ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate in aesthetic terms the manner in which sovereignty dominates the political scene. We must understand the affective conditions of the crowd, and the manner in which the crowd conditions the atmosphere. John Baldessari’s photomontage consists of two photographs of crowds, with blank shapes (in white) obscuring ‘the reason’ that has gathered the crowd. The effect of the repression of the shape of reason is to unmoor the crowd from its historical specificity. Lenin addresses the crowds that have gathered around him, but Isaak Brodsky’s perspective places the viewer in among the crowd, looking out just over the heads of the gathered workers. Bocconi forces us to look again at Fritz Genutat and Brodsky, insisting that we think beyond the internal rhythms of the crowd, and instead to the atmosphere that is patterned. The crowd has been drawn out of their spaces of work, drawn by the magnetic presence of the shape of Lenin.
