Autonomy's Double Bind - review of Illiberal Lives at Ludwig Forum, Aachen (original) (raw)

In the current conjuncture, the most fertile soil for fascism and its forms of unfreedom and reaction is stricken by crisis and concomitant collapse. The poly-crises of liberal (social) democracy are born of capitalist social relations, visible in their various forms not limited to economic, ecological, and social spheres and intensifying globally since 2008. Against the backdrop of insurgent fascist politics across the world, in 2023, the Ludwig Forum, a gigantic former umbrella factory in Aachen, stages the exhibition Illiberal Lives, which seeks to address how unfreedom endures in art, following Illiberal Arts at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2021. The curators of the Illiberal Lives, Eva Birkenstock, Anselm Franke, Holger Otten, and Kerstin Stakemeier, invited ten artists to relate their work to the Ludwig Collection.[1] The history of the collection of Peter and Irene Ludwig-who amassed wealth through chocolate production-goes back to the 1960s when they institutionalized works by artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, before, in the midst of the Cold War, directing their gaze towards Eastern Europe, buying up art, and thus bringing two sides of the iron curtain into contact.[2] Illiberal Lives animates the politics of the collection, reflecting on global shifts and perspectives that it remains witness to.