We are writing to you from Rome, the so-called Eternal City. In the age of Trump, the excesses of the Roman emperors and their expansionist empires, are back in the spotlight. We visited an exhibition dedicated to Trajan (98-117 CE), who led the Romans to the peak of their empire, and couldn’t help think of the petty toxic masculinity and rugged individualism projected onto the bloodthirsty ambition for conquest and control.
As the first emperor from outside of Italy, the Spanish-born Trajan had a point to prove. But why does this exhibition have to valorize his sick boasts of the slaughter and oppression of thousands upon thousands of ‘barbarians’?
Bringing the empire home to Rome was at the heart of Trajan’s extensive building program, including his excessive column, depicting the defeat of the Dacians (the people of ancient Romania and Moldova).
One of the disturbing twists of the exhibition was the homage to the column by Romanian artist Luminiţa Ţăranu.
The little men, with their arrogant, destructive ambitions, who will be meeting to save the world from the nuclear threats they created, are part of the legacies of men like Trajan. Yet it is not only these little men and their megalomaniac plans, but the continued valorization of the conquest of space and time, the oppression and enslavement of others, projected onto them.
Looking back to last year and our two week period (April 5-18) from this perspective, we can divide our posts between a home base in Ohio, past (April 12), present (April 8, April 10, April 13, April 15) and future (April 9), and an elsewhere, real (April 18) and projected (from documenta 14 between Athens and Kassel, April 7, April 11, April 14, April 17, to other worlds, April 5, April 6, April 16). As we toggle between Ohio (turning into Ch. 7: Where Went Ohio) and our engagement with documenta 14 between Athens and Kassel (set to become Ch. 8: Escape to Athens) and beyond (Ch. 9: On the World) how are we too complicit with this valorization? Bridging ancient and modern, crossing time zones, how do we stop the ideology of conquest and imperialism contaminating our own work with its stench?
