The Other Forum
This is a platform to discuss critical art practices. It´s aim is to
look for inspiration to hold future projects, symposiums, publications,
etc.... Below are some discussion texts to start the ball rolling.
Observations on Collective Cultural Action
Nineteen Theses on Engaged Art
A Call for More!
dimensionality of art an ENVELOPE STRUCTURE
»Don't Forget Love« - A Cartography of the Ambient:
From White Cube to Ambient
Feedback / Contribution
Observations on Collective
Cultural Action
by Critical Art Ensemble
Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five new genre artists
that was formed in 1987. Since that time, the group has produced art
work, events, and theory that explores and critiques models of representation
used in capitalist political-economy to sustain and promote authoritarian
policies. At the same time, the group's research and explorations have
been about more than just production and critique. CAE has also had
a sustained interest in the variety of organizational possibilities
from which artistic practice can emerge. Of particular interest has
been the nature and types of collectives that intersect artistic and
activist practices, because it is only through an understanding of this
particular branch of sociology that the group believes that it can refine
and improve its own structure and dynamics that makes quality cultural
production possible. In turn, the group hopes that this research in
micro-sociology will contribute as much to the continuation of resistant
cultural models as our books or art works.
The Double-Edged Sword of Market
Demands
After reviewing the current status of the U.S. cultural economy, one
would have to conclude that market demands discourage collective activity
to such a degree that such a strategy is unfeasible. To an extent, this
perception has merit. Financial support certainly favors individuals.
In art institutions (museums, galleries, art schools, alternative spaces,
etc.), the Habermas thesis--that Modernity never died--finds its practical
illustration. In spite of all the critical fulminations about the death
of originality, the artist and the rest of the entities named on the
tombstones in the Modernist cemetery, these notions persist, protected
by an entrenched cultural bureaucracy geared to resist rapid change.
If anything, a backlash has occurred that has intensified certain modernist
notions. Of prime importance in this essay is the beloved notion of
the individual artist. The individual's signature is still the prime
collectible, and access to the body associated with the signature is
a commodity that is desired more than ever--so much so, that the obsession
with the artist's body has made its way into "progressive" and alternative
art networks. Even community art has its stars, its signatures, and
its bodies. This final category may be the most important. Even a community
art star must do a project that includes mingling with the "community"
and with the project's sponsor(s). Mingling bodies is as important in
the progressive scene as it is in the gallery scene. This demand for
bodily commingling is derived from the most traditional notions of the
artist hero, as it signifies an opportunity to mix with history and
interact with genius.
The totalizing belief that social and aesthetic values are encoded in
the being of gifted individuals (rather than emerging from a process
of becoming shared by group members) is cultivated early in cultural
education. If one wants to become an "artist," there is a bounty of
educational opportunities--everything from matchbook correspondence
schools to elite art academies. Yet in spite of this broad spectrum
of possibilities, there is no place where one can prepare for a collective
practice. At best, there are the rare examples where teams (usually
partnerships of two) can apply as one for admission into institutions
of higher learning. But once in the school, from administration to curriculum,
students are forced to accept the ideological imperative that artistic
practice is an individual practice. The numerous mechanisms to ensure
that this occurs are too many to list here, so only a few illustrative
examples will be offered. Consider the spatial model of the art school.
Classrooms are designed to accommodate aggregates of specialists. Studios
are designed to accommodate a single artist, or like the classrooms,
aggregates of students working individually. Rarely can a classroom
be found that has a space designed for face-to-face group interaction.
Nor are spaces provided where artists of various media can come together
to work on project ideas. Then there is the presentation of faculty
(primary role models) as individual practitioners. The institution rewards
individual effort at the faculty level in a way similar to how students
are rewarded for individual efforts through grades. Woe be to the faculty
member who goes to the tenure review board with only collective efforts
to show for he/rself. Obviously, these reward systems have their effect
on the cultural socialization process. On the public front, the situation
is no better. If artists want grants for reasons other than being a
nonprofit presenter/producer, they better be working as individuals.
Generally speaking, collective practice has no place in the grant system.
Collectives reside in that liminal zone--they are neither an individual,
nor an institution, and there are no other categories. Seemingly there
is no place to turn. Collectives are not wanted in the public sphere,
in the education system, nor in the cultural market (in the limited
sense of the term), so why would CAE be so in favor of collective cultural
action?
Part of the answer once again has to do with market demands. Market
imperatives are double-edged swords. There are just as many demands
that contradict and are incommensurate with the ones just mentioned.
Three examples immediately spring to mind. First, the market wants individuals
with lots of skills for maximum exploitation--it's a veritable return
to the "renaissance man." An artist must be able to produce in a given
medium, write well enough for publication, be verbally articulate, have
a reasonable amount of knowledge of numerous disciplines (including
art history, aesthetics, critical theory, sociology, psychology, world
literature, media theory, and history, and given the latest trends,
now various sciences), be a capable public speaker, a career administrator,
and possess the proper diplomatic skills to navigate through a variety
of cultural subpopulations. Certainly some rare individuals do have
all of these skills, but the individual members of CAE are not examples
of this category. Consequently, we can only meet this standard by working
collectively.
Second, there is the need for opportunity. Given the overwhelming number
of artists trained in academies, colleges, and universities over the
past thirty years, adding to what is already an excessive population
of cultural producers (given the few platforms for distribution), the
opportunity for a public voice has rapidly decreased. By specializing
in a particular medium, one cuts the opportunities even further. The
greater one's breadth of production skills, the more opportunity there
is. Opportunity is also expanded by breadth of knowledge. The more one
knows, the more issues one can address. In a time when content has resurfaced
as an object of artistic value, a broad interdisciplinary knowledge
base is a must. And finally, opportunity can be expanded through the
ability to address a wide variety of cultural spaces. The more cultural
spaces that a person is comfortable working in, the more opportunity
s/he has. If designed with these strategies in mind, collectives can
configure themselves to address any issue or space, and they can use
all types of media. The result is a practice that defies specialization
(and hence pigeonholing). CAE, for example, can be doing a web project
one moment, a stage performance at a festival the next, a guerrilla
action the next, museum installation after that, followed by a book
or journal project. (FIGS. 1-4) Due to collective strength, CAE is prepared
for many cultural opportunities.
Finally, the velocity of cultural economy is a factor. The market can
consume a product faster than ever before. Just in terms of quantity,
collective action offers a tremendous advantage. By working in a group,
CAE members are able to resist the Warhol syndrome of factory production
using underpaid laborers. Through collective action, product and process
integrity can be maintained, while at the same time keeping abreast
of market demand. These considerations may sound cynical, and to a degree
they are, but they appear to CAE as a reality which must be negotiated
if one is to survive as a cultural producer. On the other hand, there
is something significant about collective action that is rewarding beyond
what can be understood through the utilitarian filters of economic survival.
Size Matters: Cellular Collective
Construction
One problem that seems to plague collective organization is the catastrophe
of the group reaching critical mass. When this point is reached, group
activity violently explodes, and little or nothing is left of the organization.
The reasons for hitting this social wall vary depending on the function
and intention of the group. CAE's experience has been that larger artists/activists
groups tend to hit this wall once membership rises into the hundreds.
At that point, a number of conflicts and contradictions emerge that
cause friction in the group. For one thing, tasks become diversified.
Not everyone can participate fully in each task, so committees are formed
to focus on specific tasks. The group thus moves from using a direct
process to using a representational process. This step toward bureaucracy
conjures feelings of separation and mistrust that can be deadly to group
action, and that are symptomatic of the failure of overly rationalized
democracy. To complicate matters further, different individuals enter
the group with differing levels of access to resources. Those with the
greatest resources tend to have a larger say in group activities. Consequently,
minorities form that feel underrepresented and powerless to compete
with majoritarian views and methods. (Too often, these minorities reflect
the same minoritarian structure found in culture as a whole). Under
such conditions, group splintering, if not group annihilation, is bound
to occur. Oddly enough, the worst case scenario is not group annihilation,
but the formation of a Machiavellian power base that tightens the bureaucratic
rigor in order to purge the group of malcontents, and to stifle difference.
Such problems can also occur at a smaller group level (between fifteen
and fifty members). While these smaller groups have an easier time avoiding
the alienation that comes from a complex division of labor and impersonal
representation, there still can be problems, such as the perception
that not everyone has an equal voice in group decisions, or that an
individual is becoming the signature voice of the group. Another standard
problem is that the level of intimacy necessary to sustain passionately
driven group activity rarely emerges in a mid-size group. The probability
is high that someone, for emotional or idiosyncratic reasons, is not
going to be able to work with someone else on a long-term basis. These
divisions cannot be organized or rationalized away. Much as the large
democratic collective (such as WAC or ACT UP) is good for short-term,
limited-issue political and cultural action, the mid-size group seems
to function best for short-term, specific-issue cultural or political
projects. The difference here is that due to the high number of members,
a large group can work effectively with a small palette of interrelated
issues, such as the variety that ACT UP has addressed in relation to
the AIDS crisis. If diversification of issues becomes too extreme, splintering
occurs. Returning to the ACT UP example, the related issue of gay and
lesbian rights was too diverse to maintain the focus of the group, and
hence Queer Nation emerged as an answer to the problem of expanding
interrelated issues. (It must be noted that in some ways ACT UP is also
an exception to these generalities. It has managed to recruit and reconfigure
itself into a position of collective longevity. The reasons why it is
the exception are too complex to go into here, and suffice it to say
that that situation is rather unique. WAC is a better example in regard
to the representative case of large-scale collective duration.) On the
other hand, the mid-size group is caught in that dangerous either/or
zone. They do not have the numbers to address a large number of complex,
tightly interrelated issues, nor do they have the intimacy of a small
group that allows for long-term collaboration. Instead these groups
work best when they form to address a particular issue with a particular
project, and then self-terminate. Such groups are really tactical and
ad hoc in nature, as opposed to cells and large collectives that can
take a more strategic position. This situation is typified by Group
Material. It started as a mid-size collective, and after a few strong
and specific projects, found it could go no further as a mid-size group
(although, rather than self-terminating, it reduced itself to a cellular
configuration for long-term collaboration).
For sustained cultural or political practice free of bureaucracy or
other types of separating factors, CAE recommends a cellular structure.
Thus far the artists' cell that typifies contemporary collective activity
has formed in a manner similar to band society. Solidarity is based
on similarity in terms of skills and political/aesthetic perceptions.
Most of the now classic cellular collectives of the 70s and 80s, such
as Ant Farm, General Idea, Group Material, Testing the Limits (before
it splintered), and Gran Fury used such a method with admirable results.
Certainly these collectives' models for group activity are being emulated
by a new generation. However, CAE has made one adjustment in its collective
structure. While size and similarity through political/aesthetic perspective
has replicated itself in the group, members do not share a similarity
based on skill. Each member's set of skills is unique to the cell. Consequently,
in terms of production, solidarity is not based on similarity, but on
difference. The parts are interrelated and interdependent. Technical
expertise is given no chance to collide and conflict, and hence social
friction is greatly reduced. In addition, such structure allows CAE
to use whatever media it chooses, because the group has developed a
broad skill base. Having a broad skill base and interdisciplinary knowledge
also allows the group to work in any kind of space.
Solidarity through difference also affects the structure of power in
the group. Formerly, collective structure tended to be based on the
idea that all members were equals at all times. Groups had a tremendous
fear of hierarchy, because it was considered a categorical evil that
led to domination. This notion was coupled with a belief in extreme
democracy as the best method of avoiding hierarchy. While CAE does not
follow the democratic model, the collective does recognize its merits.
However, CAE follows Foucault's principle that power is productive (power
does not necessarily equal domination), and hence uses a floating hierarchy
to produce projects. After consensus is reached on how a project should
be produced, the member with the greatest expertise in the area has
authority over the final product. While all members have a voice in
the production process, the project leader makes the final decisions.
This keeps endless discussion over who has the better idea or design
to a minimum, and hence the group can produce at faster rate. Projects
tend to vary dramatically, so the authority floats among the membership.
At the same time, CAE would not recommend this process for any social
constellation other than the cell (three to eight people). Members must
be able to interact in a direct face-to-face manner, so everyone is
sure that they have been heard as a person (and not as an anonymous
or marginalized voice). Second, the members must trust one another;
that is, sustained collective action requires social intimacy and a
belief that the other members have each individual member's interests
at heart. A recognition and understanding of the nonrational components
of collective action is crucial--without it the practice cannot sustain
itself.
The collective also has to consider what is pleasurable for its members.
Not all people work at the same rate. The idea that everyone should
do an equal amount of work is to measure a member's value by quantity
instead of quality. As long as the process is pleasurable and satisfying
for everyone, in CAE's opinion, each member should work at the rate
at which they are comfortable. Rigid equality in this case can be a
perverse and destructive type of Fordism that should be avoided. To
reinforce the pleasure of the group, convivial relationships beyond
the production process are necessary. The primary reason for this need
is because the members will intensify bonds of trust and intimacy that
will later be positively reflected in the production process. To be
sure, intimacy produces its own peculiar friction, but the group has
a better chance of surviving the arguments and conflicts that are bound
to arise, as long as in the final analysis each member trusts and can
depend on fellow members. Collective action requires total commitment
to other members, and this is a frightening thought for many individuals.
Certainly, collective practice is not for everyone.
Working a Project
Describing a specific event in collective practice is rather difficult
because it is nearly impossible to accurately articulate the many levels
of exchange and development that occur as members engage in the production
process. However, in the interest of clarity, here is an example (albeit
imperfect) of how the group's process works. Currently, the members
are working on a project called "Flesh Machine." CAE thought that this
project would be exemplary as it is a symphony of media, and because
we are in the middle of producing it, and hence the description will
be framed less from hindsight. The content of the projects won't be
addressed due to lack of space, but the foundational goals of the project
were to examine how human flesh is being invaded, commodified, and marketed,
and how traces of eugenic ideology are replicating themselves in the
economy of reproductive technologies. The idea for Flesh Machine began
after CAE performed and lectured at a conference of media activists
and artists called The Next Five Minutes_ (N5M) in Amsterdam. Of prime
concern at this conference was the Net and other advances in information
and communications technology, and how this technology could be used
for subversive and contestational political purposes. CAE had spent
the previous two years wandering from tech-art festival to tech-art
festival, and in an Amsterdam hotel room we concluded (along with fellow
festival nomads Mark Dery and Hakim Bey) that the political future for
communications and information technology seemed relatively clear, and
that N5M had put the period on generative discussion for the near future.
However, an unresolved issue seemed to be sneaking about many of these
conferences and festivals--biotechnology, and reproductive technology
in particular. From that moment on, CAE turned its attention and energies
to the technological revolution that wasn't getting the hype. As usual,
a new topic seemed to emerge out of an old one.
Once the subject is decided upon, the first step is always research,
and this project was no different. CAE divided into two research teams,
with one doing concept research and the other doing image research.
Once an appropriate database was assembled, CAE began the Flesh Machine
project with the book team writing up the results of the research in
a series of essays. The texts were then passed on to the design team
to be put into book form. The book, _Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer
Babies, and New Eugenic Consciousness_ (Autonomedia) came out in early
1998. From this work members took the ideas that would guide the projects
that were to follow, and from the image database we took the images
that would be the foundation of the project.
Four key projects arose from this period of research and reflection.
First was a children's CD ROM entitled Let's Make a Baby! It was designed
for presentation at the Technoscience section of Hybrid Workspace at
Documenta. Its theme was to examine new reproductive technologies at
a simple yet accurate level in order to present the manner in which
the rationalization of reproduction promotes pancapitalist value systems.
This work began with a production team who wrote the text and did the
drawings for the book (in this case, the team included a guest artist,
Faith Wilding). Then the project went to the design team for layout
and then to the tech team for coding. CAE prefers to set tasks for teams
of two so each member has an immediate consultant for their task. For
example, in the case of material production for the CD, one artist wrote
the text, the other did the drawings, and each acted as an advisor to
the other. At the end of each stage of production, CAE generally takes
time to get a collective OK, and to make sure everyone knows what stage
a project is at. The collective used to be more formal about these procedures,
but after ten years the level of trust has reached a point where there
are times where everyone just does their job, and the group does not
examine the piece until it is completed.
The other three pieces are still under construction. Furthest along
is the "The Fitness Test." This questionnaire examines a person's flesh
marketability should they decide to donate eggs or sperm, or volunteer
for surrogacy. This project began when a research team obtained some
donor screening exams, and immediately noticed how strict the market
gene pool was, and how aestheticized the genetic markers were. From
there, it went to the tech/design team who began creating a presentation
strategy on CD-ROM. An entire faux company (BioCom)** was built around
the test that reflects current reproductive hype as well as the hype's
ideological subtexts. Those who "do well" on the test will asked to
participate in "The Cloning Project." For this section, CAE built a
cryo-lab and has begun accepting donations of cells and embryos, and
volunteers for surrogacy and/or cytoplasm donation. To accomplish these
tasks, one team was detailed to construct the cryotanks (another guest
artist, Colin Piepgras, was brought in for his construction and robotics
expertise), while two other teams were assembled to begin field research.
The first team's task was to observe and learn collection and storage
procedures in genetics and cell biology labs, while the other field
research team lived for two weeks with CAE's first donors, and documented
the couple's experience as they went through IVF treatment. With all
this information in hand, CAE is beginning to assemble the full database
for presentation. In addition, the performance team is working up a
lecture-performance based on our research, which will be given as a
preface to contextualize the entire "Flesh Machine" event.
What this means is that CAE members are constantly working on various
aspects of production, and must coordinate numerous team activities
and individual tasks. In the early days of CAE, people volunteered for
certain teams, and there were disputes about who was going to do what.
But now everyone knows what they do best, how fast they can do it, and
how they can best support the project. Consequently, administration
of production is minimal. For those who find such a model a possible
alternative, remember that it takes a long time to work out all the
bugs that disrupt harmonious member relationships. Nonalienating efficiency
does not happen fast, and processes are never problem-free. In addition,
the collective does not live in a vacuum, so exterior disruptions often
occur that can freeze the group process. With every successfully completed
project, a degree of good fortune is involved.
Coalitions, not Communities
While cellular collective structure is very useful in solving problems
of production, long-term personal cooperation, and security (for those
involved in underground activities), like all social constellations,
it has its limits. It does not solve many of the problems associated
with distribution, nor can it fulfill the functions of localized cultural
and political organizations. Consequently, there has always been a drive
toward finding a social principle that would allow like-minded people
or cells to organize into larger groups. Currently, the dominant principle
is "community." CAE sees this development as very unfortunate. The idea
of community is without doubt the liberal equivalent of the conservative
notion of "family values"--neither exists in contemporary culture, and
both are grounded in political fantasy. For example, the "gay community"
is a term often used in the media and in various organizations. This
term refers to all people who are gay within a given territory. Even
in a localized context, gay men and women populate all social strata,
from the underclass to the elite, so it is very hard to believe that
this aggregate functions as a community within such a complex division
of labor. To complicate matters further, social variables such as race,
ethnicity, gender, education, profession, and other points of difference
are not likely to be lesser points of identification than the characteristic
of being gay. A single shared social characteristic can in no way constitute
a community in any sociological sense. Talking about a gay community
is as silly as talking about a "straight community." The word community
is only meaningful in this case as a euphemism for "minority." The closest
social constellation to a community that does exist is friendship networks,
but those too fall short of community in any sociological sense.
CAE is unsure who really wants community in the first place, as it contradicts
the politics of difference. Solidarity based on similarity through shared
ethnicity, and interconnected familial networks supported by a shared
sense of place and history, work against the possibility of power through
diversity by maintaining closed social systems. This is not to say that
there are no longer relatively closed social subsystems within society.
Indeed there are, but they differ from community in that they are products
of rationalized social construction and completely lack social solidarity.
In order to bring people together from different subsystems who share
a similar concern, hybrid groups have to be intentionally formed. These
groups are made up of people who are focusing their attentions on one
or two characteristics that they share in common, and that put potentially
conflicting differences aside. This kind of alliance, created for purposes
of large-scale cultural production and/or for the visible consolidation
of economic and political power, is known as a coalition.
CAE has supported a number of coalitions in the past, including various
ACT UP chapters and PONY (Prostitutes of New York), and has organized
temporary localized ones as well. One of the problems CAE had with such
alliances was in negotiating service to the coalition while maintaining
its collective practice. Coalitions are often black holes that consume
as much energy as a person is willing to put into them; hence membership
burnout is quite common. CAE was no exception. After a few years of
this variety of activism, members were ready to retreat back into less
visible cellular practice. CAE began looking for a model of coalition
different from the single-issue model. One potential answer has come
by way of CAE's affiliation with the Nettime coalition.* Nettime is
an alliance of activists, artists, collectives, and organizations from
all over Europe and North America that have come together for reasons
of generalized support for hard-left cultural and political causes.
It has approximately five hundred members, and has existed in various
forms for about four years. Nettime functions as an information, distribution,
and recruitment resource for its members. The core of its existence
is virtual: member contact is maintained through an on-line list, various
newsgroups, and an archive. In addition, the coalition holds annual
conferences (the first two, Metaforum I and II, were in Budapest in
1995 and 1996, and the most recent, Beauty and the East, in Ljubljana
in 1997), produces and contributes to the production of projects (the
latest contribution being Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X), supports
various political actions (the most recent being acting as part of the
communications wing for actions at the EU summit in Amsterdam), and
produces books out of its archive (the most recent being _Netzkritik_).
From CAE's perspective, one of the elements that makes Nettime a more
pleasurable experience is that unlike most coalitions, it is anarchistic
rather than democratic. Nettime has no voting procedures, committee
work, coalition officers, nor any of the markers of governance through
representation. Hierarchy emerges in accordance with who is willing
to do the work. Those who are willing to run the list have the most
say over its construction. At the same time, the general policy for
coalition maintenance is "tools not rules." Those building the virtual
architecture govern by providing space for discussions that are not
of general interest to the entire list. They also direct the flow of
information traffic. Whatever members want to do--from flame wars to
long and detailed discussions--there is a place to do it. For events
in real space, the primary rule of "those who do the work have the biggest
say" still applies. Indeed there is considerable room for exploitation
in such a system, yet this does not occur with much frequency because
members have a sufficient trust in and allegiance to other members;
the coalition as a whole won't tolerate system abuse (such as spamming,
or self-aggrandizing use of the list); and there is a self-destruct
fail-safe--members would jump ship at the first sign of ownership and/or
permanent hierarchy. Perhaps the real indicator of the congeniality
shared by Nettime coalition members is its cultural economy. Nettime
functions as an information gift economy. Articles and information are
distributed free of charge to members by those who have accumulated
large information assets. Nettimers often see significant works on the
intersections of art, politics, and technology long before these works
appear in the publications based on money economy. For real space projects,
this same sense of voluntarism pervades all activities. What is different
here from other cultural economies is that gift economy is only demanding
on those who have too much. No one is expected to volunteer until they
suffer or burn out. The volunteers emerge from those who have excessive
time, labor power, funding, space, or some combination thereof, and
need to burn it off to return to equilibrium. Consequently, activity
waxes and wanes depending on the situations and motivations of the members.
CAE does not want to romanticize this form of social organization too
much. Problems certainly occur--quarrels and conflicts break out, enraged
members quit the list, and events do not always go as expected. However,
Nettime is still the most congenial large-scale collective environment
in which CAE has ever worked. The reason is that this coalition began
with the romantic principle of accepting nonrational characteristics--it
believed that a large collective could exist based on principles of
trust, altruism, and pleasure, rather than based on the Hobbesian assumption
(so typical of democratic coalitions) of the war of all against all,
which in turn leads to a near pathological over-valuation of the organizational
principles of accountability and categorical equality. Nettime functions
using just one fail-safe which is system-self destruction. It thereby
skips all the alienating bureaucracy necessary for managing endless
accountability procedures. If Nettime self-destructs, all members will
walk away whole, and will look for new opportunities for collective
action. An alliance with the temporary is one of Nettime's greatest
strengths.
Final Thoughts
Critical Art Ensemble has sustained a collective cultural practice for
ten years. The collective began when the members were still students,
and to this day none of us have considered solo careers.*** Now, we
cannot even imagine what it would be like to have an individual practice,
partly because no CAE member has ever had one, and partly because it
seems to be a more difficult path to travel. Granted, CAE will never
have a blue-chip career, but except for the excessive profits that art
stars earn, the group has acquired all the benefits that such a career
provides: The practice is self-sufficient; the membership has the means
to produce the projects that it wants to make; the group has access
to international distribution; and most importantly, CAE has a public
platform from which to speak. Such benefits did not come our way entirely
because we took advantage of group organization, but it certainly was
a contributing cause.
Although collectives are not representative of cultural production in
the "art world," cells and coalitions present a viable alternative to
individual cultural practices. Collective action solves some of the
problems of navigating market-driven cultural economy by allowing the
individual to escape the skewed power relationships between the individual
and the institution. More significantly, however, collective action
also helps alleviate the intensity of alienation born of an overly rationalized
and instrumentalized culture by re-creating some of the positive points
of friendship networks within a productive environment. For this reason,
CAE believes that artists' research into alternative forms of social
organization is just as important as the traditional research into materials,
processes, and products.
Notes
*The description of the Nettime coalition given in this essay is solely
from CAE's perspective. It was not collectively written nor approved
by Nettime.
** An inauthentic metastructure (BioCom, Inc.) was used to give the
collected documents and procedures a thematic relationship; however,
all medical documents and procedures used in the project are authentic.
The couple documented going through IVF treatment is also authentic;
however, they did not engage the procedure for the sake of the project.
Rather, they volunteered to participate in the project after they had
already decided to undertake IVF treatment. The design of the CD-ROM
also mimics the popular design techniques for electronic documents from
medical institutions.
***In the first year of its existence, CAE membership changed quite
a bit. Only two members remain from the first year. In the second year,
the membership stabilized at six. Five of the members are still in the
collective; one member left after four years.
CAE is a collective of five artists dedicated to the exploration of
the intersections between art, technology, critical theory, and political
activism.
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Nineteen Theses on
Engaged Art
by Grant Kester
1. Western societies are increasingly committed to fixing the boundaries
of national identity (as well as fortifying their physical borders),
even as the economic systems on which they are based extend ever further
into other cultures and other ways of life. Internally, American society
is characterized by the widespread effort to privatize those domains
of social life which were based on the ideals (if not always the reality)
of a shared commitment to a public good. Everywhere we see a retreat
into privatized enclaves (of national identity, of personal autonomy)
along with a refusal to acknowledge the relationship between economic
privilege and consumption patterns here and lack of resources and opportunity
elsewhere.
2. The characteristic mental orientation of this system combines an
unabashedly self-interested pragmatism (whatever works to my personal
advantage or pleasure must be good) with a belligerent empiricism (if
I don't have to see the social costs of my own affluence they must not
exist). As a corollary we see a sustained attack on any form of analysis
that points to systematic power structures (less visible but no less
profound in their effects) that sustain oppression and inequality as
hopelessly "abstract".
3. With the advent of NAFTA the US can increasingly rely on low-waged,
exploited labor in other countries. As a result we have witnessed the
expansion of a massive prison industry designed to "immobilize" potentially
disruptive "youth cohorts" (i.e., young black men) whose labor is no
longer needed (cf. Sarat Maharaj and "racism without race"). We have
also witnessed the proliferation of a vast occult network of studies,
social programs, and policies all intended to repair the perceived behavioral
flaws of those marginalized populations whose failure to "succeed" threatens
to reveal the inequitable and crisis-ridden nature of the market system
itself. This has coincided with an unprecedented concentration of wealth
in the hands of an increasingly small segment of America's corporate
elite.
4. In the arts we find a parallel to the rampant self-interest of consumer
capitalism in recent attempts to establish a consumerist aesthetics,
based on the ostensibly subversive power of visual pleasure. This view
is founded on a dualistic analysis in which "reason," "theory," and
"language" are juxtaposed in a politically naive and reductive manner
to the liberatory anarchism of bodily desire, which manages to be both
reassuringly "empirical" (where "theory" is hopelessly abstract) and
magically autonomous and beyond analysis.
5. At the center of this model stands the artist-as-exemplary-individual-an
avatar of the expressive and intuitive, holding a privileged relationship
to the suppressed truths of the body and the senses. The artist need
take no account of his or her relationship to political and economic
power precisely because in naming themselves "artist" they are understood
to transcend their specific class position. They emerge from this process,
chrysalis like, as universal subjects whose good intentions and authority
over specialized forms of aesthetic knowledge guarantees that even their
most intuitive gesture will exercise a politically progressive influence
on the world around them.
6. Any demand for accountability is dismissed as the oppressive intrusion
of "analytic" thought into the "free" domain of artist creativity. The
only real taboo in this world of redemptive and open-ended aesthetic
play is, then, the open admission of the artists' own privilege. Art
in this system corroborates the very corrosive individuality and self-involvement
that provides the foundation for the dominant social order as a whole,
confusing "pleasure," as the indulgence of the privileged, with the
body as a site of political struggle and contestation both locally and
globally.
7. A small but vital network of artists from around the world have begun
to challenge both this hyper-individualistic model of art-making and
the increasingly dominant values of the global capitalist system. These
artists, working in Argentina, South Africa, Germany, Austria, Thailand,
Burma, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, the United
States and elsewhere, draw on traditions of activism in their own countries
as well as the paradigm of "socially-engaged" art developed in countries
such as the Canada, the US and the UK over the past three decades. The
"Littoral" conferences of 1993 (Manchester), 1996 (Sydney) and 1998
(Dublin) have provided a rare opportunity for these practitioners to
meet and exchange information and ideas.
8. For these artists the power of aesthetic experience lies in its ability
to transcend existing boundaries of political, creative, and social
knowledge; to comprehend and to represent complex systems and interrelationships,
and to conceive of alternative forms which these interrelationships
might take. They draw on a discursive or communicative aesthetic in
which the "artist" seeks to learn from and with their co-participants,
rather than treating them as a kind of psychic raw material to be molded
and "improved" in conformity with the artist's values.
9. These projects are particularly successful in those situations in
which the artist shares the lived experiences, material conditions and
political struggles of their collaborators. These projects have the
power to break down the conventional distinction between artist, art
work and audience-a relationship that allows the viewer to "speak back"
to the artist in certain ways, and in which this reply becomes in effect
a part of the "work" itself.
10. Their works mediate "between" discourses (art and activism, for
example) and between institutions (the gallery and the community center
or the housing block). They attempt to link cultural practices and experiences
to other registers of political activism (e.g., social movements, struggles
over resources or cultural identity, and so on). This involves both
an internal critique of the historical suppression of the political
capacity of aesthetic knowledge and a critique of the enclosed nature
of conventional definitions of political resistance which view "culture"
as irrelevant or extraneous.
11. The failure of ostensibly socialist or communist governments in
Russia and Eastern Europe has led to a generalized belief that the system
of global capitalism presided over by dominant western nations through
the IMF and the World Bank is inevitable and beyond substantive critique,
even as the economic crises in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and
elsewhere point to its inherently unstable nature. This system works
by maximizing the flow of financial capital and information, but it
must also work to suppress and regulate the flow of critical, political
discourse and populations.
12. Engaged artists, working in widely disparate locations, have a unique
opportunity to bring a critical, mediative, and discursive aesthetic
to bear on the interlinked network of institutions and ideologies associated
with the global expansion of capital, as corporate decisions in Portland,
Cologne, London or New York come to effect life and labor in Sri Lanka,
Ciudad Juarez or Thailand. Artists can play an important role in giving
representational form to the flows and forces of social and economic
power, and in helping to visually articulate the struggles taking place
against them.
13. This work would require the establishment of strategic collaborations
between practitioners working in both dominant, western nations (e.g.,
the G-7) and "non-aligned" or "developing" nations (or more accurately,
strategically "under-developed" nations). These collaborations would
require new relationships and new forms of discursive communication
and decision-making to be established between and among engaged artists
operating in widely differing contexts and cultures.
14. The recent Littoral conference in Dublin, Ireland (1998) initiated
a dialogue among practitioners working in very different contexts, and
suggested the important linkages that could be established for future
work. It also demonstrated some of the potential challenges that such
collaborative ventures might face. One of the most important was the
vast differential in resources (institutional affiliations, access to
development support and the mechanisms of art world career advancement
such as exhibitions and publications, etc.) in countries such as the
US and artists (especially younger artists) working in countries with
a relatively undeveloped cultural apparatus. This difference was often
further articulated along lines of race, as well as nationality.
15. In Dublin there was a tendency to suppress these differences under
the claim that all "artists" share common political and cultural values,
and that all have suffered equally for their commitment to cultural
politics. Lurking just beneath the surface was the problematic implication
that hard work and self-sacrifice (epitomized by highly successful engaged
artists from the west) was all that was necessary to develop an effective
or successful practice. There is, however, a difference between a practitioner
coming from a context in which the price to paid for pursuing socially
engaged art is a less influential teaching position, and those artists
who face exile, deportation or harassment by police, immigration officials
for their work.
16. Related to this was the problem of itinerancy, typically seen in
the work of artists from the US with university affiliations who develop
projects in disparate political and geographic contexts, often making
contact with a local site or community through the medium of regional
cultural or political authorities. This is quite different from the
situation of those artists working with less resources in strategically-underdeveloped
countries whose practice grows out of a sustained engagement in a specific
location or site of political struggle.
17. These differences must be recognized and engaged. These projects
involve very different creative, tactical and strategic questions, and
one mode of practice (despite its obvious success in the context of
western art and culture) is not necessarily a useful model for the other.
In potential collaborations between these two kinds of practitioners
the danger exists of a kind of touristic relationship to oppression
in other countries and a model of "imperial stewardship" in which the
ostensibly "universal" nature of art-making is used to reinforce the
colonialist mentality of the beneficent worker from the west who un-self-consciously
equates his or her own experience with that of artists living and working
in very different conditions.
18. Despite these differences dialogue is not only possible; it is necessary.
But it must begin with a frank recognition of where the various participants
in this dialogue stand. The reluctance to acknowledge these differentials
is, perhaps, linked with the fear among more privileged practitioners
that they will thereby surrender their moral authority or their power
to speak and act politically. This is not the case. By recognizing that
we are all positioned differentially in relationship to social and economic
power we only give up the right to speak universally; we gain, however,
the right to speak with greater conviction on behalf our own lived experience
and political contexts.
19. The Littoral conferences have set the stage for a myriad of possible
linkages and new relationships-future collaborative projects, the exchange
and circulation of information and ideas through the internet, conferences
and meetings, the formal and informal publication of projects and criticism,
and so on. It has done so against the indifference and in some cases
the outright hostility of mainstream arts institutions in England and
Ireland, and has provided an unprecedented opportunity to expand and
clarify a crucially important area of cultural practice. It remains
for the participants to take advantage of this opportunity and to pursue
and develop new forms of collaboration, discursive interaction, and
critical practice. The views outlined here represent only one possible
framework for this next step.
Grant Kester
Moscow, Idaho
USA, September 1998
Grant´s other
text
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A Call for More!
by jay koh
i would assume that the visitors and speakers
attending the Littoral "Critical Sites" conference in Dublin (September
1998) shared a common concern that the current system of education available
to art students seeking to work on socially or environmentally-oriented
projects (as well as the opportunities available to practitioners who
wish to pursue these projects) is inadequate. The presentation at this
conference of dispassionate scholarly papers only confirms the uselessness
of academics in providing any catalyst to change this situation. The
fact that these academics were given financial support to travel to
the conference further confirms the pervasiveness of academic hierarchies.
The sections of the conference that were taken up by artists providing
superficial presentations of projects without going into any depth as
to the concept behind the project, its capacity to achieve some communication
with the viewer, its relevance to social issues, and the question of
its practical function "in the right place at the right time" reveals
the inability of these artists to relate their artistic practice to
critical issues (for example, the tendency to ignore the differences
between real communication with the public and the simple placement
of a work or project in an open space). These presentations lacked any
conviction or concern with their after-effect; when the artists or artworks
departed from Ireland the locals were left to say, "the circus has just
left town, wasn't that fun! I'm looking forward to the next entertainment!".
i believe that these conferences should develop a form of critical presentation
that would act as an alternative to, or enhancement of, existing art
education, allowing participants to learn through analysis and self-criticism.
We could benefit from some of the points that Wolfgang Zinggl brought
up in his talk, and question the existing institutional framework for
conferences. Perhaps we could evolve a more effective strategy for provoking
a change in institutional thinking. It would have been better to focus
the conference on scrutinizing the intentions of the artist, and examining
the kinds of feedback generated by specific actions or interventions.
If artists make use of exploitative depictions of gender or race in
their work they should be called upon to account for them and to explain
the context in which they are working and the meanings and messages
they are trying to generate. If these questions were raised in a constructive
and critical forum they would certainly not diminish the artistic value
of the work.
Some of the questions raised during the various lectures at Littoral
included:
How does the inclusion of images of razor blades in murals by South
African women related to the development of critical art practice in
present day South Africa?(1)
What kinds of responses are evoked by large paintings attached to buildings
or churches?(2)
How did remarks in a lecture about art activities by non-white artists
which focused on the academic background of these artists, provoke different
reactions from a racially-mixed audience?(2)
Other "highlights" of the conference included wide praise for a universal
concept of the artist as someone who spreads "goodies" around to others,(3)
who just happens to be white and middle-class. There was also a story
about young American students from Chicago who had to travel to South
Africa in order to experience empathy for a black student who was killed
in demonstrations over food prices.(4)
It is important to channel the private outrages that were generated
at this conference; to break the public silence of indulged lethargy
and false consideration. Only then we can pursue constructive goals.
What looks good in biographical form does not always work in reality
and projects that made sense ten years ago do not always fit into today's
stunted environment. Only one point remains the same: the intention
is always good!
Workshops are perhaps the most effective way to raise some of these
issues and to facilitate the exchange of ideas, but it will be difficult
to initiate future projects (following on the "Critical Sites" conference)
since the organizer has already allocated funding from Northern Irish
sources to his respective projects and friends. Details of this process
began to emerge during the conference. Initially it was announced that
there were no funds from Northern Ireland, but two days later it was
announced that there were funds, but that they could only be used for
projects in the North. With no discussion it was established that five
projects were to be developed in the North with this money and that
the participants were already chosen.
The lack of open discussion about this process, and the un-democratic
way in which the funds were allocated in a conference that was supposed
to be about open forms of dialogue may not have been obvious to some
of the participants, but this conflict should have been obvious to the
members of the committee who were asked to make recommendations, in
order to give the conference a democratic appearance.(5) Were these
members simply used in order to achieve some other goal? i thought democratic
structures of decision-making were fundamental to any art cum social/environmental
project, and especially in a conference dedicated to this kind of work.
Shouldn't we set an example for our colleagues and show how to initiate
projects that would be accessible to everyone, like the projects of
Critical Art Ensemble(6), which were low-cost and innovative? It is
bad enough that critical artists working in the mainstream, where most
of the funding comes from have to face various difficulties (see articles
on censorship). We certainly
don't need any more hindrances from our own colleagues, who share a
common goal! As practitioners we need to understand what has led to
a situation in which art cum social/environmental projects are excluded
from the current art educational agenda; we need to seek inspiration
and provide nourishment for innovative projects through intensive and
productive exchanges, and a platform that will allow for the open scrutiny
of ideas.
Sources:
(1)Conference lecture from Pitika Ntuli, Dean of Fine Art and Art History,
University of Durban-Westville South Africa
(2)Conference lecture from Pat Hoffie, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane,
Australia
(3)Grant Kester, Nineteen Theses on Engaged Art, paragraph 15
(4)Conference lecture from Carol Becker, Dean, Art School and Art Institute
of Chicago
(5)Commitee meetings begin in Nov.1997, Dublin
(6)Critical Art Ensemble, Observations on Collective Cultural Action,
chapter: THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF MARKET DEMANDS.
jay´s
other texts , artworks
and performances
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dimensionality
of art an ENVELOPE STRUCTURE
by John Latham
Summary of finding:
the dimensionality of art discloses itself
from the mainstream art trajectory :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Time" is "3-dimensional", by point / line / plane components and is
specified in terms of
"flat time"
flat time accommodates
physical and mental events, constituting a numerate envelope structure.
the dimensional framework of art
is time- and event-based.
It subsumes the dimensional frameworks of physics.
Inclusivity potential (1)
The dimensionality of art has revealed itself via merged trajectories
of art, science and literature. Taking the year 1850 as a wave crest
where confidence in the visible world of space was at a high, we may
now see how, 100 years later by 1951, each traditional approach had
hit a deep trough where compaction to "Everything = Nothing" closes
down the space-based paradigm. A dimensionality of "event" has emerged
from a fusion of these tracks and may now be recognised as including
inherently both mental and physical phenomena. .
"flat time" as it is called,
collates three time-related components, which propose a dynamics from
which anomalies in current approaches to understanding, (along with
other problems faced by life on the planet) may be addressed. It will
map with potentially digital precision all alleged experience, from
that of photon to person to universe. .
Normally expressed as art, "flat time"
is "late abstract". Grammatical language, common sense perception, spacetime,
mass-energy, and most other such space-based constructs misconstrue
or implicitly deny it. There seems to be one key exception to this rule,
namely the possibility of a verbal talkdown of what may be said to define
the point of fusion between the idea of the universe as proposed in
physics and this proposal from art. One further step down in levels
of integration here provides a common architectural principle of structure
in events (an "evenometry") that will map all the cultures while remaining
party to none.
Inclusivity potential: (2)
historical tracks which lead to a flat time manifold showing up via
the trajectory of art.
The art track
- 1850 to 1950
A period shift which manifests a full reversal of the1850 criteria,
to reach an "impossible" conclusion
in each of the mainstream approaches to comprehension.
Beacon figures :
From full confidence in a space-based universe as represented eg. by
Delacroix (1798-1864), 3-D representation, through
Manet, Degas, - interest passing from illustrative, perspective effects
to flat process, marks, action
Monet, Cezanne, Seurat; - 2-D Surface
affording an architectural unity in the Work
Picasso and cubism develop flatness; the 'make-event' replaces appearances,
spatial perspective.
Duchamp and the conceptual; the 'Work as Art' under scrutiny; zero action
up-valued
Mondrian and the minimal; the overriding principle "Less is More" leads
eventually to
The Monochrome as the
Work, and its action-based complement: Pollock, tachism, action: The
Mark in both "time" and "frozen time" as the Work; Finally, (Cage, Rauschenberg
1951) Zero Action as
the Work, - which proposes
(all) art on par with zero action.)
Since this conclusion was reached there has been a branching into The
event-structure development and
"flat time"
"post modern"
beacon figures are an extension of the prophetic tradition, which underpins
the belief systems of cultures
Inclusivity potential (3)
Theory as science:
Mainline problems suggest that dimensional frameworks predicated on
(S=space-based) phenomena carry a flaw, whereas one based on time (T)
is viable.
The idea of gravity (basic to contemporary
physics) may be flawed at the outset: 'Quantum gravity',
'gravity waves': spacetime or semantic misconceptions..? The OI-IO definition
shows gravity as the part -IO, viz. Discharge of initial Impulse OI;
.the extended Universe coming to an end on the time-base U, .. to coincide
at a nonextended State O with the U event "score"). Physics
cannot process the behaviour of the physicist, nor recognise either
reflective or intuitive functions structurally.
Gravitational collapse:
"the greatest crisis ever to face physics" see John Wheeler, Gravitation,
1970. (The proposition zero space zero time as a 'State O') General
Relativity showing (all) matter collapsing to a dimensionless point,
predicts a state Everything = Nothing.
The crisis arises in the word physical when a spatial continuum is assumed
to be a primary datum. Multidimensional theories postulate more spatial
components, (eg. Michio Kaku's 12-D superstrings), never time-related
ones. A compression of dimensional components to "time-relatedness"
in point/ line/ plane (ie as a nonextended State O) stems from a least
extended proto-universe of one extended state. It is evidently disregarded,
prior to the series of forms as art which propose it.
Zero point energy:
the occurrence of energy (as 'photons') uncaused from any known source
- "energy from nowhere" signifies (T) "from a state of zero extendedness"
rather than from a "vacuum" as postulated in the (S) theory. (Vacuum:
a mysterious source of unlimited virtual energy in empty space. ) In
(T) the result Everything > Nothing is implicit in the expression OI-IO:
State O, and the plane (A-U)2, represent the informing score-component
of the extended Universe on the time-base line U (the Unow Universe).
Nonlocation of Information: Particles
in physics found to "know" what has happened far beyond the distance
that information can travel at the speed of light, therefore requiring
an informational relationship independent of space. In (T) any entity
is an Insistently Recurrent Event (IRE) emanating from State O Impulse
and discharging as "photon" as understood in physics. There is no spatial
component in State O, all parts of the extended Universe may be in informational
relationship within a State I Universe. Order ultimately derives from
State O in the way that musical performance is ordered from an (atemporally
omnipresent) score.. A recent report (New Scientist, 20.8.98) confirms
the inherent nonlocality in flat time .
Fifth force. To account
for discrepancies in its Standard and Inflationary models, some have
postulated a "fifth force". In flat time all events are in-formed structurally
via State O and time-base coordinates. (T) proposes a potentially digital
"evenometry" in flat time with which to construct relationships. "Fifth
force" accounting affords no architecture where a (T) diagram is specificly
that.
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»Don't
Forget Love« - A Cartography of the Ambient: From White Cube to Ambient
by Stefan Römer
Lecture for the symposion »Concepts and Artistic Practices at the
Edge of the Century«
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, Jan. 24. 1999
It is not easy for me to speak about recent developments taking place
in Germany and the 'Western world' since I can not take for granted
that we share the same social, political and epistemological system
of reference; I do not want to sum it. up simply with the term »cultural
difference«. Because the term »culture« is never used without an ideological
connotation of value.
I understand my practice as a conceptual artist and art-theoretician
as a critique of the existing hegemonial modes of production of pictures
and discourse. This is based on the theory that each politico-economical
system has its own forms of representation - such as architecture, advertising,
art, fashion etc. These symbolic systems are basically responsible for
the function of power.
(Slide: Kartographie)
My Lecture »Don't Forget Love - A Cartography of the Ambient: From White
Cube to Ambient«1investigates the changes of the spatial
frame conditions of artistic practices and the trends of incorporation
and privatization of public space in the 'Western world'. This politico-economical
restructuring of the urban field does not leave the historicising, commercialising
und discoursive exhibition space (White Cube) untouched because it has
never been autonomous. I am thinking this is totally opposed to the
deadend theory of the autonomous art object. This whole conception,
this humunculus of Imannuel Kant's Third Critique is only able to build
a system of hierarchical values and exclusions. As for example the appropriating
practices of Shukla Savant and Satish Sharma in the »Edge of the Century«-exhibition
shows the notions of invention, creativity, and originality - refering
to the old male autonomous work of art - are irrelevant for contemporary
art practice.
Corporization should be understood as the tendencies of privatization
und incorporation of former public areas in the age of globalization.
Thus, my thesis is the following: The incorporation of public space
is accompanied by a change of the white Cube into the Ambient.
First of all I would like the city to be understood as a social and
political field and not as a mere architectural or traffic-related structure.
As a consequence, the following questions arise: What is the function
of the terms public and public space? In which way are art practices
affected by the ever increasing representation of the city as a media
image? Which consequences does this have for the discoursive value of
the conventional exhibition space?
(Slide: Don't forget..., München)
I owe the title »Don't forget love« to a graffiti I have seen in the
city of Munich: In my opinion, this image seems to signify many elements
of the contemporary environment of western cities and their specific
social behavior: The hermetically closed walls of the corporate building
as a display for advertising, the relay box, the traffic system, the
street names as the signification system, the small strips of green
as a sign of the domination of nature and the observation camera as
a sign of total social control. The title may sound programmatic and
may remind of a title of a novel in the same way, but I use it ambivalent
because this individual, sentimental statement stands in blatant contrast
to the urban environment.
1. The change of the term »public«
»The old social subdivisions, based on power, capital, and self-interest,
had reasserted themselves here as anywhere else.« J.G. Ballard2
(Slide: 0 qm...)
The following scenario could be observed on a public square in Cologne
in 1992: Next to a table and a chair, fixed to the facade of a house
under demolition, one could read: »To let 0 m2 580
DM to female German single blondes only«.
Concerning »art in public space«, this installation can be regarded
as a perfect model, not only because it alludes to the - neo-right wing,
xenophobic, and sexist - social climate, in which it situates itself
sarcastically, but also because this installation doesn't cost the city
any money and will disappear automatically when a new house is built
at this site. The above mentioned phenomena within the social climate
relate to the conventions as defined by the French philosopher Michel
Foucault. It is true that this kind of art does without authorship and
disappears some time or other, which is why most of the art theoreticians
would not label it as art. But - in contrast to the illegal status of
graffiti - this kind of art uses a very factographic statement reflecting
its social context, and it acts as a critically intended intervention.
(Slide: Reiterstandbild und Architektur, München)
The concept of public space which is also relevant for this installation
denotes the idealized space, that is accessable to different social
groups and therefore meets the political function of being a venue for
social interaction as defined by the ideological structure of the modernist
state. But since this place is always infiltrated and ruled by power
interests and strategies of representation it can never realy be called
a free area. I would like to point out a new aspect: In the contemporary
design of urban space the media play a prominent role because they represent
the conditions of the public. In this sense the media must be regarded
as the fourth dimension of public space, for example touristic catalogues:
(Slide: Dream City). Thus, every public space must be examined
not only in regard to its social and economic but also to its ideological
and media function. In the course of Neoliberalism, corporate influences
have increased since both cities and companies assume that the status
of the public space enhanced by art can serve as a qualification of
the location of a company: In this way art is reified as the cultural
software of the city. Furthermore, companies are enabled to design their
corporate image according to a certain location3.
Anyhow, at present any form of art practice is situated in this rhetoric
of economism of symbol production and the image policy of a city or
a company.
Corporate image policy takes advantage of the verdict of the 1960s-70s,
that art in public space has to be understood as populist and democratic4.
Given the changed conditions this must, of course, be called into question.
In his understanding of the iconology of Erwin Panofsky the French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu assumes that art consists not only of the art object
but is appropriated by a larger group than that of the friends of the
artist5. This special kind of public is the public
of the institution of art. Therefore, the institution of art comprises
not only institutionalized buildings but all forms of publication and
publicity of art6. Consequently, the space in which
art is presented is always an institutional space for art even if it
had nothing to do with art beforehand; otherwise it would not be art
but advertising or whatsoever.
The concept of the public prevailing today is totally different from
that which the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the 1960s understood
by »civil public«7. He dealt essentially with the
transition from feudal to civil public. In the 1980s and, increasingly,
in the 1990s a transition from a civil understanding of the public to
a corporate one could be witnessed: Because of the increasingly economic
functions of the public space it is no longer at the free disposal of
the citizens. The characteristics of the new concept of the public have
to be understood as a largely economical dominance of the urban space
and the media. This economical dominance also affects new processes
of production and labour as well as conceptions of the subject. It is
interesting that also some governmental institutions nowadays present
themselves as commercial enterprises8.
The public relations techniques used belong to the so-called tertiary
sector of the economy (or the service sector) where production, in the
sense of late-capitalist theories, has given way to mere representation
and where, at the same time, territorial and institutional outsourcing
has taken place. This implies that the production of every company goes
hand in hand with creating a specific public or publicity for its commodities
by making use of its corporate image. In this sense according to Baudrillard,
the exchange value has replaced the utility value of products which
in turn, is obviously replaced by a symbolic sign value in the age of
post-Fordism9. In this new period of capitalism markets
are created for specific products instead of producing according to
demand. Within this symbolic framework of the economy only that part
of society is regarded as public that is adressed by a special kind
of advertising and from which a consumerist feedback can be expected.
For that reason the term public must always be understood in relation
to a politico-economical intention and a specific social urban space.
In order to gain a good image and to draw the capital of international
companies (global players) the cities signalize their willingness to
compromise with regard to urban planning10. This public-corporate
space has to be called into question because, in its function as a social
and ethnical space of discipline and control, it serves the city to
present a bright image of its own. In that way the city becomes the
ideal image of economism. This can also be evidenced in the numerous
discussions about safe and clean cities which are merely concerned with
aesthetic phenomena (also known as »Zero Tolerance«)11.
Reagarding the rhetoric of embarrassement typical of these discussions
political content seems to lose importance since social problems are
reduced to a visual level - also the case with graffiti12.
The new image of the city is chracterized by the aesthetics of Computer
Animated Design13 more and more transforms the former
public space14 into a dirigist parcours and an aseptic
space. On the one hand the architectural and semiotic signs of this
space have the function to facilitate an easy consumption and, on the
other hand, to exclude certain social groups. Consequently, which is
why this ambience is highly selective.
(Slide: Sparkasse)
The new paradigm of the public space is a blunt instrumentalization
of culture for the sake of economism15. For this reason,
Miwon Kwon refers to a changed paradigm concerning art programs in public
space which, in the United States, show a virtual craving on the part
of sponsors for supposedly critical art - the »new genre public art«16.
These developments in the field of art have the effect that community-oriented
projects act as a kind of social appeasement, and institutional critique
more and more has the function of business culture.
2. From White Cube to Ambient
The transformations of the public space and the practice of art presented
there can clearly be observed in the changed functions of the artistic
space. This artistic space now produces identity instead of artistic
critique, and both politics and culture lose their identity. Thus, art
runs the risk to be reduced to a sector of public relations. (Slide:
Dream City-Prospekt, BMW)
The changes of that which is regarded as public also affect the White
Cube situated within this framework - the supposedly neutral space which
is designed for the presentation of the »work of art« only and which
is problematic precisely for this reason: »The Image of a white ideal
space emerges, which, more than every single painting, can be regarded
as the perfect archetypal image of art in the 20th century.« (Brian
O'Doherty)17 This white room isolated art works in
order to guarantee a quiet contemplation. But this led the French philosopher
Jacques Derrida, in his deconstruction of the beauty of painting, to
the question where the picture ends and where its frame begins18.
He came to the conclusion that the frame is a discoursive construct.
Precisely this has become a central question for conceptual art concerned
with institutional critique since the 1970s; see for example »Framing
and Being Framed«, as the German artist Hans Haacke called one of his
books (1970-75).
Neither museums nor art galleries can continue claiming this kind of
neutrality when they are regarded as rhetorical elements of the soft
locational factor of the cities. Nowadays, museums with financial problems
have the tendency to transform their institutions into semi-private
or private companies, to the effect that the respective sponsors gain
more and more influence on institutional contents.
A new type of exhibition management emerges: The cultural program of
the German electronics company Siemens not only offers sponsoring but
also decides on the contents of exhibitions. Last year, this led to
a case of censorship: The title of the exhibition, »Brushholder Value«
(Critical painting of the late 1990s) was taken so seriously by Dierk
Schmidt, one of the artists invited, that he dealt in his paintings
with the chairman of the board and the business policy of Siemens19.
(2 Slides: D. Schmidt)
These paintings took the strategy of Siemens to its limits: The censorship
of Schmidt's contribution by the curators caused a considerable damage
to the company's image. The aggressive strategy of the company's program
not only to promote art but also to influence its contents in exhibitions
all over Germany is closely linked to the attempt of determining a corporate
concept of art. Of course, the cultural program also intends to distract
from a negative image caused by nuclear scandals, forced labour during
the Third Reich, genetic manipulation and mismanagement of the company.
3. Ambient as Presentation room
The prominent feature of the artistic sign is its multiple reference.
It is not afraid to make critical statements, to exploit other experts
and to operate within an aggressive exhibition design resulting from
populist, corporate self-representation and the aesthetics of trade
shows. (Slide: Wellcome Trust)
The social intentions colliding in exhibition spaces play an important
role. Whereas collective projects such as »Common Spaces? Common Concerns?«20
(Slide: Zweite Klasse, Berlin) intend a feminist critique of
the connection of art presentation with city images - they are presentation
room, information event, and bar at the same time (Information- and
Research-Ambient) -, art bars and art cinemas are only concerned with
staging the name of an artist in relation to an event (Party-Ambient:
Angela Bulloch, Jorge Pardo, Rikrit Tiravanija, Tobias Rehberger) (Slide:
Pop-Video, Cologne). All these practices share a preliminary »clinical
examination of space «21 and a consideration of both
the social and the institutional context.
The different groups of recipients seem to share a disapproval of the
traditional White Cube presentation: While Information Ambient with
activist tendencies addresses a politically interested audience, Party
Ambient aims at an audience which is primarily interested in being entertained.
In large-scale exhibitions with great public appeal, too, the single
artwork »pregnant with meaning« is replaced by »interactive« presentations
similar to filmstudios. However, for these typ of exhibitions it holds
true that the fashioning of a surrounding space or a special atmosphere
has replaced the presentation of the »autonomous« art object. The consumers'
desire typical of contemporary art is to participate in a medial event.
In my opinion, the concept of cartography formulated by Michel Foucault
is very suitable to describe this changed reception of artistic practices.
That means that art works are no longer isolated and idealized in a
single contemplation but are put in relation to each other. In order
to explain this process I would like to suggest a possible reading of
the spatial conditions. (By showing the following diagram:) (Slide:
Kartographie)
The dramatic changes of the artistic space of presentation at »the edge
of the century« may best be characterized by the term »Ambient«. It
should be distinguished from the kind of electronic music of the same
name. Nevertheless, it relates to comfortable clubs and pop-gadgets
of the 70s. In this context I refer to a condition of the existing order
of presentation space in relation to its social and architectural environment
which not only presents and contains artistic practices but also influences
their production. In this way the Ambient results from an overlapping
of the market and the White Cube.
The Ambient has basically to be distinguished from the White Cube and
its atmosphere of aesthetic purification even if its sublime chic is
still inherent in the psychology of the Ambient. Only by playing with
the symbolical capital of the White Cube the Ambient is able to transgress
its quality and power of defining art.
The Ambient integrates art practices into architecture as design. The
traditional perspective between art work and space used to place the
beholder in a specific spatial and intellectual relation. In Ambient
this perspective is replaced by a selection of the audience according
to the visuals of »style«-criteria. The audience of the Ambient is pre-selected
by the new concept of public space: The public space has taken the function
of the White Cube as the judge of exlusion. Perhaps all this stands
in total contrast to a post-colonial city like New Delhi?
Performance practices present a form of transgression of the designed
art object. Only the function of the White Cube makes it possible to
do one pleases and declare as art what often is stigmatized as unconventional
in public space. In their artistic investigation »What is art?« Karin
Meiner and Manfred Hammes two German artists, who are present today
do not rely on the power of definition of the White Cube because they
also ask people who are not involved in art as to their definition of
art. Moreover, in the course of time, this project results in an empirical
investigation.
Sources:
1Der vorliegende Text und die im Kunstverein München
anläßlich der Ausstellung »Dream City« präsentierte Arbeit »Vergesst
die Liebe nicht« (eine Wandzeichnung, ca. zwanzig Fotografien, acht
Zeitschriften und eine Single) sind Bestandteil einer dreiteiligen dekonzeptuellen
Untersuchung des künstlerischen Feldes. In einer zweiten Untersuchung
geht es um die unterschiedlichen Strategien der Repräsentation
künstlerischer Praktiken in der Kunstpresse; sie wurde im Rahmen
des Prokjekts »Sex & Space II.« anläßlich des Steirischen Herbstes
im Künstlerhaus Graz 1997 vorgestellt. Eine weitere Untersuchung behandelt
die Konsequenzen aus den beiden ersten Untersuchungen für die künstlerischen
Produktionsbedingungen, d.h. die Wandlungen des künstlerischen
»Ichs«, das im Verhältnis zu den beiden ersten Bedingungsfeldern
form(ul)iert wird. (Natürlich wollen wir alle reich, schön und berühmt
sein. Zeitgenössische künstlerische Arbeitsbedingungen, in: Springerin
- Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Heft 3, September - November 1998, S. 44-47)
2J.G. Ballard, Hochhaus (High Rise, 1975), Frankfurt/M.
1992, 56.
3Vgl. Miwon Kwon, Ein Ort nach dem anderen: Bemerkungen
zur Site Specificity (1997), in: H. Saxenhuber/G. Schöllhammer (Hg.),
O.K. Ortsbezug: Konstruktion oder Prozess?, Linz 1998, 36.
4Vgl. Hans-Joachim Manske, Die vielfältige soziale
Orientierung des öffentlichen Kunstwerks - Das Bremer Programm
von "Kunst im öffentlichen Raum", in: Jutta Held (Hg.), Kunst und
Alltagskultur, Köln 1981, 158.
5 Vgl. die Definition von Bourdieu, die Ende der 60er
Jahre aus der Rezeption von Panofskys kontextorientierter Ikonologie
entwickelt wurde: Pierre Bourdieu, Elemente zu einer soziologischen
Theorie der Kunstwahrnehmung, in: ders., Zur Soziologie der symbolischen
Formen (1970), Frankfurt/M. 1983, 181.
6 »Mit dem Begriff Institution Kunst sollen hier sowohl
der kunstproduzierende und -distribuierende Apparat als auch die zu
einer gegebenen Epoche herrschenden Vorstellungen über Kunst bezeichnet
werden, die die Rezeption von Werken wesentlich bestimmen.« Peter Bürger,
Theorie der Avantgarde, Frankfurt/M. 1974, 29.
7Die Grundthese von Habermas besagt, daß die bürgerliche
Öffentlichkeit die moralische Verpflichtung zur Vermittlung der
Aufklärung hat, wobei »öffentlich«, räumliche Zugänglichkeit
für alle unter der Gewalt des Staates bedeutet; J. Habermas, Strukturwandel
der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft, Neuwied u. Berlin 1962, 10. Im Gegensatz dazu beabsichtigen
Negt/Kluge, einen Begriff von Gegenöffentlichkeit in der »Kategorie
der proletarischen Öffentlichkeit« davon abzusetzen, der »sich
gegen die Einordnung in das Symbolsystem der bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit«
sperrt (O. Negt/A. Kluge, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse
von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Öffentlichkeit, Frankfurt/M.
1972, 9); im wesentlichen gehen sie bereits von einer Aufsplittung »abstrakt
aufeinander bezogener Einzelöffentlichkeiten« aus (Ibid, 15), die
einem homogenen Begriff von Öffentlichkeit widersprechen.
8 Vgl. die TV-Werbung der Bundeswehr 1995, in der
sie sich als Unternehmen innerhalb der NATO darstellte.
9Vgl. Baudrillards polemischer Entwurf der gewandelten
Symbolstrukturen der Ökonomie in den 70er Jahren; Jean Baudrillard,
Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod (1976), München 1991, 22f.
10Bspw. bemerkten die Verantwortlichen von Sony und
Daimler-Benz AG in TV-Berichten auf die Diskrepanzen zwischen Stadtplanung
und eigenen Vorstellungen am Berliner Potsdamer Platz angesprochen,
daß sie die Stadt beliebig damit unter Druck setzen könnten, wenn
sie vorgeben, daß sie sich nach anderen Standorten umsehen.
11Vgl. Klaus Ronneberger, Zero Tolerance. Urbane Kontrollstrategien
in den neuziger Jahren, in: Galerie Fotohof etc., Salzburg 1998, 15-22.
12In fast allen deutschen Großstädten gab es im letzten
Jahr Großplakatkampagnen gegen Graffitis.
13Vgl. »Der Stern zeigt auf fünf großen Panoramen,
wie die Hauptstadt zur Metropole wird«, Stern, Nr. 24, Hamburg 8.6.1995.
14Die hier skizzierte Wandlung des Begriffs des öffentlichen
Raumes stellt eine ganz andere Dimension dar als der Effekt, den Richard
Sennett herzuleiten versuchte: Ihm ging es um den architektonischen
Modernismus, der angeblich einen Rückzug ins Private förderte.
Sennett konnte dabei noch von einer Politik ausgehen, in der eine emanzipatorische
Utopie herrschte, während diese nun durch das ökonomische
Paradigma des Marktes abgelöst wird. R. Sennett, Verfall und Ende
des öffentlichen Lebens, 1974.
15Vgl. S. Römer, Probleme mit dem Kulturstandort
Köln, in: Texte zur Kunst, Juni 1998, Nr. 30, 131ff.
16 Ungeachtet ihrer kunstkritischen Quellen wird dieses
neue Kunstgenre instrumentalisiert: »Aber in den letzten Jahren sind
solche Bemühungen oft auf eine einfache Formel reduziert worden:
Künstler/in + Community + soziales Anliegen = neue (öffentliche/kritische)
Kunst. Im schlimmsten Fall bewirkt diese stromlinienförmige Professionalisierung
der Community-orientierten Kunst eine neue Form der ästhetischen
Spezialisierung von KünstlerInnen, die man einlädt, damit
sie im Auftrag diverser Institutionen, die ihre "community outreach"-Quoten
erfüllen wollen (worauf die Geldgeber drängen), "aktivistische" oder
"kritische" künstlerische Dienstleistungen erbringen.« M. Kwon, Three
Rivers Arts Festival, in: Texte zur Kunst, Nr. 23, August 1997, 150.
17Brian O'Doherty, Die weisse Zelle und ihre Vorgänger
(Inside the White Cube: Notes on the Gallery Space, 1976), in: W. Kemp
(Hg.), Der Betrachter ist im Bild, Köln 1985, 281.
18 J. Derrida, Die Wahrheit in der Malerei (1978),
Wien 1992.
19 Vgl. Barbara Hess, Immer Trouble mit Sponsoring,
in: Texte zur Kunst, Nr. 31, September 1998, S. 187 -192; S. Römer,
Brushholder Value, in: Springerin - Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Heft
3, Sept.-Nov. 1998, S. 69f; Zensur-Diskussion I, in: Kunstforum International,
Bd. 143, Jan.-Feb. 1999, 499.
20 In den Räumen der Klasse Zwei, Berlin 1996.
21 Vgl. B. O'Doherty, Die weisse Zelle, a.a.O., 291.
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Feedback / Contribution
jason wright - 11/19/98 23:11:41
My Email:canuckhip@unforgettable.com
Topic: the dublin littoral conference
i am a 25 year old canadian who attended the littoral conference in dublin in september dealing with
socially engaged art practices and community based works. i am a graduate of a bfa program from simon
fraser university in vancouver and went to the conf rence with the desire to hook up with arts organizations
who would perhaps have the ability to point me to people who could train me, or help me aquire the skills
nescessary to understand and develop what 'socially engaged art practice' is. in short i w s looking for an
alternative to graduate school where i would be more help to a community.( Altenative to Graduate Work
was actually a workshop title) instead of any help or direction i received a jumble of academic
backslapping which was often unbeareabl and i left after the 4 days dazed and newly sceptically as to
whether or not artists really have the abilities to deal with issues in communities that do not specifically
refer to art or artspeak. i was left disappointed to say the least. what does anyone think about so called
littoral art practice? i am particularily interested in jay's views as he seemed even more dissappointed in
the conference than i .is it an artist's place now to become social workers/social scientists- even when we
have never been rained to do anything remotely like community work. should we leave it to the to the
'professionals' who have these skills? is the notion that a contemporary artist must be knowlegeable in
such a wide arena of topics -semiotics to city planning to psycho ogy to urban studies to ..etc.,spread us
too thin. are we becoming jacks of all trades, masters of none, where actual specialists in the area we are
'playing' in are laughing at us and getting on to the work they were trained to do? any answers?
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