[spectre] // The State of Art //

Sat Aug 6 17:40:04 CEST 2011

..on Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 04:25:19PM +0200, Louise Desrenards wrote:
> Hi!
> Sorry but you are making a use of Baudrillard to contribute to your
> thesis but from a misunderstanding about him and about his text.
> 
> Baudrillard has not written The conspiracy of Art from a reformist
> point of view nor from economic point of view, but as an act of
> critical art -- of critical active poetry itself -- walking itself as
> entropy into the contemporary. It is a symbolic challenge. It does not
> concerns --in nothing-- your subject.

Indeed his primary challenge is within the symbolic.

However he certainly does cover the economic element and it's driving relation
to the movement of contemporary art into simulation after Warhol, or 'null' as
he calls it:

"Behind this mechanical snobbery, there is in fact an escalation of the power
of the object, the sign, the image, the simulacrum and value of which the best
example today is the art market itself. This goes well beyond the alienation of
price as a real measure of things: we are experiencing a fetishism of value
toat explodes the very notion of a market and, at the same time, abolishes the
artwork as work of art."

Conspiracy of Art, p44, Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, 2005.

Cheers,

Julian

> On 6 August 2011 16:04, Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Mattyo,
> >
> > Thanks for your comments, that was a good read.
> >
> > For what it's worth I myself am not European. I'm a European resident from New
> > Zealand. There we have very little arts funding. Students often come out of
> > university degrees with 30-40k loans, artist fees are very rare and exhibiting
> > in galleries is only free if you are well known, in almost all cases.
> >
> > I've also travelled extensively and have lived in Australia, in East and West
> > Europe and also spent plenty of time in the United States. Many on this list
> > will be the same I think; part of doing what we do requires travel and taking
> > residencies and work abroad. We're all old hands at it..
> >
> > Based on my experiences I most certainly don't think the New World offers a
> > better model in general and my text doesn't express that. Artists I know in
> > America are some of the hardest working I've ever met, often having a full time
> > day job while still managing to produce incredible work. Several media artists
> > I know in the U.S work in advertising, or as software engineers, for instance.
> > As regards crowd-sourcing, while a fan I am also wary of it, not least in that
> > the Right is ever quick to cast crowd-sourcing in a patriotic light while
> > washing their hands of a need to support the arts directly. Corporate
> > sponsorship and funding is also problematic, for a great many reasons.
> >
> > I am very interested in artist's relationship to money in their given political
> > and economic context. I see money as a root, steering power in the movements,
> > creative directions and choices artists make. Money has us moving countries,
> > rationalising our work, making it more acceptable to reach a 'broader audience'
> > or positioning it as an 'answer' to a funding call.  We're terrified of money,
> > if only for the fear of not having it. Funding calls and awards have us
> > competing with each other to get it, maldistributing it in our favour. I
> > compete against other artists for funding myself. I love receiving funding but
> > am not shy of discussing its deep impact on my work, how I feel about it, how I
> > make and distribute it.
> >
> > I am interested also in the differences between corporate, community and state
> > arts funding, as felt by the artist in relation to their work by way of a
> > natural desire to 'please' the funder. This pleasing expresses a power relation
> > and takes different forms: corporate (brand bolstering, corporation as public
> > good), community (popularity contest, utility) or state (cultural tourism,
> > stimulation of new markets etc).
> >
> > Funding calls are made, and we dance to the tune. Of course we do. At worst we
> > may even read a CFP and invent a project to fit that call in an attempt to win
> > the money; great new work can come out of this too. Here the CFP is akin to
> > inspiration. Funding has us positioning our work in an economic and strategic
> > frame and we feel rewarded and even valued when we are funded. In this way,
> > funding expresses a teleology, one endemic to the arts today.
> >
> > In New Zealand the state is not considered a reliable partner of the arts. It's
> > a non-committal, occasional, unreliable source of these rare numbers we call
> > money.  Festivals, publications and media-labs really do run on extremely
> > little funding, if at all. In Australia the situation is much better but there
> > is always (at least in the 6 years I lived there) a felt instability; it could
> > always be cut in half with a change of government or simply disappear in a
> > snap. To build a 'career' as an artist is a felt risk whereas in some European
> > countries there is even a sort of social welfare for artists, something still
> > miraculous to me. These differences are important.  In the 7 years I've lived
> > in Europe, I've seen a root, accepted understanding that culture is funded and
> > that it should and always will be, a wonderful thing indeed. This is expressed
> > in the shock and surprise at the Dutch cuts. Such a thing was clearly simply
> > unimaginable for many, as though the sun had turned off.
> >
> > Unlike painting, drawing or even musical production, the expense and complexity
> > of media art binds it closely with money, a vital organ. Because of this money
> > further sets the frame in which media art is developed, impacting the kind of
> > work we make, the risks we take.
> >
> > If the risks we wish to take are political in nature, funding is itself
> > consequential.  When we make work that offends the state (as I have) one faces
> > the law, perhaps even citizenship may be called to question. When we offend the
> > corporation our work may be positioned as libel. When we offend the community
> > we offend our peers.  These borders are symptomatic of funding itself and are
> > widely and keenly felt by artists, I believe. We work with them in mind.
> >
> > Interestingly, because the contemporary art market situates works as a capital
> > commodity the 'radical' is already anticipated and cast into capital value. In
> > this way the market absorbs and quarantines transformative potential, keeping
> > it safe by deferring it to commentary. "It's just art", people say, expecting
> > the radical in display. Baudrillard's excellent 'The Conspiracy of Art' details
> > this problem.
> >
> > For many media artists the economic and political simplicity of positioning
> > one's work as a capital commodity is increasingly attractive and will become
> > more so as state funding is increasingly cut, here in the EU.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > --
> > Julian Oliver
> > http://julianoliver.com
> >
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> >
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-- 
Julian Oliver
http://julianoliver.com