Republic of Unki - History

[Ünki]

INSIDE THE R.O.U.

Uncle Arthur an Irish artist who came to maturity in the 1990s set out
to parody contemporary Irish/Irish American society and in the process
developed a self-consciously nationalist Irish school of art. Drawing
inspiration from everything taboo in Ireland yet which ironically
appeared to have so much to do with its society the Uncle Arthur
became known under the deliberately provocative title Eetal. The more
Vayican dogma became the more the church harped on their epic defeat
of modernism and the more the totalitarian aspects of their culture
appeared to mischievous minds to mirror those of the Third Reich.

On 1994 Eetal still in his early thirties delivered a combination of
ideological provocation and art action in the form of an propaganda
broadcasts to Irish newsgroups from New York. Eetal presented a
deadpan synthesis of totalitarian visual and rhetorical posts that
brought into prophetic focus the increasing uncertainty of the future
of "Holy Catholic" Ireland after Dev. The subversion they set in
motion was accomplished by explicitly presenting the iconography and
methodology of what would eventually become the new Irish mythos.
Eetal's action anticipated the thriumph of liberlism throughout the
Irish Republic, the collapse of Catholic Church and helped push the
country towards cultural freedom. The vast majority of newsgroup
readers simply concluded that he was bigot had appeared in their
midst.

A ban was imposed on Eetal by admisistrators. During this time the
name Eetal was kept circulating in the public consciousness through a
series of further actions, anti-American propaganda and comical
postings. He made a point of declaring everything he utilised
"attacks" until the ban on posting was grudgingly lifted in 1996.
Capitulation came with the international popularity of Eetal's
postings and collective's virtual propaganda. Suddenly Eetal found
himself on the contemporary culture map as the birthplace of a
slippery new art "confrontational irony".

The absence of revolutionary idealism in the art of this century is
what distinguishes Postmodernism from Modernism. At first glance
confrontational irony appears very postmodern but it is actually an
idealistic modernist movement based on the examination of the
repression of traumas that occur whenever avantgardism is coopted by
power and capital. Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism and German
Expressionism are prime examples of how modernist art movements in the
service of totalitarianism have contributed to sociopolitical
catastrophes. Confrontational irony manipulation of the iconography of
ideological domination attempts to subvert the cycle of co-option not
by developing any critical potentials but through organizational
fetishism and mimicry of the dominant system itself. It's a big idea
cooked up by an unemployed European intellectual that seems to be a
valuable one.

In 1997 Eetal upped the ante on its Confrontational irony by declaring
himself a Rebublic. Installed in real social and political space as an
abstract virtual body, the now Unki Republic functions as a
borderless transnational state of mind open to anyone who wants to
join its citizenry. The Unki Republic enterprise defies the glibness
of propaganda journalism. A substantial amount of literature has been
generated from within and outside the Republic.

--

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." - Cicero