Dilettante, I should add here that by Contemporary art I don’t mean art that is produced by people today in the gallery system but a specific genre of art which claims the larger frame of the present to make its specificity invisible. Contemporary Art is very specific and has more to do with the metaphysical claims of the work rather than its mode of material production.
@Victoria how would you go about finding a criterion by which to distinguish that which is merely curious and that which is transformative? The reason I ask is that I find it hard to imagine a measurement other than actual impact. Emphasizing just intention (“well, at least I am sympathetic to what they’re trying to do, even if they fail…”) seems inadequate to me. Not to mention that it’s difficult to judge someone’s intentions.
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@dxb I could not agree with you more! The reason I even speak of intention is because in the context where a project has come into the world a couple of months ago (Real Flow) or another one that will only be launched on Sunday (Ali Wong), it is too early to judge impact in a thorough way. We can speculate about impact by using the practitioners’ stated or implied intentions and the logics by which these specific projects function in order to schematize potential repercussions, which we can then label as either curiosities that are only relevant to that particular practitioner’s practice or transformations that could have systematic effects.
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Oh. It is a shame something more substantial isn’t at stake. I guess it is obvious I am interested in exiting art, not merely contemporary art. Why not revive the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and call it a day then?
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@Dilettante But isn’t the gallery just one of the infrastructural nods in the field’s ecology that is currently implicated in a historically-specific ideological formation? In other words, “the gallery” just like Ministry for Transportation (for example) will function according to the agenda of the currently governing forces, which are subject to change just as is their agenda… So, just as the Ministry of Transportation is not antithetical to a social welfare state just because it is currently being governed by a libertarian party, it doesn’t seem that the gallery as a platform is necessarily antithetical to an exit from contemporary art.
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Quite a few people talk about this (see: http://randallszott.org/tag/escape/), although your qualifier “in the art world” might be important. Many are on the edges of the art world, or well outside of it.
And I have to say, if your interest is in a strategy of “divestment from International Art English,” it seems odd to cite Groys, whose his work I describe elsewhere as being “of such precious and predictably jargoned writing/speaking as to be source material for the “cut-up” method of generating exhibition wall texts [written in IAE].”
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TOTALLY. I think de-authoring (but REALLY de-authoring this time) art is crucial for an exit from the CA paradigm. But by the same token art needs to detach from its dependency on objecthood and become a systemic program if it’s not to fall into the default market of “funky goods/services.” So, I guess the really radical implication of Wright’s suggestion is that an exit from art is an entry into a new politics.
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Or into an actual politics. 
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Haha, YES. Actually, this is where speculating becomes actually interesting (as opposed to the tediously boring stuff about why CA needs to RIP). Does exiting into politics mean just collapsing into the existing parameters or could the parameters of actual politics be enriched by the exit?..
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Let me turn your argument around a bit, Could I not say then that the libertarian party “is not antithetical to a social welfare state” just because its current members are? That is, my view is that “the gallery” is more like the libertarian party in your example (which you appear to presume is more than “the agenda of the currently governing forces”) rather than the Ministry of Transportation. Perhaps I can state it more directly “the gallery” is not a neutral infrastructural element (no mere white cube). That is not to say that there can’t be better or worse employments of it within the cultural ecosystem, just as a gun can be used to kill good guys or bad guys. In the end though, someone almost always ends up dead.
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True. But short-term/long-term, non? I realize that the pragmatic approach that I am suggesting is a bit similar to a communist stating that a socially organized capitalism is a step towards communism. Your gun example also works. But the guns are out there, so something has to be done about that in the short-term before we can even think of eradicating the arms industry together with the people’s desire to use guns as power-wielding instruments. Of course, we could just eradicate the people and call it a day. But that’s a bit of a bummer.
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@Dilettante
yes , exactly : the most effective divestments are effected
naturally (i.e. those who drift away from the conceptual trappings of
the art world because it doesn’t suit or reward their practices or
disposition or circumstances) , or there never was an investment to
begin with (i.e. those who are systematically excluded ; those
marginalized by the peculiar ritual vocabulary of contemporary and past
Arts discourses ; those whose art simply isn’t recognized as anything
but a field of non-art with the potential to be “hybridized” with Art or
colonized into the gallery) . in light of this , my “interest” in
divestment isn’t so important .
I don’t fully understand your Groys comments because I happen to find
him a clear writer , generally . personally , I like the way he wanders
, and I think On The New a particularly well-written and
insightful book . your Groys comments make me remember that I shouldn’t
have harshed on Malik’s writing w/ such generalization , though : he’s
just doing his thing , and I remain interested in watching how his work
develops . but like , him & Phillips in “Tainted Love” : "Taking
art’s institutional capitalization to be a mode of sabotage
vectored/legitimized through an amorous/erotic ethos then permits a
number of medium-term future scenarios for the political economy of art
and the privatization of care to be anticipated. " I don’t think you’ll
find anything like that in any Groys …
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@Victoria It seems then that you agree that intention is an unhelpful measure. Are there particular cases in which we can assess how effectively the adaptation of an alternative art-object structure has fared? It’s not like finance was invented in 2005.
I think the impulse behind the invocation of finance is often the appeal of not having a clear provenance: artist -> curator -> dealer -> collector. This is certainly the impulse behind Goldin + Senneby’s insistent use of offshore as a structuring metaphor for their project Headless, for example. Of course, their ultimate reliance on cleverness makes them fairly legible in an art context: we know where the ownership really lies in the end, because they haven’t really gotten into the meat and potatoes of finance enough to actually obscure ownership. You can’t exit if you can’t read maps.
There’s a good discussion [here][1] of some of these approaches to using newer forms of currency to revise the art object’s ownership structure. Real Flow is quite diligent, but like you said, we have to wait and see. Did anyone mention Bitchcoin yet? That’s a misleading title because it’s basically a backed representative currency like gold or silver standards, which is exactly what a bitcoin isn’t.
I would like this discussion to be historicized slightly. Please share examples of prior attempts at “financialization”, successful or aborted. Much of the discussion around the examples raised here is hampered by their newness (which, of course, is also why we’re debating them: they’re fresh and exciting—what a gross motive!). An innovative product structure’s success depends significantly on whether it can weather it out, by holding on to its client base and being well-administrated. Unless the art is intended only as a gesture, the process of institutionalizing Bitchcoin, Real Flow, etc, is important. We should look to precedent for best practices.
Obviously, the question of what kind of infrastructure you commit to creating depends on your goals. The prompt for this discussion assumes that that goal is an exit from contemporary art In which light, @DADABASE, would you please direct us to a concise definition of Contemporary Art’s metaphysical claims and the attendant exit? I’ve seen Malik’s lectures on Youtube but that’s a little long and the book you linked to isn’t published yet.
If as a participant in this discussion you take issue with how @DADABASE frames this discussion, please articulate it. That way, when we’re arguing, we can distinguish between our different commitments, which can be left unresolved, and our disagreements themselves.
For example (correct me if I’m wrong in how I’m citing your earlier claims, but please aim to be consistent and specific) I myself believe in creating more durable and robust institutions than currently exist (they may be big, but they are morally and intellectually frail), and am interested in financial models because those creative ownership structures seem like they could help sustain such institutions outside the paradigm of selling goods OR soliciting donations. @Victoria is committed to a social-democratic Scandinavian model of art production. the question of how financialization might relate to that is thorny. @Dilettante is committed to removing authorship from art. @DADABASE is committed to exiting Contemporary Art. @osrtapes You haven’t committed yourself to any position yet.
[1]: http://dismagazine.com/issues/73342/monegraph-and-the-status-of-the-art-object/
The only one of your assignments regarding how we engage this topic that I accept is the one to correct your characterization of earlier claims. Concerning this thread, I am committed to exiting Art, removing authorship is merely a byproduct (one could say that I am trying to extend Kaprow’s unartistic ambition). More broadly, I am committed to an expansive engagement with aesthetic practices/experience, of which Art is but one (extremely narrow, academic, elitist, and overly professionalized) example. Unfortunately, Art has waged a fairly extensive propaganda campaign that overstates its claim on aesthetics as a whole.
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“It seems that through practicing finance, these art making strategies, one way or the other, abstract art’s mode of financial existence into its general reason dterre.” While value extraction willingly and creatively occurs in the context of art’s consistent valorization, this cannot be divorced from labour and the value added process of authorship and the production cycle of commodities made for a willing art market. In short, I think what this conversation fails to touch on is the role of the submerging artist as a figure in contemporary labour consistent with “precarious, flexible, mobile and fluid” roles…processes which inevitably come with marking “an exit from contemporary art.” This project reads to me like a never ending paradox, in which most socially engaged artists continually find themselves in (in advance of a broken arm): “the paradox of this position of the artist is that they run ahead of capitalism, but only to prefigure it, to capture it in advance, at the level of art” (Benjamin Noys, The Art of Capital:Artistic Identity and the Paradox of Valorisation, 2011). While Im certainly of the ilk that practicing finance and the residual affects this can lead to allows artists to re-strategize systematic engagement and practical preoccupation with the money form as ‘remixable,’ as an open ended project I’m quite fond of work like this that tends to disrupt, rather than conform, to accepted roles and models of valorization.
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@dxb : that’s right , I haven’t , not really . : ) but I am enjoying reading & participating in this conversation all the same . what I’m committed to : my practices , trying to follow them where they’ll lead me , trying not to instrumentalize them for any discourse – in my estimation , arts discourses in the end only offer decontextualization / reinscription with corrupted signifiers & post-hoc rationalizations of the vicissitudes of really quite boring valorization regimes that are ultimately just the naked power effects of who has the most money , who’s writing hype these days , and who can offer the most domesticated “challenge” , who can best signify what’s outside of Art’s reach . I’m with , like , Roger Taylor , you know ? John Berger , Lee Lozano , Ray Johnson . but obviously , at least three of the aforementioned had significant involvement with Arts institutions , so it’s not like I advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater .
I just really think these in-house ‘departures’ need to be seen as strategic re-entrances . a real ‘exit’ is probably as simple as going outside arts institutions / never having been invited in to begin with . it’s quite easy to escape if you actually really want to (or have no choice) . and in an art world where “Donelle Woolford” and “outsider art” can happen in this century & the Duchamp / Elsa Freytag-von-Loringhoven appropriation stands as a kind of secret cipher for the development of arts institutions and discourses in last one , staying “inside” just doesn’t strike this reporter as tenable , unless to make war , and that of course strains the heart .
I guess it’s easier for me to feel this way as I’m in music , not gallery art etc. – there’s no “but …” money here , no salvation , no Exit . : )
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For sure, alternative art-object structures have been around for as long as there has been a stand-off between those who see art as a sphere that is autonomous/separate from “the world” and those that advocate for art that understands itself as part and parcel of the reality that it inhabits (i.e. at the very roots of modernism/modernity). The former belief seems to generally lead to art being defined through its object-particulars/discursive claims; the latter to conceiving of art as a more systemic undertaking, although the terms on which material structures are deployed as active constituents within these artists’ practices may vary pretty widely. Judging the success of the latter usually starts with an assessment of the Russian Constructivists movement and then moves into the “systems-oriented” trend once again picked up with the rise of the conceptual practices in the 60s (Jack Burnham and his crowd, but equally Warhol’s domestication of branding (underwritten by Duchamp, of course)). (Please feel free to dilute my America-centric trajectory; I realize that there was also a lot going on in Europe (Austria, Italy and the UK in particular) but I am still just at the very beginning of mapping these genealogies, so please forgive the superficiality of this overview)). I have just actually written a very brief assessment on precisely this question for a piece that will come out in a month, so if you don’t mind, I will just post it here when it comes out. But generally speaking, while Burnham’s systems aesthetics privileges systems-oriented practices rather than object-claims, he is not really that bothered about the market side of things (because the market doesn’t really exist in a serious manner at that stage). One of the few known examples of people who actually foresaw the importance of structuring the nascent art market was of course Seth Siegelaub who basically proposed to embed artist resale rights and greater control over circulation into the newly emerging market logic. This did not get picked up (although some countries, e.g. France, have similar-sounding legislative provisions, which are quite difficult to enforce). Fast-forward into the 80s and onwards, “the corporate” becomes a really popular trope for artistic emulation, which on the one hand seems to get us out of critique’s cul-de-sac, but on the other hand does not offers us (politically, socially and economically) anything above and beyond what already exists. The latter is the really big problem with alternative art-object structures today because they seem to entrench neoliberalism rather than reconstitute it towards a different operational modality, and actually Suhail Malik was one of the first people to point this out as far as I know. As far as specifically finance is concerned (and here I define finance through its ability to structure liquidity-flows through price-setting), I am not actually aware of any practitioners who have used finance qua finance (as defined in the previous parentheses) rather then as a territory of artistic exploration with no clear aims in mind apart from the exploration (a la G+S), or who may have said they are into finance (or may have been confused for being into it by outside observers) but who are actually doing other things (a la Bitchcoin’s equity model or offshore enactment of Absolute Vitality).
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Actually, as far as confusion is concerned, a case in point is the Ali Wong example put forward as a prompt in this forum chain (it isn’t the fault of the post’s author because that’s the implication communicated in the material disseminated on behalf of the artist). What North Pole Futures is doing is basically creating a start-up, which might has something to do with financing the artist’s practice and using financing as a material of her work, but financing a company and doing finance through price-setting (e.g. through hedging and arbitrage) are different things. The former is still bound up in the equity model while the latter is strictly speaking financial. In a similar key, the project that I was involved in (Real Flow), proposed two models, only one of which was strictly speaking financial (the one that involves the buying of a contract that entitles the buyer to a percentage from the resale profit of the underlying asset).
This is true in spirit but I just wanted to give a really simple (and perhaps stupidly so) example of a different approach to organizing entitlements than the one provided by the Anglo-American market model (as of the 1980s). I think most crucially my commitment is to working towards a more structured transnational market (greater transparency, equitable distribution of profits, etc). I think one REALLY important example that we are forgetting to mention here is WAGE. I would say that in many ways, my commitments resonate with WAGE, although I think I have slightly different views on where the art object fits into all of this (actually, since WAGE is a group of people, I doubt that there is one single view on this matter).
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@Victoria, this was very confusing to me about the Real Flow exhibition which was only cleared after talking to you and other collective members. In any case I am much more interested in the second configuration since it disregards the object all together and builds an infrastructure which is only tangentially related to the actual work of art. This is precisely how fiat currency has been functioning for almost a century in countries with central banks. I cannot believe it took art so long to arrive at this solution. However, I think there is room to be thankful that one of the first instances of art flirting with strict financialization is a critical rather than a normative engagement.