? On the basis of the professional and personal entanglement, she was too strongly dependent on him and thus had no great influence over the perpetration. As the three examples selected show, complicity moves in a spectrum between glorification, emancipation and dependency. By contrast, the legal terminology suggests neutrality and objectivity. These different approaches show the various applications of the concept, which can lead to the completely contrary conditions of self-empowerment or subjection. While the prisoner Barbara pointedly produces complicities in order to recode the repressive living conditions of the prison, Edmonde, the mistress and secretary, is increasingly entangled in her helplessness. Bonnie, on the other hand, remains the glamorous gangster bride to the end, who – even at the moment she is shot – is still attractively set on stage. In media stagings, these three typologies are often not featured in pure, but rather hybrid forms. In this relation, for example, the great need for emancipation also exists in the figure of Bonnie, albeit characterized more individually and less socially than in the case of the protagonist Barbara. In all cases, however, the especially high intensity of these social bonds cannot be had without the tightrope walks between self-determination and determination by others; proximity and distance; trust and mistrust. These contradictory qualities show both the potential of attaining

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something special together and the danger of relationships’ shattering. Whoever is entangled in complicities is called upon to develop a high-level of social attention that perceives such moments of the threatening reversal of relationships.

1.3 I llegalit y and I nnovation The three examples from film and literature, as well as jurisprudence, have shown that complicity as a collective form of action happens in the realm of illegality. If the concept is now shifted from a destructive into a constructive meaning, the question arises of whether illegality and innovation are linked. Both realms operate by means of rule-breaking; nevertheless, this is assessed in the case of innovation in a socially positive manner and in the case of the illegal negatively. Are there even ‘authentic’ complicities without criminal intent? Can the conspiratorial moment and criminal energy of the concept be retained as a potential even if the process is directed towards legal, innovative aims? With what understanding of innovation does one operate in these circumstances? By means of the concept, can an anti-criminological15, libidinous mode of work be portrayed? With its specific social dynamics, complicity, like no other collective form of action, enables both constructive and destructive rule breaking, which is why it makes sense to compare both directions of this relational form with each other. In what follows, two approaches are interrelated on this basis: an artistic one, represented by the dancer and choreographer Anne Huber and percussionist Fritz Hauser, who developed and realized the piece handundfuss (2006)16; and a theoretical one, represented by the sociologist Richard K. Merton, who dealt extensively with the question of when individuals or groups act illegally instead of innovatively. By connecting these two approaches, the relationship between both realms can be examined, as rules are transgressed in artistic processes as well, 15 | Klaus Schönberger undertakes a similar effort (cf. Schönberger 2001: 8) in which he reads bank robbery anti-criminologically as a contradictory, yet also inspiring cultural practice. It is worth noting in this context the title Vabanque as a “play with uncertain or risky outcome.” 16 | Excerpts of this production are documented in the research film Komplizenschaften (2007).

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

rules which – differently than with crime – are not only recognized by culture, but decidedly intended by it. Rule breaking is the key business of the arts, for only in this way can the shifting of perception be achieved. If one compares the dynamics of the illegal and innovative with each other, one finds one’s way to border zones, for there are definitely crimes to which one would impute innovative aspects, just as there are also provocative examples in art that can strongly put into question the legitimacy of their actions. Ethnographic analyses concerning bank robbery show, for example, that this is endowed with a relatively high social acceptance: “[…] in no criminal offense other than bank robbery can the perpetrators hope for so much sympathy after a successful coup” (Schöneberger 2001: 7). The weak defend themselves against the strong, who make a profit from their dealings within the banking system and hence produce social inequality. The identification with bank robbers is therefore high in many social milieus; accordingly, there is a whole range of entertaining and successful books and films on this topic.17 On the other side, as an example, Christoph Schlingensief as an artist deliberately posed over and over the question of the moral acceptance of his projects. Whether he worked with neoNazis (Hamlet, 2001) or other “qualified disqualifieds”18 (Chance, 2000), the transgression of currently existing artistic conventions was always also at stake in order to negotiate these anew. In Passion Impossible – 7 Tage Notruf für Deutschland [Passion Impossible – 7 Day Emergency Call for Germany], on invitation of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, he encouraged the homeless, drug users and prostitutes living in the train station area in Hamburg to gain a hearing through various actions staged by him. The project reached its climax in a demonstration through the city center led by station residents, a demonstration in which precisely those “who are pushed to the edge of society and in the best case perceived as a problem, but not as acting subjects” (Grothe 2005: 101) were to be focused on. These and other actions were perceived by sections of the Hamburg audience as a threat, since they were also coupled in their various presentational 17 | As, for example, the amusing book Gangster, Gauner und Ganoven – Die größten Geldräuber der Geschichte by Marc Geise and Hans-Jürgen Jacobs (2012) or the films Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Twelve (2004) und Thirteen (2007) by Steven Soderbergh, which concern the collective cracking of casino vaults. 18 | See the documentation of the works under http://www.schlingensief.com, visited 3 April 2013.

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forms to invective against the audience, who was thus supposed to be drawn out of its passive stance. Above all, however, Schlingensief hence provoked – as in almost all his projects – the moral question of whether the performance is an abuse of the performers, as they are after all not actors, but the marginalized. Is art allowed to do that? These examples show that rules are broken and other values – whether social, legal or aesthetic – are introduced. Before we draw on the theory of Richard K. Merton, let us envisage, based on the dance and music production handundfuss developed together by the duo Anna Huber and Fritz Hauser, some details of an artistic creative process and the central function of complicity in innovative processes generally. The production was their first and only common production; both barely knew each other beforehand: “Fritz came to a premiere,” says Anna Huber, “because someone told him that I’d dance like he would make music” (Komplizenschaften, 2007). Their respective modes of working met with considerable mutual interest, and both quickly came to the decision to work with each other. In the experimental dance and performance scene, starting a project in this way is typical, since groups come from similar scenes and frequently get together based on chance encounters. They organize their work structures by themselves the majority of times, for they are seeking production conditions and expressive forms that official institutions and aesthetics do not offer them. In unpublished material to the film Komplizenschaften, Anna Huber describes her approach in the following way: “We enter an empty room and begin with talks, movements, readings, listening to music, improvisation, and out of that we develop the concept, which we also keep working on outside of the rehearsal room, for example at dinners together.” Informal work processes characterize the work in the artistic realm; there is no predefined goal. This condition is creative and in the process simultaneously fragile: complicitous qualities of bonding frequently exist at the start of new encounters, or put differently, complicity is a form of bonding that generally facilitates fresh starts in the first place. Precisely at the initial stage of new relationships, in which acquaintance with the other is still limited, intimate moments sometimes arise that can be the catalyst for experiments, which take place undisturbed and unobserved, protected from the public sphere. Artistic practice lives off these often-chaotic initial moments in which both divergent group relations and unpleasant or even embarrassing moments have to be permitted. Embarrassing, for example,

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

are moments of failure in which the otherwise so smoothly running everyday is brought to a halt; moments one would actually like to forego, yet they say something about the structuring of society: “Embarrassment not only makes social hierarchies and their rules transparent, it lets us transcend these through conscious or unconscious non-compliance with these rules.” (Ziemer 2009a: 227)

It is interesting that precisely such moments connect in retrospect, because they trigger empathy (not sympathy) and hence can undermine hierarchies: “Embarrassing moments are distinguished by the objective, secure position of the ‘neutral observer’ being taken away from him, he loses the ground under his feet and is shipwrecked.” (ibid.: 229)

Such dynamics in groups reinforce the binding power and arise mainly unobserved. Accomplices seek free spaces and gaps, initially make ties to others unobserved and in secret, and in the process do not shy from entering social gray zones. Often, for example, coming to a resolution remains open for a long time, whether it concerns an artistic intervention, a structured piece or a performance, as well as the use of various media. Following repeated meetings and many common interactions, the form of the performance can be gradually divined. In the meantime, ideas are not only rehearsed, but formulated. They are put into speech, not least of all because as a rule an application for funding has to be made. Thus it can happen that during the rehearsal period further people are involved behind the stage. They refine and concretize the idea into a sustainable concept, and after a few weeks or months, the group stands together on the stage and shows its work. Since Anna Huber und Fritz Hauser had never yet worked together as a duo, there was no model for their collaboration. Both were involved in the creation of the piece in equal measure on the basis of their competencies. At the end, both stood on stage in the framework of collective authorship and together bore the responsibility for the result before the audience, press and potential promoters. This very schematic description of the work process is, of course, exceedingly fragile in its realization. Both already possessed an artistic

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reputation at this time. It was their first work in common, in which they connected dance and percussion trans-disciplinarily. Neither is Anna Huber a classical dancer, nor is Fritz Huber a conventional percussionist; both experiment in their areas and bring together their experiences in order to open up a third, for-the-moment undefined aesthetic space between dance and percussion. “We had the image that we are two figures, who do totally different things, but are always connected subterraneously” (ibid.). Anne Huber and Fritz Hauser traverse the three-step process of resolution, planning and realization in an exemplary manner. They commit no crime, but rather show a piece, and they transgress no legal boundaries, but rather aesthetic ones. Here, the third phase especially is interesting, which moves the act into the light as the moment of performance. At the end, it is not a protagonist or the choreographer who steps on stage, but rather the duo, who assume the common responsibility. For the collaboration between the two, it is important that the three steps are carried out together, so that all parties involved decide with others together about the actual committing of the action [Begehung der Tat, tr. note: also “committing of the crime”]19, that is, all – in this case both – are in the perpetration in equal measure. Both are responsible for the actions of the other since it can no longer be determined who precisely carries the responsibility for what. Since both are entering aesthetic terra incognita, both leave their disciplinary affiliations and create something new. Here we can see the decisive difference between a project-oriented group’s social structure and a more hierarchically organized artist-formation such as that frequently encountered, for example, in ballet. There, the choreographer as a rule decides what is danced how; the dancers of an ensemble rarely have control over the deed [Tatherrschaft, tr. note: also “perpetration”]: They neither contribute with ideas to the performance, nor are they involved in the resolution and planning of the deed – they are merely those who carry it out. In our example, however, it is a case of project work where all members of the group participate and help steer the progression of events [Tathergang, tr. note: also “circumstances of a crime”]. There was in this project perhaps a female instigator, who especially encouraged following ideas. Equally there may have been a male accessory, perhaps an observer consciously holding himself in the background. There were no isolated

19 | See chapter 1.1 on criminal law and Tatherrschaft.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

perpetrators alongside [Nebentäter], because no one performed the same piece at the same time. The emancipatory potential of this collective is high, and the dependencies are relatively low. The duo can decide quite freely about its aesthetic and form of work. The extant social hierarchies play only a secondary role, for the respective competencies of the individuals are clearly defined. Anna Huber comments on this: “If I am on stage as a soloist, I have greater freedom to do whatever occurs to me then. By contrast, when we are working in tandem, I also have to be a bit considerate. But there is also something freeing when one can hand over control.” (ibid.)

The collective processes are similar in both the project-based performance of an artistic collective and the committing of a criminal offense: Both are aimed at the changing of circumstances. An innovative product is formed, an alternate process is performed, and both procedures contain transgressions of rules. The drive of artistic production is indeed not the confirmation of existing values, but the shifting of the same through various artistic strategies in order to open up new modes of perception. What, then, does innovation signify in this context? The word “innovation” signifies renewal and is still today one of the core concepts of Western views of art. The claim to innovation manifested in particularly programmatic form in the different avant-garde movements at the beginning of the 20th century. The avant garde is a social utopia, which has dedicated itself to progress and which steps forth in the awareness of what is better and with the attitude of the forerunner. The word stems from French military language (avant and garder: “to be a forerunner or advance guard,” which handed down means something like “to be the first” and to have an information edge). Avant-guardists hold themselves as a rule for elites, the agents of clear value-hierarchies; and they are imprisoned in the traditional idea of genius, which involuntarily brings them closer to bourgeois art, against which they are actually trying to orient themselves. As a rule, the avant garde champions the revolution in the sense of a radical change of the world, and its exponents propagate the belief in progress. Their radical demeanor creates zones of exclusivity and social exclusion. Their adherents appear in firm possession of a comprehensive knowledge, which entitles them to their expressions and actions. Even if the revolutionary belief in the power

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of art appears faded today, the claim of art has survived to the effect: even if not to be new, at least different. Frequently this urge for change is based in a critical stance – to work oneself loose from existing social orders and aesthetic traditions. To the extent artists want to circumvent and change social orders, traditional norms must be put into questions and replaced through new ones. In doing so, aesthetic strategies and experiments open up new perceptions and perspectives. Boris Groys asks in his book On the New: “Why do we attempt to say something at all, to write, paint, or compose something that was previously not there?” (Groys 2014: 8). He answers by reference to Friedrich Nietzsche that the desire for the new also bears within itself the wish for truth. This is, however, less to be understood as the one exactly defined truth so much as a truth affected by cultural influences and value-conceptions. Hence, his definition of innovation reads: “The innovation does not consist in something that was hidden coming to light, but rather in the value of something that one has always seen and known being re-valued” (ibid.: 14). The revaluing of already existing values, displayed in artistic practices such as sampling, contextual shiftings, appropriations or estrangements, can as a result be viewed as a general form of innovation, which differs from the avant garde’s faith in progress into the completely and frequently mystified New. The formerly unimportant, strange, profane or vulgar is thus transformed and creates a new, unexpected meaning. For Groys, this process is a quintessentially economic one, which he describes as an exchange of values, rather than of goods and in which all must take part that wish to participate in social life. No one can withdraw from this economy. If one transfers this definition to the production handundfuss, it becomes clear that here, too, something completely new is not invented, rather something hidden is made visible, becoming apparent principally in the in-between space between percussion and dance. Through complicity, new combinations and situations are generated out of the existing systems. Admittedly, the usage of the concept innovation has been viewed relatively critically in the last years in cultural studies and in the arts, since this was strongly propagated especially in the economic sciences.20 20 | In the first half of the 20 th century, the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter already described innovation from an economic perspective as the new constitution of production factors, “that innovation combines factors in a new way, or that it consists in carrying out New Combinations” (Schumpeter 1939: 88).

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

The economist and innovation researcher Jürgen Hauschildt describes innovation in his publication Innovationsmanagement as a glitzy and trendy concept: “In innovation, something of a new type is at stake: the new is more than novel; it means a change in kind, not only in degree. It is about products, processes, contractual forms, distribution channels, advertising statements, corporate identity of a completely new type. Innovation is essentially more than a gradual improvement and more than a technical problem.” (Hauschildt 2004: 3) The commercial orientation of this definition of the concept is evident, and it can be questioned whether “changes in kind, not only in degree” occur in the economy, as Hauschildt states. Innovation is understood here according to a terminology of growth, with faith in progress, as an approach to the creation of new products that can assert themselves commercially on the market. When something new is sold, it is appraised as innovative. Against this background, Groys’ definition appears essentially more plausible, since it also implies gradual improvements, which are indeed at stake in most cases (in the economy, too). Additionally, this definition negotiates values and reflects their shifts, hence why this concept of innovation allows one to think in more versatile ways in terms of context and not simply to measure based on conventional success in terms of monetary gain. The question of whether an innovation has a value for society is, namely, all too frequently suppressed. Pursuant to this understanding, a product can be evaluated as innovative which can be readily sold, but which has no sustainable value for society. It would accordingly be a senseless reduction if one were to ask about the newness of a product and not about its meaning for society. The model of reproduction has, meanwhile, been replaced by that of innovation, on which our current service society is reliant. Innovation thus defines no longer only the action of an (artistic) elite, but also represents an essential qualification for companies and employers, who have to assert themselves on the market. The inflationary use has indeed made a buzzword of this concept, which is all too often used only as a label for an up-to-date business image, although rigid hierarchies and wholly non-creative work structures may still prevail internally in many organizations. If we speak here of accomplices, who act innovatively, then we do so in terms of the shifting of values and perceptions. Their actions can be economically successful, but they are also rather subculturally anchored

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as critical practice. With Boris Groys’ definition, illegal practices can also be covered: legal and illegal acts, albeit with different aims, suspend rules. Both infringe on socially constructed norms. The criminal group breaks existing legal norms; the art collective, aesthetic ones. In artistic practice, this happens frequently not only in abstracting thematic terms, but also in relation to one’s own work structures and ways of living. Renewal is, accordingly, put to the test inside the collective relationship structures in the hope of yielding other socialities and aesthetics. The gallerist and pictorial artist Andrea Thal, whose art space programmatically bears the name “Les Complices*,” formulates this situation incisively: “In the art industry, accomplices […] are not necessarily preoccupied with different themes and media than individual authors. As the first product of its collaboration, artistic teamwork in its various forms develops communication and dialogue structures as an integral component of its artistic production” (Freymond-Guth/Thal 2005: 6). The collective mit [with], for example, presented in its opening exhibition in the arts space Les Complices* not only material products, but also a manifesto that lays open precisely these communication structures. There it states: “mit has a website, mit discusses a lot, mit addresses its environment, mit comes in support, one also sees mit privately, mit intervene in the operating system that is art, mit is alongside […]” (ibid.: 10). Andrea Thal cannot leave the ambivalence of such processes uncommented upon in that she emphasizes this communication can be simultaneously a necessity and irritant if it only circles around itself. In art and in the realm of criminality, the actors do not play upon the preset terrain, but seek in their encounters for possibilities to tread other paths. In this respect, innovation is not definable here through the anticipation of the goal, for this must first be created in common. These circumstances also explain the difference from some economic definitions of innovation, for here the goals are frequently already predefined. A product must assert itself in the market, which can be viewed economically in different ways. On the one hand, this doctrine implies the innovation of processes in terms of a less expensive, more efficient and rapid production through improved process-based workflows; on the other, it is a matter of the innovation of products: “With product innovation, it is about more, however: here not only the process of combination, but that of application is concerned. Product innovation offers an

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

output that allows the user to fulfill new purposes or to fulfill existing purposes in a completely new way” (Hauschildt 2004: 11).

There is, thus, a difference between the usage of the concept of innovation in art and economy: Viewed economically, the ends are broadly predefined and based on the conception of something new that can assert itself on the market. In art, by contrast, the shifting of values stands in the foreground, which is why this practice is more suggestive of complicity. For accomplices create their goal together, and one can assume from this that the question of values is an essential one in the collective process of negotiation, which does not, however, exclude that something quite new can arise thereby. The example of the duo Huber/Hauser has shown how processes oriented towards innovation, which are a fundamental work-principle in art, play upon the relational level. If we transfer complicity to other areas, in which innovation also plays a major role, but which do not occur in the context of art, then it makes sense to ask under what preconditions collective rule-breaking leads to constructive or destructive behavior. Here, the constructive breaking of rules is principally of significance. Daniel Jositsch opens the research film Komplizenschaften (2007) with the statement: “So, how does it fare with the groups? The ones go on together to success, the others into criminality?” Already in the 1960s, the sociologist Robert K. Merton investigated social structures that entail a group behavior deviating from a norm, a behavior that is not perforce destructive, but could also be constructive. Given social developments, his theory is again quite topical today. Referring to the 1930 work Über soziale Arbeitsteilung [The Division of Labor in Society] by Émile Durkheim, which assumed based on an increasing secularization of society the decline of religious rules and a loss of rules arising in social structures through this, Merton develops further the concept of anomie, a state of weak or absent social rules. According to Durkheim’s view, it is the collective conscience (conscience collective) in which the norms and values are gathered that hold a society together and on whose rules society rests. Uncertainty and loss of orientation stoke the destabilization of people and lead to socially deviant behavior. A collective, common consciousness generates solidarity and security in stable times in handling social questions:

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“In fact we all know that a social cohesion exists whose cause can be traced to a certain conformity of each individual consciousness to a common type, which is none other than the psychological type of society. Indeed under these conditions all members of the group are not only individually attracted to one another because they resemble one another, but also linked to what is the condition for the existence of this collective type, that is, to the society that they form by coming together” (Durkheim 2014: 81).

In observing social phenomena of crisis, Durkheim does not explain anomie’s emergence or mere appearance through the concept, but rather the rise in criminal modes of behavior that can be understood as the expression of a weakening of the collective conscience: “Our faith has been troubled; tradition has lost its sway; individual judgment has been freed from collective judgment” (Durkheim/Bellah 1973: 145). Just as with criminal behaviors, this shaken faith can also lead interestingly to constructive innovations. It is to Robert K. Merton’s credit that the concept of anomie, introduced to sociology by Émile Durkheim, can be embedded in different contexts of study. His key question concerns what social structures promote what behavior. He assumes that social norms, rules and orders can exercise such a strong repression on individuals or groups that these must behave deviantly. This statement can, in my opinion, be applied to different current life-situations: diminishing social structures that once gave security (such as insurance or retirement plans) can become just as threatening as extremely homogenous social systems in which only a few models for living are recognized and many others accordingly excluded. A starkly transformed labor market, in which traditional job descriptions have dissipated, models are lacking, and training has occurred through indirect rather than direct control mechanisms can be felt to be just as repressive as massive, unequivocal and direct mechanisms of domination. The spectrum of what is felt to be social pressure is broad and individually perceived. In order to deal with such situations, illegitimate behavior also develops, according to Merton, in certain groups and under certain conditions. This is just as much the product of a social structure as the norm of a corresponding behavior. In this, the author differentiates between cultural goals, which a group defines for itself and would like to realize, and institutional norms, by means of which these goals can be reached. Cultural goals are oriented according to intentions that a group has established for itself and ranked

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

in a value-hierarchy. These goals can be differentiated from those that accept the respective culture as a norm, and they can thus be realized only through deviations. The attaining of cultural goals is therefore often not possible through ‘legal’ paths because institutional norms restrict too strongly a collective’s room for action. In such a case, there are no socially pre-structured paths that the group could pursue. Merton writes: “Aberrant conduct, therefore, may be viewed as a symptom of dissociation between culturally defined aspirations and socially structured means.” (Merton 1938: 674) If cultural and social structures diverge too strongly, a breakdown of norms occurs, and the group reaches for illegitimate means in order to implement its goals. Merton mentions here the trivial, albeit plausible example of sports. If success in sports is defined as winning the game and not as winning according to the rules of the game, then the use of illegitimate, but efficient means is frequently at least implicitly rewarded. We know sports disciplines that are little regulated and in which accordingly much is allowed and others that are strongly regulated and back fairness, such as field hockey, for example, where it is even permissible once during a game for a team to call into question the referee’s decision on the spot through appeal. Through video analysis, the course of the game is then immediately reconstructed and discussed between the team and referee. By the same token, we know phases in the course of soccer games in which more is allowed than at other times. Following an undecided game, in the second extra time, or shortly before the final whistle, the players on the field are allowed substantially more aggressive breaches of the rules, which are punished less quickly by the referee than at the beginning of a completely open game. The player’s unease at the moment of violating the rules of the game clearly indicates that the institutional rules are well known to the players. Yet, the pressure for success entices them to refuse their emotional support for the rules and less to assert the path of fairness than victory as the most important goal. In his concept, Merton refers to different types of reaction in relation to the collision between cultural goals and social structures. These relate not to the personality or character of the individual, but to the behavioral role of the individual in certain situations. The qualities of character of the involved person are not center stage here, but rather the social structures on the basis of which a behavior is evoked. Alongside conformity as an adaptive behavior, which appears most frequently according to Merton, he depicts innovation as a second reactive possibility: “This response

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occurs when the individual has assimilated the cultural emphasis upon the goal without equally internalizing the institutional norms. […] From the standpoint of psychology, great emotional investment in an objective may be expected to produce a readiness to take risks, and this attitude may be adopted by people in all social strata” (Merton 1996: 139f). For the social bonding form of complicity, the high emotional orientation and low respect for institutional demands are of special significance. In the research interviews, the emotionality was understood variously as a “spark that has to jump across [participants] during the first encounter” (Komplizenschaften, 2007) or as a “strong sympathy, which has to carry a promise within” (ibid.) or as a “common vision,” which stands in the foreground and is combined with courage and thirst for adventure (Notroff/ Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 13). Merton notes additionally that societies exposed to a high pressure for success often come into conflict in an especially marked way with the institutions in operation at the time – whether it be the church, state, universities or others. The gangster boss Al Capone, for example, who lived in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s in a culture that had defined social advancement and economic prosperity as the highest goal, activated the “channels of vertical mobility” (Merton 1938: 679) and thereby achieved the victory of amoral intelligence over morally prescribed failure. Gambling, prostitution and illegal trade in alcohol made him during the time of Prohibition, i.e., during a time of high repression, a successful actor in the Chicago underworld. Stable and open societies, by contrast, tend to promote conformism, which does not put into question this stability with all its well-known rituals. In such societies, there is hardly any occasion to deviate from the known rules of behavior. Anomie thus makes its entrance when a society stands under high pressure to perform and is simultaneously confronted by diminishing social rules that could provide orientation. This lack of rules can unsettle and irritate the social fabric, with the effect of crimes being committed, or it can alternatively lead to constructive associations. Merton is not a psychologist, who would examine the psychological state of the participants; as a sociologist, he emphasizes rather that deviant behavior is determined primarily through social structures that engender social inequalities where goals no longer stand in relation to their possible achievement. Deviant behavior is thus based less on the criminal disposition of individuals than in their powerless position within the social structure.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

Although the emergence of this theory already dates back a long time, it again or still appears to be of high currency. We live in a society that defines efficiency and growth as central values and that attempts to fulfill these values with correspondingly high pressure to perform. Simultaneously, a pluralization of lifestyles can be observed, which in a Janus-headed manner signifies for many both freedom and insecurity. This contradiction is also the result of a profound transformation of labor, to which a chapter on its own is dedicated – a transformation in which sureties such as lifelong employment contracts, forms of social security, but also clear occupational fields dissolve. Innovation is thus today usually not a reaction to direct repression, which for Merton was still a strong basis of his analyses, but rather follows a dictum of performance that is constantly placed upon us in school, training and everyday work. The emergence of this demand can, albeit under a different guise, be read as a signal that society is insecure and must put into question the old values of growth and efficiency. If we assume that parts of our society acts under pressure to perform and that innovative behavior has hence become much stronger as a form of conformity to a standard of behavior, then it also becomes explicable why complicity is so frequently used. In creative areas, cultural values usually collide with the existing social structures, which is why groups try to produce their own structures to make possible the achievement of their goal. Not only in art, but in all social areas in which individuals react through innovation, breaches of the social structure occur. In relation to the organization of business, the economist Christa Muth says to this effect: “To be quite honest, I have to say that the importance of complicity was first made aware to me when I read your project description. […] [P]recisely in this way something new arises; I function this way, too, from time to time if I have the impression that we are not achieving what would be possible or desirable through the traditional path across hierarchies and procedures.” (Notroff/Oberhänsli/ Ziemer 2007: 28)

At this point, it appears important to underline the aspect of emotionality, emphasized by Merton, which artists, athletes, entrepreneurs and criminals equally can make use of. The higher the emotional content of the cultural goal, the higher the readiness to break social norms. Nevertheless, the reaction to social pressure is not so utilitarian and rational in reality as it may appear here. Often, groups react irrationally

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and with an excess that does not come off in straightforward orientation towards a goal or pure bringing of benefit. This theory scarcely enters into unreasonable aspects like passion, lack of plan or disproportionate action, which are necessary in innovative processes and accordingly the basis of many complicities. These aspects are, however, precisely of high importance for complicity, as Christa Muth emphasizes, for in innovative companies, the free spaces are not rationalized away through a lean management; in contrast: “A kind of disorder rules in which unplanned and unforeseen activities are embedded.” In reference to Tom Peters, she underlines “that the best companies also allow for a shot of madness” (Notroff/Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 29). For this reason, it appears more meaningful to me to speak of affects and less so of emotions. In contrast to emotion, affect is a felt condition that we cannot pigeonhole into our emotional world. Affects thus arise when we perceive something that cannot be classified into our subjectively known palette of feelings (such as, for example, grief, happiness, joy, shame, disgust etc.) and hence invites the creation of new orders.21 This facilitates encounters being charged affectively in order to develop new ideas. In Merton’s conception, a necessary connection obtains between the structure of the social environment, which can be more or less repressive, and the collective behavior deviating in reaction to this. Transferred to the model of complicity, this observation points out that complicity is also embedded in social structures, which prove to be repressive in varying ways. Merton’s analysis suggests that deviant collective behavior principally arises when the social pressure is very high. While this behavior can fundamentally arise in all social classes, it can, nonetheless, be found more frequently in socially disadvantaged structures. This conclusion is helpful, although it appears too narrowly taken for today’s social situations since social pressure extends transversally through the most varied milieus and can usually no longer be understood as one-sided repression by the dominant. The principle of control has been replaced by that of performance, which must be individually fulfilled, which is why governance practices sometimes suppress rather indirectly, through 21 | See on this the definition of affect by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994: 163-200) in the chapter “Percept, Affect and Concept.” Crucial here is that affects cannot be completely subjectively directed. Rather, the subject is pulled in by them and hence cannot control these perfectly.

Definition and Reinterpretation of Complicity

mechanisms that are difficult to decipher.22 Complicity arises in reaction to the social environment, which according to the individual sensitivity to pressure can be felt as not only a form of reaction, but also one of action when the free space is felt to be large – simultaneously precarious, but energetic; risky, but visionary. Complicities thus never stand outside of social structures, yet the innovative collective highlighted by Merton also operates when social pressure is weaker. What is crucial is the formulation of a cultural goal that can be enriched in a sufficiently emotional manner and that entails hardly any noticeable fear of institutional norms.

22 | Michel Foucault, who has provided foundations for the research-area of governmentality studies, formulates this thus: “And by ‘government’ I mean the set of institutions and practices by which people are ‘led,’ from administration to education, etc.” (Foucault 1991: 176).

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2 Everyday: Changed Social and Political Figures

As the media analyses have shown, complicities do not always lead to the spectacular coup, but are also ubiquitous as everyday practice. We become allies in order to develop and implement new ideas, tackle adverse situations and design new aesthetics, usually accompanied by a putting into question of hierarchies. From this perspective it is appropriate to ask to what extent complicity’s increased occurrence can be classified as part of larger social contexts and their transformations. Complicitous practice is tied to a line of development that describes an increasing individualization within our society while simultaneously adhering to collective requirements. Current collective concepts, however, embody the individual’s embeddedness in its temporality and fleetingness. On this point, the relation of distance and proximity is verbalized in various theories. Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community (1986) can be named as the standard work in this debate, where the philosopher describes human existence’s beingtogether of being-separated, with which the ideologically occupied concept of community undergoes a heterogenization. In current theoretical discussions, conceptions of community can be understood “rather as a paradoxical intertwining of inclusion and exclusion, participation and separation, proximity and distance” (Neuner 2007: 4). Alliances are described as loose, often time-limited and occupied in a socially heterogeneous manner, and nonetheless capable of functioning. In our everyday, we develop fewer stable forms of relationship than instable ones, but these are not necessarily weaker or less capable of being effective. Fleetingness hence shifts to the center as a social figuration and becomes an effective quality within complicity, for it opens up scopes for action

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that homogeneous bonding forms oriented toward the long-term and inclining to inertia would not enable. Starting from Georg Simmel and onto Bruno Latour, one can trace this development as a path from the collective to the connective. While collectivity theories analyze ‘togetherness’ [‘Miteinander’, tr. note: also “cooperation”], the concept of the connective speaks to the stress field of connectedness and disconnectedness between people in groups. Following Bruno Latour (2007), ties between humans and non-humans1 are also included in the connective, although that is not foremost here. With regard to complicity, the fundamental critique to be highlighted is rather regarding the conventional concept of the social that enters with the introduction of the connective. In this context, putting complicity in relation to the category of friendship also imposes itself. The research interviews have showed that complicity often – even if falsely – is shifted into proximity with friendship. It can overlap with friendship, merge into it or even end it. In particular, Jacques Derrida’s conception of friendship (2002) lends itself for comparison, where he undertakes the deconstruction of the ideological interpretation of (masculinely and martially dominated) fraternity and comradeship.

2.1 F rom the C ollective to the C onnective Since the end of the 1950s, sociology has described an increasing individualization within our society. Traditional affiliations such as profession, marital status, religion, social class or family are increasingly losing significance; in their place, the desire has emerged for ways of life that depart from known forms of bonding and allow for free decisions.2 Individualization is here synonymous with a distanciation from narrowly taken collective thinking, a distanciation that accompanies an increase in selfdetermination. In this transition from other- to self-determination, individual persons or groups depart increasingly from the given familial, religious or territorial contexts into which they were born and pursue individual 1 | Such as “microbes, mussels, cliffs and ships” (Latour 2007: 25). 2 | Scott Lash has also characterized the concept of “reflexive modernization” in this context and analyzed the growth of plural lifestyles on three levels: social action (despite dissolving of social structures), aesthetics and the changing ontology of sociality (see Lash 1996: 195-286).

Everyday: Changed Social and Political Figures

paths. As a result, old bonds of sociality fall into decline, and at the same time, social positions are attained due to acquired characteristics, not those ascribed by birth. In present-day Western societies, evidence is shown of a qualitatively new radicalization and universalization of this process; for this reason, the thesis of progressive individualization is part of the basic thinking of sociology today and assessed by it at once both positively and negatively. On the one hand, social change without individualization is inconceivable, since news ways of life can only be designed through increasing self-determination. On the other, this development can be considered to be singularly ambivalent, since a high degree of individualization can result in the collapse of social elements. In the late 1980s, the sociologist Norbert Elias aptly formulated this ambivalence in the title of his book The Society of Individuals. He speaks critically of the optimistic ideas of individualization and warns of the development of an isolated, exclusively ego-related human. An increasing individualization also changes nothing about the fact that humans are social beings and thereby dependent on one another. Rather, the paradox of individualization and social formation is coming increasingly to a head, according to Elias, for we are living in increasing dependency, while individuals become at the same more distinct from all others. He suggests unmistakably the indispensability of we-feelings, for the problem is not so much the isolation through difference than this difference becoming more and more a social norm and hence a value in itself. The desire not to attract attention collides with the desire to have to be something special. For this reason, he poses the paradoxical diagnosis: the greater the individualization, the stronger the dependencies become. This interesting observation resurfaces in many examples regarding accomplices. The media analyses show, for example, that the desire to form alliances is high due to higher isolation. None of the figures above is carried by a collective that presets norms and hence security; instead, all go their individual paths through life. Whether it is the women in prison, whose everyday no longer permits free structures, or the secret lovers, who can only live a hidden affair, or the gangster couple Bonnie and Clyde, who wish to escape from their narrow social milieu through criminal glamour – all these protagonists confirm that high isolation produces existential dependencies. The modern self believes itself capable of making many decisions autonomously; nevertheless, it is entangled at the same time in numerous new constraints so that it is only seemingly freer and freed from constraints.

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In this regard, Elias emphasizes principally the conflictual potential of this development: “The high level of individualization […] frequently does not harmonize very well with the complex and, to the individual, unfathomable network of dependence […]” (Elias 1991: 149). This network is aptly labeled as a peculiar cross-woven tissue that carries within itself independence and dependence at the same time and which is aimed at the discrepancy between the possibility and impossibility of free decisions. Even our high demand for innovation can be read as the expression of this diagnosis, since the quality of being different is a central distinguishing feature. Only someone who is distinguishable from others can stand out and assert him or herself on the market. This demand makes deviation from the norm necessary, including a turning away from socially clearly prestructured groups. Nonetheless, this behavior simultaneously increases the desire to stand within the society and receive acknowledgement. The necessity of collective affiliations has thus not disappeared in modern societies; it is only more indirectly structured. Social figurations, which arise in dynamic interplay between the individual and society, today are formed more strongly through informal communication and courses of action, because there are fewer prestructured social lifestyles. In this regard the gallerist Andrea Thal, who carries these thoughts over into contemporary art production, says: “Actually, there is hardly anything besides informal contact in the exhibition space Les Complices*. […] In addition, the space and my private life are closely tied to each other” (Freymond-Guth/Thal 2005: 24). The aforementioned investigations by Lash and Elias point to the question of the intensity and hence quality of bonds in groups. How loosely or firmly do individuals interact in the collective under these conditions? How does this paradox appear concretely in the everyday? If bonds are loose and temporary, then the question can be raised to what extent the word “social” can still be understood in its original significance of binding cohesion. The sociologist Bruno Latour (cf. 2007: 18ff.) formulates a fundamental critique of the use of the word “social,” on whose basis complicity, too, becomes legible, in that he suggests a problematic contraction of the concept’s significance. With an eye to the historical genealogy, social means “to follow someone,” “to recruit” him and finally “to have or do something in common.” The sozius is a companion, an associate [Gesellschafter] who performs belonging, binding and togetherness (cf. DWB 1971: 1826). This meaning emphasizes the

Everyday: Changed Social and Political Figures

interpersonal bond that allows one to follow the conventions of a society and to maintain them. According to Latour, however, in the 19th century a drift occurred within these semantics, which equated “social” principally with “social compatibility” and thereby was primarily geared towards social questions and deficiencies, for example those of social work or social contracts. This connotation is aimed at the helping, protecting or supporting of the ‘socially disadvantaged,’ which yields a very one-sided interpretation of the word. Latour’s mission consists in once again expanding the meaning of “social” and not limiting it only to the human and its forms of coexistence. He therefore poses a sociology of association in contrast to the sociology of the social. The difference from classical sociology consists in the former’s incorporating not only individuals, but covering rather an expanded spectrum of actors. Non-human creatures and objects, too, such as viruses, mussels, microbes or ships can thus become alliance partners for humans and also amongst one another, a foundation for which was created by Michel Callon and John Law, together with others, in actornetwork theory.3 In this way, he also grants non-human entities a potential for action; while original as a theoretical approach, this remains thoroughly contested, nevertheless.4 Primary for our context is less the possibility created by Latour to conceive the world of things and the human world in conjunction than the removal of limits on the social qua association, with which Latour smoothes the way for an associology and in whose form of thought the model of complicity is embedded. Association means the “knotting” or “connecting of elements,” which apparently do not belong together. As opposed to the social, the associative does not emphasize so much standardized ideas or binding commonalities and, with them, moral obligations as it does spontaneous combinations of unrelated elements or stimuli. Before the horizon of complicity, the art of association unites principally people with different social and disciplinary backgrounds and 3 | Some significant works are collected in the volume ANThology. Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (Belliger/Krieger 2006). 4 | At this point it should be noted, as Marcus Schroer (2008: 372) emphasizes, that Latour’s theory, while important currently in scientific discourse, was in no way conceived of for the first time. “Rather, it can be traced back to Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim. Attempts by Georg Simmel, George Herbert Mead, Siegfried Kracauer, Hermann Schmalenbach, Hans Freyer, Heinrich Popitz, Jean Baudrillard and Hans Linde should not remain unmentioned.”

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becomes visible on this level in the production of surprising connections that may not appear logical, but nonetheless generate a highly unexpected evidentness. In this way, Latour raises the associative moment above the ‘sociative’ and gives this a positive significance. Associative sociology does not diagnose the deterioration of social bonds, but instead focuses on new – precisely associative – combinations that do not function according to a stable or even predetermined principle. It is not the strength of social bonds that is foremost here, but rather the weakness, which is still effective despite or precisely through its dynamic quality and connective potency. At stake are reassemblings – “reassembling the social” (ibid.: 22) – that are characterized by new combinations in which unexpected elements are connected to one another. In classical sociology, the relationship between individual and society tends to be conceived of as diametrically opposed. Collectives are thought of as representative units belonging together; by contrast, individuals are viewed as singular entities living isolated within society. In political philosophy, too, collectives are described as a rule as large political authorities such as the state, law or nature. Political orders, which structure society, tend to be conceived of from above. Questions of social inclusion and exclusion or influence and participation in political practices are analyzed with a view to powerful institutions. Accordingly, the object of political-philosophic debates is frequently the functioning, power structures and representational forms as well as symbolisms of these official institutions. Frequently disregarded in the process are the cultural practices of discrete individuals, who repeatedly generate sociality anew (cf. Därmann 2009). It is the small, everyday and unofficial practices that create social realities and that often structure the everyday more strongly than superordinate structures. They form alternatives to the pregiven social categories and institutional orders and enable necessary free spaces. Alongside the major categories such as the state, law, religion or nature, sociology also offers for the description of human bonding forms mostly concepts that suggest stability: examples are family, friendship or marriage. In doing so, it is assumed that these groupings are constructed relatively homogeneously and set up for long durations. The approaches of Norbert Elias and Bruno Latour offer exceptions in this regard, for both do not disregard cultural practices, but rather highlight these as strongly formative of sociality and hence stress the interconnectedness of the collective and individual.

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Latour emphasizes that society is composed principally of collective forces; his aim is “to decipher the continuous fusion of human and nonhuman beings […]” Kneer/Schroer/Schüttpelz 2008: 9). With this, he formulates a turning away from the world of separated units to one of unlikely collectives, in the course of which it necessary to continually further differentiate the concept of the collective. Fundamental for complicity is the diagnosis of the “de-boundarying [Entgrenzung] of the social” (cf. Schönberger 2007), though not conceived so much as the precarity of life and work, but rather as the possibility for new combinations of the social. In this way, new collectives are taken into account. Such new assemblies can be described more as connective than collective, following the suggestion of an associative sociology: We live in a “connectionist world” (cf. Baecker 2009), in which we continually combine what is different together. Since its inception, sociology has resorted heavily to descriptions of the social that are based on social differentiation processes. As a rule, such approaches emphasize the drawing of boundaries and distinctions, which then lead to comparisons or, also, evaluations. In contrast to idea of the collective, that of a connective stresses more the possibilities of connection between different elements and hence also between individuals of different social background. In the case of complicity, which is always targeted towards a deed, this process is visible mainly on the level of the operative execution. In the case of complicity, a common, self-imposed goal can be achieved through participation of the most diverse actors. Macro-levels are less in focus here as generally valid social categories so much as micro-levels that include cooperation [Miteinander] as a concrete practice through which unforeseen realities arise. Collective and connective both underscore the actor’s perspective and make activity the central object for inquiry – albeit with a slightly different attitude. In the connective, homogeneous group definitions shift more strongly into the background than with the concept of the collective and do so in favor of surprising new linkages enabling the creation of alternative realities. Additionally, the looseness of relationships and less their strength is evaluated as constructive. Temporary, goaloriented works take the place of collective ideas, which are often bound to the weight of ideology, long-term orientation and dogma. In turn, the macro/micro dichotomy is undermined since representative institutional orders from above are taken into account less than individual, often fleeting activities that generate the connective rather than the collective; thus, the focus lies on orders’ dynamics rather than on their statics. In

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this respect, complicities are based more on such a connective idea of community, also reflected in the word’s literal meaning. While seeking and putting together is emphasized in the collective (lat. colligere = collect together), in complicity it is more a matter of finding and especially of intelligently combining different elements. To “combine” emphasizes in contrast to “collect together” that unusual elements, not appearing to belong together, are actively brought into connection with one another. Thus, when the collective is spoken of subsequently, cases are meant that internally carry highly connective qualities and that are assessed not as endangering society, but as re-forming it.

2.2 S ituational S ocialities : The U nforeseen V oting O ut of a P olitician Pursuant to the line of development from the collective to the connective, forms of bonding thus emerge that are not aimed towards stability and yet generate a highly situational effect despite their fragility. Traditional social bonding forms represent the basis of a large part of our society. ‘Social’ behavior is oriented towards norms and enables an accepted, because conventional life in the midst of society. As we have read already, Latour introduces the play on words within a “sociology of association,” which could be tied cautiously to a “sociology of the associal” (cf. Latour 2007). With this, he stresses deviation from the norm and movement on the periphery of society. Since we speak in everyday language of the “asocial,” the associal, a neologism of Latour’s, is also negatively connotated, as it emphasizes the putative disintegration of society; it allows one to ask whether a reinterpretation could also be sensible here – particularly as peripheral concepts describe heterogeneous social realities more adequately. Cultural practices can be found in our everyday life as manifold forms of interaction among the most varied actors, forms that produce communities and continually dissolve them. They generate not only classical communities, but also those characterized, in contrast to institutional formations, by displaying fleeting and unstable forms of living and acting together. Fluid formations with changing actors sketch an extremely dynamic, but also fragile form of sociality, precisely the manner of forming a collective most frequently chosen in creative spheres of work and life. Complicity is thus a phenomenon that moves on the edge

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of what has classically been understood within the rubric of society and sociality. The fleetingness constituting complicity is not an exceptional state or disadvantage, but a reality of life, which initially enables alternative social figurations. In contrast to a stably conceived sociality, situational forms of the social offer other options for action. They are more dynamic and have powers to form sociality that can circumvent institutional defaults: “These cultural practices obtain a political significance not least because they shape forms of separated living-together and indicate that site of division at which the question of belonging to a community itself becomes contested” (Därmann 2009: 9). The formulation of separated living-together describes the reality equally of being-separated and being-together and thus circumvents recognized representations and demarcations. As an example for such a situational alliance, the following case may serve, which in multiple respects circumvents representative orders through surprising linkages. It does not play out in a subculturallycharacterized milieu where representations are persistently initiated, but seldom evolve into other realities; rather, it is within entirely classical representative orders, namely on the level of traditional party politics. A legal political complicity ensured that an exceedingly ‘successful’ rightpopulist politician was not, counter to all predictions, re-elected. The case played out in Switzerland, where the extremely stable social fabric of the parties was brought to a halt, to enter into a complicity beyond their ideological boundaries: they made a resolution, forged a (secret) plan and realized this successfully in deed. Switzerland is not governed by a president, but rather by a collegial body, the Federal Council. This consists of seven members, who are elected for four years by the parliament, the United Federal Assembly. In Switzerland, there are four parties governing at the federal level, with the SP, the CVP and the FP exhibiting many similarities historically and in terms of content to the SPD, CDU and FDP. Also governing is the SVP, the Swiss People’s Party, a very conservative and populistically acting party, for which there is no direct correspondence in Germany. The SVP became known beyond Switzerland mainly through its aggressive poster campaign, which showed, for example, a flock of black ravens plunging onto the red Swiss passport, through which the liberal migrant policy was supposed to be strikingly criticized. Or through the depiction of a herd of white sheep kicking a black one out of Switzerland, furnished with

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the slogan “Create more security.” Since the end of the 1950s, the Federal Council has been composed through a so-called magic formula that says that two federal councillors come respectively from the SP, CVP and FP and one from the SVP: 2+2+2+1 = 7; so at least for decades was the formula that assured the content-based consensus of the country and an arithmetically balanced allocation of votes. In 2003, however, this formula was broken when the SVP – who popularized positions against immigration, free movement of persons, same-sex marriage and entry into the European Union – became the strongest party and for this reason obtained claim to a second seat in the Federal Council. The party’s president, Christoph Blocher, one of the richest businessmen in Switzerland and majority shareholder in his corporation EMS-Chemie, became a Federal Council member and the CVP had to yield a seat. This disruption of the magic formula was a caesura in the otherwise quite balanced and moderate Swiss politics. For four years, the businessman was thus able to represent right-wing conservative values and govern as part of the Federal Council with a political style that was provocative and incapable of compromise. In December 2007, new elections were pending, and there was a clear public consensus that he would be reconfirmed in his office. The vote was considered merely a matter of form. Behind the scenes, however, an entirely different story played out shortly before Election Day under strictest secrecy.5 For politics, an extremely unusual complicity across parties was formed that pursued the common goal of toppling the Federal Councillor incapable of dialogue so that the other parties could again conduct a constructive political agenda for the country. All the parties developed a secret plan together: the SP contacted Evelyne Widmer-Schlumpf in order to encourage her to stand as a candidate. She was also a SVP politician from the rural canton of Graubünden, where the party occupied an essentially less aggressive profile than in the urban region of Zurich, however. In contrast to the incumbent SVP Federal Councillor, she was considered to be a politician who argued factually and was at the time still Head of the Justice Department. Widmer-Schlumpf put herself forward for election although she said publicly in agreement with the parties that she would not put 5 | Through numerous interviews with the politicians involved, this is well documented in the documentary film Die Abwahl: Die Geheimoperation gegen Christoph Blocher (2008) (Switzerland, Dir.: Hansjürg Zumstein).

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herself up for election. The CVP, who called their action ‘Operation Scipio’ after the military leader who once conquered the powerful Hannibal with a small number of troops in the Alps, publicly floated other countercandidates, who everyone knew would never compete in the election. All the parties set down false tracks so that Christoph Blocher would never become suspicious of having competition from his own ranks. On Election Day of 13 December 2007, all the parties unanimously named Widmer-Schlumpf as a new candidate for the office of Federal Councillor. During this time, she sat incognito in the train to Bern where the election was taking place in the Bundeshaus. Already on the first ballot, she overtook her unpopular colleague and, in the second, won clearly by votes. All the parliamentarians knew that she had arrived in the meantime and was waiting in an adjacent room so that she could be called immediately to the microphone. She appeared publicly and asked for 24 hours of reflection period since she was afraid, given the events, of expulsion from her own party. The next morning – many children in the country were allowed to go to school later in order to attend the live-broadcast – she accepted the election with thanks. Christoph Blocher was voted out and angrily left the parliament. Many media representatives, who otherwise believed themselves quite informed, also felt hoodwinked; the parliament, however, and a large portion of the population rejoiced. This political event can be understood as a successful and legal case of complicity. The basis was a common goal that induced all equally to take action reliably together and across milieus. The operation proceeded extremely rapidly and was not made public, for only in this way could the necessary surprise effect occur to hinder a counter-policy from the SVP’s own ranks. A situational social performance, which would not be repeatable in this manner, enabled the creation of a powerful alliance against the ‘enemy,’ who was himself not involved in the process and did not suspect his opposition. This story thus circumvents the simplified logic of fronts, because, first, completely different parties joined together, normally acting against one another and, second, all of Swiss politics is based on a Milizsystem [militia system], which means that all politicians perform their mandate as a part-time job and therefore are strongly networked together anyway through their jobs and other social links. In such a small-scale system, a clear building of fronts is possible only with greater difficulty since politics and economy are tightly linked to each other. Additionally, the adversary was not opposed through the traditional

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means of politics, such as rhetoric, party program or lobby work, but rather through a very unconventional alliance in the background. This cooperation can definitely be understood as an example of connective social bonds, even if it is not based in the narrow Latourian sense on the linkages of human and non-human entities. Notwithstanding, it is a matter of a surprising, not-before-conceivable pact, out of which all immediately go their own ways again subsequently. Many small actions, accidents and also the media influenced the course of the events. The process was connective and less collective, since it did not follow the stable rituals of the parties, but instead produced unusual connections in a goaloriented manner. If one party had veered off or had a party member betrayed the plan to the media, the complicity would have collapsed in failure. The dissatisfaction with the political style of the SVP Federal Councillor was so high that an intervention across cultures could be carried out. This is illustrative of a situational sociality in which the elements must arrange themselves anew out of necessity. The commonality arose in this case not out of homogeneous frameworks, but decidedly from heterogeneous ones. It was less common characteristics or personality traits of the individuals that stood at the center, for these were too various to be social in the ‘old’ sense. The new sociality was characterized much more through diversity and the targeted application of togetherness [Miteinander] and beingseparate [Getrenntsein].

2.3 F riendship in R el ation to C omplicit y Whoever acts complicitly, knows how easily this relational feeling can be confused with that of friendship. And yet they are different. In the research interviews, friendship was moved quite often into proximity with complicity, and questions like these were posed: can friendship and complicity merge into each other, or do they exist in parallel? In what consists the difference between friendship and complicity? Can friendship be ended through complicity, and vice versa? The particularity in the relational model of friendship is that it is based, like complicity, on informal interpersonal forms of expression that lie beyond conventionally or legally defined forms of relationship, such as marriage or family. Jacques Derrida’s deconstructively-based model of friendship is especially

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suited for more precisely considering the two concepts’ similarities and differences. Friendship serves as a locus classicus of philosophy, which can be found in the history of philosophy from Aristotle through Montaigne, to Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault. The philosopher (philos), as friend of truth (sophia), finds friendship in various conceptions already fundamentally anchored in the traditional determination of being a philosopher. In the history of philosophy, friendly amenability forms as a rule the basis for knowledge, which in diverse forms of play can be developed especially well in dialogue between friends. In the ancient era, friendship was defined as a high virtue; in Christian moral theology of the late Middle Ages, it became the epitome of the love of God. In the 18th century, friendship delivered a connecting link between individualization and the regulated cooperation of collectives. In the process, friendship was based on emotional amenability, but often also on submissive dependency that then implies instruction rather than dialogue. It became an object of aphorisms in the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, through which the concept was emancipated, in a manner critical of religion, from Christian love of one’s neighbor.6 As a rereading of the ancient world, it has been thematized in postmodern theories since the 1960s, mainly in its political implications, as a relational from that lies beyond normative social categories. Friendship makes new encounters possible, which quite critically of tradition yield new forms of knowledge. In their book What is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari designate friendship initially as “a presence that is intrinsic to thought, a condition of possibility of thought itself” (Deleuze/Guattari 1994: 3). In this conception, principally those people are friends who have no commonalities, but rather position themselves as different from one another. This position is radically different in its political direction of impact from one that defines friendship as the being together of kindred spirits. Friendship is understood by Deleuze/Guattari rather as singular, and principally through experiences of difference, it opens up its fascination and a form of sociality that lies beyond homogeneous social orders and institutionalized bonding models. Instead, it follows its own paths and must circulate equally with intensities and instabilities; for 6 | Klaus-Dieter Eichle (1999) offers a collection of the most important texts on friendship.

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it arranges its environment uniquely, which enables no recourse to the predetermined. Friendship counts commonly as a form of bonding that turns against merely rational organizational forms. It designates alternative forms of being together, which also function beyond preformed political authorities and include the other, the strange. It is political to the extent that it continually puts into question the officially political, which is based on representation. In regard to its singularity and its informal, as well as affective content, there is clearly proximity between a postmodernly characterized concept of friendship and complicity. There are also differences. Before we turn towards a direct comparison of both relational models, some comments are in order concerning the concept of friendship as characterized by Jacques Derrida. His reflection shows especially how friendship has been quite problematically occupied by the history of philosophy, and he formulates a clear critique of a traditional definition of friendship, such as that represented markedly by constitutional jurist Carl Schmitt. According to Derrida’s diagnosis, Schmitt defines friendships at the beginning of the 1930s as a familial, fraternal and androcentric relational model (Derrida 2002: 10), used especially in the period preceding the Second World War in order to conceive of the ‘enemy.’ In this sense, friendship was equated with fraternity and comradeship, which was supposed to legitimate the fight against an enemy. At issue here is not a democratic concept – as this was still understood in the ancient world as a dialogical possibility of common understanding – but rather one used in the context of nationalism and popular communal thinking. Friendship understood as naturally associated fraternity creates distance and exclusion and not dialogue and inclusion. “O my friends, there is no friend” – by reference to this contradictory exclamation by Aristotle, Derrida begins his reflection, which essentially circles around investigating the history of the concept, through which the phallocentric figure of friendship has become predominant and canonical as the principle of fraternity (Derrida 2005: vii). Immediately at the start of his reasoning, Derrida indicates three ‘crimes’ that have been perpetrated in the concept of friendship and that are simultaneously his hypotheses. First, we are dealing with an understanding of the political that operates on familial dependencies and hence resorts to consanguineous, so-called natural and sexually determined categories. Derrida holds this recourse to

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be extremely problematic, since he is working with predefined genealogies that codify inclusion and exclusion in the community qua kinship. These construct clear hierarchies and are – here his critique places special emphasis – occupied mostly be men. “What happens when […] the woman is made a sister? And a sister a case of the brother?” (ibid.: viii). The brother is the central relational point of social order, whereby women or other nonconsanguineous remain excluded. Sisters participate, consequently, only as subordinate to the political. This apparent integration of the woman as ‘sister’ is in truth an exclusion and leads to a political education that is supposed to render docile and teachable, instead of autonomous and equal. Minted onto the political, this means that equality before the law depends on an equality of origin. In this conception, strangers and women cannot be a brother-friend and hence can never be equal with the powerful. The traditional conception of friendship thus contains, according to Derrida, an implicit summons – to be criticized – to value equality of birth over equality. Not an open, but a closed collective principle is inserted into friendship, which produces exclusion and unjustified power imbalances. Second, Derrida shows by recourse to Schmitt how the concept of friendship was used primarily in order to define enmity and to construe an opponent against whom one could martially compete. Schmitt writes: “The political enemy […] is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a special intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible” (2007: 33). According to Schmitt, these conflicts cannot be reconciled through uninvolved third parties; it lies alone to the participants themselves to clear up the disagreement between themselves, which as much as signifies beginning something like a fight or even a war. Thus, friendship inverts its peaceful use into its opposite and becomes part of a war terminology that legitimates the physical killing of the enemy or equally their deportation into spaces free of the rule of law. The third hypothesis implies that the traditional understanding of the political was oriented at bringing the human towards reason and under control, instead of letting it act as zoon politikon. By zoon politikon is implied that politics describes not only the public sphere qua (rational) institutionalization, but also includes practices such as political activism, resistance or other democratic forms of assembly that lie beyond known representations such as the party system. Precisely friendship would properly be a concept that strengthens such informal, unrepresented

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forms of being together and creates a high efficacy. In current politicalscience debates, this set of circumstances is slowly being discovered and research (cf. Gurr 2011), for it is obvious that particularly the conception of Aristotle, which defines friendship as a helpful possibility of being together, still applies today. In many cases, acquisition and enhancement of power are willingly purchased and functionally engaged through friendship. This history of the concept does not appear to offer good soil for defining the concept of friendship anew. Nevertheless, Derrida hopes for a politics beyond fraternity in which another, democratic, open and dialogic concept of friendship becomes operative. On the basis of the entangled historical analysis of the concept, with complicity, too, it cannot simply be a matter of inverting the concept. The deconstruction of fraternity also delivers no new political program that can be deployed in a linearly transferable way. Rather, it delivers a politicization in the sense of a destabilization of our thought, through which politics only becomes enabled in the first place. Derrida turns against an inherited metaphysical usage of political concepts such as community and friendship and instead describes the damage, injury and grief over what has been done to the concept “friend.” His dream is a politics that does not perform any violence on the potential that is planted in the concept of friendship. In contrast to Carl Schmitt’s writings, which Derrida decidedly criticizes, he also draws on the essay “On Friendship,” which Michel de Montaigne composed in the 16th century and which formulates an entirely different stance. Derrida refers much more benevolently to this author, even though he also rejects some notions here, albeit primarily in order to develop his own constructively out of them. For the comparison between friendship and complicity, this exegesis is helpful, for it offers us insight principally into the emotional or affective dimension. Montaigne describes in his quite elegant and also pathetic text the harmonious and extraordinary connection to his friend Étienne de La Boétie, whose early death induced the author to his essay. In contrast to Aristotle, who understood friendship as an important component of the functioning polis and thus emphasized its public political function, Montaigne describes his model of friendship from a very private and personal perspective (cf. Montaigne 1877/2006). One recognizes true friends mainly in distinction to non-true friends that arise as family, in marriage, in acquaintance, but also fundamentally in all heterosexual relationships and to which

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he assigns the attribute “ordinary.” True friendship would be same-sex, non-familial and never in pursuit of utility. The last point differentiates friendship particularly from marriage, which is tantamount to a form of commerce since it is mostly concluded on economic grounds. Friendship, however, would be concluded out of free will, emerge as true only with age, and be based on similarity. “But in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined” (ibid: n.p.). Moreover, friendships are inseparable, for “this friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, cannot possibly admit of a rival” (ibid.). Friendship is described here as a very intimate and close form of relationship, in which similar individuals merge into each other and feel “temperate and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth” (ibid.), which knows no conflicts and proceeds absolutely harmoniously. Montaigne even dares to suggest that one trusts his friend more than oneself, for one ultimately knows him better. One need not mistrust true friends; hypocrisies like saying “please” and “thanks” are superfluous, for since everything is shared between the two and consequently belongs to both, each can help himself to all at any time. A true friend is glad as soon as he can do something for the other. Ordinary friendships are distinct from this, since these serve only mutual utility. They are precarious and do not offer the trust of a friendship. These pass too quickly over into a utility-carrying commerce that proceeds functionally and pragmatically. Even Montaigne is captivated by the apparent contradiction in Aristotle’s statement “O my friends, there is no friend.” However, he interprets the citation mainly in terms of a privacy and intimacy to which he ascribes thoroughly socialpublic dimensions, yet ones which are chiefly subjective and only for the single friend. Montaigne concludes his deliberations with the thought that it would in fact be better to experience such a true friendship only briefly in one’s own life than to live lifelong without such a friendship. In his reading of Montaigne, Derrida is concerned mainly with working out the dimension of the political as a critical, deconstructive form of thought, ultimately creating democracy. Montaigne’s understanding of friendship, characterized by singularity, is consequently not left by Derrida within the private. For him, friendship is characterized rather by a fascinating double-structure of the private and public. Following Montaigne’s reflections, Derrida develops friendship as a relational

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model that articulates itself qua difference and not qua similarity. Accordingly, friendship must be something other than fraternity. In it, difference must appear that enables two different, autonomous people to assume a relationship voluntarily and without compulsion. The good friendship, writes Derrida, “would be unheimlich. How would unheimlich, uncanny, translate into Greek? Why not translate it by atópos: outside of self, expatriate, extraordinary, extravagant, absurd or mad, weird, unsuitable, strange, but also ‘a stranger to’?” (Derrida 2005: 178). Not identification, but differentiation and hence also unaffiliatedness and strangeness underlie his political concept of friendship and enable the inclusion of the stranger. Thus, society is thought of as a heterogeneous form of living together by persons of the most diverse backgrounds. In this sense, friendship is not individual (and not hence apolitical), but moves – precisely due to its double-structure of private and public – on the demarcation line between apolitical and political. Exactly for this reason it is so political, because it always offensively negotiates anew the political as a representative and often excluding system. Friendship is defined here not across affiliatedness through belonging, but rather across unaffiliatedness through strangeness. Its political content lies in this and its non-monopolizing structures, which can never be reflected in predefined institutions. It offers a possibility to step into close contact with the different and unfamiliar as well as with the extraordinary, which can be understood not only as unsuitable [unzugehörig], but also as misbehaving [ungehörig] and hence criticizing.7 In addition to Derrida’s attempt to determine the potential of friendship in constructively dealing with difference, a range of other sociological definitions give an account of friendship as a political form of community. From a sociological perspective, due to the high individualization and differentiation of our society, friendship plays an ever more important role as a concept of relationship alongside family and kinship. The individual 7 | The critique can be made of Montaigne that he gives precedence to the samesex (and in his example male) friendship of heterosexuals. According to his view, a male-female friendship is immediately tied to utility and sexuality, to which ‘true’ friendship stands opposed. I follow in this regard more the view of Michel Foucault, who points out that friendship was quite essentially associated with a rigid exclusion of homophile lifestyles: “The development toward which the problem of homosexuality tends is the one of friendship” (Foucault 1994: 137).

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designs more and more his or her own relationship combinations: choice of profession, family form, choice of life partner, religious affiliation, domicile, lifestyle and also political engagement are described as largely individual. Friendship hence represents an attractive alternate model to traditional relational forms and is understood as an independent social form with special qualities. If one looks at the existent approaches, reference is almost never omitted to how ambivalent and difficult it is to define friendship scientifically. Friendship is subject, at least in Western cultures, to only a few fixed social rituals, clearly defined contents or verbal and physical norms. Friendly forms of relationship occur as heterogeneous and individually shaped everyday practices, which the following definition makes clear: “Friendship is a dyadic, personal relationship based on voluntary mutuality between non-kindred, same-sex adults over a time span” (Nötzholt-Linden 1994: 29). The definition refers to the aspect of voluntariness within friendly relationships, for these are subject to no standardizable rituals; one has free choice and individual possibilities of design. Friendships are reciprocal, and they should be experienced on both sides as constructive. A friend is a companion, defends from solitude and offers social support. Affection – entirely in the sense of Montaigne, even if not so radically understood – should prevail between friends. While the time spans invested in friendships today are likely shorter (for example, due to higher mobility), it is still always to be understood as a long-term relational model. The etymology shows that a friend, an amicus, would thus be a loved one. A “good, best, dear […] proven, true friend, an inclined, liketempered, like-minded, devoted man, who shares joy and sorrow with us.” (DWB 1971: 161ff.) This word origin, too, defines friendship as a masculine phenomenon, based on loving and peaceful affection of kindred spirits, where guarding and caring are as much specified as elements of friendship as are persistence and action. From the sociological and etymological perspective, it becomes clear that friendship is furthermore located strongly in the private and that we are dealing with a relational model that is tendentially based rather on like-temperedness. Against this background, Derrida’s philosophical approach of newly defining friendship is again justified: Even if friendship is singular, it is not exclusively private, but always also part of public and hence political structures. To escape the model of forced comradeship, it must be based on difference and cannot be based on similarity. Only in this way are encounters with the stranger possible, and only in this way do

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potentials open to social changes and advancements. We have discussed that friendship in its post-structuralist characterization proceeds, like complicity, obliquely to rational structures of institutions and representation. For the institution this entails that “affective intensities traverse it which at one and the same time keep it going and shake it up” (Foucault 1994: 137). A constructive destabilization can begin, because informal cultural practices rupture the rational logic of organizational units and enable the new. Exactly because friendship counts today as a less normative relationship, based on an experience of the stranger, it approaches complicity in some qualities, while simultaneously there are distinguishing features. In regard to the similar qualities: Derrida formulates vis-à-vis the traditional concept of friendship three main critical points that serve to establish a new concept. First, the model of fraternity is criticized and with it the recourse to natural categories such as lineage and sex. Second, the invention of the polarized thinking of the enemy and with it the legitimization of agitation against the ‘enemy’ through the so-called friend is unmasked as a dangerous form of argumentation. Third, the history of the concept is read as a taming of the human through reason, which represses informal, affective cultural practices of friendship. Complicity follows these three critical points insofar as it, like friendship, is based not on origin, sex and fraternal similarity. On the contrary, the power of complicities lies precisely in flouting these categories. As a mode of collective formation, it does not resort to consanguineous structures such as family, but rather offers new and surprising forms of collectivization. These are so successful precisely because they are unexpected. How then in this context does complicity relate to the concept of the enemy? Similarly to Derrida’s concept of friendship, complicity cannot be read as a clear counter-concept to enmity. The analysis of Margit Czenki’s film showed that complicity can even be quite effective as a temporary alliance with the enemy. Still more, it is often the only possibility of survival whereby the greatest enemies can become the greatest accomplices. Accomplices also act – as in the case of the SVP Federal Councillor – against enemies, who do not suspect anything. They do not open any trench warfare, but rather appropriate the strategies of their opponent. The drawing of boundaries – “I am here, there is the other” – serves the illusory forming and stabilization of self-identity. However, it also splits off something of its self and hence represents a loss. Accomplices keep such drawings of

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boundaries in movement and as fluid as possible. They have the courage for a life without fixed attributions and therefore never stand outside of the system; otherwise, they would permanently reproduce this with their critique. Much more, they radically appropriate enemy figures in order to displace these. They draw their capability for action from precisely the power against which they turn. To note additionally, complicity is characterized similarly to friendship by informal cultural practices that are settled between not only the private and public, but also legal and illegal. These three main points describe common qualities of complicity and friendship, which is why the latter is highlighted so extensively here as a relational model. They are differentiated, however, in at least four other points: Friendships are as a rule established for longer duration. Derrida’s reference to the peculiar, estranging, crazy and absurd, which friendships can carry internally, shows that friendship withstands a great deal and is, therefore, as a rule extremely stable and long-lived. Discontinuations, which occur due to the estranging experience of friendship, are a constitutive element of friendship and can hence be understood as a feature for long duration. Friendships can be extremely strained; they withstand much, such as long phases of silence, separation, misunderstanding. Precisely a friendship based on difference is long, because it endures and includes more that is unforeseen than a friendship based on similarity, from which one can correspondingly deviate. Both harmony (Montaigne) and difference (Derrida) lay the basis for prolonged relationships. A complicity, by contrast, is always temporary. Dissent, which next to a high emotionality is an integral component of friendship and leads to a long duration, weakens complicity. Accomplices, who are endowed with very different skills, work in an extremely coordinated manner and concentrate together on a common goal. It should be emphasized that complicities are concluded when the deed is realized. Daniel Jositsch points out in the interviews (Komplizenschaften) that he knows of no cases of repeated complicity. If such a thing is entered into again, then it is usually done so in a slightly altered constellation. Second and connected to this: Complicity proves itself in practice. In its deconstructive definition, friendship is for now a negative definition, in which Derrida formulates all that which friendship is not. While this definition gives one an impression of a new semantics of the concept, it consciously does not formulate this in detail, however, in order to allow it the necessary openness. By contrast, complicity can be examined mainly

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on a level of action. When Derrida writes, “there is thought for man only to the extent that it is thought of the other […]. Following the same logic, there is thought […] only in friendship” (Derrida 2005: 224), then one could thus reformulate this quotation for complicities on the level of action: “For the person, there is only therefore action because there is action of the other.” This description, underlined by Derrida for thought, is also relevant for complicity on the level of action. Action – understood as an action of the other – formulates the core of collective action. While Derrida’s deconstructive approach precisely does not primarily affect the level of action, complicity is inconceivable without action. In this respect, complicity also reacts to the critique of Derrida’s theory, which takes aim at deconstruction’s becoming speechlessly restrained in face of the political reality; it would be, in this formulation, “nothing other than an apolitical and empty play with words” (Vogt/Silverman/Trottein 2003: 8). By contrast, complicity entails the quality of acting together [Mittäterschaft], whereby it is goal-oriented in its determination and manifests in deed. To this, the third distinguishing feature connects seamlessly, exhibited especially in the texts of Michel de Montaigne, for he emphasizes that friendship is decidedly not use-oriented. Whoever has a friend, expecting an advantage from the friend, such as money, network, social advancement or similar, is living only an ordinary and not a true friendship. On the contrary, complicity is a utility-based form of relationship, where precisely the commonly developed goal is the motor for activity. It is, therefore, not at all usual, however. At least two particularities underlie this utilitarian trait to complicity: The decisive point is that accomplices create their own goal – no externally enforced goal is pursued, but rather one forged in common that only arises in the moment of meeting together. Additionally, an excess, an unreason, and a somewhat megalomaniacal, irrational and overweening claim to something always lie within powerful complicities. Fourth, while we are dealing with the double structure of the private and public, we also have to do with that of the illegal and legal, which can generate innovation in the sense of the re-valuing of values. Informal cultural practices, which are intentionally kept non-transparent or do not pursue the normal path of conversation, are an important component of complicity and do not necessarily correspond to the principles of visibility and transparency. Complicity, however, negotiates exactly these rules through the transgression of conventional rules, thereby also carrying

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within itself a political implication, because institutional provisions are put into question repeatedly. These features show why complicity is inserted in only a limited fashion into traditional descriptions of social structures such as friendship, family or partner-relationship. These concepts of social bonding leave too little room for play to sharpen existing contradictions; they are based rather on harmony and conceived to be of longer duration. From my view, for today’s unstable framings we need instead paradoxical social categories, for one makes relationships with the knowledge of their potential later dissolution.8 The situational and dynamic character of the social is thus highlighted; thereby, the power of encounters is less predictable, but can be seen most clearly.9

8 | Georg Simmel (2008) has already succinctly described this paradox of proximity and distance. 9 | With regard to art, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have introduced the concept of the posse as a frequently appearing relational quality: “Posse refers to the power of the multitude and its telos, an embodied power of knowledge and being, always open to the possible” (Hardt/Negri 2000: 408). What is crucial is that the quality of relationships here is described as “open to the possible.” The authors draw on the situational moment of artist groups such as American rapbands, who define their music literally through their group dynamics. The intensity and hence productivity of encounters is based on the possible potential, on a capacity to be intuited, which only appears situationally in the moment of the encounter. The strength lies precisely here, which enables one to remain singular and yet to act as a collective. In this way the situational potential is pushed strongly in social bonds and in the process the juxtaposition of opposing qualities emphasized, which arises mainly in the temporal finiteness – with simultaneously emerging intensity – of the relationship.

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The blurring of the boundaries between private and public as well as between informal and formal, as discussed in the relationship of complicity to friendship, now leads us directly into current debates from the sociology of work as they are under discussion today in the framework of post-industrial forms of production. New forms of organization of work from an economic perspective do not stand so much in the foreground here; rather, the focus is on the multifaceted social consequences that these have for the participants. Basically it has been stated that since the 1980s there has been the onset of an increasing flexibilization of the labor market, accompanied by a decrease in job stability, which has led to the point “that the middle class, up to now well-earning, is under threat of losing security of planning and quality of life” (Krause/Köhler: 9). This flexibilization has diverse consequences. Three aspects appear to be of special significance for the theme of complicity: first, the dissolving of the boundary of private and professional; second, the destabilization of clearly defined professional fields; and third, an increasing self-activation of workers in organizations. My thesis is that, precisely due to these transformed conditions, complicity is an ever more frequently occurring collective-connective organizational form and that it is, therefore, worth considering the field of work more closely. In the research film Komplizenschaften (2007), the consultant Paola Ghillani states that a de-hierarchization in work processes has also been introduced into the economy and that consequently an increased occurrence of intensive, yet temporally limited and often one-time group interactions can be observed: “There are ever fewer hierarchies issuing from school and home. There need to be hierarchies, that is not in question, but the goal is the mandate and everyone tries to make the best out of it.” The claim of a new generation

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is formulated ever more strongly – especially, but not only in the creative area – to design their work’s organizational forms themselves instead of submitting to a preset hierarchy. These structural changes are mainly discussed with regard to creative professions; however, they can be seen in a larger framework. This framework is described as a development from industrial to postindustrial production1, also called a service-, knowledge- or information society. The labor sociologists G. Günter Voss and Hans J. Pongratz (2004: 13ff.) differentiate three so-called labor force types, which register less the economic conditions of work than the relationship of workers to their work. This often-cited study is important for the positioning of complicity because it asks how work is structuring individual existence and hence also relations among workers. The first labor force type is described as the proletarian wageworker of early industrialization, who was subjected to a rigid labor control, experienced a strong state of exploitation and enjoyed hardly any social protection. In industry, labor forces with low qualifications were used under restrictive conditions in order to generate maximum performance. This performance was mainly physical, with few periods for recovery. A supervisory authority set work hours, short pauses, place of work and the exact – usually monotone – manner of activity. In the era of Fordism, we are dealing with the occupationalized employee [verberuflichten Arbeitnehmer], who is subjected to a structural technical control of labor. The concept of Fordism refers to the automobile production of the Ford factories in Detroit after the First World War and describes a mode of production of total standardization and rationalization of production. Assembly line work led for the first time on a large scale to mass production and consumption. Increasingly, goods were produced that no longer served survival, but rather pleasure, luxury and mobility. Prices for such products sank; the automobile, the prototype of this development, was supposed to be affordable for everyone. This was also accompanied by a social integration of the working class in regard to wages, working hours and especially free time. Not only the car, but also the train and airplane became means of transportation that enabled trips as an important form of leisure activity. A comprehensive social protection 1 | The advent of the post-industrial society was described on social, political and cultural levels by sociologist Daniel Bell in the work The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973).

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of workers – an important basis of the welfare state – guaranteed social security and social peace during rising wages and sinking work hours. A consumption-oriented organization of leisure and life was promoted, whose social model was the middle-class nuclear family with a clear division of labor between the sexes. The separation between the private sphere and professional daily life began to dissolve in specific professional fields, but survived in most cases. In the 1950s and 60s the father – who read his newspaper in peace at home in the evenings, while the wife still performed family work – typically did not have to answer any calls from the company. In this model as well, the workers were guided by clear control mechanisms from above, which were legible and also enabled defined spaces for leisure. This model has been increasingly displaced since the 1980s2 by a third labor force type, which is defined in the framework of post-Fordism as an occupationalized employee entrepreneur [verbetrieblichter Arbeitskraftunternehmer]. Post-Fordism is distinguished among other things by an increasing, individualized self-control of the worker, which replaces the hitherto dominant model of outside control by the company. High technologization and globalization lead to spatial independence as well as flexible work hours and job descriptions. This development may well be perceived as liberating, as the scope for design vis-à-vis one’s work and hence also private life probably seems to increase subjectively. The laptop and low-threshold Internet access across nearly the entire world enable a form of spatial independence. Individual ideas and creativity are in demand as never before because work purely of reproduction, which was the most frequently performed labor in the Industrial Age, is more and more decreasing. However, this work is accompanied – and this is where critical debate today starts – with a vague social protection and precarious labor conditions. Temporary labor contracts, parallel commitments with several part-time contracts or so-called permanent freelancers lead in a certain measure to a self-determined life, yet one which is in many cases also accompanied by a high self-exploitation. Private and professional are scarcely still separated here. Both mother and father still answer professional calls in the evenings while making the meal for their children, who have spent the majority of the day in an institution.

2 | Dated thus by Egbringhoff/Kleemann/Matuschek/Voss (2003: 3).

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For complicity of course, today’s occupationalized workforce type in its further developments is of utmost importance. The profound structural transformation currently taking place changes the social fabric and hence the qualities of bonds between individuals.3 First of all, if we reflect on the strong interdependence of the private and professional, the transformation of working environments changes not only our image of work and its function in society, but to a large extent our private life as well. Especially amongst the creative professions, to which no longer just artistic activities, but also academic and design-entrepreneurial ones pertain today in the broader sense, the private is at work strongly in the professional everyday. A clear separation of both areas can for the most part no longer be drawn sharply, so that work is omnipresent in the private and vice versa. One feature of this overlapping is that relational networks are carried quite consciously into the working environment and then back out again into the private. Such relational networks operate directly on the generation of ideas and thus are frequently deemed productive. Creativity happens not only in frames provided officially for this, such as office spaces, work hours or job definitions, but also in other places that have long been considered private. The interviewee and graphic artist Martin Lötscher, who has issued a range of publications in tandem with his partner, formulates it this way: “The reference to one’s own subjectivity facilitates for us an unforced and, in the best case, playful contestation with one’s own reality […]” (Notroff/Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 24). Classical labor relations, originally labeled as collegial, were sustained in the best case by respect and appreciation. However, they ended as a rule at the office door. One clocked out, which implied pursuing private activities that had little or nothing to do with the world of work. Only rarely did colleagues also become friends, and when they did, such developments were kept secret in the office, since the appearance of any unprofessional advantages perhaps resulting from this was to be avoided. Professional distance to associates was an important element of leadership. Thus, on the one hand, clear organizational and hence also hierarchical structures were created that often restricted the team’s possibilities for co-determination and the 3 | The debate over “immaterial labor,” as put forward by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000: 300ff.) for example, is also to be considered in this context, since this labor includes in large part social competencies such as relationship building and communication.

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self-fulfillment of individuals; on the other hand, a protective space stood around the private in which rest, variety and regeneration were ensured. By contrast, in the course of the transformation to a knowledge society, labor relations are now often also sustained by affects, common interests, stories or experiences. It is openly dealt with that team members were at the same party on the weekend, met in a cinema; that one has the same friends or acquaintances. In one’s circle of acquaintances, jobs are circulated; couples work together; or – especially in the creative area – friends found small firms following the conclusion of their studies. Especially when common visions are the basis for the emergence of a project or initiative, labor relations quickly impinge on the private. Visions cannot usually be developed in a pre-given, regular setting of work – more likely these mature in surroundings that enable informal communication; in which time does not mean office time; in which formal and restricting modes of behavior can be broken up in favor of unconventional relationships. This development has been proactively realized for some time by the personnel departments of large firms, which offer coaching-seminars for their employees. This is, however, often connected with absurd outgrowths, as for example detailed in the documentary film Work Hard - Play Hard (2012) (Germany, Director: Carmen Losmann). Workshop designs are specifically staged in which colleagues have to undergo extreme experiences together – often in outdoor activities. Common worlds of experience are generated artificially, which one is supposed to recall in extreme work-situations (change-processes, fusions, crises) and which are additionally used as selection processes in order to bond together the most competitive employees. Fluid boundaries between private life and profession do not only enable a gain in informality and flexibility, but also create dependencies and hence precarious and unstable work relations, in the framework of which one acts in a short-term manner, indeed often only reacts, and no longer acts actively and in a long-term manner. The end of a work relationship can quickly become the end of a friendship. Or vice versa: Presumed friendships that arise through work are no longer such when the work ends and perhaps never were such. The attendant unpredictability of events and careers yields relational qualities that can no longer be labeled through conventional organizational-theoretical descriptions. The frequent occurrence of complicities in which private and official qualities of relationship are at play together can be understood as a consequence of this development. The emergence of complicitous germ

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cells happens as a rule beyond official structures, also clearly observable in large companies. Frequently, however, large traditional organizations suppress such alliances for fear of an uncontrollable development of force, although when one takes seriously the word creatio in the sense of creation of the unforeseen, this should be an element of true innovation management.4 These structural and personal changes are discussed mainly in regard to creative professions. Independent from whether the talk is of employees and those employed freelance, however, this structural transformation has also arrived in large firms. Second, it is striking that both in rigid structures and less thoroughly organized fields of work, standardized professions are being replaced more and more by so-called individual professions that are not performed for one’s whole lifetime. Until on into the 1980s, the idea prevailed that young people do professional training, pursue a standardized job and are paid for this by the company, but are also supervised. A manageable supply of on-the-job training and fields of study existed that provided an identity qua occupational profile and a relatively straightforward career, at least in prospect. A clearly outlined field of work with defined career steps and a fixed spatial location were the basis for a mostly open-ended contract with adequate income and good social security. Today, classic job descriptions are more and more disappearing, and one’s own activity is subject to constant changes that are presumed to be continually described anew. The endowment of identity, which occupation once gave, has become more fragile. Workers change their scope of activities several times in their professional lives today. With situational professionality, complex problems emerge in different functions that can often only be worked through in inter- or transdisciplinary settings. The new courses of study that arose in the framework of the Bologna Reform also formulate new professional fields.5 4 | An interview partner of a large Swiss bank, whose name has not been mentioned for reasons of discretion, reported that his firm would be teeming with complicities, because the company is relatively rigidly organized and in this way the employees would create free spaces for themselves. These were, however, consistently kept small by management structures where many prohibitions are in force. 5 | See for example the titles of the following study programs: M.A. Intercultural Management and Creative Economy (Universität Hildesheim), M.A. Creative

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Here it becomes clear that today there are more programs for interfacing expertises that exist alongside professional trainings for more in-depth individual specializations. It must be noted here, however, that the requirements of the labor market are developing markedly more quickly than the profiles of study programs. In turn, this has as a consequence that job profiles are announced on the labor market for which not even specialists can apply because there is no custom-fit training for them. As a result, one staffs such positions with people who are something like ‘specialized generalists,’ whereby surprising combinations of branches of study or work positions also make an attractive profile. This development indicates that there are ever fewer occupations that are exercised lifelong, with clearly defined tasks, fixed work hours and a clear division of roles between superiors and employees. Third, it is additionally pointed out (cf. Pongratz/Voss 2004: 15) that workers no longer only behave passively on the labor market, but rather become active, strategic actors who offer their labor force and creativity as goods. To be the labor force also always includes today the claim of bringing a high readiness for creativity and innovation and of not only reproducing work processes. Co-workers also have to continually get together as a consequence in order to produce new ideas constantly and hence temporarily redesign their working environment. Even if they work in the position of a salaried employee, they become entrepreneurs themselves who purposefully and actively produce their achievements and abilities and then offer these continually, as well as cross-operationally. They are forced to adapt their skills and hence to repeatedly react to unknown constellations and themes. Self-rationalization is a consequence of this self-economization, which manifests itself in radical changes of entire life-contexts: Technologies make it possible to be available at any time. One also develops ideas for the company in free time, no longer knows any clear work hours and is thus flexibly deployable in time – that is, almost around the clock. The informal modes of communication are increasing.

Direction (Design Akademie Berlin), M.Sc. Urban Design or BA Culture of the Metropolis (HafenCity Universität Hamburg), M.A. Music and Creative Industries (Popakademie Baden-Württemberg), M.Sc. Advanced Urbanism (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar).

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These three aspects, which show only a section of the qualitative changes of bonding intensities in new working worlds, make clear why complicity is a frequently occurring phenomenon. They highlight how the increase, already reflected upon, in the emergence of collectives has become essential for survival not only in everyday life, but also at work. And they show that a microscopic look at the quality of bonding forms requires other concepts, for increasingly such diverse qualities as intensity and temporality are interconnected. The sociologist Richard Sennett (2007) also relates this transformation to the social and summarizes the major changes that are also having effects on qualities of relationship: Today’s individual has to cope with short-term relationships; qualifications have a short period of validity; experiences are less valued than the look forwards (cf. ibid.: 9f.). The outcomes of his research show how unstable professional and hence social fields are today. These transformations affect not only work, but almost all spheres of life such as health, family organization or the construction of one’s own biography.6 In the sociology of work, these transformations are justifiably analyzed critically, which throws up the question, however, to what extent workers can defend against such often very indirect assimilations. The active finding of accomplices can indeed be a possibility of producing alternative orders out of the system. Seen thus, complicity can also represent a possibility to set something selfdeterminedly in opposition to the dissolution of the boundary of private and professional, the destabilization of clearly defined professional fields and an increasing self-activization of workers.

6 | Since the place of work also frequently no longer coincides with the place of residence or the place of work frequently changes in the course of a professional career, the amount of workers who are underway by airplane, car or train is also increasing, as is the number handling a portion of their work in the form of a mobile office in these means of transportation. A “discontinuous spatial and temporal logic” (Heindl 2008: 10) between globality and locality compels many workers to cover great distances, regularly be separated from their family and in the process often jeopardize their own health.

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3.1 F ailed C omplicities (B y E x ample of R adical I nnovation) By way of an example of a failed complicity, the focus is now to be put on hierarchy building and again the topic of self-motivation – from another perspective. A better understanding of hierarchical formations is thus necessary since accomplices have to have, first of all, a keen sense of hierarchical formations, for they do not act non-hierarchically, but rather in well-functioning, yet rapidly changing hierarchies. This is a quite special complicitous quality, and for this reason accomplices must precisely recognize the functionalities of hierarchies. Directly connected to this is the second question concerning to what extent the resulting self-activation can lead to a self-exploitation from which not self-determination, but freedom-restricting dependency arises in the collective. Before we come to an example of failed complicity, some reflections leading to the theme of hierarchy and self-activation in new working environments should be prefaced here. In contrast to the old types of work, the group hierarchies in the new post-Fordist model are organized less clearly from above. Supervisors once saw themselves as those who issued the tasks that the employees carried out. On the basis of clear criteria, these could be evaluated as fulfilled or not. Klaus Schönberger and Stefanie Springer (2003: 8) indicate by recourse to studies on this topic 7 that there are, however, increasingly organizational concepts on behalf of companies today that replace hierarchical organizations through discursive, more dialogic forms of guidance. Such changes show that alternative modes of management are sought, which are dialogic and non-authoritarian and aimed at the participation of group members. The consensus in the process is that hierarchies cannot be eliminated entirely, but that one can arrange them quite differently qualitatively. It would thus be too quick to say that by definition hierarchies operate negatively in groups because they represent an expression of the pure exercise of power. As a system of super- and subordinate elements, hierarchies are equally the expression of functional differentiations that enable a high autonomy within the units and more frictionless procedures within the group. Central for complicity is that hierarchies are founded today “more and more on their professionalism 7 | Cf. Töpsch/Menez/Malinowski (2001).

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and technical knowledge – and less on their family background or money” (Baecker 1994: 28). Thus, one obtains a position of leadership today less qua birth or nationality, but rather through skills that are learned and hence also able to be recalled and communicated. This view clearly differs from inheritable hierarchical systems such as those given by religion, nation or family, which function in a more authoritarian manner. Empirically, this thesis is quite controversial, for research shows that the large majority of elite positions in top management both in Europe and in countries like Japan or the United States are still occupied by people who come from the middle class – provided with the correct family habitus and network. On the part of organizational theory, the idea has long been propagated that management levels need to be in conversation with employees in order to generate a productive working atmosphere. Dirk Baecker points out the contradiction of today’s concept of hierarchy by emphasizing that hierarchy is a paradoxical phenomenon “because it connects layers together by differentiating them from one another” (Baecker/Kluge: 2003). Hierarchies are caught up in contradictions because subordinate parts of a superordinated totality are supposed to be held together. If one observes the subordinate parts as acting autonomously, which is frequently the case in today’s companies, then a superordinate totality can no longer fully steer them. The units are still dialogically connected with one another in the best case, requiring consequently a different understanding of leadership and communication. Both levels are inconceivable without the other. Especially in the small- and medium-size companies where I conducted my surveys, it becomes clear that supervisors are not interested in steep hierarchies. They know very well that they can only activate the potential of the employee through an open communication and the multifaceted possibilities of interaction of as many participants as possible. These supervisors thus no longer understand themselves as the sole bearers of responsibility, but rather distribute responsibility for the work processes to the entire group. Through the flattening of the classical hierarchy model, the employees are prompted, even if often not openly articulated, to bring themselves into work processes with their own ideas and visions. Selfactivation increases, and workers are forced in many ways to be highly self-motivated. This leads to phenomena that have also been discussed under the keywords of the subjectification of work and the de-boundarying of work (Schöneberger/Springer 2003). What changed roles do subjects

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assume today in the world of work and hence also in society? “If collective institutions – in the realms of work and life – are softening their borders as the tendency to de-boundarying suggests, then the necessity and possibility of a stronger self-structuring ensue for the subject itself” (ibid.: 10). The less the processes, modes of cooperation or contents of work are predefined, the more the pressure becomes to set structures and goals for oneself within the company. Klaus Schönberger speaks in this context of a “double subjectification” (Schönberger 2007: 82): On the one hand, businesses draw ever more on the social and communicative facilities of their employees; on the other, the workers themselves demand a great deal from work. Work serves strongly today for self-realization and is an important part of one’s own identity formation. By means of this double subjectification, the author shows especially the ambivalence within these processes. On the one hand, personal engagement of the employees is introduced by the firm to bring profit, and on the other, it enables the individual, nonetheless, to import individual interests into work and thus to lend it a personal note. We are dealing with an active, ambivalent self-steering of the worker that can open up individual free spaces and that is desired by the company. Since skills are frequently defined only on the job and even the resources such as financing or infrastructure have first to be created for projects, employees are facilitated in finding their own expression, launching their own topics and testing out forms of work. The high self-activation is accompanied by a strong self-control, additionally attended by a high “selfeconomization” and strong “self-rationalization” (Pongratz/Voss 2004: 12). This self-control relates not only to self-organization, but also selfmotivation. Workers are encouraged to co-determine processes in firms, to define their own topics and fields of work, and not to reproduce the already pre-defined. In the extreme case it is irrelevant to the supervisor how the worker attains his or her goal as long as the outcome is right. An expression of this development is the demand that qualifications at the workplace must be generated according to results, not work hours. Such formulations make clear the ambivalence between freedom and performance-oriented dependency and can be either a great advantage or significant disadvantage according to the branch of business and skills of the employees. The everyday is thus permeated by the interests of the company, shown clearly in the concepts of the companies themselves, for example. Firms purposefully try to produce free spaces for their employees

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so that they produce ideas that could then benefit the company. Such models are practiced, for instance, under the catchword “skunk works.” The concept stands for highly specialized developers in companies who join together and develop their products without contact to the company; that is, outside of established hierarchies.8 These methods for innovation served as a precedent and were assumed in modified form by firms, usually from the technology sector, such as 3M, IBM or Google. These firms emphasize that new ideas frequently do not emerge in the official order of the firm and its everyday, since hierarchies and bureaucratic processes, which are standardized and rigid precisely in large companies, impede innovation. Only if communication is direct and individual responsibility, joy in experiment and tolerance for error are high, can an energy arise in the group that makes innovation possible. Firms that are oriented to a high degree towards innovation release a certain portion of work hours to the most qualified employees, allow them not to be bound to fixed hours and places or promote unofficial possibilities for encounters through events. Often it is not abstract goals lying in the distance that characterize company culture, but the fact that the firm permits small groups to be able to work relatively autonomously in their own style on concrete questions (cf. Peters/Watermann 2004).9 Such concepts, which appeal purposefully to the self-motivation of the employees, are ambivalent, because free space 8 | The expression arose during World War II when the Department of Defense asked U.S. plane manufacturer Lockheed Aircraft for help in developing a new combat aircraft. The management commissioned its star developer with the construction. He broke from all the hierarchies of the firm and gathered a crowd of qualified engineers around himself in order to develop – sealed off from the rest of the company in a sort of circus tent – a prototype in only 143 days. When an employee answered the telephone one day with “Skonk Works,” the concept was born. Skonk Works was the name of a factory in a very popular comic at the time, in which a secret brew of shoes and skunks was produced. Lockheed Aircraft turned Skonk Works into Skunk Works und officially named its development division this from that time on. See http://www.skunkworks.com, visited 3 April 2013. 9 | Tom Peters and Robert H. Jr. Waterman (2004: 3) describe this under the headline “Autonomy and entrepreneurship”: “Even if you’re big, act small. Organizations are simply collections of people, and people don’t relate well to big, abstract entities. If you want to understand the success of Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Wal-Mart, and the original HP, look to the fact that they organize themselves

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is supposed to be created simultaneously in extremely efficient and also rigid organizations, which actually contradicts the idea of freedom. On the one hand, an open working atmosphere is facilitated, which suggests high design freedoms; at the same time, such settings must lead to new products that can be marketed. It involves targeted promotion of the elites, for such firms know that their ‘pioneers’ are dependent on strong and stable networks: “No support system, no champions. No champions, no innovations” (ibid.: 211), so the successful authors Tom Peters and Robert, who repeatedly describe non-linear management as productive. Yet precisely in medium-sized companies, such radically acting innovation groups – separated as a rule spatially, organizationally and culturally from the rest of the company – represent a major risk, not least because they induce high costs and through their special status are accepted by the core company only with difficulty. An example follows here for the failure of radical innovation at a company from Switzerland, at which I conducted extensive interviews. This example shows that complicity cannot be implemented like a prescription in companies. In distinction to incremental innovation, radical innovation signifies that the innovation constitutes “a discontinuous development regarding both the technology and the market” (Eisert 2005: 11). As with skunk works, teams are assembled that do not take into consideration the company’s existing mentalities, organizational units or communication structures, but rather consciously set themselves apart from these by proceeding disruptively in all regards, i.e., without connection to existing structures of the firm. As a rule, radical innovation teams are housed spatially outside of the company in order to be able to work uninterrupted in interdisciplinary teams. They do not act incrementally, thus do not develop any small consistent improvements, but rather act radically in the sense of a rupture of as many possible existing continuities as possible. Groundbreaking new technologies, such as the development of the telephone, PC or mobile telephone, for example – so in any case the official narrative – are thanks to such practices. A Swiss middle-sized company with approximately three hundred employees in Switzerland, France and the USA, active in the area of adhesive processing, brought into being in the mid 2000s a radical into small, relatively independent units, held together by common goals and cultural norms.”

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innovation group that consisted of four highly qualified engineers. The team was staffed through a job advertisement, albeit with the restriction that ultimately only two employees be added from outside. The senior executive decided to recruit two other engineers from within the company itself. During the staffing of the team, respect was paid to an equal relationship between men and women; it was staffed in a multicultural way and moderately interdisciplinarily, for all came from the same professional group even if with different orientations. Alongside a good salary, the usual incentive systems such as company vehicle, travelling expenses, paid coaching sessions and so forth were ensured, likewise an optimally equipped office that was not housed at the firm’s headquarters. The group received from the senior executive a budget pledged to be upwardly open and which was supposed to be temporally indefinite, with the open-ended and also abstract mission to shape innovation for the company. The group was consciously positioned not as a think tank, since quite concrete activities and not only advising were expected – this, however, without setting a main emphasis in terms of content and without organizational and deadline targets. The team worked approximately four years and produced – except for an internal company newspaper and a small team-game for the employees – nothing of lasting significance for the company. The opposite was the case: the group was strongly criticized by employees of the company. They were categorized as arrogant, privileged and ignorant with respect to the other employees. At the point where the junior executive took over the company from his father, the group was disbanded with immediate effect. The members separated, whereby the two engineers who had previously worked in the company returned there and the other two had to leave the company. Within this grouping, no complicity appeared. Why? One female engineer with whom the interviews were conducted10 explained the failure essentially in three arguments: The group members had unequal requirements, principally because two members had already worked previously in the company and hence knew its culture well. They attempted at certain moments to protect the old company culture against new influences that were, in their view, too radical. An implicit hierarchy was 10 | The interviews were conducted in 2007 in Lucerne, Switzerland and were documented on film (but not published). For reasons of discretion, the name of the interviewee is not mentioned.

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hence given that could not be destabilized. Precisely these two members returned once again into the firm following the disbanding of the group. Second, within the group there were personal dislikes, since the four were put together from outside through an advertisement and could not decide for themselves whether they wished to collaborate. While the quartet was assembled according to officially ‘correct’ criteria, such as qualification, communicative competency and professional experience, equally crucial qualities, such as sympathy, aesthetics, curiosity about others or capability for interdisciplinary work, were not considered. And in a complicity, it is just these difficultly categorizable qualities that are decisive, which the artistic director and entrepreneur Martin Heller puts succinctly in the research film Komplizenschaften (2007): “In the conceiving of exhibitions, during the hanging of pictures, I think from the body out. […] This can also be transferred to processes. I can formulate this subsequently, but at first I know it physically, whether an organization, organization chart or course of a project has a certain soundness.” The alliance that already existed through the two engineers previously known to each other should probably have been further developed by them under their own direction in order, for example, to also take into consideration the very important physical components in the finding of accomplices. Such a form of selfactivation – which, however, would then also have been less steerable for the upper management of the company – could have perhaps led to an engaged group. Here, it was not built on the strength of an already existing alliance, but instead was augmented by external persons, which led within the group rather to crippling rivalry instead of constructive complicity. Third, the targets, frameworks and restrictions were quite marginal. There were hardly any obstacles on which the group could have worked and purposefully changed: “We stood in a green pasture and were supposed to bring about innovation,” so the testimony of the engineer. The example of failed innovation delivers important information about the structure of complicity. The reading of this example does not imply that radical innovation is fundamentally condemned to failure as a method. But it does make one heedful of the fact that precisely this example did not lead, for the reasons mentioned, to the desired productive group dynamic. Complicity cannot – or only in absolutely exceptional cases – be implemented into a system from outside, for it arises rather out of the system. Complicity follows no recipe that one can assume arbitrarily into systems and that would be reproducible and callable at will; it is based

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much more on existing connections that can be strengthened. To do this successfully, one has to reconnoiter the existing organization well and not hinder germinating pacts if they provide an inkling of productivity, but rather allow them. As a recipe for successful collaboration, complicity cannot – as many management consultancies suggest – be simply transferred.

3.2 C omplicit y in R el ation to Te ams , A lliances , N e t works and other Pacts , such as the M afia Different forms of collective networking have been well researched, especially on the part of organizational theory11, but also through the sociology of work and cultural studies, and there is a range of concepts that describe collaboration in a differentiated way. Before we set the common forms in relationship to complicity, a few words on the relationship of complicity and cooperation are in order, for these concepts are also not identical. “Cooperation can be defined, drily, as an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter” (Sennet 2012: 5). The successful cooperation “tries to join people who have separate or conflicting interests, who do not feel good about each other, who are unequal, or who simply do not understand one another” (Sennett 2012: 6). In Sennett’s sense, forms of cooperation thus encompass the possibility of bringing together very different people, who do not necessarily act together in as goaloriented a manner as accomplices, however. In a certain sense, forms of cooperation are less binding, less close and more oriented towards basic understandings; however, they do not necessarily have to lead to a common action. Richard Sennett diagnoses a “weakness of the informal triangle of social relations at their workplaces” and points out that this is increasingly characterized by “weak cooperation” and consequently heightens “the silo effect” (cf. Sennett 2012: 166). Isolation has allegedly stepped into the place of cooperation, a point that is, nonetheless, consistently assessed to be negative for the climate of a company. Here, sociology comes to a similar conclusion as the media analyses of examples in this book: An increased occurrence of complicities can be understood as a reaction to isolation. 11 | The volume Contemporary Organization Theory by Campbell Jones and Rolland Munro (2005) furnishes a successful summary of interesting approaches.

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Complicity opens up the possibility of acting obliquely to the rigid silo structure and destabilizing its borders. It is a variety of cooperation, and it can arise out of such. Yet at the core it is a goal- and action-oriented form of collaboration. In order to focus the concept of complicity more, it is now worth setting this in relationship to similar-appearing types of cooperation, such as alliance building, teamwork and networking. The complex organizational form of the mafia does not fall under the area of a classical labor organization; a demarcation from this is necessary, nevertheless, because it provides ex negativo some criteria for complicity.

Teams One designates a group of individuals as a team who solve a given task with as little friction as possible. Well-functioning teams frequently consist of people with varying capabilities, who pursue a definite goal in an efficient manner and try to attain this without particular contretemps. Such groups usually play upon already existing structures and do not invent new ones. Teams work on projects, in large and small companies, in science and art, or they operate in sports. With reference to Richard K. Merton (1974)12, it can be stated that cultural goals and the social paths by which these are attained do not as a rule collide. To the contrary: Both areas are attuned to each other and co-determine each other, which is why innovation does not necessarily follow from teamwork. Teamwork is described principally in the literature on management as outcome-oriented: “One comes together to solve problems, exchange information, make decisions, plan strategies and practices” (Hölscher/Reiber/Pape/Loehnert-Baldermann 2006: 3). Teams act in a methodical and structured way; they are often put together consciously and for longer durations. In our society we rely at many sites on functioning teams who play on their structures routinely and adeptly. If we think, for example, of the fire department or a surgical team, it becomes immediately clear that such collectives must indeed be alert and flexible, but in their everyday work they could scarcely put into question their structures. The instability of the structure arising from this would prevent the frictionless process of the fire fighting operations or medical intervention. 12 | On this see Chapter 1.3 in this book.

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Team- and accomplice-structures resemble each other quite obviously in one point: Both forms of cooperation are based on the participation of members who are as different as possible and bring their various capabilities skillfully into the work process. One can observe this well in teams that work under elevated security risks, for in this context it would prove especially dangerous if dissonances existed in the team. So-called high reliability organizations, working in hospitals or acting in hostage rescue teams, for example, have to be especially careful. In organizational theory, Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe (2007) have worked out that such teams have to ward off anything unexpected as soon and as reliably as possible. They must constantly actualize their interpretation of organizational procedures and repeatedly endeavor to find the most plausible explanations for a situation so that the most important problems as well as potential counteragents can be rapidly recognized. The members of such teams confront even weak signals, to which one would normally scarcely react, with strong reactions: “Managing the unexpected often means that people have to make strong responses to weak signals, something that is counterintuitive and not very heroic” (ibid.: 8). In contrast to such teams working under extreme situations having to ward off what cannot be expected, accomplices bluntly challenge what cannot be expected. They occur in social contexts in which what cannot be expected should not be prevented, but rather actively provoked. The legendary Zurich Postal Robbery13, which as a typical accomplice case was also criminally tried, can serve as an example in order to elucidate both similarities and differences between teamwork and complicity. In 1997 five young men succeeded in broad daylight with presumably unloaded weapons in infiltrating the inner-city site of the Zurich Fraumünsterpost and carrying off 53 million Swiss francs. The theft of the century provided for international headlines at the time. The intrepidness of the perpetrators and the amount of the haul initially pointed to shrewd professionals; the perpetrators were cheered as gentlemen gangsters and their crime compared with the legendary English Great Train Robbery of 1963. In order for this crime to have been able to be successful at all, the participants had to exhibit quite various qualifications: someone knew 13 | The robbery itself and especially the period after the robbery are documented in Kriminalfälle – Schweizer Verbrechen im Visier (3/6): Der Fluch des Postraubes (2012) (Switzerland, Dir.: Andrea Pfalzgraf).

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the site, another drove the car, yet another organized the escape route, a postal employee himself gave the gang a tip. The spectacular robbery itself succeeded, but it quickly turned out that the actions of the five accomplices following the crime were anything but professional, and instead exceedingly dilettantish, which admittedly made the success all the more astounding. At work were five young men who committed a series of errors of serious consequence: Since the getaway car was too small, the robbers had to leave about 17 million francs at the scene of the crime. One perpetrator slept during the raid in the car trunk. The gangsters lost a plastic bag with photos and fingerprints during the getaway. Additionally, the perpetrators had brought in far too many helpers and helpers’ helpers, who shortly after the robbery divulged suggestive details. The robbers splurged and bragged with the captured millions while on the run. As a result, four of the five perpetrators and two backers were caught within a month. For the investigators this was a success story – if not for most of the money being missing to this day. The accomplices were able to ‘successfully’ execute something unthinkable in the secure financial center of Switzerland. In contrast to the goal setting of a team, however, goal setting here was scarcely in the realm of the imaginable. Rather, a completely unreal vision was pursued here, which was capable of being realized despite all expectations. The perpetrators could naturally not fall back on any established organizational structure, and they overshot their goal massively following the crime. This dilettantism after a successfully accomplished crime – as Daniel Jositsch underscores in the film Komplizenschaften – appears to be typical for cases with accomplices. He points out that the five men were so overwhelmed by their own courage and success that they could no longer control their behavior afterwards, which ultimately brought them quickly to prison. Especially interesting in this complicity is that the great mystery has to date not been solved: Where is the remaining money? Despite the criminal trials that all five offenders passed through, this secret persists. The five former perpetrators have fulfilled their prison sentences and are today all at large. They live in the vicinity of Zurich, and some have become reoffenders – albeit no longer in this group composition. The comparison with the Zurich Postal Robbery emphasizes the differences to teamwork. Teams are reasonable; they solve problems. Their goals are morally accepted and despite the high complexity of the circumstances are defined from the start and are to be reacted to with

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efficiency and not with deviant, unconventional behavior. Accomplices, on the other hand, often act unreasonably. Either they undertake something that cannot be done, or with what they do, they overshoot the surmised goal. They are euphoric and do not allow themselves to be restricted by boundaries of feasibility. Yet this excessiveness is not senseless, but rather provides the basis for the force of complicity. Precisely this excess produces the energy that makes the inconceivable conceivable, that appears to make the impossible possible.

Alliances Alliances are understood as a rule as strategic forms of cooperation between larger groups, such as companies or states, and not between individuals (cf. Todeva/Knoke 2002). States enter alliances when their own power falters and they need allies for the security of their own territory, which is why the concept also frequently surfaces in the terminology of war. In the realm of the economy, alliances are understood as strategic collaborations by means of which synergies are produced (cf. Nielsen 2005). Usually it is a matter of enlarging their own store of knowledge and experience in order to be able to contend in the market more effectively and with targeted strategies. It concerns a planned activity with which institutionalized groups assert themselves against competition. Additionally, in an alliance, which is as a rule created for the long term, one does not necessarily follow a common goal; rather, the attaining of one’s respective goal is at stake, for which one requires an alliance. Alliances are differentiated from complicity mainly on the basis of their strategic practices. The difference between tactics and strategy is helpful here, as Michel de Certeau (1984) represented these, for complicity is characterized less strategically than tactically. What differentiates tactics from strategy? Strategy inhabits a place “that can be circumscribed as proper (propre) and thus serves as the basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it (competitors, adversaries, “clientèles,” targets,” or “objects” of research)” (ibid.: xix). Strategists act methodically out of a defined territory – whether a company, state, or a professionally or socially clearly defined position – and execute their investigations calculatedly. They try purposefully to manipulate power relations. The subject, provided with will and power, can obtain gains from its advantages, prepare expansions and hold itself as independent as possible from the

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given circumstances. Foreign forces are monitored from a safe place by strategists (as objects to measure), controlled and incorporated. In contrast to strategists, the tactician has solely the place of the other. Taktiké literally signifies the “art of arranging and deploying (on the battlefield),” from which it is clear that the tactician acts with the other, whereas strategy means the “art of leadership of the army” (stratos = army; agein = lead). The differing etymologies show that we are dealing in the case of strategy with a hierarchical leadership model, in the case of tactics with a situational one. The tactician takes the available forces, qualities and effects and arranges these quickly and situationally. Accomplices stand in relation to the other “without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance” (ibid.: xix). Tacticians constantly act with various building blocks that open up possibilities of action for them. They have no autonomous place to serve as a separation from the outside. Tactics moves “within the enemy’s field of vision” (quoted from von Bülow, ibid.: 37); the tactician is constantly in movement without retreat and dependent on temporal circumstances and opportunities. “It [the tactic] must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected” (ibid.). Tactically individuals succeed in unexpectedly penetrating predetermined orders and thus in undermining these. De Certeau also compares tactics with jokes and sleights of hand: In contrast to the joke, which operates only with ideas and perceptions, the trick is always tied to actions. Acting tricky, understood as a tactical quality, thus fits well into the field of complicity inasmuch as this is also represented as always action-oriented, i.e., as the breakup of pre-given structures. The strength of tactics is in catching hold of suitable opportunities, combining unexpectedly and thereby forming cracks and holes in the networks of established systems. In comparison to forming alliances, complicity is rather a tactical form of action that does not act from a secure place and, nevertheless, gains its advantages from this. As a specific ‘art of arranging,’ tactics enables a high dynamism due to its context-oriented responsiveness and facilitates the creation of new situations. The emphasis on tactics reinforces the strength of complicity’s temporality and accentuates that it is always a matter in complicity of common arrangements that then become goals, whereas in alliances the preservation of the individual goals stands at the center and less the development of common aims. Each of the partners involved needs

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the alliance in order to keep alive its own organization, which is defined in corresponding contracts. The greater the structural transformation is, the greater the readiness to form an alliance. By contrast, complicity emphasizes the designing of common visions, which only emerge out of the group and are not already previously fixed or predetermined externally, which is why there cannot be any predefined norms (such as contracts).

Networks The supersession of the industrial age is described with terms such as the knowledge-, information-, service- or network-society. At the beginning of the 21st century, a changed social structure has arisen due to new information and communication technologies, which are based on decentralized flexibilization of work and life, despatialization and less hierarchical organizations. Social structure means here “the organizational arrangements of human relations in the context of production/consumption, social experience and power, which are expressed in culturally conveyed, meaningful interactions” (Castells 2001: 423). The sociologist Manuel Castells, who has written the foundational work regarding the network society, describes the social transformation that this new economy brings with it by reference to three basic features: The economy is informational; it is global; and it is organized into networks (cf. ibid.: 427f.). These new networks, which he defines as an “array of nodes interlinked with one another” (ibid.: 431), are organized multifariously. Not only do whole companies enter into networks, but within companies smaller networks are also formed that arise on the basis of specific projects, disband once again as soon as a project is concluded, and pass over again into other networks. The fundamental flexibilization of work accompanying this allows one to surmise a proximity to complicity, since this is also understood as a temporary and hence equally flexible community of interests. In contrast to teamwork and alliance formation, a range of close links exists between the network’s collaborative organization and that of complicity, which makes the distinction less clear. Accordingly, one can even designate complicity as a specific type of network, for changing pacts occur in both forms of organization – especially when Castells describes how certain networks do not simply reproduce already existing prevailing networks, but rather can initiate social transformation. This happens when “cultural communities” arise that represent values that are not handled in any other network or

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when networks “are built on alternative projects […] and produce bridges for communication with other networks in the society” (ibid.: 438). Mentioned as examples here are human rights organizations, feminist movements, ecological movements. Yet Castells also points to problems with networks. Often these have difficulties in coordinating functions, in pooling resources for specific goals well, and from a certain size in generally still having an overview of the whole (cf. ibid.: 431). The advantages of the de-hierarchization become disadvantages, by which the differences to complicity are already implied. In contrast to larger network structures, complicitous interdependencies can usually be found as smaller social configurations. One can be part of a network without actively contributing something to it or without even knowing that one belongs to it. A network can be large and confusing; whether participation is active or not lies solely with the motivation of the actors. Complicity, by contrast, calls for an active participation, which can indeed be an active non-participation as we saw in reference to various theories of action. Since complicit groups are relatively smaller, problems in coordination of functions are more seldom. Often there is only one representative per function so that disputes over respective areas of authority are usually absent. With respect to resources, it can additionally be said that complicity mobilizes as a rule all or a great deal of the existing resources. Since the group is small, it disposes of only limited resources, which is why it cannot afford to let these lay idle. Complicity is a small-group model. What does small or large mean in this connection? Economist Mancur Olson (1965) presents an analysis worth emphasizing, one that is also aggressive with respect to the capability of small groups for action. His thesis states that small groups especially are in the position to develop strength in negotiation, which can massively weaken substantially larger groups. He sees the reason for this in the idea that large groups are more difficult to bring into a common negotiation than are small interest groups, whose goals are basically more concrete and usually also more attainable. Accordingly, they are more in the position to bundle the interests of their members and to activate these purposefully. Olson notes that such small groups even assert themselves in certain societies so strongly that the welfare of the society as a whole can run into danger due to this. Following on an empirical study by John James, who examined principally North American administrative units, Olson writes, “that in a variety of institutions, public and private, national

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and local, ‘action taking’ groups and subgroups tended to be much smaller […]” (ibid.: 53). In one random sample investigated by him, the average size of a negotiating group was around 6.5 members, whereas the average of a non-negotiating subgroup was around 14 members. Thus, large groups are deployed more as think tanks, advisory boards or consulting committees, whereas task forces or innovation teams, for example, have to be relatively smaller. However, Olson does not only see this fact positively; he is also worried in his writings about large groups losing stability due to the force of smaller pacts of interest. On the one hand, he points to the fundamental problem of the motivational weakness of large groups; and on the other, he seeks – as a pioneer of good-governance principles – for social rules of the game that should prevent an uncontrolled accumulation and development of force by small groups. The destination route of his study differs from mine, which sees an innovative potential precisely in the uncontrolled force of small groups. Nevertheless, the analysis delivers an empirical confirmation for my experience regarding the capacity for action of complicitous pacts, for here as well it is shown that a group size of up to six or seven members applies as a group capable of acting. It thus suggests itself to assume from this that complicity principally functions when the group size is kept relatively small. Networks are as a rule substantially larger, which is why the group size represents an important distinguishing feature. It should be observed, however, that complicities frequently arise within networks when small groups are formed within large ones. Often it is a matter in doing so of the intensification of the network, particularly when a certain relational logic consolidates. This happens especially when a special quality of relationship emerges in the network, which Castells also emphasizes: It is informal, affective and sustained by a common new vision through which old networks are not simply reproduced. Complicity can appear as an intense form of pact within networks and then later cross over to become a network itself. Initially, however, complicity can be understood as a small, extremely intensive form of network structure.

Mafia structures The structure of the Mafia is little examined from the perspective of the sociology of work or organizational theory, since it concerns not only a form of labor, but rather a far more encompassing structure in terms of

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society as a whole. In my research interviews, the question was frequently posed concerning the difference between the Mafia and complicity. In fact, only a few similarities exist between the two structures, although complicities can also arise in mafia structures analogously to all the other organizational forms described. Mafia typologies are diverse. If one wished to emphasize the smallest common denominator, one could speak of hierarchically organized secret societies, which today operate globally and exercise economic, political and social influence through violence and extortion. They do not follow generally acknowledged moral principles, but rather establish their own, often very local and archaically informed moral values: “Archaic codes, brutal executions, obscure symbols, blood ceremonies: the mafia’s manifestations appear so bizarre that it is natural to see them as remnants of a defunct subculture. Mafiosi seem radically different from ‘us’ […]” (Gambetta 1993: 1). Affiliation in a mafia is determined first and foremost through family or territory; indeed, this expresses a core difference from complicity. The families or clans obey a rigid code of behavior that may not be broken. Patriarchally organized, each family has a boss, who in turn can have another boss. The Mafia, in which women as a rule have no access to the leadership level, embodies a brutal and repressive social system into which one is involuntarily born. Mafia-clans control the international drug trade; establish black markets and prostitution; move large quantities of toxic waste; and are involved in the illegal weapons trade, money laundering and corruption. Mafia structures are considered to be a specific form of the economy, as an “industry which produces, promotes, and sells private protection” (ibid.: 1). In order to keep in sight the brutality of this organization, here only the principle of omertà, the pledge of secrecy, is mentioned. According to this, members of the Mafia are strictly forbidden to speak publicly about the machinations of their own organization. Whoever violates this law is not infrequently punished with death. The investigative journalist Roberto Saviano quotes in his book Gomorrah (2007), in which he impressively describes the corrupt brutality of the southern Italian Camorra, the statement of a Mafia businessman: “The economy has a top and a bottom. We got in at the bottom and we’re coming out on the top” (ibid.: 12f.). Without going more precisely into the particularities of different mafiatypologies, the differences from complicity stand out clearly already, for complicity is structured neither through territory or family. Membership in a mafia is exclusive and involuntary because it is determined by birth or

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territorial affiliation, and it serves the retention of power and the increase of private property. While accomplices – to put it in Saviano’s terms – often also step in at the bottom, they deliberately do not come out again on the top. A complicity does not serve the retention of power; it is a fragile germ cell out of which something can arise. If the deed [Tat] is accomplished, a team or network, an alliance or even a mafia-like structure can emerge out of its setting; the complicity as such is then terminated, however. As an accomplice one does not belong solely to a complicity, but rather can by all means participate in parallel in several pacts, which is as a rule not the case with the Mafia. As an accomplice one can decide about which pact one would like to participate in. In contrast to complicities, mafia structures are often extensive, hence more like networks. Saviano describes, for example, how the Camorra holds the monopoly on trade in cement in southern Italy and cultivates business relations with Germany and Scotland, but how it has also established international relations to China.14 The Mafia’s hierarchies are preset and enable little room for play. They are set up for a long future space of time and historically rooted strongly in the genealogies of families. Accomplices, on the other hand, create their own social ‘families’ that, even when there are hierarchies, are still more permeable and, above all, can also be dissolved again. Both structures are organized as counter-societies, whereby the Mafia has meanwhile become the prevailing social structure in some regions of this world. Complicities are too fragile to be able to be permanently installed. Naturally women can enter into complicities. Both forms of pact are also differentiated by their goals: the Mafia functions strategically and is oriented towards long-term retention of power, motivated predominantly in a criminal manner. Both structures operate with their own codes that are usually opaque to the outside and can only be deciphered from the inside. They are connected to conspiratorial circumstances, whereby complicity functions much more unpredictably than a mafia, whose structures are very familiar to the insiders and the surrounds. A clearer code is given about how one must act. The accomplice and the mafioso live – especially in their commercial images – with a glorified coolness; they are courageous and attractive because they possess power. In that sense The Godfather (1972), as classic filmic representation of the Mafia, and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), as typical 14 | This becomes clear especially in the film of the same name: Gomorrah (2008) (Italy, Dir.: Matteo Garrone).

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filmic representation of complicity, definitely possess similarities. Even in these examples, however, there is the difference that the mafioso remains the representative of an established power structure, even if he is located in the demimonde, and the accomplice remains the representative of a temporary, far more fragile world. If we compare complicity with these four forms of pact, similarities and differences become clear. In everyday life, these differences are often not encountered so explicitly, for any complicity can cross over into teamwork, an alliance, a larger network and even mafia-like, corrupt structures. Frequently it is a question of time whether, for example, a team or network emerges out of a complicitly organized group. This commonly happens when complicity was successful in the constructive sense or when one would like to provide fixed structures for the group. The evolution of a complicity emerges in the described existing organizational forms only if the preset structure is supposed to be changed because it is no longer open and feasible for new realities. Roberto Saviano, who with the publication of his book is decidedly critical of the structures of the Camorra, makes transparent how he himself had to enter into complicities with members of the Mafia in order to arrive at the necessary information. Investigative journalism is a fitting example here for how complicities can be indispensable: “Nothing more was said. Nor did I insist, eager as I was to take part. Asking too many questions could have compromised Xian’s [a Chinese mafia entrepreneur] invitation.” (Saviano 2007: 13) As an accomplice, the journalist broke into the system in order to change it, which is frequently a borderline experience in the everyday of work, where one has to repeatedly decide situationally how far one can or would like to go. In any case, it has only been possible here qua complicity to acquire some important information and thereby to generate another image of a to-be-criticized reality.

3.3 L ife Tactics and S urvival Tactics Innovation and creativity are distinguishing features of complicity, for these are not by necessity of importance in teams, alliances, networks or mafia structures. The attempt has already been made in using the theory of Richard K. Merton to rehabilitate the concept of innovation in current

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discourse and to understand this not simply as a guiding instrument of capitalist logic. In the current debates around the transformation of work, the concept of creativity is also strongly criticized by deconstructing it as a “compulsion to self-realization” and a new form of capitalistically informed “social dominion” (Menke/Rebentisch 2012: 7). In the framework of complicity, it should be emphasized that it is less a matter here of aesthetic perspectives as of the ubiquitous call for creativity, which has changed relational practices and hence become an area of sociological research. Andreas Reckwitz (2012: 10) highlights that creativity is “no mere semantic surface phenomenon […] but rather the center of a social set of criteria that has over the last thirty years increasingly become a formative force in Western societies.” Against this horizon, it makes sense to consider more closely the concept of creativity as well, for complicity is understood as a thoroughly constructive and, with this in mind, also creative capacity for shaping culture. Creatio, “creation,” is today no longer bound as it was in traditional theological approaches to an all-knowing God the Creator or as in past art-theoretical debates to the creative artist-genius who without external influence in his atelier creates – through inspiration – a new world. Such theories, which describe the author as a deliberating genius who can do more than others, have since been put to the side by others that emphasize work’s communal or networked conditions. Here one speaks of a creative activity rather in the sense of composing, conceiving or constellating. To create, accordingly, is understood as a composing in the sense of a combining of already existing elements. With regard to art, traditionally the domain of creativity alongside religion, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994: 191) offer this definition, for example: “Composition, composition is the sole definition of art. Composition is aesthetic, and what is not composed is not a work of art.” Creation thus defines itself out of the linking of heterogeneous, always already present elements, which is why it is not so much a matter of creating the new, but the different. This definition also suggests that of Boris Groys, who defines innovation not as the revelation of something hidden, but as the revaluing of values. The core here is not the creatio ex nihilo15, which was the basis for concepts of 15 | The ‘original’ definition of the Creation is found in the Bible in the First Book of Moses, which opens: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; […] And God said, Let there be light:

Work: Transformed Work Environments

genius-based creation and which emphasized the inborn, special ability of the individual. At stake is rather the refined and novel combining of elements, which produces intensity, urgency and virulence by involving other perspectives or by emphasizing them in the first place. Whoever is creative, repeatedly composes the already existing elements of our world differently – be they words, bodies, sounds, techniques, spaces, thoughts, materials or similar – and thus creates different spaces of perception and other realities. In this sense, accomplices are not only innovative, but also creative. They do not reinvent the world, but they produce alternative logics by newly linking or bringing together elements that do not at first glance fit together. In terms of a capitalism-critical discussion of the concept of creativity, Ève Chiapello and Luc Boltanski (1999) have presented a crucial and much discussed contribution. For their comprehensively laid-out study The New Spirit of Capitalism, they compared 50 French management guidebooks of the past century from the 1960s to 1990s by means of a text-analysis program. The core of the new capitalist spirit is the fact that any form of critique of capitalism only renews it as such so that capitalism absorbs, transforms and exploits criticism instead of giving rise to changes in terms of more equitable structures. Critique, which often also appears in the garb of creativity, is hence a constitutive element of capitalist mechanisms, which the authors define in a minimal definition as “unlimited accumulation of capital by formally peaceful means” (Boltanski/Chiapello 2005: 4). Playing a central role in the process is the so-called artists’ critique, which is fed by a special relationship to creativity. Since the 1960s this has been turned against the traditional bourgeois model of family and work, which is associated with loss of meaning, disenchantment and oppression. The problem with the artists’ critique, however, is that this usually does not lead to a social critique that would much more explicitly reveal social inequalities. On the contrary: It has the peculiar effect that it inspires the company management’s new strategies and hence still only promotes the insecurity of artists and creatives. New studies also confirm this diagnosis by emphasizing that social inequality and there was light” (Genesis 1:1-3 K JV). It is more than evident that Deleuze’s definition of creation is substantially different from that of the Bible, in that for Deleuze creation never emanates from a subject, but rather always from a heterogeneous multitude as a moving, uncontrollable process.

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is especially high precisely in creative professional fields: “Occupations in which enormous pay is concentrated in the hands of a small number of employees, while the majority of the entry positions is poor, have a high degree of uncertainty as a consequence. The access to this field is broadly determined through the logic of the lottery […]” (Scheiffele 2007: 185). The working stance of critical art is frequently connected to the avantgardes of the beginning of the 20th century and is based in broad sections on the lifestyles of bohemia. Their forms of work are paradoxical: On the one hand, they uphold individualism; and on the other, they criticize the conception of a genius-driven artistry rushing in front of the times. In any case, their ideas are based on social principles that are not social in the sense of socially just and that are hence diametrically opposed to the social critique. Boltanski/Chiapello (2005: 189f.) describe in this regard how protest groups (women, gays, environmental or anti-nuclear activists) identified in the 1970s with the artists’ critique and allied with the dominant forces of the left in France in order to obtain de-hierarchization and self-management in organizations. New in this was principally “the validity of the demand for autonomy, and even making it an absolutely central value of the new industrial order” (ibid.: 190). Individualization and flexibilization of work conditions were in the process important demands, which today, however, unintentionally stand again in the light of the precaritization of labor, since a majority of control structures were simply displaced from companies onto the individuals themselves. Work did not become less, but now it is controlled by one’s self. Interesting in this connection is that the authors point out that capitalism is not particularly strongly based – as often assumed – on economic liberalism, but more strongly still on anarchist or even artistic movements that express themselves in rebellion or activism. This underscores “the necessity of inventing different modes of co-ordination and, to that end, of developing ways of connecting with others integrated into ordinary social relations that had hitherto been neglected by liberalism […]” (ibid.: 202). These thoughts are reflected concisely in a performance by the artist Carey Young. In the video I Am a Revolutionary 16, the performer can be seen in a glassy service building that could stand anywhere in the Western 16 | In 2003 in the research project Norm der Abweichung [Standard of Deviation], Marion von Osten investigated “the change in meaning of cultural practices under neoliberal conditions” (8). In the publication issued by her under the same title

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world. She is being taught by a professional language trainer, who guides her in the process to represent herself convincingly as a revolutionary in order to demonstrate innovative spirit in the company. He asks her repeatedly to say the phrase “I am a revolutionary.” As in acting training, not just speech is trained; rather, it is also a matter of the embodiment of what is said, which is why breathing, facial expression and gesture are also trained. Carey Young flips the relationship in that she as artist plays the employee, who is guided in the process by an extremely engaged language trainer to represent herself for the company as revolutionary – i.e., prepared to take risks, innovative and hence not subversive, but creative. Both Boltanski/Chiapello and Carey Young negotiate the question of the artistic autonomy and the social role of the artist. When does the artist become the service provider? Is the role of art not precisely that of not following the logic of capital accumulation and instead of being the existential site of reflection, emotional production and irritation? It is hence necessary to locate the concept of complicity in the debates about the precaritization of labor, for the criticism could be leveled that complicity, too, is founded on a prototypically self-rationalizing and exclusively utility-based principle and, therefore, would provide a further model of an efficiency-oriented organization of work and life. For whom do the scopes for action enlarge? For the company or the accomplices? Should one be optimistic or skeptical? Is it a matter of self-organization or self-exploitation, of a life tactic or survival tactic? The study by Pongratz/ Voss (2004) cited at the beginning of Chapter 3 shows precisely the path from industrialization, in which production still took place in a cohesively material manner; on to the rationalization of work, in which employees were still only involved in sub-processes of production; until the postFordist model, in which affective labor, such as communication and knowledge work, have replaced a large portion of industrial production. The production model of work has thus developed more and more in the direction of the precaritization of work. And it cannot be overlooked that complicity is also a fragile form of work, from which one could say that it encourages precaritization or would be able to maintain this as a system even in the long-term. The concept of “precarious” implies “shaky,” “uncertain” or “revocable” and is derived etymologically through the (2003), the work of Carey Young, among others, is documented in the chapter on “Creative Intelligence” (15).

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French from the Latin precarius, implying obtained by prayer, but without assurance. In the context of debate on labor, the concept is used in order “to thematize the spread of insecure work- and life-relationships” (Dörre 2010: 41). In doing so, the origin of social uncertainty is seen in structural transformations of salaried work, which is expressed in temporary work contracts, inadequate social insurance schemes (particularly in lacking retirement funds), limited employment protection and low wages. The assessment of the worsening of labor relations is relational and needs to be seen against the background of the development of the European welfare state after 1945 that provided for these protections. It should be emphasized that the precaritization of labor relations can no longer be found today only outside of bourgeois working and living conditions, but rather that it concerns more and more a well-educated middle class as well, which is composed of an increasing number of academics. Today for example, many of those studying have to accept under very flexible conditions following conclusion of their studies a long, poorly paid internship period with demanding work in companies so that their entry into professional life generally succeeds.17 Always interesting here is the question of to what extent such life models – especially among cultural producers – are freely chosen.18 Life models, as they arose primarily in the context of the 1960s, were considered at the time as dissident and entirely freely chosen in the sense of alternative lifestyles. A conscious acceptance of precarious working conditions was often the expression of a desire to overturn the patriarchal division into women’s reproductive labor and men’s wage labor within normative working conditions. From today’s perspective it is questionable whether this freedom has set in. On the one hand, one could sum this up by saying that such forms of work served for self-realization, the living out of creativity and the design of individual career paths. On the other, precisely the production of this seeming freedom can be understood as a 17 | The “P” in the so-called Generation P stands in German usage for “Praktikum” [tr. note: internship, on-the-job training] and is a prime example for precarious life phases. An exhaustive study on this has been presented by Austermann/ Woischwill (2010). 18 | Isabell Lorey (2006) points this out in her essay on “Gouvernementalität und Selbst-Prekarisierung. Zur Normalisierung von KulturproduzentInnen” [“Governmentality and Self-Precaritization. On the Normalizing by Cultural Producers”].

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quite perfidious regime of control and subjugation in which the individual is completely subject to an economic logic where the ‘human resource’ of labor power is absorbed. The result is then self-exploitation, not selfrealization. In relation to the model of complicity, the question of self-organization in businesses, but also on the free market, is especially relevant here in terms of how these are shaped by the self-employed, artists, freelancers or so-called permanent freelancers. Self-organization directly challenges group formation because it thus becomes possible to seek out allies obliquely to the existing hierarchies. A collective framework then offers a platform from out of which one can rapidly act in relation to current events. In this sense the capacity is entirely inherent in complicity to actively design culture and to conceptualize other cultures, since the possibility exists to pursue one’s own goals and hence to also produce counterpublics. Michael Warner describes in his book Publics and Counterpublics (2010) the emergence and impact of counterpublics, which he calls “a public” and not “the public” (66). By using the indeterminate article, the author differentiates counterpublics here from large, representative, even totalitarian publics and brings out in contrast ones that are small and relatively critical of representation. Such publics have been, among other things, “self-organized” (67) as well as based on “a relation among strangers” (74) and also usually addressed both to the “personal and impersonal” (76). Relying on Warner’s study, it is assumed that such counterpublics are often based, at least in the initial stages, on complicity, because they are smaller and more hidden. Complicity can produce publics and is hence not only a survival tactic, but also a constructive model for action. It can lead out of precarity by opening up an active room for maneuver. Whoever is talented or practiced in complicity, can assume different roles in project-oriented work. The general subjectification of labor has as a consequence a de-institutionalization that produces nonstandardized resumés. Biographies are developed outside of classic institutions or are formed through several institutions simultaneously. This development appears markedly, for example, in cultural journalism, in art or in the art market: Journalists are at once curators, curators are also artists, both sit on juries or have even attended the same training institution. These entanglements are critically designated not only in war reporting, but also in cultural journalism as embedded journalism, in which those writing can no longer demonstrate any distance from

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the events. At the same time, however, productive complicities can also be formed between event organizers and artists that make possible an alternative form of art production and delivery. In the exhibition space Les Complices*, it is seen this way: “Complicity was consciously chosen as a leitmotif for this interplay between artists, art promoters, theoreticians and institutions. […] The classical partitioning of space by artists, curators and gallery owners should consciously be put into question in the process and be handled non-dogmatically” (Freymond-Guth/Thal 2005: 57). Complicities can thus be both: collective forms of life and forms of survival. In each case they join strongly individualistic value concepts with collaborative labor practices. They are fleeting and, nonetheless, marked by highly situational commitment. New communities are formed that define themselves not through a common profession, connecting background or affiliation with a firm, but that come together on the basis of interests, inclinations or passions. Complicity ensures not only survival, but can have an active creative function.19 The increased appearance of the concept “project” as well is an indicator that we appropriate unstable working situations constructively. Project work is based on more open structures that also allow for failure, are limited in time and thus committed to a productivity of imperfection: “The project-maker is situated in a peculiar limbo; he or she operates in the epistemological in-between of an unsecured order and canonical knowledge. The position directly marks the transition between critical exigency and a yet undecided, to-be-shaped future” (Krajewski 2004: 24). The concept “project work” can be found today not only in the framework of cultural labor, but in every established company. The increased use of the project concept is an example for how we must in any case constantly self-organize ourselves. In this sense complicity can also be understood as an unspectacular social bonding

19 | Holm Friebe and Sascha Lobo have undertaken a similar attempt with the establishment of the “digital bohemia” by launching these new modes of work as thoroughly productive: “We want initially to highlight the opportunities that arise for those who can immediately profit from it.” For young people the book can serve as “argumentative aid in opposition to the older generation, who may not appreciate that the practices of the digital bohemia also represent a form of work – and probably a more seminal one than that still propagated today” (Friebe/ Lobo 2006: 17f.).

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form, which is subversive, i.e., creative, in precisely this unspectacular sense: It changes relations without wanting to be revolutionary. An example for a form of association generating creativity appears in an interview with Markus Freitag (cf. Notroff/Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 9ff.), who founded and still leads the firm FREITAG lab. AG with his brother Daniel Freitag. FREITAG lab. produces products from used truck tarpaulins, the bags from which in particular became internationally stylesetting in the 1990s. The inclusion of the model Top Cat in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2004 confirms the status of the design classic. By using recycled material, each bag, each laptop- or iPhone case, each wallet is unique, since the cutouts of the truck tarps are different and only partly predictable for production in terms of color or form. Key – alongside the aesthetic criteria – is the ecological manufacturing of the products. The Freitag brothers follow cradle-to-cradle design (cf. Baumgart/McDonough 2002), which says that waste material must be viewed as a feed source – either biological or technical – and needs to be conducted back into the production cycle. The truck tarps, which would normally be disposed of as waste, are demounted, laboriously washed in specially manufactured machines, cut to size, stitched and then used again as fashion accessories. This unusual process is based decisively on a complicity, which Markus Freitag had already tested out with his similarly aged brother in their childhood room: “Actually it was already this way back then, that we complemented each other well. We were small and our firm became big because we had complementary characteristics. He drew, I cut; he had good ideas, I wanted to be still better; he programmed our first databank, I wanted to design it be even more user-friendly; he delved into details, I tried to keep an overview” (Notroff/Oberhänsli/ Ziemer 2007: 10). He describes the successful collaboration here with the fact that both brothers possessed complementary characteristics that they could put into play well for each other. This not only led to their creating a new, unique product that was imitated repeatedly and awarded several prizes. Qua complicity, which here by the way coincides with familial kinship, they also succeeded in producing in an ecological manner by teaming up to that effect with the right people. Then, strong headwinds were still blowing against this “fusion of neo and retro.” But in the meantime, FREITAG lab. has grown from a micro-business to a middle-sized one and – as the designer emphasizes – is thus no longer directed only towards complicities, but towards stable structures, such

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as teamwork or alliance building. The brothers were accomplices at the initial founding of their firm; now they are business partners, who perhaps act complicitly now and then in phases of new designs. Markus Freitag describes complicity qualitatively as characterized by sympathy and force of attraction, but especially through trust: “And naturally at the beginning there was a huge trust, which I think is central for accomplices. I don’t know how a job posting would have sounded for what we started together. […] Perhaps because we are not rational business partners, but accomplices” (ibid.: 10). It is not a matter here of the merger of two calculating business partners, who set a goal through market analyses and then execute this with business plans. Here, two people developed something that no one before them practiced in the world of design. For instance, employees were ‘trained’ to become truck-tarp spies, who gazed down from the bridge of the Zurich Hardbrücke onto passing trucks for the motifs of their tarps. These motifs make the bags into unique objects. An entire infrastructure had to be developed in order to process the large tarpaulins into accessories. Unusually for a designer, along with this came large halls, washing and stitching machines, which only then enabled a technical processing of the material. This example makes clear that creative complicity can by all means lead to a self-determined, economically successful and hence less precarious life. In it the paradox of successful creativity also appears. Someone composes in a manner unlike any other and in the process generates, nevertheless, something of relevance for many. Accomplices principally foment differences; they produce diversities that often can become relevant only much later for the many.

4 Authorship: Complicit Collectivity

Especially in art collectives, one finds – so my observation – a range of experts on complicity. Basically, collective work practices are frequently to be found in this professional field and hence also an inventive handling of organizational forms. In situations in which something new is created, the question of authorship moves center. In the process, who provides the label for the new product, the new format, the research, the art or the new perspective? Reflections on the topic of work shift automatically into a relationship with debates on authorship. If, as suggested, complicity frequently occurs in innovative fields of work, then in particular the question is relevant concerning what new forms of authorship emerge on the basis of complicity. How does complicity offer a conceptual instrument of analysis in order to examine new forms of collective authorship observable in the current art scene? An array of instructive examples is available in which authors no longer understand and market themselves as sole creators of their works. When it is clear that several actors are involved in the creative process, the question arises of how authorship can be marked. With a collective’s name? With a temporary or changing name? With a false name? With no name at all? The ingenuity in dealing with the choice of a name – central historically, culturally and economically for the unequivocal identification of authorship – is considerable in the art world. Three aspects are observable in regard to the development of individual authorship into a collective one: First, the variations in naming by collectives shift to the center. Second, the analysis of social interrelationships in art and their aesthetic consequences comes into focus. And third, the emancipatory claim that artists frequently derive from collective modes of work has to be discussed. Generally it can be said that the deconstruction of individual authorship is frequently connected to complicitous work practices, for

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these provide anonymity and capacity for play, through which ‘geniusbased’ individual authorship can be effectively opened up. Authorship in the literal sense goes back to the Latin auctor and means in effect something like “originator.” It designates a credible source, a model or a director as well as someone who functions as an advisor, instigator or creator of a thing. In his discriminating lexicon entry on authorship, Michael Wetzel (cf. 2000: 480) points out that such an interest in the originator was still strange to antiquity and the Middle Ages; indeed, it becomes clear that for a long time the authorial name stood rather for the executor and not the creator of a work. Only with the beginning of the modern period has a transformation towards personalization taken place in the functional definition and has the name of the creator of the work come to the foreground. With this, the name became the strongest instrument for the identification of a person with his or her work. In the course of an increasing individualization of society, which found strong expression in the Enlightenment, the tendency arose to personalize artistic processes and to ascribe textual production particularly with an inner authorship, said to be authentic. Coupled to this was the idea that precisely this one authenticated person disposed of special gifts and possessed an extraordinary talent that was worth supporting. A system of inclusion and exclusion was established, in which innovation and originality became marks of quality of the author, who correspondingly was said to be the original creator of the work. The individualization of work is thus viewed historically as relatively recent and still reveals itself today in names having weight as brands. On the one hand, we are dealing with a celebrity culture1, which continues to ascribe special abilities to the individual artist, celebrates this person and allocates prize monies to his or her art and hence not merely high symbolic capital. In the course of an increasing secularization, the creator was established as a genius, and a consensus arose that the artist, usually taken for granted to be a man, had special abilities, like those of a divine authority, which lifted him above the rest of humanity.2 Especially in the literary business, 1 | The volumes by Ullrich/Schirdewahn (2002) and Sick/Schieren (2009), among others, offer a comprehensive discussion of this topic. 2 | Cf. on this the publication Bühnen des Selbst [Stages of the Self] by Theresa Georgen and Carola Muysers (2006), which shows that the genre of autobiography by artists has become an important strategy of self-staging.

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this strong orientation towards the concept of the author still appears indispensable today3: “The author is in the everyday life of our culture the most important variable for embedding literary expressions into context so that they are understandable and can become practically relevant” (Jannidis/Lauer/Martinez/Winko 2000: 7). This understandability is an important indication that a clear naming of authorship is also supposed to give an orientation regarding reception. When one can make out a sender, one can also more confidently recognize a style and assign the work a genre. In this manner, control over the reception and hence also the significance of the work is supposed to be guided, which indicates that authorship still offers a fundamental cultural orientation system today. On the other hand, there is a long tradition of critique of this view, carried out equally by theory and art practice. Already in 1900, the understanding of the autonomous creative artist was shaken massively by psychoanalysis. Core to the critique was the conviction that “artistic creatorship is not founded metaphysically, but invested in the individual itself […]” (Krieger 2007: 120). The shift into the individual also includes the discovery that creativity does not occur exclusively in full consciousness, but bears unconscious components within itself. The unconscious entered the social stage at this time in various, dazzling facets. Especially in his study on Leonardo da Vinci (cf. Freud 1998), Sigmund Freud clarified the connection between creativity and unconscious processes. Artistic activity is interpreted there as not only a sublimation of unfulfilled drives; additionally, Freud attests to a return to reality for the artist in the handling of fantasy: Through the close coupling of fantasy to unconscious processes, these become visible for outsiders and hence socially acceptable in a certain manner. According to Freud, a mental healing process can reside in creative expression; in doing so, he describes a process that suggests a less target-oriented and controllable perspective on authorship. In this 3 | Major debates in the feuilletons are an example for this, such as that around the exposure of the forged history, sold as autobiographical, of a childhood in the concentration camp that the ‘writer’ Bruno Dössekker composed under the name Binjamin Wilkomirski in Bruchstücke [Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood] in 1995; likewise, a whole range of plagiarism accusations against young writers, politicians or bearers of public offices as well as the accusations against Helene Hegemann, who is supposed to have taken over entire passages of text from an Internet blog, without references, in her book Axolotl Roadkill (2010).

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respect, art plays an important role in society because in it repressed sides of society can be shown. Critiques of the authorial concept have also been posed since the beginning of modernity through innovative artistic practices, still having an effect today. As a prominent example, Marcel Duchamp reflected provocatively on the question of authorship in the “Richard Mutt Case”4 and wrapped it into a Gesamtkunstwerk. In 1917, the already known artist submitted under the pseudonym Richard Mutt the readymade Fountain, a commercially available urinal from a plumbing business, as a contribution to the annual exhibition of the New Yorker Society of Independent Artists, of which he was a member. They jury rejected the object on the basis of insufficient artistic quality, not holding it to be art. Duchamp, spurred on by this rejection, took the incident as an opportunity to develop the urinal all the more into artwork and hence invented the readymade, one of the most influential ideas of modern art production, for the entirety of everyday objects could from then on be raised into art; they needed only to be meaningfully contextualized. He set in circulation diverse rumors about the supposed author of the readymade, a certain Richard Mutt, without revealing in doing so his own identity as the artist and thereby staged an art scandal. He fiercely criticized the selection criteria of the commission and demonstratively resigned from the association. The total artwork Fountain is, however, not exhausted in this game of deception with the author’s name. Shortly afterwards, a photo by Alfred Stieglitz appeared in an independent art magazine, in which the object Fountain could be seen. Only with this reproduction was the object raised subsequently into an artwork, for this photo is the only clearly recognizable depiction of the work, the original of which is still considered lost today. This story, and not the urinal as object in itself, counts among the most prominent works by Duchamp. Elke Bippus (2008: 39) emphasizes with reference to Michael Wetzel that a displacement of the concept of the work is carried out here: alongside the work as finished object stands that work whose context of emergence becomes an essential component of the work itself and does so through the collaging and mounting of experiential fragments. Through this displacement, the readymade fundamentally reflects on questions about authorship by no longer asking who has created the work, but by pointing out the collective power mechanisms of reception. Who 4 | The case of Richard Mutt is precisely documented in Daniels (1992: 177ff.).

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decides what is defined as accepted at what time? At stake here is not the especially inspired artisanal ability of an artist, but the artist’s potential for intellectual penetration of social conditions. Duchamp showed that the quality of a work is not unquestioningly dependent on the established name of an artist, but that definitional power arises rather in a collective network of interests, values, power practices and tastes. Duchamp, whose working method is still an inspiration for many young artists today, “stood for a concept of artistic authorship that did not draw its legitimation out of a material determination or manual fabrication” (Bippus 2008: 35). The game with the authorial name that Duchamp introduced with this action has been carried on since in many variations by contemporary artist collectives and sometimes also in scholarship.5 These games are frequently tied to complicity because as a rule there are initiates who are aware of the original name, but do not mention it. The choice of name is also crucial in the naming of collectives, for there it depends not only on the denomination of a name that founds an identity, but also on the name’s reflecting the group identity, which is often a complex process in a heterogeneously composed structure. Duchamp was a visionary in this development and inventive in his naming games, which incidentally also enabled the change of gender attributions when he acted, for example, under the name Rrose Sélavy. Complicit authorship capitalizes on the interplay of many names, whereby a deliberate confusion is introduced that emphasizes the involvement of many. For this reason, authorship is not simply rejected, but negotiated with many variations. The qualities of social interconnections and their consequences for art production are a second important aspect in the debate surrounding collective authorship. “To understand collective associations as a commentary on an understanding of authorship perceived as outdated and no longer adequate seems logical, however varied the cooperation has turned out to be” (Mader 2012: 11). Not only in art production and theory itself, but also on the part of sociology, interest is increasing in the analysis of the social structures that produce art. As one of the first, the sociologist Howard S. Becker underscores in his book Artworlds (1982: 1) that art emerges in a network of cooperations and therefore should always also be 5 | Thus the philosoper Søren Kierkegaard, for example, composed his famous The Concept of Anxiety (1992) under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis.

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viewed sociologically: “All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number of people. It is not an approach that produces aesthetic judgment […]. It produces, instead, an understanding of the complexity of the cooperative networks through which art happens […].” This approach is also central for complicitous authorship, for it shifts the focus from aesthetic quality to art’s social conditions of emergence, which has marked consequences not only on the level of lifestyles, but also for reception. In this connection, collective creativity is frequently emphasized, which implies that specific group constellations enhance creativity because different expertises encounter one another: “Ever more frequently, artists cooperate with one another in temporary and situation-specific projects in order to multiply common strengths and talents, but also to leave behind deep-rooted strengths and talents” (Block/Nollert 2005: 5). Instead of collective creativity, I would nonetheless speak rather of creative collectivity in order to emphasize surprising gatherings of people who normally do not work together – whether it be for aesthetic, social, ideological or economic reasons. From my view, the potential for productive and at the same time critical thought and action would be located in establishing unwahrscheinlicherVersammlungen [unlikely assemblies] (geheimagentur 2008), because new scopes for action are opened up for the most varied social groups. Such groups, in which truly diverse actors come together, are still rare. When they do arise, then it is usually because they are guided by a common interest. The social quality of such collectives is frequently assessed as an alternative and non-recurring form of action; this emphasizes the temporary and situation-specific character of group activities and heralds the movement away from the idea of a homogeneous, long-term constellation that acts together. If the goal is achieved, such a small, targetedly-acting group disbands once again. On the question of the quality of cooperation, a representative of the artist collective Group of Six Artists puts it incisively: “For me the kind of books that were important, were those in which talk was about the collective as a group of non-like-minded people. At the base, I don’t like any collectives that include more than six people” (Kunsthalle Fridericianum/Block/Siemens Arts Program/Nollert 2005: 347). This relatively intuitively made statement, which even finds itself explicitly here in the name of the collective, coincides with the empirical studies of Mancur Olson, as reflected on in Chapter 3.2. This emphasizes that a group capable of acting should not have more than six to seven members, since otherwise

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the group becomes more like a non-acting, advising board. A whole range of curatorial concepts, such as the exhibition Get Together. Kunst als Teamwork (Pfiffer Damiani 1999: 9), which gathers contemporary positions in the area of collective authorship, shows that forms of cooperation are an important topic. However, the question is whether it is really a matter here of teamwork or not rather of complicity. The exhibition text itself poses the challenge so: “In contrast to business motives […] art as teamwork does not provide focus for an other-directed and purpose-oriented organizational form, but rather for autonomously developed parallel experiences and layering strategies and the processes released by these.” A large corpus on management literature defines teamwork, however, in this manner: as a cooperation that should enable goal-achieving that is efficient, frictionless and mainly preset from outside – a sense that is not necessarily that of many art practitioners (cf. the difference between teamwork and complicity in Chapter 3.2). By contrast, complicity enables its own identification of a goal, its own assembling of groups and also its own arranging of the path to the collective achieving of such goals. The examples of art chosen by the exhibition show, moreover, playful, subversive collective practices, some of which could likewise be designated as complicitous. Third, collectives emphasize the emancipatory aspect of their form of life and working method. They resist not only through the themes they take up, but also through alternative forms of collaboration and thus implicitly criticize institutions that are oriented in their structures toward the support of individual artists. Experiences of collectives are often understood (and idealized) as a fundamental rearrangement of society and hence as a critique of the individually to-be-fulfilled performance mandate of modern society. “Art history shows that artist collectives are associated mainly with avant-garde movements that do not follow only their artistic fulfillment in social contact with the like-minded, but whose goal is to develop a (political) counter-model through their critique of art and society” (Nollert 2005: 20). The concept of such artist groups is an ambivalent one: on the one hand, because it can actually lead to other lived structures; but these, on the other, can also develop features of exclusivity that precisely do not lead to broadly supported acceptance in society. The paradox of such avant-garde groups is thus that these produce exclusion through their often quite radical stance and are no longer socially accessible. With an elitist air, self-marginalization and not self-empowerment is practiced. This creates, although the opposite is

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asserted, precisely no change in society. This problem appears, moreover, in the reception of such art, which focuses radically on the process and not on the product. The Croatian artist group Grogona emphasized this claim already in 1963 by underscoring that “collective work [can] not be foreseen relative to its form, but only according to its aspiration” and that “the ultimate appearance of the collective work [would be] without any significance” (ibid.: 11). The displacement of the work into processes of artistic practice requires that other criteria of judgment be used. Not only social interrelations within the group, but also social goals that are supposed to be achieved with such art need to be assessed – whereas social goals are usually only simulated in art and not realized. If hardly any connections thus exist between process and product, then art can scarcely be assessed any more as such and passes over into other social practices (such as social or educational work); this, nonetheless, in turn follows the old avant-garde dictum of the merging of art and life. These three displacements can be observed in successful contemporary artist collectives. At the same time, however, reconstructions of individual authorship appear in art theory and praxis. The repudiation of the concept has not condensed in a lasting way in art and scholarship, as the cult of the star and fixation on names as brands in the art business clearly shows – so the diagnosis (cf. Jannidis/Lauer/Martinez/Winko 1999). This debate makes clear how persistently we are still at work today on the topos of the author: Do we adhere any longer to the undemocratic idea of specially creative and gifted people – and hence also to the idea of the genius, with all the fatal consequences that history teaches us? Or are we leading creativity back rather to conditions of work, discourses and hence collectivity? It is my view that these questions should be posed less polarizingly, for the role of the artist has for a long time oscillated “between destabilization and stabilization – and precisely out of this oscillation, this ambiguity, does a new stability appear to have been gained” (Krieger 2007: 174). In fortunate cases, talented creatives act alone and simultaneously in various collectives or alternatingly so. Multiple qualifications are common in the process, which thoroughly coincides, if one understands being an artist quite pragmatically as an occupational profile, with the analysis of the transformation of labor. Many artists have studied, for example, art history itself; they act as curators or independently design their catalogs and thus evade an academic imputation of meaning. In this field as well, occupational profiles are no longer so sharply defined. Many artists act

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less rebelliously and oppositionally; instead, they combine art and life in a quite pragmatic sense as border crossers between art and commerce, between film, advertising, fashion etc. Nevertheless, when they would like to be perceived as artists, their authorship must be recognized as such. This means in turn that despite all the opening up of the frame for the creatorship of the artist, this must be defined independently from whether it concerns the authorship of an individual or collective authorship. The three aspects mentioned – games of deception with names; the analysis of social interrelations; and the ambivalent, emancipatory claim of artist collectives – draw attention to new forms of authorship, which are typified by examples from art. The collectives cited as examples do not abandon authorship; they further develop this in an interesting manner. Such collectives apply experimental and intentionally insecure processes that require equanimity in the face of the unpredictable. Their working methods are distinguished by the fact that the gesture is strongly made in favor of form and that a play between dynamism and stationariness is initiated. More still: the foundation for such an attitude is a culture of provoking the unplannable, which is based on trust, resources and time. The experimental setting already belongs to dealing with the experimental, which does not mean that this cannot depend on experiences or even rules and guidelines for action. One cannot simply accept the zone of that which cannot be expected; one must actively affirm it. In this sense complicity could be understood as an art of designing social situations. In complicity, individual and quite independent abilities meet collective conditions of individual perceptions and actions. Complicity does not negate individuality, but precisely challenges this and allows its effects to circulate collectively, so that a goal is attained jointly. Heterogeneous characteristics are linked and thus turn into something unplannable qua collective practice.

4.1 C onspir atorial A rtist-A ccomplices : K onspirative K üchen K onzerte , S ituationists , geheimagentur , B e at B ag B ohemia Historical and present examples show that artist collectives experiment with bidding farewell to traditional collective thinking and instead play with new, non-dogmatic forms of joint authorship. In doing so, many of

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these collectives flirt more or less explicitly with the conspiratorial aspect of their working method, which points to complicity. The question posed at the start of whether complicity offers a conceptual instrument of analysis in order to examine new forms of collectivity becomes able to be answered by means of examples from the current (stage-)art scene. Increasingly collectives are found here who no longer perform unequivocally as a group with one name, but rather appear in various constellations and doing work interdisciplinarily. The criminal lawyer Daniel Jositsch emphasizes at the beginning of the research film Komplizenschaften (2007) by reference to doctrines on crime, “Complicity always has something conspiratorial, which personally pleases me.” But what does it mean to work conspiratorially? How has the usage of this adjective changed? Let us consider the attribution conspiratorial by means of its etymology and of the practical example of Konspirative KüchenKonzerte [Conspiratorial KitchenConcerts], a Hamburg artist/cooking show that carries the adjective explicitly in its title, in order then to try to come to terms with three further artist collectives as complicitous working practices: the Situationists, geheimagentur [secretagency] and Beat Bag Bohemia. In the adjective “conspiratorial,” the sense of “secret” also resonates, and it is used synonymously with the notion of a “secret society” or with “complotting.” Methods of communication and action are denominated in this way that take place in concealment and that as a rule have a subversive content, which is supposed to lead to the changing of society. Here as well we are dealing with a negative connotation in everyday language, for conspiratorial groups forge secret plans and incline to shutting themselves off from the public. They finance themselves through opaque and often illegal pathways and pursue minority interests, also counter to the common good. At the same time –as with complicity – a high emotionality, strong group-bond and a kind of revolutionary mythos inhere in the conspiratorial, which appears to makes the impossible possible. These effects foster attraction and curiosity, which is why a range of artistic programs exists that purposefully use the adjective “conspiratorial.”6 6 | The program of Transmediale, the Berlin festival for critical art, technology and culture, can be mentioned exemplarily here. In 2008 it bore the title Conspire and formulated its program as follows: “The program presented a series of artists who exposed, estranged and challenged themselves with inarticulated codes and subversive mystification strategies.” See in the archive at www.transmediale.de.

Authorship: Complicit Collectivity

Usually emphasized in doing so is the ambivalence between transparent and opaque spaces for play, which can simultaneously be productive and impeding for the artist. Historically one also finds a range of examples in which conspiratorial activities are tied to forms of resistance, then often expressed as a sworn pact [Verschwörung, tr. note: also simply “conspiracy”].7 Such a pact is planned when legal means are no longer sufficient to set something counter to enemy forces – something often including violence. It should be underscored that conspiratorial processes are tied quite fundamentally to collectivity, for single actors only become conspiratorially active in interaction with others. In relation to creative collectivity, the gray zone of the conspiratorial is relatively constructively assessed, since the development of secret associations appears constitutive for the enabling of rule breaking, which then leads as a consequence to innovative behavior. What it means to develop or even increase creativity through conspiratorial processes can be made clear by example of the project Konspirative KüchenKonzerte. The title produces, on the one hand, a successful label and is reflected, on the other, in the working method of the collective. In order to approach the conspiratorial content of the kitchen concerts more closely, Marco Antonio Reyes Loredo, the head cook, was available for an interview.8 The collective consists of cultural scholars and artists, who created this television program without any TV experience. Initially Konspirative KüchenKonzerte ran on the small local Hamburg channel Tide TV, was discovered there and subsequently broadcast by ZDFkultur. In their self-description the collective emphasizes a typical everyday experience: “[…] as is well known, the best conversations take place in the kitchen. Therefore, the Konspirative KüchenKonzerte is televised not from a sterile studio with artificial backdrops, but truly out 7 | Such a conspiracy as resistance-practice is shown, for instance, in the book Conspiration pour l’égalité by François Noël Babeuf (1828), who addressed himself as a social reformer during the French Revolution against its violent devolution. Babeuf participated in the storming of the Bastille and composed articles that led to his incarceration. In prison he prepared a secret plan with likeminded prisoners in order to organize the fight for social equality through secret contacts. See Babeuf (1988). 8 | The conversation with Marco Antonio Reyes Loredo took place in September 2011 in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg.

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of the host’s galley at home […].”9 In conversation the head cook, born in 1979, emphasizes that at issue for him is the recapturing of a negatively cast concept, for conspiratorial means something different, for example, for the ’68 generation as for us now. Then the word was tied to forceful activism; political groups acted conspiratorially and planned not only actions (frequently illegal), but also implemented these in deed. “We do not move, however, in the realm of the illegal, but play with an actually inimical medium, TV, in order to rescue good taste, which means for us effectively to show a different TV format. For us, being conspiratorial is not ideologically cast, but pleasurably so.” Here as well – similarly to complicity – it is an issue of recovering a negatively cast connotation in favor of a constructive one. In doing so, the kitchen is a suggestive and fitting metaphor for informal encounters and conversations that are, nonetheless, quite aimed towards a target, and that are cast away from the center, usually occupied by the guests themselves. Conspiratorial is similarly tied, like complicit, to actions, for one is conspiratorial not only in spirit, but also in active joint action. During the interview the founder of the Konspirative KüchenKonzerte only shows his cards provisorily and in the process performs the conspiratorial in conversation as well. His speaking style changes between perfect marketing rhetoric and a differentiated analysis of artistic forms of production. Thus he emphasizes that the collective was forced at the start mainly to find its own form of work, for television production follows efficient and preset structures that recall, in an organizational-theoretical manner, rather teamwork, which was not satisfactory for the collective. In the Konspirative KüchenKonzerten, the distribution of roles was relatively fluid, and some individuals had to repeatedly assume tasks for which they were not qualified. Only after success arose did a professional director and the corresponding division of labor come along – thus at a point in time at which the complicity had already evolved into a well-functioning teamwork. Also on the basis of this initial productive dilettantism, work processes had to proceed conspiratorially, which lead to the fact that the idiosyncratic format could arise in the first place. The action was only consummated with its extension to the public sphere, for a conspiracy is only effective in the framework of art if it is made public. This was skillfully staged through professional means like presence on the web, in newspapers and at relevant events. 9 | See under http://konspirativekuechenkonzerte.de, visited 10 April 2013.

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The example shows how the use of the term “conspiratorial” has changed. The activist-ideological charge to the term has given way to a pragmatic and humorous success tactic, which nonetheless plays with the old mythos of the conspiratorial. With three further artist collectives, who were or are in differing ways conspiratorially active, further nuances are revealed. The avant-garde collective of the Situationists, although organized as a collective, already cultivated a high autonomy for its members. The Hamburg performance collective geheimagentur is presented because their authorship is reflected through the use of an uncopyrighted name that is available to all who wish to use it. Finally, I take up the percussion quartet Beat Bag Bohemia, interviewed in the research film, who speak about the principle of improvisation by musicians. The quartet is at first glance not organized complicitously, but rather as a traditional quartet; nevertheless, it opens insights on the level of sensorily physical perception that prove central for complicity and the question of the physical synchronization of actors on the stage.

Situationists The Situationists, who acted out of Paris between 1957 and 1972, are alluded to today by numerous contemporary artists as one of their most important references.10 This is mainly because they, like scarcely any late (and perhaps last) avant-garde collective, embody a claim to unyielding radicalism, which has been stylized into a lastingly effective mythos. Insofar as the sources convey it, the collective carried out joint actions whereby the members appeared simultaneously as individual authors in different disciplines, such as literature, theatre, music or visual art. It is a matter of a collective with a simultaneous high autonomy of the participants, which makes the group interesting for the concept of complicity. As one of the most prominent representatives who embodies individual authorship and collective affiliation at the same time, the Dutch 10 | The first comprehensive collection of Situationist art was shown between 2006 and 2007 in Basel and Utrecht in the exhibition In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni – die Situationistische Internationale. The Latin title translates to “In circles we roam at nights and are consumed in the fire” (Zweifel/Steiner/ Stahlhut 2007: 7), which clearly summarizes the motto of the Situationists’ artistic production.

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artist Constant may be mentioned, who appeared with his architectural future-scenarios both in the group’s name and as an individual. As well, Guy Debord himself, who counts as the founder of the group, repeatedly produced works as an individual author, of which the film La Société du Spectacle (1973) (France, Dir: Debord) is among the most well known. The entire group cannot be defined by one artistic discipline, for they made films, painted, conducted urban interventions, wrote literary texts, created post cards and posters, built architectural models or created experimental city maps, for example of Paris. There is hardly an art discipline that they omitted. This organizational structure, which connects together collectivity and individuality, and the interdisciplinary approach to work may be grounds for why the group is so frequently ascribed an exemplary function for artists currently producing. The Situationists summarized their work techniques under the terms “détournements” [misappropriations, reroutings] and “dérives” [driftings] (Zweifel/Steiner/ Stahlhut 2007: 10f.). Détournement succeeds when one cuts something out from familiar contexts and puts it into entirely different settings. They painted (for example, with collage techniques), cut out (e.g., speech bubbles from comics), composed (e.g., revolutionary texts in these speech bubbles) and mounted the intermediate product, last but not least, at a third site (for instance, into pornographic visual material). These estrangements, which were produced manually at the time with scissors and glue stick, had a huge provocatory potential for their time and have become the precursor to many of today’s estrangement techniques in advertising and design strategies, music videos or contemporary art. They designated their second important method as dérive; this implied a nocturnal, excessive drifting in cities, which radical flâneurs were supposed to transpose into new conditions of consciousness. Guy Debord defined the production of situations as a game of events that an experimental mode of behavior and drifting around makes possible. Drifting is in turn a “technique of the hurried traversing of diverse environments. In the specific sense also: the duration of an unbroken exercise of this experiment” (Gallissaire/ Mittelstädt/Ohrt 1995: 51). Not indisposed to the ingestion of drugs, they invented the psychogeography, which is still an important component of urbanist critique and with which they wanted to measure cities, not with diagrams, statistics and borders, but to experience them in a manner oriented towards perception, by aid of light and smells, intensities and

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encounters. They cut up the traditional maps of their city and assembled the city districts anew: In this way they designed a new Paris. In order to escape the transparent spectacle of (art-)consumption, the collective never wished for its works to be exhibited. They saw their art much more as interventionist and even situationist, whereby critique of consumption was the center of many actions. On the ground, some of their actions generated major attention because they intervened into real social situations. Thus, for example, the Lettrists, a precursor group to the Situationists, intervened in the Easter Mass in April 1950 at the NotreDame Cathedral in Paris when some members, dressed as monks, gave their best in delivering blasphemous sermons at the pulpit. The actions were simultaneously fleeting and never reproducible – a dictum towards which all of performance art was strongly oriented from the 1960s on. Alongside the familiar techniques, the Situationists show us something else still: They wanted to be an avant-garde at any price and advocated at the same time the claim of refusing any elitist gesture, which culminated consequently in wanting to entirely abolish art. That this stance could create a paradoxical situation only came in handy for the group, as the following anecdote shows: Guy Debord, the head of the collective, gave no interviews and never appeared on television. When the Centre Georges Pompidou wanted to devote the first large museum show to the group in 1989, he declined to look at his own exhibition. Strict as he was, he also spurned the offer to visit during the night when none of his numerous opponents could have observed him in the process (cf. Zweifel/Steiner/ Stahlhut 2007: 7). This story shows how paradoxical, but also consistent their work and actions were, for this refusal lead only to greater attention and myth creation. The Situationists wanted to be simultaneously avantgarde and democratic; to transfer art into life; to love the city of Paris and hate it at the same time; to have success and, nevertheless, to refuse dull consumption. Their fascinating impact is based on the radical exhaustion of this paradox, which remained all the same a paradox. Their action was also tied to the capacity of collective desire.11 The Situationists wished for a world that did not exist. This desire broke through everyday compulsions and defined these as not inalterably given. Desires are never oriented towards the existing, but address the impossible and cannot simply be 11 | An embedding in the theme of creativity and Situationist practice is also undertaken in Ziemer (2009).

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satisfied consumeristically. To desire is closely tied to the generation of ideas. Desires are insistent, perhaps always stronger than oneself; they compel activity if one does not wish only to wallow, but also to take action. Persistent desires that find no fulfillment paralyze or make inventive. Today’s collectives work in multiple regards in the tradition of the Situationists. Regarding new forms of authorship and a historical connection to complicitous art production, at least three connecting factors can be mentioned: First, the collective defines a name, yet group members are autonomous and self-evidently also appear in other formations. They work in different media; are not only part of this one collective, but also of others; are temporarily part of a group. The products are not limited to one medium, but vary. Second, the production of situations remains today a widely cited performative practice, which can almost always be observed as a collective practice. The creation of situations is conceived of as a nondualizing process, in which the high combinatorics of heterogeneous elements stands in the foreground. Elements apparently not belonging together are newly linked so that the unforeseeable character of a situation emerges where exceptions and deviations enter into relationship and enable new readings. The non-related confront one other and trigger a process, which must be considered especially in its carrying forward. Only if the potential for the shifting of perspective resides in this continuation, has the situational arrangement succeeded (cf. Ziemer 2008: 19ff.). A series of Situationist events were conducted complicitously in order to be able to play with the illegal moment in their staging. Besides the already mentioned performance in Notre Dame, the occupation of the Université de Strasbourg in May 1968 could also be named as an example, which accompanied a boycotting of the university lectures and the distribution of manifestos. A third aspect is interesting in respect to complicity, namely myth creation, to which successful instances with accomplices like the Zurich Postal Robbery or the story of Bonnie and Clyde bear witness. “The politics of the permanent exclusion of members, the sectarian attitude of conspiracy of a small elite group and the grandiose self-staging served Debord in preserving the puristic revolutionary ideal of the SI” (Zweifel/ Steiner/Stahlhut 2007: 13f.).12 The three aspects end in the claim for the dissolution of a strict separation between art and life, hence why forms of working and living together are 12 | The abbreviation SI stands for Situationist International.

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central. The primary concern of the Situationists was to abolish art in the sense of a singly true art and create in its place new situations for a new human. These situations were conceived as interventions into the city or as decided political actions, closely interwoven with the Parisian student revolts. Today, however, the experience underlying many collectives is rather that they are no longer held together through such a clear sociopolitical utopia. There is at least no uniform collective political ideology that would and could represent the cooperating artists. In fragile, temporary and flexible constellations in which the heterogeneity of the participants is not denied or ignored, unconventional collaborative forms of work are put into service (cf. Ruhsam 2010). Alternating constellations yield a relatively situational and not even a stable identification with the product. Art collectives usually no longer work at fixed sites; only infrequently write manifestos today; and pursue no uniform codes of fashion, as was the case with the Situationists. Today it is scarcely conceivable that an article of clothing, such as the black turtleneck that became the symbol of the intellect and badge of the Existentialists in the 1950s in France, would externally mark a group so clearly. The Situationists exemplified in life a model for a joint, but nonetheless autonomous form of work and life, to which a high attractiveness is still ascribed today.

geheimagentur The performance collective geheimagentur has established a name in the world of art, which anyone can use. Differently than the Situationists, to which incidentally only 72 members belonged officially, the collective does not know who and how many are affiliated with it. Following open-source thinking and based in tactics of guerilla communication (cf. Blissett/ Brünzels 2001), in principle anyone is entitled – without the license of the founders – to conduct a project under the name geheimagentur: “Only one thing is important in the process: No one knows who belongs to it and who does not – even we ourselves do not.”13 The collective stands hence as an example pursuant to my reflection on the game of deception with the authorial name. In their name, geheimagentur also flirts, like the Konspirative KüchenKonzerte, with the idea of the secret, even if it works quite differently. The collective is organized diffusely, for it is de 13 | See under www.geheimagentur.net, visited 10 April 2013.

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facto secret what authors are hidden behind the projects. Thereby, the collective abandons any copyright and does not let itself be bound to artist identities qua authorship. “geheimagentur differentiates itself from most other protagonists in the production of culture and knowledge: They want to be actually secret, to enable actually clandestine operations” (Nottroff/ Oberhänsli/Ziemer 2007: 59). This performance regularly creates confusion not only in the media, but also on the level of cultural support or reception. An active performer emphasizes in interview that she has often been addressed as the author of geheimagentur projects that she herself has not at all, however, executed herself.14 geheimagentur stresses that it does not function through exclusion – as the Situationists did as a small avant-garde elite group – but through maximal inclusion in which anyone can take part in various constellations and collaborations. It is thus “a test lab for the research of open complicity, especially because mutual understanding about intentions precisely does not represent the condition for the possibility of cooperation” (ibid.: 60). That a core group has also emerged here, despite the open-source thinking, of which at least some names of the performers ultimately have become known in the art scene, nevertheless, shows again the oscillation between single and collective authorship, which this collective, too, cannot elude when it is a matter of the reception of their works. geheimagentur is an especially interesting case because it practices complicity in a different respect: at once, as already described, as a working model within the group and beyond that in an explicitly thematic manner and with the public. A separate section in this book is devoted to the stagings of complicity with the public, which is why the thematic selection of the projects is mainly alluded to here. Over and over geheimagentur takes up conspiratorial thematics, which can already be heard in the titles of their projects, for example, Parlez! Echte Piraten. Recherchen in der Höhle des Zackenbarsches [Parlez! Real Pirates. Studies in the Cave of the Sea Bass] (2012) or Schwarzbank: Kohle für alle! [Black Bank: Moola for All!] (2012). Many projects are developed with children, during which the children do not play theatre, but slip into the role of researchers. They conduct interviews with the pirates or invent the money for the Black Bank, which then brings this into circulation as an alternative currency in their city 14 | The interview with the secretagent was conducted in November 2012 in Hamburg.

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district, with which the children can ultimately buy books, ice cream, tools, sport materials and so on. The children bring together different people like city planners, teachers or money experts, from which they receive their research materials, which still has to be put onto the scene by the secretagents. But not all projects are carried out with children, like the work alibi: wir sind nicht da [alibi: we are not there] (2007), for example. For this project two performers traveled through Zurich in order to find people – i.e., accomplices – to provide an alibi to the two secretagents for the period of their appearance in the Schauspielhaus. They collected people’s telephone numbers and their alibi-stories, and during the show a member could call these people live from the audience to request the alibis for the performers. Both secretagents were located in the meantime on the stage and heard that they were, for example, in a kitchen having a meal together with friends, in a taxi on the way somewhere or in the gambling hall. They were thus actually not there, but entangled in the alibi stories somewhere underway in the Zurich region – although they were sitting with large sunglasses on the stage. However, it was not only the alibi stories, which one could hear live, that were interesting, but especially the fact that some Zurich natives knew how to use the situation adroitly: So, for instance, one of those called did not read out the alibi story, but rather read unasked a manifesto for her demonstration against education cutbacks, which was heard by the entire audience. In this way the relationship between performers and audience was turned upside down as those called temporarily took over control of the show and the performers became auditors. geheimagentur plays with this – that with a changing cast, across multiple media, conspiratorially inspired thematics are brought onto the stage with the most varied everyday experts, who do not come only from the field of art. It follows the open-source principle, which means here that the name, the label, the brand is freely available and made as accessible to everyone as possible. The application occurs not in the digital Net, where open-source processes can frequently be encountered, but in the physically oriented performance-scene. In doing so, complicities are in many regards a central working principle: amongst the performers, who deliberately act secretly; between the audience and the performers, who change their roles; and amongst the everyday experts, in this case the providers of alibis. At issue here is a paradigmatic example of complicity, mounted on the stage as a research laboratory.

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Beat Bag Bohemia The fourth example shows an intrinsically traditional formation, a quartet, consisting of four percussionists: Kesivan Naidoo and Rolando Lamussene from Mozambique, who appear together with Lucas Niggli and Conradin Zumthor from Switzerland as Beat Bag Bohemia. The four musicians were already successful in their native countries as individual authors when they met each other at a workshop in South Africa and decided to intermittently perform together. We accompanied the four on a tour through Switzerland, during which they took the stage together for the first time – without previous rehearsals; i.e., they by and large improvised. It is not a matter here – as with geheimagentur – of distributive tactics or – as with the Situationists – of a very heterogeneous group with multi-media artistic practices, but of a model that actually generates a clear musical authorship. Interesting here for complicity is instead the principle of improvisation, which I understand as a basic requirement of successful complicity. This approach leads us to the physical level of cooperation, for which these musicians – similarly to Anna Huber and Fritz Hauser previously – are experts. They relate in the research film Komplizenschaften (2007) how a synchronization mutually coordinated on stage in a pinpoint manner, in minimal time and nearly perfectly occurs between their bodies, out of which an energetic and intelligent musical performance emerges. Lucas Niggli describes synchronization through the metaphor of the spark that has to be lit within the band, which generates a back and forth and in the best case sparks a fire. This is expressed on stage through intensity, passion and commitment, i.e., indicators that generally enable improvisation in the first place. A fascinating dialogue emerges between eyes and ears, “of which I also cannot exactly say what is going on there. What is first? Do I hear first and then play or do I play first and then hear?” (ibid.). Etymologically, improvisus is construed as a negation of providere and signifies accordingly the “non-foreseeable” or “unexpected,” developed, without any template fixed in writing, from the material and moment. Whoever improvises, combines techniques from one’s own discipline (so, for example, the playing of an instrument or physical tricks of acting) and pursues free, spontaneously appearing impulses at the same time. “Improvisation principally concerns one thing: an attitude, stance, approach to the cooperation” (Dell 2002: 17). It arises in joint (art-) action and can be recognized in the “unfolding of a relational capacity

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oriented towards a public.” With respect to complicity, improvisation focuses on the moment of that which is unprepared in encounters, which then develops a huge force in the interaction and can establish a public space. The capacity for improvisation is a precondition for the successful course of complicity, because it emphasizes the quality of relationships and their playful handling. Lucas Niggli (Komplizenschaften, 2007) tries to describe on a microlevel what happens in the moment of coming together on the stage and underscores that the impulse generator and receiver can almost not be differentiated. Crucial for successful improvisation, as for complicity, is the capacity of being able to deal ad hoc with role change. Serving functions alternate with soloistic or accompanying ones; each enters the spotlight and tells his story while the others fire him on from the darkness by being extremely present: “The changing of qualities within the quartet makes it very dangerous, virtuosic, unpredictable and alert.” These quick changes demand a high practical capacity for action, which generates its evidence situationally on the physical level. Through this, a physical synchronization emerges that cannot be understood, however, simply as a joint conformity of movement. It follows much more the principle of an independent action that generates cohesion momentarily and then disperses once again. The more independent the positions, the greater the cohesion and all the more effective the synchronization. The dancer Anna Huber creates a good linguistic picture for this in the research film when she speaks of trapeze artists in the circus, whose brother or father usually stands under the net and does nothing. Simply through their presence, they create a strong feeling of security that creates synchronization in the air, although the artists, i.e., their children or siblings, could not be caught in case of a fall. Synchronization does not have to follow in art from improvisation, and improvisation must also not inevitably lead to synchronization. In the case of complicity, however, both processes are closely related, for since a common goal is supposed to be attained, it must follow from a successful improvisation that actions proceed jointly and in a mutually agreed manner. For this, sensitive dialogues are conducted in which it can be difficult de facto to determine who is the impulse generator and who the receiver. An extremely rapid back and forth, which does not proceed primarily through speech, but rather is to be understood as a physical experiential knowledge, generates movements that turn into

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goal-oriented actions. The capacity for rapid role change, which is clearly visible in an improvising quartet, is also central in complicity, for the group must constantly react to conditions from their environment. This role change is an indice for the high autonomy and difference of the artist: “Synchronization requires and verifies that the people are separated and energetically independent, or the economy of their interdependence in terms of energy does not control their collective organization” (van Eikels 2011: 10). Accomplices perform varying roles; they are never brought into a conforming line, but rather mutually agree upon the roles according to their goals. Whoever has complicitous capacities does not perform the same role in the collective each time, such as, for example, the leader, the assistant, the networker, but is in the position of taking on different roles according to the collective goal. The collective – and not the subject – here provides the necessary and changing roles of the individuals. In the framework of complicity, rigid concepts of identity are diminished in favor of dynamic, performative capabilities.

4.2 A N e w F orm of C ollectivit y : The P roject NAME readymade by J anez J anša A separate section is devoted here to an especially original and astonishing artistic work, the Janez Janša Project, which three artists from Ljubljana have been carrying out since 2007. This project also plays, in connection to Marcel Duchamp, with naming and reflects the interrelation between identity and authorship. In turn, an artist collective to which the Janez Janša Project refers is IRWIN, the visual arts section of the movement Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), which derives its name from Rrose Irwin Sélavy, the already mentioned pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp. “This name can designate an imaginary artist with a collective identity, but also the takeover of a company name widely-spread in the United States. Both interpretations are conceivable in the framework of the total concept of NSK” (Arns 2002: 40). With this example it becomes clear once again what influence Marcel Duchamp’s games with naming still have today on artist collectives and current debates about the author. What then is particular about this project? The three artists Emil Hrvatin, Žiga Kariž and Davide Grassi became accomplices in 2007 when all three simultaneously assumed the name of the then President

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of the Slovenian Democratic Party and incumbent head of the Slovenian government, Janez Janša. Through this simple and completely legal name change, which required no difficult official statement of grounds, it was possible for the artists to jointly change their identity and make this into a new collective reality. The project provoked great irritation, because it appears absolutely implausible that some few bureaucratic processes would allow for putting through without any hurdles the triplication of the name of the chief government official and for allocating this name to civil persons. The political brisance in combination with a great deal of humor accounted for the quality of the project. The fiction of the perfect identity of the person through biometric data collections and other control measures is debunked just as much as the illusion of total security and seamless surveillance of society. The three even wrote the proper Janez Janša a factually informative letter at the beginning of their action, in which they informed him of the name change and then invited him amiably to a meeting. He has never yet answered. The three Janšas, who come from the areas of performance, intermedia and visual art, stand entirely in the tradition of performance with their abolishing of the boundary between life and art. They also used their new name henceforth in everyday life and met each other intermittently at actions. They observed and documented how their environment reacted to the name change. It was especially difficult for friends at the beginning to use the new name. In contrast to the tactics of guerrilla communication and open-source thinking, in which authorship is frequently decoupled from the name in order to be used by all, the three emphasize that their name change was a very intimate act and an entirely private decision. The three Janšas, who are hence already accomplices, because no one besides they themselves knew of this action initially, obtain thereby their noninterchangeable collective identity as a group. A conceptual exhibition pursuant to the project at the interdisciplinary art festival Steirischer Herbst in Graz in 2008 documented their work in the form of exhibited correspondence and official documents: To be seen were, among other things, the letter to the real politician, the three passports, three credit cards and three driving licenses of the performance artists – all supplied with the name Janez Janša – and photographic documentations of their actions. The exhibition made clear that the collective did not want to create a completely choreographed representation, but had left much to chance. A long-term social experiment with open outcome was laid out in order to

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test how far the performers could intervene into real life. Along with the impressively simple and effective idea, which was carried out consistently and was reflected in a high quality of the performative experiment, the case points out above all a legal gray zone. It shows that comprehensive security through surveillance is only a cultural construction that generates power when correspondingly deployed, but that at many points can never be honored in reality. This project would not be possible and successful without a complicitous collectivity. It is an example for the already mentioned general development that shows that art collectives today no longer usually label themselves with such self-evident group codes as have been historically handed down from groups of the avant-garde. Often they do not work at fixed sites, only rarely still write manifestos, follow no uniform clothing fashions and identify themselves only very situationally with an idea and their product. Nevertheless, they generate a high commitment and strong effect in joint action. What features of complicity does this project demonstrate in detail? First, the three performers intervene ‘genuinely’ into reality and thereby very plainly leave the field of art and the stage. They experiment collectively in everyday political practices, through which the trio also exposed itself to dangers at this time in Slovenia, for it was never entirely clear to the three artists, as they emphasized in a conversation15, whether they needed to expect sanctions from the government. They gave themselves over courageously to a risky game in that they did not only simulate or reflect the experiment, but actually carried it out. Their actions were not punished. The astonishing thing remains that the name change triggered no resistance on the administrative level, which is an indication that work was done there with little critical awareness and that the contents of work and given processes were separated from each other. The public authorities never hesitated to give the name of their government head to a civil person completely unknown to them. In this sense the project is a surprising intervention into social reality in that it evinces the gray zone of law and the mechanisms of administration. Second, the action was set up in such a way that only the initial act of the triplication of the name was planned. The effects that this act would generate were unable to be 15 | The conversation took place during the festival Steirischer Herbst in October 2008 in the Forum Stadtpark, where the exhibition could also be seen: http:// www.steirischerherbst.at/2008/deutsch/index.php.

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planned, precisely because the group was no longer moving in the field of art, but in other public spheres like that of politics or administration, whose mechanisms in contact with art were hardly foreseeable. The dynamic arising from this was sparked during the action among the three accomplices and always in dialogue with different publics. There was no precedent project for the action, despite references like IRWIN or others.16 What they did and how they performed it was determined situationally, as the course of events remained unforeseeable in the then existing political situation. This depended on the reaction of the media, politics, intimate private surroundings and the art industry. The creative act of the complicity thus did not lie only in the trio constellation, which allowed a good deal to emerge only in the moment of getting together, but also in the reactions of all others involved. Plans were indeed made, but then executed differently – with typically professionalized performative composure. Third, the action emanated less from an identifiable site, for example from an institution, than it was structured through relationships. The only plan consisted in the simultaneous decision to carry out the name change. No defined target group was addressed and no concrete site played upon: “[…] the real space of the Janez Janša Project is a non space, it is only a network of relations and relationships, into which the artists enter in their social and artistic lives” (Lukan 2008: 24). The game with relationships had priority over territorial or institutional framings, which lead to the fact that public spaces were mainly produced on this relational level. The artists played tactically with the events, profited from opportunities and let themselves be seduced into encounters. These relationship-oriented public spheres originate from common interests and are aimed at temporarily developing a productive-critical scope of activity. The three aspects – the intervention into reality, the consciously conceived situation that facilitates a process that cannot be planned, and the production of a public sphere qua relationships (and less across territories) – are important features of this project. They show that complicity did not occur only within the trio, but was clearly effective above and beyond the group. It is evident that the ridiculous triplication of the prominent name functioned only by means of a trio, whose members incidentally also performed, entirely in the tradition of the Situationists, 16 | In addition to IRWIN, the group referred explicitly to the work Mount Triglav by the performance collective OHO from 1968 in Ljubljana.

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as individual authors. However – and here as well lay one of the punch lines – they tenaciously used the name Janez Janša in the private setting as well, which once again enormously increased the confusion in personal contact. The social experiment showed how much individuals are tainted and tied with their names and how difficult it is to use – as in the title of the project – a name as a readymade. Complicity is practiced here not only within the collective, but also with the audience, often not at all aware of its function. At many points it becomes an audience by accident, which indicates that the boundary between performers and viewers is ever more strongly displaced. These five examples of artistic practice demonstrate new democratized forms of authorship, in which the traditionally hierarchical relationship between performers and public becomes flexible: on the one hand, in that complicity was used within the artist collective as work practice and produced within its structures largely by the participants themselves; but also, on the other hand, in relation to sophisticated stagings of complicity with the public. In this sense then, an answer can be given to the question posed initially – whether complicity is suitable as an analytical instrument for new forms of authorship: Constructive rulebreaking takes place with witty playfulness and through the breaking up of hierarchies on many levels and leads to surprising artistic settings that make genre boundaries obsolete. The occupational profile of the artist is transformed into a generator of situations, who collects heterogeneous social areas in an attractive subject matter and does not produce a work in his or her own name. Conspiratorial attitudes and actions play an essential role in all the projects, and as such are mutually possible only with considerable trust. Conspiratorial behavior can be understood in the process as the opposite of the transparent. Byung-Chul Han writes: “Actions become transparent when they become operationable, when they are subordinated to the calculable, steerable and controllable process. […] The transparent society is a hell of the same” (Han 2012: 5f.). In this sense it can be understood ex negativo that transparency does not exactly lead to creativity as production of the other, but to homogenization and predictable processes. The examples from art demonstrate especially that complicity and hence also conspiratorial behavior materialize in interplay with the public, which is why one can assume that this no longer entails observing what is presented from a distance, but as someone involved. The following section is therefore addressed explicitly to complicities that

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the core collective enters into with what is outside in order to enable the participation of many through the creation of a common sphere of action.

4.3 C omplicitous A uthorship (with the A udience) Complicity does not create only small, conspiratorial, encapsulated formations, but also – when it is successful – public spheres. What is crucial is that new ideas do not conform to an already existing public, but that other public spheres are developed qua complicity. In order to locate this development historically, it is worth casting a look into the already long sustained cultural-theoretical debates on the issue of authorship, which show how alternative public spheres emerge on the basis of changed relations between performers and spectators. Already since the 1950s, a strong debate has existed regarding the relationship between the audience and the performer. Roland Barthes in 1967 with “The Death of the Author” and likewise Michel Foucault in 1969 with “What is an Author?” composed classic texts in the critique of the concept of the author. The artistic subject as individual figure no longer stands in the foreground, but cooperative forms of collaboration, which are crucial from the initial idea, across the choice of medium in the production process, to the production of a public space and the significance of the work. Roland Barthes wanted to provide an emancipated status to the audience by pointing out that it is especially the recipients who produce the work inside the head through their own reading and own capacity for imagination and thus are an inevitably fundamental component of a collective. According to his writing, the audience could no longer passively ask, what is art supposed to mean? Instead, spectators were prompted to produce the meaning actively, whereby they themselves were supposed to assume actual authorship for ‘their’ works. Art reception could thus no longer be interpreted as reception in the sense of understanding, but was established as a form of interaction with the audience. This is made quite clear at the end of his text with the pointed statement: “The birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.” (Barthes 1967: n.p.) While in Roland Barthes’ period, the audience still predominantly sat quietly in the tiers of the theatre and hence this interaction could be understood more as a mental one, today the audience is frequently involved much more directly and physically in scenic arrangements,

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which appear as assemblies, interventions, installations or parcours. ‘Participation’ is the current and not unproblematic keyword with which many artists, but also art festivals, art education programs or funding institutions have campaigned since the 1990s. How does complicity stand in relation to this claim towards participation? The political scientist Wolfgang Fach emphasizes the problematic nature of the term: “Time and again situations arise in which people want to participate although they should not – and should although they do not want to” (Fach 2004: 198). In the history of its semantics, the concept derives from the Aristotelian model of the polity, the polis. Meant by this was a division of labor that enabled the citizens of a state to lead a virtuous life, which they could not bring about alone. Exemplary and morally correct modes of life evolve principally through mutual interaction with others. To be able to participate in the commonweal, one must, however, be free from the hardships of the everyday. From this fundamental prerequisite ensues the social tension, for as a rule it was not the working slaves, the house-keeping women, the craftsmen who were free and deployable for participative processes, but only the privileged who do not have to work in order to earn their livelihood. The latter, nevertheless, would have entirely different concerns from those who cannot participate due to their living conditions (ibid.: 197). The paradox of participation, as it is termed in the field, can be transferred to the field of art. Those who perhaps want to, do not feel invited to, because the cultural hurdles – for example, entry to the museum or theatre – complicate this. And those who should participate – assembled as the art audience – often do not even want to, because the framework of the participation is clearly set on the part of art and correspondingly also the intensities of a possible participation. Power relations are not dissolved, but performed in all obviousness so that participation can quickly become a farce. Participation is not enabled, but sharpened in its paradox, which can have as a consequence an all the more harsh denial of participation. Complicity is related in this sense rather critically to the model of participation, for there is no legitimated compass that invokes complicitous participation. The joint action with a view to the self-specified goal and the corresponding organizational form emerge, indeed, only in the moment of meeting together. Should a collective still call for participation, forms of action close to complicity may arise, such as

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aiding and abetting, incitement or isolated perpetration17, which can still be differentiated substantially in the degree of intensity of the complicity. Michel Foucault made another suggestion, aimed nonetheless in a similar direction in its democratic intensity. He formulated the vision of a culture that entirely does without the authorial function in its discourse. In the interview “The Masked Philosopher,” he put himself to the experiment by giving a certain Christian Delacampagne an interview on the topic of anonymity without divulging his identity as the interlocutor. In one passage he illustrates: “I shall propose a game: that of the ‘year without a name.’ For a year books would be published without their authors’ names. […] But, now I come to think of it, it’s possible they would have nothing to do: All the authors would wait until the following year before publishing their books…” (Foucault 1990: 324). He reflects explicitly on the role of the authorial name in our culture on four levels: First, a legal fixing of the everyday started historically at the end of the 18th century, through which the text, too, was made the property of the author as a cultural product. This legal level is a quite central one today and dominates a large area of the debate surrounding authorship, for example in relation to copyright. Second, the handling of ascriptions of authorship is characterized historically in different ways. When scientific or literary texts were defined as such or when they were furnished with authorial names has, at different periods, varied. Third, with the invention of the author, a rational being has been construed that normatively merges values, styles and contexts. This being became the measure of how an author had to be, how he was to appear in the public sphere and what moral norms she was supposed to pursue. The beginning of this normative, principally rationality-oriented discourse is assessed by Foucault as problematic, because heterogeneous styles of authorship and multiple value conceptions are scarcely accepted. Fourth, and this is an aspect that Foucault especially emphasizes, authors are in any case always bound to a strong splintering of the ego, which receives too little attention: A novelistic “I” does not simply point to the empirical author, nor does it do so directly to the text. Authorship is bound up with the multiplication of identities, whereby one should avoid equating artistic narration with an intrinsic biography. Much more it is a matter of complex relationships and discourses, which due to the imaginative abilities of the artist go beyond reality and therefore are not simply records 17 | See the exact differences as described in Chapter 1.1.

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of his or her own experiences. Foucault ends his text thematically as equally pointedly as Roland Barthes by mainly posing questions in the style of discourse analysis: “We would no longer hear the questions that have been rehashed for so long: Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse? Instead, there would be other questions, like these: What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself?” (Foucault 1998: 222). With this discourse-analytical perspective – which examines the back and forth, the divergence (lat. discursus) of language – it can be more interesting according to Foucault to ask which collectives work how on what form of authorship and thereby attain the public sphere. How is something like authorship created in the form of language games and expressive contexts? To this end, above all critical reflections on homogeneous forms of identity and identification become the focus of the analysis. These two readings contextualize the question of authorship historically and inspire new articulations that appear by shifting the boundary between performers and public. Complicity adds the level of action to these debates, for in some of the examples of artists selected here, public and performers collaborate surprisingly with one another so that both temporarily relinquish their practiced roles. Collaboration implies joined-up work and, in contrast to cooperation, is stamped strongly by a terminology of war, for collaborateurs are people who – usually secretly and in situations of occupation or colonialization – join with the enemy. In this sense collaborators often work in a concealed manner, because they do not disclose on which side they stand. In this way they procure access to information, which creates an advantage for them, making them simultaneously nontransparent, yet also well-informed and hence interesting figures. Artistically, the relationship of tension between performers and audience is reflected in similar ways. British performance group Forced Entertainment’s piece Showtime (1996) is opened by the performer Robin Arthur thus: “There is a word for people like you, and that word is audience. […] So, if it does come to a fight, you will undoubtedly win” (cited in Malzacher 2004: 121). The performer names his audience not as an enemy, but as a strong counter-part that must be convinced. Artists thematize collaboration thus not only within their own collective, but also especially as an ambivalent relationship to the audience, which –

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regardless of sector – is always part of the game. In our context, the word as used is largely free of significations related to war, applied rather in the sense of working together, yet the production of a bonding intensity with the opponent still resonates in the process. To join with the enemy means to learn from it and meet it with its own tactics. In the two examples of Alibi by geheimagentur and NAME readymade by Janez Janša, the interplay between public and performers moves to the center in a surprising manner. Thought-out settings are developed here with an unforeseeable course, which involve the audience in a novel form by making them – more or less consciously – into accomplices. No direct address18 or concrete request to action is to be observed, but rather a scenic arrangement that facilitates a playful involvement. This is created through the skillful staging of attractive offers to participation, which produce a common interest. What is to be observed is a development of the participation of spectators into a production by the audience or public sphere.19 This has to do with the audience no longer being understood only as spectating, but rather as actively co-producing. The idea of letting the audience take part in art qua participation is differentiated from scenic arrangements that facilitate creating a not-yet-existing public with new social connections. Other forms of assemblies emerge in which the non-related meet one another. What exactly differentiates audience participation from production of a new audience or of a different public sphere? In their position paper for the 2008 Berliner Theatertreffen, geheimagentur writes: “Instead of making those contributing qua participation solely into performers, they should rather be made into producers” (geheimagentur 2008). The collective attempts to create unlikely public spheres or assemblies. Another project, the Casino of Tricks, which was staged by secretagents during the 2010 Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz and could be visited daily for a week long in the evening at the festival center, clarifies the difference more precisely. In order to earn entry into the casino, every visitor had as best as possible in front of the running camera to offer a trick of his or her own, which was then stored in the video trick archive. In the casino one could obtain 18 | This existed, for example, in the ur-work of participation by Peter Handke, Publikumsbeschimpfung [Offending the Audience] (Handke 1997), which begins with the words: “You will see no spectacle. Your curiosity will not be satisfied. You will see no play. There will be no playing here tonight” (Handke 1997: 6). 19 | This thinking is also developed in Ziemer (2011).

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playing chips for each trick brought, which could then be converted at the end into cash. The audience – students, professional gamblers, the artinterested festival public, punks and passers-by – demonstrated juggling or magic tricks; gave lectures on tricks; or played roulette together. The survival strategy in the trick casino read: We are not allowed only to play by the rules, we have to play with them. There could be no mistake that a capital-critical attitude was expressed in this logic of tricks. Valuecreation functioned in the casino via trickery and not via work, without the audience having to renounce the currency of money. Especially impressive were the moments in which the casino visitors took over direction from the artist group, for example, when a group of punks cracked the casino one evening, when agent Matthias Anton was surprised by the incredible children’s tricks at the bar or when agent Sibylle Peters at the roulette table was caught out by a professional gambler in persistent discussions about the allegedly false course of the game. In these moments it became clear what production by the audience could mean. The casino became a site at which the most varied people met, who would not implicitly go together into the gambling casino otherwise. The project called on the common wish of the spectators to do tricks and play. The creation of a fluctuating and socially heterogeneous assembly of people triggered the mental game, not to speak here any more of the audience or spectators. Rather it was a matter of an assembly with its own high dynamics, one that can even decide to crack the casino. If anyone then, it is the artists themselves who are invited to participation – and that by the audience, for the relations invert. While geheimagentur, in both productions mentioned, played with traditional sites for art (the stage and art festival), the Janez Janša Project does not remain in the traditional space of art, but intervenes into everyday processes, such as politics, media or administration. One Janez Janša pointedly makes clear the inadvertent collaboration with the administration, as he recounts in the following story: As a Slovenian-Italian dual citizen, he could change his name in Slovenia on all documents; in Italy, on the other hand, not. Since then, he travels unchallenged with documents under different names. He hence reveals again absurd administrative processes. Only under the cloak of art, but without obvious declaration of the same, do these gaps in the legal system become visible. Creation is per definitionem rule breaking, because the reproduction of the old cannot lead to the other. These projects – as

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different as they may also be – show social experiments that with their inclusion and exclusion processes plumb our society. They research relationships and less so institutional frameworks and establish an often surprising relationship between all the participants, in which there is no call to participation, but the formation of new groupings via joint actions, who mutually act upon one another driven by desires and interests. The collaboration in the audience proceeds obliquely and produces in turn that which is surprising, which also provides for a great deal of fun, as both cases indicate. These examples display scenic arrangements that facilitate complicity between many – regardless of whether performer or participant. Whether complicity transpires, remains unforeseeable. But if it occurs, complicity transforms the roles of the participants: the members of the audience and the performers become researchers, observers or fellow players, which is why one could speak also of larger and longer sustained research topographies instead of stage art. The complicities often remain in the dark. If they enter into the light, they evaporate as quickly as they have emerged. However, in the best case they leave behind their effect, in that the newly composed group acts further.

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5 The Research Film Komplizenschaften (2007) (Switzerland, Dir.: Barbara Weber/Gesa Ziemer)

The research film Komplizenschaften (cf. https://vimeo.com/167702376), already cited on multiple occasions, figuratively composes the fifth chapter. This is conceived of as a film about a concept, which consists, on the one hand, of interviews with the most varied actors who make use of working complicitly: They are the dancer Anna Huber with the percussionist Fritz Hauser; the sustainability consultant Paola Ghillani; the curator and artistic director Martin Heller; the criminal law professor and politician Daniel Jositsch; and the percussion quartet Beat Bag Bohemia made up of Lucas Niggli, Kesivan Naidoo, Rolando Lamussene and Peter Conradin Zumthor. On the other, alongside the interview sequences, the film also refers – especially in the passages on dance and music – to the sensory level of complicity, which is central for this relational form. For this reason the film is not an illustrative attachment, but part of the line of argument. The entering into or refusing of complicity has to do quite fundamentally with sensory impressions, translations and subjective evaluations. How am I looked at; how quickly or slowly do I react; in what kind of spaces and at what times of day do encounters happen – all these factors establish the beginning of a cooperation just as much or even more strongly than qualifications, status or discipline. Everyday practices – the use of gestures such as nodding, winking with the eyes, the choice of clothing or unconscious postures – are also crucial for whether or not we enter into complicities together. On this basis sensory reflection opens a “(self-) eventuating and experiencing in perception” (Huber 2004: 11), and this communicates insights to us that are not of a purely academic-conceptual

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nature. In the sense of artistic research, visual investigation – understood as researching with images and sounds and not about them – is thus central for the topic. Academic language can indeed deduce a concept historically, present its manifold semantics in detail and also ascribe this a new meaning. However, concepts also always harbor something besides language, for they try to capture a sensory dimension and hence the space of experience, whose multiplicity and effectiveness never unfold just in the medium of conceptual language alone. Precisely here lies the strength of art as research. The complicity between artistic and scientific practices even makes it possible to launch a new genre – the film about a concept [Begriffsfilm] – about which the editor Barbara Weber, the protagonists in the film and many others who were creatively active researched in cooperation with me. Interesting concepts form a resonance chamber that also entails the sensory dimension and creates awareness on the aesthetic level. Additionally, films about concepts offer the possibility of researching multiple peregrinations and hence concepts’ shiftings of context. For this reason it makes sense to research complicity in the medium of film – and hence also on other perceptual levels (visual and auditory). One encounters the unforeseen not only linguistically, but on many perceptual levels. Concepts always also contain intensive pictorial, physical and sound impressions, which are indeed formulated in a certain manner linguistically, but must also above all be shown. To that end, the physical dimension of complicity – so often omitted in other disciplines such as sociology, organizational theory or even in business consultancies – shifts more strongly into focus here.

6 Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

Complicity can quickly merge into other relational qualities, and it is frequently not entirely easy in everyday life to differentiate complicity from other forms of being together. It is often only a phase in the course of a relationship, initially operative and yet fleeting and fragile. For creative contexts, something like complicity is almost indispensable, because new paths are pursued; likewise, in situations in which one has to defend oneself or would like to develop something new against opposition. So then, let us summarize the qualities of complicity in the briefest form – as briefly and concisely as complicity itself. The indicators named are the extraction of this interdisciplinary research project, in which extensive interviews were conducted with the most varied protagonists from the areas of art, science, politics and economy. Use these 15 indicators for recapitulation, supplementation, negation, affirmation or even as a template for play.

6.1 P l ayfully : 15 I ndicators Accomplices … 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

… never surface alone, but at least in twos. … find one another, instead of searching for one another. … often design the beginning of relationships. … do not appear as such, but as loners. … create a common goal that benefits all. … are different and synchronize with one another (for a limited time).

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7. … form temporary, not lasting relationships. 8. … usually (but not always) deeply trust, because they accept a high risk. 9. … perform everything together. 10. … activate the small in the large. 11. … communicate in informal ways. 12. … are tacticians of life and survival (less than strategists). 13. … act against an opponent, who does not guess their existence. 14. … make their pact strong in the face of a (potential) traitor. 15. … are an example of the power of the presumably weak.

6.2 R emarks on the I ndicators 1. One is never an accomplice alone. At issue is a form of collective bonding (with high connective stake) that can occur during the coming together of at least two people. The special quality of complicity is that the deed [Tat] – whether constructive or destructive – depends on everyone’s responsibility. Individual accomplishments are assessed exclusively in regard to the result of the cooperation. Complicity lays the basis for a small collective. As soon as a collective becomes larger (than approximately five to seven people), it usually decomposes into several complicities, or it continues to consist of a core complicity and the remainder leaves the collective.1 Larger groups are usually no longer bargaining groups; they function rather as thinktanks, boards of trustees, advisory boards or other consultative committees. 2. More than one seeks them purposefully, one finds accomplices accidentally – often in a quite unforeseen way, in peculiar places or in other social milieus or fields of work. If one seeks them, then one does so only once the first phase is concluded and as needed from the second specialist on. Complicity is incidentally also a good precondition for interdisciplinarity, because unfamiliar influences that open up new spaces impinge on one’s own thought and action. Is complicity learnable? Can one assemble groups according to certain criteria, who then act complicitously? As a rule complicity arises out of 1 | Exceptions also confirm the rule here: In the Great Train Robbery (1963), more than ten participants were involved, for example, whereby the group was divided in this case into several complicities who all the same operated well together.

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

the inside of the system and is only rarely implementable from outside. A complicitous habitus presumably stamps different phases of life and cultures in varying strengths; given this, a form of operating in secret may comply more or less strongly with cultural norms. This habitus can admittedly also be learned as a social construct and then skillfully used. However, it remains open to question whether or not one can purposefully seek out accomplices. Whoever directs his or her attention towards change, is able to seize the passing, significantly decisive moment in order to enter into a complicity. These moments do not return, in any case not in the same light, but perhaps in a different one. Complicities are, therefore, also not reproducible. 3. Complicity describes a collective dynamic that usually exists at the start of encounters. Its first expression is often a physical one: a look, a gesture, an attitude, a movement that enables independent and yet synchronized activity. This beginning represents the gravitational force that initiates a new formation. It is sometimes brief and fragile, because it combines equally vulnerability and attractiveness. Complicity can quickly merge into other organizational forms, such as teamwork, alliance, network, friendship, collaboration, cooperation or mafia structures. The transitions between these are often fluid. 4. Accomplices usually cannot be recognized as such, because they – also in the figurative sense – do not wear (modish) uniforms, nor do they obviously reveal their codes. Their pact is also usually not perceivable from the outside; they rarely write manifestos. A premature identification would weaken their power, for only without this do they preserve anonymity and gain time for the development of their ideas in order then to create new structures and operate with surprise. Complicity is based on anonymity and invisibility, because these are necessary in certain creative phases. Transparency would diminish the room for maneuver here and work as a hinderance. 5. Accomplices join together in order to develop a common goal and implement this. Without a strong, common interest, there can be no complicity. Nevertheless, the goal here cannot be understood as an ideologically charged, unattainable long-term goal, but is oriented towards realizable and very concrete (sub-) goals. The encounter in itself does not initially testify once and for all about the course of a project, but at most about the potential for developing a common goal.

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6. Accomplices have to closely agree with one another above all in the third phase, the realization of the deed. This also happens – here by example from the performing arts – on the level of movement. Whether during the improvisation between musicians on the stage or in dance, but likewise during a crucial meeting or in the course of a bank robbery: In all cases a synchronization must temporarily be established. This should not be understood as a bringing into line, for this would be a completely uncreative process, but rather emerges precisely because those acting are independent, individual and different and mutually complement one another. The greater the dependency in play, the more creative a complicity becomes. 7. Complicity is precisely on this account a frequently employed practice, since complex questions cannot be processed in unalterable and homogeneous social and disciplinary constellations. Lateral thinking and acting arise when homogeneous structures are burst open. Therefore, complicity breaks with the idea of stable relational forms and is tied to momentary possibilities, to an especially high energy and to the present in which a common goal first surfaces on the horizon. If the subgoal is achieved, the complicity once more dissolves and is negotiated anew. 8. When voluntarily entered into, complicity is distinguished by mutual trust and at the same time by a high tolerance for risk. Should complicity be forced, then dependency rather than trust is the basis. The state of trust is appealing and simultaneously dangerous, and it comes to a head when much is at stake. Trust implies here that one pursues the path jointly despite the knowledge of transgressing a boundary – also when one does not know exactly what will result out of this. The combination of high risk and deep trust accounts for the attraction and danger of complicities. From this ambivalence comes in equal measure the power and fragility of the pact. 9. Complicity is not based primarily on participation, for the inclusion and contribution of many people on processes is less at stake here. Participation requires that a structure or a goal already exist and that the possibility be offered of democratically taking part in this. Complicity, by contrast, concerns a few people defining a goal together at the same time and working in a negotiated hierarchy and with quite different competencies. Complicity is not a hierarchy-free model; instead, it

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

depends on slipping into the proper role in different situations, a role that could (or should) be a quite different one during the next coup. 10. Complicities are revealed in small gatherings, which can nevertheless also be found in large structures (for instance, in networks, large companies or organizations). Complicity does not lie outside the system, but reacts on it. This is why complicity quite frequently appears in large and mainly rigid, hierarchically clearly defined, relatively conservative structures, when innovation would be necessary and is actively impeded. The question is how large organizations should handle such germ cells. Do they hinder complicity or take it as an opportunity to change structures and hence to remain open to new influences? 11. Accomplices find their own, often-unconventional ways of communication. These articulations are little standardized. They follow no pregiven mode of corporate communications or the verbal codes of the respective social field (such as the jargon of science). In contrast: A good complicity facilitates one in being able to achieve a break with convention. The dancer Anna Huber says in the research film (Komplizenschaften, 2007) that she produces “invisible threads” of communication on stage in order to be able to act in tandem. Each person performs his or her movements and yet communicates these invisibly with the other. In the film, the musician Lukas Niggli formulates the question of what happens during improvisation: “Do I hear first and then play, or do I play first and then hear?” Artistic practices help in the process to move alternative and quite effective communicative forms into the light. 12. The question of when complicity is a life-strategy or a survival-strategy must be critically reflected upon by the actors themselves from case to case. Complicity can support precarious working or living conditions and then be borne at the expense of one’s own health or financial security, or it can be exactly the right form of work in order to arrive at alternative paths. In doing so, the goal of any complicity is not to be lost sight of. By definition, tacticians act less rule-directedly than strategists and hence are essentially more capable of attuning themselves to new situations. 13. The example of the unforeseen voting out of a politician (Chapter 2.2) stands quite explicitly for this indicator. Had this man known that there was an action against him that spanned the parties, he would

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have seized strategic measures that could have hindered his being voted out. Complicity thus evades the classic friend-enemy logic and is never revealed in jockeying over competencies. Accomplices often appropriate the tactics of opponents unnoticed in order to act successfully against them. This functions best when the opponents do not even notice that they are opponents at all, and as a result no energy is lost in meaningless skirmishes over position. 14. Complicity almost never proceeds without – at least potential – betrayal. There is always someone who puts the collective into question and threatens to exit. This person knows the secrets of the collective and can circulate these on occasions that profit him or her. As soon as this figure stands out in the collective, a reinforced bonding occurs as a rule between the others for the protection of the group. An imminent betrayal can thus not necessarily be assessed only negatively, since it increases the energy in the group. Additionally, this can usually not be prevented. 15. What is viewed as strong or weak in an organization is relative. It can be observed, however, that complicity – because it wants to change something – is initially usually weak in the face of the preexisting, fixed and dominant structures. The intimate bonding intensity within the group is hence all the more important. It is a form of social bonding that opens up spaces for maneuver, even if impeding structures are quite dominant. Should the goal make sense for the participants, then a public sphere is produced that can also be accompanied by a political articulation.

6.3 S urprising (U rban) P ublic S pheres : A rt in C omplicit y with N ot-A rt “The crucial point in regard to collective structure is that it can be used as an elementary building block for the creation of larger collectivities” (Weick 1985: 143). This statement by the researcher of organizations Karl Weick directs attention to the relation of the public sphere to complicity, whereby the concept is again set into a larger context. Complicity generates a public sphere through the deed, which nonetheless can be very small and conspiratorial. In my view complicities are, however, principally interesting when they succeed in producing relevant public spheres above

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

and beyond their own being-together. Complicities can be the germ cell for the emergence of larger assemblies, which is why the practice of selfassembling is posed in relation to complicity. It seems prudent to thematize this mainly in regard to developments in urban space, for precisely here vigorous negotiations are currently occurring about how participation in urban development processes should be organized. The connection between complicity and the concept of assembly suggests that complicity can likewise lead to exceptional public collectives, which – although they are essentially larger – bear their own characteristics of complicity. Before we draw nearer to the concept of assembly, it may be asked how the concept of the public sphere is being used in this context. The public sphere is a soundly investigated concept, treated here only selectively. Already for some time it has been assumed that we are dealing today ever less and less with large, homogeneous and representative public spheres, but rather more and more with small, fragmented or dispersed public spheres, such as thematized by the group LIGNA (cf. Das Radioballett – Zerstreute Öffentlichkeit, 2003, Germany, Dir.: Maren Grimm, Olaf Sobczak, Christina Witz). “The civic public sphere finds itself in a process of being replaced. The public sphere has de-hierarchized and transformed into a universe of sub-public spheres” (Hubeli 2008: 156). Not only has science posed this diagnosis for some time already (cf. Sennett 1983); a range of artists and activists have also thematized the loss of the public sphere, especially in the urban space, where this once was understood as the site of opinion formation, discourse, aimless residence as well as protest. In the meantime, public space is more and more privatized and controlled, entailing restricted uses on the basis of prohibitions instead of permissions. Socially, this development brings as a consequence repression and segregation; qualitatively, public space is in many places nothing more than a transit zone. Public space is in many cities today a contested site, which is why it is suited to contemplating the role of complicities and posing the question of how complicity can “be used as an elementary building block for the creation of larger collectivities,” as formulated by Karl Weick. Parallel to this fragmenting of the public sphere, we are currently encountering a range of informal public spheres in urban space, whose initiators do not find themselves represented in the framework of official city politics and therefore collectively organize themselves independently. A public sphere functions here as “a vehicle for mobilizing public opinion

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as a political force. It should empower the citizenry vis-à-vis private powers and permit it to exercise influence over the state” (Fraser 2005: 1). In cities especially, the inhabitants are increasingly developing forms of active intervention that put into question the top-down understanding of urban development and urban politics, architecture and economy. It has “followed a new form of praxis that is supported by collective production, process-directed work and acting in transverse project platforms.” Such “non-discipline-based practice” aims at the recovery and claiming of the public space and enables new circulations of knowledge and practices (Mörtenböck/Mooshammer 2010: 8). There is an attempt to come to terms with an understanding of democracy that can be found beyond the official stages of politics. At stake is the question of who takes part in what processes how and who is allowed to express him or herself. Around this participation of as many people as possible in urban development processes, discussion and debate is amplified on regional and crossregional levels. Worth emphasizing at this point is that representative democracy, with its parties, parliaments or individual representatives of official politics, usually has a difficult time in absorbing these currents constructively.2 Often one has the impression that these movements and representative democracy operate in parallel to each other, without interlocking in a way where impulses would be absorbed or that activists would really be ready to engage in a dialogue with the official city politics. The vehemence of the desire for participation can be understood as a seismograph of an already historical, repeatedly tension-laden relationship between government and civil society: “Today it is a matter – once again – of the rediscovery of the citizen, of urban consciousness and self-determined urban power […]” (Böhme 2006: 16). In the process it can be observed that classic formats of participation, as practiced in the framework of urban development processes in the last decades, often no longer offer an incentive for authentic participation. In such contexts one has the experience that often only a few people take up the offers of engagement in district councils, workshops, forum events or futurity 2 | The events surrounding the Hamburg Gängeviertel could be mentioned as an exception. After the district was occupied by artists, activists and citizens, the city bought back the area from an investor. Currently a concept for mixed use of the district is being worked out. See under http://das-gaengeviertel.info, visited 10 April 2013.

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

conferences and World Cafés. Precisely those whom one would like to involve for future changes – such as youths, migrants or young families – have no capacity due to their stressed living situation; they speak the local language insufficiently or do not come from democratic cultures in which one from early on practices something like citizen participation. In turn, those who do take part are not representative and block constructive contributions rather than provide them. Often participation becomes the exercise of an alibi, because it is already clear who decides at the end. In the administrative German of a public agency representative, this recently sounded so: “In urban administration, participation and decision process are two work processes running separately from each other, which are primarily not concerned with each other.”3 Why then the offers of participation? One could even opine that such formats are consciously offered in order to suggest participation while actually hindering it. It can thus be observed that from a historical perspective we are living in a time in which the relationship between government and citizens is strained. The necessity of one’s being engaged is hence especially present because cities today are conceived broadly in entrepreneurial terms and less so culturally or socially, which is why the economy in particular has become a leading discipline and, with that, the basis of governance principles. Additionally, the urbanization and hence densification of the city space is increasing, whereby questions of quality of life are coming to a head. These two developments are indices for why we are dealing currently with an increased emergence of self-authorized practices that are expressed collectively. One can observe in this that citizen engagement, in part vehement, appears beyond the traditionally offered formats. Much more, engaged people are gathering together in order, for example, to win interim uses or conversions of areas, the preservation of open space and rent controls; to found urban gardens and neighbor networks; or to strengthen cultural initiatives. If complicity is thus the germ cell for a larger public sphere, then it often passes over into assemblies. Such activities scarcely arise, 3 | The conversation with the public agency representative took place under my direction in Hamburg in the framework of the project Paradox Participation in the study area “Culture of the Metropolis” at the HafenCity Universität Hamburg in 2012.

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however, in regulated formats for participation; on the contrary, these are developed on the basis of personal initiatives – usually as a reaction to a concrete local threat – and often furtively at the start and with unclear structures. Complicity is thereby often the beginning on a small scale, which then – in order to launch a greater movement – merges into a larger formation, becomes uncontrollable and no longer follows a clear plan. Drawing on Norbert Elias, it is stated in regard to the dynamics of selfassembling “[…] processes, such as civilizing process, are not planned, intended, or foreseen by people, although they do presume intentions, plans and actions of people” (Vree 1999: 320). Like complicity, assemblies also follow a “secret of social figuration” (ibid.: 320) that implies that more happens in the collective through the interaction of the participants than is foreseeable from the individuals alone. A striking example of a complicity in the form of different, quite large assemblies, which generated a broad public sphere and also merged into demonstrations, is revealed in the beginnings of the New Forum, the citizen movement in the former GDR, that helped to substantially shape the period of transformation around 1989, the so-called Wendezeit. Rolf Henrich, one of the founding members, describes in a radio interview the first conspiratorial meeting in the house of Katja Havemann with Bärbel Boley and others: “The all-important point was that we had to put into motion a public debate […]. The lasting accomplishment of the New Forum is, in my opinion, that it planted this first impulse; that is, that it got things going […].”4 The first get-togethers of this quite mixed group, which consisted of artists, scientists, doctors, students and others, followed all the attributes of complicity and was supposed to create a broad public that would develop an enormous political force. In the interview, Rolf Henrich describes very clearly under what disparate requirements the group met and thereby planned and implemented actions; these in turn took up an already existing attunement of the population and hence immediately led to the New Forum having to manage an extremely high number of requests for membership. An expression of this uncertain situation was, for example, that the accomplices initially burned all these applications in the fireplace, since they were afraid of house searches. 4 | The interview, with the title “‘Das Neue Forum hat die Sache in Schwung gebracht,’ Rolf Henrich im Gespräch mit Jasper Barenberg,” was broadcast on 10 September 2009 by Deutschlandradio.

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

Nevertheless, the strength of the group increased swiftly, which then led to large, peaceful demonstrations, having as a consequence not only the opening of the GDR, but also a totally new political constellation. Without complicity, the germ cell of the New Forum would not have developed the energy that led to the large assemblies. It is also interesting that some of the initiators vehemently pled for the idea that the New Forum should not merge into a party, which in turn speaks strongly for the power of the complicity, for this capitalized precisely on its temporary and unrepeatable force, which is opposed to a stabilization. As soon as this would have to merge into the organizational form of a party, it would probably have been less innovative, although more representatively organized. Assemblies are thus temporary aggregations, exactly like complicities, even if they last longer or can repeatedly take place.5 Let us thus set complicity in relation to the term assembly [Versammlung], which is of significance as a form of emergence into the public sphere. Assemblies are “gatherings of people, who represent certain interests in the framework of their getting-together and seek orientation for future action. In doing so, the individuals assemble themselves respectively ‘as someone’ – as a parent, as a member of a community, as a renter, as an employee. They share social roles, contexts of action and/or interests” (Peters 2013). The term “public sphere,” which is embedded in a long and complex conceptual history, can be understood in multiple ways in this connection. For orientation we resort to the concept of the public sphere as represented by Michael Warner, in the sense of a counter-public. The three criteria already discussed are those of being self-organized (67), of being “a relation among strangers” (74) and of public speech’s being addressed both personally and impersonally (76). He adds three further attributes: “a public is constituted through mere attention” (87); “a public is the social space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse” (90); and “publics act historically according to the temporality of their circulation” (96). 5 | A comprehensive theory of the assembly is thus far lacking. In the postgraduate program “Versammlung und Teilhabe. Urbane Öffentlichkeiten und Performative Künste” [“Assembly and Participation. Urban Public Spheres and Performative Arts”], different kinds of assembly are being researched. This investigation confirms that assemblies [Versammlungen] – in contrast to collections [Sammlungen] – are limited in time. (Cf. http://www.versammlungund-teilhabe.de/az/index.php?title=Versammeln, visited 10 April 2013.)

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While these criteria refer to complicitous action, what needs to be added in this context is that accomplices steer control from the representative to the operative level of being together, since it is always a matter of initiating common actions. “Publicness arises at the point – and only at the point – that a debate breaks out among those surrounding” (Marchart 2007: 173). This statement implies that such processes are not free of conflict, but quite the opposite: as political articulations, they are characterized precisely through the negotiation of dissent, which usually underlies the multifarious structures of our society. Seen thus, a public sphere would already have arisen when a controversial debate is triggered. Yet, in the case of complicity, it is not a matter of debates or discourse, but primarily of actions that erupt from those involved. In the best case, this action-level does not appear confrontational, but reveals itself in the skillful linking of different actors. A definition of the public sphere that operates by emphasizing dealing with disagreements can be important in order to realize the common goals; it is, however, not sufficient. Against this background, complicity can be understood as a model that can function above and beyond social boundaries that are predefined and often also restricted by habit, for the framework is stretched across a common interest and the desire for implementation. As an example of such a transgression of the habitual, the initiative “Eden for Everybody”6 can be mentioned, which is fighting for the preservation of the allotment gardens in the Hamburg Hebebrandquartier. A housing development planned there for 2014 would be a threat for the city climate, nature conservation and the social significance of this green area. The composition of this group should be emphasized, for the allotment gardeners are working closely together with the residents of the Borribles caravan park as well as with two emergency overnight accommodation facilities for the homeless and with city activists. Even animals like hedgehogs or birds are staged as protagonists of the protest. As a small bargaining interest-community, this complicitously acting group circumvents conventional social group compositions and so articulates their protest against a pending building development. The concept of the assembly is thus interesting in regard to complicity because this also emphasizes the action-oriented level. A citizen assembly can merge, for example, into a citizen initiative; a political assembly 6 | See http://www.eden-fuer-jeden.de, visited 10 April 2013.

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

into a demonstration; parliamentary assemblies can influence political events; or a parent assembly can introduce concrete measures in their children’s school. One assembles oneself for a specific purpose, during which the implementation of the idea into deed plays a central role. While controversial debate can be an element of complicity, complicity is not exhausted in discourse, and it may not impede the attaining of (sub-)goals. Against this background, the new role of artistic practices can be viewed. For artists are intervening more and more in the development of alternative public spheres on social and urban levels (cf. Beyes/Krempl/ Deuflhard 2009). Increasingly, they no longer understand themselves as artists in the narrow sense, but as initiators of social processes, as researchers or creators of fields that work on the interfaces to the urban, to education, of science or to the social (cf. Lenz 2011). “Art for everyone?” goes the question, which is aimed above all at art in the public space and sounds out, alongside the aspect of the democratization of art, its value for the urban society as well (cf. Lewitzky 2005). Artistic practices are especially suited today to making social transformations experiential. “The increasingly participatory- and interventionist-oriented art practice opens up spaces of communication and fields of action and thus nourishes the hope of also being useful outside art, i.e., to have a capacity-supporting, community-building and identity-creating effect” (Seitz 2009: 182). According to this view, art should not be received as a closed system, but be used for various inducements to collaboration. On the basis of the displacement of the work towards the process, already adduced here in terms of art history, as represented in detail in the framework of collective authorship, we are consequently also dealing on different levels with a new definition of the profession of the artist. Since the activities at interfaces are increasing and the fear of instrumentalization is decreasing, the question is being posed in many places of whether and how the profession of the artist can merge into fields of work by social workers, teachers or researchers. The definition of the artist’s precise professional field can only be outlined with ever more difficulty, as is the case with other professional profiles. The new orientation is revealed, among other things, in that complicities arise within the art scene not only interdisciplinarily, but increasingly also with non-artistic actors and areas. “Not only art- and everyday objects have to be differentiated, but even more so artistic and non-artistic processes” (Gludovatz/von Hantelmann et al. 2010: 7). In this sense, artists cooperate, for example, with schools; they research social

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processes with artistic processes; they interact in city events, open up labs or media stations in neglected city districts or are active as curators.7 In view of these developments, it appears as though the longing of art for social relevance and the longing of urban developers for new formats of participation are coinciding. With a view to this development, the social practice of complicity is interesting because it enables different actors to produce unusual connections and with that to generate surprising public spheres. Particularly indicative for the future in this process is actors from art entering into complicities with those from non-art areas. In developing such formats, art makes available a performative and often also mediatized expertise that can be very effective precisely because it can stage unusual and multifaceted forms of assembly. Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge (Hannah Hurtzig), Park Fiction (artists with the Hafenrandverein [Harbor Edge Association]), SchwarzfahrerKongresse [Fare Dodger Congress] (Rimini Protokoll), translocal urban research networks (School of Missing Studies) or places to sleep for drugaddicted women (Wochenklausur) can be mentioned only as some of such examples. In art, “one can experimentally approach publics that perhaps do not yet even exist – counterpublics. Instead of turning to an old, always already given ‘public sphere,’ the scenic art of assembly pursues the promise of being able to call into life new publics on a trial basis through new forms of address” (Peters 2012: 133). These new forms of address often arise only through complicity, for the model offers the possibility of acting as little disciplinarily and as strongly across milieus as possible. Despite their temporal finiteness, such projects develop effects on social contexts that are frequently sustainable (cf. Jackson 2011, Thompson 2012). In this sense, the concept of the counterpublic can also be critically examined, for it is less and less a matter of staging a counter. In hybrid or even surprising publics, interest-driven assemblies arise that are based on unusual pacts and that generate goal-oriented attention. Accomplices act not against someone, for such a person can often not be so clearly identified, but rather appropriate for themselves the strategies of the stronger – often by 7 | The volume Kunst einer anderen Stadt [Art of Another City] offers a good insight into such artforms. In it, the editors Ute Vorkoeper and Andrea Knobloch document exhibitions from 2008 to 2011 that were conceived as a parcours through the city of Hamburg and in which many complicities between art and nonart were entered into (cf. Vorkoeper/Knobloch 2012).

Instead of a Summary: 15 Indicators of Complicity

affiliating themselves with the strong in order to achieve their goal from the inside out. What is ‘counter’ must in this respect be relativized, since accomplices [Komplizen] are indeed doers-with [Mittäter, tr. literally “‘doerswith,’” but more commonly simply “accomplices”], who strengthen what is with as against what is counter. It is worth appreciating the conspiratorial moment of complicity, for out of this a strong energy can frequently be developed, capable of generating alternative publics. The shifting of conventions or boundaries is an elementary component of complicity and is akin to any creative act. Beyond the discourse of creativity, however, complicity also negotiates democracy, although this is not based on the classic understanding of the democratic in the sense of the raising of the voice of the people, i.e., of the many. Complicity does not take along everybody, but it does facilitate enabling powers through unusual, self-initiated linkages. It is the basis of an art of linkages between various actors, an art that is increasingly important in the complex force fields in which we are moving today. The art lies in finding the correct ‘co-perpetrator’ [Mittäter] and underscores the qualities of affective and at the same time action-oriented linkages. Seen thus, complicity could represent a possibility of understanding society in far less restricted disciplines and social categories and, instead, of beguiling us into making contact with the most varied actors and walking along new paths together.

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Filme Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (USA, Director: Arthur Penn) Das Radioballett – Zerstreute Öffentlichkeit (2003) (Germany, Director: Maren Grimm, Olaf Sobczak, Christina Witz) The Godfather (1972) (USA, Director: Francis Ford Coppola) Die Abwahl: Die Geheimoperation gegen Christoph Blocher (2008) (Switzerland, Director: Hansjürg Zumstein) Gomorrah (2008) (Italy, Director: Matteo Garrone) Komplizenschaften (2007) (Switzerland, Director: Barbara Weber, Gesa Ziemer) Komplizinnen (1987) (Germany, Director: Margit Czenki) Kriminalfälle – Schweizer Verbrechen im Visier (3/6): Der Fluch des Postraubes (2012) (Switzerland, Director: Andrea Pfalzgraf) La Société du Spectacle (1973) (France, Director: Guy Debord) Work Hard - Play Hard (2012) (Germany, Director: Carmen Losmann)

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