Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2020 | Page 7

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
organization of protest movements” (p. 332). The essays in this volume call attention to
both issues through their discussion of the aesthetics of circulation and through the peoples,
organizations, and institutions that are involved in this circulation which involve
new spaces and multimodal technologies. Taken together the articulation and circulation
are precisely what makes arts global. They undo and question the singular axis of
modernity and its attendant aesthetics.
The role of art in providing multiple perspectives cannot be overstated. The undoing
of modernity does not entail fixity of another�although reactionary and populist politics
around the world aspire for just such a point of view�but the multiplicity of the
offering and the increasing agency of interpretation. Of course, this also runs counter
to Hardt and Negri’s position in Empire. Nevertheless, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s
Song of Roland is illustrative of just such a non-fixity. The Song of Roland was originally in
French and glorified the Crusades to inspire the soldiers in the middle ages to fight the
Muslims in Spain. Wael Shawky translates the song into traditional Arabic and it is then
performed to fidjeri style used among the pearl divers of the Middle-Eastern Gulf region.
The cultural critic Adel Abdel Wahab (2018) writes astutely on the new perspective:
“Shawky may have reproduced the original song without alteration, yet he has modified
its context, employing Gulf voices as audio containers that do not intervene with any
trace of emotion: They are simply human trumpets. Shawky reminds contemporary, cultured
Europe�a Europe that has apologized for the Crusades�of its history of war in
the dark middle Ages. Here, the Muslim enemy sings a historical song of Christian pride,
the content of which is directed against him.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJJy7V2g2Ek
Performance of Wael Shawky, The Song of Roland: The Arabic Version -
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The questioning of European modernity has also led to the questioning of multiple hegemonies
in other times and spaces: the ubiquity of patriarchal practices, caste in India,
political oppression in China, or slavery in the Americas. The global in art and conflict
is a bit unmoored from a dominant ontology. But the temptation to bring it back to one
is ever present. As history continues to repeat itself, it’s hard to imagine a world without
art�or one without conflict.
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