Let’s Democratise Democracy is an ongoing work that TTTP has installed
at numerous sites around Europe, from Barcelona to Belgrade.
The basic element of the work is the eponymous slogan printed in
the local language, black print on a yellow background on posters
of varying sizes that are either hung in or carried around the urban
space as a site-specific performance. The politically loaded places
where the posters have been presented include the Ministry of Defense
in the city of Belgrade, which the forces of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization bombed in 1999; Tito’s nuclear bunker in
Bosnia-Herzegovina; the production facility and residential area of
Uralmash in Yekaterinburg; and a refugee camp in Western Sahara
(as part of the 2012 ARTifariti festival of art and human rights,
which aimed to give visibility and voice to the Sahrawi people). In
one version of the work enacted in Barcelona, Murcia, and Alicante
on May 1, 2011 (International Workers’ Day) and May 21, 2011 (the
day before the general election), the message was communicated on
a banner attached to a small airplane flying along the coastline. The
airplane and banner, with cityscapes as a background, was filmed
from a second airplane, and people were encouraged to document
the banner’s route and upload material to an associated website; that
is, to participate in the creation of a collective work.
Just as Johnny Cash swore he would wear black “as long as there
are people suffering,” TTTP will continue to enact Let’s Democratise
Democracy as long as the principles of constitutional democracy are
being compromised by those in power. The work thus serves as a reminder
that a nominal democracy is no real democracy and that the
process of democratization is continuous and should involve the people,
not just the politicians.