“If you see something, say something,” was pasted on bus shelters and train stations around the world in the wake of the 9/11 bombings asking us to view those around us with fear and suspicion. But do we see this government sponsored vision of the world or do these advertisements move us to say something very different? In the state of exception produced by the war on terror we are asked to accept a consensual vision of fear, scapegoating and state sponsored violence. Yet many are moved to dissent from this.

Dissensus can mean widespread disagreement, a failure to reach consensus or a consensus only among those who dissent. Jacques Ranciere uses the term to describe rare moments of genuine democracy whereby new social actors force themselves into the political landscape demanding that their voices, which hitherto have been silent, are finally heard. While what we consider politics is often a ritualised confrontation between opposing parties, armies, or forces, with a known set of protocols on how this resolution will play out, a moment of dissensus allows a reconfiguration of how we understand the notion of politics itself by opening up pre-existing assumptions of social agency.

If you see something, say something was a discussion, exhibition and publishing project in Sydney in January/February 2007. Principally this revolved around an exhibition involving a small number of international and Australian artists whose work has explored aspects of dissensus – by either questioning prevailing notions of consensus or by exploring new possibilities of social agency. Rather than being an exhibition of political art this exhibition questioned how we actually understand the connections between politics and aesthetics. The exhibition was complemented by workshops and a newspaper.

Of particular interest was the role of the artist as a researcher. In Argentina during the crisis and uprising of 2001 the term “militant researcher” was popularly used to describe an engaged approach to seeking an understanding of reality. As the research group Colectivo Situaciones explains the researcher-militants’ “quest is to carry out theoretical and practical work oriented to co-produce the knowledges and modes of an alternative sociability, beginning with the power (potencia) of those subaltern knowledges.” In engaging with social realities artists have increasingly become archivers, publishers and researchers. This exhibition bought together some of these research projects which have informed both how these artists have tried to engage with social realities and encourage forms of alternative knowledge and resistance.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the help and generous funding from Mori Gallery, Marrickville Council, The Australia Council for the Arts, The National Association for the Visual Arts, Gallery 4a, Breakdown Press, The Bolivarian Circle, LASNET and the Australian Venezuela Solidarity Network and various donations by solidarity and activist groups. But it also would not have happened without the community of socially engaged artists and activists who are part of the exhibition or supporters of it and whose generosity and enthusiasm make “another world possible.”

 Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg, project initiators

Above: picture of the community notice board which was installed as part of the exhibition and Mamdouh Habib opening the exhibition at Gallery 4a. Mr Habib spent four years imprisoned by the USA under the anti-terrorism laws, including spending time in Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, before being released without charge.