Declan Clarke & Andreas Bunte: Enter the Void

A new group show opening on 13 April at Manchester's Cornerhouse seeks to address the aftermath of revolutionary activity. Through new commissions and existing works that offer tentative perspectives on events past, current and future, Anguish & Enthusiasm: What Do You Do With Your Revolution Once You've Got It speaks of moral ambivalence in times of crisis – when ideological extremes can emerge and take over, and when the hopeful euphoria of the revolutionary moment fails.

Co-curated by Sarah Perks, director of Visual Arts and Film at Cornerhouse, and Declan Clarke, whose practice involves researching and re-presenting moments of activism, the show can be seen to form a loose continuity with a series of major exhibitions at Cornerhouse that have explored socio-political concerns from a variety of viewpoints and geographical locations, including Contemporary Art Iraq in 2010, New Cartographies: Algeria-France-UK in 2011 and 2012's Subversion. With 12 exhibiting artists approaching the themes of 'anguish' and 'enthusiasm' in vastly different ways, the show presents a diversity of voices, with personal accounts alongside symbolic explorations.

Anguish & Enthusiasm shares its title with the third chapter of Victor Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary, an autobiographical account of the period between the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and the founding of the USSR. Serge's memoir recounts the increasingly sinister and bloodthirsty nature of the Bolshevik regime: the title Anguish & Enthusiasm is evocative of uncertainty, and the potential for horror and trauma.

Many works in the exhibition refer explicitly to particular struggles, and their human cost. Pocas Pascoal and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc explore the Angolan War of Independence and subsequent Civil War through personally remembered and extensively researched histories: Pascoal's 2003 film Il y a quelqu'un qui t'aime (There Is Always Someone Who Loves You) recounts her and her family's experiences of the transition from occupation to self-rule, as Angolan independence from Portuguese colonial oppression was declared in 1975 only to be followed by more horror in the form of Civil War, while Kleyebe Abonnenc's new commission does not stem from personal experience but is borne of an interest in how the use of images can affect and shape political struggle.

Works that refer to a specific conflict offer perspectives on the wider themes of the show, which engage with the fundamental questions: who gets to build a new society, and who is lost along the way? A primary function of the exhibition is to approach the unglamorous, easily overlooked post-revolutionary period when the smoke has cleared and, for better or worse, the work of changing and rebuilding societies and cultures is undertaken.

“There is no immediate image or example of what a post-revolution looks like, or indeed, no immediate manner in which we should think about post-revolution,” Clarke says – and he is quick to specify that Anguish & Enthusiasm is not about the act of revolution itself. Consciously avoiding clichéd references to political uprising, Clarke and Perks have instead sought to choose and commission work that takes “a thoughtful and considered approach to socio-political themes.”

Clarke also offers an expanded definition, pointing out that discourse around the post-revolutionary phase is appropriate to liberation, occupation and emancipation, and that revolutions are not necessarily political, but can also be technological, social and cultural.

This chimes with how Andreas Bunte describes his new commission – a set of two films that seek to deal, indirectly, with the fall of the Berlin wall. “Both films try to take account of their sites in a pragmatic and unsentimental way,” he tells me, “and provide enough room for speculations about individual stories yet leaving them untold.”

Previously, Bunte has focused on how moments in history – and ideologies – can become representative of and embedded in the surrounding architecture, with him performing a “reading of the built environment as a cipher for, or product of a particular social and political framework.” In this new commission, where he explores two abandoned former-DDR (German Democratic Republic) facilities, the reasons behind the sites' current states are inextricably linked with the society that built them. Bunte explains how the two facilities, after reunification, would have been closed for largely financial reasons: “They didn't quite meet the comfort of the time anymore,” he says. But because of their austere and durable form, these facilities remain: “Because of [their] solid concrete construction it was not possible to demolish [them]. It was cheaper to just shut the door and forget about them.”

While much of the work selected for Anguish & Enthusiasm cautions how revolution and activism can backfire, and examines the strange artefacts left behind, there is also a tentative sense of hope and ambition.

Eoghan McTigue's photographic piece Empty Sign (1998) depicts that symbol of radical traditions among students – the notice board – as a barren field of red. The notice board can be read in several ways: its emptiness communicates the potential for future action, while a rectangle of bright red, of course, has obvious political connotations. Artist collective Trust Your Struggle, meanwhile, have recreated a mural that refers to the ongoing police oppression suffered by the black community in Oakland, California. The work also aims to communicate the risks of ignoring – or not consulting – affected communities as Britain is regenerated.

By juxtaposing differing perspectives on – and messages relating to – activism, Clarke hopes that “perhaps we can expand how we think about the subject and can draw more appropriate conclusions when rebuilding in the wake of future revolutions.” Anguish & Enthusiasm is an investigation: it does not give its audience conclusions, but instead offers an opportunity for insightful discourse on topics that are usually tied to adamant emotional responses, which often preclude debate.

Clarke and Perks' appreciation of the complexity and diversity surrounding post-revolutionary states is encouraging. While Anguish & Enthusiasm indicates the inherently problematic nature of mass-action, it simultaneously testifies to the vital importance of activism against injustice.