Artleaks Gazette (No.1-4)

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Breaking the Silence – Towards Justice, Solidarity and Mobilization

Nearly two years have passed since the ArtLeaks platform published its first case.

Enough time, however, for this transnational project to gain force and speak for itself. It speaks of a threshold which borders the structural violence of a system that we recognize as unfair and unjust. For everywhere we look, be it in the old West, in the New Europe, or in Asia or Latin America, we recognize similar patterns: unpaid cultural workers, censored artists, the precarization of life, the brutal crushing of one’s rights for political, social, and economic emancipation.

In these two years in which cases have been regularly published on ArtLeaks, we learned that Mexico City is far from Toronto, and that Calcutta has little in common with Dubai. Nevertheless, it is symptomatic that from amidst zones of the global cultural realm previously not at the forefront of debate, some of the most powerful voices which struggle for new types of democratic engagements have emerged. It is here where violence appears most evidently, where Capital is in the process of producing its discriminating laws and its oppressive hierarchies, and where Creative Capital organizes in its laboratories its most dreadful experiments.

At a global scale, we witness how political radicalism is digested with easiness by corporate culture, while the commons are registered as copyrighted trademarks; we diagnose the artistic research being privatized, we see how the market takes over and dictates the conditions of art production, dissemination and reception, while spreading its ideological representations of wealth and fame to come in a future afterlife. Last but not least, we acknowledge how nationalisms, xenophobia and racism are incorporated into the official dominant culture of the neoliberal state, while dissenting voices are censored, repressed, and shut down.

If the ArtLeaks platform intended to highlight and expose structural redundancies of the art and cultural system, through the first issue of our Gazette we aim to address the problematic of reinventing tools for the mobilization of resources and emancipatory models that help to articulate the movement of cultural workers. The texts, which were selected from a pool of open-call submissions under the theme of

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“Breaking the Silence,” bear the mark of the specific contexts of their production: nevertheless, they are all brought together by the red thread of the will to bypass the passive registering of a future cultural death.

In the aftermath of the Canadian student protests of 2012, which saw an unprecedented solidarity between students, artists, and other professions, Milena Placentile revisits processes of the privatization of education and the arts: she suggests that what is at stake is control over culture, as control over the autonomy, rights and citizens’ power of imagination and she revisits models of artistic resistance which have been shaped by the will to resist repression. With the experience of the Dutch infrastructure of the arts, currently under fierce right wing attack, and basing his approach in key moments of recent history of culture, Jonas Staal argues for a new approach towards what we understand through the concept of institutional critique, an approach which strives to make visible different ideological camps and that involves taking decisions on which of these camps one belongs. In this context, he discusses how his New World Summit project – which articulates alternative parliaments for political and juridical representatives of organizations currently placed on so-called international terrorist lists – articulates a transgressive movement before and beyond the demarcation lines between art and activist politics. Evgenia Abramova achieves a practice based radiography of the labor conditions of art workers in Moscow, and draws conclusions on further steps to be taken in the harsh Russian political context. Veda Popovici, a participant in the occupation movement of the Bucharest University and in the Romanian street protests of 2012 investigates art’s power to act politically, and analyses the opportunities allowed by the cracks in the state’s law. Mykola Ridnyi brings forwards the social and political context of Ukraine, highlighting its derive towards repression, conservatism, and Christian orthodoxy, and denounces cases of censorship in relation to these shifts. Amber Hickey recounts the story of the birth of the Liberate Tate collective in which she is part of, and focuses on the tactics that this spontaneously articulated group considered amidst the blatant conditions of censorship that Tate Modern imposed in relation to its main sponsor, British Petroleum. She also investigates the larger framework of the ethics of art’s sponsorship deals, in the context of the struggle of institutional critique artists. Fokus Grupa suggest that inheritors of last century’s thrust for articulating artistic manifestos are various attempts to formulate artist’s contracts; through the workshops that they organized with various types of audiences, they propose that articulations of artists’ contracts and agreements represent concrete steps in the struggle of protecting cultural workers’ rights. Marsha Bradfield and Kuba Szreder recount London based research cluster Critical Practice’s attempt to propose a project which would have inserted itself in the fibre of the institutional apparatus of the Berlin Biennial, with a declared intent of changing the biennial’s economy. Acknowledging their failure, the two authors investigate what it would take for such a proposal, amounting to fairer revenues to all the actors involved, to be successful. Finally, drawing on the history of artists which have refused, in

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various occasions, to take part in exhibitions which were ethically and politically problematic, Lauren van Haaften-Schick presents her project of collecting letters of “non-participation” which will be further disseminated as a publication and exhibition series. To these contributions, Evgenia Abramova, Milena Placentile and Gregory Sholette, added to the glossary of terms, by discussing the concepts of “art worker”, “labour conditions”, “neoliberalism” and “glut”.

Thanks to all those who have contributed and helped to put together this first issue of the ArtLeaks Gazette, the editorial collective is confident that the discussions which will follow will significantly contribute to our common struggle of reinstating justice, solidarity and mobilization in the cultural field.

ArtLeaks Gazette Editors http://art-leaks.org

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CONTROLLING THE LIMITS OF POSSIBILITY: ON THE PRIVATIZATION OF EDUCATION AND CULTURE Milena Placentile

In his influential text, “Culture is Ordinary” (1958), Welsh academic, novelist and critic, Raymond Williams made a compelling case for a holistic definition of culture that embraced both ways of life and the processes of discovery and creative production in knowledge and the arts. Culture has since been more widely recognized as that which encompasses not only what we make or believe, but all that we are. How we live out each and every day of our lives, and how we interact with those around us, is shaped by our cultural value systems. Through language, education, tradition and ritual, etiquette and other codes of acceptable behaviour, culture conveys the terms that comprise the social contract by which we participate in civic life.

To control culture is to influence how people perceive their autonomy, agency, and rights, including their capacity to imagine what is and is not possible. It is in this light that the increasing privatization of education and art, all too infrequently discussed in the same breath, can be better understood not only as part of the drive to increase corporate profit through the privatization of everything, but as a strategy to facilitate more aggressive social transformations in the future.

English literary theorist and critic, Terry Eagleton, noted that “we live within societies whose aim is not simply to combat radical ideas—that one would readily expect—but to wipe them from living memory: to bring about an amnesiac condition in which it would be as though such notions had never existed, placing them beyond our very powers of conception.” (The Ideology of the Aesthetic, 1990).

This includes efforts to “normalize” certain conditions to the point that others cannot be imagined.

When private enterprise encroaches onto (or becomes insinuated within) sites presumed to value intellectual and creative freedom such as institution-based sites

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of learning, and public or semi-public cultural spaces such as art galleries and/or artist-run centres, the implicit and explicit messaging about the need for that presence, including its right to be there, affects perceptions about the role and status of business in public life. The nuances of this can be quickly summarized by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s now infamous pronouncement at the end of the Cold War that capitalism was the only valid ideology around which a society may be organized: “there is no alternative.”

How valid, or normal, is it that fast food outlets dot university campuses where independent cafeterias once stood? Or that corporations fund research chairs and claim partial or complete ownership of the advances achieved within, while simultaneously stifling contradictory research? Or that art galleries require corporate sponsorship for exhibition programming and actively consult with sponsors to ensure brand identity is not compromised? The idea that the private sector’s needs trump the right of individuals and communities to access intellectual and economic diversity as a public good is problematic, and yet it prevails. The superior status of corporations—either because we’ve come to rely on them financially, or because they are considered better at fulfilling services—is a matter of cultural socialization. It is a learned concept repeated by politicians and the media, and in many classrooms.

While some might think for-profit interests sneaking into and taking control of universities and artistic institutions sounds like conspiracy, consider that its no coincidence former Québec Finance Minister, Raymond Bachand, in February 2010 described planned austerity measures under the leadership of Liberal Premiere, Jean Charest a “révolution culturelle”1 (a cultural revolution). The first step to removing public services as a social right from the public imagination is to normalize user pay post-secondary education and health care as the only logical response to economic crisis. Training people to accept cuts reluctantly, and forget that better options existed is a matter of shifting their way of thinking and their expectations.

If it was a cultural revolution they wanted, it was a cultural revolution they got... just not the one they expected. Having both more politically literate and effectively structured student unions than elsewhere in Canada, as well as a longer history of grassroots organizing, Québec students declared the tuition hikes a form of class warfare and initiated resistance through lobbying and demonstrations. On February 12, 2012 they were pushed to launch an unlimited general strike (“grève générale illimitée”). Daily actions further articulated how their concerns were situated within the broader context of neoliberal globalization. As parents and grandparents began to stand up for the students in their lives, and as high-schoolers faced their future, resistance grew to create a citizens’ movement where many people participated in direct action for the first time in their lives to produce traffic blockades and other economic disruptions. The province responded with violence and, just like scenes associated with Occupy, police gleefully attacked even the most peaceful of demonstrators.

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In May 2012, the new Bill 78 restricting education-related protest turned into the draconian Law 12 which, like the War Measures Act, imposed curfew and limited assembly. Groups of more than 50 people2 were obligated to seek permission from authorities or face stiff penalties including fines of up to $125,000 per day3. At this point, more citizens were pushed to the brink and rejected the province’s scare tactics. In an unprecedented move, even members of Barreau du Québec4 wearing their official robes, joined the protests. The single largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history took place on May 25 with estimated participation of between 400,000 and 500,000 people5. By July, the city of Montreal and province of Quebec had spent $9 million6 on policing alone to quell the demonstrations, proving the argument that there was more than enough money available for education and that spending is a choice.

Le carré rouge, the red square, became a symbol of solidarity and collective strength. Rallied by inspirational imagery and slogans featuring it as produced by students and artists, never before had such a broad cross-section of citizens, from babies in strollers to elderly persons with walkers, mobilized against an elected government in Canada. The Québec Liberals reluctantly called for an election in September and they lost. However, the victory for the striking students and other progressives was slim. The Parti Québécois won a minority government and promised to drop the current tuition hike, but warned discussions would need to resume the following year. The PQ also halted the Liberal’s “Plan Nord”, an economic development strategy with dire health and environmental consequences.

The streets of Québec are quiet once again and although true transformation has yet to happen, its population is considerably more self-aware, both of the circumstances surrounding them, and of their power.7

Street actions, courtesy of the author.

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Yet many more efforts to privatize pass without so much of a peep, particularly in the world of arts and culture, increasingly labelled “the cultural sector” or “creative industries”.

Business for the Arts8, a Canadian organization based in Toronto, moves across the country promoting its artsVest program9 with evangelical zeal. The initiative encourages regional arts councils to offer matching funds to cultural organizations that obtain sponsorship from private enterprise. Having recently joined, the Winnipeg Arts Council’s website describes the program as follows: The goal of artsVest Winnipeg is to foster the development of new, innovative and mutually beneficial partnerships between Winnipeg’s small to mid-sized businesses and cultural organizations. artsVest will not only provide training and matching incentives for cultural organizations, it will also help build important bridges between the arts and business communities. The arts provide currently underutilized opportunities for business investment. With large and diverse audiences, arts events and projects provide businesses with terrific marketing opportunities. This program will help cultural organizations think more creatively about sponsorship opportunities when seeking partnerships, and assist them in stewardship after the sponsorships are secured10.

Offering one level of matching funds to organizations that woo a business donating to the arts for the first time in three years, less to organizations if the business has a history of giving, and less still for in-kind sponsorships, the program emphasizes free training to pitch proposals and access to a declining fund on a first come/first served basis until the money in a given round runs out. This translates into arts organizations not only competing for sponsors, but for the first crack at a new sponsor since that has greater return. Winnipeg is entering its second year of the program.

Whether the Winnipeg Arts Council’s discontinuation of its Special Projects Grant program was independent of the introduction of artsVest has yet to be addressed, but the result is the same: non-profit arts organizations are obliged to cozy up with for-profit business because traditional sources of funding are disappearing.

One arts administrator reported in confidence that three distinct attempts to acquire sponsorship were met with criticisms that her organization’s projects were “too weird”. She was initially enthusiastic about artsVest, but has since revised her position. Other administrators, from albeit less risk-taking organizations, view the program as useful with one administrator even going so far as to suggest artsVest is “only trying to help us prepare for the future”, as if Business for the Arts is somehow motivated by empathy. This type of response unquestioningly accepts the ideological rhetoric of austerity as if there really where no alternative, when in fact that couldn’t be further form the truth.

Founded in 1974, Business for the Arts, much like its British counterpart, Arts & Business (formerly Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts founded in 1976), takes cues from the Business Committee for the Arts11 founded in 1967

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by the same US banking tycoon David Rockefeller who founded and maintains involvement with an aggressive neoliberal think thank called the Trilateral Commission.12 In all cases, these private organizations receive varying degrees of public funding to encourage non-profit public cultural organizations away from public funding. The elite that frame these organizations use regressive tax law to dismantle the base that makes public funding available with one hand, while ushering non-profit arts and cultural organizations into the grasp of business with the other.

What does a company peddling financial services, or insurance, or premium liquor have to do with arts and culture, anyway? Absolutely nothing, until the company decides a cultural partnership will help them “increase corporate reputation, image/brand awareness” and/or achieve “image modification”. It’s a zero-sum game disguised as win-win. The for-profit business gets a fully deductible marketing expenditure while cultivating their public and brand image. The non-profit, on the other hand, jumps through hoops keeping the sponsor happy, whether by satisfying their ego or ensuring programming stays just the way sponsors like it.

The additional benefit to for-profits is that non-profits become dependent on their success: why rock the boat participating in social or economic disruption if it might cause sponsorship pockets to shrink? It is certainly no coincidence that Director of Arts & Business, Colin Tweedy, suggested in 1991 that arts sponsorship was one of the cornerstones of Thatcherism.13 This becomes a question of how we want to spend our time – learning how to suck up to businesses more effectively or becoming educated about the larger framework motivating these changes while self-organizing to resist them?

Excerpted screen capture from Winnipeg Arts

Council artsVest funds request/report form showing benefits to

business as quoted above

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As of December 19, 2012, The Canada Council for the Art’s “Grants to Professional Independent Critics and Curators” program was renamed “Visual Arts: Project Grants for Curators and Critics”. Removal of the word “independent” is not only highly symbolic for a program that once proudly offered financial support for the production of critical, conceptual space outside of institutional frameworks, but unexpected changes to the program’s expense allowances now force unaffiliated curators to work through institutions. Whereas unaffiliated curators could previously use grant money to pay artist fees and expenses related to mounting an exhibition, “the program no longer supports the presentation or publication of work. It focuses on curatorial research, writing and residencies14. ” This is a huge blow to independent thought tantamount to censorship because a national jury of expert peers is no longer enough to declare an experimental project worthy of support. Institutions are now reinforced as gatekeepers, and given extra padlocks and chains. This is especially disconcerting because, increasingly dependent on corporate sponsorship as they are, risk-adverse curatorial staff needing programming approval from increasingly elite and conservative Board members will pursue fewer and less challenging projects rather than rock the boat. Perhaps it was the timing of the announcement, like so many other Harper Government15 tidbits that slip by unnoticed, but Canadian curators have yet to blink over this one.

It is worth mentioning that these changes come at a time of expanding discourse around professionalizing the arts through education. Beyond the introduction of Doctoral level studies in studio practice as research, there are now public and private degree programs and certifications for arts administrators, curators, and dealers now known as commercial gallerists. The ever-growing network of curatorial training programs is particularly interesting in that while encouraging participants to move from one to the next in a new form of tourism for the wealthy or those willing to incur debt, they also happen to extend notions associated with western capitalism further afield. This is arguably a form of cultural imperialism in and of itself. Many of these programs implicitly promote a unified theory of curating that systematizes approaches, ultimately culling out the exceedingly radical as trainees are encouraged embrace incessant travel between large, overhead hungry institutions and to view them as responsible forums still distinct from the art market and all that it implies. Further still, the growth of private consultancy for artists, from how to find abundance to how to become famous, imparts the idea that artists lack business savvy and are doomed to failure without it.

Each country has distinct histories with regard to colonization and imperialism, class struggle, gender disparity, and economic distribution, yet it is generally recognized that those with a more fair approach to social welfare have higher overall standards of living, including better respect for social, political, intellectual and creative freedom. And while the experience of people (including artists) still varies from place to place, those with access to a more diverse public realm can encounter greater opportunities.

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The move toward privatization therefore hinges on questions of perceived dependency. University Presidents, Regents and Senators, just like Board Members and Directors of arts and cultural organizations, could easily decide they don’t want or need policies with ideological bias in favour of profit and yet they don’t either because they are afraid of confronting power and losing what funding they have left, or because they are (or want to be) power.

Not all people of the world have access to public funding for education and the arts, but why should anyone allow what does exist to be budgeted out of existence? Why should citizens go to corporations, foundations, and wealthy individuals, hat in hand, to seek their favour? Instead of pandering to these entities, which frequently compromise the true needs of students and/or cultural producers, decision-makers could advocate for economic elites to pay their fair share of tax and demand the closure of legislative loopholes that allow casino capitalism to create crisis upon crisis.

It is widely proven that corporations and the wealthy are paying less tax now than ever and what’s left is being squandered on militarization, prison expansion, and otherwise squarely into the hands of the elite through subsidies, bail outs, research and development tax credits, and other corporate welfare. Just as corporate sponsorships of the arts doesn’t clean the reputation of the companies involved, taking their fair share back into the public purse doesn’t clean money either, but it does mean that the public defines what happens to it, as it is within the public realm that we can continue to struggle for greater equality for all. Private interests don’t promote experimental investigations of society, unless it somehow serves their goal of increased profitability, and only when they can control the message. They don’t want to challenge anyone into thinking differently about the status quo. They only want to grow and increase their share of power, including social and cultural capital, which allows them to do this with greater ease.

Some will argue that taking government out of the arts is a good thing – that it will return to being produced out of passion, and those who struggle hard enough will be recognized. But isn’t it already a debunked cliché that starving artists work the hardest because, even if they’re not recognized in their lifetime, posthumous fame is reward enough? Some will argue that autonomous artists were just a blip on the radar of history and needing patrons now is no different than before. Then what was the point realizing the incredibly essential role of artists as forecasters, interpreters, visionaries, idea makers, experimental explorers, or (as is now popular) researchers for public good? Whether one values the arts for their empowering and transformative capacity, or whether one merely appreciated their decorative benefits, surely it can be agreed that reducing the spectrum of possibility does not serve society well.

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As frustrating as it is that so few in the arts appear willing to vocalize opposition to the growth of private for-profit influence over society, there are glimmers of hope. Take for example the incredible work of the BeautifulCity.ca Alliance16 that, initiated by Toronto-based artist/curator, Devon Ostrom, sought to tax billboard advertising to fund art in the public sphere. A nearly decade long battle to resist the overbearing presence of corporations in public space successfully imposed the tax, triumphed over advertisers in a court of appeals, and finally fought regressive attempts by the city to re-direct the newly collected tax away from the arts17.

Exciting!

As cultural producers, many with ties to academic institutions in one form or another, we can choose to recognize that our practices are increasingly used to support the profitability of the corporate power elite in ways that harm our best interest. We can choose to communicate directly with our communities and form relationships on our own terms. We can choose to organize ourselves by asserting our values and demonstrating resistance to the “there is no alternative” attitude.

All we have to do is start.

1 “Budget: Raymond Bachand talks about the ‘cultural revolution,’” 2010, published in Les Affaires:

http://www.lesaffaires.com/secteurs-d-activite/gouvernement/budget--raymond-bachand-parle-derevolution-culturelle/510567

2 “Quebec Law Breaches Canada’s International Human Rights Obligations,” published in Amnesty

Internaitonal: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/quebec-law-breaches-canada-s-international-humanrights-obligations-2012-05-26

3 Bruce Walsh and Grace Westcott, Quebec’s Bill 78 –Law or Order?,” 2012, published in PEN Canada, http://pencanada.ca/blog/quebecs-bill-78-law-or-order/

4 Barreau du Québec (Bar of Quebec) is the provincial law society for lawyers in Quebec, Canada. It was founded May 30, 1849, as the Bar of Lower Canada.

5 Amelia Schonbek, “The Long March: On the Frontlines with Quebec’s Student Protesters,” 2012, published in The Walrus: http://thewalrus.ca/the-long-march/

6 Quebec student protests add $9 million to policing costs, 2012, published in Maclean’s:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/07/16/quebec-student-protests-add-9-million-to-policing-costs/

7 This text was written several months ago, and the struggle continues. To summarize, the Québec Government’s Summit on Education (February 2013) resulted in the unfavourable decision that

tuition rates should rise according to inflation. Students returned to the streets and, since February 26, have faced terrible police violence sanctioned under a new City of Montreal Bylaw, P-6, which much

like Québec Bill 78, declares protest illegal. A large demonstration is taking place on April 22, against P-6. For updates about the student uprising, please visit: http://www.asse-solidarite.qc.ca/. Written

in French, the site provides accurate information posted by the most active organizers, L’Association

pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante. Another source is a booklet called “Le fond de l’air est rouge”

by Stefan Christoff of Howl arts collective, which will launch at the Brecht Forum on May 20: http://www.howlarts.net/words.

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8 More about Business for the Arts (Bfta): http://www.businessforthearts.org/ 9 More about artsVest: http://www.artsvest.com/

10 More about artsVest Winnipeg: http://www.winnipegarts.ca/index.php?/artsvest_winnipeg.

11 As counter-intuitive as this may seem, Business Committee for the Arts merged with Americans for the Arts in 2008 - http://www.americansforthearts.org/news/press/2008/2008_10_28.as 12 More about Rockefeller’s involvement with tthe Trilateral Commission: http://www.trilateral.org/go.cfm?do=Page.View&pid=2

13 Colin Tweedy, “Sponsorship of the Arts - An the Outdated Fashion or Model of the Future?”,

Museum Management and Curatorship, vol 10, June 1991, p 161. Cited in Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s. London: Verso. 2002.

14 Private correspondence.

15 Tories rebrand ‘Government of Canada’ as ‘Harper Government’,” 2011 published in: The Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/03/03/tories_rebrand_government_of_canada_as_ harper_government.html

16 More about BeautifulCity.ca: http://www.beautifulcity.ca 17 Toronto Arts Council Press Release, 2013:

http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/246297/2319cddc69/1379032459/1ba7dc26a6/

Milena Placentile is a curator, writer, and researcher concerned primarily with socially and politically motivated artistic practices, audience experience, and integrated cultural policy. Her current research

explores the neoliberalism of culture and resistance via self-organization and other means. She holds a

Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. Placentile is a regional contributing editor to Fuse. Recent exhibitions include: The Pinky Show: Class Treason Stories (excerpts) (University of Winnipeg, 2009; Toronto Free Gallery, 2010), three online exhibitions for the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad: Competition, Corporatization, and Consumerism (2009/2010).

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ART, DEMOCRATISM AND FUNDAMENTAL DEMOCRACY An exploration of the New World Summit Jonas Staal

1. What Do We Mean When We Say “Art”?

In order to answer the question what we mean when we use the word “art”, I believe we should first address the ideological context within which the word art is articulated and operational.

Owing to the sustained frontal attack of Dutch extreme-right politicians on contemporary artists and art institutions, which they claim to be propaganda for the left – or whatever is left of the left – the word “art” has in the Netherlands now indefinitely lost its “sovereign” status. It seems that, uncomfortably enough, the extreme right has a point. The terminology that they use to disqualify art, such as the now infamous concept of art as a “leftist hobby,” may be obscene, but the fact of the matter is that the current Dutch cultural infrastructure is rooted in a clearly ideologically defined era. Owing to the extreme-right discourse, the word “art” has today returned to its place in a long forgotten social-democratic post-WWII policy.

This policy described the task of the cultural infrastructure as spreading art and culture to the entire population. The social-democrats perceived art to be a form of knowledge that belonged to the shared collective project of building a new civilization, rather than art being the property of an aristocratic minority that had ruled the old world which had collapsed in totalitarianism.1 But even though the extreme right justifiably considers art to be propaganda for the left, their discourse lacks precision and historical awareness. Nonetheless, they are right that the values that we attribute in artistic discourse to the role of art in society, finds its roots in this specific, social-democratic tradition. A project of democratizing knowledge, which I in essence support. However, the conditions under which this democratization was supposed to take place ended up obfuscating precisely what was at stake – the project became incorporated in the worldwide expansion of capitalist democracy, reducing art to a state run tool to provide incentive for socalled “creative industries” – and it took the intervention of the extreme right to reassert the ideological core of the Dutch cultural infrastructure.

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It was in the context of this specific social-democratic project that the Dutch artist was able to gain his celebrated freedom: the idea of the artist and art itself as sovereign. This idea is precisely the one I object to: the idea of sovereign artistic freedom masks the essential political task attributed to art as a form of knowledge and knowledge distribution. This idea is a remainder of the post-WWII cultural infrastructure which was meant to provide artists with the means to create their work unrestrained by political influence. Unrestricted by the propagandistic use that the Nazi regime – which today remains the symbolic embodiment of 20th century totalitarianism – had made of the arts. It is this fear of propaganda that has obscured the essentially ideological project that art embarked upon. This fear created a depoliticized art, believing it was sovereign yet serving a specifically political goal.

As a result, the Dutch cultural infrastructure was created with the unacknowledged aim to formalize the ideal of democratic freedom, with which the newly risen “enlightened” West distinguished itself both in space from the East and in time from its blood-soaked past. By establishing the role of the artist as the symbol of democratic civilization and freedom, it was not so much the artist’s work that mattered, but the unrestrained existence of the artist within the democratic state itself. It is not the artist that sculpts society, but it is the artist himself who is sculpted based on a vision of the post-WWII democratic state.

We encounter here the underlying principle of the doctrine of artistic freedom: if the democratic state grants freedom to the artist, it does so at a double profit.

First– it makes each and every artist into a living statue of liberty; they become a propagandistic tool merely because the state sponsors their free existence.2 But second, and most importantly, the state is at the same no longer directly responsible for the results that the artist produces.

Whenever politicians do take direct responsibility for artistic productions they are met with heavy criticism, as the image of the propagandist continues to hunt their proximity with artistic practice. Even though we know that the real curator of the cultural infrastructure is the state, acknowledging this situation would dispel the systematically sustained smokescreen of artistic sovereignty, as a pillar of democratic freedom. The politician is the man behind the curtain that shapes the artist in its vision of a statue of liberty, but this gesture that presupposes the artwork can never be acknowledged in public. As it would show this to be a freedom not “autonomous,” not “universal,” but bound in the specific material conditions of the democratic doctrine.

The French philosopher Jacques Ellul speaks of our technologically driven society in terms of total propaganda. The biggest achievement of total propaganda is that even those in power – those who commission the artists to become the living statues of liberty, the avant-garde of the democratic state – have come to believe their actions and policies have nothing to do with propaganda. Their statues of

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liberty, their armies of artists, are nothing but the “natural” outcome of the struggle of democracy over totalitarianism. Propaganda is thus “total” at the moment it becomes the only possible truth, “just the way we do things.”3 And thus we march on, artists and politicians, in line with an ideological composition that none of us is capable of remembering why and how it ever came in to being. We are serving freedom. But who’s freedom we’re serving has long been obscured.

2. Democratism From the moment that the Dutch post-war doctrine of artistic freedom was translated into a cultural infrastructure, we have witnessed the rise of a form of propaganda that solely serves what is best referred to as “democratism.” When working in Japan with philosopher Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei in 2009, we discovered that the word “democracy” did not originally exist in the Japanese language. As Japan gained its “independence” as a result of the imposition of a constitution drafted by the United States this “democracy” had to be somehow articulated in words. It than occurred to us that the neologism used as a translation for the word democracy, in the Japanese language (minshushugi), translates as an “ism” (-shugi), just like “capitalism,” “relativism,” or “Marxism.” As democratism.

Democracy is therefore no longer a neutral foundation for a variety of other ideologies to manifest itself, but can be understood as an ideology itself – as one of the many ‘isms’ that the world is already familiar with..4 Democratism indicates the translation of the constantly self-reassessing emancipatory principles of democracy into a stagnant, non-reflexive ideology of administration and governance. Of core importance is a series of monopolies that democratism enacts, namely the monopoly on violence, the monopoly on representation, the monopoly on information and the monopoly on history. I would argue that, despite art’s claims as a form of knowledge production and source of alternative histories, it is within the context of democratism impotently trapped in its doctrine of sovereignty: the painful truth is that exactly because art is considered free, it cannot refer to anything but the status quo of democratism itself. It can thus engage in anything, except in disrupting exactly these democratist monopolies. It can be anything, except democratic.

The Dutch cultural infrastructure is obviously not the only propagandistic product in systematic denial of its own ideological agenda. We may for example point to a notorious CIA funded project during the Cold War, the “Congress for Cultural Freedom,” which among others had the task of globally promoting the works of American abstract expressionist artists, in response to the pictorial regime of socialist realism as the officially sanctioned art of the Soviet Union. A unique form of artistic state funding in the history of the United States which historian Frances Stonor Saunders has described as the “Deminform.”5

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Through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the notion of “abstract art” was transformed into a synonym of “free art.” Even though the American public at large was not at all charmed by the works of the abstract expressionists, this abstraction allowed democratism in the context of the Cold War to be depicted as the “natural” outcome of centuries of social struggles exactly by ruling out all depiction. The work of Jackson Pollock, this weapon of the Cold War, is the ultimate figurative representation of the incapacity of the artist to understand his role as instrument of democratism. This implies that I do not acknowledge his work as abstract, but that I perceive it as a series of figurations that we are supposed to recognize as “abstraction.”

We are in permanent need of a critique of ideology in order to identify the types of infrastructure that convey the real meaning to our work as artist, to understand them so we can change them. But how to know the types of propaganda that we are dealing with in a state of total propaganda? Terry Eagleton evaluates this condition as follows: “The most efficient oppressor is the one who persuades his underlings to love, desire and identify with his power: and any practice of political emancipation thus involves that most difficult of all forms of liberation: freeing ourselves from ourselves.”6 The difficulty today, in the condition of total propaganda as described by Ellul is that there is no longer anyone who even identifies him or herself as the person in power, let alone as the oppressor…

Within what we would currently consider as “traditional” propaganda, we may already find the clues of the way in which Ellul’s total propaganda will come to assert itself. In the classic 1942 Donald Duck cartoon “Der Führer’s Face” Donald finds himself as a Nazi in Germany, where he eats bread made of wood, works 24 hours per day, with only minor breaks during which he enjoys a fake mountainous background, before being forced back into the weapons factory where he is enslaved by the Nazi industry. When Donald mentally crashes due to the excessive workload, he wakes up in his own bed. Upon realizing it was just a dream, he suddenly sees the shadow of what seems to be a Nazi officer saluting him – convinced that his own country has now been taken over as well; Donald immediately returns the shadow’s Nazi salute. At that moment he realizes that he is actually standing in front of the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, and thus reassured he calmly returns to sleep. But at this specific moment – the moment in which one totalitarian doctrine is confronted with another, in which the Nazi salute is for a brief moment equated with the Statue of Liberty’s pose – the film provides a brilliant criticism of our lack of tools to recognize the condition of total propaganda in contemporary democratism.

3. From Institutional Critique to Fundamental Democracy The betrayal of emancipatory principles in the imagery of democratism’s propaganda, has been addressed most valuably in the artistic research that we

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call Institutional Critique. This ongoing research started in the sixties of the last century. Artists simply stopped producing and exhibiting objects, trying instead to shed light on the politics of their own practice as well as the politics of the institution representing – thus framing – their practice. What became central in their practice were thus the conditions allowing them to become instrumentalized as the living statues of liberty for Deminform, rather than the services they were providing in its interests. The artists involved in Institutional Critique thus engaged in an emancipatory project, recognizing themselves as part of the art institution, as complicit to the “democratic” state and “free” market regimes that defined art’s political, economic, and overall ideological framing. What we are witnessing here is a beginning of a fundamental self-critique within the Deminform.

Artists engaged in Institutional Critique demanded to establish their own framing, not as autonomous, “sovereign” units but as political beings. “We are all always already serving,” are the words of Andrea Fraser,7 an artist that was part of the “second wave” – the second generation – of artists engaged in Institutional Critique. Fraser in this context speaks of art’s “relative autonomy”. Exactly because art deals with the historical question of what it means to “represent,” it is in the context of Institutional Critique never “just representing,” but always reflective of the context in which it positions itself. It is in this “reflexivity” of art, a result of its relative autonomy, that we, as artists, should add to Fraser’s question “Whom we are serving” the question “Whom do we want to be serving?” In other words: “within which political project do we desire to situate our practice?”

What was revolutionary in Institutional Critique was the demand of transparency, partly through self-critique, of the conditions that define the role of the artist in a larger political, economic and ideological specter. But today the idea of transparency has become an inherent part of marketing tactics. Despite structural obscurity obviously remaining, governments and corporations have learned to serve the desire for transparency if they want to avoid critique by journalists or activist organizations that might influence consumer habits. But to their great benefit, our age has thought us that transparency in itself does not change behavior. Insight in the conditions of labor and its inherent mechanisms of exploitation might enhance the schizophrenia of citizen-consumer who would actually like to stand on the “right side,” but that does not necessarily mean that they will sacrifice anything of their privileged status (or their dream of ever acquiring such a privileged status, despite their knowledge of what human sacrifices this demands) for this cause.

In other words, critique in demand of transparency means nothing if it is not strengthened by the act of positioning, otherwise it runs the risk – like much of Institutional Critique has – to rather legitimate the system by showing it “worthy of our critique” (in other words: suggesting that somehow with “enough critique” it would be capable of reforming itself ). Amidst the radicality of the crises we face, this tactic is no longer viable. The task of Institutional Critique would rather be to make visible different ideological camps forming as a result of these crises and

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then abandoning its notion of “critique” so to make a choice to which of these camps we want to belong. To which of these camps we want to be of service to. I believe that this should be a political project in which art is not simply instrumentalized by our Deminforms, but in which, vice versa, politics in its turn is instrumentalized by art.

A very similar question is addressed by what may probably best be described as the “international democratization movement,” which certainly is not as new as often suggested, although it has visibly emerged in the recent years developing its claims in a dialectic movement between a not-so-World Wide Web and the “public” squares of our cities. I believe that this movement’s claims in principle formulate the same demand that Institutional Critique has brought forward, but within a broader political context. These consist in a refusal to continue to operate under the conditions of a domain dictated by unknown others (who moreover deny having any “real” power), and a demand to shape and decide upon these conditions themselves.

Through the Spanish Indignados protests and worldwide Occupy Movement, through the Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) and Wikileaks, through the old Green and the new Pirate Parties we can recognize a single demand: the demand to organize ourselves as political beings. This demand directly confronts the monopolies of democratism. It entails the democratization of our politics, the democratization of our economy, the democratization of our ecology, and the democratization of our public domain. It is a demand to explore the principles of an egalitarian society. Such a society is not the same as a society where everyone has the right to everyone’s belongings, or a society where there is no such thing as a private sphere or intimacy, but it is a society in which the concept of power, the question how it is constituted and to whom it belongs is placed into permanent question.

The demands of the worldwide democratization movement take the shape of public spaces where the meaning of this concept of egalitarian society is explored in varying collectives: through protests, squares, as well as virtual spaces. These are platforms where we do not outsource our vote – in Dutch literally meaning “voice”, stem – but where we attempt to shape these ourselves. This concept of democracy as a movement of political beings, not tied to single leaders or dogmas, but through a fidelity to the principles of egalitarianism as a shared emancipatory project, is what I call Fundamental Democracy. It is a concept that is irreconcilable with democratism.

This however does not mean that I naively idealize the concrete functioning of the international democratization movement. Having lived on the squares of Occupy Amsterdam with a group of about thirty artists for about three months, I have experienced how protests against a system can turn into its most perverted mirror.

Our initiative consisted of a variety of artists, all concerned with the role of art

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within the political event. As such, our presence was one exploring an alternative model of the art institution, situated in the camp. What soon was known as the “artist’s tent,” programmed daily reading groups, hosted action committees and organized lectures and classes for art students. But apart from being an urgent democratic experiment, worth to engage with through the mostly educational initiatives of our temporal group, Occupy was just as well the scenery of corruption by abuse of public donations within the Occupy camp, the deployment of excessive bureaucracy in order to wear out political opponents during so called “general assemblies”, of use of violence by so-called voluntary “peace-keepers” who were on night watch, and I speak of nightly deportations from the camp of unwelcome subjects such as psychiatric patients and drug addicts – people who, as philosopher Ernst van de Hemel has rightfully pointed out, were in fact occupying the square before the Occupy movement set camp. During those two months I have often said that the only thing that is good about the system that we were opposing, is that no one in the Occupy movement holds a position of power in it.

This does not mean that Occupy has failed. I would call the protest, and many of the phenomena that are part of the international democratization movement, collective social experiments. Occupy, IMMI and Wikileaks, the Green and Pirate Parties: these are not solutions, they are instruments. What the international democratization movement represents for me is thus most of all the current will to start working. By taking on the task of exploring what fundamental democracy may be through different social experiments, we explore what it means to be political beings, however terrifying and disillusioning that sometimes might be. It is in the context of this project, that the analysis and thorough self-critique of Institutional Critique becomes of value again, as rather than legitimizing the hand that feeds it first of all contributes to the subverting of power structures that have separated ownership of our world into those with power, and those with none at all. That system is not worthy of our critique any longer: it now needs our subsequent resistance.

4. New World Summit In the past years I have collaborated with other artists, with politicians, political parties, and non-parliamentary political groups in an attempt to answer the question how, from the perspective of an artist’s practice, to use the discursive space opened by Institutional Critique in the service of the demands of fundamental democracy, rather than as another legitimating force of democratism. As a result of these collaborations I founded my artistic and political organization New World Summit, which attempts to structurally oppose a series of monopolies that I described as the pillars of democratist politics. It achieves this by dedicating itself to providing “alternative parliaments” hosting organizations that currently find themselves excluded from democracy, for example by means of so-called international designated terrorist lists.

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The first three editions of the “New World Summit” present alternative parliaments for political and juridical representatives of organizations currently placed on socalled international terrorist lists. The terrorist lists comprise organizations that are internationally considered to be state threats. In the European Union, a secret committee, the so-called “Clearing House,” draws up the EU terrorist list. The Clearing House meets bi-annually, in secret and there are no public proceedings of the way decisions are made for the listing of political organizations. One could rightfully say that even by its own standards, the committee that is in charge of placing organizations ‘outside’ of democratism is itself organized in a fundamentally undemocratic manner.8 The consequences for the listed organizations and people who are in contact with them include a block on all bank accounts and an international travel ban.

A core characteristic of the New World Summit is that it is an exploration of the potential of an international parliament: it has no fixed geographical location, it represents no nation state, no properties or indefinite claims on the right to speak. On the contrary, it defends the demand of each and every political being to represent his or her political beliefs, if willing to do it in the shared space of the summit.

New World Summit logo

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New World Summit – Berlin, an overview of the “alternative parliament” of the New World Summit in the Sophiensaele, Berlin, Artist: Jonas Staal, 2012, photo: Lidia Rossner

The first installment of the New World Summit took place on the 4th and 5th of May 2012 in the Sophiensaele, a theater and political platform in Berlin.

Invitations to about one hundred organizations mentioned on international terrorist lists were dispatched. From the respondents we were capable of hosting four political representatives, and three juridical representatives, the lawyers of such organizations. The first day of the summit, entitled “Reflections on the Closed Society,” allowed each speaker to hold an uninterrupted lecture on the goal of their organization and the confrontation they experienced with the existence of the international terrorist lists. No intervention from the audience was allowed.

The second day, entitled “Proposals for the Open Society,” was based on an interrogation by the audience. As such, I defended the function of the “New World Summit” in these two days as a form of “radical diplomacy,” by on the one hand proposing an unrestricted, albeit shared, platform to the organizations, but on the other hand by demanding political accountability through the similarly unrestricted interrogation by the audience.

The second installment of the New World Summit took place on December 29, 2012, and focused on the political, economic, ideological, and juridical interests that are invested in upholding the notion of the “terrorist” by hosting the keynote speaker Professor Jose Maria Sison, co-founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). Both

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organizations are currently included on “terrorist” lists as a result of their ongoing armed struggle with what they describe as a “semi-colonial and semi-feudal Philippine government,” which is under “US imperialist control” and consists of “comprador bourgeoisie, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists.” Several experts representing the different layers of the system that revolves around this notion of “terrorism,” separating certain organizations and individuals from society, were asked to respond to Sison. In turn, a lawyer, a public prosecutor, a judge, a politician, and a political theorist spoke, each representing a “layer” that separates a civilian (the audience) from a listed civilian (representatives of the CCP and NPA).

The third installment of the New World Summit was held in India, and was planned in an open air pavilion at the Aspen House in Kochi where it would feature a number of representatives of political organizations “banned” from the political arena by the Indian government, who would present lectures on the histories of their organizations, on their political struggles, and gained results, as well as debate their views with each other and the audience. The Indian context shows that there are profound ties between these organizations and the colonial legacy. The many movements in India that continue to fight for the right to selfdetermination comprise a wide variety of political orientations, including sectarian movements of Sikhs, Muslims, Baptist-Christians, and Hindus, the political movement of the Maoist Naxalites, and the territorial struggles of the indigenous

New World Summit – Berlin,lecture “The Tuareg People’s Right to Self-Determination” by Moussa Ag Assarid,

spokesman of the National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA), Artist: Jonas Staal, 2012, photo: Lidia Rossner

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peoples of Tripura, Manipur, Assam, and Tamil Nadu. The New World Summit in Kochi was an attempt to make these political struggles, waged across the Indian subcontinent, visible, and an investigation of the relationship between India’s history of colonialism and democratization and the organizations currently excluded from the political process.

Only a few weeks after the inauguration of the pavilion, which was built for the summit only, the Fort Kochi Police registered a case against me on January 9, 2013 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act Section 10 (4). The State Intelligence ordered the removal of panels by the Fort Kochi Police depicting the flags of organizations banned in India, which were organized by color in the pavilion. Through the use of black and greys (they obviously lacked enough black paint) they covered twenty of them, leaving five they were not familiar with, but which are listed nonetheless. Interestingly enough, the authorities had no objection to paint over the flags of organizations that they considered to be unrelated to the state, but did follow the abstract color scheme that lies at the basis of each of the alternative parliaments, as we organize the flags by color, not by geographic placement or ideological orientation. The three sides of the pavilion, ordered one side in red, the other in blue, green and yellow, and the last in black and white formed the basis for the authorities to cover lighter flags in grey, and more darker ones in black. So here abstraction, rather than the overall figurative depiction of the

New World Summit – Berlin, lecture “Women and Democracy: The Kurdish Question and Beyond” by Fadile Yildirim (right) and translator Merel Cicek (left), on behalf of the Kurdish feminist movement based on the theoretical work of Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Artist: Jonas Staal, 2012, photo: Lidia Rossner

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flags, shows itself the most powerful in changing behavior of the authorities. They will cover the images of the flags, but they will follow the order of colors as decided by the New World Summit when it comes to this choreography of censorship. Thus a parallel with Pollock’s performance of democratism becomes visible, only that is not the artist that enacts abstraction on behalf of Deminform, but it’s the state itself who’s monochromatic depiction of power appropriates artistic tools. In other words, the state paints.

The intention of the New World Summit is to bypass the existing terrorist laws, by (1) making use of legal tools to move through a variety of juridical gray zones and (2) creating new ones by the use of art. In the case of the New World Summit in Kochi, the success of this approach is tested on the highest imaginable level: by prosecuting the New World Summit through exactly the same law that is used to list certain organizations.

The first, crucially important tool in this process is located in the summit’s capability to move geographically. Almost all countries today have an international terrorist list, and allies tend to copy organizations from these lists on request. For example, the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, is in the Netherlands placed on the list at request of the United States government, not because they were aware of any actual threats themselves. But considering the fact that not all countries are allies and not all geopolitical interests are matching, these lists sometimes do not correspond. Hence an organization such as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an organization basing itself on an interesting combination of Marxism and Islamism, is considered terrorist in the United States but – after a long juridical fight – no longer in the European Union.

The summit started in Berlin and now continues to travel around the world, in the coming months from India to Belgium (September 2014). Each time it enters into a different juridical and political “zone,” thus capable of offering a platform to voices that were impossible to host in previous summits. Theoretically, this way the New World Summit – a parliament in flux – at the end of its travel, will have been able to host all organizations placed today on the international terrorist lists.

The New World Summit thus proposes an injection of knowledge suppressed by democratism, brought back into the public sphere by using the second tool that is key in developing this project: the juridically exceptional position of visual art.

The meaning of art’s “relative autonomy” may be best highlighted from the perspective of the law. A simple example. In Germany, one of the flags shown in the New World Summit in Berlin, that of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), may not be shown in public spaces such as the Sophiensaele, the location of the summit. A punishment of six months can be given to anyone who breaks this law.

But because the parliament of the summit does not organize the flags of the listed

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organizations by geographical location or ideological orientation but based on color it is impossible to consider the showing of the PKK flag to be a “single” offense.

I claim the flag to be part of a color scheme, of an abstraction that is created by the organization of all flags together. To take out one flag means to destroy the abstraction that is key to the work as an installation. It would mean one would destroy my artwork. Yet, for the invited organizations the “truth” of their flags does not diminish because they are organized by color. These two realities, artistic and political, exist simultaneously: the flags are abstract, and they are the total opposite of abstraction at the same time. These two realities do not deny each other: they exist as a consequence of one another.

Philosopher Vincent van Gerven Oei rearticulated the concept of art’s “relative autonomy” in the context of the New World Summit as art’s “relative illegality.” It is this constructive “state of exception” within a juridical framework that can become an important political tool for people that have been subjected to that other “state of exception”: the one that has placed the organizations “outside” of democratism by help of the international terrorist lists. As such, art’s relative illegality may create new forms of public domain, in which new histories may manifest itself – those many histories that have been suppressed from democratism’s consciousness through the international terrorist lists. These are the histories according to the resistance.

The true cynic might say that the organizations that spoke during the summit were merely “staged” within an artistic contexts, as some type of political objet trouvé, a curiosity.

I will answer this cynicism with a concrete example from the summit. When one of the speakers at the New World Summit, Luis Jalandoni, who spoke on behalf of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, took the floor and said “I’m Luis Jalandoni, and that’s my flag” while pointing to the other side of the room, there was no doubt that for him this space was not political despite the presence of art but that it was political exactly because of art. The space became a political space not simply because I labeled it as such, but because the speakers together with me demanded it to be so. If anything, these organizations were educating us through the urgency with which they brought politics back to the theater. Not as a mere simulacrum of politics in the negative sense of the word, but as the rightful place to speak of the meaning of the concept of representation: to ask the core questions that have made the theater and the politics each other’s ideal birthplace.

News on upcoming editions of the New World Summit, the New World Summit Bureau and the New World Summit Academy for Cultural Activism

http://www.newworldsummit.eu This text is an adapted version of a lecture given at the second part of the 3rd Former West Research Congress at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht (NL)

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1 The Dutch historian Kees Vuyk effectively argues that these policies where, similar to the American involvement with modern art through the CIA (which I will discuss later on this text), just as well motivated by fear of “Communist” sympathies in society. Source: Vuyk, Kees, “The Arts as an Instrument,” International Journal of Cultural Policy: Volume 16, Issue 2, 2010

2 In 2006, theater group Orkater and author Arnon Grunberg joined the Dutch troops in

Afghanistan. Both are known as critical cultural producers, who would translate their experiences in Afghanistan by showing the ambiguities and paradoxes of war, the discrepancies between the

command at home and the war “on the ground.” Interestingly enough, it is not despite but exactly

because of this criticality that they were tolerated by the military. Through their presence, the artists

prove the success of democracy as export product: its transparency and self-criticism go so far that the war is being criticized even at the moment that it is waged. This critique would however never stop it, but on the contrary provides its legitimation. This is how the artist performs its role as a “living statue of liberty.”

3 Ellul considers this state of total propaganda the moment when all resistance against the dominance of the Technological Society, which he believes has become the dominant condition of the western world at the end of the second Industrial Revolution, has seized to exist: “Only when very small

groups are (..) annihilated, when the individual finds no more defenses, no equilibrium, no resistance

exercised by the group to which he belongs, does total action by propaganda become possible.” Source: Ellul, Jacques, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p.9) 4 The concept of democratism first appeared in a piece of writing by Vladimir Lenin: “Besides the interests of a broad section of the landlords, Russian bourgeois democratism reflects the interests of the mass of tradesmen and manufacturers, chiefly medium and small, as well as (and this is

particularly important) those of the mass of proprietors and petty proprietors among the peasantry” Source: Lenin, Vladimir, “Working-Class and Bourgeois Democracy” in Lenin Collected Works, Volume 8 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), p.72-82

5 Saunders, Frances Stonor, Who Paid the Piper? (London: Granta Books, 1999), p.57 6 Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An Introduction (London/New York: Verso, 2007), P.xxiii

7 Fraser, Andrea, “How to Provide an Artistic Service: An Introduction” in Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), p. 156

8 Source: Adding Hezbollah to the EU Terrorist List – Hearing before the Subcommittee on Europe of the Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives, June 20 2007

Jonas Staal is an artist who studied monumental art in the Netherlands (NL) and the US. He is a PhD researcher in contemporary propaganda at the University of Leiden, NL. His work includes

interventions in public space, exhibitions, lectures, and publications, and focuses on the relationship between art, politics, and ideology. He regularly publishes in newspapers and magazines such as de

Groene Amsterdammer, Metropolis M, and NRCHandelsblad. Staal lives and works in Rotterdam.

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ON ART WORKERS’ LABOR CONDITIONS (MOSCOW) 1

Evgenia Abramova

1. The structure of the project 1.1. Purpose and Objectives The main purpose of this project is to investigate the working conditions of art workers in Moscow. In Russia, this aspect of contemporary art has largely been ignored, as debates in the field usually focused on either aesthetic considerations or market analysis. This began to change only in 2009-2010, thanks to the efforts of several groups (the so-called “Voronezh group” – Maria Chehonadskih, Arseny Zhilyaev, Elizabeta Bobryashova, Mikhail Lylov, the platform Chto Delat?/ What is to be done?, Vpered the “Forward” Socialist Movement and others). These groups were among the first who began to seriously discuss problems related to artistic labor. They organized the First and Second May Congress for Art Workers together with other activists and artistic groups in Moscow in 2010 and 2011. During these public events, participants argued at length over problems related to precarious employment in the art world. In line with these initiatives, the project “On Art Workers’ Labor Conditions,” implemented with the support of the website Polit.

Ru, was launched in 2009.

Such information has rarely been publicized in the media and was never consolidated in a single resource.2 At the same time, art workers’ problems and urgencies are still intensely discussed in private. The first systematic attempt to bring these voices together was initiated by the May Congress in 2010 in Moscow (in the section “Personal testimonies of art workers”).

1.2. Methodology The methodology of the project was based on qualitative sociological research, namely gathering “oral histories.” This strategy had the advantage of selecting case studies instead of using a general model; illustrating labor conditions with biographical details; and varying the questions instead of just repeating those included in a rigid questionnaire. Furthermore, the collected testimonies could be published.

The criteria for selecting the interviewees were the following: 1) the place of residence at the time of the interview was Moscow (the urban space, which those living and working in the city had in common)

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2) interviewees were under 35 years old (the standard age-limit denoting a “young art worker” – in this project, the age limit was not intended to define the “view and lifestyle of a generation”) 3) having a professional interest in contemporary art (as stated by the interviewees themselves or those who classify their artistic activities within the framework of contemporary art)3 4) participation in the programs of various institutions related to contemporary art Additionally, the interviewees’ places of employment had to be different (one interviewee per institution), in order to gather as much information as possible from diverse institutions.4 1.4. The necessity of public exposure and its limits The project “On Art Workers’ Labor Conditions” was based on the idea that working conditions in post-Soviet Russia do not only need to be normalized/ regulated, but also be exposed publicly, i.e., normalization through exposure. It was also considered necessary to define, collect and publish various cases of nonpayment or delay of fees/wages, to document the lack of formal contracts or agreements, long working hours, etc. Based on this evidence, further research can be conducted and art workers’ labor conditions may be improved.

However, the necessity to expose these facts also meant that some information had to be withheld for publication such as: names of institutions, organizations, and individuals, along with payment amounts.5 Time and again, the interviewees and the author of this research had problems with questions “about money”: in some cases these were seen as unethical, despite the participants’ willingness to openly discuss their working conditions. As a result we could not present all relevant evidences about art workers’ conditions.

2. The labor conditions of art workers 2.1. Working and living in Moscow Art workers admitted that it was easier to find a job in fields related to contemporary art in Moscow, especially when compared to other cities in Russia, where there are few and far between institutions for contemporary art (Chehonadskih), or as opposed to Europe, where there are too many (Yaichnikova, Kravtsova, Mahacheva).6 After completing specialized courses in Europe, art workers usually returned to Russia (Moscow), as they found the competition here much lower; they were more likely to make a name for themselves as artists (Makhacheva) and apply their knowledge as critics and curators (Yaichnikova, Kravtsova). Also, it was easier to find a second job in Moscow in order to have enough time and money to participate in the contemporary art scene (Mustafin, Zhilyaev). In other cities in Russia, having a second job while at the same time being involved in contemporary

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art is simply not possible, and therefore it seems as though moving to Moscow is a necessity (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev).

At the same time, the interviewees thought that professional development opportunities are blocked in Moscow, as opposed to cosmopolitan cities, which foster them. On an imaginary map of contemporary art, they positioned Moscow as a periphery or a very local place, where there are constant shortages of almost everything: education, public and private institutions, artists, critics, collectors, funds, employment and housing. Thus, Moscow is also a city that art workers want to leave (at least temporarily) for places with better conditions for contemporary art (Chehonadskih, Kravtsova, Dyakonov, Svetlyakov, Mahacheva, Parshikov, Zhilyaev, Auerbach, Yaichnikova).

It is a challenge for art workers based in Moscow to find a place to live. It becomes necessary for them to rent an apartment: both for those who moved here from other Russian cities (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev, Mustafin, Maslyaev, Oleynikov), as well as those who grew up in Moscow (Tavasiev, Dyakonov, Parshikov, Kravtsova, Yaichnikova, Zaitseva, Auerbach, Svetlyakov, Mahacheva). For the latter, the necessity of finding an apartment is related to the need to live separately from their parents and have an independent income. Living together with one’s parents is considered inappropriate for the art workers’ age or simply viewed as something temporary (Auerbach, Yaichnikova).

Housing costs are associated with the constant threat of evictions and random increases in rent, depending on the whims of landlords. These are the most significant expenditures for art workers, which take away more than half of their income. If an art worker loses his/her housing, then he/she has to spend more time and money to find a new place to move into (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev, Maslyaev).

In these cases, art workers move from one acquaintance to another because they do not have enough money to rent their own apartment (Zhilyaev, Chehonadskih).

2.2. The Artistic Profession: From Education to Work Art workers described their interest in contemporary art as a break from previous educational or professional training. Most of them were educated in the humanities, social sciences or life sciences, did not work in a specialty field, or worked only for a short time after graduation (Parshikov, Zaitseva, Zhilyaev, Mahacheva, Maslyaev).

In some cases the “transition” to contemporary art meant not only a rejection of one’s prior professional experience or education, but also moving to another city/ country and being separated from family and friends (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev, Oleynikov, Mustafin, Yaichnikova).

Choosing contemporary art as one’s main field of specialization means opposing classic and conventional models. A common grievance in the interviews was related to the conservative model of art history, still predominant in Russian universities.

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Art workers, who defended their final thesis in contemporary art (the second half of the 20th century to the present), encountered resistance from the academic community (Parshikov, Yaichnikova). Moreover, art workers do not regard the introduction of contemporary art courses in leading Russian Universities (Moscow State University, Russian State University for Humanities, Higher School of Economics) and new educational art institutions in Moscow (The Institute of Contemporary Art, Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia) as a suitable equivalent for “higher education.” They call into question the official status of these educational institutions, the professionalism of the instructors, the offerings of the curriculum, the level of critical thinking, as well as the connections of local institutions with foreign establishments for contemporary art and the art market in general.

2.3. Contemporary Art Institutions Most art workers interviewed here began their careers in the second part of the 1990s or early 2000s in Moscow, when social practices within contemporary art had been already legitimated. Initially, commercial galleries, non-profits, professional publications, new state museums and contemporary art centers and departments, as well as commercial “creative clusters,” emerged as democratic spaces that had the potential of establishing new and more open relationships between art and society, in contrast to official cultural institutions.7 One of the turning points in this joint cultural production could have been to fairly compensate each and every one who is engaged in it, while maintaining horizontal instead of hierarchical relationships, and demanding emancipatory production conditions integral to critical contemporary art praxis in general.

However, as evinced by this project, most of the aforementioned institutions, which gained status and credibility by the 2000s, have established a system of labor practices that can hardly be called democratic. They rarely organize noncommercial or critical projects, or do so very sporadically, and seldom advertise open competitions for grants, fellowships, and residencies. Moreover, these institutions almost never carry out educational or research projects, and poorly regulate contractual relationships with art workers, catering mostly to the commercial interests of various sponsors (Chehonadskih, Maslyaev, Zhilyaev, Zaitseva, Kravtsova, Dyakonov, Parshikov, Yaichnikova, Auerbach, Svetlyakov).

In addition, most private, for-profit contemporary art institutions (galleries, professional publications) function as small to medium-size businesses; therefore, they have an unstable income and are constantly challenged by rising costs and small profits (Volf, Chehonadskih, Dyakonov). In turn, state institutions are allotted modest, but dependable on national or regional budgets; nevertheless, they also have to seek out additional sponsors and are faced with difficulties because of excessive bureaucracy (Yaichnikova, Maslyaev, Svetlyakov). Non-commercial, private foundations centered on establishing private collections have better means of production compared to galleries and state institutions (Parshikov, Zaitseva).

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As for “creative clusters,” they are first and foremost focused on leasing real estate; according to this logic, contemporary art projects should be conducive to the commercial success of the owners (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev).

The main problems art workers face - when dealing with institutions for contemporary art in Russia - are irregular employment and low salaries/ honorariums for their work. Moreover, there are usually no contracts in place that would ensure the rights and obligations of the parties involved, the terms of remuneration or social benefits. When these institutions do offer a contract, art workers typically do not have any bargaining power to assert their rights; may not be experienced enough to change the conditions of the contract; or simply do not have time for it (all the interviewees).

Artists, who work with galleries and/or participate in other institutions’ projects, are perhaps in an even more difficult situation: Their labor (work) is not budgeted as part of the project and is therefore not compensated (Oleynikov), while the infrequent sales generally do not cover costs of production or living expenses (Makhacheva); moreover, given the lack of sales, art works frequently end up in the recycling bin (Zhilyaev, Auerbach).

Because of all these factors, stable, formal interrelationships between art workers and institutions were never established in Moscow. For example, galleries may or may not sign contracts with artists to sell their works (Tavasiev, Auerbach). Or they can pay production fees, organize an exhibition and buy some of the works, but do not sell any art works (Zhilyaev). Or they provide studio space but seize the art works to cover their expenses (Oleynikov). Or they can offer participation in an exhibition but cannot pay production costs (Oleynikov). Few artists can support themselves by selling their works or wining grants or prizes (Tavasiev, Auerbach).

At the same time, there are attempts to foster art workers’ autonomy from contemporary art institutions. However, this autonomy is based on resources (free time, finances, management) provided by other institutions, which are not dedicated to contemporary art. In other words, to realize their artistic projects, art workers must find different jobs, as teachers or designers for example (Zhilyaev, Mustafin), or receive financial assistance from their relatives (Oleynikov, Chehonadskih).

2.4. Art and labor When describing their activities in interviews, art workers drew clear distinction between artistic practices and labor (work). If it were not for this distinction, they would not be able to act as a self-enterpreneurs that is to create their own subjectivity, which is based on blurring of this distinction. Defending the autonomy of art, they do not consider themselves as “workers” per se; that is, those who are subject to external constraints of employer/client relationships and are in control

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of they own work power, bear the risks of irregular, unstable employment, and are responsible for their own professional development, as well as health and pension benefits. Art workers either refuse to consider art as just work (Tavasiev) or demand recognition of their artistic practices as a form of work (Zhilyaev, Oleynikov, Mahacheva). Curators also separate different types of artistic activity, such as creating concepts, the selection of artists and works, or writing managerial texts from organizing and producing exhibitions (Parshikov, Yaichnikova, Maslyaev, Svetlyakov). Critics consider that “artistic” texts are different from those written for a sum of money (Kravtsova, Dyakonov).

The emphasis on the boundary between art and labor is indicative of the fact that art workers consider their practices to be based on independent, intellectual, educational and research-oriented interests, as well as driven by self-realization and “naked enthusiasm” (Tavasiev, Chehonadskih, Svetlyakov, Dyakonov, Mahacheva, Zhilyaev). For them, art is not a utilitarian activity or a monetary value and should be protected from subsumption into commercial exchange on market.

However, it is important that art workers themselves meaningfully blur the line between art and labor. If the state and employers/clients do this, and neither recognize art workers’ labor, nor guarantee that they will be adequately remunerated, it means that art workers are exploited under neo-liberal conditions (Oleynikov, Zhilyaev, Chehonadskih). If art workers demand the acknowledgement of their creative activity as labor, then they are able to fight against exploitation and to uphold the right to work and be fairly compensated. (Chehonadskih, Oleynikov).

2.5. Social Benefits Within the field of contemporary art in Russia, art workers are deprived of most social benefits, such as: seniority, vacation time, temporary disability benefits, and pension. This is due to unstable employment, lack of formal contracts, and “black” and “grey” salaries/honorariums. Neither the state nor private organizations are able to provide art workers with long-term social benefits.

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that art workers are generally disinterested in social benefits. They have to constantly search for jobs and are frequently not remunerated for their labor; therefore, the question of social benefits takes a back seat or even becomes irrelevant. Moreover, art workers commonly do not know how to apply for social benefits, or by whom and when these guarantees will be provided for them.

According to the Russian legislation, there are two types of contracts: labor (employment agreement) and commercial contracts. The first one includes several social benefits: seniority, vacation time, temporary disability benefits, and pension.

The second one includes only pension.

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Any work related or contractual benefits (seniority, leave of absence, temporary disability benefits, pension) are either extraneous to art workers employed on a temporary basis, or unreliable, as agreements with employers are usually verbal.

Consequently, long-term social benefits - in practice- seem impossible to ensue due to art workers’ unstable employment. (suggestion - Actually, the social benefits of a labor contract are not considered as “social rights” by art workers who are usually employed on a temporary basis. In many cases officially guaranteed benefits are provided only according to negotiations with an employee.) Vacation time has lost its status as the right for leisure and the art worker has to petition the employer for the date and duration of his/her leave (Zaitseva). As for temporary disability benefits, art workers rarely enjoy these; instead, they have to go to private clinics if they do not have health insurance already (Tavasiev, Parshikov). But in general, art workers cannot afford to get sick at all, not only because illness threatens the realization of their projects, but also because they could potentially lose money for not finishing their works.

In the case of commercial contracts, art workers may only rely on pension payments when they reach retirement age (the amounts depend on the size of remunerations and taxes). Still, for art workers pensions do not represent a guarantee and they are mostly associated with the deterioration of living conditions and fear of poverty.

Art workers imagine they will not receive pension from the state once they reach retirement age, or if they do, the pension will be so miserable as to make it impossible to live on. Some elderly members of art workers’ families are also facing these challenges (Tavasiev, Yaichnikova).

Therefore, the “work - remuneration – tax - pension” logic is not applicable for art workers. Deprived of social benefits, art workers hold mostly pessimistic views of their future: 1) to continue working after retirement age (Oleynikov, Mustafin); 2) dying before reaching retirement; 3) relying on financial support from their children; or 4) moving to a place where living costs are minimal (Mustafin).

3. Conclusion Since the first interviews (25 April 2010) and until now (30 September 2012), art workers’ labor conditions have not improved much. Therefore, it is important to reiterate some general demands made by art workers’ in the interviews that were addressed to the general public, as well as to institutions for contemporary art.

These demands aim to normalize and formalize working relations between employers/clients and art workers through contracts, which should include mandatory remuneration (advance, payment of their labor and its results) and provide social benefits. This should be an extension of a system of open competitions (grants, residences, prizes). The fulfillment of these basic demands creates opportunities for the implementation of non-commercial, critical projects in contemporary art (Chehonadskih, Zhilyaev, Oleynikov, Kravtsova, Dyakonov, Mahacheva, Auerbach, Yaichnikova, Mustafin, Parshikov).

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1 Edited and translated from an original text by Evgenia Abramova published on polit.ru: http:// polit.ru/article/2012/09/30/altvorrabotnyki/

2 See Bikbov Alexander. The economics and politics of critical judgment / Neprikosnovennyj Zapas

(The Emergency Rations). No5(67). 2009. Steiner Arseny. Young artists / ArtChronika. 01.07.2010.

Chehonadskih Maria. Lost in Translation: the precarity in theory and in practice / Hudozhestvenyi Journal (The Moscow Art Journal). No79/80. 2010.

3 In Russia, there was no sociological research (either qualitative or quantitative) conducted on the

labor conditions of art workers. This is perhaps due to the small size of the market for contemporary art. In addition, contemporary art is not a priority in state cultural policy (See Vladimir Putin, The construction of justice. Social policy for Russia. / putin2012.ru. 13.02.2012). Because of the rising

popularity of “cultural industries” and the development of these industries, there will probably be more sociological researches in this area in the future.

4 The list of art workers who were interviewed within this project (in chronological order): Nikolay Oleynikov, artist; Rostan Tavasiev, artist; Maria Chehonadskih, art critic, curator; Sasha Auerbah,

artist; Kirill Svetlyakov, art critic, curator; Arseniy Zhilyaev, artist, curator; Valentin Dyakonov, art

critic; Ilya Volf, Chief Operating Officer of art gallery; Maria Kravtsova, art critic; Anna Zaitseva,

curator; Taus Mahacheva, artist; Denis Mustafin, artist; Andrey Parshikov, curator, art critic; Alexey Maslyaev, curator; Elena Yaichnikova, curator, art critic.

5 The Legislation on Culture No36 12-1 stipulates that “art workers” are those who create or interpret cultural values according to their own creative activities, as an integral part of their lives; art workers

should be recognized as such regardless of whether or not they work under official agreements or they are part of a larger professional association. In addition, national law provides that art workers are

also those adhering to the World Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works, and the Rome Convention for the protection of artists, including performers, phonogram producers and broadcasters.

6 In terms of publishing the interviews, the interviewees had editing rights to the final text. The

reason why some information was elided or added was not specifically discussed. In only one case, we did not publish the name of an institution so as not to arouse the attention of the authorities.

7 Art workers’ names were added in brackets at the end of topics/paragraphs, which were discussed or mentioned in interviews with those particular art workers.

Editing and translation from Russian by Corina L. Apostol and Jasmina Tumbas.

Evgenia Abramova is an independent researcher and activist based in Moscow. She graduated

from Moscow State University with a MA in Philosophy. Her research interests: urban studies (the

development of the cultural workers’ labor conditions in post-Soviet cities), cultural and visual studies (artistic and activist practices in public spaces, mass- and social-media).

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DICTIONARY

Art Worker and Labor Conditions Evgenia Abramova The term “art worker” refers to the relationship between art/creativity and work (with an emphasis on labor/working conditions), defining “art workers” as both the subjects of rights and social-labor relations. The use of this term implies that aesthetic considerations are not of primary concern. In “On Art Workers’ Labor Conditions in Moscow” we did not discuss with the interviewees whether they considered themselves “art workers” or not, nor how they understood this term. Two of the interviewees used the term “art worker,” but in the sense of not contesting this terminology, rather than identifying with it. Another person who took part in several art projects refused to give an interview, a decision motivated by the fact that he did not consider himself an “art worker.”

As for the term “labor (working) conditions,” it refers to the different types of employment (unemployment/stable employment), the different types of work (producing texts, objects, performances, events), payment (non-payment/official payment), forms of labor and social relations (the presence of absence of a contract), and social benefits (or lack thereof ). Generally, the project was based on the political demand: “Any type of work must be paid!,” which was not reflected in all of the interviews, as the main purpose was to provide longer descriptions of art workers’ working conditions; for labor practices are deeply immersed in everyday experiences, where the borders between official rules and informality are volatile, depending on numerous factors, ranging from ethical to legal concerns.

Glut Gregory Sholette The glut of art and artists is “the normal condition of the art market,” Carol Duncan commented in 1983.1 More than 20 years later a 2005 Rand Corporation study of visual artists in the United States updated her observations, describing an even more unsettling picture of the art world. Its key finding was that although the number of artists had greatly increased in recent decades, the hierarchy among artists, “always evident, appears to have become increasingly stratified, as has their earnings prospects.” The report goes on to add that although a few “superstars” at

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the top of this economic pyramid “sell their work for hundreds of thousands and occasionally millions of dollars, the vast majority of visual artists often struggle to make a living from the sale of their work and typically earn a substantial portion of their income from non-arts employment.” 2 […]

Like the deterritorialized flow of finance capital, all that is solid, and all that is intangibly social, has been reduced to a kind of raw material for market speculation and bio-political asset mining. It is the social order itself, and the very notion of governance, along with a longstanding promise of security and happiness, that has become another kind of modern ruin. Even if the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) is the new MBA (Master of Business Arts), as some neoliberal business theorists intone, mumbling the phrase like some magic formula, what exactly does enterprise culture gain from its seemingly tender embrace of artists and creative labor?

Perhaps, rather than an historic compromise between artistic creativity and the neoliberal economy, what has fixated neoliberalism onto the image of the artist as ideal worker is not so much her imaginative out-of-the-box thinking or restless flexibility as the way the art world as an aggregate economy successfully manages its own excessively surplus labor force, extracting value from a redundant majority of “failed” artists who in turn apparently acquiesce to this disciplinary arrangement.

There could be no better formula imaginable for capitalism 2.0 as it moves into the new century. Still, what remains to be seen is how those lost bits and pieces of a ruined society and dreams of collective dissonance might be reanimated through some artistic necromancy by those not yet ready to give in to the disciplinary sirens of enterprise culture.

Gregory Sholette, Glut, originally published in “Glut, Overproduction, Redundancy!,” Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise culture, Pluto Press, 2010

1 Carol Duncan, “Who Rules the Art World?,” in Aesthetics of Power: Essays in Critical Art History, Cambridge University Press, 1983, 172.

2 Kevin F. McCarthy, et al., Rand Report: A portrait of the visual arts: meeting the challenges of a

new era, Rand Corp., 2005; http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG290.sum.pdf

What is Neoliberalism?

Milena Placentile French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, described neoliberalism as a modern repackaging of ideas elites have always used to exert their supremacy, this time through the distorted co-optation of progressive language, reason, and science to justify the concentration of power in their hands. Presenting itself as both contemporary and self-evident, it contends that the market ought to be free, and any effort to contain it (i.e. assisting people through social programs) is archaic and

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backward. Neoliberalism therefore champions a radical, unrestrained capitalism “with no other law than that of maximum profit [...] rationalized [...] by the introduction of modern forms of domination such as ‘business administration’ and techniques of manipulation such as market research and advertising”1. It furthermore seeks to undermine rights won by workers after decades of social struggle. Proponents of neoliberalism try to convince us that their worldview champions ‘liberated trade’ capable of freeing us from antiquated regulations and ushering in a new era of abundance. None of this is true.

Neoliberalism is therefore a movement founded by elites for elites as a way of reversing the modest expansion of human rights and economic justice achieved since World War II. It is from a sense of superiority and entitlement that it aggressively seeks to harm others through strategies that amount to nothing less than class warfare. With a sense of urgency, Bourdieu notes that neoliberal misinformation must be “fought with intellectual and cultural weapons”2. Some understand Bourdieu’s statement as an appeal to academics; however, it may also be read as a call for each of us, from whatever our point of experience or frame of reference, to embrace our collective capacity to harness arts and culture-inspired critical thinking as a way to reject capitalism as the singular vision through which to enact our lives.

1 Sapiro, Gisele, and Pierre Bourdieu. Sociology Is a Martial Art. New York: The New Press, 2010.

112.

2 Ibid., 128.

Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art

Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). His recent

publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press,

2010) and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (with Nato Thompson for MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008). He is an Assistant Professor of

Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), and teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.

Milena Placentile (see pages 13)

Evgenia Abramova (see page 36)

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SO YOU THINK YOU’RE POLITICAL?!

Seven notes on the harmlessness of art Veda Popovici

#1 “...what you are doing is a symbolical gesture and it remains in the repertoire of a happening”1, said the rector of the University of Bucharest to a heterogeneous group of people that had organized the occupation of the History Department in November 2011. During the rector’s visit, he was especially keen on convincing the occupiers that what they were doing was merely a happening - referring to the specific art historical term related to performance art- that it could not be more than a symbolical gesture, or in other words, that was only art. It seemed that contemporary art provided the rector with a concept that could (in his view) efficiently discourage the occupiers and eventually make the whole action fail.

The rector’s words stayed with me for a long time, making me wonder: how come this figure of authority thought that art was precisely the best way to neutralize the disturbing potential of this political gesture? It was clear that, for him at least, legitimate art needs to be a separate realm from politics, and that art has no potential to change the configuration of power. But even more importantly, it emphasized a key function of contemporary art: its ability to provide authority with tools (concepts and images) to neutralize and domesticate political acts. In the specific context of the Bucharest occupation, it made me think that if one of the most powerful people in the educational system at that time used this idea in his attempt to stop a radical protest, then clearly this function of art has become essential to the present-day configuration of art and politics. Several events in the following year brought me back to this idea. #2 Art and legality Article 3 of law 60/1991 concerning public gatherings in the Romanian legislation states that “any public manifestation of artistic, religious or sportive character does not need any authorization to be performed.” So art, religion and sports enjoy first-hand the status of “freedom of expression”. Other gatherings, political in nature, must be announced (according to the Romanian Constitution) and officially authorized (according to law 60/1991), thus only having a second-hand “freedom

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of expression” status. Of course, the illusion of “freedom of expression” elides a clear dichotomy made by the authorities in the allowance of the harmful potential: art, religion and sports supposedly have no politically disturbing character.

Article 3 became very popular among activists in 2011 and 2012 in Romania, as they realized that it could be a way to organize a political action without: a) being banned and fined in the absence of media coverage, which usually happened with many illegal actions that often got leaked to the police; or b) getting through the bureaucratic, abusive procedure of getting authorization for their political actions.

As long as they declared that their actions had artistic connotations, they would be legally, and at least temporarily, covered. This shortcuts all the risks that getting an authorization entailed: submissive confrontation with authority, revealing the protester’s intentions, changing the date and location of an action and the risk of failure because of not getting approval. In legal terms, all of this could be avoided provided that protesters would be familiar with contemporary art practices such as happenings, performance, re-enactments. These activists continued to apply these tactics not so much out of love for legality, but out of the need to actually organize public actions and to have visibility for their contestatory discourses. This practice spread widely amongst protesters, configuring direct actions as artistic interventions. Using the so-called harmless status of art given by the authorities to carry out political interventions gained much popularity and certain strategies like the flash-mob became prominent.

A thin-ice, typical of current subversive practices, emerged. At once, this new tendency seemed both efficient and a failure. On the one hand, the protesters were strategically using art’s harmless status to perform radical political discourses. The status of an art piece was necessarily temporary and strategic: art had to merely be a means for the actualization of a strong political message in public space. On the other hand, the codification of political messages in art’s harmless clothes often neutralized the message itself, placing it in the ambiguous realm of art’s “anything goes.” To reiterate art as the only legal framework of performing real political freedom gives the measure of that freedom: in legal terms, it is only possible as art.

Playing out this situation can end up disturbing or confirming authority. It may reiterate spectacle (the fake setting of freedom in contemporary liberal-democratic contexts) or contest it because of art’s designated function to conveniently dwell between “it’s just art” or “it is radical politics through art”. The questions to be asked become: for whom is it convenient? And who is tricking whom? #3 On “creativity and imagination” Coming from a similar activist background like the initiatives described above is an activist educational project based in Bucharest begun in 2012. Entitled “the school of activism,” the project debuted under the name CRIM, an acronym for creativity and imagination. As stated by the organizers, CRIM’s main focus is to educate young people in what regards the importance of civic political involvement within

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one year. The methods they used include debates, screenings, games, contemporary art shows and flash-mobs2. A series of events that took place in June boasted3 workshops on creating banners, making stencils, shouting slogans and a happening.

The civic involvement thus translated into the appropriation of methods that could be labeled as civic disobedience, or as simply the right to protest.

Although CRIM also refers to the connection between art and direct action, it does not push the limits of both what is understood as (performance) art and direct action. Instead, it uses precisely the neutralizing concepts of art, as defined by the authorities: creativity, free expression, fun, in other words the hallow language of multiculturalism. But most importantly, it stresses the importance of the how instead of the what: it seeks to create a methodology of being creative while being rebellious, without any clear reference as to what one was supposed to be rebellious against. This deep political ambiguity is perfectly enacted in the vocabulary of the “creative class” and its realm of trendy lifestyles. #4 Bucharest, January 2012 and after In January 2012, spontaneous anti-governmental mass protests broke out in University Square in Bucharest. Backed up by well organized ultra-groups, the protests included students, revolutionary veterans, civil activists and other social groups. The heterogenous masses that made up the revolts carried various messages that generally affirmed dignity through radical anti-governamental, anti-austerity and anti-Troika4 slogans, placards and manifestos. Although not numerous (the maximum reached more or less five thousand people), the protests were longlasting (around two months) and generally seen as an expression of genuine revolt and voicing of various social groups, gaining significant symbolic capital in the year to come. Interestingly enough, here too, just like at the occupation of the History Department a couple of months earlier, were voices that pushed the mass manifestation in the realm of “this is only art”.

One evening during one such mass protest, a playful message was published on the contemporary art mailing lists: an art gallerist together with an art critic were inviting the art scene to join a mass art performance.5 It is unclear whether the message was expressing some type of solidarity calling the people of the art scene to join the protests, or if it was a cynical reflection on the ultimate harmlessness of the protest by comparing it with an art piece. The latter interpretation seemed to gain more validity when another Bucharest art critic made a similar call.

The protests were already lower in intensity but still going on when a review of a recent art show was published.6 The review seemed a mere pretext for discrediting the anti-governmental protests that went on in University Square. The critic defined the protests as mere “lifestyle performances”. From the comfortable “objective perspective” of this enlightened intellectual, the subjectivity that was emerging in the square was already that of the spectacle, a “zoon aesthetikon”. What is mostly

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interesting here is how this critic denied the true violence and risk of the bodies performing politics and neutralized any potential of these protests by integrating them to an artwork.

The joyous, laid-back irony of all these reactions is the cynical tone of authority discrediting its challengers. While gallerists and art critics were ironically mollifying the protests by assimilating them into art, mass-media representation was already undertaking its mission of gradually and steadily turning the protests into a mass spectacle.7 One can see both tendencies originating from the same locus of consolidating authority and subordination mechanisms and using a very similar logic of neutralization: art’s harmless status to turn a political action into mere spectacle. The spectacle of mass protest, an increasingly popular practice of discreditation in the media functions as a domesticating tool of the political, and it is being appropriated through various embodiments of authority and capital, and not just the mass-media.

The Debordian critique of the spectacle gives warning about the spectacle’s need to continuously incorporate, appropriate and co-opt social elements, especially those with politically disturbing potential.8 #5 Art and Spectacle If the spectacle is a social relationship between people mediated by images9 and art is a historical stage of culture in which representation is instituted as way of knowledge, the relation between art and spectacle lays in their common need of representation. Following Debord’s theory, two conflicting tendencies can be discerned in art: one that confirms the institution of the spectacle by staging communication and community; and one that points to the impossibility of communication and community in the contemporary configuration of capitalism.10 Art must end itself so as to fulfill self-criticism and acknowledge that it is unable to render real communication and community. Art must end before it turns into spectacle that is, “the rigid institution of appearance as truth”11. Thus, although it can produce spectacle by reinforcing representation as hegemonic reality, art is fundamentally distinct from it: it can make evident the impossibility of dialogue and the staged nature of certain images, their artificial character. By emphasizing the artificial character of representation, art creates space for the desire of real communication and it can provide a social context to develop practices towards real community.

The art system, and thus the institutionalized social conditions of art, have however, went through important changes since the period of the 1960s when The Society of Spectacle was written. Reconfigurations of art’s social and economical functions include: the urban process of gentrification, the emergence of Richard Florida’s creative class, or even more recently, as a result of the so-called financial crisis, the acknowledgment of art as an ultimate commodity alongside gold. These

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changes confirm and even surpass the Debordian vision of the importance of art in advanced capitalism. The crucial role art now plays in the contemporary configuration of the global capital can be seen as one of the privileged fields of negotiation between agents of authority and agents of subversive change. On this field of negotiation the sole importance of art is not at stake, but its legitimizing/ de-legitimizing potential, in other words what we would call its harmlessness vs. its harmfulness. #6 the harm-full/-less The tension between the harmlessness and the harmfulness of art can be translated as the need of authority to institute art as being a fundamentally autonomous, separated field from politics, and thus unable to challenge it in a meaningful way, and the tendency of contestatory politics that propose art as an accessible, socially flexible field from which authority can be efficiently undermined. It is precisely this tension that was very visible in such projects as the Berlin Biennale 712 and later in the Truth is Concrete camp at Graz, Austria in September 2012.

The two-week marathon camp Truth is Concrete sought to bring together artists and activists from around the globe to share practices on the limits of art and activism and simultaneously gain visibility in a Western-based art system and audience. This was not the sole ambition of the marathon. It needed also to be a “machine”, an object of performative nature producing its own, new performative events.

Truth is Concrete obviously refers13 to the Debordian tension between art’s force of revealing the staging of the truth (that is the spectacle) and its tendency to institute representation as ultimate communication, thus making way for the hegemony of the spectacle. So, going beyond the “contemporary artivism” trend, the project was intended to bring into (Western) visibility practices and methodologies from around the world that efficiently combine, super-impose or extend the limits of art and activism. Although not clearly visible from the start, the project’s most important faulty points are already subsumed in these descriptive phrases. I will elaborate on three of them: 1) the Western frame of visibility, although at first glance legitimate, shortly revealed itself as a power mechanism that marginalized non-Western discourses and privileged the Western ones, as being the most refined (or advanced) methodologies and concepts. From the privileged time-frames given to superstar panelists, to the most popular protesters’ methods that were developed and could mostly be applied in a Western context, this situation became prevalent quite soon, silencing by omission non-Western experiences shared by a big crowd attending the camp.

2) the ambiguity of the political frame put together groups or individuals so far apart that exchange was excluded, thus delegitimizing dialogue as premise for the whole event. The necessity of parrhesia as theorized by Gerald Raunig14 (also present at the event), the delivery of truth or the uncompromising affirmation

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of radical ideas as opposed to ambiguity was elided. Mixing various, at times incompatible political positions resulted in enacting ambiguity and relativity.

3) the staging of radical political practice consisted in appropriating from autonomist and anarchist strategies (ex.: camp mode, shared responsibilities, open platform for expression). This staging culminated in the organization of a direct action in the city of Graz (see photo 1). The action in itself is interesting because it shows a direct consequence of subsuming radical political practices into art. The spectacular action filled with choreography, march, noise, performance, stenciling and vandalism ended up entertaining the locals and posed no real threat to the political status quo (see photo 2). #6 Art and legality (2) From a legal point of view, there is an important distinction between radical politics/direct action and art. In the contemporary Western legal systems, art is seen as a fundamental right. There is therefore a tendency to tolerate, legalize and defend something that is considered art. Enacted radical politics are always directed towards forms of governmentality, and the most cohesive expression of this governmentality is the law. Take the form of revolution as the privileged form of enacted radical politics: it is fundamentally illegal. It is this definite distinction between the tendency of legalizing art and illegalizing radical politics that is at the core of the configuration of the harmlessness of art. A position of authority will try, just as the rector in Bucharest, to show that a certain action is merely art, already legal, already part of “democracy”.

Thus, the importance of a particular moment in any action emerges: the moment in which it stops being art and becomes politics. From the subversive position, this moment is necessary as, for the position of authority the inverse moment is as necessary: the moment in which politics becomes art. In other words, art can be used to push the limits of legality, to test the borders of the state’s governmentality.

However, given that this governmentality is intricately linked with global capital, it cannot but address it in terms of censorship and control through financing.

In the partial framework of the law, art offers the possibility of using a citizen’s participation in legality and in the legitimating authority this endorses as tactical method for enacting a radical discourse. However, it is its legalizable status that can be used to tame or domesticate a political act. #7 Us, the harmless Back in University Square in Bucharest, on the 1st December 2012, the Romania’s national day, an action was performed by a group of 10, including myself. The Other Flags action was part of the project The Other Us.15 Organized as a workshop for reimagining identity, The Other Us concentrated on developing a critical stance on nationalism, national identity and investigating the revolutionary potential of identity politics, particularly from a feminist and decolonial perspective. Part of the workshop was a process of producing flags (old or new) to be worn in a public

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protest on the 1st of December, breaking the monopoly of the national flag and reclaiming political presence for the Other, whomever this may be. To investigate the dynamics of legality, we attempted to obtain an authorization for the event.

Although, as stated above, artistic manifestations don’t need authorizations, I sought to negotiate it for the sake of investigating further on the harmless status of art in the eyes of authority. The hearing went pretty badly: art, artists were not very interesting for the Public Gatherings Commission until it was clear that the protest would consist of non-national flags waved around in public space. It seemed that a limit of the harmless was reached with the symbols of the nation. The manifestation was described as anti-Romanian and I myself was repeatedly warned on the criminal danger of bringing offense to the national flag.16 In terms of the subject of the workshop, this only confirmed the urgency of deconstructing national subjectivity and rethinking identity politics. It also showed an awareness of authority for the effective use of art’s harmlessness to political ends, and thus an awareness of art’s potential harmfulness. However, as showed in the video, the action was performed freely and without any interference from the authorities. The political message went through in public space, however it did not present any threat to authorities. This may very well mean that it was harmless.

If we think of the harmlessness of art as a political tool to neutralize any subversive

The Other Flags action, 1st December 2012 (National Day of Romania), Bucharest.

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potential to existing power structures, what lays beyond this? It may very well be that the powerful ones need to institute a definite status of art’s harmlessness that confirms art’s harmfulness. Thus, investigating exactly what images and concepts authority uses to institute the formal harmlessness of art may shed some light on the blind spots of the same authority. It seems that one of the most important of these is art’s ability to turn a political action into a spectacle, it’s mere artificial staging, breaking the urgency, actuality and reality of the message.

On the negotiation field of art’s harmlessness, tactical identifications can be efficient. By tactically – that is temporarily – using art’s harmless status, agents of radical politics can access social spaces that, otherwise, do not welcome them: public squares, sidewalks, museums, etc. However, there must necessarily be a moment where a certain action stops being art and is proclaimed politics. We must keep in mind that what enables this negotiating field is the flexibility of defining both art and politics, and it is this flexibility that should be used to push the limits and definitions of not only art and politics but most importantly the state, law, citizenship, and above all to question capitalism.

Photo 1: Reverend Billy in front of the Camera Austria in Graz, 2012.

Photo 2: Begging is illegal in Graz, though when it is enacted like a casual, funny performance it raises smiles, 2012.

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1 The fragment belongs to Ioan Panzaru, then rector of the University of Bucharest. The whole

speech can be listened as part of my work “The harmless”, available at: https://soundcloud.com/vedapopovici-1/inofensivii (in Romanian)

2 The main organizer of the CRIM project is the civic organization Militia Spirituală (Spiritual

Militia), concentrated on civil disobedience non-violent direct actions and the financing source is

the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe. See resources on the project on the site of Militia Spirituala: http://www.militiaspirituala.ro (in Romanian).

3 See description of this series of events here: http://www.doitreisi.ro/2012/06/crim-puterea-sta-in imagina%C8%9Bie/ (in Romanian).

4 The Troika refers to the three organizations which have the most power within the European Union.

The three groups are the European Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank (ECB).

5 The gallerist is Dan Popescu, owner of H’art gallery and the art critic is Oana Tănase, then working as a curator for the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. The entire message read: “H’art gallery and Oana Tănase invite you to a remarkable event: the collective character from the University Square will produce at an hour of maximum audience a complete performance. It is an

interactive performance in which you can freely express yourself through all artistic techniques and methods – drawing, collage, photography, music, screaming, smiling, balloons, kissing. The only forbidden artistic mediums are stones. One can swear of mother. And of father.”

6 The author, Erwin Kessler, philosopher, art historian and critic is a popular figure on the local

Romanian art scene, a fervent supporter of the neo-orthodox direction in post-89 contemporary

Romanian art. The articled referred to is “O promiscuitate ideologică, gramaticală şi retorică” (An

ideological, grammatical and rhetorical promiscuity) published on 24.01.2012, available at http://

www.revista22.ro/o-promiscuitate-ideologica-gramaticala-si-retorica13059.html (in Romanian). The works he mentions as being “the true manifestos of the movement that started on the 1th of January

in the University Square” are the “Four Manifestos of the Harmless Nature” available also in English at http://veda-popovici.blogspot.ro/2012/01/harmless-nature-manifestos-1.html and http://vedapopovici.blogspot.ro/2012/01/harmelss-nature-manifestos-2.html.

7 I have elaborated more on this process in “The Carnival, the Spectacle and the Non-event”, in Bezna zine, available at http://archive.org/download/Bezna2apocalypseProtestsMarch2012/Bezna2.pdf

8 Guy Debord, Society of Spectacle, originally published in French, 1967. For all the following notes I used the translated version by Donald Nicholson Smith, Zone Books, 1994.

9 Ibid., thesis 4.

10 Ibid., thesis 184-185.

11 Ibid., thesis 186-188, 190.

12 The Berlin Biennale 7 marks a relevant moment of the intricate relation between art and politics.

Along with some participants of the Indignados movement, Occupiers from around the world were called to enact their practices in the context of the biennale. What turned out to be later commonly

referred to as “the zoo” was the caged position this group had in the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the taming process that Occupy practices were put through. It very much looked like

something that the rector of the University of Bucharest would love to see: politics framed as art, and thus neutralized, made harmless. The Biennale employed an overidentification method to show the

future of the Occupy movement: that of becoming a spectacle itself. By playing out (one of ) its most immediate danger(s), the frame of the Biennale brought a thorough critique of the movement and

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provoked it to transform itself. In the end, “the zoo” offered some insight of the extent to which art

is either harmful or harmless and how this configuration can be used towards either emancipatory or domesticating ends.

13 The organizers cite a dense genealogy of the phrase passing through Bertolt Brecht, Walter

Benjamin, Lenin, Hegel, Augustine. For the statement, program and other resources see: http://www. truthisconcrete.org/

14 Gerald Raunig, “Instituent Practices Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming”, translated by Aileen Derieg, 2006, available at http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/raunig/en/#_ftnref17

15 More resources including a video documentation of the “Other Flags” action can be found here: http://veda-popovici.blogspot.ro/2013/01/other-us--ceilalti-noi.html

16 According to chapter 4, article 20 from the law 75/1994 in the Penal Code, “citizens have the duty to pay respect towards the national flag and the national hymn and to not do anything that would offend them”.

Veda Popovici works as an artist, theoretician and activist mostly in a dilettante manner. Her interests include collective representations in art, possibilities of creating the common, colonial histories and

contemporary power relations in the art system. Currently, she is a Phd. Candidate at the University

of Arts in Bucharest with a research on nationalism in Romanian art of the ’70s and ’80s. She lives and works in Bucharest.

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POINTS OF PAIN Mykola Ridnyi

The social and political context in Ukraine has changed significantly over the past few years. While the symptoms of repressive actions by the authorities and the move towards a totalitarian state are not evolving as rapidly here as in Belarus and Russia, there are still plenty of reasons to worry. In order to strengthen their conservatism, the authorities have established a “National Commission on Public Morality” and increased the influence of the Orthodox Church in society, all the while the largest nationalist party, supported and controlled by the radical right, won seats in parliament. These social and political trends are directly connected with the artistic and activist milieus, forming a network of so-called “points of pain” and conflicts with the authorities and the orthodox and far-right activists.

In 2003, the “National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality”1 was established, which began to be extremely active in 2008, when it was run by Vasyl Kostitsky. Incidentally, the decision to establish this commission was taken by the cabinet ministers of Yulia Timoshenko, who, due to changing political winds, often appears in the media as a victim of the new regime. Under new laws, the violations of public morals can place the offender in civil, administrative, and even criminal liability. One of the initiatives of the commission was to subject all websites to state-registration. Therefore, even Internet content is closely scrutinized by the officials.

Anatoly Ulyanov, the editor of the contemporary art news portal proza.com.ua, actively opposed the Commission and spoke publicly against it. This seriously aggravated not only the official representatives but also the sympathizers of the political institutions that protect religious radicals in “The Brotherhood” (Bratstvo) party. On March 13th 2009, Ulyanov was attacked by one of the party’s activists.2 Soon afterwards, the Commission closed the proza.com.ua portal and Ulyanov decided to emigrate. On November 2nd 2009, the activist and blogger Olexandr Volodarsky accused the Commission of censorship and exposed their efforts to restrict freedom of expression.3 He made a performance in front of the parliament during which he and his partner simulated sexual intercourse, while a third participant gave a speech about the relativity of moral standards and the impossibility of a direct interpretation of the concept of morality. After the end

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of the performance, Volodarsky was arrested and charged with “hooliganism by a group of people.” Although Volodarsky’s action was supported by numerous activists and the media, he was convicted on September 9th 2010 and sent to a colony in the Kotsybinske settlement in the Kyiv region for more than a year.4 Similar cases of censorship and repression have not always been the Commission’s doing, but they have been perpetrated by like-minded cultural representatives.

For example, in May 2009, the director of the Kharkov Art Museum, Valentyna Myzgina, decided to close “The New History”5, an exhibition curated by the SOSka group. The project was conceived as an intervention of contemporary art in the traditional museum exhibition space, with the goal of creating a dialogue between different artistic traditions, while avoiding casting classical art against contemporary art. Myzgina’s decision was not based on any order “from the top,” but rather represented a local act of censorship in the context of the national “moral” environment. In response, the artistic community expressed overwhelming support for the project, which was documented in the catalogue of the exhibition.

The biggest scandal was the closure of the exhibition “Ukrainian Body”6 at the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) in February 2012. The exhibition offered a view of Ukrainian society as a material, cultural, ideological, and aesthetic environment through the corporal experiences of the human bodies forming this society. Serhiy Kvit, the director of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, where the VCRC was located, decided to close off the exhibition to visitors three days after it opened, explaining his decision with the remark “It’s not an exhibition, it’s shit.” The subsequent waves of protests and media coverage to the odious gesture worsened the conflict; in the end, the artists and activists were expelled from the Academy’s premises and the VCRC was closed. The context behind this case is that rightwing political views are very popular at these types of institutions. Even some of the professors share these political positions, especially the director Kvit, who is an active supporter of the nationalist party “Freedom” (Svoboda).7 As a leftist organization inside this Academy, the VCRC was constantly under attack.

Nevertheless, after this conflict, the VCRC activists managed to re-open the center in a new space – the cinema “Zhovten.” But right-wing activists also attacked the first exhibition in this space, “A room of my own,” which was organized by Evgenia Belorusets and presented research on Ukrainian queer families. As a result of the attack, the majority of the artists’ photographs were destroyed; the guard was also physically assaulted.8 A few months after this, representatives of the LGBT community declared they would cancel the Gay-Pride parade in Kiev, fearing violence and harassment from the extreme-right. Despite this, two leaders of the initiative “Ukrainian Gay Forum,” Svyatoslav Sheremet and Maksym Kayanchuk, were severely assaulted by a dozen attackers.9 On the same day, there was a counter-action in support of

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traditional family values in the city. Moreover, members of the leftist movement, such as Serhiy Kutniy from the Left Feminist Initiative and Andriy Movchan10 from the Student Union “Direct Action,” were also attacked. Incidentally, one of these assaults took place on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, April 20th 2012.

During the 2012 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, the “Freedom” party won about 12% of the votes. Under the guise of “official” political lobbying, these nationalists are actually legitimated to continue in their violence, homophobia and outright fascism. A good example of this was the action in defense of human rights, which took place in Kiev on December 12th 2012,11 where “Freedom”

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party activists organized a provocation. As a result, the police detained several participants in the action for human rights whereas the party activists were released.

Given the authorities’ aforementioned conservative-repressive stance, the actions of the nationalists, who position themselves as “the opposition,” are in fact collaborationist. Thus, right-wing radicals actually save time for militia, which by now doesn’t intervene in conflict situations with dissenters. Currently, the right wing nationalist niche appears more and more comfortable and prominent in the context of increasing repression and control by the authorities, especially given the alliance of Church and State in the reactionary struggle for “true” values, which we are all expected to follow vigilantly.

1 More information about the National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality (in Ukrainian): http://www.moral.gov.ua

2 Art-critic Anatoly Ulyanov and the Bratstvo fighters, 2009, published in “Forbidden Art” (in

Russian): http://artprotest.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1178&chtoto=2009 -qq-&catid=13&2011-03-10-05-43-54&ordering2=4).

3 More information on the Volodarsky affair on his personal blog: http://free.shiitman.net 4 “Olexandr Volodarsky sent to a penal colony,” 2011, published on “Openspace.ru”: http://os.colta.ru/news/details/20807/?attempt=1

5 See “Instead of an Excursion,” video by SOSka Group, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4LpmvlGp0

6 See “Statement of the Visual Culture Research Center, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla

Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine)” published in ArtLeaks: http://art-leaks.org/2012/02/11/statement-of-thevisual-culture-research-center-national-university-of-kyiv-mohyla-academy-kyiv-ukraine 7 More information about Svaboda (in Ukrainian): http://www.svoboda.org.ua/

8 Anna Tsyba, “The attack on Evgenia Belorusets’ exhibition ‘A room of my own’ or homophobia without limits,” 2012, published in ART Ukraine (in Russian): http://www.artukraine.com.ua/articles/949.html

9 Alexandra Lopata, “A peaceful LGBT march in Kiev was disrupted and the organizers were severely beaten,” 2012, published in Kiev Pride 2012 (in Ukrainian): http://lgbtua.com/pride/news/news_111.html

10 In the center of Kiev, a journalist was beaten by six assailants, 2012, published in Censor.Net.Ua (in Russian):

http://censor.net.ua/photo_news/203839/v_tsentre_kieva_shestero_neizvestnyh_izbili_jurnalista_ fotoreportaj

11 Activists protesting the law banning “homosexual propaganda” were arrested in Kiev, 2012, published in Ukrainskaya Pravda (in Russian):

http://www.pravda.com.ua/rusnews/2012/12/8/6979030 Mykola Ridnyi is an artist and curator based in Kharkov, Ukraine. He took part in Boris Mikhailov’s workshops (2005) and graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Kharkov State Academy of Design and Arts (2008). He is the founder and curator of the gallery-laboratory SOSka in Kharkov

since 2005. He curated the projects: “Numbers (SOSka group and Porgram Class), Center of Actual Art Eidos, Kiev, Ukraine in 2009; “Generation” (Program of workshops by R.E.P. group, SOSka

group, David Ter-Oganyan and Aleksandra Galkina), City Art Gallery, Kharkov, Ukraine in 2008.

Ridnyi’s work has been exhibited in Europe, Russia and the US.

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BEYOND REFLECTION: RADICAL PEDAGOGY AND THE ETHICS OF ART SPONSORSHIP Amber Hickey

In Fall of 2008, I was asked to co-organize a workshop with the Tate Modern Department of Public Programmes. It wasn’t a freelance job, contract, or internship.

I was simply called a “collaborator,” a role that turned out to be useful, given that I had no formal ties to the institution. Almost a year and a half later, the two day workshop, entitled Disobedience Makes History, finally happened. Our attempt at radical mediation resulted in an ongoing series of creative, collaborative actions, critiquing the Tate’s acceptance of sponsorship from BP, and helping to open up public debate across the United Kingdom and elsewhere about the ethics of art sponsorship.

During the initial planning stages of the workshop, I invited John Jordan, a friend and art-activist, to facilitate the workshop. He reluctantly agreed to do so, although he acknowledged feeling “institutionalized” by the idea.1 The two curators at the Tate Modern with whom we were planning the workshop seemed to be some of the most radical curators at the institution. However, as the days of the workshop came closer, one of the curators sent an email to Jordan and me stating, “Ultimately, it is also important to be aware that we cannot host any activism directed against Tate and its sponsors, however we very much welcome and encourage a debate and reflection on the relationship between art and activism.”

Soon after, Jordan called me. Due to the curator’s blatant attempt at political censorship, he wanted to disregard the request and make a point to critique the Tate’s longtime sponsor, BP, during the workshop. He asked me if I agreed, not wanting to jeopardize my position with the Tate. My concern was not with my relationship with the Tate; I was hoping this workshop would result in something beyond reflection, so of course I agreed with him. In the past, I had been involved in many workshops that hinted at the potential for provocation and change, but merely offered a taste of what could be. The possibilities that could arise from a more direct approach proved more exciting than any workshop plan.

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At the time the email was sent, the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico had not yet occurred. Therefore, the curator’s attempt at censorship was testimony of the Tate’s prior awareness that their twenty-year practice of accepting sponsorship from BP contradicts their ethical policy. The policy clearly states that “The Tate will not accept funds in circumstances when . . . the donor has acted, or is believed to have acted, illegally in the acquisition of funds, for example when funds are tainted through being the proceeds of criminal conduct . . .” Their organizational priorities, which include a goal to demonstrate “leadership in response to climate change,” are also in conflict with their sponsorship choices:2 “BP is one of the world’s largest single corporate emitters. In 2007 alone the company released over 63 million tons of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the emissions of Portugal.”3 Recently, the US government filed a public lawsuit against BP for their part in the gulf oil spill of April 2010. If it was not clear to the public before that BP is a criminal corporation, it should be now. Somehow, it seems there is still work to be done, perhaps due in part to the cultural airbrushing of their image by arts institutions such as the Tate.

In their twenty-year relationship, the deal has remained essentially the same: BP offers money, and the Tate, in turn, offers social currency, cultural capital, and progressive clout. The chair of the Tate is Lord Browne Madingley, former CEO of BP. However, I doubt he had any influence on the email that was sent to us. It is more likely to have been a classic case of self-censorship, stemming from fear and conceived of by the curators themselves to protect against any possible criticism.

Notably, when one looks at the history of social change, it is clear that in order to achieve progress in urgent issues, a precarious situation needs to be seen as motivation, rather than as a boundary.

Rather than functioning as a warning, the email functioned as a catalyst for us, and Jordan decided that he would project it onto the wall near the beginning of the workshop. The participants would then be asked to decide how to react. In radical pedagogy, it is important to start with real material that is relevant to all in the space. The more real and less abstract the subject is to students, the more learning and genuine sharing of knowledge occurs.4 Although we would violate the trust of the curators by revealing the email, doing so and challenging the hierarchies that we were expected to answer to had the potential to cause something genuinely interesting to happen. Furthermore, if we had told the curators of the change in plans, their jobs would have certainly been at risk and they would have been required to cancel the workshop. This was the only way to use the email without putting their jobs and the workshop under threat.

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The first day of the workshop arrived, and as Jordan, one of the curators, and I laid out a selection of radical books on the chairs where the participants would sit, there was a palpable tension in the air. The issue that we were about to bring up with thirty-two individuals is one that is incredibly difficult, particularly because it is so divisive. Following the global financial crisis and, more recently, the change of government in the UK, many cultural institutions have found it increasingly difficult to secure funding. As an artist and organizer myself, I recognize the challenge of being constantly faced with ethical issues, and the many risks of contradicting one’s politics when working in the arts. I frequently wonder if it is possible to make and share art in a “purely ethical” way. I am not sure if such a purity exists; to argue that it does sounds idealistic. However, there is a difference between idealism, and being active and aware of the symbolic and concrete meaning of our choices, and their broader effects.

A common reaction to the argument against the acceptance of BP sponsorship, and one we encountered several times during the workshop, is, “Why does it matter where the money comes from, as long as it is going towards something positive?” BP is currently “a major sponsor of the British Museum, the Tate galleries, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery. In addition it sponsors the Almeida theatre, the National Maritime Museum, as well as the Science and Natural History Museums.5” The passive and widespread acceptance of this particular type of sponsorship greatly benefits the corporations that provide it. Through their visual and textual association with institutions with desirable “profiles,” this money affects the way society views these corporations. Therefore, the acceptance of corporate sponsorship can indirectly, but drastically, impact our communities, our health, and our environment.

Map of art institutions in London that accept

sponsorship from Shell and BP, Artists BP

Protest Tate. Source:

The Guardian, 2010.

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Another common argument is that due to their support of the arts, BP cannot be all that bad. This is simply not true. In fact, “. . . according to one group of BP shareholders, BP spent more on their new eco-friendly logo last year than on renewable energy.”6 Even before the gulf oil spill, BP had a deplorable environmental record. Sponsorship agreements function as social cushions, assisting the corporation in continuing to function in an unethical manner.

“Patronage masks the corporation’s participation in constructing social relations and identities in a multidimensional culture of everyday life. . . .Culture cannot be isolated from social and political agendas.”7 In contemporary western society, where far too much control has been outsourced from people to corporations, to oil companies, and to other actors in the prevailing capitalist system, where even our ideals can be housed in the market, these arts institutions and the people who support them have an opportunity to make an impact. The Tate has, thus far, maintained a largely passive role within this system.

What sort of model does this project to other art institutions? What if the Tate were to “interrogate the interests of the corporation itself [and] consider the potential for alternative forms of participation in the production of culture”?8 Once arts institutions stop accepting funds from unethical corporations, they will be making a radical statement by positioning themselves against practices that harm humans and the environment, and those corporations will be pressured to confront the reality of their unscrupulous practices.

The second day of the workshop arrived. The email had been shown to the participants the week before, to the great dislike of the curator present. After a heated discussion, the participants had decided to plan an action which would question the Tate’s sponsorship decisions. Before the participants arrived on the second day, the gallery administrators called Jordan in for a meeting with several members of staff, including the director of security. He was first given a lecture about the importance of respecting corporate sponsors, and then informed that the workshop was to be monitored with high security. They threatened to cancel the workshop or shut it down if we were to do anything that would threaten the “peaceful enjoyment of the visitors.”

At the end of the day, the participants performed a beautiful yet simple action.

They posted large black letters on the windows of the seventh floor workshop room that read “Art not Oil.” The words remained on display for about thirty minutes, as several of us went outside to document the action.

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“Art not oil” action, Disobedience Makes History, Tate Modern, 2010. Photograph by Amber Hickey.

Before the workshop ended, we discussed the need to form a group that would continue and build upon the efforts that we had started. After the workshop, the participants stayed in touch, met with other like-minded people, and began performing actions as the art activist collective, Liberate Tate. LT regularly organizes creative actions, aiming to encourage the Tate galleries to cease their acceptance of sponsorship from BP. This is an extraordinary outcome for what began as a simple idea to provoke institutional critique, fuelled by activist thinking, inside the concrete walls of the ten-year-old monolith of the Tate Modern.

Locally, Liberate Tate has built ties to research organization Platform and grassroots activism group Art Not Oil, both of which they collaborated with in their Tate à Tate audio tour project, aiming to “provide visitors with a new experience of the presence of BP” in the Tate galleries.9 Art Not Oil is allied with Rising Tide and the Greenwash Guerrillas—environmental activism groups with chapters internationally. However, it has proven difficult to find movements focusing specifically on the ethics of sponsorship in the cultural industry in other countries. Having recently moved back to the United States, I cannot help but notice the ubiquitous presence of corporate logos on cultural institutions in our cities; one of the most ironic is a Boeing logo on the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles. That the influence of the cultural industry in the cycle of corporate image repair seems to be largely overlooked here

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is frustrating, but unsurprising, considering that the United States has a firmly established and widely lauded history of private funding of cultural institutions.

Although sponsorship from tobacco companies is no longer socially acceptable, there is still a marked lack of critique in the receipt of sponsorship from other industries with questionable ethical records. In 1969, the Guerrilla Art Action Group performed an action that has come to be known as Blood Bath in the MOMA lobby, protesting the presence of the weapons-industry-affiliated Rockefeller family on the museum’s board.10 Aside from this and other related actions by the GAAG, as well as those by Hans Haacke and the Art Workers Coalition, most of which occurred during the Vietnam War Era, I have not managed to unearth a critique that has emerged with such high visibility in the United States since.11 This area is ripe for exploring.

Following growing public pressure, along with the actions of Liberate Tate, the Tate issued a public statement of their intent to re-evaluate their acceptance of BP sponsorship. I hope the term “re-evaluate” will come to fruition with more than mere discussion.

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“Beyond Reflection: Radical Pedagogy and the Ethics of of Art Sponsorship” was written in 2010. Since then, the article has undergone minor changes and updates.

1 It was not the first time Jordan had been invited to lead a workshop at the Tate. He was also invited in 2008 to lead a workshop related to Doris Salcedo’s Unilever-sponsored Shibboleth in the Turbine Hall.

He refused at that time, due to Unilever’s support of the Burmese military junta.

2 “Tate Ethics Policy” http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/4428, Last modified 2008; “Our Priorities” http://www.tate.org.uk/about/our-work/our-priorities, Last modified 2012.

3 “BP Wins Coveted Emerald Paintbrush Award” http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/bps-winscoveted-emerald-paintbrush-award-worst-greenwash-2008-20081218, 22 December 2008.

4 John Jordan in discussion with the author, November 2010.

5 “Artists prepare for BP protests at Tate Britain,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/24/artists-bp-protest-tate, 24 June 2010. Update, February 2013: According to grassroots activism group Art Not Oil, the Almeida theatre is no longer accepting sponsorship from BP (“About Art Not Oil,” http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/about, 2011).

6 “BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous,” http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=219, 14 December 2000.

7 Mark W. Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 5.

8 Ibid.

9 “‘Tate a Tate’ - Audio Tour,” Liberate Tate Blog, 2012, http://liberatetate.wordpress.com/alternative-tate-tour-2/. More information on the tour can be found here: http://www.tateatate.org/.

10 Guerrilla Art Action Group, Jon Hendricks, and Jean Toche, Gaag, the Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969-1976: A Selection (Printed Matter, 1978) Number 3, Communique.

11 If the reader knows of any such efforts, please get in touch. This is an ongoing research project, and I would love to hear about actions and groups that I may have overlooked.

Works cited: “About Art Not Oil,” 2011, http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/about.

“BP Wins Coveted Emerald Paintbrush Award,” 22 December 2008, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/bps-wins-coveted-emerald-paintbrush-award-worstgreenwash-2008-20081218.

Bruno, Kenny, “BP: Beyond Petroleum or Beyond Preposterous,” 14 December 2000, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=219.

Jordan, John,“Will BP lead Tate into artistic hell?,” 1 July 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/01/tate-bp-corporate-sponsorship?intcmp=239.

“Our Priorities” http://www.tate.org.uk/about/our-work/our-priorities, Last modified 2012.

Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hendricks, Jon and Toche, Jean. Gaag, the Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969-1976: A Selection. Printed Matter, 1978.

Press Association, “Tate Britain party picketed in protest against BP sponsorship,” The Guardian, 28 June 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/28/tate-britain-party-picketed-protest-bpsponsorship.

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“Pressure grows on the Tate to ditch BP by 2012,” 2010, http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/news/2-default/70-pressure-grows-on-the-tate-to-ditch-bp-by-2012.

Rectanus, Mark W. Culture incorporated: museums, artists, and corporate sponsorships. 2002.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

“Tate Ethics Policy” http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/4428, Last modified 2008.

Vidal, John, “Artists prepare for BP protests at Tate Britain,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/24/artists-bp-protest-tate, 24 June 2010.

Amber Hickey is an artist, organizer, and PhD student currently based in Santa Cruz, California.

Her work is focused on creatively challenging “inevitable” structures: profit-based economies, unjust hierarchies, gender roles and so forth. She is the editor of “A Guidebook of Alternative Nows.”

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ARTISTS’ CONTRACTS AND ARTISTS’ RIGHTS Fokus Grupa

The genealogy of the manifesto in the arts can be traced back to political proclamations – documents which put forth an agenda of certain political programs and goals. This is not surprising as artists and intellectuals have been increasingly involved in political affairs since the 19th century. Agitating for political/artistic claims was therefore a natural process embraced by avant-garde artists who arguably inaugurated the use of manifestos in the arts. Art manifestos have become so important that the avant-garde was canonized largely relying on the self-identification scriptural practices of different artistic groups expressing their programs and goals. For example, Alfred Barr’s famous 1936 diagram for the MoMA exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art,” which presented the development of modern art in the West, singled out several early modernist and avant-garde movements, at least half of which were self-identified groups around their respective manifestos.1 Even though they were developed from the rhetoric of social and political agitation, the proclamations espoused in art manifestos have been largely embraced by the art world – perhaps as a consequence of their straightforward way of address. Indeed, art manifestos have come to be more commonly perceived as art ephemera or as art works in and of themselves, rather than operative ideas to be put into practice in order to achieve certain goals. To be sure the manifesto reflects individual or group agendas of what the art world and even the world is and what it should become, often using agitational rhetoric to prescribe future developments.

Approximately at the same time as the art manifesto emerged, a different type of textual promotion of artistic practices arose in the context of the Russian avant-garde. In line with the ideals of the 1917 Russian revolution, Kazimir Malevich drafted one of the earliest documents dealing with artists rights entitled “Deklaratsiya prav khudozhnika: Zhizn’ khudozhnika” (Artists Rights Declaration: The Artist’s Life) published in Anarchya (Anarchy) in June 1918. Oriented towards art as labor and artists as workers, Malevich’s text defines artistic practice in the context of the legal and economic frameworks at play after the art work leaves

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the possession of its producer. This type of agreement, even though in many ways similarly utopian in its goals as the art manifesto, was nonetheless grounded in a legal rhetoric.

In line with their preoccupation with textual instructions, documents, definitions etc., conceptual practices of the 1960s and 1970s further developed such agreements designed to protect artists and their work, as opposed to the contract which usually benefits the buyer or the dealer.

Weather challenging bourgeois tastes, expanding the field of art or resisting commodification of art works/practices, both the manifesto and the contract function in two different ways. While manifestos intentionally work against the grain of the art world, they have nevertheless been historicized as merely art ephemera; meanwhile, contracts, which mainly intend to regulate the art system instead of revolutionizing it, have been raised at the level of art works as they closely resemble the textual instructions, documents, definitions which entered the 1960s conceptual practices.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, objects such as the urinal, originally a functional design object, have been used to expand the understanding of what is perceived as art – Duchamp’s example is used when a project is denied the status of “art.” Furthermore, as Boris Groys observed: “Looking for modern art in today’s museums, one must realize that what is to be seen there as art is, above all, defunctionalized design fragments, be it mass-cultural design, from Duchamp’s urinal to Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, or utopian design that—from Jugendstil to Bauhaus, from the Russian avant-garde to Donald Judd—sought to give shape to the “new life” of the future. Art is design that has become dysfunctional because the society that provided the basis for it suffered a historical collapse, like the Inca Empire or Soviet Russia.”2 Maria Eichhorn’s project “The Artists’ Contracts” shows contracts as case studies in a context of an exhibition. In the interviews Eichhorn conducted in the related publication3 artist Daniel Buren explicitly differentiated his artistic work from the contract he devised. This is not the case with others. Adrien Piper for example, included a clause in the contract, which very much resembles her artistic strategies: “No single work by the Artist shall be sold by the Dealer at a percentage discount… since it is already subject to the 50% Off Black Artist Discount and 25% Off Women Artist Discount.”

It would be tempting to conclude that what the manifesto was for the avant-garde, the artist agreement/contract was for conceptual art. Both the manifesto and the artist agreement are still thriving to this day, but the relevance of the manifesto has obviously decreased with the end of modernism, while the need to regulate and maintain the existing system has become more relevant since the 1960s. Looking

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at the wider political context, one might say that at least in the Western context, the language of arms has been substituted by the more benevolent language of the law.

The research of Fokus groupa began in 2009 with a project carrying a somewhat misleading title “Art and Market.”4 We investigated different case studies, contracts and actions by artists and self-identified art workers dealing with artists’ rights as well as art works that negotiate the established production process, the distribution and the circulation of art. We have published our research, which was initially presented in the form of a lecture-discussion, as a newspaper and as a website. With every new presentation and discussions we gained different insights into specific case studies from different parts of the world and art contexts.5 Since 2011 we have begun to work in a somewhat different way. Continuing our research into the politics of art we created an open series of drawings, work in progress entitled “Pjevam da mi prođe vrijeme”( I Sing to Pass the Time )6 based on various visual documents of political and or legal interventions by artists and art workers throughout the 20th century. Contrary to the outlined presentation of “Art&Market”, “Pjevam da mi prođe vrijeme” consists of drawings, which are indexes of different treads of open research that are continuously added to the project.

In 2012, we were invited to organize an event in the framework of the program “Micropolitics” organized by “[BLOK] Local Base for Culture Refreshment”, dealing with the relationship between art and money.7 Our afore-mentioned projects gave us an insight into a fair amount of cases where artists and art workers approached the art system as a field in which political and ideological issues are pursued. Thinking of the format for the “Micropolitics” event, we decided to organize a workshop. Entitled “Artist Contracts as Artistic Manifestos,” the workshop emphasized that the need to self-organize, to be involved in the circulation of art works, to be protective of the intended meaning of the work of art, in other words to draft an agreement, is a reflection of a certain value system.

Even though many of the contracts were drafted with the intention to be used for all types of artistic production, nonetheless, all of the agreements we came across were produced by those who involved in conceptual or context-based practices. This might also be the result of our own practice as well as our interests in the wider context of art. We also observed that agreements drafted by conceptual artists such as Seth Siegelaub’s from the US or Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis from Yugoslavia, haven’t been enthusiastically received by institutions, gallerists and collectors.8 Working with different art practitioners and students, we tried to discuss the need to view one’s work as part of a wider economical and political framework and think of the different ways in which we can be responsible for the use and misuse of artistic labor.

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We started the workshop with analyzing and discussing specific agreements9, trough which participants of the workshop could better reflect on their own position towards the circulation and presentation of their work. Finally, all the participants including ourselves drafted a hypothetical agreement that could be employed after a consultation with a lawyer in a legal system in a specific context, which essentially expresses what each author of the contract finds relevant for her/ his/ practice.

1 More information about Barr’s diagram here:

http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/archives_highlights_02_1936 2 See Boris Groys, “Politics of instalation”:

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-installation/#_ftnref2

3 See Maria Eichhorn, ed., The Artists’ Contracts, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

4 “Art&Market [There is No Art Without Consequences]” is an art related research project started on

a three-month residency in Republic of Korea were we engaged with questions such as art’s relation to money, as well as art’s position in gentrification processes and inherent power relations within public space. The title “Art&Market”, what we came to understand later, to many evoked a manual, a set of instructions on how to enter the art market.

5 For more information on Fokus Grupa’s Art and Market project see: http://artandmarket.fokusgrupa.net/

6 “Pjevam da mi prođe vrijeme” is a title appropiated from a song by Croatian singer/songwriter Arsen Dedić, which deals with a disbelief in political potential of activism in music.

7 See more at: http://mikropolitike.blok.hr

8 These artistic contracts are reproduced below.

9 For the workshop we analyzed agreements by: Seth Siegelaub, Lawrence Weiner, Adrian Piper, Daniel Buren, Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis.

Fokus Grupa is an art collective based in Zagreb formed by Iva Kovač and Elvis Krstulović. They

work within the framework of post-conceptual art practices. In recent production Fokus Grupa gave lectures, made interviews and published content dealing with artist rights and the role of art within

the public space [Art&Market], narrated the history of the ‘art proletariat’ [I Sing for Time to Pass] (published in Micropolitics Notebook 2011).

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Artistic Agreement Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis ARTIST Surname, name _____________________ Address ___________________________ Account No ________________________ (later in the text referred to as Artist) ORGANIZATION OF COLLECTIVE LABOR: ________________________ Address ___________________________ Account No _____________________ (later in the text referred to as: Gallery) Artist and the Gallery have drafted on the (date)_____________ in (place)______ ___________ this AGREEMENT On conditions of public presentation of artworks in organizations of collective labor in the field of culture or in the organizations of collective labor with an independent cultural program 1. PRODUCTION 1.01. Author will lend the following artworks or organize the following event to be exhibited/presented in the Gallery: ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 1.02. Author will exhibit mentioned artworks or realize the mentioned artistic event in the Gallery (or in another space arranged for by the Gallery) from (date)______________ to _(date)______________ 1.03. Mentioned artworks/event will be exhibited/produced in _______________ __________ part of the Gallery space occupying approximately __________(size) and will not be confined in-between any other artworks.

1.04. Aforementioned artworks or concept of the mentioned artistic event the Artist will submit to the Gallery on the (date)_________________ in a fitting state to be exhibited/realized, accept if it was agreed otherwise.

1.05. Costs of transportation of afore-mentioned artworks to the Galley is the responsibility of ________________ and the costs of transport from the Gallery to the Author is the responsibility of ______________________.

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1.06. Once the works are delivered to the Gallery all other costs are the responsibility of the Gallery.

1.07. The gallery takes the responsibility to exhibit all the mentioned artworks or realize the mentioned artistic manifestation. Each possible modification has to be consulted with the Author.

2. REMUNERATION 2.01. The Gallery is obliged to reimburse the Author with the following amount as a remuneration for: a) renting the artworks __________________________________________ b) for the concept/realization of the artistic event ____________________ c) other: ________________________________________________________ 2.02. Remuneration from the following article of this agreement amounts to __________ % of the net amount at the disposal of the Gallery allocated for the mentioned exhibition/event.

2.03. The Gallery will reimburse the Artist in the statutory term after receiving the invoice.

2.04. In the case that the Gallery cancels the agreed exhibition/event the Gallery is obliged to reimburse the Artist equivalent to the 50% of the remuneration agreed upon.

3. PRODUCTION 3.01. Gallery commits itself to ensure the supplementary resources, professional and technical assistance necessary for appropriate exhibition/event set up/realization.

3.02. The Artist commits himself/herself to collaborate on the set up of the exhibition, or the realization of the event unless some other agreement is reached.

4. DOCUMENTATION 4.01. Exhibition/event will be documented in the following manner: a) photographed b) filmed on tape c) videotaped d) other: _____________ 4.02. All the expenses of the documentation process is covered by: a) Gallery b)Artist 4.03. Rights of use and duplication of documentary material (accept for the archival purposes) the Gallery can obtain only with special agreement with the Artist who is the sole copyright holder.

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5. CATALOG/ARTSTIC PUBLICATION/PRINTED INFORMATION 5.01. Gallery obliges to provide a: a) catalog b) publication c) printed information accompanying the exhibition/event following these specifications: a) edition ………………………………………………………… b) dimensions ……………………………………………………. c) number of pages …………………………………………….. d) author of the preface ……………………………………………. e) number of copies (colour - black/white) …………………… f ) full price ………………………………………………………… g) technique ……………………………………………………….

5.02. Catalogue/publication will be prepared in collaboration and with the approval of the Artist.

5.03. The costs of the production of the catalog/publications is the responsibility of the Gallery unless it was agreed upon differently: __________________________________________________________________ 6. PROMOTION: 6.01. The Gallery is obliged to announce the exhibition/event in printed material it issues and in the media with prior approval of the Artist.

6.02. The Gallery is obliged to organize the opening of the exhibition/event announcing it with invitation cards with prior approval of the Artist.

7. In case the Artist is not able to prepare his/her works for exhibiting or to realize the concept of the event, then he/she is obliged to inform the Gallery _________ days before the opening. Thereby the responsibilities of the Author and the Gallery as defined by this agreement cease to be valid.

8. In case the Artist does not fulfill his/her obligations as stated in the articles 1.01, 1.04. and 7. of this agreement, the Artist obliges him/herself to compensate all the real costs and damage that resulted in the obligations of the Gallery toward third legal and private parties.

9. Additional arrangements: ………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………

10. This agreement becomes valid when signed by the Artist and the Gallery.

11. In case of legal dispute a Zagreb legal court will be consulted.

12. This agreement is drafted in ……. copies out of which one is for the Artist and …… for the Gallery.

Artist Signature

Gallery representative signature

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THE BERLIN WIRE Marsha Bradfield & Kuba Szreder (members of Critical Practice)

Intro Our case study is a story about institutional inertia in the arts. It considers Critical Practice Research Cluster’s (CP) failed attempt to transform the socio-economic mechanisms prompted by and organizing the seventh Berlin Biennale (BB7). CP is comprised of artists, designers, academics and others and is associated with Chelsea College of Art and Design (London UK). The Cluster explores the conditions and possibilities of cultural production, including itself as an instance of contemporary collaborative praxis. CP embodies this self-reflexively via modes of self-governance and forms of self-organization marked by transparency, open access and pragmatic practice. In keeping with these concerns, the Cluster’s proposal to BB7 sought to formulate micro-transformations of the Biennale’s apparatus, attending in particular to its socio-economic aspects: the ways in which BB7 managed both the people and/or resources it brought together.

Titled “Critical Economic Practice” (CEP for short), this project sought to reflexively explore BB7’s controversial curatorial agenda focused on the “results of art”. If this agenda aimed to move art beyond empty gestures caught in the art world’s symbolic economy and task it with realizing real-world results, CEP aimed to consider their achievement through “the apparatus of contemporary art”: the aggregate of practices, mechanisms, resources, energies, desires, agendas, strategies and tactics that motors the ongoing reproduction of art as a field of cultural activity composed of artists, curators, artworks, audiences, institutions and other actors.

In contrast to the glut of critique on BB7 as an art world extravaganza, what follows is closer to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Biennial’s apparatus. We draw on CP’s experience of negotiating this apparatus while considering general, even perennial questions about the organizational mechanisms composing “the institution of art,” to use Peter Bürger’s notion.1 We frame CP’s application as a kind of “crash test” to highlight one of its notable results: our proposal failed to overcome institutional inertia, despite the curators of BB7 expressing interest in CEP’s realization.

It is important to note that despite CEP being excluded from BB7, the project is ongoing. It will evolve in response to other organizational circumstances and institutional specificity with the aim of positively transforming the apparatus

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of contemporary art in general. The agents of CEP are also in flux. The “we” of this text refers to its immediate authors who, as members of CP, are evolving CEP on behalf of the Cluster. Additionally, Metod Blejec, Cinzia Cremona, Neil Cummings, Karem Ibrahim, Scott Schwager and other members of CP have contributed to CEP directly and indirectly over the course of its development.

Others are sure to shape the project in future.

Prologue CP’s proposal to BB7 developed through negotiations with the curators and organizers, mainly Artur Żmijewski (AŻ), Joanna Warsza and Zdravka Bajović.

This dialogue began in 2011 when we met with AŻ on 15.01.11 after the symposium, “Art: What is the Use?” at Whitechapel Gallery in London, where he made a presentation. There was a serendipitous connection between the symposium’s preoccupation with art’s utilitarian value and AŻ’s growing interest in its concrete outcomes. We discussed CP’s practice, ethos and projects with AŻ and he invited the Cluster to develop a proposal as a response to BB7’s theme.

In an email 24.01.2011, AŻ clarified his commitment to engaging artists with the impact of art as well as questions around whose agenda it aims to advance. Is it possible, he wondered, to produce a work of art that has a measurable result?

Can artists and/or their practice “create reality” in the same way that politicians sometimes can? Who do artists represent: a community and/or themselves? AŻ was emphatic that only artworks realizing genuine results were relevant to BB7. There was no place for empty gestures in this frame.

Intrigued by Biennial’s preoccupation with something akin to art’s use value, CP proposed a “Market of Values” to engage with the subtle and situated economics organising art and other contingent economic circuits: Markets are good at evaluating values, and communicating the results of those evaluations. While the idea of values distributed by competitive markets penetrates all aspects of contemporary life, other kinds of markets and economies exist, even flourish.

Our market will be inspired by the ancient agora - a site of economic transaction and a space of political discourse. We will propose, explore and implement various economies and structures of exchange, these might include: a casino, a blood donation bank, an auction, a derivatives market, various currencies, voting systems, gift economies, waste, and many others. Some values and economies might benefit everyone, like a commons (a blood bank, for example) and not just those who are the fiercest competitors or start with the largest assets. We imagine a flea-market type assembly of structures, with stalls hosted by artists, economists, academics, activists, ecologists, anthropologists, civil-society groups, pressure groups and others to explore existing evaluative structures and produce new ones.

(CP‘s first proposal, 2010)

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On 30.06.11, Zdravka Bajović of BB7’s curatorial team emailed regarding our proposal. As a playful experiment, the “Market of Values” was ill suited for the Biennial in their view. They rejected the Market because it insufficiently addressed BB7’s core question “What is the real result of art?”. The Cluster was invited to rework its proposal with this feedback in mind.

Critical Economic Practice (CEP) Phase One We decided to revisit the question posed by the curators of BB7 with the scrupulous seriousness that they demanded. Instead of reflecting on the results of any singular artistic manifestation (a piece, gesture, performance, object, etc.), we focused on what George Yúdice calls the “reality effects” of the artistic institution.2 He argues that reflection on the political results of art should not only concentrate on artworks or projects but also on the institutionalised means of their production.

Artistic institutions, asserts Yúdice, produce “reality effects” by providing employment, reinforcing the division of labour, establishing alliances between sectors, strengthening contact among communities, mustering political support, connecting businesses and stimulating local economies in other ways.3 We assumed that BB7 would be no different. As an artistic institution it would impact its surroundings to ends that are potentially easier to identify as the “real results of art” than the majority of artistic manifestations produced in the Biennale’s framework.

This led us to conclude that grappling with the “real results of art” meant coping with BB7’s “reality effects” as an artistic institution, dispersed across its internal and external economy.

Our engagement with the “reality effects” of BB7 was directly inspired by Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the artistic apparatus. In “The Author as Producer” (1934) he writes that the task of the revolutionary author is to “alienate the apparatus of production from the ruling class in favor of socialism, by means of improving it.” 4 The apparatus encompasses the mechanisms of cultural production and dissemination. It is organized through the complex division of artistic labour and the social norms regulating authorship, ownership and the circulation of art objects. Moreover the apparatus influences artistic subjectivities, molds people’s imaginaries and desires, their perceptions of the self and other. These conventions are functionally convergent with the economic relations underlying what Harrison and Cynthia White call the “dealer and critic system”.5 Since its emergence in the late nineteenth century, this system has linked artists, critics, dealers and collectors in flows of symbolic and economic capital that create structural conditions for the reproduction of an autonomous art field. In other words, the artistic apparatus is reciprocally intertwined with the political economy of the art world.

While developing our response to the curatorial team’s feedback, we recognized the degree to which our proposal hinged on cooperation from AŻ and his staff. We were encouraged by AŻ’s receptiveness to examining the “results of art” achieved by the Biennial.6 He described its organization on various public occasions (e.g.

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meetings, interviews, public statements) as a radical counterpoint to the typical structuring of similar politicized art exhibitions. Nevertheless, without reflexively engaging its own institutional conditions, BB7 ran the risk of being just another art event with a political tendency, streamlining familiar figures to conduct business as usual.

Change Begins at Home CEP’s interest in the “results of art” that BB7 might itself realize ties back to CP’s own self-reflexive engagement with the forces and counter forces shaping its cultural production. In contrast to the inaccessibility that tends to ring-fence the field of art, CP aspires to be accessible in two particular ways: anyone can join and the Cluster endeavours to make its process transparent through placing its organisation documents (meeting agenda and minutes as well as research outcomes) in the public domain. Granted, in practice access to CP depends on disposable time, London residency and a willingness to negotiate the filigrees of disparate relations that propel the Cluster’s becoming. The contingency, complexity and complicity that preoccupied CP’s proposal for BB7 sought to grapple with the intractable results of art arising from its simultaneous engagement in multiple economies. At the same time, CEP tracked with proximate research trends. CP’s involvement with the Precarious Workers Brigade and its exposé of labour abuses in the London art scene and beyond shored up the Cluster’s conviction that exploring the “real results of art” entails examining the labour conditions of those most directly effected: arts practitioners. Importantly, this conviction helped us to identify our own process of working with BB7’s curatorial team as a valid subject of investigation. Concomitantly, researching with Free/Slow University of Warsaw into the intersection of sociology and economics in the field of art seeded CP’s then future and now current research into the disparate values propelling artistic production. In response to this medley of interests, Critical Economic Practice (CEP) was born as a sketch of what CP aimed to realise at BB7. The proposal’s crux was expressed as follows.

Critical Economic Practice: C.E.P.

by Critical Practice

In response to the question central to the Berlin Biennial, “What are the results of art?”, Critical

Practice is establishing Critical Economic Practice – C.E.P. This enterprise uses artistic practices to critically modify the social and economic mechanisms of the art field.

The central logic of C.E.P. is that the concrete results of art are located in the traceable outcomes of

the social and economic mechanisms regulating the functioning of the art field. In contrast to vague artistic gestures that are often attributed political impact they do not deliver, C.E.P. demonstrates

outcomes by catalyzing, measuring and mapping the interactions that constitute the economies of exchange in the art field.

C.E.P. targets and transforms the structures organizing production, circulation and distribution of

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value in this field. C.E.P. will extract and reconfigure this value through alternative economies that

insist on social justice through the insights they produce and practices they model. C.E.P. will ensure that this value is equitably distributed, in keeping with the long-standing avant-gardist commitment to radical democratization and the transformation of social structures.

For the Berlin Biennial: C.E.P’s four-step methodology will identify the results of art in the context of the Biennial as follows:

(a) Research the Berlin Biennial’s complex economies through a combination of mapping tools, taken from the different fields of social sciences, economy, anthropology and participatory performative practices.

(b) Propose performative interventions and artistic actions that will transform existing economies and establish alternative models of social, artistic and personal exchange inside the Biennial. Their aim

will be to multiply resources by setting up additional revenue streams and provide models for public redistribution of value generated.

(c) Embody and operate these mechanisms during the course of the Biennial as both short-term interventions and more durable modifications of existing structures.

(d) Display the results through publicly accessible artworks, comprised of archives, diagrams, maps, videos and organizational documents.

C.E.P.’s aims include:

(a) To research the art field as comprised of diverse and coextensive economies, exploring how social, cultural, symbolic, economic and other structures converge and accrete value in relation to the labour and resources producing it.

(b) To address inequities by modeling alternative economies, operative within dominant structures, for tapping hidden values and/or attribute and redistribute existing ones to more equitable effect.

C.E.P. is presently devising working schemes and tactical performances for the Berlin Biennial. C.E.P. is eager to discuss and negotiate them with the Biennial’s curator and managerial team. To ensure the

successful execution of its strategies as part of the Berlin Biennial, C.E.P. requests feedback by 30th of August, 2011.

CEP Phase Two At first, CEP was warmly received by BB7’s curatorial team. In a Skype meeting with Zdravka Bajović and Joanna Warsza on 26.09.11, they pledged support for CP’s commitment to realizing practical, action-based outcomes. CEP seemed to strike a chord, chiming with these curators’ own experience of working within the constraints of a large-scale, long-term and publically-funded enterprise. They agreed that planning and realizing CEP at BB7 should begin with mapping the institution’s apparatus. CP’s aim was to trace BB7’s various economies so as to detail how they function both internally and in relation to the Biennial’s social

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surroundings. The decision was taken that CP should come to Berlin for a research trip in November of 2011 and engage with BB7’s apparatus first hand. To advance the Cluster and the Biennial’s collaboration, CP agreed to send a list of questions to and about BB7. Emailed on 10.10.11., they sketched areas of mutual interest in line with the Cluster’s ongoing concerns related to organizational structures, budgetary distribution and artistic programming. In keeping with CP’s commitment to organizational transparency, we identified BB7’s opaqueness as the first obstacle to be overcome before devising any sensible transformation of the Biennale’s apparatus. Zdravka Bajović pledged to show support for CP’s preliminary research by sending an overview of BB7’s organizational structure. However, this was never forthcoming.

Critical Practice’s Questions for BB7 1. General organizational structures

- how many people are employed by BB and what are their positions? What is their division of labour and responsibilities? Is there an organizational diagram which show this?

- how many people work on permanent, temporary, intern and volunteer contracts? could we have copies of the different contracts?

- how many interns does BB employ and how many of them are paid?

- what is the ratio of artists to administrators in BB? 2. Budget

- what is the BB’s total budget? Could we have a breakdown of its different aspects?

- what are the main sources of revenue (i.e. public funding, ticket sales, sales of rights and publications, sponsorship, etc.) and how much income do they generate?

- what are the main expenditures (i.e. infrastructure, core team, artistic program, copyrights, insurance, public relations, etc.) and how much do they cost?

- what kind of arrangements are in place for private sponsorship? (i.e. barter of services, financial inputs, etc.)

- do you have any studies of the economic impact of the BB on Berlin (i.e. through tourism)?

- as the BB accepts public monies, in what ways does it need to be accountable for this funding? What is the ‘social contract’ implicit or explicit in this acceptance of public monies?

3. Artistic program

- do you have any data on the social profile of participating artists? (i.e. gender, country of origin, age groups, country of residence)

- do you have any data on the economic profile of participating artists? (i.e. how many of them are

represented and take an active part in the art market? how many work in the public sector? how many subsidize their works from other sources?)

- what are the contractual agreements with artists for new commissions? (i.e. are artists paid

honoraries? are the commissions copyrighted? who keeps the rights for their distribution and sale? in the case of commissions entering the art market - are any portions of sales returned to BB?)

- what are the contractual arrangements with regard to exhibiting existing works? (i.e. is BB renting

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them or getting them for free? who is paid in case of renting - owners / collectors or authors?)

- what is the relation between BB and Berlin artistic scene? how many local artists are exhibited? what are the links with local partners / initiatives? what is the BB’s relationship with parallel or satellite

events? how many of them are involved in programming? do they receive any financial support from Biennial?

4. Audience profile

- how many visitors come to BB? do you have any specific information on the social profile of visitors? were there any marketing / audience surveys conducted in recent years? how many people pay for regular / reduced tickets, receive free accreditations (for press, professionals, etc.)?

- What does the VIP program of BB look like? What kind of privileged access / services are on offer?

How many guests use these services? Are they charged specially for these services? What is the social profile of guests (i.e. collectors, politicians, directors, intellectuals, etc.)?

5. Information policy

- of the above requested information, what is publically disclosed, and on how regular a basis?

- are publications and works of art produced by BB copyrighted (with limited access) or put in the public domain (with public access)?

CEP Phase Three At this stage and from the Biennial’s perspective, it seemed the main obstacles to realizing CEP were the project’s feasibility and significance. According to AŻ in an email from 12.10.11, CP’s proposal failed to manifest explicit mechanisms for achieving “real world results” of art. At the same time, AŻ seemed anxious that CEP would be a mere research project. Because his curatorial agenda hinged on “finding answers and not asking questions”7 he was reluctant to support anything abstract by dint of being exploratory.

We were astonished by AŻ’s response and all the more so in light of his sense, expressed in an email of 12.10.11, that a core problem facing contemporary art practice is systemic anxiety. Eventually the Biennale was subtitled “Forget Fear,” highlighting AŻ’s sense that it is fear above all else that deadlocks the management of institutions and intimidates artists and curators alike. CEP aimed to explore these types of conundrums. We emailed AŻ to this effect insisting that the project’s concrete mechanisms would evolve in situ and in response to BB7’s apparatus. As we made the point in our correspondence on 07.10.11: We aim at creating specific mechanisms for the Biennial, which would be a bit more innovative and context responsive than quite general ideas of taxation or contractual subversion like, for example, redistributing the revenues coming from BB commissions when they are sold on art market, micro taxing the carbon footprint of BB visitors, inventing micro financing and crowdsourcing schemes for BB audiences, introducing schemes of progressive entry charge in which costs of tickets are dependent on monthly revenue of visitors, etc.

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It is perhaps not surprising that what played out in our subsequent email exchange with AŻ’s and his staff was a case of “chicken and egg”. To support the project and provide access to BB7’s institutional knowledge, the curatorial team required a detailed description of CEP’s intervention. To detail this intervention, CP needed access to BB7’s in-house organization and its ongoing development. A stalemate ensued.

CEP Phase Four The “chicken and egg” problem was exacerbated by a game of “cat and mouse”.

BB7’s correspondence became increasingly delayed and obfuscated. Obviously the capacity to withhold information is a privilege of power, just as being exposed to the investigative gaze of disciplinary institutions is the fate of the powerless.

Then in October of 2011 our negotiations switched format, with email exchanges giving way to face-to-face meetings, informal discussions at parties and other social events. In the end, getting answers to our more probing questions proved impossible. Most of the information we received was basic and already in the public domain, namely that BB7’s budget amounted to 2.5 million Euro. To this AŻ added in a conversation on 3.11.11 that the curators were only in charge of around 20% of the Biennale’s budget. The rest was managed by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the institution responsible for producing BB7.

Based on scraps of information gather through our exchange with BB7’s curators, a rather grim picture emerged of institutional inertia and curatorial impasse. When we met with AŻ on 3.11.11 in Warsaw, he decried responsibility for BB7’s seized apparatus, declaring himself to be victimized by it instead. According to AŻ, even simple artistic productions were met with institutional resistance and curatorial agency was seriously compromised. Rather than evolve the Biennial’s organization, AŻ and his team were expected to fulfill their contractual roles and provide programming. BB7 was founded on and could operate only within a clear division of duties, responsibilities and power between managers, curators and artists.

AŻ’s agenda relied on the organizational apparatus of KW, trying to redirect it away from maintaining artistic autonomy and towards supporting political change.

Yet it seems, based on CP’s experience of working with BB7, that it does not matter whether art is distinguished by its “purposeless purpose” or if it tries to realize social change. The bureaucracies that enable artistic production define the limits of both art’s autonomy and reformist zeal. In this way, BB7 is not an exception to wider, historical tendencies. It was incumbent on KW to be as efficient as possible with the limited resources at their disposal and ensure that BB7 succeeded as an event.

Other interests and ambitions, such as those identified in CEP, seemed impossible with the Biennial’s institutional immunology shoring up its operational capacity.

Anyone wishing to interfere with an institution’s bureaucratic routines should be

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prepared for resistance. The more heated and advanced the event’s production, the more resistant it will be to anything compromising institutional efficiency.

Like other institutions, KW was part of an accountability chain. The institution responsible for realizing BB7 was most immediately accountable to its primary stakeholders, especially the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which provides the bulk of KW’s funding. This foundation is in turn accountable to the politicians who support it. And they are in turn accountable to their parties and constituencies.

In a statement pertaining to the BB7’s accountability in general, AŻ declared the following: “We [BB7’s curatorial and production team] should not lose sight of our main goal: to open access to performative and effective politics that would equip we ordinary citizens with the tools of action and change. Art is one of these tools”8, with original wording and grammar). What, however, is missing from this statement is any frank acknowledgement that in this particular case, art’s effectiveness as a tool for change was caught up with institutional accountability as accountability between institutions and key stakeholders and not the “ordinary citizens” to which AŻ referred.

What is surprising in the case of BB7 is the curatorial team’s failure to acknowledge from the onset this two-fold rub: chafing between curatorial and artistic agency and institutional effectiveness on the one hand, and between formalized and general accountability on the other. Perhaps it was only through actually testing BB7’s bureaucratic mechanisms that they came to appreciate its structural incapacity for change. And perhaps AŻ and his team’s struggle to cope with this “real world effect” of art (institutions), helps to explain why their correspondence with CP was so intermittent. It wasn’t until 27.02.2012, more than a year after our initial meeting with AŻ in London on 15.01.11 and further to several reminder emails, that we had word from BB7’s associate curator Joanna Warsza: the Biennale would not realize CEP. Dearest Marsha, Dearest Kuba, Thank you very much for reminder, and sorry for our silence, I know that you have been waiting very long for an answer. We are sorry to say that for various reasons - some of it structural or administrative - we will not be able to realize the project with you. We are overloaded with work and sometimes struggling ourselves with the skepticism towards expanding an art field. I spoke a bit with Kuba about it...

Best and hopefully see you very soon.

Joanna

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Epilogue BB7’s failure to realize CEP seems paradigmatic of the “real world effects” of arts institutions crippled by inertia. We conclude this exposé of CP’s dialogue with the Biennial’s curatorial team with several observations, some more common sense than others. It is our hope they may contribute to the critical and progressive practice of art and its institutionalization going forward.

The first observation relates to accountability. As an invited applicant to BB7, CP had no leverage on the Biennale nor exerted any instruments of political pressure. Willingly or not we negotiated from the in-between position of invitees and applicants who were at the Biennial’s disposal. While it was clear that CP’s application was wholly accountable to BB7, it seems that when it came to negotiating CEP, BB7 was far less accountable to CP. Second and closely related are the terms of this negotiation. As exemplified by CEP, applications involve time, energy and other forms of investment in their preparation and assessment as well as their rejigging and negotiation. To be successful, applicants must reveal their project’s significance while demonstrating their competence by earnestly and effectively engaging in the application process.

How much of an artistic intention should be shared, when and to what ends? In the case of CEP, these questions grew all the more pressing as the project’s likelihood of realization shrank. It was a vexing process, filled with uncertainty.

In light of this, our third observation pertains to our complicity in the very system we aim to change. In our current age of dematerialized labour, short termism, rampant collaboration and the spirit of unaccountability that often tracks with privatization, concerns around the appropriation of cultural outcomes and the expropriation of creative labour seem increasingly urgent. We do not mean to suggest that our proposal was appropriated without our participation. And yet we are struck that many of the Biennale’s critical outcomes were located precisely at the intersection of curatorial agency and institutional frameworking, as they followed threads similar to those outlined in CEP. For example, an announcement issued in BERLIN BIENNIAL NEWS 19 (15.06.12) reads as follows: More than halfway into the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the invited global movements have challenged the hierarchical structure of the Biennale, initiating a move toward horizontality. Horizontality means de-centering power away from leadership hierarchies and making decisions through group consensus. The experiment consists of changing the positions of the curators relative to the Occupy Biennale and calling a series of assemblies with activists and KW staff willing to rethink the terms and conditions of labor.9

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We read this announcement with mixed emotions. For sure, CEP shares with the OCCUPY Museum and OCCUPY movements many core values. Accountability and the rethinking of labor conditions are political postulates and not authorized notions. And the more they are spoken about, the more pressure is put on making institutional change that benefits us all. So it was not that some of CEP’s ambitions were put into practice at BB7 without CP’s involvement that we found so disappointing. Rather, it was their futility as largely symbolic gestures, the very type that AŻ had emphatically deplored back in January of 2011.

This comes onto our next observation, which pertains to the limits of potential transformations. The spectacle of basic democracy in the form of OCCUPY, climaxing just two weeks before the Biennale’s end on July 1, 2012, is a case in point. If OCCUPY erupted with the promise of change, it came too late to impact the Biennale directly. By mid June, the Biennale’s budget had been spent, the contracts were being wound up and the project was largely realized. All that remained was for BB7 to clear its debts and reconcile its failed ambitions. So when it came to transforming the Biennial, OCCUPY was a gesture shot through with capitulation manifest in its emptiness: representation without transformation.

Another attempt at transforming BB7’s institution is much more effective and hence inspiring. The curatorial team made some forays into engaging the socioeconomics of the institution’s apparatus when they waved BB7’s entrance fee, a decision announced in the Biennale’s eighth newsletter published on 28.04.2013.

What made this an encouraging act is that it proved, beyond any doubt, that where there is political will, a dramatic makeover of the apparatus can be achieved, even in the rush of things.

This brings us to our final observation. The growing collision between contemporaneity and complexity makes the evolution of new modes of cultural production an increasingly urgent concern. OCCUPY is appealing in part because of its NOW factor. Yet this can elide the long and convoluted process required to effect long-term and sustainable change in a world shaped through exponential interdependence. To expect either OCCUPY to revolutionize BB7 or BB7 to revolutionize itself or, the apparatus of art in general, may be unreasonable. But to ignore what this coalition between art and activism has brought to the fore, specifically demands for systemic institutional reform, is unforgivable. We hold fast to the conviction that unless transformation wrestles with the intractable problems that mitigate its very becoming, this transformation will fail. To rebuke AŻ’s anti-intellectual slogan (quoted above) that BB7 was driven by “finding answers and not asking questions,” we insist that moving beyond abstract theory depends on collectively questioning the basis for institutional inertia in the art world and political paralysis in general. To this end and as an exposé of its evolution through BB7, may the foregoing discussion of CEP’s early development be a resource for mapping the apparatus of art, building solidarity amongst practitioners and

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identifying practices that deadlock critical cultural production. Only through engaging this reflection, solidarity and cessation can we move beyond dreaming of alternatives and get down to the difficult work of achieving real-world results with a lasting legacy.

1 Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

2 George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2005), 311.

3 Ibid., 324-330.

4 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” [online publication]

<http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=135>, accessed 20 Feb. 2011.

5 Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 94-98.

6 Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza (eds.), Forget Fear (Cologne: Walther König, 2012a), 7.

7 Artur Żmijewski, “7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Politics” in Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza (eds.), Act for Art: Berlin Biennale Zeitung (Berlin: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012b), 10.

8 Żmijewski, Op. Cit (2012a), 7.

9 BB7 Challenge, [web document, press release]

<http://metropolism.com/fresh-signals/bb7-challenge/english>, accessed 10 Dec. 2012.

Marsha Bradfield is an artist, curator, writer, educator and researcher. Across these practices, she is developing a praxis of dialogic art. She co-authors events, projects, exhibitions, publications, etc.,

that use dialogue to explore authorship as constitutively collaborative. Her interdisciplinary approach foregrounds the dialogic interactions among people, objects, cultures, systems, technologies and

other aspects as they couple and decouple through cultural production. Marsha received her PhD from Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London in 2013. She works in collaboration with ArtLeaks, Critical Practice, Precarious Workers Brigade and Contemporary Marxism Group. Marsha divides her time between London UK and Vancouver Canada.

Kuba Szreder is a member of Critical Practice since 2008. Graduate of sociology at Jagiellonian University (Krakow). He works as an independent curator, his interdisciplinary projects actively

engage in public sphere, combine artistic practices with other formats of cultural production and

critical examination of society. His research is focused on critical reflection about artistic apparatus and its position in contemporary capitalism. In Fall 2009 he started his practice-based PhD at

Loughborough University School of the Arts, in which he scrutinizes the economic and governmental aspects of project making and their impact on an ‘independent’ curatorial practice.

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NON-PARTICIPATION Lauren van Haaften-Schick

In 2008 the Spertus Museum in Chicago prematurely closed their exhibition “Imaginary Coordinates,” which presented historic and contemporary interpretations of mapping the Israel-Palestine region. Although the exhibition was not politically aligned, religiously affiliated funders accused the museum of sympathizing with Palestine, and threatened to end their support. While the incident did not go unnoticed by the press, the museum attempted to continue business as usual, and later that year artist Michael Rakowitz, who is of Iraqi-Jewish heritage, was invited to create a newly commissioned work for the museum. His eloquent refusal of the invitation, later published in the journal The Exhibitionist, outlines the importance of Imaginary Coordinates for presenting works from both sides of the Israeli Palestine conflict, and lambasts the museum for their decision to close the exhibition early, thereby “serving the interests of those who seek to erase culture and memory.” Rakowitz’s letter concludes by declaring a simple yet often lost principle of the ethics of cultural production, that “what an artist refuses is sometimes more important than what he or she agrees to.”1 As evidenced by Rakowitz’s protest, there are many instances where producers choose to resist and refuse limitations on their practices, their freedom of speech, and reject contexts that do not present their work as it should be understood. In January 1969 the artist Takis removed his sculpture on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in protest of the museum’s poor contextualization of the work and exhibition of it against the artist’s will. The demonstration that ensued led to a series of demands presented to MoMA regarding the fair treatment of artists, and served as the catalyst in the founding of the Art Workers Coalition, who called for political responsibility among institutions and an assertion of artists’ labor and intellectual property rights. A member of the AWC, Lee Lozano’s “Strike” piece also from 1969 outlines her choice to withdraw from the art world in order to pursue “total personal & public revolution,” and declares that her future involvement in art will be strictly limited to efforts that further this goal.2 The following year, a widespread “Art Strike,” initiated by members of the AWC and affiliates, called for museums and other cultural institutions to close their doors for one day to two weeks as an expression against the US government’s “policies of racism, war and repression.”3 For the Art Strike, Robert Morris ended his

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retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Frank Stella closed his exhibition at the MoMA for a day, Jo Baer, Robert Mangold, and Robert Smithson barred the Whitney from exhibiting their works in the permanent collection that month, and MoMA and the Guggenheim suspended their admission fees. In 197780 Gustav Metzger proposed another Art Strike, which was to last for three years during which time artists would not produce, sell or exhibit work, in the hopes that this refusal of labor would serve to cripple the hierarchical industry of art as it stands.4 Regardless of their explicit agendas, these acts of complete withdrawal highlighted the value of these artists’ participation by emphasizing the gap that was left when their work could no longer be accessed, and challenged established forces of control over the channels by which art may be transmitted and received.

The concrete impact of these acts is up for debate however. As Stewart Home admits of his own Art Strike from 1990-93, although some artists will cease to “make, distribute, sell, exhibit or discuss their cultural work... the numbers involved will be so small that the strike is unlikely to force the closure of any galleries or art institutions.”5 Elaborating on this notion, Luke Skrebowski writes that because “contemporary art’s ‘value’ is decided primarily on the secondary market, a cessation of primary production would not be able to stop business... rediscovered figures from the past and/or previously unincorporated regions could be employed as vehicles for speculation” such that the market/institution as it stands will always be able to replenish its stock regardless of the contemporary artists’ participation, or lack thereof.6 These scenarios seem to only further a cultural climate that tends to encourage over-production and exhibition for the sake of attention, inducing a kind of “pressure to perform,” as argued by Jan Verwoert, where the political or conceptual motivations behind the act of making can override content and criticality.7 The promise of cultural capital as the payoff for precarious livelihoods make the automatic “yes” an obvious option for many. In the worst scenarios, the artist ceases to present alternative ways of seeing, of operating, and thus a core purpose of art is abandoned. Yet Homes continues to assert that the importance in the act of striking and of refusal lies in the ability to “demonstrate that the socially imposed hierarchy of the arts can be aggressively challenged.” Such statements also give voice to often under-represented positions, proposing a crucial alternative to accepting what is given, and what shouldn’t be. This optimistic assertion is an attempt at reversing the widely (and quietly) held belief among artists and others that the risk of not participating will diminish our cultural, intellectual, and financial value – in this opposite scenario, we may be empowered by it.

I am now compiling these letters of “Non-Participation,” as a publication and exhibition series. The content of these statements will remain un-edited, and they will be accompanied only by factual accounts. Letters received and researched thus far concern a diversity of issues ranging from the non-payment of artists’ fees, censorship of university courses and of art critics’ writings, to the cancellation of projects for various political reasons. In some cases, the artist is the one who is at

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fault and not the institution they are speaking against, and in other instances the true right or wrong is impossible to decipher. Regardless, these acts of resistance force questions and concerns deserving of consideration. It is the hope that this collection will serve as a broad reference, a guide, and at the very least a source of inspiration, revealing that opting out remains and will always be a viable and valid option.

The call for submissions is below, and is followed by a sampling of letters received.

1.“The Untimely Closing of Imaginary Coordinates: Letter from artist Michael Rakowitz to Staci

Boris, Senior Curator at Spertus, refusing an invitation from the museum to create a new work for an upcoming exhibition,” The Exhibitionist, Fall 2008.

2. Lozano, Lee, “Strike Piece,” 1969, viewable at: http://pastelegram.org/reviews/99.

3. New York Artists Strike Against War, Racism, Repression, and War, “Art Strike,” 1969.

Announcement viewable at: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/images/detail/art-strike-9979.

4. Metzger, Gustav, “ART STRIKE 1977-1980,” Art Into Society/Society Into Art, Institute for Contemporary Art, London, 1974.

5. Home, Stewart, “About the Art Strike,” The Art Strike Papers, viewable at: http://www.

stewarthomesociety.org/features/artstrik3.htm. Originally published in Welch, Chuck, The Eternal Network: a mail art anthology, London, 1989.

6. Skrebowski, Luke, “Working against (Art) Work” in Baldon, Diane, ed. et. al., “CounterProduction,” Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2012.

7. Verwoert, Jan, “Exhaustian & Exhuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform,” in Ohlraun Vanessa, ed., Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2011.

Call for Submissions: Non-Participation Non-Participation The project, “Non-Participation,” will be a collection of letters by artists, curators, and other cultural producers, written to decline their participation in events, or with organizations and institutions which they either find suspect or whose actions run counter to their stated missions. These statements are in effect protests against common hypocrisies among cultural organizations, and pose a positive alternative to an equally ubiquitous pressure to perform. At the heart of the project is the notion that what we say “no” to is perhaps more important than what we agree to.

Historic instances and examples include: Adrian Piper’s letter announcing her withdrawal from the show Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975 at LA MoCA, stating her opposition to Phillip Morris’ funding of the museum and requesting that her criticizing statement be publicly shown; A letter from Jo Baer

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to a Whitney Museum curator canceling an upcoming exhibition on the grounds that her work was not being taken seriously because she is a woman artist; Marcel Broodthaers open letter to Joseph Beuys questioning the relationship between artists and exhibiting institutions; the withdrawal of John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie and Ed Ruscha from the board of trustees of LA MoCA in response to the leadership of Jeffrey Deitch and his dismissal of curator Paul Schimmel; and public announcements by art writers Dave Hickey and Sarah Thornton of their “quitting” the art world.

I am now collecting your letters of non-participation, which will be compiled as a publication, with other activities surrounding the project to be announced.

Please send copies of your letters via email to lauren@laurenvhs.com.

With your submission, please indicate whether or not you wish to remain anonymous. All names and contact information can be omitted or made public, depending on your preference.

Each letter will be accompanied by a factual account of the incident and/or any other relevant information that could illuminate the situation, as you see fit.

There is currently no deadline for submissions.

In terms of my own work, Non-Participation is a natural extension of my last exhibition, “Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures,” which presented a selection of canceled exhibitions and the projects artists and curators created in response. The idea for Non-Participation came up many times over the course of the exhibition, and now I would like to see it come into being. Please feel free to pass this along to anyone else you think may be interested.

And of course, let me know if you have any questions, thoughts or suggestions.

Thank you in advance.

All my best, Lauren van Haaften-Schick

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I get two or three donation requests a month. The last one from an organization in Alaska and most of them have nothing to do with art so I had to come up with a “general letter of NO”. ************ To Whom It May Concern, Thank you for thinking of me when you sent a request for a donation of my art for your upcoming auction but I must politely decline. I feel it is only fair to let you know the reasons why I am saying no and it is certainly not that I don’t believe in or want to support your cause.

1. Original art is a very popular item at auctions. Art is something that rarely loses its value yet it is usually undervalued when it sells for less than its gallery retail price at auctions. This does not look good in the eyes of other collectors of that particular artist’s work because it devalues their own collected item. Generally the only time artwork sells for its value at an auction is at events where the audience is primarily made up of art connoisseurs/collectors who are there specifically to buy art.

2. Contrary to what most organizations tell artist donors, auction attendees rarely contact the artist whose work they purchased to buy other works. Perhaps they figure they can wait until the following event to buy it for less than retail.

3. Artists do not get any tax break or incentive when they donate their own work to an auction. We can only deduct the cost of materials at the end of the year which we already do as a regular cost of doing business. A collector who buys an artwork, however, can indeed declare the donation of an artwork (for its full retail value) as a tax-deductible charitable donation.

4. Artists are asked to donate their means of making a living (more than any other professionals) to auctions and fundraisers for causes, many of which have nothing to do with art, yet visual art is one of the lowest paid professions.

5. When a work is sold at auction, not only does the artist not make money but neither does the gallery that spends their time and energy trying to promote and represent him/her and also depends on sales.

6. For many artists, the work “sitting around” in their studio is their retirement account and you don’t want to be partly responsible for depleting it.

Now, here are some alternative suggestions: 1. Ask some wealthier folks to purchase artwork from artists, perhaps at a negotiated amount and in turn they can donate it to the auction. The artist does not completely lose all the income for that particular work and the patron does get a tax break when they donate.

2. If you still feel it is right to ask artists to donate their art to your organization, you may want to select artists that you know are either wealthy, not depending on sales of their work to pay their bills or newer/younger artists that really want/need some exposure.

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3. An evening at an artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; studio! Ask some better known artists to open up their studio for a group, and auction that off instead of an individual artwork. You could probably arrange for them to donate a percentage of any sales made during that evening at his/her studio to your organization. This brings that promised exposure to the artists and there is a chance for the artist and the organization to make money; both from the auction item and from the event at the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio later.

4. Invite some artists to have work for sale (not auction) at the event for the valued price and give the artists 50% if the work sells.

5. Lobby the IRS to change its policy on the way artwork is valued when donated by its creator. Suggest that the artist should get whatever the selling price is (not even the value) as a charitable tax deduction.

Most artists I know are socially minded folks that generally do want to help their communities. Unfortunately we are often only valued as an easy donation any time money needs to be raised. Until some organizations realize these inequities, we are kept in similar situations as some of the causes these very non-profits are trying to help. I hope you realize that whatever criticisms I may have are not personal and are only meant to be constructive and beneficial to all involved.

Respectfully yours, Juan Alonso

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This letter is following up to a phone conversation with a book store owner who has organized a juried competition of which artists are selected for a small museum show in Traverse City, Michigan, as well as inclusion in a book. I am objecting here to the pay in model for artists as the feature of a museum show as well as a book project in which the book will be sold.

Dear Barb,

*******

....I congratulate you on the many hours and years that you’ve dedicated to the realization of this project. Forgive me, I have an anarchist temperament but don’t mean to pick on those that are warriors on the same team. And I appreciate your openness to understanding the issues I’m raising. Of course I would expect nothing less than your interest in valuing and respecting the artists.

What we have here is an old pay-in competition model that is out dated and clearly sets artists up as speculators. Some artists pay in but have no return at all, do not get in the show or in the book. The artists are not paid for their services, for adding to the talent pool, for delivery of work, for the use of their name, image or their copyright. Exploitation is a harsh word but the scenario is one where the artist is perpetually staged at an economic disadvantage-an unpaid worker paying in-when other players are making money in the same game off of the very contribution of the artists. You can understand why artists are very skeptical when they hear the word “opportunity”. Assuming to normalize unjust economic treatment of one category of people-artists-is a kind of discrimination, another harsh word but applicable. What other category of people are asked to work in exchange for opportunity and recognition ? Artists realize the part they have played in allowing these structures to exist and have been working toward resolving them by standing up for themselves and trying to articulate why these issues matter.

In a transparent world we see the host gaining social capital by the affect of appearing charitable to the artists but in reality the artists are the ones giving of their services. The artists are the primary content providers, the feature of the show, the very spark and center that draws the audience to the project. With this pay-in model they are also investors.

I do think it will be important to acknowledge that the artists have contributed financially to the project. Projecting an appreciation of the artists as being collaborators, working jointly to produce and create the show and publication, will significantly help shift the assumptions of how artists fit into the cultural class structure. It will offer the artists the opportunity of sharing the same deserved social capital and give credit where it is due.

I hope this is helpful, Barb. I’m attaching a website that is referenced often with these issues.

Melanie Parke http://www.wageforwork.com/

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I was invited together with the art production house La Collezzione di Carrozzeria Margot by the Danish artist FOS to hold an art intervention in the special Danish floating pavilion, Osloo at the 54th La Biennale di Venezia - Arte.

My project THE ITALIAN PAVILION ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY (2011) consisted in leading a paradoxical ethnographic survey into the Italian Pavilion from the Danish pavilion, a sort of base camp for displaced Italian artists - the ethnographic practices being the occasion to overturn power relations so as to criticize the curatorial project of the Italian Pavilion, heavily influenced by the populist agenda of Berlusconi’s government. I collected aspiring ethnographers (all art workers) trough an online open call and “leaded” them into the “otherness” of the sexist, chauvinist and amateurish Italian Pavilion. The project was well received and had great visibility on the Italian art online media during the Biennale.

The paradox is that just after the survey I was invited in the regional branch of the Italian pavilion in Pecci Museum and of course I refused! ****** Da: Leone Contini <leone.contini@gmail.com> Oggetto: Re: 54° biennale di Venezia/Padiglione Toscana - Museo Pecci Data: 14 giugno 2011 00:24:07 CEST A: XXX <XXX@centropecci.it> Caro XXX, scusa se ti scrivo solo adesso ma avevo già accennato via telefono a XXX alcune perplessità rispetto alla mia partecipazione, poi ho provato a chiamarti varie volte al Pecci (anche stamattina) ma senza successo.

Immagino che esporre al Pecci sia il sogno di ogni artista toscano, ma accettare di far parte del Padiglione Toscana sarebbe un gesto di totale incoerenza rispetto alla mia ricerca artistica.

Quindi avendo a lungo riflettuto ho preso la decisione di non accettare l’invito.

Ti ringrazio per la tua stima e spero che in futuro avremo modo di lavorare insieme in contesti curatoriali differenti.

Un caro saluto e a presto, Leone

Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, artist and writer from New York. Recent curatorial projects include “Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures” at The Center for Book Arts

(New York), “Directly in front of you” at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), “Spirit of the Signal” at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (New York, NY). She was the founding director of Gallery TK in Northampton, MA from 2004-2006, and AHN|VHS gallery and bookstore in Philadelphia from 2009-2010. She holds a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire College.

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Perreault, John, “Art: Whose Art?” The Village Voice, January 9, 1969.

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“Sculptor Takes Work Out of Modern Museum Show,” The New York Times, January 4, 1969.

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ArtLeaks Gazette 2 (An)Other Art World(s)?

Imagination Beyond Fiction Introduction

While the first issue of the ArtLeaks Gazette sought to draw attention to the systemic abuse, repression and exploitation inherent in the contemporary art system, with this issue we take the next step in thinking more critically in the direction of how this system could be transformed, and meaningful ways of engagement in the art world today. Some of authors that we gathered for this task explore what it means to re-claim the institutional space, to disrupt the business as usual of auction houses, big galleries, or even take over corrupt state institutions in the long term.

Others look towards artistic education outside the private academia as key to creating real social alternatives and ways of thinking and doing an engaged art, opening the possibilities for resistant political subjectivities.

Similarly as it is the case of post-Occupy era activists who grapple with common issues of the ephemerality of their actions when transforming public spaces in cities across the globe, so do these present-day cultural workers strive towards finding depth-reaching strategies to transform culture and society. It seems ever more important today to insist on the yet not consolidated openings and alternatives engendered by the social movements of the past few years, in which art and culture played important roles.

Our original questions for the open call: What are the conditions and possibilities of alternative art worlds? and How can we engage and use our imagination, at the same time avoiding the traps of utopian thinking? have been answered by artists, activists, and thinkers coming from the Global North and South, from both Eastern and Wester Europe. Our intention is not to globalize our publication as a goal in itself, rather, it has been ArtLeaksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; politics from the beginning to shine more light on historically marginalized or unknown problems and articulation of solutions located beyond the finance capitals in the so-called West or Former West.

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Our aim here is to present the reader with different strategies of art workers whose ideas and visual languages go against the grain of the usual aesthetics and discourses. Emphasizing the international character of a growing resistance calling for a different way of making art, running institutions and therefore doing politics, these art workers translate their aspirations into a renewed cycle of struggles.

Finally, we conceived this issue as a tool for connecting and mapping different active groups and initiatives, which do not necessarily come together into a composite solution to all our problems. Rather we envision that the zones of overlap and tension between ways of organizing, alternative economies and alternative art production will work towards strengthening cultural and political ties between different groups and sectors of the present-day artistic working class. We imagined the ArtLeaks Gazette as a useful tool for coordinating these struggles and perhaps to begin imagining how an international union of art workers could function. While capitalism has been internationalized, artists’ struggle continue to be local/regional and remain atomized. Our publication therefore seeks to provide a possibility for imagining a larger, international union that can offer resistance and solidarity.

We thank to all those who have contributed and assisted us to put together the second issue of the ArtLeaks Gazette! http://art-leaks.org Texts by: Corina L. Apostol, Larissa Babij, Daniel Blochwitz, Joanna Figiel, Noah Fischer and Artur Żmijewski, Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle, Sean Lowry and Nancy de Freitas, Andrea Pagnes, Heath Schultz, Andrey Shental Visual works (reproductions) by: Assembly for Culture Ukraine, Roisin Beirne with Clare Breen, Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch,David Lunney, John Ryan and Tom Watt, Daniel Blochwitz, Department of Biological Flow, Noah Fischer with Pawel Althamer and Artur Žmijewski, G.U.L.F. (Global Ultra Luxury Faction), Ellie Harrison, Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle, Deana Jovanović, Mark Shorter, Occupy Museums (OM), OFSW (Citizen Forum for Contemporary Arts), Self Organized Seminar (SOS), Iulia Toma, Winter Holiday Camp Graphic interventions: Federico Geller ArtLeaks Gazette editors: Corina L. Apostol, Vladan Jeremić and Raluca Voinea Editing assistance: Jasmina Tumbas

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The Occupied Museum Noah Fischer With comments by Artur Žmijewski

This text is informed by individual and collective practice– particularly since the Occupy Wall Street Movement of September 2011. I hope its assumed that the groups discussed here: Occupy Museums, Horizontal BB7, Debtfair, Winter Holiday Camp, and Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F) contain divergent views.

Here I share my pathways with them and through them, and my vision of our horizon.

Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F): March 2014 action: “Rebranding Guggenheim” with OWS illuminator. Photo: Noah Fischer/ Winter Holiday Camp: members and staff with “Diplomas.” Photo: Gabriello Csoszo

What happens when a political art practice collides with a global movement? My answer is Occupy Museums, initiated in the most optimistic moment of Liberty Square and still developing as a movement-affiliated practice long after the tents were banished from public space. Like the OWS movement in general, Occupy Museums (OM) challenges the structures and languages of economic inequality in a highly visible cultural arena. This depends on rewiring embedded social assumptions such as contemporary art’s default to luxury asset and a widespread obedience to the professional aura of Neoliberal institutions. OM is therefore a march from the conventions of the artworld toward a revolutionary mode. Yet conversely, we’ve sometimes managed to complicate and refine OWS-style protest aesthetics and tactics to an art form.

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But who is this “we”, and what does it mean to be “movement affiliated?” In my view, it’s something like holding a dual citizenship. Despite the well-known breakdowns and failures of the Occupy Movement, there exists a large post-Occupy community which has reached a perspective from which we cannot so easily re-integrate into normative post-crash Capitalism. So almost by default we’ve become an entity: self-imposed outcasts perhaps, but with a clear mission and some resources. OM has been busy developing new dimensions of this mission, burrowing deeper into the artworld through a series of collaborative “cases” and picking up actors as we go: blossoming into an international network which can access many levels art world power. As an international group, we constantly research new campaigns, waiting for the right moment to meet up offline and catalyze live situations with new tactics, risk and in the flesh. Our strength lies in motliness: we are famous and unknown artists, museum guards who paint and sculpt, academics, wierdos, curators, lawyers, parents, debtors, but most of all, people claiming a personal stake in changing the status quo. Desperation is not unknown to us. In truth, we vibrate with anxiety. However, we found a way to channel anger and fear into nonviolent and thrilling action. Into functional politics. Gradually we discovered many resources within our loose network. We discovered joy in the craft of beautiful actions, so that our practice even appeared with the urgency of a high-energy art movement that seemed no longer possible in this stale market-friendly era. But more than a movement perhaps, we are holding up a territory, temporarily re-offering or unveil-

Museums under construction: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, David H. Koch Plaza at the Met, Photo: http://www.guggenheim.org/abu-dhabi

ing the public space covered over by the private sphere. And finally, I realized that our post-occupy network in its energetic visual pulsing and dense communication structure and collective memory had become a sort of machine for propagating a new culture. So I propose to think of this entity not as a protest called “Occupy Museums” but as an institution: the Occupied Museum.

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A Crisis Many museums are quiet temples where it’s still possible to be touched by the flow of time and hear the whisper of the muse; schoolchildren make pilgrimages for a chance to stare into the eyes of ancient Etruscan Noblewomen or 17th century madmen or just globs of colorful paint: a generative contact with cultural meaning.

But these days, meaning-creation is undermined by the well-known crisis of market-generated inequality. In order for artworks to circulate as highly speculative assets, and for oligarchs to rise in social power by way of museum boards, certain boxes must be checked. Museums guarantee historical standing—the key metric for market value. Even as global exhibitions and artfairs proliferate, we are seeing a small cadre of art institutions and shortlist of artists trading evermore heavily

Occupied Museum practice, a movement flowing through and around institutional frames. Drawing: Noah Fischer

on their apparent rareness; emptied-out but highly visible brand names. But this visibility depends upon the invisibility of labor abuse and debt relations churning at the base of the art-globe pyramid. Value and labor is sucked upwards by precise instruments, but unlike the financial industry which is rightly perceived as crooked, the art world and market is masked by the rhetoric of genius and creativity and the benevolent aura of art. This veiling trick makes museums irresistible for Late Capitalists.

Museums can’t help but express their times. We know that the phenomenon of art masking over economic inequality stretches way back to the Colonial pillage of the Global South when they quickly filled up with stolen objects, temples, even people. But that was a century ago or more, before the rise of the middle class and institutions that serve them. However, when we look at today’s newest institutions (just to use American ones as examples) we eoncounter obscene vignettes of a new oligarchy: a Guggenheim branch for jetsetters touching down in Abu Dhabi- to be built by bonded migrant labor; the public space of the largest US museum- the Metropolitan- redesigned and named after Tea Party funder David Koch; the New Whitney Museum perched on top of the connecting station of the brand new hydro-fracked gas pipeline brought into NYC by Bloomberg-One couldn’t think up better parodies.

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Museums are like canaries singing: our culture is in crisis! It’s troubling to realize that art museums, among all the Neoliberal institutions have proven especially adept at veiling and normalizing economic social and environmental injustice.

The Occupied Museum The Occupied Museum unveils this incredible obscenity as blockbuster exhibition.

It exhibits the private dividing lines that permeate the faux-public space of Neoliberal institutions. From this mission flow art forms: the spontaneously unfolding performances, epic disruptions, scripted press interactions, illuminated facade projections, community agreements, collective sculpture, painting, and writing. The Occupied Museum understands art in the age of a world-widening economic gulf as necessarily the outcome of conflict. It exhibits and records the creative clash between visible and hidden populations and between visible and invisible art histories.

The Occupied Museum owes only one thing to the public: departure from the display of Capitalist business-as-usual. Sometimes the most important exhibitions are intricate, aggravating horizontal group processes which explore the potential democratic (crowd-expressing) functioning of the frame in which we understand art. Sometimes the usually hidden absurdity of power relations provide bruttespectacle: police appear en masse in front of MoMA, curators retreat, and the main gate shuts in the face of an elderly black lady and 6 artists (during opening hours) at the Museum of American Finance on Wall Street. Other exhibitions seem to reproduce all the aesthetic spectacle of a blockbuster show, but a disruptive and uninvited one: Philip Glass mic-checks the end of his opera on the streets in front of Lincoln Center while police standing in a long line barricade off a public plaza; hand-drawn dollar bills rain for minutes inside the “debt spiral” of an aggressively globalizing Guggenheim and the stunned audience pauses in hushed quiet.

The police usually appear to close the exhibitions. Art and all its accompanying privileges make an effective alibi: arrests are rarely made.

First Occupy Museums assembly at MoMA, October 20, 2011 (Noah Fischer in coin mask). Photo: Jerry Saltz/ OM member Max Liboiron Marching with Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, Community Mayor of Harlem, with model of her home at 477 W. 142nd Street to the Museum of American Finance Photo: Noah Fischer

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From Claiming the Streets to Unlocking the Zoo Standing in Liberty Park in early October 2011, there was wide understanding that the Occupy Wall Street Movement pointed to more than the 2008 financial sector abuse. We were concerned by a crisis of the entire public sphere, and only starting at an obvious “ground-zero.” Experience had led me to believe that the visual arts; one of the world’s largest unregulated markets, was central, not tangential to this crisis.1 Strikingly, just as the crash was wreaking increasing havoc on the middle class as unemployment benefits ran out in 2011, art auctions were setting records, and private museums were popping up like gaudy magic mushrooms. It was clear that the mainstream artworld was intimately connected to the mechanisms of economic inequality. However, in Liberty Square, Puerta del Sol, and other occupied squares around the world, many people had a collective vision of art transitioning beyond Late Capitalism.2 I thought that rather than primarily highlight the auctions, galleries and art fairs (the obvious targets of the private market), to instead challenge the authoritative public-facing “temples”- where cultural capital is extracted from the public sphere on which all the speculation depends. Museums owe their authority to their public mission and to the existence of canons: the very narratives which are susceptible to conflicts of interest. Like ratings agencies, these are exactly the kind of tools that Wall Street players like to manipulate in order to win every time.

Three weeks after the Occupation had begun, all this bubbled up in a hastily written manifesto and call to action I posted to Facebook called “Occupy Museums!”

This went viral, was published in newspapers nationally, and soon became an OWS style horizontal action group, meeting on Mondays in the private/public indoor space of 60 Wall Street which was the hub of OWS organizing. From October 20th, 2011, a group of 10-20 people went on a kind of weekly action rampage, cooking up different ways to pull MoMA, Sotheby’s, Lincoln Center, many NYC museums into the growing public conversation about inequality, labor abuse, and deterioration of the public sphere.

At first I thought to simply extend the phenomena of Liberty Park to the museum, holding general assemblies on the sidewalks in front of MoMA.3 These were institutional collisions. We represented a known entity-at the time filling the newspapers with daily stories. We counted on our network’s abundant resources: free printing, reclaimed public space, internal organizing lists, and our own media (livestream, blogs, social media) plus key relationships with mainstream press. We stood in solidarity with the OWS governing structure, seeking consensus in assemblies or working groups4. At the first Occupy Museums action at MoMA, high level staffers came down to talk to me alone and quietly, as if I could represent the concerns of a grassroots phenomena. I simply told them we’d be back next week with even more people. Looking back to this early stage, we were basically evangelists from what seemed like a radical new culture. But movements unfold in stages and this was only the honeymoon stage.

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Horizontal meeting at BB7 2012 photo: Max Liboiron/ Media working group at Horizontal BB7 photo: Noah Fischer

The Horizontal 7th Berlin Biennale Around the metal tables of 60 Wall Street after runnig meetings with hand signs, we’d talk unofficially and we often discussed what an ethical museum might look like. Maybe Liberty Park was already a kind of museum? Occupy Groups were already finding playful ways to archive its unfolding culture. Certainly our action assemblies were effective Culture-Machines for including lots of voices and veering toward spontaneous outcomes. However, we had no chance to know whether contemporary museums could be transformed from the inside since there weren’t invitations coming from the 1% funded US museums to come and occupy them.

However, pretty soon, one arrived from Europe. We accepted an invitation from curators Joanna Warsza and Artur Zmijewski5 and twelve of us6 arrived at the Seventh Berlin Biennale a month after it had started, and after the press had long declared it a failure.

Artur Zmijewski: We were trying to invite people from different ‘protest’ movements and convince them to ‘take part’ in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Our people were travelling to Madrid, Barcelona, New York, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and so on to meet and talk to people from Indignados and Occupy Movements. We started this work in 2011 and on this direct way the process of trust building began. In the interview with Noah Fischer conducted by Joanna Warsza, Noah was talking about MOMA curators who are confronted with Occupy actions, but do not want to meet activists. So, we decided to invite activists. But with certain hope, that they can do what we are not able to do – to open the art institution and start a process of the transformation of it. I did not want to exhibit them, I did not want to create a ZOO – I wanted to offer them the institution itself - Kunst-Werke - which they could hack and use freely for their purposes. That’s how the invitation was formulated. The first action by Occupy Berlin was the occupation of Biennale’s press conference. It was a proposal by two representatives of this group: Grischa and Mario. We accepted it and during the press conference members of Occupy movements started to moderate it. They presented their manifesto and started open debate with

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journalists about “what each of us can do for global change”. It was a first moment when the art institution was really challenged by the autonomous action. As a Biennale we paid a certain price for it – we lost the sympathy of journalists.

NF: Before leaving for Berlin we hosted a discussion at 16 Beaver entitled “Occupations and Institutions- an Open Discussion with Occupy Museums.” Generally the OWS community had been highly skeptical of any sort of institutional collaboration of involvement and the meeting at 16 Beaver was highly critical. Holding a “pure” autonomous position had been symbolically effective. Yet this was a moment to face the inevitable clash between inside and outside. We were preparing to go not as invited participants but more like warriors: unafraid of conflict. On arrival at the KW, we were led to a large bare-bones exhibition room in which to lay down our sleeping bags at night (passing KW visitors each morning to brush our teeth or take showers). The lower level main space was set up with circular benches for our assembly along with army tents and poster making stations. The setup felt exactly like a human zoo. This was mostly due to its unfortunate architectural layout.

Visitors would watch us from a viewing platform elevated about the large pit area.

This reduced the assemblies to performing behaviour of (surveilled) activists, and it seemed to fit in with Zmijewski’s most cynical projects. However, in retrospect, the visibility and tension of this zoo was helpful. It was a catalyst for the situation to unfold antagonistically- the discomfort of the collision between movement and institution could not be hidden. Soon we moved our meetings from the zoo-space to the KW’s upscale courtyard near Dan Graham’s glass box cafe and there we planned actions at Deutsche Guggenheim and Pergamon Museum.

At the same time, I began a series of private negotiations with Artur. I saw that the negative press was to our benefit, that we were in a position to help him “save” the Biennial. I challenged Artur to go farther into his open concept and unfreeze the institutional frame which appeared to have cynically captured the movements.

If this was not his intention, he might readily accept a radical path out of his own trap. When Artur seemed interested, our group formulated a proposal called “You cannot curate a movement”7 which stipulated that he and Joanna step back as curators and join us to try out horizontal direct democracy in the whole institution of KW, or as far as we could go. The offer was accepted.

Artur Zmijewski: I would say that they had some interesting tools, but these tools were not tested inside the formal institution. They had experiences from the squares, but not from daily work inside the formal institutional structure. So, the opportunity for Occupy Movement was to use their tools developed on the squares inside the institution of culture. It was not easy – for example the majority of activists were busy with “asamblea bureaucracy” – they had group meetings every day, but without conclusions. They did not know how to drill a hole in the institutional walls. Occupy Museum was the first group busy with the institution. Via their actions Occupy Museum was constantly provoking us – they asked us to write them an official letter from KW [signed by the BB7 curator and the director of KW] that they are artists and that their action is a part of the BB7.

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They wanted to give it to the police in case of troubles. We signed such documents, but we were not informed about the scenario of planned action. Finally we had a meeting in front of former Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, where they made one of their actions.

After the action they started to talk to me and started to treat me as an ‘empty figure’ of art functionary, blaming me that I’m paid by the German government and that I cynically built a human ZOO in KW. It was a difficult, but interesting moment, when the negotiations between us started. The whole conversation happened just on the street, when the group was surrounded by police which was protecting the main entrance to the Guggenheim gallery. As a result we had a “street” or “square” agreement: we were to meet the next day and both sides would have proposals ready to be discussed. I wanted to propose them to be curators of BB7 together with me and Joanna Warsza. Their proposal was more radical – they wanted us to became ‘former curators’, and to decide about the Biennale and about KW together with Occupy movement. Because both proposals were quite similar, it was easy to find a consensus. We agreed on the activists’ proposal. We became former curators and activists started to penetrate KW.

Horizontal BB7 outside of KW: Occupy Museums 15 June action at the Pergammon Museum. Photo: Max Libroiron/ “Occupied Banner” overpainted artwork in the courtyard, later displayed on the façade. Photo: Max Libroin.

NF: The horizontal process began with a series of general assemblies attended by a wide range of KW workers and public including director Gaby Horn, former curators, cleaning staff, and museum guards. There was a mixture of skepticism and excitement and those present consented to try the experiment for a limited time. We quickly formed working groups to try to merge with the workflow of the KW: there was a media and communications group, a focus on direct actions, on managing the space of the KW itself and on the research to make KW’s budget fully transparent.

I was in the media working group along with Artur, M15 activist Hector Huerga, and the whole KW/ BB7 media team. It became possible to change the official website and send collectively written texts as official KW press announcements to their complete mailing list. Of course, horizontalizing the institution’s PR messaging center was a lot easier than navigating the deeper institutional levels such as building maintenance and accounts payable not to speak of the guarding and

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display and insurance of the rest of the art in the Biennial. However, unprecedented research had begun. Occupy Museums member Tal Beery canvassed the KW offices with a questionnaire, repeatedly interviewing Director Gaby Horn about the budget. We were experimenting from the inside- trying to reformulate museums based on what we had learned about cooperation and public space in the squares.

Artur Zmijewski: Certain period of time when the KW employees, former curators of BB7 and activists from Occupy Museum were working together I would call ‘carnival’.

The whole process was long – we were working one year to make 3 weeks of this carnival possible. But the institution became partly open and temporarily horizontalized. Activists from Occupy Museum tested their tools and shared their knowledge with us. We were able to practice alternative institution together with them. Political reality is brutal – after this experience KW went back to its former shape quite fast. But a few of the permanent KW employees decided to quit their job. After the experience which they had during BB7 they were not able to continue work under the same conditions.

NF: It wasn’t clear how much of the horizontality had been real, how much of it was a game in the KW sandbox. It was clear that the general public was confused about what had happened–having been largely left out of the entire affair. The meetings, collaborations, attempt at horizontality between artists, staff, and public, and of total financial transparency dissolved soon after we left, presumably most old rules either never changed since we didn’t penetrate the institution enough, or were reinstated precisely on the exhibition schedule following our departure. Even when it appeared that the museum guards had been given a raise in wages following their speaking up at the assemblies, I was skeptical that the happy concrete outcome might also mask a lack of engagement with the heart of our direct democracy proposal.

Artur Zmijewski: It’s a bigger problem. I did not realize on the beginning that KW and BB7 are one institution even if they look like two entities – there is a permanent loyalty game. Employees are loyal to the director – when the new curator of the Biennale comes, they have to transfer a part of their loyalty to him or her. A mix of this loyalty and trust allow them to follow curatorial proposals. In case of Occupy Museum proposal, it became a problem. Curators agreed to be ‘former curators’ – they made a kind of risky step. Loyalty and trust allowed KW employees to follow the process, but not fully. The mid of biennale is a moment in time, when BB curator starts to lose his or her authority – loyalty of the employees goes back fully to the director of the whole institution. Even if they participate in the transformation of the institution, finally they would rather declare that ‘it was nothing significant for them’. The curator will disappear in a few days – they will stay with the director. This loyalty game is another level of the Occupy Museum intervention.

One of the employees who quit his job in KW after BB7 was a head of press department.

He actively took part in the horizontalization process. Maybe he became more loyal to the transformation process, than to the boss and he was not able to invert it.

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NF: Skeptics reduced the Occupied BB7 to a performed politics. On the other hand, much effective resistance is essentially performance, visibly attempting the impossible and in so doing, making power relations obvious and therefore malleable. Horizontality at BB7 had uncovered potential strategies but also exposed mechanisms for dismantling or minimizing radical change as Artur describes above.

Another example: consumption-focused art media geared to make single pronouncements on exhibitons could not effectively communicate the unfolding direct democracy process. So unlike many actions, we couldn’t effectively use the media as a tool. If we were to re-launch an Occupied Museum, we had to learn better strategies to co-create the narrative.

Meanwhile, the energy of the movement continued to dissolve, leaving us on an uncomfortable cliff of political relevance. A few further significant “cases” which I do not have space to discuss here occurred at Momenta Art in New York8 (which was cut short by Hurrican Sandy and the resurgence of the Occupy Movement in response to that crisis) and Truth is Concrete in Graz9 but we did not succeed in getting much farther than Horizontal BB7 in 2012.

Winter Holiday Camp (WHC): Merging with an Institution in Crisis In March 2013 I received an email from Artur Zmijewski requesting a meeting in Warsaw. I was summoned to join Artur and Pawel Althamer in planning a radical exhibition at Zamek Ujazdovski (CCA) to follow the development of the Berlin Biennale. The CCA was itself undergoing a public crisis. Director Fabio Cavallucci was locked in a struggle with nearly the entire museum staff, the Solidarność union was going public about the matter. We began the project by forming an international working group, about half Polish and half from abroad, rich in experience of institutional practice. After months of research trips and daily communication, which included interviews with many museum staff10 who revealed the dire

Planning first intervention of uninvited Winter Holiday Camp at CCA. Drawing: Noah Fischer/ WHC members with “Institution in Crisis” suspended sign in front of CCA, December 2013. Photo: Gabriello Csoszo

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precarious labor situation in detail, and after we decided to publicly support the workers, the project was cancelled (with a budget-alibi). Our group decided to go anyway, uninvited.11 When possible, uninvited practice is probably the best case for radical political practice in museums. This scenario doesn’t include any “debt” to the institution so when antagonism arises, we can proceed in the struggle with our full toolbox and our freedoms. In the art world, invitations, favors, and connections among a highly networked community of competing individuals, creates significant blocks to harder edged political practice. Because of the high concentration and thus scarcity of opportunity and money, the very real possibility of alienation or even excommunication from a good position in the arts network often creates a losing equation for radical politics. The professional network is just too densely inter-surveilled. A counterstrategy is to build up value and resources in a parallel, radicalized network so one has less to lose by speaking out and acting without permission-one can “fall back” on a radical safety net.

In the first days, meeting in a café near the museum like a band of insurgents plotting the overthrow of a compound, we decided to re-frame the entrance to the castle with a suspended sign that read “Institution in Crisis.” Occupy Museums member Tal Beery and I fashioned it from sticks, which the whole group had ritually gathered in the Polish woods. This welded the conflict onto the museum’s own visible brand, and at the same time, announced an arrival.

An essential situation for initiating the Occupied Museum is a truly open public meeting: it breaks hierarchic stratification. When we Artur and I encountered director Fabio Cavallucci in the galleries and offhandedly suggested meeting, our seed was planted. We occupied the meeting, growing it into a public event with the press, staff, friends all invited. In this meeting we strongly voiced the fear and desperation of the staff in front of both director and workers, breaking through a

Winter Holiday Camp: Director Fabio Cavallucci signs the document to acquire WHC into CCA’s permanent collection while Artur Zmijewski, Paula Struginska and Noah Fischer look on /WHC: all staff meeting with the BB7 banner in center, later to be overpainted by children.

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culture of fear and silence. When the director tried to leave, he was blocked at the door by artist Joulia Strauss who menacingly clutched a steel trident. We had prepared a strategy. Our main aim was to offer the Winter Holiday Camp project itself (including the meeting we were in) to the director and the acquisitions committee as an artwork, and a Trojan Horse.

The acquisition tactic made use of a much adhered-to institutional rule of speculation, whereby value and importance is attached to a thing once it is officially collected by an institution. Usually museum collections are treated as value-enhancing stamps of cultural capital, however being in the collection comes with a kind of permission, a collected artist becomes something of a diplomat for the institutional brand, bearing a trace of its authority.12 However, hacking institutional logic contains an inherent problem in relation to the public sphere: it’s usually non-visual, unspectacular, unsexy. It means embracing bureaucracy: long meetings in which an activated agenda struggles through the filters of group dynamics. They are often far more interesting to those involved than “outsiders.” Unfortunately these outsiders are the general public—who may not have time on their hands to jump into the process. Thus, in the midst of WHC, we needed to create a stronger connection to the Warsaw public as we had failed to do in Berlin. Our opportunity was the exhibition called Fragment: Collection which had never been officially opened.13 We used social media to autonomously host an opening – the “Opening of the Open Institution” inviting local artists, CCA curators, and even the Director to prepare speeches for our uninvited event in their museum. There was little they could do to stop the snowballing legitimacy of the event in the eyes of the local artists and public. We conceived of the opening as a ritual.

Occupy Museums member Imani Brown led a voodoo cleansing dance, banishing spirits from the CCA galleries and offices with candles and incense. Artist Agnieszka Polska whose work was displayed in Fragment: Collection, sprinkled vodka

WHC Ritual assembly led by WHC member Imani Brown during “Opening of the Open Institution” to clean Zamek Ujazdowski of evil spirits. Photo: Noah Fischer/ WHC members Joulia Strauss, curator Marek Gozdziewski, and Imani Brown with WHC tridents that would later block Cavalucci’s egress from the first meeting. Photo: Gabriella Csoszo

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on each office door as a large group danced through the museum’s restricted office level. Pawel Althamer painted with children, irreverently spray-painting a mural (actually, overpainting the central banner from BB7 displayed in an image above) in the middle of an installed gallery of artworks. We had opened something.

Visual Aesthetics Revisited as Political Tool Occupy Museums actions had generally downplayed the importance of visually beautiful or highly-produced aesthetics. Instead, our actions opted for the functionality and performativity of group communication, for example, use of the human mic. If we needed signage it was often made in haste and there were only a few times we made anything like visual art, and then often by mistake.14 Since the days of the park, we had defaulted to the OWS “pizza box” aesthetics which was partly due to urgency, partly as a visual sign of solidarity and a rejection of slick corporate aesthetics. Experience told us to be careful with visuality: the moment we had stepped into the Zoo-like “Occupied” space at BB7, it was clear that all the signage representing activist activity was working to counter-effect, the signs in the KW seemed like scalps collected by the institution rather than signifying empowerment.

Visuality and its mute ease of circulation was just too-easy a target for co-op-

March 2013 Drawings in preparation for WHC. Pawel Althamer, Artur Zmijewski, Noah Fischer.

tion.15 But an anti-visual position could fall into dogma, repellant to audiences and therefore politically unproductive. I felt that Occupy Museums wasn’t necessarily a “post-studio” practice entailing stepping away from visual art practice. And there was irony in the fact that a group of artists had essentially assigned ourselves unpaid part time office jobs- consisting of meetings and digital work (heavy use of Google Docs and Skype) rather than hands-on art making. To be fair, I’ve come to enjoy meetings, and especially the ubiquitous collective writing practice, but it seemed that art was a missing ingredient in our practice.

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Pawel Althamer and Artur Zmijewski often take out paper and inks in meetings and practice a spontaneous form of painting/conversation. This dance with the subconscious proved quite effective for brainstorming strategy in Warsaw. Group paintings became the official document of acquisition of Winter Holiday Camp by the CCA (image above), while a series of paintings we given out as thank you gifts to staff members. Unused galleries were filling with collective murals. In Warsaw, the Occupied Museum now claimed an abundance of visual art, distributed through a gift economy.

Public Space on Museum Walls?

Walls are museum’s most powerful tools and they could perhaps also become ours.

But I knew that touching the walls, coming close to the revered art objects on them was close to a social taboo which could brand the wall-toucher as anti-civilization; destroyer or art; dredging up images of the 16th Century sackers of Rome. At ZKM Museum’s “Global Activism” exhibition (co-curated by Joulia Strauss), we first employed the tactic of “wall-chatting” / “exhibition supplementing.” We began pinning note-sheets from an activists assembly onto the exhibition walls, right next to artworks which were canonizing the recent years of global activism. Artur and I began to draw with fat markers and paint directly on the curatorial text, sparking the whole assembly to join in on a massive “wall chat session.” We wanted a single institution’s voice opened to additional commentaries.16 The whiteness of museum walls- the space between installed artworks-represents the taboo of purely private untouchable property- a property which is shifting from the public to the private domain. Recently built “speculative museums”17 such as New Museum in NYC often feature larger expanses of such white space, echoing blue chip art galleries.

Does it devalue the public’s experience with an artwork to claim this patch of public space? Wall chatting seemed instead to add social value. We repeated this tactic later in a Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F) action at the Guggenheim New York, taping a silver mylar manifesto to the Guggenheim’s exhibition walls near the curatorial text. Later, G.U.L.F organized a more ambitious wall action where we taped colorful graphics next to the exhibited paintings of the blockbuster exhibition “Italian Futurism: Reconstructing the Universe,” calling on Trustees to support fair labor in Abu Dhabi. The taboo of an uninvited addition to the walls charged up the manifesto with political relevance: people immediately assembled to read it and security guards ripped the graphics down within minutes.18 The tactic hit a nerve.

Luckily we had taken snapshots.

Horizon: A Debt Market Underneath the Museum Occupying the “Temples of Culture” seems effective for shifting a conversation the first step, but this conceptual shift has limits. Beneath (or perhaps above) the temples lie the shark-infested waters of the market, and the most daunting challenge on the horizon is shifting the economic behavior that propagates inequality. Money

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is a social relation. Personal debt churns in the “dark matter” of the invisible part of the art world, circulating as lifelong relationships to banks which greatly modifies daily life, creating a constant power imbalance. This can be seen from the micro to macro scale. Like many US based artists, I am deeply in debt for my masters degree, and in early 2013 inspired by Strike Debt’s Rolling Jubilee, I began to model an exchange system that tie the value of art objects to the debt of their creator, aiming to

“Wall Chatting” intervention: at the “activist summit of the ZKM exhibition “Global Activism,” January 2014. Photo: Noah Fischer

replace speculative value with mutual aid. In Spring of 2013, Occupy Museums developed this concept into a modified art fair called DebtFair, where artists revealed their debt information publicly on a website, and attempted to exchange art objects directly for debt bailouts: a crude statement which we hoped would also actually work. There was enormous potential to create an artists “debt-community” and we were inundated with information from hundreds of artists who are deep in personal debt from credit cards, mortgages, but mostly student debt. However, acting as a volunteer service organization on that scale has so far proved beyond our capacity.

Holes in the Wall of Impossibility The selling out of the public sphere by Neoliberal institutions (from government branches to global museum branches) can be thought of as a crisis which also creates certain opportunities. We are seeing institution’s social legitimacy quickly dissolve in a cloud of labor abuse and conflict of interest at auction. Massive PR campaigns are increasingly required to cover over this weakness. However, the status quo is providing us with an ever longer list of perfect targets. We see public space at the Metropolitan Museum soon to be inscribed with the name of David Koch, who is busy undermining democratic elections and we wonder just what might cause the right shift for the public to reject his patronage and the zombie museums he will create. Some new perspective is needed. Our practice hacks existing frames to open the Occupied Museum which is a visible stage for public unrest and public creativity to reverse the deterioration of truly common space.

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G.U.L.F: February 22nd action, Noah Fischer and Paula Chakravartty hanging anti-labor abuse manifesto beside curatorial text for Futurist exhibition, Guggenheim Museum NYC. Photo: Nitasha Dhillon/G.U.L.F: May 24th Action “Supplementing” the Italian Futurist Exhibition with Noah Fischer’s designs. Photos: various G.U.L.F members.

It’s true that uninvited art practice and self-proclaimed institutions are nothing new: the Situationists, Art Workers Coalition, Asco, Repo History, and artists Martha Rosler and Coco Fusco are only a few local examples. However, along with the challenges of post crash financialization and deterioration of public space has arrived a new movement.

Occupy showed how rising global inequality in a newly connected era can combine to create Instant simultaneous mass movements, capable of crossing the substantial gulfs of geo-political specifics (the differing aims of Zucotti, and Gezi for example) and even after the season of protest has ended, there’s more reason that ever for those people currently gaining little benefit from the pyramid of abstracted value and precarious labor, to shift practice outside existing the frame and jettison their current professional goals to begin “hacking visible frame” on their own. Our actions are movement focused: aimed at inspiring others to join us in any number of ways.

When I hastily wrote the first Occupy Museums manifesto from the euphoric height of the Movement, much of the press reacted with vitriol or dismissiveness:

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even those who generally agreed with the Occupy Wall Street movement positioned Occupy Museums as misled art haters, (and themselves as “defenders of art.)” A few years later, it seems like assumed wisdom that the arts just like finance is infected with economic inequality and that institutions with backward positions on labor should not go ignored. Recently, we have even seen some wins.19 The issues of out-of-control student debt and global labor abuse are gaining traction. Yearly auction spectacles are routinely seen not as indicators of general market success but rather as an exclusive party going on at the disconnected top of the pyramid. And many are waiting for the next crash and wave of protest.

Sustainability is of major concern. Some activists in my network are living on foodstamps, battling fore closures or rental evictions themselves as they struggle against the PR machines of mega corporations. It’s an unfair fight. At the end of the day, resources are needed to live a basic healthy life, and here is where cooption-the institutional “throwing of bones” to activist artists works so well–because almost all the resources to be had are in corporate funded museums or non-profits or in the pockets of rich collectors.20 This is why Post-Capitalist support networks, physical spaces, self-proclaimed institutions, and most of all, value systems, are needed to support a robust shift.

The Occupied Museum tries to offer the following resources: strengthening the post-Occupy network through morale-producing actions and calls for participation.

Refining a set of horizontal communication tools for grassroots organizing. Capturing high-visibility of top museums and politicizing it. Access to the mainstream press where otherwise hidden subjects and realities can be exhibited. The potential for collective/historic spectacle which nurtures recaptures meaning.21 Identification

Collaborative drawings of the Occupied Museum trajectory and strategies: Artur Zmijewski and Noah Fischer.

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of a number of allies inside of existing institutions, A long list of open source action tactics for individual and groups, Open-source research for horizontality in institutions.

On a broader level, we try to offer permission. The critique of museum’s social legitimacy is meant as a green light to artists and citizens everywhere to autonomously occupy the visible centers of culture; to experiment on your own. I imagine a movement by “dark matter” artists to re-use in any number of ways the most corporate of museums and other faux-public spaces, a mass culture of uninvited interventions and “supplemented exhibitions” blossoming until participating in the sanctioned art frame becomes passé, and the energy of art goes outside the frame and the support system of exchange shifts to mutual aid debt bailouts.

All this concerns a particular definition of art. I believe that art wasn’t meant to forever degrade quietly into luxury asset; rather, today’s counter-revolutionary absurdities can wake us up into reclaiming a meaningful avantegarde practice. Art contains the tools to break through the faux-public mirages when such illusions appear. Art contains enough humor and urgency and contemplation to connect directly with people’s realities and mythologies at the same time and thus function as an effective political tool even when formal political process itself breaks down, which is exactly what’s happening now. The Occupied Museum is a forum to exhibit such art in the world’s major museums, immediately. Each time a small group of people successfully deploy tactics which break through entropy to open an exhibition of the Occupied Museum, a new page of the institutional manual is written; new labor codes and art histories are recorded.

The lights of the Occupied Museum are slowly flickering on.

Noah Fischer’s sculptures, actions, performances, writings and collaborations explore the official

rhetoric and currencies regulating behavior within Capitalism. In the early/mid 2000’s he exhibited

kinetic light/sound installations and collaborated with Berlin-based theater group andcompany&Co. Spurred by the financial crash and mass exposure of financial inequality in 2008, Fischer exited from the private art market to experiment with uninvited practice in public space on Wall Street and this

led seamlessly into the Occupy Movement. He initiated action group Occupy Museums in October 2011 which has carried out actions at MoMA, Guggenheim, and the 7th Berlin Biennale among

others. Fischer is currently organizing international campaigns with Occupy Museums, Global Luxury Art Faction (G.U.L.F), and creating a sculptural currency for an alternative debt-based economy. He lives with his wife Brenda and Daughter Luna in Brooklyn, NY. http://www.noahfischer.org

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Endnotes 1 A decision to bring my practice outside of this frame after working with commercial galleries had delivered me to Occupy Wall Street in the first place. In the Spring of 2011, the Aaron Burr Society and I developed a series of collaborative performances orating about economic inequality and

redistributing money (coins) on Wall Street while wearing a coin mask, called Summer of Change. By the last performance in the series, the Occupy Movement had begun, and I joined it as a talking coin. http://www.summerofchange.net

2 Alexander Carlvaho organizer or first OWS Arts and Culturel Working Group, Email October 3, 2011:

“Many of us in the movement believe we are at the brink of a new aesthetic school. A new historical

art period, that reaches beyond the nihilism and hopelessness of post-modernism to a time of agency, belief, and hope. Virginia W. once wrote that “around 1910 everything changed” to announce that

modernism came to make a revolution. Maybe we, in 2011, a century after, may be entering the same flux”...

3 These first actions we planned with the Teamsters Art Handlers Union in Solidarity with their

struggle against Sotheby’s action house. OWS and Union members were able to successfully mix approaches, and messaging.

4 By November, these larger organizational structures had deteriorated and become irrelevant but we continued to strictly abide by OWS style process (to the best of our abilities) within the group.

5 The genesis of the invitation: I had previously worked with German curator Florian Malzacher.

Joanna Warsza and Florian were visiting NYC during early days of Occupy. They came to an Occupy Museums action at the David Koch dinosaur wing of the Museum of Natural History highlighting the “menace” of philanthropy. An interview turned into an invitation.

6 Core OM members Tal Beery, Jolanta Gora-Witta, Max Libroin, Arthur Polendo, Carey Ma-

chet, Ben Laude, Nitasha Dhillon, Noah Fischer, Blithe Riley, Maria Byck, Maraya Lopez, and Jim Costanzo went to Berlin.

7 Nitasha Dhillon, member of Tidal, MTL and G.U.L.F and veteran of OWS was an architect of the horizontalization strategy.

8 When we opened Momenta’s space to general use by the Occupy community and held a series of public discussions about the Bloomberg Family Foundation’s conflict of interest, Bloomberg-con-

nected board members of Momenta art resigned, striking a serious financial blow to Momenta. This

seemed to highlight the precariousness and self-censorship involved in private funding, but our refusal to diminish the critique came with serious fallout for good people who were on our side.

9 “Truth is Concrete” was curated by Florian Malzacher and consciously meant to take an opposite

approach from the Berlin Biennale. The institution presented movement politics in the frame of hyper connectivity and productivity: a 24/7 marathon camp for discussions and performances which favored constant communication and networking over open experiment. Finally, a small group of which I was part called “Action is Concrete” succeeded in pulling the general assembly out of the curated frame

and onto the streets. To the curators, the action was an embarrassment of performed faux- politics. In my view, it was an opportunity to solidify a political artistic community and exchange tactics through practice.

10 Mostly conducted by NYC based artist Maureen Connor who brought her “embedded practice” to OM.

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11 Housing was provided by Pawel Althamer and Artur Zmijewski who also supported some travel expenses. WHC members funded their daily work and materials for the project.

12 We had used the Acquisition tactic twice before: in 2012, we accused MoMA of “unilaterally ac-

quiring” our banner when they confiscated it during an action, and this accusation loosened MoMA’s

lips, setting off a public back and forth in the press. In an action at the Museum of American Finance, we offered a cardboard model of a foreclosed home to their permanent collection. After an initial

refusal, they accepted the model into their permanent collection, which we presented on Occupy Wall

Street’s International Day of Fighting Foreclosures. At CCA, This new permission made it impossible to prevent our horizontal process and we set up a series of meetings with the staff to begin rewriting the CCA constitution.

13 It was intended to fill a gap in the program resulting from the early closing of a previous show (whose high expenses had been used to argue for the cancellation of Winter Holiday Camp) The Show, British British Polish Polish was also a subject of political attack from the Catholic Right

which resulted in a blasphemy trial. We ended up supporting CCA in this context in an action at the Ministry of Culture.

14 At the 2012 Occupied Freize Art Fair, our protest was penned into Police barricades. We decorated the pen to create what Tal Beery called a “freedom cage” which can be thought of as an installation analog to the art fair booth.

15 this was also clear when the highly produced and super-visual issue of the Occupy Wall Street

Journal appeared in an exhibition on the wall of MoMA. No challenge to power norms existed in that case.

16 A German Refugee activist named Napuli wrote her story on the wall to add a viewpoint missing from the exhibition, the Refugee Movement in Germany was not included in the Global Activism Exhibition.

17 See 2010’s “Skin Fruit” at the New Museum from museum board member Dakis Jannou collection and curated by Jeff Koons:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/arts/design/05dakis.html?pagewanted=all

18 We later heard directly from Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong that following the action, owners of the paintings had called in, angry to see the colorful graphics taped inches from their loaned works. This has greatly helped pressure mount on the labor-abusing museum.

19 This is to speak nothing of the cultural capital which accompanies wealth and has a strong pull on most artist-activists who are often highly ambitious, and besides, often need cultural capital to open doors for successful organizing.

20 Transfield leaving Syndney Biennale following artist boycott, and the unionization of Frieze Art fair in New York.

21 I’m thinking of a moment when Lou Reed, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson joined us in front of Lincoln Center for the Satyagraha protest.

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On the Citizen Forum for Contemporary Arts Joanna Figiel

Two-thousand-and-twelve saw a certain large-scale, spectacular sporting event take place in Poland, leading to a number of discussions concerning the use of Ministry of Culture funds. A large portion [of these funds] was allocated for big scale, one-off events such as the Euro 2012 football championship or the 2012 Polish Culture Congress, drawing attention to the generally poor, day-to-day financial situation of Polish artists and cultural workers. Following these debates, the various artists, curators, critics and writers forming the Citizen Forum for Contemporary Arts (Obywatelskie Forum Sztuki Współczesnej - OFSW1), staged a one-day art strike – a day without arts and culture. The aim of the strike was to influence the public discussion of cultural matters, including the symbolic and political, but also economical place of artists and cultural producers within the public sphere and social hierarchies. Around the same time, a proposed change to tax law meaning a reduction or elimination of a flat-rate allowance to reclaim up to fifty percent of costs from revenue on contracts was announced. Such a change would further harm the majority of artists and cultural producers who are often reliant on commission contracts and need to then recoup the costs of their production, materials, etc. This provided further impetus for the OFSW action.

‘The day without art’, the first to ever take place in Poland, followed a well established, if sporadically enacted and relatively little-known tradition of artists’ refusal of work. The protest followed examples beginning in the 1960s with the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), who focussed mainly on institutional critique and that continued through Gustav Metzger’s “years without art” (1977-1980), when the artist went on strike, producing no work whatsoever, thus drawing attention to his position as part of the art world and his relationships to galleries and institutions. In the early 1990s art strike strategies were taken up again, this time by Stewart Home and various adherents of the Neoist movement, whilst in recent years Redas Dirzys and Temporary Art Strike Committee have been calling for an art strike in Lithuania. Such actions attempted to disrupt the role and position of artists themselves,

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or to address issues in the cultural economy and creative industries in more general terms. Most recently, in 2012, the London-based Precarious Workers Brigade, a group organizing for several years around the issue of precarity within cultural and creative work, called for a Cultural Workers Walkout2, in solidarity with other casual and public sector workers taking part in a national strike the same day.

The Polish art strike was, by all accounts, quite a small and seemingly insignificant event, relatively speaking. A number of galleries and institutions3 did however express solidarity, and some did indeed close their doors for the day, in addition to a handful of protesting OFSW members, some bystanders, and one banner. In terms of media coverage or turnout it certainly did not stand out amongst demonstrations and strike actions staged that year by workers in other sectors. However, the strike did kick-start a non-going debate about cultural and artistic production in Poland.

It brought, once and for all, the often-invisible working conditions in the arts and culture into the public domain. Most importantly, it cemented the credentials of the autonomous, horizontally organised OFSW as an effective and credible model for (some, see below) artists and cultural producers to represent themselves and each other in a field that is unstable, mostly reliant on decreasing amounts of public funding, and characterised by increasing levels of competition and individualism.

Zbigniew Libera, “I’m an artist, but this doesn’t mean I work for free” Photo by OFSW

Julita Wójcik, “I’m in a union - I don’t work for free”, Photo by OFSW

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Crucially, this first public action of OFSW not only brought the economic conditions of artistic and cultural work into open discussion, but also into the streets of Warsaw, where contemporaneous protests, be it by nurses or taxi drivers, were taking place. Thus, not only were their often obscured working conditions and labour made visible, but also the ideological distance between the labour of artists and cultural producers, and that of workers in general, was dramatically reduced. Artists and cultural producers on contingent, casual and temporary contracts, without health insurance or pensions, increasingly without the ability to own a home or afford the mortgage and burdened with debt, are, in terms of employment law and economic survival, often leading the way for workers in other sectors. Therefore, when some twisted joke on the original mission of the art avant-garde casts artists are new models of employment in an increasingly deregulated, neoliberal job market, an erasure of the ideological gap between art and labour, and the dismantling of the myth of artistic genius could be an important political strategy.

Almost two years on from the art strike, OFSW is continuing to shape the struggle for changes to economic and social aspects of the Polish art scene. Its programme includes: - Efforts to ensure artists receive payment from art institutions.

- Artists’ remuneration to be included in the rules of the Ministry of Culture grant programs.

- Inclusion of artists’ labour rights in Polish employment legislation.

- Pension and health insurance provision for artists.

- Publishing a ‘Black Book for Artists in Poland’, with an aim of defining the status of artists and cultural production in Poland.

The forum was also actively involved in the on-going conflict around the Centre for Contemporary Arts Zamek Ujazdowski4 and the dispute concerning the directorial competition at Poznan’s Arsenal Gallery.

More recently OFSW has joined forces with the trade union movement, or rather, one of the new unions, the recently formed Inicjatywa Pracownicza5 (IP, Workers’ Initiative), which began in 2001 as a continuation of various self-organised grassroots and anarcho-syndicalist groups active mainly in and around Poznan. In 2004 it became an officially recognised union. IP was formed as a reaction to the crisis of Poland’s official union movement–its bureaucracy, passivity and links with the antisocial and anti-worker governments – but also as a union that recognises new forms of employment and contracts not recognised by traditional unions, also paying attention to specific issues concerning female and migrant labour. IP allows for the formation of autonomous collegial commissions that can then support workers on casual contracts, or those who are self-employed.

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One such collegial commission affiliated to IP is the recently formed Komisja Środowiskowa ‘PracownicySztuki’6, founded in October 2013. The forming of the group was in part a reaction to the ongoing CSW Zamek conflict7. Here, despite two trade unions in operation, most staff concerned with the issues at stake (developments around the tenure of director Fabio Cavalucci, the non-payment of artists fees8 or the British British, Polish Polish exhibition, various other budgetary concerns, the treatment of the Winter Camp exhibition/events season and so on) were unable to participate in the dispute due to their employment status, i.e. being on casual contracts. Other reasons for affiliation were to receive formal support from a nationally and legally recognised union in negotiations around the guaranteed minimum artist’s fee payment and issues concerning social security and pension contributions. In addition, it allowed representation for freelancers, project-based workers and the self-employed who, for the lack of a physical and fixed workplace, are often unable to even recognise who their colleagues are, let alone to struggle alongside them or cooperate with arts and cultural employees on permanent contracts.

24.05.2012. - Art Strike rally in front of Warsaw’s Zachęta – National Gallery of Art Photo by OFSW

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Banner reads “Strike! - We call for the goverment to start negotiating with artists” Photo by OFSW

The commission, currently consisting of over 100 members – including artists, cultural producers, writers, curators and critics, academics and teachers, poets, musicians recently held its first annual conference. During the two-day event, attended by ca. 50 new members, four objectives were declared: - The struggle for workers’ rights and social protection (especially health insurance and pension) for artists.

- Striving to settle the issue of remuneration for artistic work.

- The struggle to incorporate the voice of artists in decision-making processes in the arts and cultural sector - Solidarity and cooperation with other industries where there are on-going struggles for workers’ rights, as well as social movements for freedom and democracy (e.g. the anti-eviction movement).

Working groups on issues such solidarity/interventions, legal/contracts, social insurance/pensions were formed and since the commission’s inception a meeting addressing the work and payments for writers, including non-fiction writers and poets, has taken place.

To date, the biggest success of the commission/OFSW has been with regards to the issue of guaranteed minimum fees for artists. On 17th February 2014 four institutions—Art Museum, Łodz, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta National Art Gallery, Warsaw and Arsenał Gallery, Poznan—signed an official agreement

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regarding such fees. The minimum payments were set at 800PLN for taking part in a group exhibiton, 1200PLN for taking part in a small group exhibition or so-called ‘project room’, and 3700PLN for a solo show (respectively c. 200, 300, 900Euro).

A further five institutions have pledged to sign the agreement as well.

While this leaves artists in Poland far off the relative security of other countries’ models, for instance the German system of social insurance for artists9, or organisational models, such as the Scottish Artist Union10, the commission is definitely a first step towards some more concrete solutions. The formation of such a group, in a sector so heavily reliant on competition and individualism as the art world, and where even a few years ago it would have seemed scarcely achievable, can be counted as a great success in itself.

Joanna Figiel, Obywatelskie Forum Sztuki Wspolczesnej/ Komisja Środowiskowa Pracownicy Sztuki

Ogólnopolskiego Związku Zawodowego Inicjatywa Pracownicza. Joanna is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Culture Policy Management, City University London and works at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on labour issues, unpaid work, precarity and policy within the creative and cultural sectors. She is a member of the ephemera editorial collective.

Endnotes 1 http://forumsztukiwspolczesnej.blogspot.co.uk/

2 http://precariousworkersbrigade.tumblr.com/post/7027907945/culturalworkers

3 Around 90 in total, including, beyond Warsaw, in Poznan, Krakow, Wroclaw, and Trojmiasto; as well as in smaller towns like Bytom, Slupsk, Torun.

4 http://csw.art.pl/index.php?lang=eng

5 http://ozzip.pl/inicjatywa-pracownicza/item/10-about-inicjatywa-pracownicza-workers-initiative 6 http://www.obieg.pl/obiegtv/31185

7 http://art-leaks.org/2013/10/26/centre-for-contemporary-art-ujazdowski-castle-workers-protestletters-contd-warsaw-poland/

8 http://www.krytykapolityczna.pl/artykuly/kultura/20140217/stokfiszewski-koniec-z-nieplaceniemartystom

9 http://www.kuenstlersozialkasse.de/ 10 http://www.sau.org.uk/

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The Assembly for Culture in Ukraine: Shaking the Foundations of Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture A conversation between Larissa Babij and Corina Apostol

The Assembly for Culture in Ukraine is essentially an ongoing meeting of citizens who are concerned with how cultural processes in Ukraine are structured and intent on transforming these structures and pressing the Ministry of Culture to shift the vector of influence on culture from government ideology to the people who are the recipients and creators of cultural products and processes.

One of the defining characteristics of the Assembly (one which is often criticized) is that it does not have a consolidated voice. Based on the principle of horizontality, which defies hierarchy, the Assembly functions through self-organization. Initiatives come from individuals and the initiator is responsible for making his/her proposition happen. No one gives or fulfills orders. And no one is delegated the responsibility for speaking or answering or deciding for the group. The Assembly expresses its positions in letters addressed to particular government officials and in public statements published on the Internet. Audio and video recordings of almost all meetings are also available via the Internet within Ukraine.

In the following conversation the use the word “we” refers to past events (involving several or more participants of the Assembly) and positions that have been agreed upon and declared as common views of the ACU. Corina Apostol (CA): I would like to start with very basic questions about how the Assembly came into being and how it’s developed over the past month. We’ve recently heard of cases of art workers’ protests in Bucharest or Belgrade, and even occupations of museums and public institutions; at the same time, these actions seemed to be effective only for a short period of time, as some kind of consciousness-raising moments.

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Larissa Babij (LB): The Assembly for Culture in Ukraine came into being after three months of continuous protest and civic tension in Kyiv and all over Ukraine.

The Assembly has been meeting regularly in the basement of the Ministry of Culture since February 23, 2014. Those who have been involved in the protests in some form or other have accepted the fact that you have to give up your daily routines and certain expectations in emergency situations. Work in the Assembly demands a lot of time, patience and flexibility, but there are enough people interested in reforming culture in Ukraine that it has persisted for two months already, albeit with varying momentum.

CA: How did you decide to occupy the Ministry of Culture? As I remember, the situation in Kyiv back in February was very dramatic and volatile, in terms of the political processes and protests on Maidan.

LB: The week between February 18-22 was the most violent on the Maidan: a hundred people were killed and many of my colleagues and I were volunteering in hospitals. As former President Yanukovych seemed ready to withdraw, on February 21, Ukrainian students took over the Ministry of Education. The following day I saw a Facebook post from an unfamiliar person calling people to gather and occupy the Ministry of Culture. Since I have often picketed the Ministry of Culture together with the Art Workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Self-defense Initiative (ISTM), most recently in a series of demonstrations aimed at the Ministry itself in January, I decided to go and investigate this proposal to occupy the Ministry.

Initially a group of 40-50 people, including cultural workers, journalists and a student â&#x20AC;&#x153;self-defenseâ&#x20AC;? brigade from Maidan, gathered near the Ministry. Someone called the Minister of Culture and his deputies to come and open the building, as it was Saturday. Our main goal was to prevent people from the previous administration from removing documents from the building, especially those containing evidence of corruption.

CA: How did you manage to establish yourselves inside the building?

LB: After an hour or two of standing and calling through the windows of the Ministry, someone from inside opened the doors, and then they let us inside. There was an unused space in the basement that we were allowed to set up for our discussions.

We then decided to call an official meeting the next day for everyone who works in or is concerned with the cultural sphere and how it has been organized thus far in Ukraine.

On February 23rd the Assembly as such was born. Over three hundred people came to the meeting, including some former and current bureaucrats. Many attendees wanted to complain about their experiences, but others began to formulate what has to be done to change the Ministry of Culture and restructure the cultural process in Ukraine.

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CA: What was the reaction of the people still working in the Ministry? Did they join the discussions?

LB: Initially no, the occupation occurred over the weekend and almost nobody was working there. At that time there was no Minister of Culture, because all the former cabinet members had been dispersed and no one had been appointed yet. On the day after entering the Ministry a few of the occupiers sealed all the doors of its offices to prove that no documents had been removed, and we continued to block access to most Ministry employees until the new Minister was appointed.

CA: And how was the new Minister appointed?

LB: He was put in power by the new government, but he also had the support of the Maidan. He is an actor who spent a lot of time on the Maidan stage. On the most violent days in February, when there was a lot of shooting, he was there, trying to calm people and giving directions where medical help was needed. His appointment, like that of other current Ministers, was an attempt to build a bridge between the protests and the new government.

CA: The Assembly was also responsible for putting out a series of concrete demands to change the Ministry. How would they affect the way the Ministry is organized and functions?

LB: In the first week when we were physically blocking the building of the Ministry we set out some demands: one was to set up a financial audit of the institution, one was about lustration. When the minister was appointed, he met with the Assembly and signed a memorandum, which included (in addition to the abovementioned demands) his promise to recognize the legitimacy of the Assembly, implement structural reforms and to develop together with the Assembly mechanisms by which the public can exercise control over the Ministryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decisions and policies.

While the first demands are practically aimed at preventing further corruption, the other points demand that the Ministry begin to function as a public institution, listening to and serving the people. The main task was to start developing new organizational mechanisms in collaboration with the Minister, and in parallel develop mechanisms through which the Assembly and the general public could have access to and influence the decision-making processes of the Ministry.

After the new Minister was appointed, he dismissed most of the previous deputy ministers, and the Ministry went back to work. An independent organization has been hired to perform a financial audit, but it hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t started yet. The Assembly has regularly demanded meetings with the new administration; these demands have been met with reluctance. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve met officially with the Minister five times so far, plus several meetings with his new deputies. The administration has tried to get the Assembly to go away, but the Assembly persists in meeting in the basement of the Ministry of Culture and pestering officials to produce evidence of beginning systemic reform.

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CA: The Assembly adopted a non-hierarchical model of organization, similar to that used in the Occupy movement. If I understand correctly, there is not one leadership, but everyone who is present at these meetings can influence the process.

LB: Yes, that was a fundamental decision. When the group was just forming, we realized that if we are trying to change the system, the more the Assembly mimics the existing system the less likely we are to make meaningful changes. The Assembly is a method for collectively discussing issues and making decisions; its membership is fluid. There have been tensions in the group over maintaining this non-hierarchical, horizontal organization, which demands a lot of time and patience from its participants. The second meeting with the Minister, which revealed how little interest the official structure actually has in the ideas and demands of the Assembly, deepened a schism between the Assemblyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participants over priorities and fundamental principles. While there are staunch proponents of the Assembly as such, even though its radical, utopian methods may ultimately only yield small

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results, others prefer efficiency and effectiveness, especially in influencing policy and decisions within the specialized departments of the Ministry, to the slow, laborious process of systemic change. However, the Assembly is still meeting and working through these differences to identify common goals and ways to work together.

CA: Could you say a bit more about the composition of the Assembly and the participatory impetus behind different groups in its constituency?

LB: The Assembly is open to everyone: the amount of people that show up for any given meeting varies from just a few people to several hundred. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d say there are around 30-40 people who are very active, and each meeting usually has around 20 attendees, including continuous newcomers. People participating in the Assembly, while they may be members of various groups and organizations, speak for themselves and do not represent the interests of any other group. Thus the Assembly does not supersede, replace or deny any other cultural organizations.

Because the first meetings had so many participants, a decision was taken to break up into working groups. While there were conflicting views on how the groups

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should be organized, the principle that was chosen was by discipline: film, circus, music, design, contemporary art, festival organizers, coordination, etc. The problem is that this to some extent mimics the existing structure of the Ministry of Culture, favoring the old-fashioned division by genre, which does not reflect todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural production. However, there is also a group devoted to analysis, which is developing a proposal for reorganizing the Ministry.

The working groups researched and prepared reports on the needs of their respective spheres. The Assembly also had conversations with people who had worked in cultural administration in other countries like Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Lithuania; those from the latter countries shared their experiences restructuring their cultural administration when transitioning to the EU. CA: Tell me a bit about the drawings created within the Assembly that begin to describe what new structure you had in mind.

LB: The Assembly agreed that the Ministry was not serving the needs of culture, but instead serving whatever ideology the government wanted to promote and functioning as a mechanism for corruption. Since the system itself is dysfunctional, regardless of the individuals working in it, the challenge is finding a way to change the entire system, without immediately dissolving the existing structures.

The first drawing shows how the old Ministry was working, with ideology from the

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top sifting down through all the departments. The main conceptual shift proposed by the Assembly is eliminating the top-down vector, so the people and their needs become the focus of cultural activity and administration. The system that would provide coordination and resources for cultural activities should be focused on the public – viewers, thinkers, doers. Practically speaking, this system could be organized as a series of autonomous agencies focused on different aspects of culture (conservation, development, innovation) and a center for coordination and analysis that would distribute the national budget according to the needs of the public and the needs of the agencies. It is imperative to separate state cultural policy from the budget; in this model, those who develop cultural policy make direct recommendations to each agency, but do not influence the distribution of funding.

CA: How do you negotiate the relation between the Kyiv-based Assembly and other cities across Ukraine?

LB: The Assembly for Culture in Ukraine is nationwide. From the beginning in other cities such as Zaporizhya, Kharkiv, Lviv, people formed their own assemblies.

In an attempt to avoid centralization in the capital, the assemblies in Kyiv and other cities share a lot of their minutes and recordings of meetings online. Information is also passed along personally when people travel between cities.

CA: What are some of the most important things that you feel the Assembly has achieved so far?

LB: As in the model I described above, where cultural administration focuses on aspects of conservation, development and innovation, I have observed that the members of the Assembly include people who are conservators of an authoritarian system of thinking (waiting for a commands from above), people who believe that cultural management and other forms of “modernization” should be implemented in Ukraine’s cultural sphere, and people who see the Assembly as a means to invent new ways of working together. At its core the Assembly – as a foundation for Ukraine’s future culture system – really is about social relations. One of the important things is to keep the Assembly autonomous from the Ministry, which not only allows for a certain degree of unpredictability and mobility, but also clarifies the difference between exercising one’s rights as a citizen and aspiring to power. It is also worth noting that the Assembly’s work to reform the Ministry of Culture began immediately after the Yanukovych regime dissolved, affirming that cultural reform is fundamental to any kind of social, political or economic change.

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Larissa Babij lives in Kyiv, where she works with Ukrainian contemporary artists as a curator, writer

and co-conspirator of experimental projects. Together with Tanz Laboratorium she has been produc-

ing the annual PERFORMATIVITY Educational Art Project since 2011. In April 2014 she brought Gregory Sholette’s and Olga Kopenkina’s “Imaginary Archive” to Ukraine (including new works by

local artists). Her writing has been published in ARTMargins Online, Guernica and other publications. She is a member of the Art Workers’ Self-defense Initiative (ISTM).

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Artists between aestheticization of the struggle and unionization Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić

On June 22nd 2013, artists and cultural workers organized one of the biggest protests in Belgrade and other cities across Serbia.1 About 800 people, most of them workers in public cultural institutions, and some from independent organizations, joined the demonstration in Belgrade’s Republic Square. Although the vast majority of them live and work in harsh conditions, during this public protest they unfortunately avoided addressing directly their economic problems, such as unpaid social insurance contributions, precarious working conditions and inadequate distribution of public funds. Among other complaints, an objective cause for the protest were the cuts of the budget for culture, that shrunk it to 0,62% of the total state budget of Serbia, as well as the reallocation of main parts of these funds for religious and “patriotic” projects. In spite of this, the organizing committee stressed in its press release that the main aim of the protest was the struggle against the degradation of culture and the decay of the society’s moral values that “every European nation needs to protect.” Representatives of independent organizations expressed their discontent demanding the withdrawal of political party-interests from cultural institutions. In the course of the devastation of state institutions, a good part of the cultural production has been already handed over to the cultural industries, and is, directly or indirectly, managed by individuals belonging to party structures like in the case of project MIKSER – “a multidisciplinary platform which centres around the affirmation of cultural industry of the Balkans and organization of the biggest regional festival of the festival of creative arts.”2 The contradictions and confusion of the protest described above provoked a set of questions concerning the organization of artists and cultural workers and their representation in organizational bodies. First of all, how is it possible to successfully organize artists and cultural workers today, in reference to their position within the production process?

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Protest of artists and cultural workers in Belgrade, June 2013, Photo by Rena Rädle

How to strengthen the struggle over workers’ rights and for a cultural production in the context of the public goods? How to position toward the activities of neoliberal managers, promoting the creative industries and intensively advocating gentrification, such as Belgrade’s Savamala project related to various initiatives and organisations in Serbia?3 Who is actually profiting from the work of interns and a growing army of volunteers in the context of cultural production?

In this article we will give a brief overview about some aspects of the present-day struggles in culture and the arts, and discuss existing forms of organization, with a focus on the situation in Serbia. We will pay special attention to different ways to struggle and strategies for organization that could be successful in local and international contexts.

Art Strikes, Anti-Authorship and Institutional Critique Generally, there are two ways for artists of dealing with the material condition of the artist in society. Firstly, there is, let’s say, the pragmatical one, when artists join organizations to regulate their legal and economic status. Secondly, there is the artistic-ideological dimension, when artists try to problematize their position through the artistic work itself. Working on both fronts is desirable and not mutually exclusive, even though the opposite happens quite often.

The problem with the second position can be followed easily through the history of the artists’ social struggles. Here we can observe a paradoxical situation in that, what started as an emancipatory step and act of protest or critique, is later captured in the realm of commodification. Through aestheticization, the struggle of the artist easily becomes an artistic product or cultural commodity.

This tendency became obvious in the 1970s, exactly in the period when conceptual art developed out of a critique of the art market: The politics of a practice that engaged with the struggle for the material working and living conditions of the artists was presented by some conceptual artists as their own artistic practice.

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The art strike quickly became a means to struggle; the famous 1969 strike was organized in support of the artist Takis who removed his works from the MoMA. The “Art Workers’ Coalition”4 was founded around his case. The group called artists to go on strike, published statements and tried to influence the museum’s exhibition politics through direct criticism of the institution. Simultaneously with these practices the afore-mentioned problem of the commodification of the struggle emerged.

In addition to strikes against the commercialization of the arts, another practice of the 1980s was the negation or creation of fictive authorship. This strategy went against the treatment of artistic acts as branded goods and was meant to prevent

Protest in Belgrade, June 2013, Photo by Rena Rädle

the accumulation of market value through the mere status of being a “criticizing and striking” author. The second famous art strike was organized by Gustav Metzger from 1977 to 1980, followed by another one from 1990 to 1993 called

by Stewart Home. In 1979, Goran Đorđević joined the international debate on art strike and developed his own artistic agenda.

The question arises if these strikes really contributed to the improvement of the artists’ position and to the decommercialization of artistic production, although they might have been successful in some of their specific aims. The problem becomes more complicated through the fact that, among others, the market value of art is defined by a complex system of mediators and through the speculative framework posed by banks, auction houses and leading galleries. That means that for example a strike of volunteers and workers of galleries, museums, cultural agencies and auction houses would momentarily have a stronger effect than a strike of the artists-producers themselves. If we understand the strike in a certain moment in time as a relevant means to struggle, we will have to think about how to include all the above mentioned groups into coordinated action with clear political demands.

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In the beginning of the 1990s institutional critique emerged. Its well-known protagonists were Andrea Fraser and Hans Haacke. Both artists are an example for a next wave of aestheticization of the artists’ struggles, that was first transformed within the conceptual arts and then filtered through the discourses of structuralist and critical theory. Today, we have inherited from institutional critique a whole culturological framework of criticality circulating through the social relations of the post-ideological discourse. Yet it does not offer much in the field of the real struggle of the artists and cultural workers for material conditions, especially across the European economic peripheries that are confronted with austerity measures, different parameters and conditions of production.

Artists’ organisations and unionization As the pressure on cultural workers across Europe became stronger due to budget cuts and their increasingly precarious position, a series of new platforms or organizations emerged alongside the traditional ones. Through them, artists and other producers of culture are trying to concretely strengthen their position towards agencies, institutions and various financiers of cultural production in the private and public sector. Apart from these new initiatives, in many countries classical artists’ associations still exist, which protect and support art production and realization of the artists’ social rights. They resemble guild-like organizations through which a producer of designated artistic products can achieve the status of a so-called “freelance artist.” These organizations can be useful political actors when it comes to legal regulations concerning the taxation of art work or social security.

In Serbia, one of the major problems of the local artists’ organization ULUS5 is that the relations of cultural production have become very contradictory in the current systemic crisis of neoliberal capitalism, and that it did not find an answer to the collapse of the social position of the artists being confronted with unpaid and precarious work in culture. Additionally, the process of privatization of public spaces is heavily affecting ULUS, depriving the organization of spaces for production and presentation of its members’ works, such as galleries and workshops. However, attempts to establish an artists’ union do exist, with the mission to meet this challenge.

A different form of cultural organization in Serbia is the NKSS Association6 “Nezavisna kulturna scena Srbije” (Independet Cultural Scene of Serbia), which does not focus on the association of artists-producers but links civil society organizations. This association tried to implement some projects of “successful” initiatives in the region, such as “Clubture” from Croatia. The strategy of this Serbian organization is to position itself as an intermediary between the ministry and individual organizations in terms of allocation of funds.

With the founding of NKSS, the formerly active platform “Druga scena” (The Other Scene) was in a way curtailed, since the majority of active members joined NKSS. While “Druga scena’s” program quoted among its goals defending “public

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goods of general societal importance, but not as means of gaining profit or realizing other individual private interests” and supporting “the improvement of the social position of the cultural workers”7, the NKSS’s program is limited to the establishment of a superstructure for applications for local or international, public or private donors, aiming at joined lobby work for certain cultural politics and managing donations from bigger funders for its members.

Especially the Balkan region is heavily affected by NGO industry, and culture is always interconneceted with non-profit funds. In that respect example organizations such as W.A.G.E.8 that criticizes the lacking transparency of funds paid to artists by non-profit foundations in New York, could share their knowledge and experience with their Balkan colleagues. W.A.G.E. established a certificate that documents payment and social contributions, putting pressure on foundations and non-governmental organizations and thus preventing the cuts of artist fees. Also important are organizations such as the Carrotworkers’ Collective and the PWB (Precarious Workers Brigades)9 that came out of the protests against cuts in London. PWB for example question the massive voluntary work in cultural production, with the young producers in culture serving years and years in internships and mini-jobs that violate their social rights.

An important organizational framework are platforms and organizations that work internationally. An example of such a form of organization is the platform ArtLeaks10 that operates through the realization of various events, publications, magazines, public statements and campaigns and puts pressure through social networks and regular open meetings in different countries. This way it supports local

Protest in Belgrade, June 2013, Photo by Deana Jovanović

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struggles against violations of workers’ rights of artists and cultural workers, making them visible and articulating them on a global level. It should be underlined that ArtLeaks drifts from a platform towards the evolution of a sustainable union.

One of its longterm goals would be the formation of the first international union of artists and cultural workers that operates along the lines of the production of public goods and supports the artist-producer according to the principle that artistic means can be a legitimate means of struggle.

In these terms we don’t need to discard the experience of the conceptual art of the 1970s, nor the art strikes and anti-authorship of the 1980s, or the organization experiences from the internet activisms and networks of the 1990s. Artists and cultural workers need to conflate these historical experiences into a means of political struggle for artists’ workers’ rights and the acknowledgement of their work. Joining a broader emancipatory project, without which it will be indeed hard to achieve these rights in the long run, artists will succeed to advance the society’s resources and conditions and thereby their own position.

It must be emphasized that the above quoted strategies and ways of organizing might look even less progressive when compared to the practices of some artists during the 1930s in Yugoslavia. Some of the most interesting are the groups “Život” (Life) and “Zemlja” (Earth) who fought for social art and demanded full rights for artists as workers. In 1932, Mirko Kujačič, the founder of “Život” from Belgrade, wrote a manifesto in which he demanded the improvement of the material condition of the artists.11 With his colleagues from the group he went into direct conflict with the so-called “l’art pour l’art-artists” (art for art’s sake), who were then leading the art pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzorić” in Belgrade. Kujačič turned up in the gallery dressed in a blue workers’ shirt, read out the manifesto and put a pair of workers’ shoes on the wall. The simple demand of these artists was that the societal role of the artist needs to be understood in a broader socio-political sense, not only trough the narrow frame of the guild. When the Zagreb group “Zemlja” exhibited in Belgrade in 1935, the artists of the group “Život” made vivid propaganda and mobilized trade unions, the women’s movement, students’ and workers’ youth groups for the opening.12 They activated the whole society and in this way, art left the confines of bourgeois taste and actualized itself as living political action. In our view, what is actually lacking today, are similar contemporary practices that address society at large, and thus relate the artist to political and social movements that, by acting on the local and international level can transform society.

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This article is based on a text written in Serbian for culturenet.hr and a talk by Vladan Jeremić held at the round table discussion “Levels of contradictions and means of articulation,” organized by the

Centar za dramsku umjetnost, on 12.12.2013. at Gallery Nova, Zagreb. Participants of the round table discussion were: Vladan Jeremić, Sabina Sabolović, Goran Sergej Pristaš i Marko Kostanić.

Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle are artists and cultural workers. They live and work in Belgrade, Serbia.

http://www.modukit.com/raedle-jeremic Endnotes 1 http://art-leaks.org/2013/06/23/artists-and-cultural-workers-stage-massive-protests-in-serbia/ 2 http://mikser.rs/en/

3 Mikser na vodi, Marko Miletić, http://www.bilten.org/?p=868

4 http://www.primaryinformation.org/projects/art-workers-coalition/ 5 http://www.ulus.rs/

6 http://www.nezavisnakultura.net/

7 http://drugascena.wordpress.com/ 8 http://www.wageforwork.com/

9 http://precariousworkersbrigade.tumblr.com/ 10 http://art-leaks.org/about/

11 Zidne novine, Udruženje KURS,

http://www.zidne.udruzenjekurs.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/zidne-novine-br-2_web.pdf

12 Revolucionarno slikarstvo, Spektar, Zagreb, 1977, Josip Depolo, Zemlja 1929-1935, p. 21-22.

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Spear v.s. scissors: Art held captive by budget cuts Andrey Shental

Neoliberalization, privatization, commercialization Austerity measure policies currently in effect in many countries have given rise to a special rhetoric reminiscent of Franciscan preaching poverty and humility faced with the vicissitudes of earthly existence. It’s not just a metaphor: the English word “austerity” itself contains obvious religious connotations. Like religion, these austerity policies are naturalized and internalized affectively: comparing the national economy with the household, or appealing to collective traumatic experiences, as many critics have observed, produces a fake sense of community, as opposed to an artificially produced shortage, lack, deficiency. The apologists of austerity measures offer us only one possible way out of this crisis - sacrifice.

In his 2012 book “The Year of Dreaming Dangerously”, Slavoj Žižek wittily summarized the austerity politicians’ arguments: we live in critical times of deficit and debt and will all have to share the burden and accept a lower standard of living—all, that is, with the exception of the (very) rich”. This begs the question: why does the social sphere has to be sacrificed, when we can more wisely apply taxes? This is immediately objected to with the axiom: “The idea of taxing them more is an absolute taboo: if we do this, so we are told, the rich will lose any incentive to invest and thereby create new jobs, and we will all suffer the consequences.”1 Or, alternatively, to transfer the least important sectors of society in the hands of private capital.

Cuts in state subsidies of culture and experiments in privatization have affected many European countries, especially the former welfare states, which still kindle the remains of social democracy. In the UK, the Parliament led by the Conservative

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Ellie Harrison, Bring Back British Rail, 2009

Party has for the past 3 years been effecting budget cuts and actively dismantling what had not already been dismantled at the hands of Margaret Thatcher and her labor successors. Budget cuts, which have affected art and culture much more than others fields of knowledge production, have in the English language been shortened to an almost onomatopoeic name, reminiscent of the clanging of old metal shears: cuts. In the part few years these cuts have not held the front pages of newspapers and magazines, but they appears in the nightmares of social workers who are in constant fear of personnel reductions and dismissals. According to a statement he made last year, David Cameron, tried to completely de-ideologize austerity measures: this policy is not just a temporary measure, but should be implemented as a public policy, and perpetuated as inevitable and necessary. It is difficult to imagine what the future results of this will be, but after two years we can draw certain conclusions and make forecasts.2 At the present moment, we can say that left criticsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and journalistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; worst fears were not justified. Everything remains seemingly unchanged: the galleries are still working, museums are free of charge, art journals continue to be published, and people are no less interested in art then before: a recent statistic by Tate Modern will reassure those who think that contemporary art is of no use to anyone anymore: crowds of people go there (although for what is another question).

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Ellie Harrison, Bring Back British Rail, 2009

Against this background, failures and even the inevitable “healthy” fight for survival in a “free” competition economy seem insignificant. Some small galleries and magazines experienced serious difficulties, but almost all were able to find alternative ways of funding, and only a few were closed or reorganized . But who still remembers “Storey Gellery,” where no almost no one has visited? Who will regret the exhibition hall at the British Film Institute, when a luxurious library was opened in its place? In a country that suffers from a surplus and overproduction of art, such trifles simply are not worthy of attention. And what if tickets to the British Film Institute tickets are now nine pounds instead of six pounds ? It seems that it doesn’t matter since people continue to go there.

At the same time, the “age of philanthropy” that former minister of culture Jeremy Hunt promised happened only nominally. The conservative minister promised that given greater tax breaks, the rich will take pity on art, and share their income and savings - and that the influx of capital from the private sector will transform the UK into a new Florence. Capital did begin to flow (4 %), but it did not exceed the level of annual inflation (5.2%) and turned out to be more insignificant given its sharp decline in the previous years - of course, Hunt did not include this in his reports.3

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Ellie Harrison, Desk Chair Parade / Desk Chair Disco, 2009/2011

Major changes in the art system are not limited only to closed galleries and shutting down journals, but also occur on the barely noticeable microlevel and often go unnoticed. The reduction of the state budget and the policy of attracting primarily private capital, lead to inequality and polarization, as Žižek observed: “the poor are getting poorer, and the rich - richer.”

Recognized, respected and promoted institutions acquire new spaces, overseas offices and stores. Only in 2012 the following commercial galleries have somehow manage to expand: Pace, Blain / Southern, Marlborough, Carlslaw St. Luke, David Zwirner, Space Station 65 , Eykyn Maclean, Michael Werner, Thaddaeus Ropac, Gagosian, White Cube, Vitrine, Carroll / Fletcher. This not only goes for private institutions, but also for charitable ones: Tate Modern increased its space through underground oil storage tanks and in parallel continues to build a new wing, the Jerwood Foundation opened a gallery of the same name, the David Roberts Foundation moved to a new multi-storey building, the organization Gasworks, consisting of studios, residences and exhibition hall, also plans to increase its space several times over.

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Such disproportionate expansions lead to a peculiar aggravation of “class relations” within the art system, strengthening the position of artistic elites and - most surprisingly - to the formation of stellar systems and hierarchies within the leftist movement. As curator and theorist Simon Sheikh explained me in an interview, despite another rise in tuition costs, Goldsmith University , the main stronghold of critical theory in the U.K. or as it is called the “factory of criticality,” began receiving more applications from students than usual.4 This is not only due to the growing fashion for leftist ideas among young people, regardless of their background, but also indicates that Goldsmith professors acquired a special patent for leftist discourse, while other universities where “stars” of critical theory like Simon Sheikh himself do not teach, were forced to close their art departments.

In parallel with this polarization, the process of geographic centralization on the London axis also occurs - the budget of private donors interested in visibility or advertising their brand, is flowing, in contrast to the state budget: especially in the capital (an increase of 9%), while the provinces get several times less (a decrease to 32%). Another, more evident and not always conspicuous process is the commercialization of the art and related fields of research activity. To survive in a situation of intense competition, artists and galleries have no choice but to adapt to market demands. Moreover, bureaucrats suggest quite specific tactics to further the cultivation of mercantilism, such as cultural celebrities who should promote the art to the masses. And these suggestions became inevitable compromise for many, because in order to qualify for state grants, British institutions involved in charity work in the field of art, must have their own sources of income. At the same time, understanding the invasiveness of such an abrupt transformation, the state willing sponsors research and counseling centers that help pave the way to private financing “painlessly,” while fundraising is gradually shifted onto the shoulders of the institutions.

Ellie Harrison, The History of Revolution: Fireworks Display, 2010

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As for state support, it is still carried out through a system of organizations, established as a result of the separation of the British Council into regional councils.

Among them, the Arts Council of England (ACE) is the most powerful organization, which to its credit, copes very well with its tasks, even after substantial reductions in its budget. The ACE directly allocates money to organizations or grants to individual artists and redistributes its budget within a whole network of small independent substructures, among them the Film and Video Umbrella iFLAMIN (supporting film and video ), The Art Catalyst (supporting art-science), ArtQuest (information and legal support ), Art Angel ( support for costly and risky projects ), LARC (Liverpool community organization), etc.

However, the ACE continues to deliberately cut budgets and introduce new conditions of contracts, reducing their duration, which makes the situation of many institutions highly unstable. In this situation, non-profit, small and young organizations, as well as the artists themselves , and especially those who have just graduated are forced to find alternative ways of financing or horizontal ways to unite, for mutual support, and sometimes direct offensive.

Drowning people hold their salvation into their own hands According to the critic and curator Lars Bang Larsen in his book “Work, Work, Work,” today we are experiencing changes in the time politics of labor, which results in time becoming a real currency - “The time that you will be spending or will have spent as the future time of deferred.”5 Developing his idea, one can add that time - is what the modern state least willingly provides, insisting instead on immediate effectiveness, efficiency and practical applicability of any type of production.

Therefore, austerity measures are not only budget cuts but also the imposition of a certain alien and often harmful temporality.

In the situation of the neoliberalization of the art system, small organizations who need more time to get on their feet and achieve visible results, find it especially difficult to adapt to the new rules of the game. They cannot make income through a cafe or a bookstore, or the release of souvenirs like copyrighted prints, let alone attract celebrities. Most often, they begin to engage in the sale of work, like many so-called non-profit galleries do behind the scenes. Common Practice was founded to support the most vulnerable of them, bringing together several institutions in different formats in order to jointly research and find ways out of this critical situation. Their publication “Value, Measure, Sustainability” developed the idea of “deferred value”: small organizations are as good as large ones, even though they do not provide tangible results in the short term, and therefore it is necessary to reconsider the conditions of funding and the metric approach in assessing their activities.

Namely, the study suggests ways to make better use of “immaterial assets,” included in the total turnover that employees have to perform - such as conduct paid consul-

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tations, give lectures, etc., that is, ways in which to invest their subjectivity for a net profit. And this can have negative consequences: overtime, educational programs for profit; furthermore, the very orientation of education towards making a profit does not bode well. But what is especially confusing in the aforementioned publication, is the consensus that the pursuit of growth - physically, spatial expansion, and the expansion of activities in general - is the a priori goal of small institutions.

Development is not outwards but inwards, and focusing on professional activities is not expected nor stipulated in general, bearing witness to how deeply the ideas of entrepreneurship and marketing have penetrated the consciousness of the British art system .

On Ethics It is generally accepted that ethics is one of the radical artistic methods invented in the early twentieth century, that was intended to democratize art. However, ironically, everything turned out quite the opposite. The state system to support art in the U.K. can be said to capitalize on this idea: since 1994 the ACE survives by selling National Lottery tickets. According to the statistics, the lottery is played primarily by representatives of the lowest strata of the population, those engaged

Ellie Harrison, Artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Lottery Syndicate, 2010-2011

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in manual labor and working on a temporary basis. They, unlike many artists, often originate from the middle class, and have nothing to lose, so they are ready to give their last money on a fluke. The ethical aspect of this type funding is (with rare exceptions) a taboo among the art community, and is perhaps criticized by Christian organizations: it is easy to deduce that the latter comes from the belief that gambling is sinful by definition. This is a key paradox of British art. The local artistic intelligentsia continues to live with hope that the art changes something in this world, while the same art lives on the money of the people who go to galleries for anything except to get warm. This would not be an exaggeration, given that utility bills in the UK are constantly getting more expensive.

Some artists see an evil mockery of themselves in the fact that art is funded by the lottery: a career in the art world is also a kind of lottery, where success is often determined by luck and good fortune, and it is no secret that many artists themselves are living below the poverty line. Playing with this situation, the founders of the Artists Lottery Syndicate invented an alternative model to support the artistic community, by receiving money from the same National Lottery, not from above but from below. Artists bought tickets together to increase their probability of winning, and they planned to divide the money among themselves. As the organizer of this initiative, Ellie Harrison, told me, members of the syndicate invested 8436 pounds, but were only able to win 1346 pounds. The Artists Lottery Syndicate positioned itself as an artistic conceptual project, and its true mission was not to acquire earnings per se, but to draw attention to the commercialization of the financing system through the symbolic return the money back to the lottery.

As these monetary losses were burdensome for the participants, the syndicate was transformed into the organization Artistsbond, a less risky way of investment through a single state lottery â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the National Savings and Investments, that even began to bring some profit. By the end of 2012, the organization has won three awards of 25 pounds, and each of the artists got their share of 32 pence. Under the terms of the agreement, any artist living in the UK who has a bank account may participate Artistsbond, but his or her participation should be lifelong: Ellie believes that in this way they oppose the demands of short-term effectiveness, imposed by the market and new cultural politics.

The artist and the crowd Crowdfunding is a relatively new way of sponsorship based on the horizontal collecting of donations through the Internet. It was invented in the United States, where government support of culture is minimal; and after the introduction of austerity measures Crowdfunding became popular in Europe. Currently in the UK there are several organizations that collect funds to support art projects: WeDidThis, WeFund, Sponsume, Crowdfunder, as well as their US counterparts - such as KickStarter and Indiegogo. The Crowdfunding model is based on the principle

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Ellie Harrison, Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed, 2011

of “all or nothing,” accruing money for a limited time: if the project does not gain the required amount within the specified period, it is simply not sponsored. This is also called “participative” financing, as all the donors are rewarded either by direct participation in the project or a souvenir or some privilege. It can be effective among small groups of like-minded people, and at the state level, such as in France, where donations for the restoration of the dome of the Pantheon in Paris were rewarded by invitations to a private party.

Using Crowdfunding to fund art projects causes the similar fears as does the open distribution of taxpayers’ money. Assuming that taxpayers will determine the UK’s museums exhibition policy, then high Renaissance and modernist masters or even entertainment projects would be almost exclusively exhibited. Exhibitions containing anything “controversial,” would not receive a budget. However, if the content of the exhibitions would be determined by experts in contemporary art, regardless of what visitors want to see themselves, then this model by definition cannot be called democratic - that gets us back to the old dialectic of intellectuals and people.

The structure of Crowdfunding holds inside it this intractable conflict. On the one hand, it helps some young artists to start a career: in the UK money was successfully collected for three final exhibitions, used to pay for the participation of several

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contestants in the BP Portrait Award, implementing projects of young curators, publishing catalogs, etc. But if we take a quick glance we come to realize that these internet servers are primarily used for entertainment projects, equating art with graphic design and fashion. Still, the money that goes to support the arts, is hardly comparable with the millions of dollars that Internet users donate to burn discs by their favorite rock bands or for the development of new computer games.

The very ideology behind these sites raises many questions. For example, the British lead of Crowdfunding Ed Whiting defines it as “a microphilantropy” that raises a new generation of “major donors” - that is, the very rich, who will invest, but only under the condition of low taxation. Moreover, Crowdfunding usually does not involve the possibility of selfless donations and thus mediates the perception of art: as I wrote above, each donors is supposed to get some material or symbolic gain.

Thus, aesthetic judgment, which, according to Kant, must be disinterested, is in fact inscribed in the logic of real subsumption and entrepreneurship. Despite this, Crowdfunding still has the potential to support protest, critical, and even revolutionary art, that is hardly represented in state institutions.

All of these initiatives (as well as many others) allow art to survive in the era of austerity measures, but they also tell us something about the need to change the existing system, in which art can serve either private capital or exist through money received from the lottery.

Ellie Harrison, General Election Drinking Game, 2010

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Freelancers The above problems may seem to some readers - such as myself coming from Eastern Europe, no more than the whining of spoiled British artists snickering on grants and high fees, and in general living in a country where there so much art that it is almost nauseating. And these readers would right to some extent. In many ways, the role of non-profit galleries in the UK is no more than lengthening curriculum vitaes, or to facilitating exchanges of compliments between insiders at exhibition openings. As for those galleries that are engaged in marginalized areas and local communities, they in many ways just diverting attention from the real social problems: no gallery in east London failed to prevent riots that happened there in August 2011. While interning in a gallery in Hackney - where in some parts pogroms occurred - I watched as students of African and Arab descent arrived there entirely lost: they did not want to see art projects and even less to discuss them with the gallery employees. At the same time they were photographed by interns in order to send documentation to the ACE, as the galleries are required to report on their alleged charitable activities.

Yet, the decline of galleries and a reduction in the production and distribution of art cannot be a solution in a context in which the downside is little more than a chimera or ideological construct, produced by capitalism. In a system where the public budget is downsized in order to increase the salaries of the rich or pay the national debt to banks, we can hardly count on the fact that that money for the arts would instead go to a “more necessary” social sphere. Therefore, upholding the art system in its entirely - even considering that in a few decades of neoliberalism its sociality was partially atrophied - is primarily an ethical and ideological position. This is not a quixotic attempt to get back to a post-war social democracy, but a necessity to resist the expansion of neoliberalism, which is destroying the remnants of a society in which art has become the last refuge for politics. Moreover, art as defined by Stendhal as a “promesse du bonheur,” that is promising happiness in spite of lack and suffering, may be one of the few remaining antidotes to this artificial austerity.6 However, the impossibility of reducing cultural production is associated with a completely different issue, that reverses the problem on its head. In this country, contemporary art has reached a deadlock: it exists in such amounts, concentrations and forms that it is not needed by society nor by the state which sees how wonderful this art pays for itself in the galleries of the central, eastern and south London.

But given the current situation, measures like the reform or partial dismantling its infrastructure will only exacerbate unemployment and create new serious social problems. During the period which is now remembered as the years of well-being and prosperity (especially during the time of prime minister Tony Blair), art spawned hundreds of arts organizations and trained thousands of professionals, whose existence is now totally dependent on competent funding. British humanities institutions produce thousands of artists, curators and critics from around the

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Ellie Harrison, Anticapitalist Aerobics, 2013

world annually, forming a reserve army, which ultimately leads to structural unemployment and a post-wage economy based on exploitation. In this situation budgetary deficits, the artistic elite, obsessed with the idea of infinite growth and development, is unable to slow down its momentum, or otherwise reform adequately. As a result, it “lumpenizes” students and graduates, creating class inequalities in an age of already record-high levels of unemployment among young people. Any resistance against the new austerity reforms is criminalized, and the students themselves, who do not agree with these economic measures aimed against them as “class,” are publicly denigrated as naive and uneducated.

Faced with these issues, the British contemporary art system is unable to resolve not only structural, but also ethical contradictions. It illegally exploits students and graduates, denies ethnic, gender and sexual equality, and it is perhaps more successful at this than any other immaterial industry. Young professionals full of ambition and expectations agree to unpaid internships, and in most cases they end up performing mindless and thankless job to supplement their semi-fictitious resume.

Gallery interns are forced to seek any means of subsistence to help them get a job in their field in a hypothetical future. Moreover, because of this, a conflict emerges among young people: those who cannot work for free are doomed to remain forever freelancers or completely change their sphere activity. Such a system is also beginning to take shape in Russia - where wealthy arts organizations like the “Garage,” which now also has unpaid Internships or the “Manezh,” where volunteer work is actively promoted.

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Produced under such conditions, art paradoxically creates a new kind of autonomy and self-reflection: artists, critics, art historians and curators, all faced with the problem of survival, focus their practice and research activities on the context of their own existence, survival and artistic and economic relations.

Currently in the UK there are many organizations dealing with the problems of exploitation: Critical Practice, Precarious Workers Brigade, Future Interns, Ragpickers, and, of course, ArtLeaks. Through these and similar initiatives the problem of the precarity of art labour becomes an integral part of art itself and its discourse.

But precisely this inward turn works like a spring, ready to shoot back at any moment. Art’s self-reflection provides a new opportunity to get out of its own autonomy.

This unassimilated debris, marginal elements of the artistic infrastructure, allied with each other, give some hope for a change in the status quo. The very terms “intern” and “freelancer” as Hito Steyerl notes in her text7 have their own tradition, being etymologically connected with the struggle for freedom and justice: freelancer refers to a free medieval spearman, while intern is associated with the word internment. However, in order not to fall into philosophical realism by giving these notions real political power, we should be primarily talking about them as a potentia. They could become modern fighters with the system, because they are not bound within its contracts, and are situated in the border zone between the “inside” and “outside.” Art, which is sponsored by the poorest people, while the rich launder their money, art, from which productivity, efficiency and utility is demanded, cannot but trigger their rejection and protest. However, in practice, these fighters become active actors of contemporary protest movements, but they do not become revolutionary subjects.

On the one hand, the system of contemporary art, affected by its internal contradictions become a crucible of the politicization and radicalization of its members, which led to some extent to the student protests in 2010. On the other hand, when this same system is more and more constrained, we do not see the escalation of conflicts and protest movements. Perhaps it is because the artists belong to a narcissistic class, closed in itself and who is not ready for solidarity. By interacting an activist group which appealed to the international consolidation of artists, I was confronted with the fact that artists are not willing to recognize their social and financial situation. Given that class conflict is beginning to emerge on a certain age level, youth and poverty begin to be perceived as a shameful, yet inevitable transitional period. After several years of Internships and low-wage jobs, people seems happy to forget about their experiences as if they were a necessary step to a successful career.

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No less problematic is “organization on the ground” and the establishment of trade unions, because workers are afraid to speak about their rights and to demand anything under the threat of losing their jobs. In this situation, oddly enough, a direct action in the gallery space - even though I am not in full support of this method - proves an effective measure, allowing for some clarity and a kind of “political education.” Ideally, such an action should be accompanied by solidarity with the employees themselves and grow into a common struggle, instead of being limited to a moment of “intellectual terrorism” by intimidating gallerists and drawing attention to these issues.

However, a more problematic aspect of activism on the territory of art, is its openly economic character. As David Beach rightly observes, instead of demanding the abolition of wage labor as such, as in the tradition of the engaged left movement, interns are fighting for relative exploitation, that is, for the replacement of slavery by another form of slavery, and therefore, the continuation of capitalist labor relations.8 In the context of austerity measures, the notion of a possible “horizon” narrows more and more, being reduced to a simple opposition between decades: the 90s were better than the 10s and 70s were better than 90s. Moreover, the emergence of the phenomenon of unpaid work in the private and public sector is so demoralizing that even a meager salary begins to look like a possible way out. On the one hand, these measures apply to the majority of young professionals in the art system who feel the urge to fight them, and on the other hand, since such a position may be a dead end in terms of changes in the system as a whole, we should not talk about lowering fees and free education as the given right of any student, we should not talk about social democracy as a satisfactory and tolerant form of government, but about an alternative social model as fundamentally possible and necessary. When speaking of higher wages, the abolition of internships and improved working conditions, we at the same time need to identify with other workers in other fields and other countries. And as banal as it may sound, economic demands should lead us to the political ones, while at the same time not pushing away potential allies.

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Based on a text published online in Russian on Colta.ru, March 2013. This text has been revised and expanded for the ArtLeaks Gazette 2. Translated by Corina L. Apostol

Andrey Shental is a critic, artist and curator based between Moscow and London. He holds a BA in Art Criticism at the Moscow State University and is currently doing his MA in Critical Theory at

Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (Kingston University). Together with Joao Laia he co-curated a nomadic video-programme “Now Showing: Austerity Measures” that has travelled

through London, Lisbon, Porto, Athens, Barcelona. He works as an editor at TheoryandPractice.ru

magazine and contributes to several art-related publications including Artchronika, Colta, AroundArt, Art Territory, Idea and Frieze, where he publishes reviews, essays and interviews.

Ellie Harrison was born in London and now lives and works in Glasgow, where she sees herself as a

‘political refugee’ escaped from the Tory strongholds of Southern England. She describes her practice as emerging from an ongoing attempt to strike-a-balance between the roles of ‘artist’, ‘activist’ and

‘administrator’. As well as making playful, politically engaged works for gallery contexts, she is also

the coordinator of the national Bring Back British Rail campaign, which strives to popularize the idea of renationalising of our public transport system, and is the agent for The Artists’ Bond - a long-term speculative funding scheme for artists, now with 120 members across the UK.

Endnotes 1 Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Verso Publishers pg. 23 2 See “David Cameron makes leaner state a permanent goal”:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/david-cameron-policy-shift-leaner-efficient-state 3 These figures are from 2012.

4 See my interview with Simon Sheikh in Russian:

http://theoryandpractice.ru/posts/6823-saymon-sheykh-sovremennoe-iskusstvo—eto-mesto-izgnaniya-politiki.

Unfortunately the interview was never published in English

5 ‘The Paradox of Art and Work: An Irritating Note’ in Work, Work, Work: A Reader in Art and Labour, Stenberg Press, 2012, pg. 22

6 See Steven Shaviro, Accelerationist Aesthetics: Necessary Inefficiency in Times of Real Subsumption:

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/accelerationist-aesthetics-necessary-inefficiency-in-times-of-real-subsumption/

7 Hito Stereyl, Art as Occupation: Claim for an Autonomy of Life, e-flux journal #30, 12/2011 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/art-as-occupation-claims-for-an-autonomy-of-life-12/ 8 See David Beech, Reproduction, Interns and Unpaid Labour:

http://dbfreee.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/reproduction-interns-and-unpaid-labour/

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Circus Melodrama Corina L. Apostol with drawings by Iulia Toma: ArtLeaks Bestiary Series

A sketch for a theatre fable for cultural workers based on the everyday life in a family of orphaned wild beasts, including some endangered species trying to live and work together in a circus.

Intro Hello, good evening, welcome to our show. I am the director of this event and tonight we will take you on a very special journey deep into the every-day life of a circus, of wild birds, terrific beasts, and even shiny reptiles. How exciting it will be!

Isn’t it wonderful to escape for a few hours into a world of fantasy and magic which has no relation whatsoever with reality?

Sit comfortably and enjoy tonight’s performance brought to you live by these wonderful and talented creatures! Applause! Applause! (All the actors now come onto the stage holding hands) And please do not forget to thank our sponsors whom we owe all these wonderful things! Yes, thank the benevolent sponsors and patrons! Isn’t it so nice to be a sponsor? Applause! Long live free enterprise!

Enters the Monkey: OK, can we go now? I am just going to start, I have a play to do here tonight!

Director get off the stage, please and let us begin!

Ahem ahem here we go!

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By now most of them hated working in the circus. Their lives depended on it and some long time ago, they even felt like it was their home. Oh how nice the feeling of being part of a circus community! The games they played, the laughs they had, the public raving about their acts, the occasional dramas, all this they cherished as their own unique world – and it had been their own laboratory of creation for generations. But everything changes.

It happened without their realizing it, while they were too intoxicated by sheer fun and excitement. The circus had become a cage to which they no longer had the keys. At first there were solitary voices complaining, but soon the whole chorus of wild birds, mammals and even the reptiles were rebelling. Finally, even the big stars were talking about escaping the circus. Even they realized that they were only playing the interests of the big sponsors who controlled them like puppets on strings.

Director intervenes: Excuse me but this part which you just said is incorrect and plus we agreed to not include it in the final play! Please cut it out for good, Monkey! We cannot have such direct attacks on an artistic institution or its sponsor even in the form of an artistic event which has nothing to do with reality!

Monkey: But I need to say these things, they are true and….I….. (director just stares down at the monkey) Monkey continues: But they could not even how they would change the mess they were in if they could. Some called the circus a new system of oppression. But that sounded too abstract to catch on. They all knew how oppression, manipulation and control really felt inside and outside of their bodies. Some brave ones decided to stop ignoring the problems and speak out and encourage others to raise their voices too. Some even began imagining rebellious actions to clean up the mud they felt they were living in.

Director interrupts: You play sounds too pessimistic and realist! People don’t want to hear about these things! They want to be enchanted by nice, adventurous, lovely stories!

The Director turns at the audience: And that goes for you too! What will the people upstairs will say if they would see how boring your faces look right now??

Eyes bright, smiles on, chins up and we’re on live! I am especially talking to you here (pointing at someone random in the audience), I want to see that big expressive face of yours - SMILE! ENJOY! IT’S ALL FOR YOU! Monkey: Ok let me continue, please…

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There was ferment like never before; a less innocent , less carefree but hopeful era had begun. Of course, there were still parties and fun to be had even during dark times. But in the end life never quite works out the way you expect it to…

Voice from the audience: Monkey you are in league with the bosses! Shame!

Shame! Down with the monkey!

Monkey: I am not in league with anyone! I am for autonomous creative expression!

I believe in the power of free creativity! After we won the last revolution, yes, now this is freedom and I am free!

So now we are really going to begin and I would like to start with a very personal story which brought me the inspiration for this play. And it goes like this, it is actually a letter i received from an old friend….

The Letter Dear Monkey, You’ve only been gone a couple of days but I get the feeling you are starting to freak out about how much you miss me, so here’s a run-down of my recent adventures.

The manager made me lick an icicle that was half my size at the beginning of my show (it’s the new trend in circus acts) and I got nearly stabbed by it but the audience loved it: “do it again!, do it again!”. Then I had to stand like forever in a meter pile of bat shit which I had to clean up after people left. Apparently it’s all in my “contract” – funny thing when you’re not educated enough and just “x” your name to a piece of paper. I guess I was just tired of looking in boroughs for scraps of dried fruit; I just wanted some decent food and a warm place to live. I am still a monkey from the jungle and this “salary system” they got here seems unnatural to me. I feel trapped in it but I ain’t smart enough to see myself out.

Anyway, after my acts, I made plans to ride the rollercoaster when the show was over just for my own fun you know… but then I made the major mistake decision to feed myself lots of sugar and coffee to stay awake. Things took a turn for the way worse when, due to lack of sleep and sugar-caffeine rush I picked a fight with two burly men hanging around the circus; and after narrowly escaping I learned that the rollercoaster was closed for the winter…

And then I gave myself a pep talk in the bathroom and made a fun acrobatic show the next day with some kids cheering me on and now I’m almost back to normal.

By the way, I also joined a new group together with the Lizard. They’re called the “Repressed Mammals Banter Group” or something…and if you thought that talking in-between shows about how unbearable things are in the circus was getting too dangerous…well… you ain’t seen anything yet!!!

It was so great when you were here to make me laugh and gave me hugs. .. Thanks for that!

Love, Parrot

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Monkey: Unfortunately, dear friends, the Parrot left soon after he wrote this to me, he decided to emigrate to a new life in the amazonian jungle.

Director: I think your play is moving in a better direction, still there is too much mention about all sorts of illegal and criminal activities which have no connection to us and it really ruins the moment. This is after all a melodrama about LOVEâ&#x20AC;Ś.

Monkey to himself: Bitch!

Director: What did you say? Nevermind, I have to have dinner now with a sponsor, please do follow my instructions! I am watching youuu!!

Monkeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s assistant/voiceover [Parrot would oftentimes think of his good friend from afar, from his new life in the Amazonian Jungle. How good it was to be free again! The monkey was still too attached to the circus to finally let it go, the Parrot thought. He could always remember how it was to be a wild creature living carelessly nurtured by the jungle. But in a few years he discovered that even his dear Jungle was being destroyed by forces he could not understand then, the same as those eating away at the circus. The Parrot was destined to travel from one place to the next, always looking for something he thought he could return to but never did. ]

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The Working Group for Repressed Mammals, Birds and Reptiles The Zebra: Quiet! Quiet please! We have come here from different realms of the animal kingdom, different species, different languages and customs. And in spite of our differences, we are here to discuss some problems which plague our lives at the circus and even our everyday lives. We are all for the circus, but who is the circus for?

We stand for collective mobilization and autonomy of circus life! It’s time to think where we are, what we want…and tonight, The Flamingo, our talented and beautiful poet has written a song to inspire us! Please, we are listening, dear Flamingo….

Flamingo: Thank you. I dedicate this poem to us, the new oppressed species! (cheers from the audience). Ahem, I begin: “We are all broken by the quality of life” Bear: Oh, he starts so depressing. I need a drink already…

Everyone: SHHHHH!!!!

Flamingo: “We are all damned by the cruel wheel of oppression” Bear: Oh, for the love of…

Everyone: Keep it down, we want to hear!!!

Flamingo [reads dramatically]: “We dreamed ourselves free eagles whose wings could not be chained But we ended up never more than carrion crows They pushed us from our nests, stole our eggs, changed our stories The mockingbirds sings it, it’s all that he knows “Ah what can I do?” say a powerless few With just a lump in your throat and an emptiness in your stomach Pity, I thought a bird’s life was full of dignity But now I can’t even see whose profiting from me My world is of puppets grasping at their threads to survive…”

Everyone except the bear: “AHHH….” Handkerchiefs, teary eyes, running noses all around.

The Zebra: You cut so deep to the core of our suffering, Flamingo. Oh, such lives we do lead nowadays….Freedom , freedom, we want freedom!

Everyone except the bear: Set us free, set us free! We want to create as free animals!

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Bear: What? What is this senseless weeping? Who is this freedom really for? I see no merit in his teary verse. Yes, we are the wretched many, but we still have our dignity, mammals! Sorry, I mean birds as well…and reptilians of course! We still have…we still have justice on our side! And the oppressed will rise! They will rise…. I thought we were here to self-organize!!!

Everyone: Yes, the oppressed will rise! They will rise! We will rise!! Rise up, rise up!

The fox: Who are we here? We can only feel the symptoms of how we’ve come to live and work like a disease; we cannot feel your sense of pride. You speak of dignity when most of us need two or three humiliating acts to make ends meet; we run from one to another while juggling a series of temporary gigs throughout the year. We are owed, we are robbed, we are overworked. We feel unsafe, abused and dispensable. Imagine! Most of us will probably never be able to live our old age in comfort.

Everyone: How do we make a change? Can you show us, Bear? Do you know what to do? Can you lead us?

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Bear: I am not sure that I…. I feel you are weakened by this oppressive circus which runs our lives. Your minds are clouded by the symptoms of the system that enslaves! Eh….There’s somewhere else I have to be tonight….

Fox: Then let us weep! Let us at least express our traumas! Let us confess our own miseries and those which we inflicted upon others too! …I don’t mean ME of course….but I’ve heard rumors that some here do collaborate with our sponsors on dubious event….Well, anyway there is at least some comfort in confession.

Bear: No. It is not the way. I am sure of it. Listen to me I come from a distinguished Marxist tradition!

But nobody listens anymore. Night has fallen and everyone wants to go home and rest after a tense discussion.

Flamingo: So anyway, Bear, here’s a booklet of my poems I wrote recently : “Let it all out!”. So you know, cut me some slack, I was a bit drunk (what can I do in my condition), definitely nervous, I was sad for missing my friend the Stork’s wedding because I couldn’t afford the trip, certainly pissed at life….However, I can proudly say I managed to finish the series probably because of my dear wife who nurtured

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me with cooked fish. She is really great to me, even though I can’t help behaving like the peacock sometimes…you know the ladies really adore poets…what’s a guy to do when…Anyway, I thought your little speech was pretty good tonight…

Bear: Yeah, thanks, I’ll check it out…I need to be somewhere tonight. …But. You know what? No matter what you guys say, I still feel like my own free agent, I can get into as much trouble as I want, no rules, nobody tells me “you can’t do that!”

Freedom of the will, you know! My circus acts are still my own creation! That’s worth holding on to!

Flamingo: I guess I am happy for you if you feel that way…anyway…I wish I had your conviction….Take care. My best to Mrs. Bear!

The Bear thought to himself then: I always knew I was not born a slave. But I am not their leader.

[They part ways.]

Director comes back on the set: I am baaack! How are you my darlings? I hope the play is going well.

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Monkey: You talk like you are so above this. Sitting at high-class tables, making classy conversation by candlelight. Do you ever think that these sponsors are the betrayers of the revolution? Should we not denounce them?

Director: Whatever do you mean! Know you place, Monkey! I put food on your plate while you monkey around behaving “creatively”! Everyone knows that the revolution has been won, and no we are living in a free society, including all you creative critters jumping and thumping on the stage! How little you know of how to manage you own selves! You need a Director! and you need Sponsors!

Monkey: But in whose interests do you work, Director? What is your real play here?Who are the real sponsors? Is all this support so innocent, so free of obligation, so generous and charitable?…Anyway it’s getting late, we must go on with the play.

Director: Listen here, if you use any more of these scenes which we agreed to cut and which harm our friends and sponsors……I WILL STOP YOUR PLAY! Would you like to be in a real revolution?

Silence.

Monkey: No. Director: Then go on with the entertaining story!

Monkey’s assistant spits directly on the stage looking at the two: And now it’s time for the next scene:

Love Changes Everything Fox: Good evening, Tiger, my dear friend! I come from the revolutionary “Working Group for Repressed Mammals, Birds and Reptiles.” There were some intense discussions tonight, you should have come! We even cried, except the Bear who was his stoic self of course. Flamingo wrote such a stirring verse. You know although he is not of my species nor of the “prescribed” gender for me, I’ve always fancied him.

His feathers are so tantalizingly pink! Mmmm…Delicious!….. But why are you so quiet and morose?

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Tiger [begins singing]: You know my story?

I never met a chase that I could not catch never fallen in love and not been bored by it….

I never asked a lover for their help You learn better when you’re always picking lovers who can’t help themselves.

And I don’t want to try so hard anymore I don’t want a fucking lover who makes me feel like a failure…damn!

Fox: I see, amorous problems again. But look around, we are again on the verge of revolutionary times! Lovers come and go like leaves change on trees! The red blood baths have been replaced by red hearts on Valentine’s day! Oh… or is it the other way around?… Valentine’s hearts and blood baths still to come. Everywhere I look there are enemies and hypocrites, hypocrites who pretend to have our best interest at heart… red hearts on Valentine’s Day and blood bath still to come…oh now my head is really on fire!

Tiger: You are as blind as you are smart, dear Fox. Love changes everything. I’m heartbroken and I’m dealing with it as I can…you see, dear Fox you have your hell, I have mine. I don’t even care about the circus or the revolution anymore.

Fox: Oh, I did not mean to belittle your sadness! I mean I was once in a stupid kind of love, a way too in love-love, a you -can’t-possibly-be-this-cool-in-reallife…right? –love. And I knew better, my internal realist said : “well, he’s so out of my league!” And at some point I had to give up on him and returned to the circus routine to make me feel better again….That and I ignored all my phone-calls and ate ice cream like any depressed soul.

Tiger: You know, I woke up this morning, my coffee tasted like shit. I want to shave my whole fur off, all the food tastes rotten. And I feel like everything is working as it should in the world, but everything’s just wrong with me…

Fox: You speak wise words, friend. And I think your own struggles are not so far from what us rebellious beasts have been discussing about and organizing. Yes, yes, love does change everything. You’ve relieved some deep seated apathy I’ve been carrying around. Hallelujah!

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Tiger: What do you mean?

Fox: Love is a whole different animal, you are right. But I just realize that we’ve been arguing only about money and resources as a way to organize ourselves and hit a dead end politically - like tonight’s play (right? looks at the audience) .

We never tried beginning from the position of love as a force for our struggle. Love opens us to move beyond ourselves. Love can bring us to the adventure of creating the change we’ve all been waiting for. To see a different world that we don’t yet know through attachments that give us the real possibility to flourish.

Tiger: After all, you are not half as dumb as you look, my dear.

Fox: Let’s tell the others together! There is no real revolution without free love!

Director: Yes, yes very good! After all this is all about LOVE! To be continued….

Corina Apostol received her B.A. with honors from Duke University, majoring in Art History and

History. Currently Corina is pursuing a doctorate in Art History at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, with a dissertation entitled: “Dissident Education: Socially Engaged Art from the Former East

in Global Context.” Corina also works as a curatorial research fellow at the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Mu-

seum. She is the co-founder of Art Leaks and co-editor of the ArtLeaks Gazette. Corina contributes to The Long April. Texts About Art, IDEA Arts+Society and Critic Atac.

Iulia Toma is a mixed-media artist who works with the means of aesthetic expression through textile, as well as with photography, painting, installation and text in each work. Recently she has been focusing on social issues that she expresses in her own individual way: feminism, women’s rights, interper-

sonal relations of closed communities, the materiality of urban living, social justice. She teaches in the Department of Art & Design, Textile section at the National University of Arts Bucharest, practicing pedagogy in harmony with her personal activity as well as with the innovation required for didactic activity within the artistic discipline.

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Artist Union Fund for a Living Wage Daniel Blochwitz

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My diagram proposes a sort of artist union fund for a living wage within the current political/socio-economic system - thus an evolutionary rather than revolutionary proposal - that tries to re-distribute fractions of financial gains from art sales made by galleries, auction houses and commercially successful artists. These resources would go into a fund that would disperse the money equally amongst all eligible visual artists, selected by rotating and elected jurors of peers and art world workers in monthly paycycles comparable to a basic income. This system would be based on solidarity, in which those who profit most from the current art market come to the aid of those artists whose work or practice can’t sustain their basic needs, because it tends to be too political/radical/critical/conceptual/theoretical or otherwise resistant to mainstream tastes or interests. It could provide a starting point for a future when an art practice can be totally independent of the market and media and subsequently starts to concern itself truly with the issues that are most pressing and/or form-findings that are most innovative. It would benefit the common good and public knowledge. Art would get a chance to reach its most pluralist/democratic/emancipated incarnation and thus also connects most strongly with the “real world”….

Daniel Blochwitz was born in 1973 in East Germany and came to the US in 1995, where he studied visual art, receiving a BFA (Eastern Kentucky University, 1999) and MFA (University of Florida,

2003) degree in photography, the latter with a minor in German Literature and Film, before attending

the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York (2003-04). He has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally.

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Autonomous Research within and/or Beneath the Ruins; Or, We are Finally Getting our Feet Wet Heath Schultz

The beginning portion of this text was originally written as a glossary entry on “autonomous institutions and education” for an unrealized project. Included here is a slightly adapted version.

Also included is a revised and expanded piece I wrote exploring an experimental collective research project I was involved with in graduate school along with several peers. The editors and I found that these previously distinct texts add a certain depth to one another and thus publish them here as one.

For purposes of clarity, I’ve framed the different histories and traditions of “autonomous institutions and education” in four ways. In no particular order I will refer to them as: Activist initiated education; Infrastructural experiments; Free Schools, and finally Free Universities.

Activist initiated education is typically derived directly from political struggles and often have a clear political purpose. Examples here might include: the Highlander Folk School, founded in Tennessee (US) in 1932 to help educate and organize labor and union activists; the highly influential praxis of Paulo Freire and his work with Brazilian illiterate poor;1 and Sojourner Truth Organization’s (US) now infamous How to Think: Dialectical Materialism course, developed in the 1970s as a week-long intensive on Marxist theory.2 Importantly STO’s ‘classes’ were not run by academics, but STO members who were directly involved in organizing workers toward revolutionary ends. More recently we can look at projects like the IWW’s Work People’s College, which seeks to build the skills of union organizers and help educate fellow workers on the historic and contemporary class struggle.3

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Infrastructural experiments are platforms to help facilitate self and co-education projects. They often use networked forms to connect individuals with shared interests of inquiry and usually function through the establishment of a website or other common site of exchange, enabling those interested to find each other.

Perhaps most visible here is the arrival of listservs, wikis, discussion boards, and other online sites of exchange. While the quality and political leanings of these efforts vary greatly, perhaps two of the more productive examples and concerted efforts are the discussion-based listservs Nettime and Edu-Factory in their initial form. While both projects have now become closer to an announcement list, originally they were structured as rigorous critical exchanges between intellectuals across the globe. Nettime, inaugurated in 1995, was primarily focused on the emerging technologies around the web and its corresponding sociopolitical conditions; importantly this also led to a high degree of self-reflexivity on the form of the archived listserv itself. Following a similar form, Edu-Factory initiated their study in 2007 focused on “university transformations, knowledge production and forms of conflict, in which nearly 500 activists, students and researchers the world over have taken part.”4 While these two examples make deliberate use of the global reach of the network and remain self-reflexive about their form, the listserv has become a ubiquitous site of critical exchange and self-education for all kinds of activists and intellectuals.

A quite different use of similar technology can be found with the Public School, started in Los Angeles (US) as a web platform in which one could suggest a course.5 Courses proposed would provide a description, where the individual was located, and any other relevant information. Those interested in participating in a given course could make that known by simply clicking a button, and when enough people have expressed interest, the participants exchange info and self-organize how they want to proceed. This particular web platform has now been exported and adapted to various cities across the world.

Notably these projects bear a striking resemblance to the ideas of Ivan Illich’s concept of ‘learning webs,’ articulated in his book Deschooling Society (1971) in which he calls for a peer-matching communication network very much like the Public School provides, in order to connect those with similar interests outside of statesponsored educational environments.

Free Schools are most closely associated with anarchist pedagogy and can be traced back to the Modern Schools of the early 20th century. The first Escuela Moderna was started in Spain by Francisco Ferrer in 1901 as a counter-educational program influenced by anarchist philosophy. Not long after Ferrer’s inaugural efforts in 1909 the infamous Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, with many others, started a Modern School in New York City.6 Importantly, the Modern School movement primarily emphasized working with children as an alternative to state-sponsored

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schooling. This tradition has continued and transformed into what is now often termed ‘unschooling’ and ‘deschooling’ movements.7 Today Free Schools typically take the form of volunteer initiated workshops and classes, often around ideas related to anti-capitalism but certainly not exclusively so. Projects like the Experimental College of the Twin Cities (EXCO) (US) for example takes the form of the Free School but does not necessarily remain adhered to its anarchist roots in the courses it offers.8 EXCO mixes the use of a connecting platform and a free community educational space in which community members offer free classes.

Free Schools have also proven influential to various artist-initiated and experimental projects like the Free/Slow University of Warsaw, Universidad Nómada in Spain or the now defunct Copenhagen Free University.9 While each of these projects has a distinct character, they all share a commitment to experimental research as well as non-traditional ways of expanding public engagement with knowledge production and their respective communities.

One can see that we’ve quickly overlapped into what I’m calling the Free University. I use the term Free University because of its rhetorical associations with a high level of intellectual rigor found in upper-level academia and because these projects tend to be distinct from the anarchist histories of Free Schools as well as public self-education projects like EXCO. For better or worse, participants that are highly educated through the academic system often initiate many of the projects in this paradigm.

At their foundation and what sets free universities apart from the previous categories I’ve suggested, is their commitment to advance a theoretical and/or analytical engagement with contemporary struggles, geopolitical configurations, or other leftist and anti-capitalist concerns. 16 Beaver and Edu-Factory are perhaps the most visible examples. With many free university projects the form or self-organization is important due to the realization that the ways we produce knowledge also generates ways of knowing and being.

From the outside, free universities might look indistinguishable from any self-organized seminar, reading group, or study club. They often take the form of intensive multi-day workshops on a given topic with many participants, or longer-term investigations with a smaller number of participants. Many of these projects have taken particular inspiration from Colectivo Situaciones’ theorization of ‘militant research’ or the Autonomist inspired ‘co-research.’10 In particular, there has been significant theorizing around this collective process of knowledge production with an emphasis on the theoretical and political questions that surround autonomy.11 Brian Holmes comments on autonomy and the influential research project Continental Drift:

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…There is no possibility of generating a critical counter-power—or counter-public, or counter-public sphere—when there is no more search for relative autonomy, or when the collective self (autos) no longer even asks the question of how to make its own law (nomos). So the importance of this kind of project is to use it as a moment of experimentation, not just in the quest for the perfect theory of the perfect procedure, but cosmologically, to rearrange the stars above your head. Such events don’t often happen, the only solution is to do-it-yourself.12 Related to the question of autonomy, this experimental trajectory often looks to notions of the ‘common,’ as a concept that may provide a line of flight from the privatizing nature of capitalism. Edu-Factory Collective writes: ...The common is, from a class point of view, the escape route from the crisis of the public/private dialectic [...] When we speak of the common, far from existing in nature, is therefore produced: it is always at stake in constituent processes, capable of destroying relations of exploitation and liberating the power of living labor.13 Here the problems and possibilities of autonomy and common converge, and the forms—ways of being and collaborating—of collective research become important.

In short, we cannot overcome capitalism if we do not also find new ways of producing knowledge collectively that reject logics of strictly individualized study, competition, and the privatization of knowledge, i.e. the logics of capitalism in both form and content. **************** The following is a text written in August 2011 as an introduction to a now defunct project called Self-Organized Seminar (SOS).14 Along with several of my peers, we began this endeavor in order to establish a collective way of working and studying in the fraught space of our shared MFA program. The text below was written at the beginning of our efforts and lacks several lessons we learned by working together for the remaining two years of our graduate program, but I believe it remains a useful resource to frame an experiment that attempts to thwart the professionalizing and individualizing tendencies so present in creative graduate programs. The glossary above helps situate our project; most significantly, we took several cues from free university experiments.

Collective members of Self-Organized Seminar were: Brendan Baylor, Kristen Degree, Kelly Gallagher, Josh Hoeks, Christopher Pickett, Heidi Ratanavanich, Corinne Teed, and myself. I would like to thank them here—this text would be impossible without their wonderful minds and hearts.

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Following images: Self-Organized Seminar (SOS), In the Shadow of Debt: Participatory Relief!, workshop at the University of Iowa, 2012

Over the course of our first year or two while working toward studio arts MFAs at a large research university, a few friends and I began an on-going informal conversation about our frustrations with our respective programs, the neoliberal university, our classes, and various other problems.

We felt that our art programs were failing us, unable to provide a theoretical and political footwork for what we wanted to do in our practices. Our programs were beholden to the confines of art disciplines and we were pushed into PhD seminars, looking for a deeper and more textured understanding of our varying political interests. In turn, we found ourselves frustrated by those seminars. While initially interesting, they usually struck us as only concerned with the discipline specific paradigms and quickly meandered into irrelevant and apolitical academic indulgence, excusing itself (and thus students) from any real political possibilities of worldly relevance or responsibility.

In the hallways between classes or at night during studio sessions, over beers and coffee, we found ourselves arriving at something of a critique of the surely common problems listed above. But we also found that we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to move forward, how to make critical work in such a structurally problematic environment.

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We realized we spent all of our time trying to explain ourselves to our peers— “What is wrong with getting an MFA? If you hate it so much, why are you here?

What is wrong with Critique sessions? What is wrong with the University?”—Legitimate questions that we still can only sort of answer.

We came up with not so much an answer to our problems or a deeply sophisticated critique, but rather an idea for an experiment among friends with common interests in twisting away from the normative and cowed paradigms of university Art production. And so we arrive at our not-so-creatively named project—“self-organized

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seminar.”15 Shorthand we’ve taken to calling the experiment SOS; perhaps tellingly, if inadvertently, suggesting a double meaning—Help! Save our souls! But no longer do we look to anyone but ourselves.

In large part the project looks like a reading group, an autonomous research project, or maybe militant research. Basically, the plan is this: we take classes that are not especially time-intensive—no seminars, but instead primarily workshops where we can focus on “our” work (a privilege of art programs). This extra time and energy is re-directed into this self-organized research project, reading self-selected texts and meeting once a week to discuss and figure out our next steps. It is a long way of saying that we divert our energies away from our schoolwork and toward a collective project, toward developing our political interests through experimentation and communal support.

We want to deepen our friendships, our ability to collaborate and to comprehend.

We want to learn how to resist and build a new way of working in an environment that feels overbearing, normalizing, and paralyzing: to borrow from one inspiration for the project—to begin to occupy and/or evacuate.16 We desire a double-movement of pushing back while twisting away.

We decided we would start with two brief and wonderful texts: Brian Holmes’ “Continental Drift: Activist Research, From Geopolitics to Geopoetics” and Marto Malo de Molina’s “Common Notions Part 2: Institutional Analysis, Participatory Action-Research, Militant Research.”17 From Molina we learn the beginnings of radical critiques of institutionalized practices, that the purported neutrality of an institution “is a trap: one is always compromised.” Molina offers us much insight from theorist, political militant, and radical psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, especially his vehement condemnation of the normative practices of psychoanalysis. But we also learn roots of activist research projects—from feminist consciousness-raising to Brazilian pedagogical theorist and activist Paulo Freire’s poverty centered and empowering ‘action-research,’ designed primarily to educate illiterate peasants. Molina also provides notes on the (at times) heady practice of militant research.18 Militant research is important in its materialist inspiration, she notes, where content and power flows through the body, simultaneously inscribing it. We learn that the gestures we make, the art we produce, inside and through the institution are swallowed and digested into its belly—always growing, always making itself stronger. Militant Research always begins with the concrete, with our own experiences as subjects. Politics and resistance can’t be separated from the micro-gestures we make, the ways in which we inhabit and use our bodies as well as the spaces in which they exist. Thus we find ourselves discussing some kind of exit route, or Guattari’s ‘lines of flight.’ SOS! We’ll try and slip out the back door on company time, returning only when we have to.

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The co-production of critical knowledge generates rebellious bodies. Thinking about rebellious practices provides/gives value and potency to those same practices.

Collective thinking engenders common practice. Therefore, the process of knowledge production is inseparable from the process of subject production or subjectification and vice versa.19 Until finally our new rebellious bodies can stand on their own with affinities, deterritorialized from its original body and becoming something new with others, something capable of resistance, communalism, and struggle.

But first we must remake ourselves and re-chart our territories. Another inspiration for SOS, Brian Holmes, who has with many collaborators been in the forefront of experimental and very committed research projects,20 states this clearly in our preschool reading: [...] disciplines have to be overcome, dissolved into experimentation. Autonomous inquiry demands a rupture from the dominant cartographies. Both compass and coordinates must be reinvented if you really want to transform the dynamics of a changing world-system. Only by disorienting the self and uprooting epistemic certainties can anyone hope to inject a positive difference into the unconscious dynamics of the geopolitical order.â&#x20AC;?21 And so we have something of an exit plan, something of a compass, pointing us toward each other.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m writing now three years later after the slow and probably natural death of the SOS in early 2014 due to our eventual graduating and busy-ness. It is difficult to describe such a collective process in retrospect. It was very much about our move-

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ments together, struggling to learn and grow in ways that oppose, in practice, the competitive logic of the art world and academic environments, and in a broader context, capitalism. We were right to look to Marto Malo de Molina and Colectivo Situaciones as signposts with their emphasis on both an embodied and intellectual collective struggle in efforts to constitute a common space. I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to gauge the success of our project; I can only say that it was immensely helpful for me, and I think for my collaborators, to think carefully about collectively politicizing our praxis against the professionalizing logic of our MFA programs. In isolation, our efforts may seem insignificant, selfish even, divorced from on-the-ground struggles (indeed, we constantly circled around this question), but when viewed alongside dozens of other autonomous and experimental anti-capitalist research efforts like 16 Beaver (NYC) and Slow-Motion Action/Research Collective (Chicago), perhaps one can begin to see an extremely significant pattern of reimagining how intellectual and creative activity can function outside, against, or even within our oppressive institutions.

SOS and similar projects are resistant to easy packaging. It was messy, as all experiments are. The lessons we learned, or perhaps the questions we learned to ask better, are too complicated to unpack in this brief essay. Here what I want to avoid is summarizing SOS as an art collective that did periodic projects and events, even though we were art students involved in a collective process that sometimes involved projects and events. It sounds silly to make the distinction, but it is an important one that marks the possibility of locating a new collective way of working (to occupy and/or evacuate) in a relentlessly capitalist environment.

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While I am hesitant to sum up SOS as simply creating a handful of projects, there were a few moments when we came out of our collective shell in an attempt to reach out to our peers. Notably we facilitated two events: the first a seminar on institutional critique,22 and the second a collaborative print workshop we called In the Shadow of Debt: Participatory Relief! With both events we attempted to bridge the gap between our anti-capitalist experiments and the more mainstream liberal tendencies of many of our peers. Because the institutional critique seminar is relatively self-explanatory, I’d like to briefly describe our printmaking workshop.

In the Shadow of Debt took place at a printmaking conference held at University of Iowa (US), where we were all students. We wanted to problematize the uncritical embrace of the prestigious degree (UI is a highly-ranked Printmaking program) as well as the conference’s largely apolitical programming. We found the conference to be paradigmatic of many of the problems we were exploring as a group, namely the celebration of hermetic academic/artistic culture that systematically denies its complacency in the neoliberal university that serves capitalism so well. The conference itself was not especially egregious, and yet its banality struck us as a good spot for a gentle intervention. We wanted to insist that conference attendees recognize the unsustainable and problematic ways in which labor is exploited in the university while students accrue debt that will prove near impossible to pay off in any sustainable way. Even more we wanted to suggest debt as a global condition, and draw connections between debt, precarity, and political movements across around the world.

In a rather simple and arguably timid gesture, we asked conference attendees—our friends, peers, and strangers—to print their cumulative debt on a screen-printed image of a our university as a brain-factory. The result was dozens of printed posters with dollar amounts ranging from $0 to $160,000 or so (had we currently been at a private school that number would’ve surely been even higher). We also took photographs of each participant, each holding up their poster, their burden. Formally the photographs recalled both a mug shot—convicts holding their name and number for the State to keep track of them—as well as a student who joyfully holds up his award for the camera. “This is my college degree, it cost $160,000,” a caption could say. We all sort of laughed together at the high dollar amounts with a certain exasperation and thinly veiled sadness. We knew one another’s exorbitant debt was shared but still distributed unevenly. We cheered with happiness (and probably jealousy) at the few who had printed “$1,000” or even one participant’s “$0.00!” I sheepishly printed my own: “$600.” I was embarrassed to admit to my peers that I have been luckier than they have. Others coyly printed “TOO MUCH!!!” or simply “∞,” not willing to go along with our requests entirely.

We did all this while a haphazardly curated soundtrack played off our iPods.

The only criteria for inclusion: songs about money. I remember Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me), Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems,” Patty Smith’s “Free Money.”

And on and on. The paradoxes and ambivalences of money present in our cultural

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relics audibly lingered over us, blurring together, drowning out, lightening the mood.

In the flier we made inviting people to participate, we stated: “To publicly state our personal debt declares our vulnerability to a financial and political system that we share with millions. […] Acknowledging our academic debt enables us to connect ourselves, as debt-ridden graduate students, with the precarious everywhere […].

We ask that you join us in making our precarity evident—to wear our debt on our sleeve and gesture toward a larger movement.”

I think it is a mistake to characterize SOS as an art collective. To do so would be to remain stagnant in precisely the way artists too often are: content with this ‘gesture.’

Part of what was meaningful, for me at least, in working with SOS was that it was decidedly not a gesture, but a real attempt at remaking how we could work together while recognizing all of the ambivalences and contradictions inherent in our lives as subjects and students in a capitalist world. It was a small attempt maybe, but one that continues to look for connections in the constellation of others like us around the world. Just like our debt, our struggles and experiments are yours, too.

Heath Schultz is an artist and writer living in Austin, TX. Mostly a researcher who sometimes finds ways to make his thinking public, he is interested in understanding the relationship between radical

politics and cultural production, and struggles to balance a practice between activism, production, and theorizing.

Endnotes 1 Freire’s major theoretical contribution is of course Pedagogy of the Oppressed, [1968] New York:

Continuum, 2000.; See also Education for Critical Consciousness, New York: Continuum, 2005, in which much of his pedagogical methodology is discussed.

2 Description and course materials available here: http://www.sojournertruth.net/htt.html. Accessed May 2014.

3 http://workpeoplescollege.org. Accessed May 2014.

4 Edu-Factory Collective, “Introduction: All Power to Self-Education!” in Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory, eds. Edu-Factory Collective. New York: Autonomedia, 2009. p 0.

5 http://thepublicschool.org.

6 For this history of anarchist education see Paul Avrich’s The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States, Oakland: AK Press, 2005.

7 For more on this see Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, ed. Matt Hern, Oakland: AK Press, 2008.

8 http://www.excotc.org/. Accessed May 2014.

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9 Free / Slow University of Warsaw: http://www.wuw-warsaw.pl/wuw.php?lang=eng; Universidad Nómada: http://www.universidadnomada.net; Copenhagen Free University: http://www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk. Accessed May 2014.

10 See Colectivo Situaciones “On the Researcher-Militant” available at:

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en. On co-research see Marta Malo de Molina “Common Notions, part 1: Workers-inquiry, Co-research, Consciousness-raising” available at: http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en. Accessed May 2014.

11 For a working definition of autonomy, see 16 Beaver’s glossary developed in 2008: http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/glossary2008.htm. Accessed May 2014.

12 Brian Holmes, “Articulating the Cracks in World Power,” available online at: www.16beavergroup. org/drift/readings/16b_bh_articulatingcracks.pdf.

13 Edu-Factory Collective, “Introduction: All Power to Self-Education!,” p 11.

14 An archive of our work can be viewed at selforganizedseminar.wordpress.com.

15 An archive of our projects as well as an extensive digital library is available at selforganizedseminar. wordpress.com.

16 http://occupyeverything.org/. Accessed May 2014.

17 Brian Holmes, “Continental Drift: Activist Research, From Geopolitics to Geopoetics,” avail-

able at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/5-Xholmes.pdf. Marto Malo de Molina’s

“Common Notions Part 2: Institutional Analysis, Participatory Action-Research, Militant Research,” available at: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0707/malo/en. Accessed May 2014.

18 “Militant Research,” while summarized by Molina, is typically attributed to the Argentinian group Colectivo Situaciones. Theoretical footwork for militant research can be found in their text “On the

Researcher-Militant,” available at: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en. Accessed May 2014.

19 Molina, “Common Notions Part 2.”

20 See especially “Continental Drift,” (16beavergroup.org/drift/) an on-going project in collaboration with 16 Beaver and several others. For more of Holmes’ writing see his blog brianholmes.wordpress. com. Accessed May 2014.

21 Holmes, “Continental Drift.”

22 Readings from the seminar can be found here:

http://selforganizedseminar.wordpress.com/institutional-critique.

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SPACED, ART OUT OF PLACE The experiences of the Free University of Liverpool and the CyberMohalla project as examples of alternative education Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage)

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed.

And right there is the cursed paradox of it.1 ( Jack London, 1909)

Preamble In the decades of the 1980s and the 1990s, alienation was described as a cognitive space overcharged with nervous and conditioning incentives to act, frequently deriving from external forces to select and exclude individuals who fail to meet often badly regulated specific requirements. The dramatic economical crisis of the recent years has contributed to making individual and household debt a post post-modern form of slavery, due to the toxic effects of unscrupulous financial policies.

Within this context, higher education has also become an issue linked almost exclusively to the economic status of the student and his/her family, or his/her possibility of contracting a considerable loan at a certain interest to be able to complete his/her studies. This has created a form of non-meritocratic selection and unjust exclusion, evidencing another discrepancy in the idea of globalization, whose great promise now lies in ruins. The relentless pressure of production aimed at satisfying the constrictive logic of the capitalistic markets and their financial oligarchies, weakening the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will and his/her decision-making capacity to act differently, paints the picture of a dystopian future. As a result, the conditions for the growth of new communities are stranded. To begin to reverse this situation, new philosophical categories are needed, and with them, new ways of praxis.4

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The deception of the artist statement In today’s global contemporary art scene, a large part of research results/public presentations seem too much encircled in the manifestation of artist statements, oftentimes seditious, redundant, pretentious, and discussed only to embellish a certain type of work. Does an artwork need a statement to be understood, or explained as such to the fruiter?

From my point of view, I see a ‘quid’ (almost a habit, a tendency) forced and compulsory in all this, probably deriving from an a priori intentional attempt of hoped/ presumed self-affirmation at any cost, also due to the fact that more and more colleges and universities insist on requiring artist statements as a means to be able to compete in the art world, to gain visibility and be recognized. Sometimes an artist can obtain the desired effects of having the artwork accepted, but only when his/her statement luckily matches with the criteria and procedures of the cultural structure to which the statement is addressed.

This common routine of encasing one’s own art in well-compiled artist statements clashes with the needs for changes in contemporary society and it hinders innovative transformation of cultural production. There is not much difference between the words ‘submitted’ and ‘submissive’: to submit implies a form of implicit obedience to the existing system (and an overall acceptance of it), which, given the current situation, seems really hard to avoid for a multitude of artists, often even for the ones that through their art try to criticize openly that same system.

Almost anyone who has to submit an artwork or a project is subjected to fulfill artist statement procedures of a certain kind. By doing so, the risks are multiple: an excess of self-serving and presumption of the artist towards him/herself and his/her artwork; the progressive impoverishment of the artwork to the level of a mere ‘artist statement outcome’ albeit frequently not matching the reality of the artwork itself; the withering of the artist’s creative process because of forced frustration, feeling obliged to attempt and satisfy those requirements and then, in most cases, being rejected; the loss of the experiential benefits that a creative path pursued with constant dedication and by adhering to it completely with no compromise can bring Paradoxically, by over-producing artist statements and often assuming them as a best way to emerge from a condition of anonymity, artists also undergo a form of external surveillance, nourishing that “watch-over you” system that rules, and that artists simultaneously criticize and strive to change. It is like labeling oneself as a Beckettian flesh for the grind, a mouse for the pied piper, presenting artworks, which seem to be just surrogate evidences of well-adjusted written words.

Since the last decade I have observed in art schools in general the increasing trend is to brainwash students by telling them that an artist statement is prior to any-

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thing. It is like saying that what counts the most is the etiquette, not the artwork, not the thorough study of history of art, nor the history of thought. In some MA classes where I’ve given lectures and seminars (that one must pay $ 25.000 per year or more to attend), I sadly witnessed the low level of students’ knowledge about art.

This lack of knowledge was to the detriment of the quality of their work and ability to develop interesting questions on art issues. On the other hand, they all shared the same ability to formulate elaborate artist statements of their artworks, which in general lacked the very poetics and concepts flaunted in those statements.

The fault is not with the students at all; rather I think it is due to the lack of concern and carelessness of the institutional educational structures. It is much easier and expeditious to teach how to compile a statement than to deepen the comprehension of art making. Art today is often taught in univocal ways. However, I argue that a capillary approach to it should be facilitated, according to the talent that each student has and shows, and that should be nourished with care, commitment and patience, offering a wide spectrum of different creative processes. More than anything, students should first and foremost be taught ‘how to learn’ to make art, through effortlessly open dialogues, and in a climax of liberated situations, which educational/formative ‘enclaves’ (also often elitist) don’t seem to provide.

Theoretical studies are fundamental of course, for they can also indicate choices and possibilities on the many ways of how to practice art. Yet today the excess of theory, rather than its convergence in artistic praxis, has led to an over-production of empty abstractions, as this is what the system demands.

On lieu of such approaches, the duty of an art school should be to increase understanding on what it means to express someone’s most profound urges through art.

In short: it’s elusive and misleading to believe that by producing artist statements, an artist will actually be fairly rewarded by having given the chance to “whoso pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil”5. Yet, there is also a more delicate question to take into account that involves the sphere of personal ethics: to prefix artist statements to research and practice makes precarious one’s own intellectual honesty.

Some examples of alternative forms of education In terms of free educational/formative experiments, the three years adventure of the Free University of Liverpool, which was born as a protest and founded in November 2010 “during the hiatus of the students and the public sector worker marches against the ConDem government’s plans to privatize public sectors of higher education,”6 deserves attention, for the courage of openly contrasting that institutional trend and its consolidated structure. With a program of radical, creative self-education and viral interventions to dis-establish, disseminate, propagate, radiate and grow cultural praxis in terms of active cooperation, the FUL was open to anyone who wished to engage in a critical exploration.

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FUL closed in October 2013, but its effects still resonate, having become an example of a lively community of creative resistance, where people learned to work together, work with others, deal with difference, determining freely when art and activism can work together and when they don’t. It is an example of a pro-active gathering reunion, living, learning, participating, and giving birth to new modes of knowledge.7 Of course there are many other interesting experiences of alternative formative educational art praxis. Some of them can be found in the cultural programs of foundations and artist-in-residencies around the globe, which promote and support artist-run-initiatives, free formative courses and internships for students: Sarai CSDS (New Delhi), Taipei Artist Village, Alumnos47 Foundation with its Moving Library (Mexico City), C32 Performing Arts Space (Venice), to cite just a few.

These structures are born not just to host, but to collaborate actively with artists and other cultural institutions to create opportunities for art students to develop research, raise and increase awareness on art issues, share ideas, implement audience interests, thereby producing art projects and opening such practices to national and international partners on the basis of fruitful cultural/cooperative exchange.

It is worthwhile to describe the literary case of the Delhi based collective of young researcher-practitioners and writers CyberMohalla Ensemble, that has emerged in working-class and quasi-legal settlements of the city. They gathered together within the project called Cybermohalla (“mohalla” means “neighborhood” in Hindi), a network of dispersed labs for experimentation and exploration among young people in different neighborhoods of the city.

The CyberMohalla project was founded in May, 2001 by a collaborative initiative of The Sarai Programme at CSDS8 and Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education9, a Delhi based NGO for the creation of nodes of popular digital culture in Delhi, through the settlement of generative cultural spaces and creative hubs. It addresses the intersection between information technology and creativity in the lives of young people who live in a highly unequal society. It is a community of young practitioners with difficult access to proper education, some of them living in the poorest districts of the city. “Sarai CSDS organized for them spaces and provide the structure where these young people can now share each other thoughts, ideas and creative energies in media labs located in the working class areas of Delhi. The young people who come to these media labs are between the ages of 15 to 23. At the lab, they work with media forms (photography, animation, sound recordings, online discussion lists and text) to create cross media works, texts, collages, posters and wall magazines. Their writings and images can be seen as a rich database of narrative, comment, observation, imaginative play and reflection on the contested circumstances of life in the sprawling urban metropolis of Delhi. The labs are selfregulated spaces. That is, the daily routine of the lab is decided upon by them, they

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are in charge of the maintenance of the lab and the responsibility to imagine and realise the future of the lab is theirs.”10 These examples represent cultural structures addressed to people who are interested in learning and exploring knowledge in an unconventional way in order to collaborate with a wider community and generate critical research insights and knowledge in the public domain.

Here, the shifting of the emotions, the actualization of the critical thinking, the relationship with the other, the effectiveness of group dynamics, the contact and conflict are the cornerstones of the learning and creative process. When a community sharing, albeit temporary, takes shape, it becomes possible to investigate one’s expressive necessities through the eyes of the other, triggering a willingness for change and transformation on a cooperative basis.

Designed to structure a meta-dialogue between self and the other, between the world of one’s vision and the vision of the world of the other, CyberMohalla has become also a place that functions on the symbolic and material level at the same time: a contextualized place, where one can freely explore the endless possibilities that art making, creative writings and the use of technological media involve, as well as other ways of living, as time based discovery.

Specifically, Cybermohalla is a project, which aims also to propose alternative criteria of cultural production in terms of social and civil intervention through forwardthinking, to disarm crystallized socio-cultural patterns and norms and try to plan for the future.

To encounter and work creatively with other people implies also the convergence of different expressive behavioral manifestations (besides difference in languages) that lead to an integration of several instances: bodily, cognitive, emotional, intuitive, creative, and in terms of time (past, present, future), relation (I-Thou, I-world), and body (listening and interaction).

For instance, to explore different modes of relationship, or to analyze the meaning inherent to the variety of daily rituals that each one has,, respecting the imagination, the world of emotions and the variegated ways of expression of the other, means also to transform a place of cultural production into a protected space of free access and gathering open reunions, where it becomes possible to share experiences and ideas dialectically, without feeling too much subdued by external pressure and conventional censorship.

A space conceived to be as an experiential ‘lieux de rencontre’ to research the potential of creative human resources and discuss limitations less critically and more purposefully, is also a place of mutual understanding in which the differences are enhanced and respectfully highlighted, and hence where the possibilities of listening, realize and creatively making are made possible and implement.

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The usefulness of establishing new and reinforce already existing professional art laboratorial activities serves also to reduce the boundaries between theory and practice, privileging open communication and confrontation between facilitators and participants to explore the limits of creativity and its extendibility.

The investigation is always a crucial moment of any creative process and should be principally conduced throughout an active participation and continuously tested.

Hence, ways of expression, interactions with the others, within reality, with auxiliary tools, and/or technological and digital media, should not be left to the a mere theoretical realm.

For instance, what should normally happen during the preparation of an intensive art workshop is at first an explanation of activities and overall delivery, in order to introduce and offer the participants the various ways of how they can transform their own ideas and concepts into practice, which in turn can be changed and developed both on an individual and collective scale, acknowledging the cutting-edge existing between ‘what I want to do, and what someone wants to do with what I want to do’.

In our workshop activity experiences (which combine different performing arts and social/experimental theatre praxis, and that we organize annually in synergy and cooperation with cultural institutions worldwide), we freely analyze the many human existential conflicts (at the core of our research), as well as the often hidden relationships between people and their discomforts/diseases (social-psychic-spiritual).

We always ask our participants to keep in mind that more than a technical one, it is an aesthetic control of the surrounding space/environment through their own body language and signs (holy but empty space at the same time) that can lead them to produce an original creative, meaningful imagery, and set him/her into a positive open confrontation with him/herself and the others.

Here, it is not a matter of interpreting something a priori assumed, but to operate practically in accordance with one’s own human nature, to realize its full potential, as stated by Socrates, “a self-aware person must act completely within its capabilities to their pinnacle, to become aware of every fact (and its context) relevant to his existence, if [s/]he wishes to attain self-knowledge”.11 This means to indicate new possible meanings, render tangibly a concept, or even stir up and provoke emotions (inside us, inside the others) to externalize what is hidden inside someone’s own heart, and ultimately valorizing life experience.

A major problem is that many art schools founded on the ashes of post-structuralism and postmodernism are both heavily theoretical and followed a fragmented, almost anti-authoritarian course, ending up being absorbed in narcissistic and near nihilistic manifestations.

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Thus, even though contemporary art issues are increasingly multifaceted and address many different areas simultaneously, in terms of art practice I often see that still persists a critical habit “of ‘yes or no’, ‘right or wrong’ statement, as if – in general - we still feel more comfortable with dichotomies: to opposites”.12 Therefore, rather then observing the actual choices made by agents in practice, contemporary art continues instead to be examined from a top-down point of view, almost forgetting that in art anything is a matter of giving and delivering through the specificity of a ‘poiesis’, an instrument of creative freedom to explore and discover unknown territories, which expand and change continuously.

On the other hand, in laboratorial activities as the ones described above, the facilitators stimulate each participant to adopt and form their own methodology (both individual and collective), as anything new that will be discovered along the laboratorial creative process is to express and realize new ideas. The use of irregular forms and the making of mistakes are necessary for artists in order not operate slavishly according to pre-determined rules and norms, to exercise a free choice (consciously and responsibly), to get completely involved (directly and personally), to get off the ground, to put themselves over the barrel, to bring into focus and undermine their own beliefs and prejudices, to arrange, to tune, to compare, to confront, to offer, to sharpen, to bare, to uncover physically and emotionally, to arrange, to put away, to tweak, to put at risk, to hazard, to lay it on the line, to hit for, to strike down, to ground, to dump, to put on, to banish their own credos, to try out, to tax to the limit, to meet, to collect, to edge and hive, to drop down their own arms, to hammer away at something, to get started, to break into, to sleuth and get forth, to enjoy whatever state of being, and to also rely on weakness.

What in art schools is hardly taught is the nature of the psychic actions within their process of art making: what an artist expresses through his/her artwork is not just a well-rendered representation/outcome of a concept/idea. It is also what emerges from the full concordance of his/her own inner imagination with the context around him/her, a sign of a profound experience, and of his/her inner life.

Conclusion The example of the CyberMohalla project is noteworthy because it has been clearly conceived to offer a dynamic space of learning and subsequent cultural production, where is actually the process and the practice of the creative writings (in the case of the Ensemble) that contribute to develop a fruitful critical thinking and a propositive dialogue between all the participants. Here the direct encounters on a daily basis are fundamental, the confrontation of ideas is crucial, and the collection of personal life-stories are essential to stimulate and implement participatory collective commitment, and which in turn become sources of inspiration

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As there are many different languages spoken around the world, so in art there are many different poetics. To bring at least just a few together into a laboratorial situation, crossing and combining them, means to provide an open space where a temporary community can freely live and work.

These kinds of operations offer the possibility of breaking out of the idea of the cocooned global village, and to explore inquires deepening reflection, flexibility, sincerity, both individually and collectively. In art, on a social level, we shouldn’t forget that everyone is a legitimate subject.

Given the short time allocated between conception, subsequent corruption and production of artworks, a laboratorial situation today should strongly consider and hold the focus on the value of spontaneous creativity, as this is what is sought most intimately, and also what might attract a new possible audience that more and more calls for genuineness and authenticity.

In the case of the CyberMohalla Ensemble, each of the members had several stories to tell, equally valid, interesting and moving. These young writers have been welcomed to gather, live and confront their differences of analysis, and were then motivated to meet again to give birth to a mutual creative process of productive exchange of information and expressions about their personal and private lives, which then were re-experienced collectively. The CyberMohalla Ensemble, interlacing different individualities together, has been able to transform all those stories into a compact literary art form, which is the artistic manifestation of the young storytellers themselves, delivered with to an increasing public of readers.

Over the years, the collective has produced a very wide range of materials, practices, works, texts, and installations. Their work has been circulated and shown internationally in online journals, on radio broadcasts, in publications, as well a being featured in contemporary and new media art exhibitions. Their most significant publication include “Bahurupiya Shehr” (Rajkamal, Delhi 2007), “Trickster City” (Penguin India, 2010), a best seller collection of vibrant short real stories of 20 young writers of the Ensemble, “No Apologies for the Interruption” (Sarai, Delhi, 2011), an image-text exploration of post-piracy media encounters.13 Their last main project “Cybermohalla Hub”, in collaboration with Frankfurt-based architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller, is an installation that represents a consolidation of the conversations, designs and efforts from over the last few years to carve out a language and a practice for imagining and animating structures of cultural spaces in contemporary cities. Sternberg Press (Berlin) has published their book “Cybermohalla Hub” in 2012.14 To establish a space as an open source of free cultural production as constant work in progress and extending personal knowledge and reciprocity are key factors.

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When the investigation focuses on a common ground, the usefulness of a shared territory of multiple experimentations is continuously tested. Constant feedback is necessary to increase mutual trust and collective achievements. Shared remembrances, ideas, actions, interventions and expressions, when they flow together become fermented material at the same time being civil, social, and poetical, resulting from an aesthetic course, which carries within clearness and significance of a broader creative process.

The success of a formative/educational laboratorial activity, such as the case of the CyberMohalla project, is founded on pinpointing solutions in terms of praxis and applied research, by fostering technical knowledge (pedagogy) and functioning as a cultural engine within the local community to stimulate cooperation and integration. The effects of promoting intercultural and intergenerational dialogue and social exchange concretely enlivens the relationship also between culturally distant individuals, which process-led practices of art conceived in such a way may reunite.

Aiming at exchange and social interference, those kind of laboratorial practices become means to activate a potential cultural energy, displaying anomalous and exceptional experiences, where art and life coincide. Putting into relation and giving visibility to the many differences, and making them visible to benefit the growth of a community, allows for the communication between its members to be founded on empathy and reciprocity.

In general, academic discussions tend to dismiss independent cultural activities by saying that they often belong to an amateur sphere that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t demand rigor and discipline, detectable in cultural products of poor quality, sometimes also presumptuously accompanied by the excuse of a political, social or didactic message. There is some truth to this of course, but also something vicious is detectable, probably because the established cultural institutions, which hold the power of professing an idea of education, refuse to accept the validity of these cases, instead of opening and evaluating new possible fruitful and productive models of learning, as the ones promoted by the mentioned realities above.

The CyberMohalla Ensemble functions because it consists of a well-coordinated, non-hierarchical group. Knowledge is shared and learned reciprocally, because of their continuous encounters on the basis of given tasks that must be fulfilled almost always together. Their approach to creative writings and art speaks of social engagement, individual and community dynamics in relation to their urban settling, personal identity and its contamination and transformation by living in specific environments, tracking stories, experiences, ideas, expectations, local issues, past and present situations, living and working conditions directly on site.

Dialogues among the members represent always a crucial moment in the various phases of the their working processes, specifically functioning to understand in

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depth the collected materials about people’s stories and what they see as alternatives to their present condition. This stimulates a mutual, cooperative exchange on a re-cognitive level, where the evidences and witnesses of each social and individual experience in this very context could be then transformed into art. 15 Here the idea is that all should become a collective shaped outcome, a “real people” project, which finally transforms into pure poetic/artistic matter (the final product).

This ‘modus operandi’ is hardly detectable in academies and universities. If human and social practical aspects are not seen as crucial in art schools, art schools might become even useless, as the Free University of Liverpool already indicated.

Indeed, the activism that animated the constitution of the FUL has increased awareness on the vulnerability of the consolidated educational system. It showed alternative places where giving context to the complexity of social relations, and the ways people are willing to risk crossing visible and invisible lines drawn by norms no longer acceptable, are possible.

I have taken into account Cybermohalla project and FUL as examples of alternative education because for them the priority is to engage their members, participants and students in the adventure of knowledge, cultural intervention and activism, instead of instructing them on how to use words to write well compiled artist statements, as a necessary way to try to promote and consolidate their art, a habit which I personally see somehow elusive, even seditious in most cases.

On the contrary, engaging in the adventure of knowledge is a constant process where is possible to realise hopes, desires and dreams that will push it forward.16 Participating, contributing, facilitating, learning and teaching are fluid and interchangeable, as well as the continuous feedback given and received from one each other. Therefore, it is fundamental not ‘to state’ anything presumable, but rather to settle “a community in the making, and the making of a new forum for leaving and learning, as giving birth to knowledge is ultimately humanising.”17 Finally not ‘statement’, but cultural ‘praxis’ is the watchword18, that is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, to realised and determine something else, vital, open, different, and unconventional.

Andrea Pagnes is an artist, independent curator, lecturer and writer based in Italy and South West

Germany. He holds degrees in Modern Literature and Philosophy. He founded cultural magazines,

and obtained a Social Theatre operator diploma, working as actor and playwright, focusing primarily on personal conflicts and social responsibilities. Since 2006 he has been collaborating with German

artist Verena Stenke as VestAndPage, creating art in live performance and filmmaking. VestAndPage are also the idea makers and curators of the independent biennial live art exhibition project Venice International Performance Art Week. http://www.vest-and-page.de

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Endnotes 1 London, Jack. 1909. Martin Eden. New York: Macmillan Publisher, p.219. “The chief qualification of

ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers. Don’t think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing. They have

tried to write, and they have failed. And right there is the cursed paradox of it. Those watchdogs, the failures

in literature, guard every portal to success in literature. The editors, sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript-readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and who have failed. And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are

the very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way into print - they, who have proved

themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius.”

2 Hegel, Friedrich. 1807. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Bamberg and Würzburg: J.A. Goebhardt.

3 Berardi, Franco Bifo. 2009. The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte, p.23.

4 Ibidem. From the book introduction of Jason Smith, pp.9-21.

5 Malory, Sir Thomas. 1470. La Morte d’Arthur, Book 1, Chapter V.

6 The Free University of Liverpool. 2012. Foundations. Liverpool: FUL Press. From FUL Archive:

“THIS IS A PROTEST! Higher Education is a right for all not a privilege for the few. It is on this basis the Free University of Liverpool is committed to FREE education for any student who wants

to study with us. At the Free University of Liverpool we believe that critical thought and action are

at the heart of changing the world we live in. With this in mind we support, teach about and practice cultural activism. We believe in the strength of intervention, in the necessity of interruption and the

efficacy of interference in the powers that seek to privatize and instrumentalise education. The current cuts the ConDems announced are promising to ruin civil society in the UK. This is the last straw!

We will not sit here and take it any more. We will rise up and educate each other and ourselves to

FIGHT BACK! We are interested in those who wish the world were otherwise and are willing to

take steps to make it otherwise. Students wishing to learn with us will take a Foundation Degree: a six month introduction course to changing the world or Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Praxis: a three-year

course, taught on the ground in Liverpool by a dedicated team of cultural activists, educationalists and cultural workers with experience and formal qualifications. The Foundation Course starts in October 2011 and the BA in Cultural Praxis starts in October 2012. Lectures, seminars and workshops will

form the core activities of the university with equal weight given to the power of words and the power of action. Praxis is our watchword. These courses are validated by the blessing of leading thinkers,

writers, artists and educationalists, all of who have contributed to the course by way of interviews and

lectures. They believe, like we do, that higher education is a right for all not a privilege for the few. The Free University of Liverpool is run cooperatively by the Committee.”

7 See: http://thefreeuniversityofliverpool.wordpress.com/

8 Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, one of India’s leading

research institutes, and one with a commitment to critical and dissenting thought and a focus on critically expanding the horizons of the discourse on development, particularly with reference to South Asia. Sarai is a coalition of researchers and practitioners with a commitment towards developing a model of research-practice that is public and creative, in which multiple voices express and render themselves in a variety of forms. See: http://www.sarai.net/

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9 Ankur has been working on developing educational resources and pedagogic tools for children and young adults for the last 25 years. It has evolved educational spaces in many neighborhoods all over Delhi. See: http://ankureducation.net/index.html

10 “Each practitioner spends five days a week at the lab, and many are at the lab for close to eight

hours every day. The day begins with listening to what their peers have written the day before, and brought to the lab to share. The challenge here is not only to be able to write a text, but to be able

to read it out in front of fifteen people, and to be able to listen with them, and among them. While

Mondays are reserved exclusively for listening to each other’s texts (reflections, descriptions, conversations, logs of a street, anecdotes from daily encounters, etc.), afternoons and evenings on the other

days are devoted to creating projects from these texts, their narration and the discussions that follow every narration. These projects could be animations, HTML, typed texts and formatted texts, sound

scape, photo stories, written word, audio and visual juxtapositions or narratives, storyboards, etc. Every day is a day for practice and creation realized through engaging associational free ways of thinking

with each other’s experiences. Our thoughts and energies are spent to understand the tentacular complexity of Delhi urban settlements: in fact, tapping into the media environment is not limited to the

locality alone, but also extends to the media practices of the city. Repetition and duration are central to building the density of each node, and therefore, of the network; and every practitioner coming to the lab knows there will be new encounters and engagements every day.”

Retrieved April 4, 2011, from: http://www.sarai.net/community/saraincomm.htm.

11 Sahakian, William S., and Sahakian, Mabel Lewis. 1993. Ideas of the Great Philosophers. pp.32-33.

New York: Barnes & Nobles Books. For a thorough investigation, see also: Baird, Forrest E., and

Kaufmann Walter. 2008. From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice.

12 Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity, An Essay On Exteriority. Try.Exterity, An E1969.

Jersey: Pearson Prentice.horough investigation, see also: Baird, Forrest E., and Kaufmann Walter.

2008. media environment is not limited to the locality alone, but als; Ref. by: Darwall, Stephen.

L. 2003. Theories of Ethics. In: Frey, R.G. and Wellman, C.H. (Eds.). A Companion to Applied Ethics.

Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 1717rd

13 Shveta Sarda editor and translator at Sarai CSDS (as the young Cybermohalla Ensemble writers

all write in Hindi, the language they know better) outlines that in this book the focus of the research is “on practices of auto-didactism and their radical alterations within the post piracy digital environment, along with the difficulties posed to writing and thinking the layered conflicts produced by the accelerated growth and violent renewals of urban landscapes and imaginations.”

Retrieved March 12, 2012, from: http://p2pfoundation.net/Shveta_Sarda

14 In 2006, one of these neighborhoods was demolished, and its residents were relocated to the barren landscape of Ghevra. Their practice of eight years, their dialogues with people around them, and the

shrinkage of their spaces of intellectual/creative life propelled them to propose the Cybermohalla Hub in Ghevra in collaboration with architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Dr Michel Müller (Frankfurt). The

design takes the multiplicity of voices in Cybermohalla practices as its starting point, translating them into dynamic architectural elements. Constructed on a 6x3 m plot (the size of houses in Ghevra), Cybermohalla Hub will be a space that creates a body of work around the making of the neighborhood.

Linking the cultural practice and the architectural project, the proposed book represents a crucial part of the process. The book not only documents the architecture of the project, which functions as an at-

tempt to “build knowledge,” but also publishes insights that have emerged from the project as a whole.

Retrieved May 14, 2014, from: http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/3673-cybermohalla-hub

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15 Cybermohalla on themselves (2007): “The city wears many masks. With each mask it dawns

on a different guise, each guise creating countless images: like restless shadows that travel together without ever becoming known to one another. In living in it, the city seems close; but it seems far

when one begins to narrate what it is to live in a city. This distance provokes practice; through our

practices we seek ways to cover this distance. We seek our ways of expression from those around us, from those near us. To us, our different practices are not a means of falling into someone’s life; that

we have entered someone’s life is not the important thing – no entry pass or card records or marks it.

What matters is, what are the terms with which we let someone step into our life. Our practice is our engagement with the time, questions and tussles that have been narrated to us, and which form the

scaffolding in which we start collecting the scraps of desire to express. Practice! Need, habit, entertainment and hobby are not what we desire. In needing, we are alone. In habit we are chased by boredom.

It is not entertainment, because that makes us dependent on the new. It is not a hobby, because hobby seeks futile gatherings. To us, to be in practice is to follow our insane desire over huge distances. This

desire gives us a force to tussle with ourselves. And the tussle makes us vulnerable not only to our own thoughts but also leaves on us a special imprint of the images of many others.”Retrieved April 10, 2011, from: http://www.cookplex.com/mystreet/delhi/sarai/index.html

16 The Free University of Liverpool. 2012. Foundations. Liverpool: FUL Press, p.12.

17 Ibidem p.9 18 Ibid. p.13

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Project Anywhere: art, peer review and alternative approaches to validation at the outermost limits of location-specificity.

Sean Lowry and Nancy de Freitas

This text discusses the conception and development of a new global exhibition model dedicated to the validation and dissemination of art and research outside conventional exhibition environments. With much contemporary artistic activity manifestly ill-suited to the spatial and temporal limitations of traditional exhibition environments, and the figure of the curator as “cultural gate-keeper” still dominating more democratic models of selection and validation Project Anywhere was conceived as a potential solution for this double bind. Project Anywhere aims to meet the challenge of defining and implementing a new approach to the critique, peer review and documentation of artistic practices that fall outside of the forms and structures accommodated by conventional exhibition and publishing modes. Acting as a node to connect artistic activities in disparate locations, the Project Anywhere website1 is not an “online gallery”. By contrast, the site becomes a contextualizing framework for an expanded project space encompasses the entire globe where the role of curator is replaced with an adaptation of the type of peer review model more typically associated with a refereed academic journal.

Historical context Artistic practices which unfold outside of conventional exhibition circuits have become increasingly common in recent decades. Much of this often dematerialised2 and post-object practice is concerned with critiquing traditional exhibition systems and the commodification of art objects. Historically, these practices have evolved

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to challenge the idea that art only functions through its reification into an object such as a painting or sculpture. As a consequence, discrete paintings and sculptures, films screened in theatres, and conventionally staged theatrical performances are no longer necessarily a primary focus for many cultural practitioners. By contrast, many artists have attempted to transcend the discrete exhibited and distributable object by producing ephemeral works, using their bodies, or framing networks of social and political activity as sites for artistic expression. Importantly, this shift has also transformed relationships between spectator and artist. The spectator is no longer passive and detached but rather an intrinsic element within a whole aesthetic experience in which relationships between conditions of production and networks of reception are implicated. This reorientation of art’s perceived purpose has had a profound (and still unfolding) impact. The roots of these developments can be traced back to the 1960s, when Situationist International (SI)3 and Fluxus4 began to challenge conceptions of the way in which viewers are involved in the process or “situation” of artistic production. Extending ideas that originated in early twentieth century avant-garde movements such as Dada, this “second horizon”5 of post war “neo-avant-garde”6 tendencies was more explicitly concerned with the creation of art experiences that offered active viewer participation. The outcomes of these interventions were not objects but rather experiences, resulting in a blurring of boundaries between art and life.

With aesthetic experience transformed from passive to active, both art and the conditions of its production and dissemination became increasingly politically focused, opening the way for even more radical challenges to the idea of place and spatial location. This tendency is perhaps most explicitly demonstrated in the institutional critique performed by artists such as Hans Haacke, Marcel Broodthaers and Andrea Fraser. For Miwon Kwon, one the best reasons for expanding the idea of site specificity was an “epistemological challenge to relocate meaning from within the art object to the contingencies of its context; the radical restructuring of the subject from an old Cartesian model to a phenomenological one of lived bodily experience; and the self-conscious desire to resist the forces of the capitalist market economy.”7 Accordingly, much advanced art practice now seeks to actively transcend the physical limitations of traditional exhibition contexts, and often includes work in remote geographical locations, technically specialized contexts, and even in imagined spaces. Project Anywhere, the subject of this text, is specifically dedicated to the validation and dissemination of art at the outermost limits of location-specificity.

During the late 1990s, participatory practice was famously reframed by Nicolas Bourriaud, who argued that audience involvement made work political, since the space of interaction created fleeting communities whose inter-subjective relations and concrete communications could be politically affective. The political, he suggested, could emerge within and through the aesthetic experience without the art or the artist engaging directly with politics. However, Bourriaud’s influential ideas were also criticized. Claire Bishop, in particular, critiqued the lack of critical antagonism, loss of aesthetic criteria, and assumption of democracy she saw as evidenced

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throughout much the work and ideas championed by Bourriaud. For Bishop, the aesthetic antagonisms presented in the work of artists such as Santiago Sierra and Artur Žmijewski potentially contain more critical potential. Bourriaud’s ideas have also been critiqued by Owen Hatherley8 for their alleged ignorance of the persistent political ramifications of advancing neoliberalism, declining socialism, and an expanding mass media, and Adam Geczy for being a form of Situationism.9 At any rate, in the academic/research environment in which many artists are now working, this contested terrain and its inherent defiance of traditional location-specificity presents a new series of challenges. Here, it could again be argued that a political dynamic is inherent, since this kind of work sets up a distinctive ambiguity, particularly in terms of academic expectations for peer review and critique. Responses are often remarkably similar to the skepticism that earlier artists faced when they abandoned medium specificity.

Expanded exhibition circuits Within an expanded approach to the idea of an exhibition, it is clearly no longer realistic to expect all art and research to fit within the physical and material constraints of established public art institutions or other public viewing spaces such as theatres, libraries, community centers, universities and art academies. Although some artists’ work is specifically positioned to critique the institutional spaces in which they are expected to present their work and ideas, others are simply unable to appropriately present their work within such spaces. Consequently, and in divergent ways, many artists eschew conventional spaces in favour of dynamic exhibition environments, ever expanding in their physical and temporal parameters.

An “exhibition” might now constitute anything from a “Silent Dinner Party”10 to the performative ascent of a mountain11 or a modular eco structure in the Kalahari Desert.12 Significantly, such practices invariably disrupt established critical processes of review insofar as they make direct access to the artwork difficult. Established models of validation typically require direct, physical access and a comprehension underpinned by full sensual experience of the physical work. Consequently, the challenge for artists who create work in defiance of location-specificity is that their work often sits outside of the quality assurance processes that typically define value within the academy. Critical peer validation of research output is fundamental for artist academics, but if the direct experience of an artwork is potentially inaccessible, what kind of assessment can be made? In the 1960s, when Michael Fried and Clement Greenberg famously argued for medium specificity, they were arguing from a modernist position that emphasised disciplinary integrity and the purity of the medium. The situation is very different today. Rosalind Krauss has recently described a “post-medium condition” that re-presents the idea of purity of the medium.13

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Roisin Beirne, Clare Breen, Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch,David Lunney,John Ryan, Tom Watt, Winter Resort, 2012, Photo by Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch

Countering the presumption that a specific morphological instantiation or physical performance necessarily constitutes the primary condition for critique is the argument that the aesthetic object is finally something immaterial. In other words, it is something unfolding within a network of relations that includes both sensory and non-sensory information. By extension, this idea of a work as something inhabiting a network of material and immaterial forms (i.e. historical and social contexts, multiple forms of documentation, critiques and interpretations etc), suggests that being critiqued, discussed and experienced in a mediated form is still an aesthetic object insofar as it can still be distinguished from other forms of human cultural and intellectual expression and activity by virtue of its dependence upon the structural idiosyncrasies of the art condition. Moreover, with physical spaces and materials now inextricably intertwined with expanded structural conceptions of what constitutes an artwork, it no longer makes sense to pinpoint a single fixed and immovable location or moment for a creative work. Given that we cannot even behold a work as art without the surrounding historical, subjective and cultural contextualizing information bound up in this determination, an aesthetic object can therefore potentially be anything that directs aesthetic contemplation and interpretation toward this idea of network. For David Davies, the physical work is simply a vehicle or medium

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through which the artistic performance is generated.14 Thus, the morphological instantiation or physical performance makes no exclusive claim to the art condition in itself, but represents the networked aesthetic experience.

Once we regard the supporting apparatuses of art history and the political, social and economic contexts that underpin the production and reception of art as aesthetic elements, it becomes possible to argue that the art condition, is something that is always dematerialized. This art condition, a structure that hosts aesthetic comprehension as distinct from other languages of human comprehension, is therefore something built in the mind of the interpreter via both direct experience and documentation, and moreover, that it is clearly problematic to separate these elements. Most of us, for example, did not directly experience the seminal performance works of the 1960s and 1970s that continue to inform our understanding of contemporary art. Although our understanding of the ideas carried within these works is dependent upon mediated documentation, these seminal works are nonetheless interpreted aesthetically; that is, they are interpreted in a manner that is fundamentally distinct to other forms of knowledge.

Much contemporary artistic activity is specifically framed to implicate structural relationships within the spaces (physical and cultural) in which it is situated. Working within the systems and symbolic languages of a host context, such work invariably produces meaning and experience that is contingent upon that host context.

A creative work is a dynamic collection of signs, concepts, myths, traces, objects, sensations and contradictions. These are all intertwined with its surrounding contextualising apparatus of documentation and interpretation. Thus, comprehension of a creative work typically demands a combination of aesthetic experience and contextualising information. A central question at play within this paper is whether this relationship can be adequately extended across time and space via substantial documentation, facilitating “authentic” access to both aesthetic experience and critical comprehension. This, as we will discuss a little later in this text, is Project Anywhere’s raison d’être.

Institutional validation Despite the radical transformations that have occurred over the last century of artistic practice, institutional agendas continue to have a disproportionate and conformist influence upon artist academics, many of whom are dependent upon university and residency programs for financial support in order to actually produce work. Some of these conditions and requirements have contributed to an environment in which particular, assumed limits are set on artistic processes and outcomes.

Consider for example, the typical requirement for artistic research to include: documentation and analysis as research evidence; quality assurance through academic peer review; public program collateral for institutional use (museum or public gallery); media and social network friendly publications as well as public funding justifications.

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Given the reality that much artistic activity is now concerned with the production of work that transcends physical location or evolves over extended periods of time, there is a commensurate likelihood that audiences will only experience works through mediated networks of documentation and interpretations. In the extreme, some artistic interventions are impossible to distinguish as art without a specifically designed, corresponding online presence. Broadly, audiences are now less likely to expect artworks and their corresponding documentation to exist in singular destinations, but rather, to be situated and understood within unfolding processes of formation. Adequate documentation for the task of communicating new knowledge clearly needs to be able to incorporate the kinds of open-endedness and contradiction that this kind of art itself experientially manifests. Without addressing this challenge, any understanding produced between the complexities of creative works and parallel, contextualizing elements will never hold.

Addressing the challenge of expanded exhibition circuits: the conception and development of Project Anywhere Project Anywhere was conceived and developed as a possible solution to the challenges outlined above. Prior to the development of this system, and based initially upon the founding concept of Sean Lowry in 2011, Project Anywhereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Steering Committee (2012)15 was formed with a view to developing appropriate policy for the task of validating artistic research at the outermost limits of location-specificity.

Department of Biological Flow, Channel Surf, 2014-15, research-creation event, Photo courtesy of Department of Biological Flow

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After much consultation and debate, a two-stage peer review process was developed. It was decided that a blind peer review of project proposals would be used to determine which projects would be hosted, whereas an open peer review of project outcomes would better suit the task of deciding which projects would be finally archived as “Validated Research Outcomes”. As part of this undertaking, a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria was developed. Here, it was also emphasised that Project Anywhere should retain verification materials to demonstrate that all evaluation criteria are met (these materials are archived and backed up for external auditing). Once this two-stage peer-review policy was formulated, an Editorial Committee16 was then formed in order to review any proposals that had successfully navigated the peer-review process. Once these proposals had been returned to the candidate with peer comments for revision and then resubmitted for Committee for review, the Committee makes their final recommendation as which projects will be hosted. Meanwhile, an Advisory Committee17 was also formed to oversee the overall strategic direction of Project Anywhere.

Following the first round of evaluation and Committee review, a selection of four projects was made for hosting during 2013. With four projects and a live web presence, the site and its conceptual framework was finally open to the scrutiny of the Project Anywhere committees. The digital conditions of each art project’s web presence (text descriptions, image quality and links) became the focus of the committees’ attentions and evaluative discussions are continuing as to the potential value of: 1) higher quality visual and textual information on hosted works;

Mark Shorter, Song for Glover, 2012

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2) more comprehensive artist statements; 3) supportive texts by invited writers and/ or comments from external critics; and 4) advice for artists on quality documentation (writing style, web format, image choice and quality).

Given the dual schema of Project Anywhere, research practice and exhibition practice have become two interconnected frameworks under examination. Project Anywhere is a critical response to both of these problematic issuesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;art AS research (artistic research) and the notion of the exhibit or exhibition as the primary product of artistic practice. Many interesting and ongoing practical and theoretical challenges have arisen within the process of designing and managing the launch of this initiative, which in turn is providing a valuable testing ground for future approaches to research and experimental exhibition formats.

Looking ahead Three lines of enquiry in particular will be drivers of research and development associated with the Project Anywhere. The first relates to the concept of distributed project documentation. This is the relationship between official and informal material and the opening out of archival and documentary environments and structures accessible as part of the aesthetic experience of contemporary work. There are implications for the maintenance of any digital archive that is expected to be true to the form and complexity of the work being produced. The second line of enquiry will focus on the quality of documentation produced by and for artists working in the new genre. Project Anywhere is poised to play a significant role in the development of new approaches to visual/textual documentation of contemporary practice.

The third line of inquiry, and perhaps the most far-reaching, is a reconsideration of the function and impact of critique within this new environment.

In recent years, tertiary art education and the artwork associated with higher education programs (and graduates) have become products dominated by research paradigms and objectives with quantifiable, verifiable end results. The institutional requirement for documentation and evidence of research, and scientific models of peer validation, has undoubtedly introduced a political dimension and a homogenizing influence upon artistic activity. Distinctive parallels have emerged with marketing attitudes and productivity agendas as we witness the loss of unfettered, open-minded, value seeking creative action. Socially oriented, critical processes and work towards self-enlightenment or pure experimental, speculative thinking may be in decline. In 2012, an interesting examination of this phenomenon took place at the 1st Tbilisi Triennial, Offside Effect,18 which was focused on the conceptual development of educational platforms that challenge the current prescriptive influence of the Bologna process in Europe. Artists and lecturers, collaborating with groups of students from several selected experimental academies, attempted to open a window on their creative orientations and strategies for making work. Much of the visitor experience of these works entailed: encounters of a discursive, critical or archival nature; interpretations of artistic freedom; collective, experimental, bohemian and squatter action, and the idea of an exhibition functioning as a school in turn

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framed as a work of art.19 In this context, the art is framed and understood within the immaterial context of social relations, expanding beyond the tangible object, fixed in time and place. Project Anywhere is also alive to idea that art can be understood as something immaterial within a network of social and political connections.

Much like the fictional world that we call art, cultural projections such as institutions only exist to the extent that people agree that they do. Art remains a fertile ground on which to stage a dynamic play between a literal register of information and spaces for the imagination to flourish. In asserting that the “art” itself is not directly presented on the Project Anywhere website, the idea that the art is to be somehow apprehended as existing elsewhere in space and time is implicated. To this end, the indexical information made available via the website functions to direct attention to a work existing somewhere else in space and time. The potential remoteness or transience of some hosted projects will invariably mean that it is difficult, and in some cases impossible, for all subjects in the intended audience to directly apprehend the work. This invariably raises the question of whether mediated apprehension of some works is somehow a “second-best” experience. Given the “post retinal” nature of much contemporary practice, these kinds of philosophical questions have arisen across a range of institutional contexts. In many cases, these theoretical uncertainties in themselves are developed into an artistic or curatorial premise. To cite one example, the artistic director of Documenta XIII (2012) Carolyn ChristovBakargiev directly addressed the necessity of the relationship between aesthetic and sense perception: “What does it mean to know things that are not physically perceivable to us through our senses? What is the meaning of the exercise of orienting in thought toward these locations?”20 Accordingly, some Documenta XIII “sites” included in the Kassel catalogue were actually located elsewhere on the globe.

Other social experiences reinforce this notion that it is possible to build an aesthetic experience in the mind of an interpreter who does not directly sense a creative work. We sense many things vicariously, without direct experience. For example, many humans who have not experienced life in the wilderness may still hold strong political opinions about the value of an unvisited wilderness and have a personal attachment to the idea of it. In this sense, simply knowing that it is there offers an experience profoundly different to that of a theoretical proposition.21 There are of course many other lived examples of things that we can sense without resorting to direct experience. We do not, for example, necessarily need to directly witness events ranging from sexual impropriety to genocide in order to be reasonably convinced of their existence. Extra sensory information in the form of substantial documentation can provide forms of validation that are as convincing as direct sense experience. Continuing with this train of thought, one of the reasons that Tehching Hsieh’s work arguably remains compelling is the way in which systematic documentation has enabled interpreters who did not directly witness his five One Year Performances in New York between 1978 and 1986 to build his works in the mind. Hsieh’s Time Clock Piece, for example, is validated by 366 time cards,

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366 filmstrips, signed witness statements, a record of missed punches, and a 16mm time-lapse film. Consequently, Hsiehâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performances provide a profoundly different kind of comprehension of concepts central to the mechanics of capitalism, surveillance, production, control, discipline and submission than might be possible within a more traditional theoretical or philosophical argument.

In conclusion The conditions under which Project Anywhere was conceived are underpinned by a series of now long standing debates concerning the paradoxical conditions of artistic production, display and consumption. From the historical avant-gardes through conceptualism and institutional critique, to new modes of exhibition, display and performance across the global contemporary art spectrum, artists have consistently demonstrated a self-reflexive awareness of what Sabine Folie recently described as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the paradoxical insight that total comprehension is impossible.â&#x20AC;?22 By extension, addressing this problem of incomprehensibility has also become a defining characteristic in the framing of artistic research. The ongoing challenge that faces Project Anywhere is the question of how the veracity of artistic documentation might accommodate these paradoxes in a way that is sympathetic to the contradictions characterizing much contemporary artistic practice, whilst also somehow being accountable to the institutional expectations of university-based research culture In accepting that it no longer necessarily makes sense within an expanded conception of art (and by extension artistic research) to pinpoint a single fixed and immovable location or artefact as the primary text for a creative work, Project Anywhere encourages artists to push against the edges of artistic practice and the specificities of exhibition location whilst at the same time striving to maintain research accountability via the relatively democratizing processes of blind peer validation.23 In doing so, Project Anywhere aims to connect the sensory experience of apprehending art with the communication of knowledge about and through art. As an exhibition platform, Project Anywhere promotes new and experimental art at the outermost limits of location-specificity. As a publishing platform, Project Anywhere facilitates processes of critique and validation for artistic practice. The extent to which the initiative serves the artistic and arts research communities of the future will invariably depend on careful management of these distinct yet intertwined objectives. Although the relatively democratizing process of blind peer review is arguably a more ethically robust alternative to the figure of the curator as a cultural gatekeeper, it is also clear that an alternative approach to committee selection may eventually need to be found to circumvent any perception of indirect influence in Editorial Committee member selection by the Executive Director. This, and many of the other challenges presented in this paper, will be addressed as time and funding permits (the Executive Director currently performs all administrative functions and covers most costs beyond small institutional contributions from partnered universities toward advertising).

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It is clear that the challenge of institutionally validating research in which artistic practice is the significant medium is made even more difficult when the research activity is “out in the world” as opposed to within a traditional exhibition space such as a museum or gallery. This paper has examined the challenge of bringing new knowledge from discursive, speculative and experimental fields of artistic activity at the outermost limits of location-specificity into contexts that also meet expectations of clarity and relevance typically demanded of research. It has also discussed the challenge of documenting geographically remote or ephemeral contemporary artistic research in a format that can potentially facilitate meaningful dialogue under relatively stable conditions. The Project Anywhere team is currently working toward hosting a conference at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, a division of The New School, New York, NY on Thursday November 13 and Friday November 14, 2014 that will feature presentations from international artist/researchers that have successfully navigated peer evaluation at the proposal stage within Project Anywhere’s 2013 and 2014 program, together with a series of invited speakers also interested in the challenge of exhibiting, performing and conducting research outside traditional exhibition environments. It is envisaged that this conference will provide another opportunity to test the challenges discussed in this paper.

Sean Lowry is a Sydney-based artist, an academic at The University of Newcastle, Australia, and.

Executive Director of projectanywhere.net. Lowry’s conceptually driven artistic practice employs

strategies of concealed quotation designed to evoke ghostly feelings of familiarity. From August to

December 2014, Lowry will be Visiting Scholar/Artist at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York.

Nancy de Freitas is an artist and academic based at Auckland University of Technology, New Zea-

land. She has lectured widely on art and design research practice and material thinking methodology and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the international journal ‘Studies in Material Thinking’.

Endnotes 1 “Project Anywhere: a global peer reviewed space for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity,” accessed May 10 2014, http://projectanywhere.net/

2 See Lucy Lippard and John Chandler, “The Dematerialization of Art,” Art International (February 1968): 31–6. 10.

3 The power of mass media was the target of Guy Debord and the Situationist International. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Debord characterises the reified “spectacular” image as symptomatic

of capitalistic alienation and, moreover, that the spectacle actually conceals this estrangement. (Guy

Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994), §

10). For a comprehensive introduction to SI, see Tom McDonough, ed., Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004).

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4 In the late 1960s, George Maciunas’s insistence upon “concretism” (materiality) in fluxworks and his criticism of “illusionism” (representation) aimed to problematise the spectacular reification of reality.

For Maciunas, the irreproducibility of material contextual conditions marks out all representation as

inexorably illusory. For an introduction to Fluxus, see Ken Friedman, ed., The Fluxus Reader (Chichester, West Sussex and New York: Academy Editions, 1998).

5 See Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

6 See Hal Foster, The Return of the Real (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996), xi.

7 Miwon Kwon, “One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity,” October, 80 (1997): 91.

8 See Owen Hatherley, “Post-Postmodernism?”, New Left Review 59 (Sep/Oct 2009): 160.

9 See Adam Geczy, “Sanitised Situationism,” Broadsheet: Contemporary Art + Culture 37:2 (2006): 127-127.

10 See Honi Ryan, “Silent Dinner Party” (from Project Anywhere’s pilot program, 2012), accessed May 10 2014 http://projectanywhere.net/archived/silent-dinner-party.

11 See Mark Shorter, “Schleimgurgeln: Song For Glover”, (from Project Anywhere’s pilot program,

2012), accessed May 10 2014, http://projectanywhere.net/archived/schleimgurgeln-song-for-glover.

12 See Hans Kalliwoda, “WiaS (The World in a Shell)” (from Project Anywhere’s 2013 program), accessed May 10 2014, http://projectanywhere.net/project/wias.

13 Rosalind Krauss, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 56.

14 David Davies, Art as Performance (Oxford: Blackwells, 2004), 59.

15 Project Anywhere Steering Committee (2012): Professor Brad Buckley, Associate Dean (Research), Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, Australia; Professor Su Baker, Director, Victo-

rian College of the Arts, Faculty of the VCA & Music, University of Melbourne, Australia; Professor Richard Vella, Head of School, Drama, Fine Art & Music, University of Newcastle, Australia; Dr.

Sean Lowry, School of Drama, Fine Arts & Music, The University of Newcastle, Australia; Associate

Professor Nancy de Freitas, School of Art and Design, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand; Mr. Ilmar Taimre, Executive Consultant, Independent Researcher/Virtual Musician, Brisbane, Australia.

Dr. Jocelyn McKinnon, School of Drama, Fine Arts & Music, The University of Newcastle, Australia; Dr. Andre Brodyk, School of Drama, Fine Arts & Music, The University of Newcastle, Australia;

Dr. Angela Philp, Deputy Head of School—Research, Drama, Fine Arts & Music, The University of Newcastle, Australia; Dr. Tony Schwensen, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A. 16 Project Anywhere Editorial Committee (2014): Dr. Sean Lowry School of Creative Arts, The

University of Newcastle; Professor Brad Buckley, Professor of Contemporary Art and Culture, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney; Professor Bruce Barber, Director MFA, School of

Graduate Studies, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Associate Professor, Simone Douglas,

Director, MFA Fine Arts, Parsons The New School for Design, New York; Dr. Adam Geczy, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney; Professor Steve Dutton, Professor in Contemporary Art Practice, The School of Art and Design, College of Arts, The University of Lincoln; Dr. Les Joynes, Visiting Associate Professor of Art, Renmin University of China, Beijing.

17 Project Anywhere Advisory Committee (2014): Professor Su Baker, Director, Victorian College of

the Arts, Faculty of the VCA & Music, University of Melbourne; Mr. Ilmar Taimre, Executive Consultant, Independent Researcher/Virtual Musician; Dr. Jocelyn McKinnon, School of Creative Arts,

The University of Newcastle; Associate Professor Nancy de Freitas, School of Art and Design, Auck-

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land University of Technology, New Zealand; Dr. Sean Lowry, School of Creative Arts, The University of Newcastle, Australia; Professor Brad Buckley, Professor of Contemporary Art and Culture, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, Australia.

18 1st Tbilisi Triennial, Offside Effect, curated by Henk Slager and Wato Tsereteli, Center of Con-

temporary Art, 10 Dodo Abashidze Street, 0102 Tbilisi, Georgia, October19 –November 20, 2012.

Contact: tbilisitriennial2012@gmail.com.

19 The Triennial exhibition included documentation from Unitednationsplaza, by Anton Vidokle and Martha Rosler, an “exhibition as school” project intended to start as a biennial (Manifesta 6, 2006),

but eventually realised as an independent temporary school in Berlin (October, 2006). The work had a later reincarnation under the name Night School at the New Museum in New York, 2008-9.

20 Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, “Introduction”, The Guidebook, dOCUMENTA (13), Catalogue 3/3 (Kassel: Hatje Cantz, 2012), 7.

21 Consider, for example, the description of the six hundred thousand hectares of wilderness that

constitute Southwest National Park (part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area) pro-

vided on the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife website: “The park, the largest in Tasmania, epitomises the

grandeur and spirit of wilderness in its truest sense. Much of the park is remote and far removed from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. For many, just the fact that such a place still exists brings

solace.” Southwest National Park: Introduction, Tasmania Parks and Wildlife, accessed November 14, 2012, .http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=3801.

22 Sabine Folie, “unExhibit-Display and the Paradoxes of Showing by Concealing”, unExhibit, exhibition catalogue, trans. Gerrit Jackson (Wien: Generali Foundation, 2011), 169. Folie concludes this

catalogue essay with a claim toward art that restitutes “imaginative space by a concealment that paradoxically ‘shows’ while leaving behind a vestige that cannot be differentiated, that is neither entirely transparent and comprehensible nor utterly opaque and comprehensible.”, 173.

23 Project Anywhere “Peer Evaluation Policy,” accessed May 10, 2014, http://projectanywhere.net/ peer-review.

ARTLEAKS OPEN CALL For establishing local/regional ArtLeaks We call on artists, activists, researchers, curators, dancers, interns, art workers, to create local or regional ArtLeaks organizations to discuss issues related to working conditions, censorship, exploitation in their respective artistic and cultural fields.

The problems and concerns put forth by our platform ArtLeaks are truly global and require an international solidarity network between cultural producers to tackle them.

In this sense, we strongly encourage like minded individuals, groups and collectives to create and manage their own ArtLeaks, to publish reports in their original languages on the situation inside institutions in any form. Both anonymous and signed reports are welcome, as long as they are submitted together with collective evidence and documentation.

We will offer logistical support and visibility to those who are ready to take responsibility for these local initiatives. The main ArtLeaks page and the ArtLeaks mailing list will continue to function as a public forum and archive of information related to international artistic struggles and models for a more emancipatory cultural field.

Those who are interested should send us a preliminary email inquiry describing their proposals in a couple of paragraphs at artsleaks@gmail.com

It is time to break the silence!

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ArtLeaks Gazette 3 Artists Against Precarity and Violence – Resistance Strategies, Unionizing, and Coalition Building in a Time of Global Conflict and Contradiction Introduction

The ArtLeaks Gazette aims to shed critical light on both the challenges and obstacles inherent in the contemporary art world, in order to work towards constructive and meaningful transformations. Beyond “breaking the silence” and exposing bad practices, ArtLeaks is exploring the ways in which art workers around the world are pushing towards changing their factories of art, embedded in larger socio-economic-political flows. We realize this is a difficult task as the global condition since ArtLeaks was established in 2011 is quite different now. The (art)world has changed due to the major political and economic changes, while violence and hostility have greatly increased around the globe. The years to come seem like they will be even more full of conflicts and contradictions. Due to the increase of global wars, the threat of climate breakdown, and other devastating realities, technological progress cannot reduce or eradicate capitalist exploitation. Therefore, new media and technology are being used in a negative way, encouraging deeper precarity, austerity, and inequality. This is also happening in the sector of arts and culture increasing the debt of artists and cultural workers. We hope that art workers are able to formulate an answer to these challenges, to build strong coalitions, and to unionize in order to counter precarity and violence in a countervailing way.

The third issue of the ArtLeaks Gazette: “Artists Against Precarity and Violence – Resistance Strategies, Unionizing, and Coalition Building in a Time of Global Conflict and Contradiction”, brings together art workers dealing with these urgent

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questions about models of organizations, unionizing, and strategies of resistance, and helping us to illuminate new ways of production and coalition building in international and local environments.

Specifically, left over of cultural institutions of the welfare state is in poor shape due to the neoliberal offensive now underway for several decades. For example, in socalled “creative” European cities, significant numbers of registered artists function as a “reserve army” for cheap or even voluntary work. Conditions of artistic labor are summarily dismissed as unimportant, frequently among the upper echelons of the art management class, and sometimes even among artists that have either achieved economic hegemony or aspire to it. In some cases, when members of the art community do decide to speak out, they face the danger of being excluded from an exhibition or a project, or blacklisted from working in certain institutions. One of the problems lies in the fact that artists usually do not understand themselves as workers, but are interpolated as subjects of neoliberal necessity, working against each other and claim that art production differs from the production relations in a capitalist economy.

Several present-day art worker groups are beginning to look back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, and even further to the mid 19th century, particularly in the 1930s, as moments of inspiration during social movements and political struggles, for the struggle for art workers’ rights, reclaiming cultural institutions, art and/as labor in a global context. Indeed, we would emphasize today’s art workers need more of that do-it-together spirit, a greater common interest and a more developed strategy and plan for transformation. The challenge remains to continue to question the autonomy of artistic production, to confront those who benefit with this mode of cultural profiteering, and to demythologize the production process of art itself.

Editors: Corina L. Apostol, Brett Alton Bloom, Vladan Jeremić Authors of texts: Corina L. Apostol, Ingela Johansson, Bojana Piškur, Dmitry Vilensky, Mikołaj Iwański and Joanna Figiel, Xandra Popescu with Veda Popovici, Delia Popa and Ioana Cojocaru, Alejandro Strus and Sonja Hornung, Haben und Brauchen, G.U.L.F., Ivor Stodolsky Visual Contributions: KURS, Anastasia Vepreva and Roman Osminkin, Tatiana Fiodorova, Monotremu Cover page by the editors, Photo credit: Margaret Singer Published by ArtLeaks, August 2015, http://art-leaks.org/

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KURS, drawing for wall newspaprer, 2014/15.

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KURS, drawing for wall newspaprer, 2014/15.

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Art Workers Between Precarity and Resistance: A Genealogy Corina L. Apostol

On present-day and historical stakes In the backstage of art fairs, biennales, shows, before artworks are exhibited, sold, collected or gifted, artists, interns, assistants, handlers, curators research and plan, they acquire working materials, necessary tools, to draw, to write, to build, to rehearse, or to film, to publicize and invite audiences on social media. Performances, graphics, installations, films, sculptures, documents or paintings, are all the result of artistic labor and of creativity. Despite this reality, on todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global art market, artistic labor goes unrecognized while the focus falls solely on the tangible results of this labor. As a result, conditions of artistic labor are summarily dismissed as unimportant, frequently among the upper echelons of the art management, and sometimes even among artists. In some cases, when members of the art community do decide to speak out, they face the danger of being excluded from an exhibition or a project, or blacklisted from working in certain institutions.

This critical state of affairs is not a sine qua non. The widespread belief that artists are far too independent and focused on their own work to self-organize and participate in social movements is easily contradicted by a substantial amount of historical examples when artists came to work together in unions, communes, associations, guilds, syndicates or collectives. Many of these started in the mid-19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. What is also important is that these artists were not just seeking better pay, legal rights, and life securities, but also aligned themselves with workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; movements that challenged the dominant status quo. Since the second half of the 19th century, when the terms artist, art worker and activist

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Unknown artist, the Destruction of the Vendôme erected by Napoleon to commemorate his victory at Austerlitz, lithograph, 1871, Credit: Getty Images

were used interchangeably in the context of the Artists Union inside the Paris Commune, artists have occupied a precarious and consciously in-between position within the class stratification of society. This lineage of self-reflection and resistance can be traced through international avant-garde movements that followed. Within these groups, which I discuss later in this text, artists and art theorists opposed the notion of “art for art’s sake” and attempted to embrace a working class identity even though they widely disagreed about what exactly this entailed. In this sense, we can conceptualize the historical development of engaged art workers as a dialectical relationship between artists and society, wherein the transformation of one cannot occur independently of the other. As I show through my selection of the following case-study examples, collective actions at the macro-level and the grassroots-level could not exist separated from one another.

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The artist as art worker and activist: nineteenth century beginnings In the second half of the 19th century reactionary appeals to an art for art’s sake clashed with principles of an emerging avant-gardism. During the revolutionary period in France, artist Gustave Courbet penned the famous Realist Manifesto (1855),1 immediately after Marx’s famous Communist Manifesto (1848). While the extent to which he participated in major historical events has been put into question, Courbert’s bold confidence and passionate belief in the artist’s role in changing society – broadly conceived – towards a liberated and socialist future were strongly shaped by these events. Those were turbulent times of class and political conflicts, from the moment the working class entered the scene as an autonomous political force – which was brutally suppressed by the bourgeoisie – to the French workers’ brief, yet powerful Commune.

In 1871 Courbet called on Parisian artists to “assume control of the museums and art collections which, though the property of the nation, are primarily theirs, from the intellectual as well as the material point of view.”2 Courbet’s statement responded to the paradigm shift of the economic framework, wherein the transfer of capital accumulated by capitalist organizations created a new class. This bourgeoisie had acquired economic means and invested heavily in the salon art production to flaunt their power. Emerging as new spaces for the presentation and enjoyment of art by the bourgeoisie, the salons of the 19th century operated autonomously from the church and the monarchy; while self-fashioned as disengaged from everyday production, they at the same time built themselves as powerful, independent entities in the field of art. Courbet challenged the salon system and the political classes it upheld through his infamous monumental canvases depicting labor, sex workers and peasants, through his support for the communards’ removal of the imperialistic Vendôme Column in 1871, and his role as commissar of culture in the Commune committee.

The transformation of the artist’s subjectivity as art worker and activist during the latter half of the 19th century, spearheaded by the Realist movement, was an initial landmark moment that continues to define the relationship between art and social movements today. Courbet’s appeal was one of the first instances when artists’ aspiration for social change led them to align themselves with a wider workers’ movement and break with the bourgeois institutions of art and the monarchy.

Transgressing from artistic praxis into political action, artists could be considered as a counter-power, occupying political functions in a new order, no matter how briefly this lasted.

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Art workers, avant-gardes and new social movements In the following case studies, I show how artist groups from around the world sought affinities and alliances to various degrees with members of the organized Left, in order to frame the concept of “art worker” as a form of recurring artistic subjectivity under which members of the artistic community mobilized in different context and using different strategies, from artistic interventions to direct actions.

Thus my analysis of these groups does not rely on historical causality from one cycle of protest or one movement to another, rather it builds a ground for a comparative study of both continuity and change, overlap and dissonance.

While its participants did not express a specifically socialist position, the DADA movement opposed the values of bourgeois society, political conservatism and the senseless First World War. DADA inaugurated a specific, rebellious attitude towards artistic production, and expressed a set of discontents with the institutionalized nature of the art world. Some members of Berlin DADA sought to identify, at least in theory with the working class, presenting themselves not as artists in service of capital, but rather artists of the working class: art workers.3 As Helen Molesworth has observed, “Dada’s perpetual return is due to the constant need to articulate the ever changing problems of capitalism and the role of the laborer within it.”4 Unlike their 19th century predecessors, DADA was mainly a cultural

Front page of the Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) with a photomontage by John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little man asks for big gifts. Motto: Millions Stand Behind Me!), 1932, Credit: Metropolitan Museum, Timeline of Art History.

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Tina Modotti, Syndicate of Painters, Sculptors and Technical Workers on May Day in Mexico City, 1929, Credit: Getty Images

movement spearheaded by artists who had been displaced and disillusioned by WW1, and who used various forms of creative expression to express their anti-war position. Due to this, there was an affinity between the various DADA movements and the Left political parties, especially in Berlin, although, rather than expressing a socialist position, DADA remained heterogeneous and anarchic. DADA’s importance is that the movement sparked an awareness that an artist’s role in society could no longer be considered according to the antiquated and deeply problematic nature of high bourgeois society.

Just a decade later, in Mexico City the groundbreaking Syndicate of Technical Workers, painters and sculptors demonstrated alongside the local proletarian social movement with creative enthusiasm. Even though Mexico had hard won its independence in 1821 from the Spanish Empire, the economic divide between the rich and the poor, and the social gap between the Spanish and Amerindian decedents were glaring, sparking a decade of civil wars in the country. In their 1922 Manifesto, the Syndicate grasped the general socialist zeitgeist and addressed to “the workers, peasants oppressed by the rich, to the soldiers transformed into hangmen by their chiefs and to the intellectuals who are not servile to the bourgeoisie.” They wrote: “we are with those who seek to overthrow an old and inhuman system, without which you, worker of the soil, produce riches for the overseer and politician, while you starve. We proclaim that this is the moment of social transformation from a decrepit to a new order.” Their goal was “to create a beauty for all, which enlightens and stirs to struggle.”5 Many members of the Syndicate, which functioned as a guild, joined the Mexican Communist Party (MCP). Their activities

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were invested both in a new type of collective artistic language, which found its expression in the large-scale educational public murals sponsored by the state, and defending artists rights and interests.6 However, over the course of the decade, the Syndicate members grew increasingly dissatisfied with the government and began criticizing the post-revolutionary realities in Mexico. The government terminated the muralists’ contracts, expelled them from the Party and the Syndicate gradually dissolved as some of its founders such as David Alfaro Siqueiros emigrated.

In the same timeframe, this time in New York, The Harlem Artists Guild was founded in 1928. Its first president, the artist Aaron Douglas,7 together with vice-president Augusta Savage and prominent members of the Harlem Renaissance movement (Gwendolyn Bennett, Norman Lewis, Charles Alston and others) agitated for the end of race-based discrimination and for the inclusion and fair pay of African American artists in arts organizations. Although an Artists’ Union existed in New York at the time, these artists felt the necessity for an organization based on the needs of the Harlem artists’ community, that would more effectively represent and lobby for their views and values. The guild’s constitution stated that, “being aware of the need to act collectively in the solution of the cultural, economic and professional problems that confront us” their goals were first to encourage young talent to “foster understanding between artist and public [through] education” and through “cooperation with agencies and individuals interested in the improvement of conditions among artists,” and finally to raise “standards of living and achievement among artists.”8 The guild played an influential role in helping artists attain the recognition necessary to qualify them for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) work projects.9 With the assistance of the Harlem Artist Guild, and the WPA, African American artists succeeded in gaining employment despite the hard times of the 1930s.

Unknown Photographer, Artists Union Picket, 1930s

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Re-adaptations and new cycles of struggle after the second world war In the post-WW2 reactionary period in the United States, The Artists’ Equity Association was established at a time when unions were dismantled, factories purged of women, and the government’s hostility towards artists left them with very little prospects. The Association10 faced considerable opposition as the idea of organized artists was looked on with suspicion by conservative critics and lawmakers due to a lingering antipathy to the activism of previous groups as the Artists’ Union and the Harlem Artists’ Guild and because of the ideological Cold War mistrust of socialist values. The Association ended up duplicating some of the activities that concerned its aforementioned predecessors putting in place its own grievance committee.

It functioned as a collective working platform, which agitated for improved economic conditions for visual artists, and for the expansion and protection of artists’ rights. Even though it did not endure for more than a decade the Association was a national endeavor, bringing together artist leaders, museum directors and critics to discuss issues around the visibility of the artists and their financial conditions.11 In the turbulent 1960s and 1970s artists were once more among the first to self-organize, identifying with the workforce under pressure to accept pay cuts, pension cuts and to disband unions. In 1968 France, artists, workers and students, pent up with anger over general poverty, unemployment, the conservative government, and military involvement in Southeast Asia, took to the streets in waves of strikes and demonstrations. Factories and universities were occupied.

L’Atelier Populaire, The police post themselves at the School of Fine Arts [while] the Fine Arts’ students poster the streets, 1968.

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Atelier Populaire (the Popular Workshop), an arts organization founded by students and faculty on strike at the École des Beaux Arts in the capital, produced street posters and banners for the revolt that would, “Give concrete support to the great movement of the workers on strike who are occupying their factories in defiance of the Gaullist government.” The visual material was designed and printed anonymously and distributed freely, held up on barricades, carried in demonstrations, and plastered on walls all over France. The Atelier intended this material not be taken as, “the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action, both on the cultural and the political plane.”12 Unlike its predecessors from the Realist movement, Atelier Populaire did not seek to become a political party or power, but functioned as a critical cultural frame around the social movement in France at the time.

In 1969, in the same turbulent socio-political global climate, an international group of artists and critics formed the Art Workers’ Coalition in New York. Hundreds of art workers participated in the AWC’s open meetings. Its function was similar to that of a trade union, engaging directly with museum boards and administrators who had become the façade of the commercial art world. The group which began around demonstrations at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, presented museums with a list of demands. The group invoked its avant-garde processors in posters, flyers and banners, referring for example to the felling of the Vendôme Column in Paris by the communards in 1878 as an inspiration. They also sought inspiration in the Artists Unions of the 1930s that organized themselves similarly to industrial unions, as well as artist’s guilds in Holland and Denmark, demanding subsidies for universal employment, rather than support from private capital from wealthy patrons.13 In their famous list of demands, the AWC called for the introduction of a royalties system by which collectors had to pay artists a percentage

Art Workers Coalition, 1970, Photo credit: Jan van Raay

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of their profits from resale, the creation of a trust fund for living artists, and the demand that all museums should be open for free at all times, and that their opening hours should accommodate the working classes. They also demanded that art institutions make exhibition space available for women, minorities and artists with no gallery representing them. In 1970 the AWC formed an alliance with MoMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Staff Association and by working simultaneously from both inside and outside institutional boundaries, their coalition of art-activists and the staff members were able to establish PASTA (The Professional and Administrative Staff Association) in 1970. This was one of the most significant official unions of art workers in the United States, as it joined together the interest of artist with those in similarly precarious conditions who are involved in different aspects of artistic production.14 Although the Art Workers Coalition folded after three years of intense activities, their legacy of reimagining artistic labor and challenging the unjust and discriminatory institutional models in the United States endured. More recently, with the involvement of the artistic community in social movements such as Occupy, questions of artistic subjectivity and class composition, artists as workers, protest politics and the role or art and artistic institution in the age of the art market have become once again paramount.

Contemporary challenges and new beginnings Today, it has become clear that artists are pressured to conform to the logic of the art market, even becoming the symbols of the new neoliberal creative economy.

As cultural critics such as Gregory Sholette15 have correctly observed, by coopting the desires and demands of the 1960s and 1970s cultures of protest, businesses and policy makers have transformed the office into more flexible, less hierarchical forms of control, that are increasingly difficult to disentangle and oppose.

At the same time, some artists groups who lead a precarious existence continue to identify as workers, at a time when traditional industries have all but disappeared, when there is no longer the safety net of the extinct welfare states, or as some countries at the periphery of the European Union, where the state has altogether ceased to mediate between the working population and the corporate empire. While the 1% enjoy their prosperity, it is by now abundantly clear that the many have not taken advantage of the trickle-down effect.

In the art world, even blue-chip artists deal with constantly changing occupations, traveling from one art fair to another biennale to another major exhibition, with exhausting networking and publicizing. While even the successful artists struggle, there are also those many artists whose production is invisible, yet completely necessary for the art world to go on spinning. Those young art students, newly graduated from academies and universities, have to deal with not being able to afford a studio, with scrambling for teaching positions, with having almost no health benefits. For the most part these artists end up as manual producers, whose

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skills such as painting, welding, casting, designing, are employed by the knowledge producers. This labor hierarchy illustrates the widening divide between the very few artists who are successful and the many that are not privy to the wealth of today’s art world. The latter, like other precarious workers continue to struggle to get to the right side of (art)history, to escape their condition of have-nots. In such difficult times, collective political organizing has become once again necessary. On the backdrop of social movements who are tackling the side-effects of the so-called financial crises around the world, the destruction of educational and cultural structures together with the rise of the right wing and nationalist sentiments, some art workers’ groups also began engaging with the artistic equivalent of the military-industrial-complex.

Currently there exist international self-organized coalitions, collectives, brigades, forums, assemblies, a loosely united, international art workers front working to disentangle the problematics around the tightening mesh of power and capital gripping art and cultural institutions. These groups are tackling issues around precarious conditions, the corporatization of the art world, the privatization of public spaces, self/exploitation, abuse, corruption, and so on, that affect not only the artists in the exhibition spaces, but also those anonymous many who invisibly labor to keep the art world working, those who clean exhibition spaces, guard galleries, those to build art fairs, underpaid or unpaid interns. These initiatives have managed to demonstrate that art workers are not bound to atomized, agent-less subjectivities, and that there is still a genuine desire for significant change in the art world.

In the United States, the New York based group Occupy Museums was born out of the Occupy Movement in 2011, criticizing through direct actions inside museums the connections between the corrupt high finance establishment and a corrupt and tamed high culture. Occupy Museums targeted important private museums in Europe and the United States, and attempt to hold them accountable to the public via means of horizontal spaces for debate and collaboration. Also coming from New York, the group W.A.G.E. is dedicated to drawing attention to economic inequalities that are prevalent in the art world, developing a system of institutional certification that allows art workers to survive within the greater economy. In London, the group Liberate Tate have engaged in a continuous wave of creative disobedience against Tate Modern, urging them to renounce funding from toxic oil companies.

In the same city, the groups Precarious Workers’ Brigade and Ragpickers have come out in solidarity with those struggling to survive in the so-called climate of economic crisis and enforced austerity measures, developing social and political tools to combat precarity in art and society. In Russia, the May Congress of Creative Workers, established in 2010 in Moscow, has acted as an organizational frame feeling the need to research the motivations, urgencies, approaches and strategies of cultural workers for survival, in the context of the tenuous production conditions in Russia and Ukraine – characterized by different levels of oppression, abuses of authority and even physical violations.

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W.A.G.E., wo/manifesto, 2008, Image credit: W.A.G.E.

Between 2010 and 2013, the Congress functioned as a tool of exercising the power to formulate grievances about particular working conditions and working towards establishing structures and alliances to improve them. More recently in February 2014, during the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, a group of artists and activists decided to occupy the Ministry of Culture in Kiev and launched the Assembly for Culture in Ukraine, demanding ideological, structural and financial restructuring of this important organizational body. While not all its members self-identified as art workers, the assembly continues to work in the same building as an ongoing meeting of citizens who are concerned with how cultural processes in Ukraine are structured and intent on transforming these structures and pressing the Ministry of Culture to shift the vector of influence on culture from government ideology to the masses who are the recipients and creators of cultural products and processes.

When ArtLeaks,16 the organization I co-founded in 2011 was launched, it was in the larger context of social movements and establishment of several of the aforementioned activist initiatives. Unlike many activist groups, which function under an anonymous, collective identity, it was important to us to use our real names and

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make concrete demands, to take responsibility and not make it leaderless project, which could provoke suspicions. The platform has maintained an international scope, while its goal has been to unite not just artists, but also curators, critics, philosophers around issues, problems and concerns in different contexts and using diverse strategies from “leaking” to self-education, unionizing, and direct actions.

Similar to our online case archive, Bojana Piškur, of the Radical Education Collective17 in Ljubljana, together with Djordje Balmazović, a member of the Škart Collective, Belgrade, have put together a research investigation, “Cultural Workers’ Inquiry,”18 based on Marx’s Workers’ Inquiry and concerning the position of a handful of cultural workers in Serbia in 2013. The publication, which is freely accessible online, contains straightforward testimonies of censorship, corruption and discrimination given by the respondents.

Activist groups engaged in similar struggles and activities with ArtLeaks, such as the above-mentioned Precarious Workers’ Brigade,19 Occupy Museums,20 Liberate Tate,21 and the May Congress of Creative Workers,22 have maintained fluid membership and loose hierarchical structures, making a difference without institutional support or funding. It doesn’t follow that these groups don’t have any resources – if thinking of resources not just as capital, but also as key people, experience, activist know-how, organizational knowledge, etc. They are reacting against the limits of institutions and the need to re-think them, re-write their missions, fight against proliferating repression and tacit abuse - the cultural side-effects of neoliberalism.

These networks do not necessarily imply a consensus over the self-identification

First Occupy Museums action at MoMA, 2011 (Noah Fischer in coin mask), photo: Jerry Saltz

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Precarious Workers’ Brigades, London Precarious Workers Brigade targets the irresponsible defunding of public services, 2011

of art workers as part of the same class with common grievances and a common agenda, rather they are grounds for alliances between cultural workers and cultural communities across national borders. Through these alliances, art workers can and do support each other during the creative process and their professional endeavors, which oftentimes unfold in highly unsound or in some context, even dangerous circumstances. The art workers models of organization which I have been discussing here are not the only means by which to precipitate socio-political transformation.

Rather, its importance in my opinion is that it embodies the idea of a collective, self-organized, politically concerned project that can lead to the transformation of a society. The concept of “Art worker” is a moniker that helps us recognize the possibility of such a transformation in a historically conscious way.

The future of art workers’ movements One of the biggest challenges these groups face is a yet-to-be-defined overall strategic vision and the precarious ways in which their activities exist, a condition that is also visible in the current fragmentation of socially engaged, politically committed, activist practices. Categories such as activist art, interventionism, social practice, institutional critique, relational aesthetics, etc., are not cohesive in their tactics or demands, neither are they explicitly affiliated with a broader social movement from which to formulate strategies of social transformation. Arguably, this is in itself symptomatic of the effects neoliberal ideology: heightened individualism, entrepreneurship, privatization, a do-it-yourself attitude. As a counter-example, early

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20th century avant-garde movements found a common ground with the organized, revolutionary Left, while the post war, neo-avant-garde was brought together by the oppositional strategies of the New Left.

And yet, some of activist art worker groups are beginning to look back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, and even further to the mid 19th century, as moments of inspiration for the fight for art workers rights, reclaiming cultural institutions, art and/as labor in a global context. Indeed, today’s art workers need more of that do-it-together spirit, a greater common interest and a more developed strategy and plan for transformation. Although the genealogy of engaged art, avant-garde movements and institutional critique has been historicized, it still holds relevance and inspiration for many activists, for whom the museum, the exhibition space, are still battlegrounds for struggle and conflict, which they do not escape from but engage with, challenge, transform into spaces for the common. Undoubtedly, by remembering and relearning from past endeavors, be they successful or not, current generations of art workers, in the broadest sense of the term, can better imagine their own collective evolution and emancipation.

Corina L. Apostol is a Ph.D candidate in the Art History Department at Rutgers University, NJ, USA. Her dissertation “Dissident Education: Socially Engaged Art from Eastern Europe in Global Context (1980-2014)” demonstrates how artists groups and creative collectives both effected and responded to global socio-political changes, through pedagogical projects that empowered audiences. She is the co-founder of the international platform ArtLeaks that exposes cases of censorship, exploitation and abuse in the artistic workforce. She is also the co-editor of the ArtLeaks Gazette, a yearly publication dedicated to art workers’ rights and struggles around the world.

Endnotes 1 Gustave Courbet, Realism, Preface to the brochure “Exhibition and sale of forty paintings and four drawings by Gustave Courbet,” 1855, republished in T.J. Clarke, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848–1851, (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society), 1973.

2 Courbet, Gustave. “Letter to artists of Paris, 7 April 1871”. In Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. Petra ten-Doessachte. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1992.

3 See Brigid Doherty, “The Work of Art and the Problem of Politics in Berlin Dada.” October 105, Summer, 2003, pg. 73-92

4 Helen Molesworth, “From Dada to Neo-Dada and Back Again.”October 105, Summer, 2003, pg.

180.

5 David Siqueiros, et al., originally published as a broadside in Mexico City, 1922. Published again in

El Machete, no. 7 (Barcelona, June 1924). English translation from Laurence E. Schmeckebier Modern Mexican Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1939), pg. 31.

6 David Alfaro Siqueiros and Xavier Guerrero, some of the founding members of the Syndicate edit-

ed a newspaper associated with the organization, El Machete, which included articles by Diego Rivera and others.

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7 Through his political activism and artwork, Douglas revealed ideas and values exemplified during the Harlem Renaissance, an artistic movement founded on the ideals of racial pride, social power, and the importance of African culture. During the 1930s, African American history and culture was repre-

sented and celebrated through the arts. See: Campbell, Mary, David Driskell, David Levering Lewis, and Deborah Willis Ryan. Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. New York: Abrams, 1897.

8 Republished in Patricia Hills, “Harlem’s Artistic Community,” in Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence, (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2010), pg. 26-27

9 “Works Progress Administration.” Surviving the Dust Bowl. 1998. PBS Online. 6 March 2003 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/ pandeAMEX10.html

10 Yasuo Kuniyoshi was the founding figure of the Association, which he began to conceptualize in 1946 together with like-minded friends.

11 For more information on the Artists’ Equity Association, please see David M. Sokol, “The Found-

ing of Artists Equity Association After World War II,” Archives of American Art, Journal 39 (1999), pg.17-29

12 Quoted in Kristin Ross, “Introduction,” in Kristin Ross, May 68 and Its Afterlives, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pg. 17

13 See Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam Era,” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)

14 For a more detailed history of the Art Workers Coalition, see Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, (Oakland, CA: University of California Press), 2011

15 Gregory Sholette, “Speaking Clown to Power: Can We Resist the Historical Compromise of Neoliberal Art?,” in J. Keri Cronin, Kirsty Robertson, eds., Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture and Activism in Canada: Visual Culture (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press) 2011, pg. 27-48.

16 More about ArtLeaks on our website: http://art-leaks.org

17 More about the Radical Education Collective on their online archive: http://radical.tmp.si

18 Bojana Piškur and Djordje Balmazović, eds., Cultural Workers’ Inquiry, published online, 2013: http://radical.tmp.si/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Workers-Inquiry_English.pdf

19 More about PWB on their website: http://precariousworkersbrigade.tumblr.com 20 More about Occupy Museums on their website: http://occupymuseums.org

21 More about Liberate Tate on their website: https://liberatetate.wordpress.com/

22 More about the May Congress of Creative Workers (in Russian) on their website: http://may-congress.ru

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An Introduction to the Great Miners’ Strike in Kiruna, Malmberget and Svappavaara An Artistic Inquiry into The Great Miners’ Strike and Solidarity Actions Ingela Johansson

On December 9, 1969, the great miners’ strike erupted in the ore fields of Norrbotten in the far north of Sweden. It was a wildcat strike in which 4800 miners at LKAB’s (Loussavaara-Kiirunavaara AB) mines in Svappavaara, Kiruna and Malmberget, halted work for 57 days. The reasons for the strike were many: the miners were subject to a harsh time-study system, UMS (Universal Maintenance Standards), that LKAB used to push down piece rates. Real wages had fallen steadily for fifteen years and the workers now demanded fixed wages. The company structure of LKAB was strictly hierarchical. In the context of the strike, this was illustrated by the 31 “leadership tenets.” For instance, tenet 29 declared that an employee should simply follow orders, “A manager should practice his leadership in such a way that a non-manager merely needs to follow orders.” By giving their managers this leadership training, LKAB implemented a new mode of work organization in the hopes that the assembly line (Fordism) would rationalize production. LKAB became state-owned in 1957, but despite this the work environment had noticeably deteriorated due to harsh rationalization measures. The miners’ cabins, which contained locker rooms and communal dining rooms in which the miners socialized during breaks, were eliminated. “We are not machines.” was one of many slogans in circulation on placards in Kiruna during the strike.

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Photo: Satura. Documentation by Margareta Vinterheden and Alf Israelsson.

Industrial workers had achieved a higher standard of living due to the general increase in societal welfare in the postwar years. The Swedish folkhemmet (people’s home), the vision of the welfare state, was known across the world, especially for its egalitarian ideals. Thus it was assumed internationally that workers at Sweden’s largest state-owned company labored under the best conditions in the world. In reality, miners were subject to a very dangerous work environment that included noxious diesel fumes in the mines, and their wage growth was inferior to that of many other industrial workers.

The miners’ strike also challenged the “spirit of unity” – the idea of state and industry working together to create harmony on the labor market. State-owned LKAB was a member of SAF (Swedish Employers Association). One demand made by the miners was that LKAB immediately withdraw from the organization. The strike also protested the miners’ own trade union. The workers wanted the right to negotiate locally, rather than through Grängesberg, in central Sweden, where the offices of the miners’ union were located. The largest trade union in Norbotten, Gruvtolvan, was not represented on the board of the miners’ union. In general, the workers considered the union too weak to effectively put pressure on the large mining compa-

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nies. Thus the strike was a strike against several parties: LKAB, the state and the miners’ own collective, and L.O. (The Swedish Trade Union Confederation). The strike would shake up the social democratic welfare state and a few years afterward, in the 1970s, and L.O. began internal reforms. The most concrete change to come out of the struggle and the wildcat strikes was the Law on Codetermination in the Workplace (MBL in Swedish), which passed in 1976. The push to increase productivity, along with the introduction of Fordism at industrial plants around Europe, was challenged by industrial workers who refused to work in response to rationalizations, deteriorating pay conditions and alienation.

In northern Italy, “the two red years,” ran from 1968 through 1969. A wave of strikes around Sweden, starting with the port workers’ strike in Gothenburg in November 1969, gave the miners’ strike added momentum. The year 1968 also witnessed a general uprising against authority. Young people challenged the norms and power structures in society at large, as well as those of a social democracy they felt was outdated. The new left wanted to see a more engaged social democracy, one that took cues from global political movements.

The miners’ strike received broad popular support. Many political groups visited the ore fields during the strike: sociologists, journalists, activists and cultural workers.

“We are no machines”, Photo: Press TT.

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Swedish public television, which had recently become a two-channel system, sent journalists to the scene. However, the new channel, TV 2, couldn’t broadcast that far north. There was plenty of media attention nationally, but the miners weren’t able to see themselves in the various programs that covered the strike. Instead they listened to Norbottenskvarten (a local radio program). The news was heavily regulated and controlled by the state-run radio and TV – this resulted in the image of the strike conveyed in media being anything but “objective.”

For many young people, the miners came to represent the industrial working class who would revolutionize society. Different political groups had hopes as to what the miners might be able to realize ideologically for them and for society. For instance, some believed that the miners’ struggle could result in a revolutionary systemic critique of both the Swedish spirit of unity between industry and labor, as it was part of the nascent anti-capitalist movement. KFML (The Communist Union of Marxist-Leninists) offered their support by spreading propaganda and providing ideological guidance. The party played an important role during the Vietnam War by organizing solidarity work through the united NLF Groups (Vietnamese Na-

Photo: Satura. Documentation by Margareta Vinterheden, Alf Israelsson.

(On the image: The filmmaker Margareta Vinterheden interviews the strike committee member Elof Luspa.)

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tional Liberation Front). Members of KFML were also active in collecting means for the strike fund so that the miners could continue to strike when they didn’t receive strike support from L.O. Despite many political groups wanting to actively support the strike, the strike committee was clear that this was their strike and that no outside groups should be allowed to compromise their unity. Everyone in the group fought to achieve a united front. Appearing united strengthened their negotiating position against LKAB and made it possible for the miners to negotiate for themselves, without the involvement of L.O., as they were suspicious of the union’s stance on the conflict.

The strike meetings were organized according to a direct democratic principle termed “big meetings”. The big meeting was the workers’ highest decision-making authority during the strike.

The outwardly united front would eventually cause the strike to crumble. There were many reasons why the front didn’t hold, too many to detail in this article. In short, supporters of social democratic policy wanted to achieve a smooth ending to the strike after pressure from the Social Democratic party and L.O. There was fear that the wildcat strikes would threaten the basis for the spirit of unity, introduced after Saltsjöbadsavtalet (an agreement made in the 1930s between industry and L.O., supported by the government). The strike could also be used by foreign powers – the Swedish government maintained good relations with the US during the Cold War, due the threat posed by the Soviet Union. There was a well-worn conflict between Communists and Social Democrats fighting for their ideological home base at the various union chapters in the mining towns. Malmberget was more oriented toward Communists, while Social Democrats ruled the roost in Kiruna.

The state secret service IB (the information bureau) oversaw the strike through wire-tapping on site. Even media worked to splinter workers. Miners often felt that journalists were painting a false image of the strike, or that they held back because media was state-run. At the time, many state institutions were run through with repressive tolerance against voices deemed too radical.

Alternative channels and forms of distribution were created in reaction to state control of public institutions. For example Filmcentrum emerged in May 1968 to organize the independent filmmakers, and provide production support, as the Swedish Film Institute was considered too conservative for experimental activities. According to Filmcentrum’s motto, filmmakers should go out into society and document factories and industry using simple means in order to create quick documentary reports. A concrete suggestion for making the film project available was to use existing channels of distribution. Thus an inventory of all film projectors in all Folkets Hus (community centers) and other public venues across Sweden was made.

Through the socialist organization Clarté, the NLF-movement organized exhibitions in Stockholm where artworks were auctioned off to benefit the Vietnamese

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cause. The miners’ strike contributed to a continued solidarity effort and more experimental institutional activity was initiated at places like the Modern Museum and the City Museum in Stockholm in order to draw in the new social and political movements. The Modern Museum started a parallel project called “Filialen”, a collaboration between the museum director Pontus Hultén and the intendent Pär Stolpe. For three years (1971-1973) “Filialen” provided space for a radical pedagogy intended to broaden the notion of visual art and to encourage a public not accustomed to contemporary art.

In this spirit of solidarity work and radicalism surrounding the miners’ strike, benefit shows, fundraisers and art auctions were arranged at various places in Sweden to help the miners. At the Modern Museum an evening of solidarity was arranged with popular singers and artists. The Museum of Sundsvall collected art for sale, Galleri Heland in Stockholm also collected art for an auction. The author Sara Lidman played a key role in these solidarity efforts. At the first strike meeting in Kiruna she donated money from the proceeds of her and Odd Uhrbom’s book Gruva [Mines] as a first contribution toward a strike fund. The money collected around the country was then put in a bank account opened for the strike fund and the artworks not sold were sent up to the strike committee. However, the strike committee decided to not sell the art, instead the miners kept them as a memento of the gift.

The miners had collected more than 4.5 million Swedish kronor for their strike fund and they didn’t feel that they needed to sell the art. Rather they wanted to keep it for the historical record. The miners’ strike art collection consists of graphics,

Document: ”Telegram”. Translated quote: ”You have our full support, The workers at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm”

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paintings and sculptures. The collection documents one of Sweden’s most famous strikes; it also documents the solidarity movement that emerged around this time in 1968.

Cultural workers launched several other initiatives during the strike, often solidarity efforts that were welcomed by the miners, but criticized by media and organizations that received support from the Social Democratic Party. Independent theater groups from Stockholm were on site to perform theater. The NJA group (Nils Johan Andersson) staged a play produced by Sweden’s National Theatre, Dramaten, that was intended to be for the state-owned Norrbottens Järnverk AB in Luleå; when the strike broke out the ensemble decided to also perform it at the strike sites in the ore fields. This was harshly criticized by the board of Dramaten, which resulted in actors quitting their jobs there. Narren Theatre was also on site for a couple of months and staged a play Solidaritet Arbetarmakt [Solidarity, Worker power] in dialogue with workers at Malmberget. Filmmakers Alf Israelsson and Margareta Vinterheden who had grown up in the area made the documentary Gruvstrejken 69/70 (the miners’ strike 69/70). The filmmakers Lena Ewert and Lars Westman were given the responsibility to film the closed internal strike meetings, their engagement resulted in the documentary Kamrater motståndaren är välorganiserad [Comrades, the enemy is well organized], a film made in collaboration with a special film and editing committee consisting of miners.

The history of the great miners’ strike is known within the contemporary political left movements and is still present in the collective memory of the older generation.

But for the general public, it is rather unknown, and one could rather suspect that the attempts by powerful forces to hide its history have prevailed. In the current status quo of the neoliberal society, it is difficult to comprehend the ideologies that were at stake during the 68 movement, particularly as this period is remembered as the ideal state of politics in Sweden. It represents a democratic system with more social justice than we see in contemporary politics. However, the event of the strike, at the time of evolving criticism by the 68 politics, could have been addressed publicly by the Social Democratic Party, as a self-analytical example towards its past conflicts with the left to regain momentum. But the Social Democratic labour movement has never had the ability to self reflect over its hegemonic and reformist role; it is now occupied with moving to the middle politics in post capitalism renouncing ideologies of the past as it seeks to regain power.

Often the historic event of a strike is generally spoken of in terms of nostalgia, but to address historical struggles as pure nostalgia diminishes the work that was put at stake for those active in the opposition. The outstanding and broad social engagement and activism for the strikers cause is particularly interesting as it included different fields of culture workers who mirrored the situation in various works. In retrospect, the strike event contributed to the radicalization of the general cultural landscape in Sweden, which could fuel the spirit of art workers struggles. Actors

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Photo: Documentation by Pål Sommelius. “The Miners’ Strike Art Collection” (at Gällivare museum), Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm.

from various cultural fields stepped up to support the strike and thus promote a more equal society. Curators were putting solidarity posters up publicly. Theatre companies put up plays in the mining district and filmmakers documented the course of the strike on site. Artists and musicians organized petitions and collections for the strikers in Stockholm; at cultural institutions experimental activities were established to capture the new social and political movements.

Since 2010, artist, Ingela Johansson (Sweden), has been working on her investigation “What happened to the art of the strike?”. She examined the great miners’ strike of 1969/70 as it related to the general radicalization of the artistic and cultural landscape in the wake of the 1968 uprising. The project has taken various forms, in which Johansson has worked with archival materials from the time of the strike. She has shown “The Miners’ Strike Art Collection” (at Gällivare museum) in collaboration with Bildmuseet in Umeå (2012) and Tensta Konsthall (2013). She has also staged this material as theater, and organized “Witness seminars” in collaboration with Södertörn University in Stockholm.

Note The article is a compilation of the 500 page book, The art of the strike, voices on cultural and political

work during and after the mining strike 1969-70. Ingela Johansson has collected documents of various

kinds that use the strike as a point of departure and the actions of solidarity and support, which were carried out by artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers and other groups. To these strike docu-

ments she added conversations with people who were involved in various capacities. The conversations took place between 2010 and 2013, either on site in the mining district, at other locations across the

country, over telephone, Skype or email. The material on which the assemblages in the book are based consist of newspaper articles, excerpts from books, protocols, letters and more, as well as of sound-re-

cordings from strike meetings, seminars, witness seminars, speeches and conversations. They comment on the societal events in ’68 and the collective memory of the course of the strike. Ingela Johansson has collected the materials and conducted the interviews, in part with Kim Einarsson. The material

has been assembled and edited in collaboration with Kim Einarsson and Martin Högström, who have also created the graphic design.

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Sources Peter Bratt, Jan Guillou, ”Han spionerade på Gruvstrejken”, Folket i bild/Kulturfront nr 9, 1973.

Peter Bratt och Jan Guillou, ”Sveriges Spionage”. Folket i Bild/Kulturfront nr 9, 1973.

Jan Guillou, ”Vem kontrollerar säkerhetspolisen?”, Folket i Bild/ Kulturfront nr 3, 1972.

Thomas Kanger; Jonas Gummesson, Kommunistjägarna. Socialdemokraternas politiska spioneri mot svenska folket, Ordfronts förlag, Stockholm 1990.

Åke Kilander, Vietnam var nära, en berättelse om FNL-rörelsen och solidaritetsarbetet i Sverige 1965–1975, Leopard förlag, Stockholm 2007.

Leif Nylén, Den öppna konsten: happenings, instrumental teater, konkret poesi och andra gränsöverskridningar i det svenska 60-talet, Stockholm 1998.

Bengt Olvång, Våga Se! Svensk konst 1945–1980, Författarförlaget, Stockholm 1983.

Pappren på bordet Del 1 och 2: protokoll och dokument från den stora gruvstrejken i Malmfälten 1969/70. Utgiven av Strejkkommittén i Malmfälten, Ordfront, Stockholm 1972.

Kim Salomon, Rebeller i takt med tiden – FNL-rörelsen och 60-talets politiska ritualer, Tidens förlag, Stockholm 1996.

Carl-Henrik Svenstedt, Arbetarna lämnar fabriken; Filmindustrin blir folkrörelse, Pan/Norstedts, Stockholm 1970.

Anders Thunberg, red., Strejken; Röster, dokument, synpunkter från en storkonflikt, Rabén & Sjögren, Stockholm 1970.

Zenit, 16ó LKAB-strejken, 17 februari, 1970.

Kjell Östberg, 1968 – När allt var i rörelse, Sextiotalsradikaliseringen och de sociala rörelserna, Prisma i samarbete med Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola, Stockholm 2002.

Kjell Östberg, I takt med tiden. Olof Palme 1927–1969, Leopard förlag, Stockholm 2010.

Kjell Östberg, När vinden vände: Olof Palme 1969–1986, Leopard förlag, Stockholm 2010.

Interviews Stefan Böhm, Lena Ewert, Björn Granath, Ove Haraala, Lars-Erik Johansson, Sköld Peter Matthis,

Leif Nylén, Kajsa Ohrlander, Pär Stolpe, Carl-Henrik Svenstedt, Göran Therborn, Margareta Vinterheden, Lars Westman, Östen Öhlund

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Tatiana Fiodorova, Artist, 2015.

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Education in the Museum – A Space of Political Emancipation?

Bojana Piškur

This text is based on the concepts, working methodologies, and deliberations of institutions conducted by the initiative Radical Education (RE) between 2006 to 2014. RE was initiated as a project within a public art institution – the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana – in order for it, through analysis of its own work, to direct itself towards a different level of relationship with this institution and others like it.

With (those) groups that are not “only” artist collectives, like Radical Education, in most cases we are not dealing exclusively with visual material. These kinds of groups do not perceive art merely as a “form”, representation of some political or social reality, but as a new, different kind of “aesthetics” that emerges at the crossroads of politics, art, social criticism and engagement. At the same time, with groups that enter art institutions in different ways, the following question almost always arises: “In which ways do you avoid the hegemony of representation so that the work process, research methods or political action do not fall into the trap of a participative-multicultural project?”

Concerning these kinds of antagonisms, Antonio Negri, at a conference1 in the Reina Sofia Museum that took place last March, brought up an open question: "What does it actually mean for us today to have a museum?" He understood this question in the sense of active deliberation of our role and relationship towards museums, not only in the field of art as such, but also in a broader sociopolitical context.

On the other hand, these questions are very much related to the ideas of a different type of museum or with what is today called “other institutionality.” For this reason I will first make a short survey of some of these practices, since the ideas of new

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Exhibition of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1948. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana.

institutionalism are also a continuation of our Radical Education project and of the relationship between this collective/process/work methodology and art institutions. Radical Education did not therefore develop in a vacuum, but as a long-time process of deliberation of different practices, especially those connected with the experience of socialism and new social movements.

Alexander Bogdanov,2 right after the October Revolution in 1918, wrote the socalled first Bolshevik utopian story “Red Star”, in which he writes about living in communism on the planet Mars. Among other things, he writes about museums, namely, of the idea of art in such a communist community, and says: “In socialism, art will spread in the society in order to enrich life everywhere. As for our museums, they are scientific-research institutes, schools, in which we teach the development of art, or more precisely, the development of humanity through artistic activities.”

In the article “Proletarian Culture”, published in Ljubljana in 1930 in the magazine Delavec [Worker], the relationship between the worker and culture is analyzed, and the need to free the worker from the influences of the civil culture that requires him to work, think and behave only in one determined way. The author writes that workers have to engage themselves in experiments with different kinds of art and thus at the same time create new forms of collective living. The proletarian culture must be egalitarian and collective, as opposed to the bourgeois culture, which prefers individual poetics, hierarchy and elitism. There is striving towards certain kinds

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of emancipation, like the one Angelica Balabanoff, Russian-Italian sociologist, wrote about in the 1920s. She claimed that the workers’ problem lied in their being intellectually carefree and indifferent so that it was necessary to incite in them a sense of need for participating in different cultural activities like: systemic lessons about culture, press that makes the worker participate in cultural events, books that stimulate thinking. She felt that the best method was discussion, since it enabled the worker to reexamine his or her own conceptions, feel his or her own experiences and seek explanations for the concepts he or she did not understand. She also sees in this the beginning of independent thinking, some kind of radical pedagogy.

Of course, such ideas can be found in other contexts too; for example in Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire, or in French philosopher Jacques Ranciere and his “Ignorant Schoolmaster”, and in many different theorists and practitioners of different kinds of pedagogy. These realizations influenced the RE collective as well, especially when they were collaborating with migrant workers in the Social Center Rog in Ljubljana. Or later, when, in different context, the “Marx’s Worker’s Inquiry” was being conducted among cultural workers (we will discuss this a little later).

If we consider the museums in Yugoslavia and their relationship towards the socalled proletarian culture we can, as early as the end of the Second World War, see the role that the museum pedagogue had (they were not called that then) and the idea of “education for all”, and the need to bring art closer to everyone. Certainly, this was also very much connected to the tradition that culture played during the

Exhibition of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1948. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana.

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Exhibition of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1948. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana.

Second World War in the National Liberation Struggle (an example of partisan art). During the self-management, all museum workers were called cultural workers, which was an integral part of the cultural policy of the time.3 Workers’ organizations organized different thematic fine art exhibitions in factories and enterprises, there were cinema and photo clubs, literary workshops in factories and much more.

These were at the same time the spaces in which they could experiment with form, and the very contents of art. For example, especially well-known are the experimental films developed in cinema clubs in this period. Didactic exhibitions like the “Contemporary Art I” project in 1957, in the City Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, travelled around Yugoslav cities, while actually being an exhibition composed exclusively out of reproductions of works of art. Likewise, in the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, in 1948, immediately after the opening of the gallery, an exhibition was laid out about the Women’s Antifascist Front (WAF), which was political propaganda, but was at the same time a good example of an educational didactic exhibition. Of course, today we can be critical towards the very way in which an art space served for the purposes of propaganda, but, on the other hand, we can, through examples such as this one reexamine the very role of museum, museum as a space of contemplation, or museum as a social and political space, and museum as a space of class antagonism. For whom is the museum? For the intellectual elite, or for everyone? And how does this “everyone” enter and participate equally in the museum?

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The aforementioned questions are not new, and the long tradition of dealing with these issues does not relate only to the period of post-October Russia. There are numerous examples, like the one during the Second Spanish Republic in the 1930s, when there existed “Missiones Pedagogicas”, which implied “bringing” the so-called high culture (for example, reproductions of paintings from the Prado Museum) to the people in the poorest villages of Spain, who never had access to this kind of culture. Another example is the “Museum of Solidarity” in Santiago de Chile, the story of which begins in 1972, during the world’s first democratically elected Marx-

Mário Pedrosa’s letter to president Salvador Allende, 1972. Courtesy of Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile.

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MĂĄrio Pedrosaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s letter to president Salvador Allende, 1972. Courtesy of Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile.

ist president, Salvador Allende. At the same time in the world, under the auspices of UNESCO, began discussions about a different role of the museum in society.

At the international seminar of museum workers of Latin America in Santiago de Chile, where the so-called social or socialist museum was discussed, a new model of integrated museum was proposed, which was supposed to connect cultural rehabilitation and political emancipation. By all means, it was especially important here

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to take into consideration the very context of Latin America and the history of dictatorships and class divisions in this geopolitical area. The museum was, in this way, supposed to actively participate in social and cultural changes, to be progressive, but not being ideologically limited in any way by political representation or being merely a propaganda machine. The Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende was jointly deliberated by Mário Pedrosa (at that time exiled from Brazil due to dictatorship) and president Allende himself, and it had the purpose to become a workers’ museum, or as Allende once said: "This museum will not be just a museum.

It will be a workers’ museum.” The example of this museum could perhaps serve as an excellent illustration of an integrated museum had it not been closed in 1973, during Pinochet’s coup d’état.

This museum was very specific because in it there was no “classical political propaganda” like the mentioned WAF exhibition at the Museum of Modern Arts (MMA); it was founded exclusively on donations of artists from all around the world. Besides the new museological vocation, one of the most important components was international solidarity and support. Artists donated their works, believing in a new and different society. And this meant several thousands of works, by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, artists of abstract expressionism from the USA (which in fact is a great paradox), conceptual artists like Sol Le Witt, artists-participants of Documenta 5 in Kassel4 and many others.

This idea was present earlier as well and includes not only the creation of new works of art, but also educational, cultural tasks in the service of the revolution, where the artistic creation becomes an active process. Thus art becomes a way and a means of organization of the collective social system and the role of a certain class (proletariat) in it.

In the RE, from the very beginning (2006), the ways of opening the museum for all were deliberated, as well as of politicization of the museum and bringing different practices from the “outside” into the very context of some art institutions. However, the RE was at the same time a rather heterogeneous group of people (anthropologists, sociologists, anarchists, artists, pedagogues, migrant workers) with different experiences of working in communities (of migrant workers, asylum seekers, the erased, with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Piqueteros in Argentina, with the HIJOS in Guatemala, etc.), and institutions (faculties, museums), so as a consequence of this, very different ideas arose on what museum space actually was and to whom it served.

The RE was formed in a time when the alter-globalist movements (post Seattle, post Geneva) was already exhausted to a certain degree and when intensive deliberations on how to proceed began. Is it also possible to be in some kind of league (alliance) with the classical type of institutions, as, for example, universities and museums? What are the products of such encounters? What are the new “mon-

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ster-institutions”5 like, politically speaking? Is there a possibility for a joint struggle against capitalism and exploitation, and in which ways? One of the first actions, when the idea of the RE was actually conceived, was the occupation of the “Rog” bicycle factory in Ljubljana, in 2006. The “Rog” opened up crucial questions of joint space in the city, access and usage of these spaces, politicization of public space, and the question of how to connect with other institutions.6 The RE tried from the very beginning to connect two institutions: the museum (MG) and the Rog Social Center. The starting point was the idea that the RE was not and did not want to be “just another” participative project within the museum, because temporary solidarities of this kind (for example, limited work with different marginal groups, namely, the so-called “projections of politics as something else and outside”) only divert from the politics here and now. There was an attempt to make some kind of contact between the social movement and one art institution, so that, in this way, some new institutional forms of resistance could be found, in which resistance would be considered a joint space of encounter, some kind of new “aesthetics”, in Paolo Virno’s sense of the word.

I feel that this is especially important since it puts into the foreground the thesis that there also exist different kinds of aesthetics that are not linked exclusively to “art as object” (here is also hidden the criticism of the idea of participation of which Claire Bishop writes), but also the ones that are based on the creation of “joint”,

Exhibition of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1948. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana.

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but joint in the sense of production ways (joint concepts, live knowledge), different forms of cooperation (based on the tradition of radical pedagogy and methods of co-research/militant research) and ways of opening the space of political. Then education is not only a “model” any more, but it becomes a specific micro-political situation that can develop in most diverse spaces in the form of different alliances and collective actions. The way of mutual cooperation and joint work is also very important since it is hard to enter activists’ circles “as a gate-crasher” and start research or a project ad hoc. We are in fact dealing with a long process that is primarily based on trust, having in mind that rather “fragile” political subjectivities are most often involved.

As was previously mentioned, the RE understood theory from the very beginning as a process in the forming of a new political artistic subjectivity. Theory was simultaneously practice and vice versa, practice was part of theory. This is much more important because in debates and discussions with the most diverse groups of people, concepts and ideas like the following were considered: work, precarious work, cognitive work, common good, class antagonism, emancipation, artistic autonomy, etc. As it is generally known, a series of problems always arise in such contexts, like the one with translation, the problem of language usage, etc., however many of these kinds of projects strove to be distanced from “intellectual arrogance”. This was also the subject of a series of seminars that were organized in cooperation with the SC Rog and the MG. One of the themes was “Resistance as Creation”, which was organized with the “invisible” workers of the world, asylum seekers, activists, cultural workers, and in which there were discussions about relationship between social centers, artist and political collectives, ways of communication and cooperation with the local community, questions of usage of public and common spaces in the city, etc. We should keep in mind that this period of late 2007/ early 2008, was a period of large construction investments in Slovenia, of making private-public partnerships, of the arrival of almost 80,000 immigrant workers from Bosnia who worked in very poor conditions, and that, at the same time, all those problems were almost completely invisible in Slovenia itself, namely, it was evident that there lacked any kind of political engagement concerning all those issues.

During the seminar entitled “To Think Politics: New Concepts in Political Activism”, the RE, together with people from the Infoshop (anarchists), young political philosophers from the DPU (Delavsko-punkerska univerza)7 and people from the social movements that were active as early as the 1980s, discussed the possibilities of recognizing realistic alternatives in the movements and concepts like: Zapatism, political communities of the “erased”, autonomous workers’ unions, etc. The question with which the workshop dealt is the question of different political expressions in the local political system. Naturally, today, after six years, we cannot think in the same way. After the big demonstrations in Slovenia two years ago, the alternative political scene dissolved completely, primarily due to criminalization of a part of these protests, that is, of their certain participants, by the state apparatus, and then also due to the appropriation of demonstrations by the existing parliamentary parties.

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But the important thing in all these processes, seminars, debates, etc., was that they were all based on reexamination of one’s own position and critical analysis of one’s own work in relation to the collective. If someone today posed the question how to understand the RE in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the answer would probably be that the RE was in fact “a series of failures”. This meaning of the RE is certainly not negative – which is a small paradox – but quite the opposite. This process, project, methodology or collective called the RE, was never realized in a way for it to become the brand of an institution, specifically the MG. It never quite lived up to the expectations of what a project, a seminar or an exhibition should achieve and in which way, because with the RE there always existed a “space of unpredictable.” Today it is clear that it was that very space that had in itself the biggest political potential.

The RE project often had invitations to take part in different seminars, conferences, debates, and actions, which it did. But after some time, the activity of the participants was reduced to only traveling and talking about what they thought should be done, and not actually doing it in local communities. This also conceals the paradox of such illusory privilege of activism in the framework of the art scene, due to which many cultural workers do not even notice the contradictoriness of their positions torn between the privileges of a certain class and exploitation within the extended workers’ class, to which more or less all the cognitive workers belong today.

Out of such observations arose a different type of research related to the “Marx’s Workers’ Inquiry”, which at the same time had the purpose of self-education. This is also significant for the reasons of which Franco “Bifo” Berardi speaks when he wonders how it is possible to explain the transformation of working men and working women from dissatisfaction to acceptance of work. Although, surely, one of the reasons is political defeat from which the labor class has been suffering since the late 1970s, according to him, the biggest reason for this transformation lies in the loss of eros in everyday life and in the investing of desire into work, which in this way becomes the only place that provides narcissistic strengthening of individuals.

The effects of this are a general loss of solidarity, non-existence of workers’ community, and the occurrence of the imperative of competitiveness.

The “Marx’s Workers’ Inquiry” was developed in 1981 with the purpose to redefine the position of the French proletariat. The inquiries that the RE conducted were adapted to the local situation. The first inquiry took place in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, in 2010, in the form of collaborative research conducted by two collectives: the “Workers’ Inquiry” group and the RE. The “Workers’ Inquiry” was in fact a group of doctoral students who were doing a part of their studies in the Reina Sofia Museum.

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The inquiry was sent to workers (450 surveyed) of this, the biggest Spanish museum, as a questionnaire, and it served as a trigger for numerous discussions, above all concerning the way in which “the spaces that are relatively closed for dialogue can be detonated and disturbed.” The inquiry had 80 questions that were related to several subjects: education, current employment, type of contract, social security, conflicts at work, censorship, and sociopolitical positions. Out of 450 inquiries, the answers were anonymously submitted by little less than 10% of the employees. As it turned out, the biggest problems were “fear” and “self-censorship” of the workers.

The analysis of these data was organized in multiple debates, in the museum itself and in some social centers in Madrid, together with other activists’ groups. One of the big frustrations of this research, that is, the inquiry, was the absence of answers from the employees in the museum. However, as it turned out during the analysis, in an intervention such as this in a type of institution like the Reina Sofia, each answer is good enough, including the one not received, because the reasons for this absence are equally important as the received answers. The analysis of the research should have been published in the magazine of this museum as well, but it was, in the end, censored by the museum management without explanation.

The group from Madrid and the RE met later with the cultural workers in Belgrade too, and together they organized a series of seminars on the theme of work relationships and the experience of working in cultural institutions in Serbia. The inquiry was then revised according to the sphere of Serbian culture, in this case, in cooperation with the group Škart. Here it has the form of an interview with the cultural workers, active in the field of culture and politics, the majority of which had conflicts at their jobs.

One of the goals of this inquiry was to point out different ways and levels of exploitation of the examinees, which could potentially stimulate further actions against the commodification of their work. The key to the understanding of exploitation lies in determining the way in which it shapes the work and life of workers, from flexibility of work to the absence of social security and health insurance, uncertain working conditions, etc. Likewise, what is certainly clear here is that today we can no longer speak of some kind of autonomy in art. While the artistic production still enjoys relative creative freedom, the deterioration of material conditions for the artistic work, the increasingly smaller control that artists have over reproduction of their own ideas, practices, goods, pushes artists into a kind of contract with the capital, namely into wage labor. The question of the way in which the division between the artistic production and wage labor could be overcome has become not only a question of survival strategy, but also a political problem. In this problem Virno anticipates one of his crucial theses: “Is it possible to separate something that is united today – intellect and wage labor, and to unite that which is separated – intellect and political action?”

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Exhibition of the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 1948. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana.

The analyses of the inquiries were published in a booklet. The goal of the analysis was to show that the main neuralgic points that preclude joint solidarity and struggle against the existing condition are the following: large degree of alienation from the products of work, unstable life, fragmentation of working time, high level of censorship and self-censorship, self-exploitation and the imperative of competitiveness. One of the crucial problems is also the fact, which Virno especially emphasizes, that the post-Fordist work absorbed in itself many of the so-called typical characteristics of political action.

The RE in the last year, it could be said â&#x20AC;&#x201C; cancelled itself, that is to say, it came to the edge where this kind of intervention in the space of an art institution became unnecessary. Certainly, not unnecessary in the sense that the museum became an ideal institution, but that the ideas of the RE became a part of deliberation strategies on new types of institutionalism within the museum itself. This is also visible through newly-formed collectives among the employees, exhibitions and debates that intervene in different critical ways in the reality of the museum, not only as institutional criticism but social as well, which often points to various antagonisms hidden inside the museum.

In the end, I would like to mention another example from the RE practice in the museum that connected different subjectivities; artistic and activist, and the people from the anti-psychiatry movement active since as early as the 1980s. This occurred

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this year in the context of the “Politicalization of Friendship” project, where concepts of total institutions and ways of opening such institutions were deliberated.

There was consideration on what the meaning of creativity was and what the common articles of artistic creativity and madness were. What can we learn from madness? In the 1980s this movement attempted, through radical education of psychiatric profession, to change society’s relationship towards madness, the psychiatrists’ relationship towards the patient, and the hierarchical relationships themselves in psychiatric institutions in Slovenia, leaning in the process on the ideas of Félix Guattari and Franco Basaglia. At the exhibition itself, together with people from psychiatric institutions, activists and the engaged students of social work, a kind of “didactic exhibition” was organized that included photographs, film, diaries, letters and notes that were all shown in the museum space with works of Yugoslav surrealists and a film of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. It turned out, interestingly, that there were actually no differences in formal or conceptual sense between the works. At the accompanying debates in the museum there was also discussion about deinstitutionalization today, that is, about the demands to close psychiatric institutions and open centers for communities of psychiatry users. The so-called psychiatry “users” took equal part in these discussions.

What is important to say in the end is that the “Radical Education” project was never something fixed in some predictable form, method, way of work and similar, but above all an entrance into the unknown domain of politics. This, at the same time, also represented the risks that could have lead to something new, to the experience of intensiveness, to a break with the already existing, to some new discovery, but also to failure. This is why it is hard today to interpret what the RE actually was; a collective, project, research method, concept or all this together. But, what is certain is that in those eight years the RE succeeded in opening a new space of deliberation inside the museum.

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Bojana Piškur was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She graduated with a major in Art History from the University of Ljubljana, and received her PhD at the Institute for Art History at the Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, in 2005. She works as a Senior Curator in the Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana (MG+MSUM). Her main theme of research is experimental art contexts, concepts, forms, and relations, in wider social environment. Bojana was a member of the Radical Education Collective.

Endnotes 1 The conference was called “The New Abduction of Europe” (2014), with participation of activist collectives and museums of contemporary art from Europe.

2 Alexander Bogdanov was one of the key persons gathered around the Russian Proletkult.

3 For example, in Slovenia, during the 1950s, agitprop maker Boris Ziherl wrote about socialist

cultural revolution.

4 A major role was played here by Harald Szeemann, as one of the main advocates of this project.

5 Monster-institutions is a concept deliberated jointly by activists from different social centers in

Europe.

6 It is no accident that a guest of the first occupied factory was none other than Antonio Negri.

7 http://dpu.mirovni-institut.si/, 27.01.2015, 16h

The text is the result of Bojana Piškur’s lecture held at the Nova Gallery in Zagreb, currently run by

What, How and For Whom? (WHW), in December 2014. This version is first published in English.

It appeared in Serbo-Croatian in April 2015 at http://dematerijalizacijaumetnosti.com

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Activist Club or On the Concept of Cultural Houses, Social Centers & Museums.

What is the Use of Art? Dmitry Vilensky

The legacy of Socialist Houses of Culture, the recent experiences of social centers and the progressive politics of some museums and art institutions, with their focus on participatory projects and new forms of publicness have moved to the fore issues related to the use value of art practice and aesthetic experiences.

In my view, the most crucial issue is what is art’s emancipatory role in society? How can we find a way today to continue not only the project of Bildung —the process of individual development via aesthetic education (despite all the obvious sympathy for it) —but also find a new continuation for the project of art and thought as tools of a radical transformation of people’s collective consciousness?

Since Schiller’s time, the goal of art as aesthetic education was the harmonious development of the individual, the formation of a mature person capable of creativity. This concept, however, was oriented toward the individual bourgeois subject: it led to the formation of the egoistic individual. It is clear that a return to this concept today would be reactionary. At the same time, I think that there is a general consensus about the statement that today’s decisive battle is shaping up around the production of subjectivities.

Activist Club Seven years ago, in trying to answer this question we have produced the project “Activist Club.” Its genealogy is obviously rooted in the process of the development of so-called Workers’ Cultural Houses in the Soviet Union and in general

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Chto Delat, Rosaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

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to the ideas promoted by Soviet Productionism, which in the starkest form posed the program of “life-construction.” As Boris Arvatov declared in his book Art and Production: “Art as an immediate and deliberately employed instrument of life-construction: such is the formula for the existence of proletarian art.”1

Chto Delat, Rosa’s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

Can we share these sentiments today? And where can we find a way to continue the project of “proletarian art” today? On the one hand, we are living during the prolonged transition to post-Fordism and knowledge capitalism. The farewell to the production line frees our hands — but where is that factory the Productionists dreamed of today? What once upon a time was a source of hope for progress and emancipation turned out, historically, to be a reactionary phenomenon that had to be overcome. The formation of “new political subjects” whose analysis Italian operaismo undertook in the sixties, is the complete opposite of what the Productionists hoped for. The natural exodus of workers from the factory began, and along with it the “assembly line/collectivist” model of subject formation and the forms of its political organization also began to collapse.

Where can we find that factory today, or those means of production, whose seizure would supply us with an emancipatory impulse as precise as possible? Today this factory is nowhere and everywhere. The development of capitalism allows us to see the production of false subjectivity in the totality of capitalistic practices, which are now realized everywhere: in the thick of daily life, in institutions of culture, in the very networks of social interaction. It is this understanding that opens up new zones of struggle, not simply for non-alienated labor and knowledge, but also for the break with labor and production.

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In this new situation, although I have a clear sense that many activists might not agree with me, I think that we need another kind of knowledge and art as never before. We need it as we need fresh air: we need it to produce “oxygen” in an atmosphere totally polluted by the byproducts of the “creative industries.” But what should this knowledge/art look like? Where is the place where it can be useful and meaningful?

Political art vs. Avant-garde Let’s look at the current situation with the development of art practices that merge aesthetics, art and activism.

Over the last decade, a number of artists and writers have succeeded in both realizing and finding the theoretical grounding for a variety of works, which allow us to speak of a new situation in art. These projects have found points of connection between art, new technologies, and the global movement against neoliberal capitalism and austerity measures. The lineages of this new interest in political art can be traced back to Documenta 10 (1997) and coincide with the emergence of the “movement of movements,” which erupted onto the political horizon in Seattle in 1999. This situation has subsequently been manifested through a variety of cultural projects, whose critical stance towards the process of capitalist globalization and emphasis on the principles of self-organization, self-publishing and a political understanding of autonomy – as the realization of political tasks outside the parliamentary system of power (and outside the comfortable realm of art institutions) – all these factors have evoked the idea of a return to “the political” in art.

But to conceive of these artistic processes simply as “political” would be to seriously underestimate the situation we find ourselves in. There is evidence that what we are actually talking about can be interpreted as the emergence of an artistic movement: its participants are concerned with developing a common terminology based on the political understanding of aesthetics and autonomy; their praxis is based on confrontational approaches towards the cultural industry. This finds consistent realization in the international framework of projects carried out in networks of self-organized collectives working in direct interaction with activists groups, progressive institutions, different publications, online resources and so on.

From history we know that such traits were once one of the characteristics of the avant-garde. However, many people today see the avant-garde as something discredited by the Soviet experience, where the “dictatorship of the proletariat” rapidly degenerated into a “dictatorship over the proletariat” – a totalitarian situation that most activists and artists explicitly reject. But despite the anti-vanguardist principles of the “movement of movements,” I believe that some of the essential features of the avant-garde are crucial for understanding contemporary art.

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Chto Delat, Rosa’s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

As Jacques Rancière once mentioned (and I fully agree with him): “If the concept of the avant-garde has any meaning in the aesthetic regime of the arts, it is […] not on the side of the advanced detachments of artistic innovation, but on the side of the invention of sensible forms and material structures of life to come.”2 But at the same time, today there is an enormous problem for any kind of revolutionary thought and aesthetics, which has limited opportunities to verify these “forms and material structures of life to come” in practice.

Our collective has its own position: we need to institute our own structure, and Chto Delat sees itself as a new type of institution based on the principle of crystallization. What does that entail? It means that we are not trying to dissolve our works in life, but do something just opposite to it – we are trying to crystallize some art practices in a variety of different situations – inside and outside the framework of cultural institutions.

Workers’ Club and social centers We also find ourselves closer to these issues, because in Russia we had to withdraw (and being aggressively pushed out) from the beginning from art territory and remain active in the other fields, mostly realizing and representing our works in a framework of different activists groups, civil society NGOs, social forums, universities and the Internet.

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The project Activist Club started in 2006 from my workshop with young Italian art students and activists – organized in the framework of the project “Common House,” curated by Marco Skotini at Teseco Art Foundation in Pisa.

The idea for this project obviously originated from the concept of the Workers’ Club introduced in the USSR in the mid-1920s and well known through the famous piece made by Alexander Rodchenko. Created in 1925 for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, it was never produced in real life. It was thus a kind of model of how such a places should be organized. The piece introduced a western bourgeois audience to the completely different method of staging cultural activities in workers’ free time in the USSR (such as “Lenin’s Corner,” a space for gatherings and seminars, or the performance of “Live Newspapers,” etc.)

The task of the Workers’ Club was to provide workers with orientation on issues of political struggle and to introduce them to a different type of aesthetic experience and practicing art in the form of seminars, lectures and workshops. It critically undermined the obsolete idea of an idle consumer, who could derive pleasure and “emancipate” himself from shabby everyday existence through the experience of the art object in the museum. It was about building a space based on educational methodology, creativity and participation.

Chto Delat, Rosa’s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

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There is a growing interest in this concept and even direct reconstructions of workers clubs. Of course there have been several recent attempts to reconstruct this piece. Christiane Post attempted something like this at the 6th Werkleitz Biennale; there was an installation by Susan Kelly, “What is to be done?”; and a reading room at the exhibition Forms of Protest, at Van Abbe Museum just to mention a few.

When we were preparing our first approach to the concept of an activist club in Pisa in 2006, I came across a publication by bookstorming.com and Galerie Decimus Magnus Art Editeurs, meticulous documentation of the reconstruction of Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club done by the French artist Michel Aubry. It was very inspiring to see one of the most famous works of the Russian avant-garde in an amazingly detailed reconstruction. Also, it shed light on many details of the composition that were not visible in the historical photographic documentation of the project.

But we were not interested in a reconstruction, but rather in a process that I call the “actualization” of the general idea of what the concept of the workers’ club is about – actualization in a Benjamin-sense, as the process of reclaiming its missed chance today.

For historical materialists history develops through the chain of events – revolutions (moments of popular mobilizations) and catastrophes. Each of them is the culmination of revolutionary struggle for emancipation and its temporal collapse.

It is quite important to conclude that the formation of a new subjectivity is not only shaped in relation to the current political situation, but also finds its shape in relation to the past. Why go backwards? Because the possibility of “becoming” is located not only in the possibilities of the present, but is also rooted in the actualization of all lost opportunities in the past.

So we have decided to concentrate on working on the concept of an activist club.

And we keep believing that it makes sense to realize it in the form of an art project.

With the idea of the activist club we are talking about a self-imposed challenge that is, to a certain extent, comparable with that once placed by the Soviet government on Rodchenko: namely, to show the bourgeois public another means of producing the space where art can come together with political learning and subjectivation.

Another aspect of our inspiration was the current discussion on the concept and role of social centers. It is important to notice that there is a move from the side of progressive museums to reconsider their public role. This was one topic of discussion at the recent conference at the MACBA, “Molecular Museum. Towards a New Kind of Institutionality” (2008), which tackled the relationships between museums and social centers. I think that for all of us the concept of the social center, as a place where art might be able to reveal its pure use-value and ignore its exchange value, is very important.

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Chto Delat, Rosa’s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

The new social centers strive to engage a broad caste of oppressed people and give them a chance to encounter culture and combine it with fighting for their rights of recognition. The discussion about the future of social centers can be connected with the concept of the workers’ club developed in the Soviet Union, because they share an approach to the value of art and the ways in which people can participate in its production.

But let’s look more closely at the concept of the Workers’ Club and its late implementation in the everyday life of the Soviet Union in the form of workers’ cultural centers – or “Houses of Culture.” What was the meaning of that project?

There is unfortunately very little research on this topic – carried out during the Soviet era and later when the whole system had practically collapsed – but we should take into account the dimension of these developments. In 1988 there were over 137,000 club establishments in the Soviet Union. And I think that everyone of my generation had some positive experiences of these places.

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The House of Culture (Dom Kultury) was an establishment for many various recreational activities and hobbies: sports, collecting, arts. The Palace of Culture (this term was very often used as well) was designed to have room for all kinds of projects. A typical Palace contained one or several movie theaters, halls, concert hall(s), dance studios, various do-it-yourself hobby groups, photo and film studios, painting and drawing courses, amateur radio, and a public library. All of these groups were free of charge until most recently. These houses usually were built and run by the trade union organization of one factory, but they were often established by local authorities – the local soviets – and served the general public. They especially focused on children’s after-school education.

So it was a structure that embraced all kinds of so-called creative developments of a person. Rodchenko’s room was a quite modest proposal for designing just one module-space, but a few years after his Workers’ Club, it became the biggest challenge for many famous architects to construct entire huge buildings that could serve all these purposes.

It is clear that the concept of social centers is rather close to the idea of People’s Cultural Houses, and I think that these experiences should be more closely studied and continued in the form of constructing a counter public sphere. So right now – at a moment when the possibilities to address society at large are more and more limited we need places where the crystallization of certain excluded communities and positions – can happen and we need to focus on the long process of learning and find an alternative ways of distributing the knowledge. These places could “function as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment and/or as training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics.”3

Chto Delat, Rosa’s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

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I think that right now, at a time with very limited opportunities for the development of a culture of the oppressed, we should rethink the old question posed by Paulo Freire: “[I]f the implementation of a liberating education requires political power and the oppressed have none, how then is it possible to carry out the pedagogy of the oppressed prior to the revolution? This is a question of the greatest importance; one aspect of the reply is to be found in the distinction between systematic education, which can only be changed by political power, and educational projects, which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of organizing them.”4 Why this quotation? The grammar of this quotation quite precisely poses the question about processes of organization. “Them”: this is obviously all those people who, by virtue of their class status, acutely experience the injustice of the world, but who at the same time do not possess sufficient knowledge to be aware of the strategic tasks of their own emancipation. In other words, according to the old, universally accepted model, there are certain privileged external agents who develop these practices of emancipation – that’s why discussions about the figure of the educator played such an important role in the Soviet Union and Latin America. In previous times, these were people connected to God and the Church; they were followed by revolutionary parties and psychoanalysts. After the obvious downfall of these mediators, the question remains: is education possible without a teacher? Today it is the figure of the teacher/pedagogue—as the figure of repression under the sign of education — who is rightly and seriously under suspicion.

But it might make sense to dialectically reconsider this figure as someone who stays in the process of an exchange of knowledge – someone who knows something, but is ready to be in a process of learning all the time and return this knowledge transformed.

So back to our topic – I would say that the idea of a workers’ club is useless today on the level of the formation of subjectivity. For me, the shift from worker to activist is important. Historically, the worker’s identity had a marked political position, but I doubt that it does now. Today, political subjectivity is shaped inside and outside labor relations, and the position of the political subject is determined more through one’s stance as an activist.

From worker to activist A research paper was published recently in Russia by Carine Clément, the French sociologist who heads the Institute for Collective Action in Moscow. She presented the findings of her research on the new social movements in Russia, entitled “From Citizens to Activists: Social Movements in Contemporary Russia.” It was interesting that in her analysis of the processes by which the new movements are formed, she used a schema whose poles were two stances: that of the “philistine” (the pas-

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Chto Delat, Rosaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cultural House, St. Petersburg, 2015.

sive, apolitical citizen) on the one hand, and that of the activist on the other. This, in essence, is a particular variation on the subjectivity formation schema. ClĂŠment cited the testimony of her activist-respondents, who described their experience of moving towards activist stances. They talked about how they had begun to see their lives from a new perspective, as being connected to the social whole. They said that they had gained a sense of self-worth, confidence, strength, and collective solidarity, the readiness to defend their positions. The transformation of the subject causes the person to see the world from the universal perspective of the whole and gives them a sense of personal strength and fearlessness.

So for us was important to address these people first of all â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but we do not want to separate them into straightforward examples of the right type of behavior from the wrong one. Instead we focus on the demand that everyone can be an activist and assert that these experiences are open to anyone. Inspiring experiences have also emerged recently in different social centers in Europe, where activists are building their own environments for self-educational activities, centered around cinema and reading and discussion spaces.

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As our friends from Universidad Nomada once postulated: “For quite a while now, a certain portmanteau word has been circulating in the Universidad Nomada’s discussions, in an attempt to sum up what we believe should be one of the results of the critical work carried out by the social movements and other post-socialist political actors. We talk about creating new mental prototypes for political action.”5 I would suggest that the same approach should be developed in relation to spatial practices. In this particular installation of the Activist Club and its further social development in the form of “Rosa’s Cultural House,” we were trying to demonstrate how these “spatial prototypes” could be realized and what they might look like bringing art out of white cube institutional situation and at the same time framing it via direct interaction with variety of politicized publics which usually stays outside of encounters with artistic practices and milieus. I hope that is one of the possible ways in which art can function today in order to fulfill the promise of its liberating power.

Dmitry Vilensky is an artist, writer, and founding member of Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, a platform initiated in 2003 by a collective of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Vilensky lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Endnotes 1 Boris Arvatov, Art and Production: Sketch of a Proletarian Avant-garde Aesthetic (1921-1930), (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1972), pg. 100.

2 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Gabriel Rockhill tr, ( New York: Continuum, 2005), pg. 24.

3 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the public sphere,” Simon During ed., The Cultural Studies Reader, (New York: Routledge, 1993), pg. 519.

4 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1, Myra Bergman Ramos tr., (New York: Continuum, 2005), pg. 10.

5 Universidad Nómada, “Mental Prototypes and Monster Institutions: Some Notes by Way of an

Introduction,” in Alan Moore and Alan Smart, eds., Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces, (Barcelona: Other Forms, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, 2015), pg. 24.

This text is based on a previous version published by eipcp

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The TRAFO Boycott: Standing Up to the Privatization and Corporatization of Art and Cultural Institutions in Poland Joanna Figiel & Mikołaj Iwański

If the ‘90s in Eastern Europe saw a hasty implementation of neoliberal politics, then in case of Poland this period was also characterized by a shameless expression of admiration towards Margaret Thatcher. The paradigm of decentralization as the fundamental rule for organizing the public sector administration introduced in that period was, and still is, particularly damaging to the arts and cultural institutions.

Continuing this logic of neoliberal politics, formerly state-run art centers and galleries are being passed over under the management of local governments, and simultaneously pushed into a never-ending conflict with the latter. These conflicts – concerning, for example, the rules specifying criteria for directorial competitions – have been intensifying since about three years ago when a new amendment was introduced to the law on cultural institutions allowing local governments to outsource management of cultural institutions to private companies selected via an open tender process – a procedure identical to that used when contracting a supplier of, say, concrete or tarmac.1 Since this new legislation, the relationship between underfunded galleries and arts centers, the arts community and local governments has been steadily deteriorating.

Local councilors are now armed with a new tool for disciplining the expensive and unnecessary – in their view – art and cultural institutions. Worryingly, some of them are able to exploit the new laws to the full advantage of personal/political

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agendas. The issue is further complicated by the steady stream of structural EU funding, part of which reaches the cultural sector in the form of one-off infrastructural investments.

This EU funding, the so-called ‘Polish Thatcherism’ insisting on privatization of every part of the public sector in the name of neoliberal ideology,2 the decentralization of management of cultural institutions, and a lack of coherent legal culture all create – in the long view – a lethally destructive combination. This neoliberal approach is – first and foremost – affecting democratic procedures, fairness and transparency when it comes to management and appointments, as well as labor relations in the cultural sector, with working conditions increasingly deteriorating over the past decade.3 The best example of the devastating effects of the new regulation is the case of the TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki, Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin.4 Under circumstances that are to this day unclear, the Center has been passed over under the management of Baltic Contemporary – not to be mistaken with the Gatesehead/ Newcastle upon Tyne complex – which, to date, has had no engagement whatsoever in the arts nor in the cultural sector. In fact, the company has been created just before the tender took place. Those running it were only given weeks to prepare offers; the only offer presented against that of Baltic Contemporary has been disqualified over a formal technicality. A private company whose owner, Mikolaj Sekutowicz, has never been involved in the arts nor culture, resides in Berlin, not in Szczecin.

His partner Constanze Kleiner is, however, a curator and subsequently prepared the first show under his management, and is now in charge of what has been, to date, one of the most important spaces in Szczecin.5 The two artists that publicly described and criticized the tender process6 and the merits of the winning offer, Agata Zbylut i Kamil Kuskowski – both academics with links to the Fine Arts Academy in Szczecin – ended up entangled in legal proceedings that lasted a year and a half. Zbylut, from the Zachęta Sztuki Współczesnej, an arts organisation that initially came up with the idea of opening an arts centre in the current TRAFO location, and Kuskowski, a director at the Fine Arts Academy in Szczecin, have merely written about the facts and questions concerning the tender process, yet they were accused by Baltic Contemporary’s lawyers of ‘black PR’ against the company. The pair was initially found guilty under fair competition laws and sentenced to a fine before having their conviction overturned in a court of higher instance.7 In mid-2014, the Citizens Forum for Contemporary Arts8 called artists and curators to boycott the gallery in solidarity with the accused pair and to defend freedom of speech in the context of privatization of cultural institutions, of which, sadly, TRAFO has become a symbol of. Around 200 have joined the call, and since then, practically no Polish artists allowed their work to be shown there. While this display of solidarity can, and should, of course be seen as a success, a situation in which a major city like Szczecin remains without a serious – and adequately run – cultural space showing local artists is hardly ideal.

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Even more worryingly, the mayor of Poznan has recently cited the TRAFO tender as a positive example of managing such – de facto – outsourcing processes. The mayor, instead of ensuring a well-executed competition for a new director of the Arsenal Municipal Arts Centre in Poznan decided instead to dismantle the Centre, only to outsource its management, via a tendering process, to a private entity.

The Szczecin and Poznan events are just two examples of the worrying effects of the unacceptable state of affairs brought on by neoliberal politics and particularly this new amendment to the law allowing the emergence of the open tender public managers of cultural institutions. The authors of this regulation, presumably in their excitement at the possibilities the free market supposedly entails, did not anticipate the scale of possible conflicts of interest and demonstrated a cardinal misunderstanding of the meaning of public institutions. The ‘successful’ running of the latter cannot – and should not – ever be reduced to quantifiable ‘outputs’ nor mere ‘business efficiency’, which are unfortunately imperatives of destructive neoliberal politics developing over the last decades in Poland and most other European countries.

Joanna Figiel is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Culture Policy Management, City University London. Her research focusses on labour issues, precarity and policy within the creative and cultural sectors. She completed her MA at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths. Joanna is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera.

Mikołaj Iwański – PhD in economics, graduate of philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Art critic, AICA member, he carries out research into the art market in Poland. He collaborates with magazines including Magazyn Sztuki, Krytyka Polityczna and Obieg.

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Endnotes 1 More about the new legislation on public tenders and cultural institutions is here http://www.prze-

targipubliczne.pl/archiwum/art,4997,instytucja-kultury-jako-zamawiajacy.html and here http://www. zamowienia-publiczne.lex.pl/czytaj/-/artykul/instytucje-kulturalne-moga-nie-stosowac-przetargow

2 Or, as Mikołaj Iwański terms it in his commentary on the recently aborted directorship competition at Poznan’s Arsenal, ‘Slavic Thatcherism’ – see: Mikolaj Iwanski, ‘”Słowiański thatcheryzm”. Komentarz do unieważnienia konkursu na dyrektora Arsenału,” available at: http://obieg.home.pl/test/teksty/29351

3 Such outsourcing of public services, or the so called “secondary primitive accumulation” in neoliber-

alism is described at length, mainly in relation to the UK situation, by Ursula Huws in her text: “Crisis as Capitalist Opportunity: New ccumulation through public service commodification”,

http://vuh-la-risprt.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/crisis-as-capitalist-opportunity(-

4184b6a5-6d9c-44e9-944a-9430142c5bdd).html, as well as in her book, Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age.

4 For more about the center, see: http://www.trafo.org/index/trafo

5 There is a profile of Mikolaj Sekutowicz and his partner, Constanze Kleiner – formerly of Berlin-

er Kunsthalle – in the local edition of one of the bigger Polish daily newspapers, Gazeta Wyborcza

Szczecin edition here: http://szczecin.gazeta.pl/szczecin/1,34959,12782714,Kto_przejal_szczecinska_Trafostacje_Sztuki__Poznajcie.html. For more on Kleiner’s dismissal from the role at Kuns-

thalle see for example here: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/dieter-rosenkranz-den-eintritt-zahle-ich/1542472.html and here:

6 Here, the pair give an interview about the process:

7 More on the case and it being eventually dismissed here: Mikołaj Iwański, “Uchylony wyrok przeciw Agacie Zbylut i Kamilowi Kuskowskiemu!,” available at: http://obieg.home.pl/test/felieton/34389

More reactions to the outcome of the tender and the handling of the tender process here: Ewa Podgajna, Trafostacja Sztuki połowy miasta. “Moja noga tam nigdy nie postanie”, available at:

http://szczecin.gazeta.pl/szczecin/1,34939,14525734,Trafostacja_Sztuki_polowy_miasta___Moja_ noga_tam_nigdy.html

8 The Citizens’ Forum of Contemporary Art is an open association of various communities, organisations and private individuals from all over Poland, that have one thing in common – their desire

to accelerate the changes needed in the cultural arena, especially in relation to contemporary art. For

more information on the group and its actions see my article in the previous ArtLeaks Gazette here: https://artsleaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/joanna_figiel_artleaks_gazette_2.pdf

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Putzstrategien Alejandro Strus & Sonja Hornung

Alejandro Strus and Sonja Hornung are Masters students at the Weissensee School of Art in Berlin. This past year we were among the students pushing for changes in the fee structure of Raumstrategien (Spatial Strategies). This account details our personal perspectives on the events that unfolded.

The bulletin board in the Berlin-Weissensee School of Art is painted black and decorated by an anonymous student.

In autumn 2014, concerns were growing again at the Berlin-Weissensee School of Art over the tuition fees charged to students in one of the six MA programs offered at the university. The semester fee of â&#x201A;Ź1250 has been, since the programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inception, the source of problems for students of Raumstrategien, a small trans-disciplinary program focused on art in public space, political theory and political (artistic) practice.

The fact that we need to pay for our education may come as a surprise; tuition fees are actually quite rare in Germany, with Lower Saxony announcing last autumn as the last German state to abolish fees for public universities. In the context of Berlin, where rents and living expenses are on the rise, earning the money to cover

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fees has become increasingly difficult. Some of the Raumstrategien students have scholarships or grants from the German state system – grants that are not enough for covering fees, but only living costs. Most of us, however, cover our fees through either part-time work or debt or a combination of both. As a result, it becomes difficult to strike a reasonable balance between work and study. Many of us have found ourselves negotiating with the art school administration to take breaks from our studies. It is clear to us that a tuition-free Masters, or indeed even a Masters with reduced tuition costs, would alleviate a great deal of this pressure, to the long-term benefit of the course.

Therefore, it is not just idealism, but also through personal experience that we have learned the importance of free education also laid out by the Berlin constitution, Article 21: that “Art and knowledge, research and teaching are free.”

Likewise, it is not only idealism, but also a lived sense of this pressure that led us in autumn 2014 to begin investigating our circumstances more thoroughly. Since Raumstrategien is a relatively new program born out of the educational reforms of the 1990s, we learned that our predicament is a part of a broader shift in the higher education landscape towards modularized learning focused on producing flexible entrepreneurial thinkers for a rapidly changing, knowledge-based job market.

We embarked on a process of research, touching on the complex histories of educational reform and university protest in Europe. One particular strand we found in this history begins with Reinhard Mohn’s decision to go into business, rather than to study.

Reinhard Mohn In 1947, upon returning to his hometown in Gütersloh, Germany, 25-year-old Reinhard Mohn decided not to go to university as he had once dreamt. Instead, he applied himself to rescuing his father’s business, Bertelsmann, from the rubble of World War II. This was no easy task in British-occupied Gütersloh, since Mohn senior had been an enthusiastic member of the SS and the company was one of the key publishers of Nazi propaganda.

However, over the following decades Bertelsmann rose to become the sixth-largest media corporation globally, with one hundred twelve thousand thirty-seven Bertelsmann employees worldwide and an empire rivaling that of Axel Springer or Rupert Murdoch. As early as 1977, Mohn established the Bertelsmann Foundation, a non-profit political think-tank which currently owns 77.4% of Bertelsmann.

Not only was the foundation a convenient way to reduce Bertelsmann’s taxation obligations, but it also allowed Mohn to turn his influence to politics: “I had the impression that our political system back then was in a very bad shape – I still have the impression that it’s in a very bad shape – and so through the Bertelsmann

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Foundation I looked for new ways for politics … My offer for politics is to sell the people competition. Competition makes people strive harder, I have noticed, and this should be brought to politicians’ attention.” Through intensive and well-funded research papers, Bertelsmann-funded summits held with the political elite, and lobby work, the Bertelsmann Foundation has pushed forward principles of entrepreneurialism and meritocracy in other areas of society on a European and global level. Bertelsmann’s agenda has found its way into various austerity processes, from Gerhard Schröder’s Agenda 2010 to the Bologna Process.

Bertelsmann + Life-long learning = Bologna One area of research that preoccupied the Bertelsmann’s think-tank from the outset was higher education. In 1994, the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) was established by the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh with the intention of forging a path for tertiary education reform. CHE-funded research and lobbying was to form a basis for the Bologna Declaration (1999) and subsequent systematization of the European tertiary education into a competitive, modularized bachelor/masters

Putzstrategien poster.

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model that is held accountable to privatized and expensive accreditation processes. Even earlier, the Bertelsmann Foundation, together with the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) published a short but significant paper in 1995 entitled “Education for Europeans – Towards the Learning Society.” The paper argues that, in the shift towards the knowledge economy and a highly competitive, open and liberal market, the global viability of Europe hinges on “humane resources.” In order to remain competitive, Europe’s “humane resources” must be able to adapt quickly in a rapidly changing, information-driven economy. This is where the principle of Lifelong Learning—“‘cradle to grave’ continuous learning”—comes into play.

For the life-long learner, “adolescence” is characterized by “the obligation to learn” and motivated by externally-imposed “attainment goals and final qualifications.”

“Young adults” then “enter the world of work or start their vocational training, which ends when they take up regular employment.” At this stage they learn “informal learning, self-directed learning, social, cultural, and personal skills … [and] networking.” Systematic learning is supplied by efficient, “modularized” educational content. This allows one, during “adult life”, to “gradually build up competency profiles” both informally and through formal continued vocational training, because due to a “strong involvement in professional life and family life, time is very scarce for adults.” And the elderly? Here, “learners have greater freedom to decide for themselves whether, how and for what purpose they should take part in learning activities.” The elderly alone are promised “independence and autonomy.”

This is a profoundly political agenda. In the life-long learner can be found the new, flexible, neoliberal subject forged through an educational system that has been streamlined to suit the agenda of industrial lobbyists, among which Bertelsmann is a key player (the company even has a policy for the “lifelong learning” of its own employees). Propelled by lobbying done by the Bertelsmann Foundation and its affiliate, the CHE, not to mention by Bertelsmann’s clout in the industry-driven ERT, Lifelong Learning has since become one of the main tenets of European education policy, driven largely by the Bologna process. The result is an education system that is increasingly market-oriented.

Germany In the German context, the “Bolognisation” of the tertiary education system has seen the implementation of Bologna’s hallmark, a strict, two-tiered bachelor/master structure, in which learning is modularized into quantifiable units of credit points.

This system replaced the former and more relaxed Diplom/Meister system more focused on self-directed, research-based outcomes in the Humboldtian tradition of autonomous learning, academic freedom and the unity of teaching and research.

Locally, the implementation of Bologna in Berlin conveniently coincided with a more general “rationalization” of higher education. For example, universities are

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Putzstrategien poster.

now funded according to three quota categories: the number of students enrolled, the number of students studying full-time, and the number of students who graduate. The Berlin Senate sets individualized quotas for each university, with preset funding increases if student quotas are met. Previously students could remain in university as long as was needed, but now, students are generally expected to take no longer than 5 years to complete their studies. In the context of post-crisis Europe, student intakes are on the rise, even as teaching resources are whittled down into shorter-term contracts as a result of stringent funding. Faculty departments increasingly look to private-public partnerships in order to fill the funding gap.

Weiterbildung This shift has also seen the introduction of a new category in German higher education: the Weiterbildungsstudiengang or postgraduate training course, which aligns exactly with the market-oriented principles of life-long learning. These courses last between one and two years and (in theory) are supposed to be entirely self-funded, making functional the educational system under the pressure of the job

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market’s demand for graduates. Although technically in Germany education is free across the board, fees of up to €30,000 can apply to such courses. There is no legal limit to the amount charged, which is decided by the university. Weiterbildung courses are often designed in close cooperation with companies or research foundations with the aim of providing clear career outcomes for their students (for example, the Berlin Technical University’s M.Sc. in Energy-Efficient Transport Systems, which is co-funded by Volkswagen and Gasag, or the M.Sc. in Urban Development, which exists through a public-private partnership with corporate partners in El Gouna, Egypt). Weiterbildung courses in the humanities or fine arts are less common, for the obvious reason that such areas of knowledge are less commercially viable – although there are some exceptions, our own MA being one of them.

In Berlin, the number of Weiterbildungsstudiengänge are on the rise, with over 65 paid courses sprouting over the last two decades. Many of them are taught in English and appear to cater to well-moneyed international students. All universities are contractually obliged to the Berlin Senate to offer professional training courses.

From Raumstrategien to Putzstrategien Following the reunification of Berlin in 1990, Weissensee, as the former East Berlin academy of art, experienced a period of uncertainty. Its architecture program was shut down and, after a series of attempts to create a replacement program, Raumstrategien was founded as a trans-disciplinary Weiterbildung program. Alongside the school’s MA in Art Therapy, Raumstrategien fulfills Weissensee’s contractual obligation to offer postgraduate vocational training. However, unlike in more traditional Master courses, Raumstrategien students come from a variety of fields such as architecture, design, fine art, cultural studies and curatorial studies.

In short, Raumstrategien is something of a black sheep: it is younger than the other departments, doesn’t conform to their 5-year course-structure, and its content is interdisciplinary. Structurally, Raumstrategien occupies a strange position. While on paper it is required to be a self-funded professional training program for mature students who are already in the workforce, the reality is quite different. As a new department in the university, Raumstrategien is a theory-based program with a critical focus that is not out of step with other “art as research” approaches found in British, American, or other German institutions. Without having recourse to the exact figures, we find it difficult to imagine how the MA course could ever commercially carry its own costs, as is legally stipulated.

The term “neoliberal ideology” creates a diffuse and elusive opponent. However, institutions are built, and changed, by people negotiating with one another, face-toface. No matter how strong an emphasis Raumstrategien’s course content places on institutional critique and researching new ways of making art practices public, the MA is currently a program that structurally must fit a fee-based and market-based

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structure for university education. Inspired by our studies, we began to consider ways we could change the institution of Weissensee, to better integrate Raumstrategien into the university community as a whole. Why shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Raumstrategien students be able to change our fee structure based on principles of self-representation and negotiation?

There had been intermittent discussions about reducing the fees almost since Raumstrategien first opened, and in the fall of 2014 some students began meeting in school and after-hours to revive the issue again in the face of dwindling student numbers, and in full appreciation of what our study program could become if it were free, like other courses in Germany.

As a first step, students met with the Vice Chancellor of the school and outlined various scenarios for reclassifying the program, or reducing fees to the lowest amount legally permitted. In response, the only viable option suggested to us was to chase after third-party private sponsorship to cover the costs of the course, an option we discussed in detail, with the conclusion that private funding would negatively affect the independence of the MA as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;free spaceâ&#x20AC;? for autonomous artistic practice and critique. In this meeting, it was hinted that the MA might be closed if it did not carry its own costs. This form of precarity was all-too-familiar on a personal level: for international students, simply not paying the fees would entail ex-matriculation and losing their visas. So a protest in the form of a fee boycott was not an option.

Students handing out flyers around the art school.

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Around the same time, a loose organisational group formed called the AkSa—Arbeitskreis Studiengebühren abschaffen [Working group to abolish student fees].

The group made contact with the student union, and we decided on a democratic, consensus-based decision-making process that would be transparently communicated to students not directly involved in the group. It was decided that there would be a formal legal approach petitioning the university’s academic senate (and eventually, if necessary, the Berliner Senate) to address the tuition fees issue, alongside a strategy of awareness-raising through the publication of a manifesto and a series of protest actions.

After our initial meeting with the vice-chancellor, negotiations continued with the school administration, who met with our professors in two closed meetings. In these meetings the option of part-time study was discussed. While an improvement (an option which had previously been refused to Raumstrategien students), this measure would not reduce our fees, but simply spread the amount over a longer time period.

In frustration over our exclusion from these meetings, some students worked to spread awareness of the situation throughout the school community. The “Putzstrategien” —Cleaning Strategies/ Trouble Strategies—protests saw small numbers of us dressing up in mismatched cleaning uniforms. We cleaned the school’s foyer and eating area while handing fliers to classmates and staff. This was accompanied by a poster campaign which plastered copies of our tuition bills throughout the university. The Raumstrategien bulletin board in the central administrative building was also blackened-out and replaced by a single notice: “fee”, with tear-off tabs labeled with the number: €1250. The cleaning action referenced the Hi-Red Center performance group, who cleaned Tokyo Subways before the 1964 Olympic Games.

Significantly, it also referred to our own jobs we work to pay our fees, and the way it separates us from our peers in other departments of the school.

The decisions to escalate from meeting with the Vice Chancellor to publishing our manifesto and running a small-scale protest in the art school were not without internal controversy, and a number of Raumstrategien students expressed doubts as to how effective our protest might be, voicing reasonable frustration over undemocratic decision-making processes. Time pressures made it difficult to meet as a complete group. Being students, workers and also protesters simultaneously, by the end of the semester we were reaching our limit.

At the same time, we were warmed by the level of help and support from the student union, who provided us with invaluable support from the very beginning in all of this. We also found support among other, non-fee paying students – many of whom were horrified to find out how much we paid – and some university staff, in particular, the janitors, gatehouse workers, the workers in the school cafeteria, were overwhelmingly supportive.

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Students cleaning the cafeteria.

However, the reaction from the administration of the art school to our protest was more extreme than we had envisaged. What was intended as a slow, carefully researched investigation into the political and legal background of our situation – a means to open a conversation with the art school about a taboo topic – escalated very quickly (we were all surprised at how quickly) into a conflict-laden relationship with the art school administration, despite the fact that, aside from one meeting, there was no direct communication between the administration and the students as a group. Pressure was directed, instead, towards our professors, who had stood by – but were by no means responsible for – our actions. It was at this point that we decided to stop our protest, at least temporarily. Very recent developments at Berlin’s Universität der Künste, where an affiliated group of students (Loose Grip) performed a boycott, have sparked shared discussions over the economization of learning in Berlin.

Conclusions The discussion over Raumstrategien, and the Weiterbildungsstudiengang programs in general, comes at a time where austere education funding policies coincide with negotiations over the societal function of universities. The question of whether higher-education should provide a space for research and artwork, or to a job-training role is a particularly acute one for art schools. Here, attempts to restructure ter-

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tiary education institutions to suit industry-designed standards fail on several levels.

Practically, the Bologna credit system is applied, and then circumvented when it becomes untenable to fit certain subjects – for example, an art project that, organically, stretches over two-and-a half semesters – into a scheduled system of modularized learning. While it is helpful to enhance international mobility for students, this goal, the main “selling-point” of the Bologna reforms, hardly seems to justify the wholesale destruction of older learning structures that were more focused on self-directed learning and solid student-professor relationships. On a moral level, the proliferation of supposedly self-funding study programs such as the Weiterbildungsstudiengang are also problematic, as they circumvent the established democratic support for free education, and tap into a familiar North American phenomenon: the use of “wealthy” foreign students as a revenue stream on the backs (and reputations) of public institutions. If the first criteria for acceptance into a course of study is income, the integrity of the entire education system as a whole is affected.

Our protest, by no means perfectly executed, also had far from perfect results. Although the option of part-time study will now be available in the coming semester – a definite improvement and a direct result of the protest – we still, ultimately, pay the same amount of money for our studies. On the one hand, our course is still mis-categorized as a “professionalization” degree that will –realistically – neither carry its own costs nor produce bright-eyed young professionals eager to fill the next gap in the job market. On the other hand, the ideal of free education for Raumstrategien students still remains totally out of the question. Our relationship with the administration of the art school, already burdened by the usual problems that come hand-in-hand with a course consisting of 50% international students (visa issues, language problems, financial problems, late fee payments due to mismatching funding cycles, etc.) has not improved since the protests, the result of honest misunderstanding, as well as very genuine financial pressures within the art school itself.

Why was our protest so quickly shut down? We learned that we are caught in a kind of pincer movement born out of a broader context. From below, the realities of “life-long learning” are setting in across Europe, as rising job precarity and living costs as a result of austerity measures and the shift to a knowledge-based economy have led to a particularly unstable existence for creative workers, leading to a job landscape where re-skilling is essential for survival. This is a pressure we experience on a personal and a generational level. On a structural level, our art school is effected by the rationalization of higher education from free, self-directed learning based on the principle of autonomous thought, to a modularized, fractured professionalization system coinciding with an efficiency-oriented approach to funding based on quantities of students, rather than quality of teaching and learning. Importantly, both the students of Raumstrategien, the course itself, and the leadership of Weissensee actively resist these pressures (in 2013, the school even negotiated to retain the old Diplom/Meisterschule system for the painting and sculpture departments,

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in defiance of the Bologna reform model). But – we take it on trust – where money is short, there are no easy solutions.

Nonetheless, Raumstrategien enjoyed a certain level of visibility throughout this period. Additionally, we developed a sensibility for the shifting social roles of universities in Germany, the pressures of the market, and our positioning in this rubric.

This knowledge is now a part of our program, and we continue to work with it. The research, and even the conflict-laden process behind the protests, brought us to together as a group, and laid the groundwork for an exhibition entitled “Pay-Off ” that took place this summer in Weissensee’s end-of-year show. Most importantly, together, we now have a very clear understanding of what exactly we are resisting.

Endnotes 1 Bertelsmann in an interview, translated by the authors.

2 See http://www.bertelsmannkritik.de (only available in German)

3 See “Strategy for Lifelong Learning in the Federal Republic of Germany,” available online: http://www.blk-bonn.de/papers/volume115-english.pdf

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Monotremu: â&#x20AC;&#x153;In this photo-perfromance we tried to illustrate the waiting time between a show or an exhibition that we were part of, and the moment we

are remunerated for. But more generally is about the type of relations (and the

bonds) we feel we are having with the

art and cultural institutions, both from Romania as abroad.â&#x20AC;?

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Solidarity: Making it Happen Xandra Popescu

Imagine a world without an art market. A world in which the state is the sole art commissioner. A world in which the artists are unionized. Union Memberships come with a set of concrete advantages: having an atelier, discounts for art supplies and artist residencies in picturesque spots at the seaside or in the mountains. One could say that this is what the Artist’s Union provided in Socialist Romania. That would be one version of the story. Others would remind us that all of these things came at a high price: the price of isolation. Artists could seldom go abroad. Career wise virtually none of them had access to the international art scene. Every exhibition was subject to censorship and artists were often denounced with or without grounds. What sort of political role could artists assume in such circumstances? The best case scenario they could aim for was creating a space of resistance.

Paradoxically enough, in Socialist times entering the Artists Union was prestigious.

Many were knocking at the door; few entered. In order to keep younger artists at bay, enlightened members of the Union came up with the concept of Atelier 35 a network of project spaces in the big cities of Romania dedicated to artists up to the age of 35 – which would have been considered back in the days the conventional upper limit of youth. Atelier 35 functioned as a laboratory for experimentation and at the same time a waiting room for the Artists Union. But soon the waiting room became more interesting than the room. After the fall of Ceaușescu regime, the role of the Artists Union changed and young artists no longer rushed to join the Union.

Loosing this point of reference the role of Atelier 35 also remained unclear, but remained inscribed somewhere along the vague lines of youth, experimentation, and enthusiasm.

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The Logo of Atelier 35 designed by artist Ion Grigorescu

In the beginning of 2015, following the controversy around the possible evacuation of Atelier 35 in favor of the organizers of Bucharest Biennale, the Romanian Artists Union has renewed its request towards young artists to form a new department within its structures titled Atelier 35. Their reason: the Union needs enthusiastic and active young people capable of moving things foreword and â&#x20AC;&#x153;absorbing Euro-pean funding.â&#x20AC;? But perhaps by increasing the number of memberships, the

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The Logo of Atelier 35 designed by artist Ion Grigorescu

unions could continue to ensure social benefits for its members. Currently the Artists Un-ion is funded through the memberships but also through the so-called stamp - a two percent tax on every work of art galleries sell. Part of the quota of memberships goes to the Union and part of it stays with the departments and is used for the or-ganization of exhibitions and events. The Union is structured into departments ac-cording to the criteria of medium: textiles, graphics, metal, ceram-

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ics, art critique, restoration, etc.). But what would be the medium of the department titled Atelier 35? Well, youth itself, apparently. Artists entering Atelier 35 would become mem-bers of the Union in their full right and obligation. But why wouldn’t young artists join the medium-specific departments of the Union directly? For one thing, because they may find such divisions outdated and secondly perhaps because through its activity, Atelier 35 has become representative for contemporary artistic practices. Indeed, over the last few years, Larisa Crunțeanu, Alice Gancevici and I have un-wittingly contributed to the “rebranding” of Atelier 35 as the administration of the Artists Union puts it.

A stamp of Atelier 35 dating back to Communist Times

An 80’s logo of Atelier 35

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Along with several collaborators and friends, Larisa and I who currently power At-elier 35, have albeit reluctantly, responded to the Union’s call to form such a new department within the organization. The reasons varied from pragmatic ones such as: pensions and social protection for artists (and the Artists Union has already got such mechanisms in place) to the old adage: “we can bring the change from inside” or the optimistic idea of artistic solidarity. For some, there was also the hope and claim to the Union’s resources, as it still disposes of many studios and exhibition spaces.

A group of around 10 to 20 people started gathering regularly and discussing what should be the principles of such a structure. Collective making is not easy. Many decisions are still to be taken: should this group be a small circuit of like minded people who would lobby for the rights of artists by key institutions or rather a “catch all” kind of structure based on the lowest common denominator? Should de-cisions be taken by voting or rather by constructing consensus? Should this struc-ture inside the Union have a patrimony of its own for organizing exhibitions and events? Should there exist aesthetic criteria for entering this structure or not?

For me the most important question is what should be the relationship between art workers? What is the element that binds us together? Is it our shared aspirations, our precarity or our youth?

I have asked three women artists with a great deal of experience in self-organization to answer the following question. What would a union you would like to be part of look like? I hoped that such exercises of wishful thinking could create a climate for political friendship.

An 90’s logo of Atelier 35

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Veda Popovici Imagining communitarian solutions is one of my favorite pastimes. But, unlike many such dreams that are faraway utopias of communal organizing, a Union of the Cultural Workers could be a very tangible and realistic imagining. Routed in the historical tradition of unionizing and workers organizing, such a union should be a response to the current siege upon the social rights of the workers by late capital-ism. However, I must state that I am not really a big fan of unions – as they look nowadays, mostly sell-outs – my impression is that it’s mostly an outdated strategy of struggle. With this tension in mind, I can still think of two major arguments in support for a union. Firstly, it could be a strategic solution, for the contemporary Bucharest and Romania. Given the specific conditions of where, with whom and in what conditions my labor is conducted, this could really work. The Romanian context is characterized by a continuous and assiduous dismantling of all social rights of cultural workers gained through decades of struggles. Mostly, this is due to the violent intrusion of capitalism in the 90s. A Union of today could protect the little that remains and begin the retrieval of what has been lost. Which brings me to the second argument: such a union would also be a stable platform for organizing and creating political discourses in the realm of contemporary art. It would be informed and connected to international networks and organizations for cultural workers rights such as: similar unions in Eastern Europe, collectives such as W.A.G.E., Carrots Workers Brigade or ArtLeaks. With such international openness, this Union could constitute the formal social frame for creating new discourses and tactics of struggle, that would be more radical and more adapted to current global conditions of empire and capital.

Veda Popovici works as an artist, theoretician and activist mostly in a dilettante manner. Currently, she is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Arts in Bucharest with a research on nationalism and national identity in Romanian art of the 70s and 80s.

Delia Popa My father was a designer-architect, a lecturer at the “Nicolae Grigorescu” Art Insti-tute, Bucharest and a member of the Artists Union until 1990 when he died.

I grew up spending summer holidays at the Casa de creație [House for Creating] in Con-stanța, at the Black Sea, one of the residency spaces for members of the Artists Union. (The Union was considered an NGO of public utility; it obtained a complementary pension of 50% for members who already had a pension, and had the potential for obtaining other benefits for artists. On the other hand, art exhibited in the Union spaces has not gained international exposure and recognition and hasn’t generated any visible artistic group before 1989.) My sister and I loved that house (and still do) and I assume that spending all this time with artists and their children, since I was 4 and into my adolescence, played a part in choosing to become an artist and study painting at the National University of Arts Bucharest.

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There I learned a bit about art, philosophy and anthropology, how to draw and paint, but I also learned that almost all professors had a beard, no female painter has taught in the Painting Department, and that the U.A.P. was run by the same people (men) as the school. Beyond the lack of feeling that I belonged to this group, I also felt a sense of stagnation, in the department and in the art scene of Bucharest. As I was leaving for London, to find movement and more knowledge, the art scene was starting to move here as well.

But was the Union moving? Was it still a place which artists aspired to enter, to gain artistic status and group representation as it has been during the CeauĹ&#x;escu regime? According to my uncle, Vlad Calboreanu, also a designer-architect and active member of the Union, in the last 25 years this organization has been a mixture of a union and a promoter of art, without really succeeding in any of the two endeavors.

Since I returned from my journey abroad in 2008, I have been interested in triggering a group of like-minded individuals around feminist ideas in Bucharest, and now I feel this group is possible with the purpose of strengthening the work of the Union, with feminist ideas. In my opinion the main thing is to separate the promotion of art from the work for the union.

Delia Popa is a visual artist and art educator from Bucharest. Her practice makes use of feminist theory and practice re-contextualized in the Romanian environment by means of performance, video, drawing, and painting. She studied fine art in Bu-charest, London, and Chicago. In 2014 she defended her thesis on Arts Management in Contemporary Art in Romania at ULBS Sibiu. In 2013 she co-founded ArtCrowd-artists in education, an arts education organization which aims to develop life skills such as critical thinking, creative thinking and collaborative skills in children and youth.

Ioana Cojocaru Considering the present socio-economic situation in Europe and the repercussions that debt, austerity regulations, and precarious working conditions have on workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; life at large, I would say that the artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; union to whose platform I would choose to subscribe should be one that works actively with formulating and sustaining differ-ent modes of organization than the top down structures ruled by a neoliberal capi-talist logic. It should be generated by people who acknowledge the necessity of counteracting the alienation that occurs with a low, insecure or non existing wage, and the acceleration in demand for rapid production. It should enable its members to slow down and question the means of production, the hierarchies of knowledge, and the divisions of labor embedded in the production of an artwork, as all these processes and actions are integral to the meaning of the piece. It should offer legal advice and professional support to the ones who raise uncomfortable questions and demand transparency in decision making when entering or being hired by an art institution. It should have policies that help regulating the working conditions

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that art institutions offer its employees, and it should work actively with a gender agen-da in order to level the existing inequalities and eliminate the discrimination faced by women artists. It should encourage its members to become political subjects rather than entrepreneurs answering to the market demand. It should work close to the art academies and lobby for collective organization in which cooperation, solidarity, open source, non market economies, and the commons are replacing the words that have entered the arts from the lean production vocabulary, and are now forming the subjectivity of young artists, leaving them with very little space to imagine otherwise. This syndicate could engage in larger political debates that could be beneficial for artists, one being lobbying for a guaranteed basic income. Parallel with this, it could build alliances with all the other existing progressive trade unions being active at the time in order to influence the political climate.

Ioana Cojocariu is a visual artist who currently lives in Malmรถ, Sweden. She is presently engaged with the formation of a self-organized group that uses video documentation and auto-ethnography as a re-search practice. The intention of ini-tiating this platform of communication and knowledge production that is not tied to a specific cultural institution, but which can be seen as an autonomous formation with an agency, came out of necessity.

This type of collective re-search focuses of intersubjectivity and interrogates the modes of organization and productions of an artwork. It engages into a constant process of re-evaluation and positions itself critically in relation to the notion of ownership.

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HABEN UND BRAUCHEN (to Have and to Need) STATEMENT at Artist Organisations International at HAU Theater Berlin, January 11, 2015

Sonja Augart, Tatjana Fell, Alice MĂźnch, Ina Wudtke and Inga Zimprich formed a temporary working group to represent Haben und Brauchen1 (to Have and to Need) at the Artist Organizations International conference, which took place at HAU, a theatre in Berlin in January 2015.2 We wrote this statement to voice our anger at a curated and costly symposium, which pretended to be an attempt at organising an international movement of solidarity amongst artists.

We read our statement from amidst the audience.3

Haben und Brauchen, sound check, 2015. Photo credit: Arne Sattler

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Spoken by Sonja 1.000 artists and cultural producers in Berlin signed an open letter.4 This was the starting point of to Have and to Need in January, 2011.

Spoken by Alice: I was one of these artists.

Spoken by Sonja With this letter to Have and to Need positioned itself against the exhibition project ‘Based in Berlin’ which was initiated by the former mayor Wowereit. To Have and to Need protested against the instrumentalization of artists for neoliberal image policy and city marketing. To Have and to Need demands cultural policy that adequately responds to the specific needs of the thousands of artists living and working in this city and their institutions.

Haben und Brauchen, performing the statement a HAU, 2015. Photo credit: Arne Sattler

Since then to Have and to Need functions as an independent platform for political and cultural debate. To Have and to Need tries to generate an open structure of participation. Currently about 20 people are actively engaged – they vary according to the issues and questions at stake. As to Have and to Need we reflect on the complex shifts and changes of living- and working conditions for artists and cultural producers in Berlin. At the moment we’re working on three main topics, these are labour, city space and concepts of art.

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Spoken by Ina: I am one of these artists.

Spoken by Inga Of all artists only five percent can make a living of their work. I can’t. I was tired living from one precarious project to the next which we eventually often do without even paying ourselves. Most of us work in side-jobs, often being assistants to other artists, working in galleries or building up exhibitions and fairs. Many of us are supported by our partners, families, friends, or live off the unemployment office with all the pressure that comes with it. Still, though this affects most of us, it is hard to openly address our working realities within the art world. Just like most other sectors of society the art field is based solely on competition and on the fact that only very few of us can make it. And even now as I speak we compete. We’re competing for the few resources, for contacts, opportunities, for visibility and an occasional fee like the one today that we had to split by five.

Even if we demand obligatory artists fees for publicly funded exhibitions, these demands cover only a tiny fraction of what artistic labor and cultural work really involves. If I’d add up all the time that goes into researching, analyzing, planning, organizing and producing work, I don’t even want to think about what I’m actually paid per hour. Many of us also do political work as artists, care for our contexts, sit in endless meetings, run self-organized spaces.

We stand behind the demands of W.A.G.E. for Work, Carrotworkers’ Collective, Precarious Workers Brigade, the BBK Berlin and other initiatives. We need to understand that changing our situation as cultural workers requires commitment, effort and persistence.

Spoken by Ina The 1990s surplus of space which made the establishment of numerous low cost project spaces, studios and rental flats possible has turned into a shortage of space today. Artists, cultural producers, welfare recipients and other precarious workers are harassed and evicted by upscale real estate projects and privatization of neighborhoods.

Spoken by Sonja: I am one of them.

Spoken by Ina As a consequence of growing commercial infrastructure, private galleries, art initiatives and artists have played their role in the process of expanding the gentrification throughout the city.

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Spoken by Tatjana: I am one of them.

Spoken by Ina Parallel to this development we witness a construction of national history in the city center. Reactionary historic and spatial lines are reinstalled and cemented. It is planned to exhibit German, Prussian colonial heritage unquestioned in the middle of Berlin, while contemporary art is employed to rehabilitate this looted art from ethnographic collections.

In the future scenarios developed by the City Senate, in 2030 the self-organized, participatory, artistic practices generated during the Berlin of the 90s, will be entirely replaced by creative industries.

Spoken by Alice An event named Artist Organizations International alludes to the Communist Workers International and the International Workers Movement. This event today pretends to create a solidarity of art workers internationally. It seems like an attempt at organizing collectively to fight for better working conditions on an international level.

But the leading protagonists are missing: Where are labor unions, artist unions, FAU, ArtLeaks, W.A.G.E. for work, Carrotworkersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Collective and other groups that aim to empower precarious workers? Does an event that assembles a small number of art projects want to distance itself from those real efforts to unite? How can we prevent that our participation in this event devaluates the work of countless initiatives that do practical political work? How can we value the hard and invisible labour to organize ourselves? (pause) Spoken by all: We came as a group of five persons.

Spoken by Tatjana We who are here today stand for the questions which we share within to Have and to Need. To Have and to Need as well speaks with many voices. At the same time we address our general questions related to the possibility to organize internationally.

Spoken by all: We came as five women.

Spoken by Tatjana

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As a matter of fact the art-field contains a high percentage of women. The main share of structural care-taking, reproductive work and invisible labor is done by women. The work of women is often underpaid, payed unequally or not payed at all.

We find women sitting in meetings â&#x20AC;&#x201C; writing protocols, working from home under precarious conditions, forming the backbone of every project. For many of us, our middle-class family background allows us to work in this precarious field.

Spoken by all: We came as a group representing a group.

Spoken by Tatjana Our wish to work equally in groups implicates the resistance to a logic of selection, a selective determination of single representatives, like the most souvereign person, the most eloquent speaker, the most well-known person, the male offensive speaker. What degree of trust and reliance do we need to encourage each other? Which needs do we want to articulate publicly? How can we negotiate within our group how to follow invitations sent out to single individuals? How can we pled to work as a group in contexts like this? Who decides who will be a representative?

Haben und Brauchen, performing at HAU, 2015. Photo credit: Arne Sattler

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Spoken by Inga You have purchased a ticket for 33€ to watch the performance of political art initiatives throughout three days. What’s missing for you? What’s missing for us? What do we gain by re-staging our work in a theatre? Who takes the credit for our efforts to organize and unionize? Who will put his name under our work?

Creating solidarity would mean for us an equal right for all to attend and for all to speak.

Creating solidarity would mean creating a learning situation, a situation in which we all listen to each other.

Creating solidarity would mean for us that we meet in self-organized spaces and in places without curatorial invitation policy.

If we want to create solidarity, the entrance to our meetings is free.

If we want to create solidarity we facilitate what makes participation possible: translation, accommodation, joint meals, child-care and we try to reach beyond our networks.

Creating solidarity would mean for us to acknowledge all forms of labor that each event requires: the care work in our social contexts, the maintenance work for spaces and infrastructures as well as organizational work that brings us here.

Creating solidarity on an international level means for us to abolish event-based productions like this one and to acknowledge existing local infrastructures instead.

It means to familiarize ourselves with the work that other local initiatives already do, also outside the art field.

Creating solidarity would mean for us to learn from activists and unionists how to rethink our practices and to rework our field in order to establish more fair forms of working together.

The long-term, tedious and unspectacular labor of creating solidarity with each other takes place outside the theater and outside of spaces that are foremost geared at presentation.

Haben und Brauchen [to Have and to Need] is an informal platform for discussion and action founded in 2011. It advocates the recognition and preservation of a self-organised artistic practice that has grown out of the specific historical conditions in Berlin. Haben und Brauchen’s manifesto goes beyond individual artists’ interests and makes connections to debates around the commons, precarious economy, urban development and housing policy as well as the shifting notions of labour in contemporary society.

Endnotes

1 A recording of this statement can be found at https://vimeo.com/118486462 (from min. 23 on).

2 To Have and to Need is an open platform for discussion of cultural policy in Berlin. https://www.habenundbrauchen.de

3 Artist Organisations International has been an event curated by Florian Malzacher, Jonas Staal,

Joanna Warsza at HAU (Hebbel Am Ufer), Berlin and supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds with 100.000€ https://www.artistorganisationsinternational.org

4 Haben und Brauchen’s initial public letter, published to protest against the exhibition project, can be found here: http://www.habenundbrauchen.de/en/category/haben-und-brauchen/1-open-letter

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Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin, How can an artist fight down precarity?, 2015.

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Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin, And what about violence?, 2015.

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On Direct Action: An Address to Cultural Workers Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.)

What time is it on the clock of the world? - Grace Lee Boggs We amplify a cry reverberating across the globe. From Istanbul and Sao Paulo to New York and London, the proliferation of direct actions is disrupting business as usual at elite cultural institutions: #Black Lives Matter at the Museum of Natural History, climate protests at the Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, collective pressure for boycott at Haifa’s Technion, worker solidarity disruptions at the Guggenheim Museum NYC, to name only a few.

We now see a diversity of tactics being employed. At times, uninvited assemblies inside museums are announced. At other times the unexpected occurs, unheralded.

Actions take aim at arange of targets: labor exploitation, white supremacy, the capture of public space, climate injustice, gentrification, police violence, Israeli apartheid, rape and sexual assault, and more. They are beautifully disruptive within their own arenas of concern. But these concerns are also connected.

We know that by generating narratives in the media, actions can either have deeply transformative potential, or they can reinforce existing norms and power relations.

They can either accept the limits of a given context—and implicitly affirm them— or they can change the nature of that context altogether.

We believe that a shift is beginning to occur.

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G.U.L.F., Meet Workers’ Demands Now!”, G.U.L.F.’s banner released from the Guggenheim’s rotunda on the MayDay 2015, Photo credit: Margaret Singer

We are living in times dominated by a global ultra-luxury economy. This economy masks the theft of public space, the dispossession of citizens’ rights, the abuse of workers, the ruthless extraction of debt revenue, and the propagation of seeds of more racism and violence everywhere. We act to strike the global ultraluxury economy in the interests of making a new space of imagination, one that builds power with people and facilitates there-arrangement of our own desires in the struggle for justice and freedom.

We are the Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.). Our name aggressively reflects back to the actually existing art world its true nature: a spectacular subsystem of global capitalism revolving around the display, consumption, and financialization of cultural objects for the benefit of a tiny fraction of humanity, namely, the1%.

We are cultural workers. We are students, teachers, thinkers, makers, painters, writers, musicians, and more. We recognize and use our privilege to speak out but must always be wary of reproducing the privilege of our location. We work with the imagination and the senses, with hearts and minds, with bodies and voices.

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G.U.L.F., Meet Workers’ Demands Now!”, G.U.L.F.’s banner released from the Guggenheim’s rotunda on the MayDay 2015, Photo credit: Margaret Singer

We recognize that our work, our creativity, and our potential are channeled into the operations and legitimization of the system. We work—often precariously—as both exploiters and exploited, but we do not cynically resign ourselves to this morbid status quo. We will not allow our songs to become ashes, or our dreams to become nightmares. We see our proximity to the system as an opportunity to strike it with precision, recognizing that the stakes far exceed the discourses and institutions of art as we know them.

We are living, working, and creating in an expanded field of empire. This field is marked by mortal crises—crises of finance resulting in gaping inequality, of climate, of dispossession and displacement, of poverty and neocolonialism in all its forms, of state violence and creeping fascism, and always of patriarchy. But this field is also traversed by freedom struggles, from the striking workers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai to the insurgents in Palestine, Ferguson, Athens, and beyond. G.U.L.F. itself emerged, in part, from the occupation of Wall Street. There, inspired by uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, and Spain, we bypassed the institutions of a corrupted representative democracy. We put our bodies directly on the line at the symbolic

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doorstep of global capital. Wall Street is an abstract space, everywhere and nowhere at once. By de-occupying it, we created space for collective powers to surge fort hand for struggles to connect with one another. Walking together, we have asked questions. How do we live? What is freedom? What does solidarity look like?

What role can art play?

We target both global systems and local conditions at once. G.U.L.F. names an overarching system, but it also evokes a specific location which exemplifies that system in its most spectacular form: the oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. These states are the supreme recreational playground for the global 1%.Artistic and educational institutions from New York to Paris have eagerly contributed their brands to the development of the de luxecity scapes of the Emirates. We see monuments to “culture” woven into a monstrous assemblage of fossil fuels, financial power, and imperial geopolitics. Holding up the pyramid, bearing the weight of the entire edifice, are the legions of workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and most recently, Ghana and Nigeria, who seek dignity and a better future for their families. They are drawn to the Gulf by economic precariousness in their home countries, and often end up bonded to their work through debt. Many of these workers have been at the forefront of struggles for wages and labor reforms that challenge the very terms of Gulf petro-capitalism, itself embedded in global flows of capital and labor. The global cultural brands setting up in Abu Dhabi— Guggenheim, the Louvre, the British Museum, NYU—accept zero responsibility.

They insist that the grievances of the workers should be addressed to the government, to the subcontractors, to the middlemen, to the “sending country,” but never to the disinterested heights of the art institutions themselves, which possess a leverage they refuse to acknowledge.

What can be done? Our partners in the Gulf Labor Coalition first brought these conditions of life, work, and debt to public attention. They called for an artists boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in particular, demanding that certain conditions on the Island of Happiness be met. Trips have been taken to labor camp sand construction zones in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reports have been written, extensive meetings have been convened. G.U.L.F. brought a new element to this arsenal: artistic direct actions targeting the flagship Guggenheim in New York, designed to incite solidarity, not charity. We have made unsolicited alterations to the building, to the spectator environment, and to the internal protocols of the museum itself, making it into a temporary zone of the marvelous while drawing connections between speculative real estate booms and busts from Manhattan to Abu Dhabi. Banners were dropped, propaganda flung like confetti from the heights of the famous spiral; voices thundered and echoed throughout the rotunda, police were called in to secure the museum as it shut down. We have disfigured the Guggenheim’s corporate brand and magnified the pressure on the museum’s trustees to accept responsibility for the human misery at the bottom of the subcontracting chain.

When we act in New York—the capital of the global art world and global media

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alike—we perform on an outsized stage, and can amplify many voices, especially those that go unheard on Saadiyat Island. How do we understand the connection between the struggles of the UAE’s migrant workers and our own struggles? Why do we regard the liberation of these migrant workers as a precondition of our own liberation? We do not imagine the workers as victims to be saved, but rather as fellow human beings whose freedom is bound up with our own. We have connected with their plight because our own dignity depends on it. Our liberation is either collective or it is nonexistent, so we assail the Guggenheim in New York because it is our gateway into a larger struggle. When we proclaim solidarity, we do not ignore very real differentials of conditions, temporalities, experiences, power, and privilege between ourselves and the migrant workers. We hold onto the specificities of struggle because we understand that history is more awesome than good will. We will not be solidarity tourists. Spectacular actions are necessary yet insufficient on their own. How do we sustain solidarity?

We imagine escalation—at the Guggenheim and beyond. The Guggenheim has been for us an urgent target in its own right. But it has also been a testing ground, a laboratory of learning, training in the practice of freedom, with ramifications far beyond the museum itself. Even if the Guggenheim Foundation trustees accede to the demands of the Gulf Labor Coalition and take independent action to protect the rights of workers—or even to abolish their debts—our work will not be over. Saadiyat Islandwill still stand as a challenge and a target, along with every other cultural stockpile designed to embellish the lives of the ultra-luxury elite at the expense of the lives of the great majority—especially the lives of black and brown people, who are systemically devalued and rendered disposable under carceral neoliberalism. The workings of the art world have long been bound up with the fine art of gentrification—the by now formulaic intertwining of culture-driven development, realty speculation, and enclave policing that disciplines and displace slower-income populations from urban neighborhoods. On Saadiyat Island, we see these components in a slightly different, but fundamentally related, combination—brown bodies in accommodations that resemble detention camps, toiling under debt bondage and brutal law enforcement to build a real estate paradise for a light-skinned over class.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest. The ultra-luxury economy is deeply racialized, locally and globally. In the Gulf, Americans and Europeans doing business are called expats, whereas people constructing and maintaining these surreal cities in the desert are called migrant workers. Actions within and against this economy must make the struggle against racism and white supremacy as an essential component. This extends to the occupation, exploitation, and ethnic cleansing characteristic of Israeli policy—indeed, a global cultural boycott of institutions connected to Israeli apartheid is well within our reach. Boycotts, strikes, pickets, die-ins, occupations, web hacks, media hijacks… whatever the combination of tactics, our actions are at once oppositional and abundantly creative. As we disrupt and refuse the role that art now plays in the normal functioning of a global system that prop-

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agates racism and inequality in its shadows, we make space for something new to come into the world. The heart of this new culture is solidarity and human dignity.

From acting we learn anew way of thinking. Let each action be an opportunity to test, toun learn, and to train in the practice of freedom. Let us expand our analysis, deepen our struggles, and reimagine together what art can be as a force of collective liberation and international solidarity.

G.U.L.F. Labor is coalition of international artists working to ensure that migrant worker rights are protected during the construction of museums on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi.

This text was previously publish in the e-flux journal:

http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/authors/gulf-labor/

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When Politics Becomes Form.

The Venice Biennale, 2015 Ivor Stodolsky

On Karl Marx’s birthday this year, a six-month public reading of Das Kapital was initiated not far from a video-installation documenting the thoughts of two leading Marxists of our time – Stuart Hall and David Harvey. On the same day, the same artist who initiated these politically-charged projects launched a preview of a new film. It features a Spirit of Ecstasy Rolls-Royce car and was commissioned by this luxury brand whose eponymous sister corporation was recently the 16th largest defense contractor in the world.1 Welcome to the Venice Biennale where, as the wisdom of Leonard Cohen has it, “everybody knows.” Even critical reviews register paradoxes such as these with rarely more than a passing remark.

But, halt! – even if only for the fashionistas. Wasn’t Cohen’s bon-mot passé long ago – a relic of fin-de-siècle “po-mo”?2 This laissez-faire cynicism does not do justice to a new generation of re-engaged art and politics of the moment. Why is Okwui Enwezor, who as its curator has filled this year’s Biennale chocker-block with political art, so “tone deaf ” as one journalist put it, as not to feel even the slightest burning in the ears at such blatant contradictions?3 In 1969, shortly after the uprisings of 1968, Harald Szeemann curated his (in)famous “When Attitude Becomes Form”. Its radical attitude created such an artistic rupture of form, and an equally horrified reaction from the establishment, that after-shocks were felt for years to come. The exhibition was shut down, despite its sponsorship by Philip Morris Cigarettes, and Szeemann resigned. Drawing parallels, Okwui Enwezor has curated what is slated as a highly political show in the midst of uprisings which stretch from Tahrir Square to Thessaloniki.

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Contrary to Szeemann, however, Enwezor is the darling of the establishment. The direction is reversed: politics seems on its way to becoming mere form.

For some at the Venice preview, that was not enough. When radical art and political theory can be hyper-commodified – as the fetishistic facsimile of near forty-pages of Das Kapital in the Biennale’s €85 catalogue amply demonstrates – direct action seems one of the last possible ways, in such “spectacular” contexts, to make uncompromisingly clear this difference between politics and its mere form.

At least this was the rational of Perpetuum Mobile, the curatorial vehicle run by Marita Muukkonen and myself.

Although having come to Venice not to work, but to observe for the first time in many years, we were fast drawn into the heart of an operation initiated by friends and colleagues from the Gulf Labor Coalition based in New York and the local activist space S.a.L.E. Docks, along with many friends and fellow-travelers.

The task: occupy the Venice Guggenheim. Hashtag: #GuggOccupied. //

Preparations for the #GuggOccupied action: Noah Fischer (G.U.L.F.), Marita Muukkonen (Perpetuum Mobile), Andrew Ross (Gulf Labor), Ivor Stodolsky (Perpetuum Mobile), Amin Husain (G.U.L.F.). Banner painted by Joulia Strauss. May 2015. Photo credit: Perpetuum Mobile

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The use of what amounts to bonded labour in building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is at the core of the concerns of Gulf Labor, a growing coalition of engaged artists, researchers and activists with links to international art and labour associations. Its origins overlap and were inspired by the “Who’s Building NYU Abu Dhabi?” campaign, initiated by professors and students of New York University.

The new NYU campus – as well as a new branch of the Louvre, among many other infrastructure projects in the UAE and the wider region – is being built under the same exploitative labour regime, which often goes under the name of the “Kafala System”.4 In the US, awareness of the harsh abuses of the labour regime in the UAE date back to at least 2006, when a Human Rights Watch report on the topic was published.5 This report was given wide distribution by initiators of the NYU campaign, such as such as the sociologist Andrew Ross, gradually leading to a wider movement.6 The issues raised centre on working conditions and the manner in which migrant labourers are tricked into a system whereby their first years in Abu Dhabi amount to forced and nearly unpaid labour. With the cost of travel to the UAE covered by the building companies up-front, the workers are usually deprived of their passports and hence the ability to travel, until it has been repaid. This can take more than two years, with hardly anything gained by those trapped in the system.

Kept in sub-human factory-town conditions, workers live in slum dwellings with multiple persons crammed into prison-cell like rooms. Predominantly male, they are commonly de facto forbidden/unable to see their wives, girlfriends or partners for extended months or years. Comparison to slavery is hard to avoid. Labour conditions are appalling, with laws against working on high-rise scaffolding at temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius regularly flaunted. Deaths on-site are a feature of everyday life. Wages are abysmally low.

With the inception of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project, awareness of the responsibility and complicity of the art world in these abuses became evident in the US. Like the NYU campaign in the case of education, art practitioners believed they could have some degree of real leverage through activism in their own professional field. Headed by artists such as Walid Raad, a new group under the name of Gulf Labor brought the issue to the attention of the art world around 2010-11.7 Since then, a variety of strategies and tactics have been tried and developed – from letter-writing campaigns, to developing fake Guggenheim websites to occupations of the NY museum. It also involved art itself, with a weekly series of art works circulated, criticizing the harsh labour regime and the Guggenheim in particular.

In recent years, the Guggenheim Foundation has done much to discredit its remarkable collection and history. The flagship of the neoliberal agenda, it stands at the forefront of turning art collections into corporate franchises. As a Helsinki and Berlin based organization, Perpetuum Mobile had already been witness to its deleterious business strategies in the Finnish capital at first hand. In a procedure in

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From the opening of “To The Square 2”, a Perpetuum Mobile project commissioned by Checkpoint

Helsinki, which addressed the issues of political art in public space. Helsinki, 2014. Photo credits: Jani Ahlstedt/Checkpoint Helsinki/Perpetuum Mobile

preparation behind closed doors since 2010, the Guggenheim Foundation received 1.2 million in tax-payers’ money, topped up by corporate-friendly Finnish foundations to almost 2 million euros. This slush-fund was offered to the corporation to finance a “feasibility study” for a new Helsinki Guggenheim. In a clear conflict of interest, this study was carried out under the auspices of the Guggenheim Foundation itself.8 It didn’t take long for the millionaire-studded working committee to respond with a self-serving “yes” to its own idea.9 The methods of the “feasibility study” were also dubious. From the point of view of the local art scene and administrators, the public face of this operation was a handful of young college graduates - just out of elite business schools, judging by their age and designer suits. Personal reports describe their research as consisting of highly superficial interviews with local art officials, lasting no more than 20 minutes in some cases. Deeper discussion was off limits. When the issue of financing the new Guggenheim franchise was raised, the young men were clearly under orders: “We don’t talk about that.”10 Alongside the neoliberal Helsinki mayor, an elite clutch of Finnish museum circuit operators formed the core supporters. The director of the public City Art Museum, Janne Gallen-Kallela-Sirén was so enthusiastic as to offer shutting down his own museum, proposing to merge it with the New York corporation’s enterprise. (When this was rejected, he soon found himself with a consolation prize as the director of a museum in Buffalo, upstate New York.)

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Given the size of the City budget, let alone art budgets, the feasibility study’s figures were staggering. The new jewel-box building was slated at 130-140 million euros, excluding another 30 million in VAT. Starchitects were set on alert. The costs of the planning and founding phase were set at 11.2 million and the annual operating costs put at 14.5 million. The Guggenheim thus would create a “funding gap” of 6.8 million a year, with its expenditure comprising 7/8 of the Helsinki City art museum’s budget. Best of all, the project would charge a “licensing fee” for the Guggenheim brand of 30 million dollars over 20 years – that is, 1.5 million a year for the Guggenheim’s logo.11 It comes as no surprise then, that the “study” proposed that almost the entirety of the financing for this corporate enterprise was to come from the public purse.

Projections were made in all seriousness for closing down primary schools to foot the bill. Artists were dumbfounded by the figures, and rightfully came to expect that their still half-decent Nordic-style funding system would soon be put to the axe. Asked about their appreciation of the Finnish art scene and its place in the new building, the Guggenheim’s directors offered that, in fact, they had a taste for Finnish architecture and design. While the local tax payer was set to pay for the lions share of the museum, the Guggenheim intended to reserve for itself the right to organize its program as it pleased - at least for the first three years. The board composition was to be approximately half-half.

The Square newspaper stand and info point at “To The Square 2”, Lasipalatsi Square, Helsinki, 2014.

Photo credits: Jani Ahlstedt/Checkpoint Helsinki/Perpetuum Mobile

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Non-Googleheim (Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle) & ZIP Group installation (detail) at “To The Square 2”, Lasipalatsi Square, Helsinki, 2014. Photo credits: Rena Rädle

// Back in Venice, shortly after Karl Marx’s birthday, things were gearing up for an eventful day. A press-conference was scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Cafe Paradiso in front of the Giardini. News was spread by work of mouth – for fear the police would catch wind of the action and intervene immediately, stopping the flotilla of boats from disembarking. The plan was to float with fanfare and protest-banners out into the Laguna and down the Grand Canal, to land at the Peggy Guggenheim’s grand water-side entrance and to occupy the museum.

The day before the occupation a series of talks were held under the name “Abstrike - Let’s Strike! Towards an inter-continental platform for art and cultural workers.”12 The presentations at S.a.L.E. Docks included many of the upcoming action’s participants. Among them were Marco Baravalle (S.a.L.E. Docks), Andrew Ross, Nitasha Dhillon, Amin Husain, Noah Fischer and Gregory Sholette (G.U.L.F Gulf Labor), Luigi Galimberti (European Alternatives/Transnational Dialogues), Roberto Ciccarelli (Il Manifesto - La Furia dei cervelli), Cooperativa Crater Invertido and Art Collaboratory, Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) and Anna Bitkina (TOK Curator), Emanuele Braga (MACAO) and Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen (Perpetuum Mobile).

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The wrought-iron gate of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. #GuggOccupied at the Venice Biennale 2015. Photo credit: Perpetuum Mobile

The planned occupation was not publicly announced, but an expectant enthusiasm was in the air. The artist Joulia Strauss worked tirelessly throughout the proceedings on a large banner in the adjacent space. Yet that night, at an assembly with members of the Gulf Labor Coalition, S.a.L.E. Docks and Perpetuum Mobile, it became clear that the proposed plan was flawed. Under a law which forbids protests on the Laguna and Grand Canal, the police could stop and easily detain the flotilla before it reached the Guggenheim, given the long distance to be covered. So a new two-pronged strategy was developed. The press conference was to be held parallel to the occupation, which would be launched directly from S.a.L.E. We at Perpetuum Mobile took on a special task: to enter the museum early in the morning, to survey the landing-dock and security arrangements prior to the flotilla landing – that is, to occupy the museum from within.

Aside from a knee injury – incurred as a guard smashed the wrought-iron gates we tried to hold open as our fellow activist-occupiers disembarked from their boats – the occupation went surprisingly smoothly. Indeed, having noticed a party on the roof-terrace before opening time, we found a way upstairs to this breakfast-bonanza organized by Christie’s auction house. Fresh-pressed orange juice aside, it made for nice shots of the Grand Canal landing-dock to be occupied. The conversations, however, were appalling. As if straight out of a 19th century novel, elegant breakfast guests were overheard averring that, “if you give the workers a finger, they’ll take your arm!” More up-to-date chit-chat included, “Diamonds are on the down, I am investing in contemporary art...”

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The plan to occupy the Venice Guggenheim was initiated by G.U.L.F. (Global Ultra Luxury Faction), the Coalition’s activist section. A few days earlier, on 1st of May, G.U.L.F. had occupied the rotunda of the Guggenheim’s famed spiraling Frank Lloyd Wright building in New York, demanding direct talks with the corporate leadership. Their demand was refused and the museum was closed instead. As the sociologist-activist Andrew Ross, a senior member of the Gulf Labor Coalition explained, the occupation of the Venice Guggenheim on the 5th May was a follow-up on these unmet demands for direct talks.

S.a.L.E. Docks and a variety of local and international groups played an indispensable role in planning and carrying out the action initiated by the New Yorkers.

Nevertheless, because the Gulf Labor Coalition was officially invited to Venice by Okwui Enwezor to participate in the Biennale with a large banner-work in the Arsenale, a certain sense lingered of the occupation being part of an artistic, rather than a distinctly political process. Perhaps this is what lead some in G.U.L.F. to take on the role of primus inter pares – a “verticalization” of organization which marks a change in approach for those of them who had advocated a far more horizontal structure as part of the Occupy movement. //

#GuggOccupied at the Venice Biennale 2015.

Photo credit: Perpetuum Mobile

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#GuggOccupied at the Venice Biennale 2015.

Photo credit: Perpetuum Mobile

This shift from the principles of assembly-based decision-making to a more “democratic centralist” approach was not reflected on in public, although it deserves separate analysis and discussion. Only a few general issues can be raised in the scope of this article. On the other hand, to what extent can or should one effectively counter a 1% corporate oligarchy with a not-dissimilar elite organizational structure? Considering the specificity of the field of art, to what extent is this structure inherited from the traditional artistic model in which the “artist” has the final word on the (in this case, political) “work”? In other words, can the political message and impetus be effective through or despite an elite institutional form?

On the other hand, considering mass roots-level democracy, there is no doubt that Occupy’s forms of consensus-oriented decision-making processes have proved problematic. Not only are such procedures at times difficult and cumbersome in practice, but many have criticized the form of the assembly for masking and reproducing multiple hierarchies while claiming roots-democratic legitimacy. In the first place, participation itself requires the privileged position of having the resources of time, money, health and the institutional knowledge and positioning to be present.

Furthermore, many social inequalities and power relations are inevitably imported into the assembly form itself.13 Without such self-critique – and while paradoxically rejecting the traditional democratic practice of representation outright – many assemblies’ claims to represent “the 99%” were highly problematic.14 However, one

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should bear in mind that these very issues also apply to organizational forms which do not claim or strive for equality or consensus, such as elite institutions or operational groups.

A different, semi-traditional form was taken by the movement against the Helsinki Guggenheim: the art-workers association. What came to be known as “Checkpoint Helsinki” started as a movement of artists, curator and art-workers against the use of tax money for building the corporate museum, mobilized by a few active voices and joined by hundreds of others. It resulted in well-attended public assemblies which added to the debate in civil society and the mainstream media. As a voice of art-workers against the proposed art museum, this “anti-Guggenheim movement” played a visible role in turning the tide against the Guggenheim Helsinki. Due to a combination of factors, the City Council of Helsinki voted against the project in May 2012 by a margin of one vote.

Although Checkpoint Helsinki’s assemblies dwindled significantly following this victory in 2012, they maintained a public profile. Proposing alternatives to the Guggenheim project, they argued that a city which seriously considered spending 180-200 million on a corporation should have some funds to spare for locally-organized, smaller-scale alternatives. After considerable delays, they were funded with a modest budget of 200-300 thousand per annum for an initial three years. In this process, the “anti-Guggenheim movement” was transformed into a regular institution with a degree of oversight by the City funders, loosing some of its political edge. Nevertheless, it commissioned critical and radical art projects, including Back To Square 1 and To The Square 2, with revolutionary artists from Cairo to Moscow, curated by Perpetuum Mobile15 – to provide disclosure of my own involvement.

Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. Not very long after the Guggenheim Helsinki’s defeat, it was found out that despite the City Council’s decision, the Conservative Party major was preparing an architectural competition for a new building behind the scenes. No clear financial model was presented, but somehow a new urban space for the revived Helsinki Guggenheim project was allocated in December 2013. A privately financed architectural competition was officially revealed in 2014, and the results have been recently announced in 2015.

Due to the current politics of austerity and harsh cuts to all social and cultural sectors, the odds seem against the project being realized any time soon. However, the once strong anti-Guggenheim movement is not its former self. Checkpoint Helsinki is, for the moment at least, taking a quiet wait-and-see approach, unwilling to be affiliated with a protest at the opening of the architectural competition.16 However, they have been part of co-sponsoring a playful counter-competition for the redevelopment of Helsinki’s public space under the title “Next Helsinki”.17 In any case, institutionalization always brings with it a certain degree of constraint, especially when the City funding model is up for renewal.

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#GuggOccupied at the Venice Biennale 2015.

Back row: Ivor Stodolsky, Gregory Sholette, Amin Husain, boatsman from S.a.L.E. Docks; Middle row: Noah Fischer, Andrew Ross, Joulia Strauss; Front row: Marco Baravalle, Nitasha Dhillon.

Photo credit: Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic. Excerpted with permission from:

http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/venice-gugg-protest-sale-docks.jpeg

// Creating new models of association and sustainable livelihoods is perhaps the crucial issue of our times. Older forms, such as unionization, cooperatives and collectives – long in decline – are in the process of being re-imagined and wedded with new conceptual frameworks, such as the project for a “commons transition”.18 Experimental new forms are in evidence across the world. The case of the Cooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC), an “integral collective” which brings together hundreds of highly diverse groups, gives hope to ambitious plans for interconnecting the plurality of different forms. Based on these multiple experiences, combining the

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proliferating technologies of liquid democracy (such as Loomio or Wezer) and the development of the non-speculative ethical economic ecologies (such as the blockchain currency FairCoin) projects like FairCoop are emerging. These ambitious yet realistic, bottom-up democratic movements are taking thier first pre-mondial steps.

New parties which have grown out of the protest movements of 2011, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, are crucial tests for how the question of political form can be answered on the level of grand politics. Podemos, of course, is the new Spanish party which grew out of the 15-M Movement – whose practices, as many know, provided models for Occupy. An important in-between stage to forming the political party, after the 15-M demonstrations lost their force, were the so-called Mareas – “the ‘tides’ or ‘waves’ of spontaneous organization against the Eurozone austerity measures: the anti-eviction movement, the hospital workers, the teachers and so on” – that is social movements, many of whose leadership figures became prominent members of Podemos.19 Although the issue of leadership has been hotly debated, the public leader of Podemos Pablo Iglias argues that: “If anything has made us strong, it is that we haven’t allowed militant nuclei to isolate us from the wishes of society, to hijack an organization that is—over and above the identities of its political leaders, cadres and militants—an instrument for political change in Spain.”20 The development of Podemos is certainly worth more detailed study, and its action when in power will be the true test of the party as a political form in our time. The case of Syriza, so courageous and full of hope, yet now seemingly having betrayed its entire program in a shocking capitulation, is a stark warning. // Returning to Venice once more, one can see that, as in all politics, good timing is of the essence. Once the Venice occupation had closed not only the canal-side grand entrance, but also the entrance by land, the Guggenheim’s leadership was in a trap.

Not only were they forced to close the museum, but the US’s Venice Pavilion’s party – the highpoint of the Biennale for the Guggenheim, scheduled for that evening inside the museum – was on the point of being cancelled. The pressure was on.

Desperate to avoid a police intervention and the ensuing violence and scandal, an immediate meeting with the occupants was accepted. A small delegation was issued into the halls of power. Here they met senior members of the board, as they had demanded, and quickly received assurances that recently published studies reporting on the dire situation in Abu Dhabi would be read and responded to.

Exiting like victors through the wrought iron gates, the delegation declared the mission accomplished. As the remaining occupiers were informed, the delegation had reached the conclusion to clear the occupation. Their grounds were, on the one hand, that the delegation had achieved its ends of meeting the directors; on

Page 109 / August 2015

#GuggOccupied at the Venice Biennale 2015.

Photo credit: Perpetuum Mobile

the other, that a violent confrontation with security forces would harm the delicate unspoken memorandum of understanding local activist partners had with the police â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a balance which they needed to preserve for another direct action scheduled for the next day. Within less than two hours of being shut down, the Guggenheim was open for business again.

The effectiveness of #GuggOccupied remains to be seen. Since May 2015, Ashok Sukumaran, Walid Raad and Andrew Ross of the Gulf Labor Coalition have been denied entry into the UEA. This shows the Guggenheim and its partners are willing to harden the battle lines, regardless of the stringent criticism drawn from leading figures in the international artistic establishment.21 Whether or not the public-relations strategy of naming, shaming and occupying it again and again, provides a big enough threat to the Guggenheim to force it to change its malign practices is an open question.

PR strategies have their political limits. The ambitious but compromised political statement of the Venice Biennale, mentioned at the beginning of this article, have made a show of this truth. To institute genuine change, the structural and financial underpinnings is where to look, not the rhetoric. And this requires far wider socio-political transformation.

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If one thing is clear, one cannot imagine a wider political sea-change without new political forms. These are fully possible as is evidenced by the rise of Syriza and Podemos, as well as the ambitious experiments for integrating the legions of self-organized cooperative associations into self-sustaining social ecologies. If art can contribute on this historical level, it is in imagining the presently unfeasible.

For it is through acts of the imagination that forms that are truly impossible under the corrupt old paradigm, are made imaginable on the pre-mondial horizon.

Ivor A Stodolsky is a curator, writer and theoretician based in Finland, Germany and France. In his engaged curatorial practice, he organises exhibitions, conferences and events relating art and politics internationally, and is also the the editor of related publications and films. Recent projects include Pluriculturalism (Moderna Museet, Malmö), Back To Square 1 and To The Square 2 (Checkpoint Helsinki), the 4th Roma-Gypsy Pavilion (Cineromani Berlin), Re-Public (Urb Festival, Kiasma, Helsinki), Re-Aligned Art from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Tromsø Kunstforening), Re-Aligned/Media Impact (Moscow Biennale) as well as many other Perpetuum Mobile projects.

This text was presented at the Jan Van Eyck Academy Conference (Berlin, July 2015) and published in parallel in the ArtLeaks Gazette #3.

Endnotes 1 See http://www.myartguides.com/venice-art-biennale-2015/events/item/5073-isaac-julien-stonesagainst-diamonds and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings.

2 “Po-mo” was a favourite short-hand for “postmodernism” used by the renowned anti-Thatcherite sociologist Paul Hirst.

3 http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/why-is-the-2015-venice-biennale-so-out-of-date.html 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system

5 http://www.hrw.org/report/2006/11/11/building-towers-cheating-workers/exploitation-migrant-construction-workers-united

6 https://fairlabornyu.wordpress.com/faqs/ 7 See http://gulflabor.org.

8 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1.12.2014 Nr. 279, p. 15.

9 Headed by Richard Armstrong, whose annual salary is well over half a million dollars according to the activist-architect office Aibeo (http://www.aibeo.com/#!no-guggenheim-in-helsinki/c18dj).

10 Cited by Marita Muukkonen, who was Curator at Helsinki International Artist Programme at the time.

11 http://www.hel.fi/hel2/kanslia/guggenheim/ps/economic_summary.pdf

12 For video documentation see “Ab-Strike: II° Panel ‘Scioperiamo! Verso Una Piattaforma Intercontinentale per I Lavoratori Dell’arte E Della Cultura.’” Global Project. Accessed July 27, 2015. http:// www.globalproject.info/it/produzioni/ab-strike-ii-panel-scioperiamo-verso-una-piattaforma-intercontinentale-per-i-lavoratori-dellarte-e-della-cultura/19120.

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13 As an example of many such critical comments from within the Occupy movement at the time

see, “ ‘Consensus’ and Its Discontents.” Libcom.org. Accessed July 27, 2015. http://libcom.org/library/ consensus-its-discontents. See also Chapter 6 of Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon. London; New York: Verso, 2012. Thanks to Andrea Liu and Vladan Jeremic, respectively, for the suggestions.

14 For more on the debate surrounding representation, see Teivo Teivainen and Ivor Stodolsky,

“Reclaiming Democracy Through the Square” in THE SQUARE Issue #1, p. 11 (http://issuu.com/

ivorstodolsky/docs/tsq2_newspaper_hr) and the forthcoming contribution of Teivo Teivainen “A State of Pre-, An anthology of art and theory from the Re-Aligned Project” (http://www.re-aligned.net/

state-pre/?lang=en/&lang=en). See Dmitry Vilensky’s article in The Moscow Art Journal 2008/2014 (English Digest) for an unforgiving critique of Occupy (found in Russian here: http://permm.ru/

menu/xzh/arxiv/xudozhestvennyij-zhurnal-%E2%84%9685.-nashe-novoe-budushhee.-chast-2/okkupaj,-kotorogo-vse-tak-davno-zhdali.html).

15 See http://www.re-aligned.net/programme-b2square1/ and http://www.re-aligned.net/tsq2-concept-programme

16 http://www.aibeo.com/#!no-guggenheim-in-helsinki/c18dj

17 http://www.checkpointhelsinki.org/en/projects/the-next-helsinki

18 See the highly interesting work of Michel Bauwens, the P2P Foundation and many other on this and similar concepts, first developed AS [CUT:on] a large-scale commission FOR [CUT requested by] the government of

Ecuador: http://commonstransition.org/

19 Iglesias, Pablo. “Spain On Edge”. New Left Review, II, no. 93 ( June 2015): 23–42.

20 Iglesias, Pablo. “Understanding Podemos”. New Left Review, II, no. 93 ( June 2015): 7–22.

21 http://gulflabor.org/2015/letter-from-sixty-curators-critics-and-museum-directors-to-uae-art-institutions-and-their-affiliates/

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http://art-leaks.org

Page 3

/ September 2017

Contents Demanding Justice: Social Rights and Radical Art Practices

5

Dialog 1,2,3

7

Introduction

Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin

Let’s talk about Class, and Art

11

Subsidy

21

Bill of Rights

29

Contradictions and Transformative Trajectory of Art & Labor

31

Visualizing Resistence: Subversive Artistic Practices in the Republic of Macedonia

45

Dictionary of Resistance for Beginners

63

#J20 Art Strike

78

Art Workers, Art Strikes and Collective Actions

85

Artist Strike, or How Close Are We to Bouazizi?

97

www.kunsthalle.ro

99

Mike Watson

Joshua Schwebel and Catarina Pires Art Handlers Alliance of New York

Trondheim Seminar/Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremić

Tihomir Topuzovski Haim Sokol

Corina L. Apostol

Gil Mualem Doron

Claudiu Cobilanschi

Dark Matter Games

Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder and Noah Fischer Interview by Marco Baravalle

103

Page 5

Demanding Justice: Social Rights and Radical Art Practices Introduction

The Open call for the ArtLeaks Gazette No. 4 “Demanding Justice: Social Rights and Radical Art Practices” was published in December 2015 and, because of personal and political challenges, it took us some time to publish this issue. Nonetheless, we believe that the theme of the publication is as relevant today as it was a year ago, and we would like to thank our contributors for their timely interventions and patience!

A lot has changed since the ArtLeaks platform was launched in 2011. Compared to the existential threats societies are exposed to today, the problems of the art world seem less important. We witnessed the rise of Trumpism, the establishment of right-wing governments in Europe and threats of global wars. A wave of aggressive commercialization has swept the art field, driven by the process of financialization, turning art into assets for financial speculation. Nevertheless, the climate of social disintegration and political confrontation also forged new forms of struggle and alliances. Art workers around the world contextualize their practice on another qualitative level, in a period marked by human rights, labor, anti-fascist and anti-war campaigns. They are trying to reconcile their artworks, texts, exhibitions, projects with a desire to act politically in line with these campaigns by blurring the lines between artistic, non-artistic and political activist types of work. Their strategies have taken the form of nonviolent actions directed at the museum and gallery system, the art market and even at local governments.

The fourth edition of the ArtLeaks Gazette is supporting art workers’ campaigns, and with regards to their social (civil, economic and legal) rights, and demands for an increase in art institutions’ responsibilities in upholding these rights. These responsibilities encompass struggles related to representing art workers’ projects with integrity, treating their profession fairly and with respect, and remaining open to debates with art workers. While not all art workers’ campaigns are united by the

/ September 2017

Page 6

/ September 2017

same specific goals, as contexts and needs differ, they include increasing the representation of art workers’ voices in art institutions and at the state level.

In addition to analyzing concrete practices and campaigns, this issue engage with relevant topics related to social rights, jurisdictions, legislatures and competences, in order to develop a critique of the neoliberal formats that have been for decades perpetuating across the globe. We decided to bring together those contributions which are able to question neoliberal realities, virulent nationalisms, and austerity regimes, considering not only overall conditions in the artworld but also local specificities.

The on-line gazette is published under the Creative Commons attribution noncommercial-share alike and materials are available for translation in any languages to any interested parts.

Editors:

Corina L. Apostol, Vladan Jeremić and Rena Rädle.

With gratitude to Katja Praznik and Airi Triisberg for the editorial engagement at the beginning of the process.

Text Authors:

Corina L. Apostol, Trondheim Seminar / Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremić, Tihomir Topuzovski, Haim Sokol, Mike Watson, Joshua Schwebel and Catarina Pires, Dark Matter Games (Marco Baravalle, Noah Fischer, Gregory Sholette and Kuba Szreder)

Campaigns:

Art Handlers Alliance of New York, #J20 Art Strike

Visual Contributions:

Claudiu Cobilanschi, Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin, Haim Sokol, Gil Mualem Doron

Title page illustration:

Poster no. XIV from the series “On the Concept of History”(2016) by Haim Sokol Published by ArtLeaks, September 2017, http://art-leaks.org

Comics by Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin.

Comics by Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin.

Comics by Anastasia Vepreva & Roman Osminkin.

Page 10 / September 2017

Previous pages: Comics by Anastasia Vepreva and Roman Osminkin This comics constructs from the open-call text for ArtLeaks Gazette No.4 // Demanding Justice: Social Rights and Radical Art Practices. We took the key phrases from it and played with them.

Hereby we wanted to show contradictions between political art and political activism. The paradox

is that socially engage art wants to participate in politics but also wants to save its own autonomy as art—because when art becomes politically effective, it ceases to be art.

Roman Osminkin is a Saint Petersburg based poet, art-theorist, performer and video-artist. Ph.D at the

Russian Institute of Art History. Member of the St.Petersburg Writers Union since 2007. Author of poetry and short prose books, Comrade-Thing (Kraft, 2010), Comrade-Word (Kraft, 2012), Texts with external

objectives (NLO, 2015), Not A Word About Politics! (Cicada Press, NY, 2016). - Winner of the POETRY

SLAM SPb, 2006, 2010 and the video-poetry festival «Fifth leg» 2010, 2016. Member of the editorial board of the «Translit», the most influential leftist journal of poetry and literature theory in Russia.

Anastasia Vepreva’s artistic practice has a focus on the analysis and discourse of historical memory. She works in various techniques with the idea of systems of oppression, and of death. She holds a double MA from

Smolny College, SPBU, St. Petersburg and Bard College, NY, USA. She has participated in the Moscow

International Biennale for Young Art, The 6th Moscow Biennale, Manifesta 10, 35th Moscow International film festival.

Page 11 / September 2017

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk about Class, and Art Mike Watson

What we mean when we say we want to talk about social class and art: When I first decided to talk about social class in the art world I knew I would face a difficult task. Two years on from that pointâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;when I began organizing a forum on social class held at Open School East and The Royal College, London in December 2015â&#x20AC;&#x201D;I am more convinced than ever of the need to address the issue of social class division within the arts, as well as the need for creative discussion to be applied to issues of class in wider society. What follows are some of the difficulties I have identified in talking about social class over the last two years. Many of these points back up experiences in the art world, academia and in my wider life experience. Indeed, class is not really a quantifiable science, which in itself can be a cause of frustration when trying to state to middle or upper class peers the importance of talking about social class and of realigning the class makeup of the arts. Though this should be no deterrent and I would urge working class art professionals to draw on the passion they feel for the subject of class inequality and to bring that passion to bear in conversation with their peers, for whilst not being measurable, that passion is tangible. As such, it is a positivist manifestation of the reality of social class as a materially inscribed fact. Indeed, such passion, emotion, anger or fear has been the motor for the greatest movements in history both for social change and against it.

One only has to see the contorted and mean spirited postures and faces of David Cameron and George Osborne in YouTube footage of the two dismantling the mechanisms of social justice to see to what level emotion is crucial to the politics of class, at both ends of the scale.

Moving on to the difficulty in talking about class in the art world: Firstly, I have found that it is generally only the working class who think we need to talk about class; the middle and upper classes treat the subject as little other than a bearable annoyance, a fact of birth, or of history, but nothing one can do anything about.

This is clearly carried over into a lack of interest in the political debates which surround issues of wealth inequality. Whilst, to be fair, a good number of middle

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and upper class people do hold a broadly leftist political world view, this tends to be channeled via the softening touch of social democratic values, which airbrushes the rough edges of the leftist cause, so that revolution becomes a more palatable adherence to ‘social values’. There are two problems here, firstly it is all too easy to talk casually about class: we all have class backgrounds and we all know someone who is richer than us. Consequently, conversations on social class are engaged in with an air of ‘oh dear’, as participants who are not really underprivileged pose as if they are.

Of course, these conversations are not liable to reach any incendiary conclusion, not least as they often take place within the comfy surroundings of a gallery, museum, coffee shop, restaurant or other dinner table. This leads neatly into the second point, which is that the middle-class art practitioner does simply not know what it is like to wonder where the next meal is coming from or how one is going to pay the rent, or run a phone or internet connection or buy a new pair of shoes as the last remaining wearable pair (i.e. without holes in the soles) broke. Therefore, one of the problems with talking about social class in the art world is a woeful ignorance which makes people talk as if they are underprivileged whilst they bask in a level of comfort that means it is unlikely that they’ll ever muster the anger to really do anything about their underprivileged position. This problem has been exacerbated by—and is brilliantly, yet unwittingly, conveyed via—the 99% movement, as discussed in Towards a Conceptual Militancy (Zero Books, 2016): “The same syndrome can be seen in the largely ‘gestural’ oppositions to the global economic crisis and its causes. The 99% slogan – ‘we are the 99%’, popularised by the Occupy Wall Street movement – which highlights the vast accumulation of wealth in the hands of an elite 1%, ignores the vast differentiations of wealth amongst the 99% ‘poorest’ people on Earth. This blindness to the privileged position of some of the 99% in comparison to the poorest people within the global whole – and all of the stratifications between – highlights yet another attempt to create distance and ascribe blame. It is a classic case of Nietzschean ressentiment (or ‘resentment’, whereby the aggrieved re-feel their grievances to the detriment of their ability act to change their position). As Nietzsche argued in A Genealogy of Morality, the characterisation of the oppressor as ‘bad’ cannot automatically imply that the oppressed are ‘good’. Yet as applied to the anti-war and anti-finance protest the logic of resentment takes on a different complexion, for even as – for example – the gap between rich and poor grows, class stratifications are arguably far more varied in Western society today than in Nietzsche’s time. We are witnessing a middle-class resentment at both its complicity with and distance from power.” (TACM, pp17-18) Put simply, the teeth of any potential working class movement are blunted because a great many of the people with an apparent vested interest in class politics are not really working class, are not underprivileged and do not care to start any meaningful course towards societal reform, because they are too comfortable to care. This can be seen in the art world by anyone who is genuinely from a poor background and who

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has frequented some of the plethora of endless talks, screenings, dances, poetry readings and now (popularly, as if we needed another ‘trend’) ‘walks’ around political themes held in the name of art. The hands off, ineffectual manner of so many of these events (not naming any, as they involve too many respected colleagues) is enough to make one spit or pull their hair out. If this reaction seems aggressive, just spare a thought for the poor dying refugees that are trying to enter fortress Europe as tens to hundreds of middle class artists, curators and art lovers engage in talks, walks, and dances on ‘borders/Syria/climate change/capitalism/gentrification/etc’ at any given point on any evening of the week across Europe.

The great gulf between what needs to be done and what is being done is in itself enough reason to try to talk not only about class in the art world, but about how the art world’s resources can be used to address class issues in the wider world.

Though this needs to be a real discussion on social class in which people appreciate their relative level of comfort or discomfort and open up to a radical restructuring of the labour practices of the art world so that the class structure can become more evenly differentiated. That differentiation is crucial so that the art world can speak with a maximum diversity of voices from across all social backgrounds, all genders, all ethnic groups and all sexual orientations.

This leads nicely to a crucial next point, and that is that conversations on social class in the art world are often interrupted by people who argue that we should be talking about gender, race or sexual orientation instead of class. Whilst one can understand this sentiment as the directed anger of people who are also aggrieved by oppression and intellectually moved to declare their own plight as important, it also sadly derails the leftist project. All too often the well-intentioned practices of identity politics do the work of the ruling class for them by forsaking solidarity in the name of individual grievances. Granted, it is vital that specific maligned groups are represented within the voyage towards a more equal society. In this light, the Black Panthers and the Combahee River Collective are among the most outstanding leftist movements in the recent history of the West. However, they did not specifically aim to supplant a class discourse. Indeed, The Combahee River collective, formed in 1974 by amongst others, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier in order to give a voice to Black women—who felt marginalized both by the anti-racist and working class movements—issued a statement in 1980 in which it was written: “The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women, we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”

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Often taken as the first group to specifically use the term ‘identity politics’, the Combahee River Collective—named after a military action along the Combahee River in South Carolina undertaken by a female Commander Harriet Tubman in 1863—clearly saw the promotion of black women’s rights as essential to overcoming the shortcomings of the male dominated leftist and black power movements, though, crucially, within interlocking systems of oppression. Now, within that, sometimes one will need to talk about race, and sometimes gender, sexual identity or class. That is to say, within an interlocking system of oppression we need to strengthen the oppressed in all walks of life, so that they can join forces and challenge the ruling elite together. This also means that there will be times when we need to speak simultaneously of all our discontents, but when I’m talking about social class and my own discontents I’d ask that people don’t interrupt me with theirs as if our discontents are mutually exclusive, because they’re not.

Another reason why we shouldn’t posit social class politics in opposition to race, gender or sexual identity issues is that doing so risks leaving working class people of all genders, races and sexual orientations behind whilst potentially promoting only the interests of middle to upper class people from racial minorities, exploited genders or non-normative sexual orientations. One might think here to the figure of Okwui Enwezor, who curated the 2015 Venice Biennale around the theme of Marx’s Capital. To be fair, symbolically such an event had enormous potential. Yet Enwezor himself moved with the airs and graces of nobility, and British nobility at that. This was a man schooled in evading questions, who when asked about the Marxist mission in the Guardian, just prior to the Biennale, dropped the ball, answering: “His programme was to use capitalism to achieve social equality,” says Enwezor. “I don’t think that Marx, had he lived, would have wanted capitalism to end.” 1 With friends like these one doesn’t need enemies though, above all, this is evidence that class needs talking about openly and seriously in the art world, because until that point is reached political art will just be used to make middle class people feel less guilty and to whitewash (or ‘artwash’) global capital. In fact, we need to address the social makeup of the art world so that the global art world does not become a mere sop to globalization itself. Indeed, if global political art, or political art on a global level is not actually acting in any directly political way, and is only representing politics whilst continuing to operate an unequal system of privilege, it will be used by corporations to whitewash what they are up to whilst giving jobs to bored middle and upper class art enthusiasts. The loser will continue to be the poor.

In this sense, there is a certain responsibility in saying one is a political artist or curator. You cannot just wear the badge of being a political artist, something more has to happen, though it felt that was what Enwezor was doing.

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This leads to a next consideration, namely, that the art world is dominated by people from privileged backgrounds who employ a certain code of behavior out of habit, and that this code excludes people who are underprivileged. This can most clearly be seen when an exchange or money or discussion about payments is involved between an institution or privileged individual and someone who is categorically from a poorer background. In some exchanges the poorer person, needing payment, is often seen as vulgar, pushy and, ironically (or perhaps, better put, disturbingly), over concerned with money. Indeed, asking that payment be made promptly, and in line with prior agreements, can appear to underscore a lack of love for the work itself, or a lack of concern for art or culture. This accords with the fact that a great many people who work in senior positions in museums, in academia, in galleries, etc., don’t actually need their stipends in order to live. This varies from country to country but is certainly the case in Italy (where I live), a country lacking in meritocratic structures. Of course, it is actually the case that the person who is quick to ask a payment is often needing money to get through to the next day, having sacrificed everything to work in the arts.

This basic misunderstanding is linked to a more fundamental misunderstanding of the values of working class people, who are often seen as living rather irresponsibly, hand to mouth, instead of amassing, however slowly, savings. This argument was played out publicly in 2014 in the UK as Tory peer Lady Jenkins argued: “We have lost a lot of our cookery skills. Poor people do not know how to cook,” before continuing to say, “I had a large bowl of porridge today, which cost 4p. A large bowl of sugary cereals will cost you 25p.”2 This not only misses how damaging it would be to eat only cereal all day every day, but the fact that the particular situation of a freelancer in the art world with no savings or no family or other help (often unable to secure a loan or credit card) often means that shopping with any long-term plan in mind is impossible. There is never enough money at hand to do a large weekly shop, whilst the number of hours worked for low pay necessitates quick daily shopping trips in order to buy just enough food to make it to the next low payment from a client. Living in this environment of uncertainty—frequently from childhood, i.e. from birth—of course develops in the individual a tendency to grab when money is there (or is due to be paid), and then a tendency to go on a spending spree when a decent (though still low) amount of money arrives. It also leads to intense resourcefulness on a community level as a kind of unofficial communism arises between friends and family, who lend and give each other a large percentage of their income, regularly and without second thought.

It is coming from this a poor artist or curator enters into the baffling financial and social rites of the art world, with the potential for embarrassment always on hand.

Most confusingly, I have found, is the fact that vast amounts of food and drink are often shared, but often with little in the way of friendship being exchanged. In fact, the more lavish the display of hospitality, the stiffer the people are and the less

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they seem to want to know anything about their guests. One can appreciate that a certain level of reservedness goes hand in hand with power and wealth. It certainly wouldn’t make sense for the wealthy to exclaim surprise at their own hospitality, yet often the food and drink is provided by faceless sponsors, just to be consumed by dour faced art world acolytes, bored of the constant rounds of cocktails. Thus, after we talk in an art space about politics, and maybe go for an art walk, and do a dance on the theme of poverty, we eat food given to us by strangers, drink alcohol and talk on the whole coldly with associates. In these situations, I learned long ago to return to my hotel (if staying away, paid by faceless entities at a museum of art foundation) to eat a kebab, watch football and drink cheap lager (at least knowing it wasn’t given to me by a faceless corporation seeking publicity or a proud host throwing a lavish display of personal wealth). And here we see the vast gulf between the spontaneous and uncalculated giving, sharing and celebrating of the working class and the calculated patronage of the powerful.

Against given sensitivities, the question of what social class a person might come from could appear uncouth. Indeed, it is something that only a working-class person would ask in part as they have the generosity of spirit to reciprocate and divulge their own class background, in part as they have nothing to hide or lose. Though above all the question of social class, raised by a working-class person, could be seen as led by resentment and jealously. However, I could say wholeheartedly that this is not the case for me or any of my politicized working class colleagues in the art world. In fact, conversations never revolve around how much money ‘they’ have and how much ‘we’ want. Working class people who want money generally don’t work in the arts (with few exceptions). The issue that a leftist has with the rich isn’t that they should give more of their money to us, the issue they have is that the rich and powerful place too much emphasis on the importance of gaining and maintaining wealth and power, to the detriment of the enjoyment of life and of the fostering of community. We don’t want the money or the power of the rich, we want the rich to stop involving the whole world in their obsession with money, power and greatness (which would appear to be a major principle of Corbynism, and the reason for its success). We want the rich to stop involving the rest of the population in their notion of a deferred gratification and a stiff upper lip, and to stop nullifying the value of art by bringing it under this rubric. Though, above all, we want to talk about social class in the art world as social class stratification and its attendant promise of class mobility—providing one behaves like the upper classes—is the tool by which the powerful spread their love of power and make their perversion our concern.

More than all this we need to talk about class division in the art world as art helps to provide us with the symbolic tools for conveying who we are, and right now those symbolic tools are in the hands of the elite. Though above all we need to leverage the tools of the art world to open a more transparent debate about social class across society, because if we’re not careful social class divides—which one could argue underpin every concern from terrorism, to immigration, to climate change to economic crisis—will tear us apart this century just as they did in the last.

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Since beginning to talk about social class within the arts, the worlds of art and academia suffered the loss of a cherished figure who gave people from low income backgrounds tremendous hope - Mark Fisher. Beyond simply pointing to the disproportionately middle and upper class composition of the cultural fields, Mark Fisher made it feel that it’s ok to be working class in the academic and cultural fields, and that feeling beaten down at times by your peers is a normal reaction to an abnormal environment. At one point, he wrote on social media of the anguish felt at ‘coming up against’ a social class superior within the university environment.

He understood that however hard one tries, the baggage of a life lived struggling to deal with inadequate finances whilst attempting to master strange social conventions will always be to some extent limiting. He understood the feeling when words fail you and muscles tighten so as to make movement and speech awkward in the face of peers raised and schooled for the professional way of life. A feeling confounded by the patronising pity of the bourgeois leftist. And none of this is based on merit. Quite the opposite, in fact: the socially disadvantaged art world or academic worker must perform a gargantuan feat of stamina and mental acuity whilst hiding their broken feelings on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the bourgeois peer play acts for pocket money.

That Mark was subject to long term depression which recurred and ended with him taking his life was a cruel blow for those who joined him in the condemnation of an academic and cultural system that weighs heavily on the energies and health of its most deprived employees. Of course, it would be simple to blame the capitalist and academic system for pushing Mark to the edge, though the point will be made and discounted in equal measure. After all, it is in line with depression as a condition that its sufferers feel victimised and blame others for their state. As such, the logic that the sufferer of depression (or anxiety) need to simply pick themselves up and carry on easily takes hold.

Though in part to dismiss such callousness I would like to reflect via personal anecdote and broader fact on the very real material correlate between the social structure in the cultural and academic fields and stress, anxiety and depression. I would like to do this so that the problem of these conditions can be located in a resolvable exterior which can be changed, thereby drawing upon the hope that Mark brought to the public via his writing and through his actions, not least evidenced in his openness to young academics, students and creative practitioners.

Starting with this latter point I wish to pinpoint a ‘closed-door phenomenon’ within academia and the arts that operates both in the UK and Italy (the two countries I have most experience of as a student, visiting lecturer, curator, critic and adjunct professor). Put simply, for reasons of culture and history (i.e. due to a rigid class system) one is taught from an early stage in their career that the door (metaphorical but also physical) is closed as a matter of course. Access to academics is by invite and acceptance into circles where successful academics convene is rare. Further, acceptance as ‘one of them’ (a viable person who understands what is there to be

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understood) is hard won, signaled by a complex system of body and verbal language traits that excludes people who grew up in non-white middle class environments.

Indeed, at one of London’s (and Europe’s) most prestigious graduate schools in philosophy where I studied at some point in the ‘00s it was the norm for students to be made to feel stupid by professors who knew more than they did. This sensation was tangible and reflected by a number of my student colleagues in what was seen as a Pythonesque situation whereby the guardians of knowledge would zealously protect it even from the people they were obligated to pass it on to. In what would appear to be an inheritance of the private schooling system professors would over time select students they particularly favored for special treatment, encouraging them onto the Ph.D. program and into a career in the same department or another one within the same network. This was the state of the academic left which gave rise to Mark Fisher, though he battled long to get a position himself, having taught until the late part of the ‘00s in a further education college and only gaining a full-time position at Goldsmiths, University of London, relatively recently. On the way there, his popularity arose largely for his willingness (and perhaps accurately for the necessity) to circumvent the barrier which separated those ‘in the know’ from the rest.

In part this was due to Mark being an early adopter of internet blogging via his site K-Punk, which correctly identified the fact that the staid and closed form of academia that operated in the UK at that time could not continue. Or, rather, at the least, it couldn’t continue as the only sphere for leftist academic debate. The internet enabled geeks and enthusiasts of every variety to ‘talk’ – or, more commonly, type – endlessly on subjects which might otherwise have caused intense boredom or irritation to their partners, friends or family. This led to an era of blogging in which, for example, new philosophical movements were founded or consolidated online through the interaction of students with academics who were often from outside their own institutions as well as between academics living in different countries and on different continents. Some of the most important academic friendships and feuds of our time were formed and fomented in this environment. Indeed, Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Philosophy and Object-Oriented Ontology all grew up in this way in a short space of time.

Whilst optimism for the political potential of the internet has waned in many respects (not least as it has been instrumental in the rise of the far right and of the disturbing phenomena of Trump and Brexit) we can’t overlook a phenomenon which has allowed students to bridge a gap in tuition by appealing directly to a young generation of blogging tutors from other institutions (such as, notably, the very prolific blogger and philosopher Graham Harman, Mark Fisher and Nina Power). Whilst blogging proved fairly ineffective for tackling the actual problems inherent to the academic system itself, at a structural level it can’t be doubted that a new generation owes much to that time of ferment and the openness of a few thinkers unrestrained by social class protocol. The trouble is that so long as a broad class system still prevails there will always be a sensation of superiority and inferiority within academic departments as well as in the cultural field.

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Simply, if one is outside the dominant social class in a given field there will always be something that differentiates them from their peers. On the surface this manifests in behavioral traits and in a studied casual yet elegant manner of being that is beyond emulation for any period of time. One either has the affectations of the upper classes or does not, but if they do it’s because they were born with them and then further schooled in them. Beneath the surface there is a material aspect. One either has someone holding their back (or considerable savings or a house owned outright) or does not. If one does not have these things life will be more stressful and fitting in with one’s upper class peers will be virtually impossible on any sustained level.

Of course. there are token working class people in the arts (Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst), but they are put there specifically to be working class for the entertainment of the wealthy. This is not a path open to many people and not one that can be planned for or deliberately obtained and these few working-class superstars are closer to Wayne Rooney than Peggy Guggenheim. For the rest of us upward mobility is a hamster wheel. One never really arrives where they think they should and the constant thought that ‘by now I have done surely enough to rest, to relax, to have the ease of my peers’ is always met with disappointment. What’s worse is that the need for enterprising young working class cultural practitioners to establish themselves is often exploited. I have worked in an art foundation nearly entirely staffed by unpaid and underpaid labor. At one point during the six-month run of a politically themed exhibition an illegal immigrant worker spent several hours in the attic of the arts foundation bailing out water as it was raining and the roof was broken. Beneath people watched videos on capitalism and climate change. This is for me the best visual metaphor of the art world I have ever seen, only it was real.

Everyone in that foundation was bound into compliance with its corrupt functioning by their need to get ahead. This is something repeated throughout the arts and academia and can be seen in the adjunct professor system operative in American universities.

Now, on a physical level sustained stress without relief leads to depression. This is a material reality: life conditions create mental illness. What then, on a scientific basis is the likely fate of a working class academic or arts practitioner who repeatedly finds themselves in the same place despite working harder and achieving more year on year? Clearly the facts speak for themselves.

We need to look out for each other and open doors instead of closing them. We need to fill the halls of academia and the art world with people of diverse backgrounds such that no one feels excluded. In some small way that path has begun.

Let’s talk about class, let’s do it proudly! Let’s talk about what social class I am and what social class you are.

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Mike Watson is an art theorist, critic, and curator based in Italy who is principally focused on the relation

between art and politics. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmiths College and has curated for Nomas Foundation and at both the 55th and 56th Venice Biennale. In May 2016 he published a book entitled Towards a Conceptual Militancy for ZerO books.

References 1 The question actually asked, by correspondent Charlotte Higgins, was â&#x20AC;&#x153;Did not Marx foresee the end of capitalism, inevitably brought down by its internal contradictions?â&#x20AC;? Full text: https:// www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/07/das-kapital-at-venice-biennale-okwui-enwezor-karl-marx

2 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/08/poor-cannot-cook-peer-eats-words

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Subsidy Joshua Schwebel and Catarina Pires

The following is a description of an intervention and exhibit that took place in Berlin at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in the summer and autumn of 2015. The text is written by myself, the artist who created this work, and by Catarina Pires, one of the interns who was working at the Künstlerhaus at the time of my exhibition.

Project Description My name is Joshua Schwebel and I am a conceptual artist. My most recent project, Subsidy, exposes the labour practices in art institutional structures, particularly the pervasive absence of payment in the field of cultural labour.

The project began when, as an artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin for the year of 2015, I recognized that the institution used (and continues to use) unpaid interns as part of its administrative structure. Having been awarded a funded residency in this institution, I was disturbed to be put in a position of benefiting from a standardized practice of structurally enforced precarity.

My artistic project within the residency was to redirect the complete funds allotted for my exhibition budget (€3,000) into honoraria to compensate the formerly unpaid interns whose time coincided with my year in residence. Through a negotiation process, I returned my budget to the institution in order to pay a total of seven interns for their work in the administrative offices.

I sent the following letter to the artistic director, Christoph Tannert, and residency director, Valeria Schulte-Fischedick: 7 July, 2015 Dear Valeria and Christoph, I am writing to request your support and assistance to complete the project I have developed while in residence here at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

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I aim to use my entire exhibition fee to compensate the unpaid interns who work with the administrative staff and support the artists at the KB. My fee should be divided equally amongst the interns who have worked during the year of my residency. Ideally I would like the KB to simply transfer my exhibition fee to its own accounts, and then make bank transfers directly to its interns. With your support I am open to resolving the precise movement of the funds in compliance with tax regulations, however I would prefer if possible that the payments go directly from the KB to its interns. The documentation of these transactions, inclusive of this very letter, subsequent pertinent correspondence, and proof of the bank transfers, will be included in my exhibition.

While the Künstlerhaus Bethanien is one amongst many, if not the majority, of international arts institutions benefiting from, and in many cases dependent on unpaid labour, my intention is not to single it out, but rather to draw attention to the larger practice of unpaid labour in the arts. The KB institution and artists, myself included, are benefiting from the availability and necessity of passionate self-exploitation at the entry level of cultural work. No other field so implicitly contradicts itself in declaring a culture of access, openness, and radical political critique, while ignoring and therefore obfuscating the growing gap between those who can afford to support their cultural commitments and those who cannot continue in the field due to lack of external financial means. I intend my transaction to address this crisis of access and sustainability in arts and culture today.

I am happy to meet with you both to discuss this further. Your facilitation and advice are welcome and necessary in order to complete this transaction.

Respectfully, Joshua Schwebel This letter provoked a radically censorious response from the director, who phoned me 10 minutes after receipt of my letter. He pronounced that the project “wasn’t art”, that it was too political for the institution, and that I was “being stupid”. He insisted that the money was intended for materials and objects for exhibition. He refused to send anything in written form, or even to document his receipt of my letter.

After a week of panic and an intense feeling of hostility and unwelcomeness at the residency, I was called in for a meeting. During the meeting the director proclaimed his disappointment, claiming to “love my work”, and implying that this piece had “nothing to do with my previous work”. He said he felt set up, and that my piece

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Subsidy, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Photo Sandy Volz.

was making the Bethanien look bad, making it look like they were doing something illegal. I explained that there is nothing necessarily illegal about using unpaid interns, although there should be, and that my issue is not with the particular institution but with the larger artistic and institutional practice of relying on the unpaid labour of most often female, intelligent, eager young people. And that in accepting this labour, the institution fundamentally devalues the labour of all of its paid employees, by showing governmental funders (the Berlin Senate, in this case), that the institution can and will sustain its operations with inadequate administrative funding. After negotiating the validity of my project and confirming that there would be “things” in my exhibition space, the meeting was concluded with a handshake, and I made clear that I would not change my project or repeal my intention.

In proceeding with the exhibition, I asked the interns working in the office at the time of the exhibition, Livia Tarsia in Curia and Catarina Pires, to perform their assigned office duties within my exhibition space, which I transformed into a semi-private office space by installing a wall and door to divide the space from other artists’ galleries. Livia and Catarina enthusiastically accepted my proposal.

The choice to position the actual working interns within the exhibition space under

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my name was a delicate decision, and one not taken lightly. The decision was made in order to prioritize the interns’ voices, opinions, and choices. To make this decision more emphatic, I suppressed the printed publicity card for the exhibition, and reduced the typical exhibition signage to a small name card, which normally was affixed outside my studio door. Catarina and Livia worked in the gallery during the overlap between office and gallery hours (between 14h and 18h Tuesday – Thursday, and 14h and 16h30 on Fridays), speaking with visitors should they have questions, but for the most part, performing the duties they normally would undertake in the KB’s administrative offices. All furniture in the exhibition was provided from the KB’s own storage, and office supplies were taken from the administrative offices.

Funds to divide the exhibition space into an office were redirected from allocations for my (unused) publicity budget.

While including Livia and Catarina in the exhibition space served to make their role within the institution, and my intervention, visible to a general public, more importantly it withdrew them from the institution’s offices, articulating their contribution to the institution’s operations through its absence.

Subsidy, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Photo Sandy Volz.

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Subsidy constituted a refusal to work in the way the institution expected, an attitude and method that has been consistent throughout my artistic practice. By resisting the institutionally streamlined process that facilitates access to money for the production of exhibition objects (and obstructs access to money for work that doesn’t prioritize the exhibition outcome), I encountered and overcame several unspoken (and some quite plainly spoken) authoritative assumptions about what art is and where it belongs. The project also enacted a refusal to uphold current working conditions in contemporary art; conditions that maintain systemic precarity, ambivalent ethics, and competition amongst artists and cultural workers. In negotiating for money ear-marked for ‘art’ to reverse its course and return to the institution, the project forced a re-examination of the values that determine what the institution prioritizes in its spending: how funding priorities pre-emptively designate what is important for art and artists. As Marina Vishmidt remarked, “Money is a flash that lights up the circuits of power in the institution, hence Subsidy (2015) takes money as its means of material realization. An institution is forced to recognize the labour of its unpaid staff by means of money, which means it is at the same time forced to recognize this time as labour time, and itself as an exploiter”1. By using money as money, my project made visible the structural disparity between labour and value in the artworld.

Catarina Pires We are dealing at the present time with the general acceptance of the internship as a main source of labour among the art institutions. These internships are either unpaid or underpaid. Art workers find themselves in a vicious circle that includes power imbalance, speculation and immaterial benefits that may never become form.

The internship is a distant relative of 11th and 12th century apprenticeships in Europe, where master craftsmen took in young learners to teach them the trade, usually for years, and after this transitional period, they would be granted full membership of the trade guild and could earn wages. During the 20th century, internships have evolved exponentially. The capitalist system, playing with people’s expectations, offers instead of payment – either a “glance into a prestigious institution’s way of functioning”, an “experience within one of the top companies in the field”, or simply “networking”; although they usually search for a qualified person who is “flexible, enthusiastic and highly motivated, with a positive attitude”.

Especially in the arts sector, it is expected that people will work for free. The institutions claim most of the time that they lack the funds to pay for the labour that is being executed, while sometimes blatantly spending money on superfluous matters. The under-financing is indeed a reality but the problem lies in the prioritizing criteria used by the institution and not the lack of funding alone. The unpaid/ underpaid labour is taken for granted. Art institutions do not escape contamination

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by free-market ideology: there is a constant permeability between corporations, the state, and the art institutions themselves. Especially since the economic crisis of 2008 we are led to believe that this cross-contamination is inevitable. We witness the paradox of institutions that wish to be in the vanguard of new ways of thinking and exhibiting while still being based on corporate modes of production and capitalisation.

Andrea Fraser summarizes some features of the art professional: “We’re highly educated, highly motivated “self starters” who believe that learning is a continuous process. We are always ready for change and adapt to it quickly. We prefer freedom and flexibility to security. We do not want to punch a clock and tend to resist quantifying the value of our labour time. We do not know the meaning of “overtime”.

We are convinced we work for ourselves and our own satisfaction even when we work for others. We tend to value non-material over material rewards, which we are willing to defer, even to posterity.”2. These characteristics make the art professionals ideal candidates for the perpetuation of this kind of exploitation-logic, and why it is so difficult to overthrow.

I was an unpaid intern at Künstlerhaus Bethanien at the time Subsidy took place and as for my personal experience as a part of it, I consider it was of great importance to provoke a reaction both from the institution as from the exhibition visitors about these otherwise invisible issues. Most people visiting the exhibition expressed surprise, unease, or even fright, as someone said “hello” to them, in such a context.

It produced a direct contact between the visitors and the office interns, something that never occurs. While sitting in the exhibition space we realised that the explanation about the concept and what was taking place was necessary. It enabled a break from the white cube object contemplation, straight into reality – the reality of the institution’s way of functioning, labour rights, and in general, what is behind the scenes. The realisation that there is unpaid labour involved in the exhibition made most people uncomfortable; at the very least it raised awareness and at best it will instigate action. As Hans Haacke once said, when art declares its separation from everyday politics and concerns, what it does is to preserve the status quo3.

At the same time, this project made the interns’ absence in the office noticeable for the institution, requiring resultant changes in the usual office organisation.

Although I was performing most of my normal tasks in the exhibition space, some required the office physical space and therefore it made fully visible the necessity of the intern’s work.

Institutions – especially the largest ones - have no trouble finding interns who will work for no pay, since people feel the apparent inevitability of undergoing successive4 internships. Interns embody features that make them especially vulnerable to precarity and labour exploitation: the intern stands in a state of limbo; s/he is no longer a student, but also not considered a worker; therefore s/he has no access to union protection, no equal work rights, no social security deductions, but also no

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Subsidy, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Photo by Sandy Volz.

student benefits. This extreme precarious situation lowers considerably any potential negotiating position for better working conditions – what if unpaid interns working on galleries, art institutions, museums, etc. decided to go on strike, for instance?

Having a more affirmative and interventional attitude is in my opinion mandatory, as in the case of Subsidy, to shake the establishment by not playing by their rules. Priorities should be reviewed when it comes to budget allocation by the institutions, as from the funders – in many cases public ones – that support the institutions’ activities without insuring that labour is fairly paid. We need more critical targeted projects and most of all that art workers can channel the non-acceptance of these situations to collective action, unionization and organization, overthrowing first differences inside the class itself, and so that art’s aspirations of liberation, consciousness and progressive thinking can be materialised, and not swallowed up by the current neoliberal logic.

Joshua Schwebel is a conceptual artist interested in the relationship between value and visibility. His work reveals the concept of value as a cultural construct borne through hidden ties to morality and privilege, by

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exposing the cultural and social techniques employed in value construction. In his work he devises strategies to

reveal the politics of exclusion, expropriation, and competition that both mandate and conceal the conditions of

valuation in late Capitalism. Through strategic interventions, displacements, and withdrawals, he attempts to unbalance and open up these seemingly impartial processes.

Catarina Pires is a writer and curator based in Lisbon. She was a curatorial and production intern at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

References 1 Vishmidt, Marina: Wages for Anyone is Bad For Business, Subsidy, Berlin: Archive, 2016 pg.

2 Fraser, Andrea. “A museum is not a business. It is run in a businesslike fashion.” Möntmann, Nina.

Art and its intitutions . current conflicts, critique and collaborations. Black Dog Publishing, 2006, pg.94.

3 Glahn, Philip. Estrangement and Politicization: Bertolt Brecht and American Art, 1967-1979.

Dissertation. New York, 2007.

4 According to a survey published by the European Union, conducted among people between 18

and 35 years old, 46% of the people have had an internship; in Germany, where Subsidy took place, this number reaches 76%. From the percentage of people that have had an internship, 22% already

experienced doing 4 or more internships. 59% of people reported not having received any monetary compensation for their work during their most recent internship. (European Commission 2013).

http://www.arthandlersalliance.org

Foundational Bill of Rights, Art Handlers Alliance of New York, relaunched march 2 2017

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Art Handlers Alliance of New York (AHA-NY) are art handlers coming together for: – Open Dialogue – Shared Resources – Health Benefits – Fair Wages – Job Protection – Better Working Conditions – Solidarity Among Freelance, Contract, & Union Labor

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Contradictions and Transformative Trajectory of Art & Labor Trondheim Seminar / Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremić

This paper presents the conclusions of the Trondheim Seminar on transformative art production and coalition-building, organized in September 2015 by Rena Rädle, Vladan Jeremic and Anne-Gro Erikstad at LevArt1. The seminar “Art Production in Restriction - Possibilities of Transformative Art Production and Coalition-Building” held in Trondheim, Norway had brought together artists, writers, critics, and curators who are active in groups that are struggling for better working conditions in the arts and society at large. Throughout the course of two days participants discussed theoretical conceptions of artistic labor and precarity, exchanged local and trans-local experiences in confronting the neoliberal entrepreneurial mode of art production, and strategized ways of transformative and emancipatory art production and organizing. Below are the summaries of the six plenary sessions, where the results of the working groups were discussed and the conclusion of the Trondheim Seminar.

Plenary Session 05 September 2015 Working Group I

Defining (artistic) work: artistic labor / precarious work / unpaid labor / reproductive work / flexible work/ forced labor Contributors: Marina Vishmidt (presenter), Jesper Alvær, Noah Fischer, Marius Lervåg Aasprong, Danilo Prnjat, Rena Raedle, Gregory Sholette.

The input for the working group on definitions of artistic labor was given by Danilo Prnjat. He reflected the notion of the ‘art worker’ in the context of the avant-garde and posed general questions on participation. In the following discussion, the contradictions in defining artistic labor were drawn up and it was debated what kind of

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Plenary session, Trondheim Seminar, September 2015

unification and cohesion certain concepts presuppose and what their implications for coalition-building are. There were two aspects looked into, from where artistic labor can be grabbed, the concept of productive and unproductive labor, and the concept of division of labor.

From a capitalist standpoint artistic work is unproductive labor as it partakes in the distribution rather than the production of surplus value. The question was put that if artistic labor is assumed to be productive labor, that means if artists identify as ‘art workers’ and organize as such, do they then just ask for a bigger share of the surplus value produced elsewhere, thus benefiting from exploitation?

A historical comparison with the 60s generation of political or activist artists in the US and West Europe identifying as ‘cultural workers’ shows that their structural position was actually quite elite compared to most workers, and secured in the context of the welfare state compared to today’s competitive (debt) environment. But workers did not become a driving force for large-scale social change. On the contrary contrary, artists are today structurally part of a general condition of precarity. It

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was argued that the identification with the ‘worker’ today could be an attempt to break with this increasingly exploitative entrepreneurial norm, as a class politics acknowledging the class struggle within and outside of the field of art.

Discussing the second concept, it was stated, that if we want to describe artistic labor from the viewpoint of the division of labor, it is hard to say if artistic labor is mental or manual labor, which makes labor politics of art more complex. The question then could be not how to unite with workers, but how to break with or break the social division of labor that produces art and labor as distinct spaces and categories? So, the urgency is to break with divisions of labor, - not to re-distribute interpretive power, as institutional critique did. It was argued that we instead need a re-distribution of work – and we can’t fight for workers without addressing our own working conditions.

So, if the objective is to dissolve the categories of art/labor, art/life, what do we put in the gap? What kind of gap is it: a terminological, social, ontological, material one? It might be a theoretical gap first of all: does ‘art’ do a certain kind of work that you would just need to find another designation for? Or it might be a material gap: how do you then abolish distinctions which are socially operative?

The implications of these concepts for the artistic practice were then laid out in more concrete terms. It was noted that managerial structures and corporate reward structures pervade the art world just as they pervade the non-profit sphere. That means that the speculative value created by the art CEOs, art middle managers, etc. is disproportionally more rewarded than value created by reproductive labor and care work by the art workers, art lumpenproletariat, etc. There are the class relations within art and the class relation which art reproduces in general, and we need to see what definition of labor is most adequate for art workers in their political practice. Art could be seen here as a tactical space – people using the relative freedom and resources of art as a means of getting somewhere else.

It was proposed that if we aim to dissolve the categories art/labor, art/life, artistic practice could be described as competence, as the term translates well across different fields and can be used as a lever for communication with people outside the art world, albeit it is loaded with neoliberal managerial connotations. Along these lines it was proposed that our competence as artists might then be our ability to steal and re-distribute: to puncture and rupture the walls of art’s bastion of privilege and to steal and re-distribute to the undercommons.

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Mini Book Fair, Trondheim Seminar, September 2015

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Plenary Session & Discussion 5 September 2015 Working Group III

Valuation of artistic work: problems of quantification of work / art and economic alternatives Contributors: Airi Triisberg (presenter), Corina L. Apostol, Sissel M Bergh, Mourad El Garouge, Minna L. Henriksson, Lise Skou, Lise Soskolne, Raluca Voinea

The input for the discussion about valuation of artistic labor was given by Lise Soskolne. She presented the strategy of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), a New York-based activist organization focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions. The organization has developed a certification format for institutions that comply with minimum standards for the remuneration of artistic work, a strategy that relies on the “reputation economy” of the targeted art institutions. Currently W.A.G.E. is working on a complementary individual certification model functioning in direction of a union-like organization of workers.

During the discussion, two general strategies of framing artistic labor were elaborated, that conceptualize artistic labor either as commodity or as social contribution.

The first subsumes artistic labor under wage labor, with the possibility to extend the demanded standards of payment to other workers in or even beyond art institutions. The possibility of internationalization of such standards was discussed. Examples of national standardization campaigns and reached agreements in Sweden and Poland were given.

A number of challenges of the “wage labor-strategy” were addressed, especially in a transnational context. The necessity of a relevant transnational counter-power able to pressure employers to meet wage demands and the complexity of standardization of payment within globalized working relations was emphasized. It was criticized that standardization also might imply exclusion of certain groups that cannot meet the established standards.

The critical distinction was made that W.A.G.E. does not subsume artistic labor under wage labor. A foundational principle of W.A.G.E. Certification is the fact that an artist fee is distinctly not a wage for the work of making art and is defined as payment for the work an artist does once they enter into a transactional relationship with an arts organization.

The group discussed the difficulties of framing artistic labor as wage labor, because there seems to be a strong resistance against that in the art field, and a certain desire to think about artistic labor as an exceptional form of labor. The point was made that if artistic work is understood as social contribution and not as a commodity it can serve as a model for the reconfiguration of the concept of labor, that would bring about a different model of economy.

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Examples of alternative economies were discussed amongst them cooperatives based on exchange economies and their own currencies from Spain and Greece. It was underlined that alternative economies go together with a certain de-skilling of individual labor. The discussion ended with the open question how the reduction or even termination of division of labor would affect artistic practice within such economies.

Plenary Session 06 September 2015 Working Group IV

Possibilities and difficulties of coalition-building beyond local and international constraints Contributors: Ivor Stodolsky (presenter), Jochen Becker, Marita Muukkonen, Minna L. Henriksson, Sissel M Bergh, Vladan Jeremic

The input for the group working on possibilities and difficulties of coalition-building beyond local and international constraints was given by Minna Henriksson.

She presented a case study about the Mänttä Art Festival in Finland, an annual exhibition project in the Finnish periphery that invited international artists without paying for fees and production. After examining particular problems of this case, general methods of finding common ground for building alliances were debated.

It was stated that for aligning with social movements, art has to locate itself in the wider social field. Starting from the universal common needs people share, more particular interests can be articulated and negotiated in the spirit of solidarity. In a local situation, community building can be achieved through spotting of specific issues, referendums, commoning of resources, building of project groups and collectives. The operaist method of co-research, a research method that intends to erase the border between researcher and the object of research, was proposed as method to find and define common demands.

As a central challenge to the communication between different groups the necessity of translation between different terminologies and “languages” was emphasized. It was stated that expert terminologies are important but need to be made accessible to communicate with other groups. Local knowledges and languages informed by cultural or social backgrounds need to be reformulated. In this respect it was underlined that art has the advantage of being a more “universal” form of communication. The point was made that the translation / reframing / reformulation of needs or problems into political demands is at the core of political empowerment and representation. Careful reformulation, translation and re-translation is especially important to find common grounds for alliances in trans-local

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Plenary session, Trondheim Seminar, September 2015

contexts. This means that existing organizations need to develop the capacity to reformulate their problems, demands and political strategies keeping in mind a trans-local approach.

Another important issue of discussion was the need of adequate spaces for gathering and voicing demands. Spaces for meeting were found to be a precondition for finding common grounds and aligning of different groups and movements. In this context the question was raised if the spaces of the art world such as biennials and art fairs, can be at all considered suitable spaces for such purposes. It was stressed that a welcoming public space open to everyone needs to be created. In addition, the fact that one needs to be aware that these spaces are also open to recuperation from other forces was discussed.

In terms of language, the argument was made that for describing international alliances today it is necessary to find alternatives to the words “national” and “global” that stem from the discourse of capitalist market globalization and nation state politics. Instead of “inter-national” or “trans-national” the terms “trans-local” (rooted in more than one situation) or “pre-mondial” were proposed. The term “mondial” could be used for naming a ‘globalization from below’.

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Plenary Session 06 September 2015 Working Group V

Transformative ways of art production: Artistic contribution as class struggle Contributors: Raluca Voinea (presenter), Corina L. Apostol, Danilo Prnjat, Jean-Baptiste Naudy, Jelena Vesić, Jesper Alvær, Kuba Szreder, Lise Skou

The input for the group discussing transformative ways of art production was given

by Jesper Alvær, who presented examples of his artistic research on art and labor.

For the plenary session, the group prepared a collective statement to articulate contradictions and potentials of artistic practice that makes links with subjects positioned outside of the art field.

In the beginning it was stated that the group speaks from the position of artists and cultural workers. The group stressed that the emancipatory force of art can only be realized if art doesn’t exploit people in the interest of art but if art puts itself in the

Dinner at RAKE workspace, Trondheim Seminar, September 2015

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interest of the people. It was underlined that artists can use their privileges and status in a tactical way to support certain causes.

The relation to the institution of art was identified as main contradiction and the group called for the re-appropriation of the definition of social practice, but as well the re-appropriation of the notion of aesthetics from the institutions. The notion of aesthetics needs to be remobilized in a way that can (1) stimulate the imagination of the oppressed to form a liberating force not limited by conventions, (2) that can change the notion of the real, of what is normal and of what is acceptable.

Playfulness was proposed as a tactic/strategy to counter rules and expectations.

In the plenum discussion problematized that artistic practice nevertheless remains bound and valued within the institution of art, although rules of the institution can be subverted and institutional space can be used tactically and playfully for non-art purposes and common social or political causes. It was underlined that artists must be aware of their manifold privileges when they join coalitions for social struggles with other groups. The artist can go out on the “playing field” of other social struggles and then return and harvest the value of his/her practice in the institution of art. However, the question of accumulation of cultural capital and funding come up. On the other hand, one can also lose, be blacklisted by either an institution or a movement.

The best meeting place for making coalitions was found to be outside of the art institutions, in the public space, on the streets. This is the “playing field” outside of safe boundaries of art institutions, where artists can show what contribution they have to offer for a common cause.

Plenary Session 06 September 2015 Working Group VI

Aligning with social movements Contributors: Gregory Sholette (presenter), Airi Triisberg, Lise Soskolne, Marina Vishmidt, Marius Lervåg Aasprong, Mourad El Garouge, Noah Fischer, Rena Raedle

The input for the group discussing alignment with other social movements was given by Noah Fischer. He reported on artists involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Fischer described forms of organizing that emerged and gave examples of coalitions with social movements that came out from Occupy, such as the Art and Labor Group, Gulf Labor Coalition and G.U.L.F. It was stated that in recent years a striking growth of coalitions between art and labor and art and justice campaigns can be noted, such as Gulf Labor Coalition, Liberate Tate, Australia, Precarious Workers Brigade, ArtLeaks, Art & Labor or the occurrence of labor strikes at the National Gallery London. It was proposed

Contradictions and Transformative Trajectory of Art & Labor, drawing by Vladan JeremiÄ&#x2021; and Rena Raedle, 2015.

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that the raise of consciousness about the relation between art and labor can be explained through the global economic crises and capital’s turn from generating surplus value based on labor towards pure forms of financialization.

In respect to these coalitions, the advantages and disadvantages of positioning / identifying the artist as artist or as worker were discussed. Both positions were elaborated.

On one side, art can be defended as a special kind of labor, that is useful to non-art political coalitions and social movements. Art helps to get media attention. Furthermore art and culture can generate and expand the collective embodiment of resistance and help to turn it into objective social forces.

The other position sees art as non-special work similar to any other type of precarious work, because it is part of the “social factory” (Mario Tronti), where all aspects of life are fully subordinated to capital. This common condition of precariousness and existential risk encourage the artists to build bridges to organized labor unions outside of the art world.

The need to distinguish two positions of the artist in the process of production, either as a wage laborer or as an entrepreneur, was discussed: either as workers that sell their labor or as entrepreneurs that employ others, produce commodities and sell them.

The group concluded that in order to become active outside the prescribed spaces of the art field a certain naïveté is required by the artist. The group argued that to operate within a social movement or any other coalition, the artist needs to take the risk of setting herself/himself aside and to actively forget certain conventions and habits of imminent critique or ever-growing cynicism. The notion of active naïveté

by Antonio Negri was proposed to describe this relation towards moments and spaces from where coalitions can arise.

In the plenum, building solidarity was stressed as most important aspect in the process of coalition-building. The problem of patronizing attitudes was addressed. It was stated that solidarity arises from the joint struggle for mutual liberation and that objective class differences don’t need to result in patronization if coalitions are negotiated as partnerships. Within the movement, artists do not need to represent artists-authors, they are members that use their artistic competencies as part of and in solidarity with the movement.

We need to be aware that engagement in social struggles can reveal deep contradictions: self-exploitation, cooptation by institutions, parties, NGO’s, conservative and reactionary political attitudes, discrepancy between an idealized situation and a concrete political reality.

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Conclusion: Findings, Agreed Points and Recommendations for Transformative Art Production and Coalition-Building 1. The Troubles with Artistic Labor The contradictory character of artistic labor that can be described as both non-work and role model of labor has become paradigmatic for the general position of labor in modern relations of production. Artistic labor plays an important role in social reproduction – amongst many other forms of unpaid labor. To problematize this relation it makes perfect sense that artists redefine their labor as productive labor and, in line with this argument, claim “wage for work”. Even more so since the exploitative entrepreneurial norm artists are subjected to, has become a common norm of general precarious labor conditions. Yet this isn’t the end of the road. It is futile to differentiate artistic labor as manual or mental labor, as productive or unproductive work or as wage-labor or reproductive labor.

Nonetheless, the question remains: how do we break the social division of labor that produces art and labor as distinct spaces and categories? For that we need a re-distribution of work that represents the link through which artists can get involved in a common struggle, addressing their own working conditions. With the abolition of the division of labor, with the dissolution of the categories art / labor, artistic activity and the value of art would undergo a complete re-definition. Thus, the problematization of artistic labor and the material working conditions of artists is an eligible field where common ground needs to be found with other workers / non-workers.

2. Ways of Labor Struggle in the Arts Artists’ unions and other artists organizations demand the standardization of fees to be implemented by state institutions and non-profit art institutions, based on either legal guarantees or voluntary certification of employing institutions. While the strategy of standardization of wage shows successes within local frameworks, limitations become obvious in transnational working relations of the art world.

Standards would have to be relative to local living and working conditions, an institution that could control these standards doesn’t exist and localities or groups that don’t meet a minimum standard would be excluded from every scope of action.

Instead, individual commitment to dignified standards of labor and solidarity with local social struggles through withholding of labor, organized boycott of problematic art manifestations, solidarity or shaming campaigns and direct action against institutions disrespecting labor rights become powerful tools supporting a translocal struggle for transformation of labor on common basis. The symbolic act of with-

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holding of labor from a biennale is a legitimate tool to support the cause of a local community. The effect of such boycott grows proportional to the cultural capital of an artist. More sustainable alliances with groups from outside the art-world require engagement of artists in the wider social field.

How and on which common ground these alliances can be build and where is the place of the artist within such coalitions?

3. Recommendations for Alliances and Coalition-Building Finding common ground, from universal common needs to more particular interests, is the precondition of any alliance. Artists can help in the translation and re-translation, reformulation and reframing of needs and problems that are articulated by different groups. Translation between different terminologies and languages informed by social and cultural backgrounds gains importance in translocal approaches to finding common grounds. Art and culture are also powerful means to create cohesion and to form a collective identity of social movements.

In practice, artists share a common continuum with the general precarious condition of labor. Not only in the art world, opportunistic behavior and clientelistic networking typical for flexible labor conditions create structural exclusion and hinders the political organization of workers. A material distinction of the position of artists in the process of production can be made: There are artists who sell their labor and there are artists-entrepreneurs that employ others to produce commodities and sell them.

Another peculiarity that makes troubles in coalition-building between artists and non-art groups lies in the artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; relationship towards the institution of art. It needs to be acknowledged that artistic practice stays bound and valued in the institution of art and therefrom a number of contradictions come up, when artists link their practice to the wider social field.

Rules of the institution can be subverted and institutional space can be used tactically for non-art purposes to gain visibility for common causes. Artists can use their privileges and they can re-appropriate the definition of social practice and aesthetics. The notion of aesthetics can be remobilized as a space for imagination and liberating force of the oppressed, that can change the notion of the real.

But the emancipatory force of art can only be realized if art doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exploit social movements in the interest of art but if art becomes a means in the hands of the people. Alliances and coalitions can only become sustainable if solidarity is developed in a struggle for mutual liberation, and not through patronizing attitudes.

Consequently, the best meeting place for making coalitions is definitively the space outside of the institutions, because here it is where artists can show what their

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contribution to a common cause really is. To engage in social struggles can reveal deep contradictions: discrepancy between ideal and political reality, self-exploitation and cooptation by institutions, parties or NGO’s, confrontation with conservative and reactionary political forces and all forms of repression. For the artist, this might mean to give up certain peculiarities of the arts, such as for example authorship, or maybe an artistic career. And she needs to translate/reframe her/his practice in the light of particular competencies that might be useful for a certain cause.

To be part of a social movement or coalition, the artist needs to take the risk of setting herself/himself aside and to consciously block out certain conventions and habits of the art world, imposing either its imperative of criticality or omnipresent cynicism.

It is a ‘responsible playfulness’ or ‘conscious naiveté’ that allows the artist to be part of a moment and to enter the space from where coalitions towards transformation emerge.

This paper was first published in: Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić (eds.) Conclusions of the Trondheim

Seminar – Contradictions and Transformative Trajectory of Art & Labor, LevArt, Belgrade, Trondheim and Levanger, 2016. (http://levart.no/contradictions-and-transformative-trajectory-of-art-labor-rena-radle-og-vladan-jeremic)

References 1 This paper was written by Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić in Belgrade, December 2015 and reviewed by Airi Triisberg, Corina L Apostol, Gregory Sholette, Lise Soskolne and Katja Praznik.

Contributors to the working groups were: Airi Triisberg (Tallinn), Corina L Apostol (ArtLeaks,

Bucharest), Danilo Prnjat (DeMaterijalizacija umetnosti, Belgrade), Gregory Sholette (New York),

Ivor Stodolsky (Perpetuum Mobile, Berlin), Jean-Baptiste Naudy (Ateliers Populaires de Paris), Jelena Vesić (Belgrade), Jesper Alvær (Oslo), Jochen Becker (metroZones, Berlin), Kuba Szreder (Warsaw), Lise Skou (Aarhus), Lise Soskolne (W.A.G.E., New York), Marina Vishmidt (London), Marita

Muukkonen (Perpetuum Mobile, Helsinki), Marius Lervåg Aasprong (Trondheim), Minna Henriksson (Helsinki), Mourad El Garouge (Ateliers Populaires de Paris), Noah Fischer (Occupy Museums, New York), Raluca Voinea (ArtLeaks, Bucharest), Sissel M Bergh (Trøndelag Bildende Kunstnere, Trondheim). Drawings and photographs by Rena Rädle and Vladan Jeremić.

For more information about the seminar, related papers by the contributors and full documentation of plenary sessions see http://transformativeartproduction.net.

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Visualizing Resistence: Subversive Artistic Practices in the Republic of Macedonia Tihomir Topuzovski

Research on subversiveness in the visual arts is concerned with opposition to the existing social order and attempts to achieve changes through engaged forms of action. Subversive practices in art are intertwined with forms of action that undermine the establishment’s institutional system. The practitioners attempt an opposition to and transgression of existing social norms and situations and initiate demands for change. In this context, the relation between these practices and politics presupposes that art, in one way or another, can help expand political action and participation, using artistic modes of presentation and practice that are intended to increase awareness and stimulate or provoke political action.1 According to Ingram “artistic practices are not just a form of resistance, refusal and critique, but contributor to political and spatial transformation,”2 where artists interact with the geopolitical context. They are involved in the political circumstances, reacting and seeking changes. In conditions of opposition, therefore, art becomes subversive of the existing social order, undermining the normal and legitimate, aimed at transforming the existing situation. This raises the question: What can subversive art accomplish in the political arena? And what are its limits?3 The study focuses on practices that represent a completely different approach to artistic action, aimed at achieving changes to the problems emerging for artists and citizens in their current situation as well as the manner in which any given art opposes the given order4 or subverts it. This insistence on rejection or subversion incorporates the affirmative statement that art has an autonomous power of resistance5 embodied in various visual practices which are “being ever more called upon to provide both insight into politics itself and the stimuli for social change”.6 In the acts of “subversion and transgression [actors] crossed the contemporary borders of art and overthrew various binary and hierarchical oppositions”7 established within social systems and create new situations.

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This article focuses in particular on recent events in the Republic of Macedonia where artists are intervening in the political context. These artistic practices relate to the political crisis in the Republic of Macedonia which evolved from problems with democracy, including an instrumentalized state in the service of the ruling party, media under government control, rigged elections, and a scandal over the illegal wiretapping of citizens by the government. These political circumstances in the Republic of Macedonia are powerful societal forces that influence culture. In such situations, artists have developed innovative practices and responses to the ongoing situation that are characterized by subversiveness.

I argue that the subversiveness of artistic practices is an important object of study whose investigation brings new insights into art. In this article, I consider the theoretical discussion on interpreting subversiveness and also focus on the contextualization of subversiveness within the field of artistic action, in order to interpret the tendencies of these practices in the case of the Republic of Macedonia where they provide continual impulses and political demands. The article provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of how subversiveness in the visual arts relates to political dynamics in the Republic of Macedonia.

Protest in the front Public Prosecution Office in Skopje; Photo: Vanco Dzambaski.

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While this article has a conceptual and an empirical focus, I organize my argument as follows: I start by analyzing subversiveness from its political connotations to its articulation in art. Here the aim is to provide theoretical background to the empirical analysis, in which I focus on a more explicit grounding of subversiveness, describing and explaining agents, principles, and forms of action. Taking these dimensions into account, I apply this discussion in the context of the Republic of Macedonia within which I identify and analyze forms of subversiveness. One particular aspect of the analysis offered here is that there is little discussion of these practices in the spatial context of this country. Finally, I examine wider lessons that can be drawn from subversiveness in art and what these practices have achieved in the case of the Republic of Macedonia.

In addition to the diversity of literature surveyed, the empirical analysis was carried out in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. Data was collected via semi structured and structured interviews, archival research and visual methods. Interviews were conducted with art historians, custodians, curators, artists, politicians, writers and activists (the names of interviewees have been withheld upon request because of the dangerous political situation in the Republic of Macedonia). This data was coupled with secondary sources such as newspaper articles, art magazines and official websites.

Rethinking artistic practices subversively Subversiveness is commonly defined as opposition to the existing power balance, authorities and social order. However it should be noted that “Subversion has no universally accepted definition”.8 Explanations of subversiveness indicate that, through subversive practices, various social, political and ideological demands are put forward.9 These acts have a clear intention against an existing social model and its norms. As noted by Levy, “Sovversivismo was a politically nomadic movement, according to Gramsci.” He explains that “subversive chiefs used a radical stance as a form of blackmail against the ruling political class, because at the decisive moment these chiefs invariably threw their lot in with the forces of order.”10 Subversiveness involves rejection or destabilization of the existing order, its obliteration and destruction or changes to the existing hierarchy. The model of these practices, as a constituent part of all anti systemic movements, can be traced back to the 1848 revolution in France, where “a proletarian-based political group made a serious attempt to achieve political power and legitimize workers’ power”11 in opposition to the institutional order. These practices are critically or theoretically founded or represent practical activities undertaken to erode the existing order.12 As a historical example of subversive activities, Levy points out that the terms sovversivo and sovversivismo (subversive and subversion) were first used by intellectual and artistic circles in Italy in 1914, but also by the police, clerks and government agencies, when describing the activities of anarchists, socialists, republicans and all

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other opponents of the monarchy and the political establishment of the time.13 This refers to the different backgrounds and imperatives of lower-status groups within society. Thus, much of “the Left in particular, and Italian politics in general, runs the Gramscian argument, was a product of the culture of ‘sovversivismo’”14 created in conditions of deficiency, the instrumentalization of institutions, a weak ethical and political culture, a wrecked civil sector and an environment unable to satisfy the basic demands of individuals and groups in the society. In their anti systemic tendencies, “the masses who mobilized to transform the world expected that, once movements came to power, they would enjoy freedom and equality — if not in perfect measure, at least to a greater degree than previously.”15 In other words, it appears that the practitioners intend to go a step further toward principles and visions for a better society.

Turning now to the context of culture, it is worth beginning with the point that subversive practices in art exist as activity close to the notion of politics.16 These artistic practices are intertwined with political and activist movements and they oppose what Ranciere17 identifies as consensus, “the main enemy of artistic creativity as well as of political creativity... that is, inscription within given roles, possibilities, and competencies” which passivize the role of artistic action. Instrumentalized acts always support the preservation of existing systems in which, as noted by de Certeau, everyday practices depend on a vast ensemble of procedures.18 In this context, the role of the artist is instrumentalized or “Today, the artist could be defined simply as a professional fulfilling a certain role in the general framework of the art world,”19 placed in a system of organizations, authorities, faceless agents, rules and protocols. The ultimate consequence of such activity is that the horizon of possibilities, as described by Bourdieu,20 is closed, followed by adaptation to the dominant position in inevitable dependency.

However, subversive practitioners intend to take additional steps opposing such an arrangement. Thus, any artistic project which aims at creating a better society must take account of the instrumentalization of institutions in order to create what might be a new possibility through the transgression of existing criteria. This can be considered as calculated damage that questions a society’s prevailing value system.21 In this respect, using this approach re-examines the boundaries “between what is supposed to be normal and what is supposed to be subversive, between what is supposed to be active, and therefore political, and what is supposed to be passive or distant, and therefore apolitical.”22 What follows is the repoliticization of the artists they refer to and the analysis of “socio-political processes, related to the transformation of the system”23 paying attention to social conditions, problems and challenges.

Examining these possibilities in the context of artistic actions and the creation of subversive agents, it is of paramount importance to note that this concerns not only the artist or artists, but also a large number of those working in the field of culture.

This can be illustrated by the example of the Russian collective “What Is to Be Done” (Chto delat), which is a network of poets, artists, philosophers, critics, design

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artists and writers who act as a collective.24 Their horizontal networking and interaction strengthens the organizational capacity of various groups and increases the efficiency and synergy of these agents in their multidisciplinary democratic struggle.

The ultimate consequence should be to unify different types of struggle, 25 such as social, urban, ecological, antiauthoritarian, antiinstitutional, feminist and antiracist, as well that of sexually marginalized groups.

The implementation of subversive practices embodies another aspect. The artists’ engagement with the problems cited above presupposes certain ethical principles on the part of the participants. They try to change “living conditions in economically underdeveloped areas, raise ecological concerns, offer access to culture and education for the populations of poor countries and regions, attract attention to the plight of illegal immigrants, improve the conditions of people working in art institutions”,26 as well as addressing issues of discrimination, freedom of speech and economic inequality. In the final instance, their agreeing to act upon these problems can be defined as a reaction to “the increasing collapse of the modern social state ‘and an effort’ to replace the social state and NGOs that for various reasons cannot or will not fulfil their role.”27 Thus these practices are most commonly undertaken by the underprivileged living in conditions of social, identity-based, ethnic and racial segregation and exclusion. Consequently, the principles of these practices aim “to produce a new perception of the world, and therefore create a commitment to its transformation” which are “united no longer by the abstract forms of the law, but by the bonds of lived experience”28 Through these acts artists come close to an understanding of their paradigmatic role linked to the crux of social problems.

At the same time this new faith in the political capacity of art has assumed many forms that are often divergent, and in some cases even conflicting.29 These art practices often employ forms of radical activism, affecting public spaces such as squares, streets and crossroads, aimed at getting publicity and, more importantly, at influencing the public sphere by involving the public in existing problems and challenges. Furthermore, artists remove distanced observers from their safe position, pulling them into a game of affects. In many cases, forms of subversiveness “generate the effect of absurdity and parody”,30 humor and incisive irony.31 Such forms of subversiveness can be illustrated with the example of artists in the “Occupy” movement.

They occupied cultural institutions such as museums at the onset of the movement “Occupy Wall Street” because these institutions were seen as stimulators of social and economic inequality.32 On this basis then, the focus of subversive practices in art is not separated from a given societal context, but inherently arises from the existing political and social relations, which are relations of power.

The spatial context In approaching these kinds of artistic practices this study focuses specifically on the Republic of Macedonia, which has been marked by a transition accompanied

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by radical reforms in every stratum of society.33 These rapid changes are having a serious effect on the distribution of income and wealth, the restoration of the market system, and the growing income gap: all factors that have brought issues of inequality34 and rising poverty levels throughout the country. The changes have resulted in problems of social inclusion and social cohesion of different class, gender and minority groups and their access to social provision. Mirroring the pattern displayed in most of the former socialist countries, the resurgence of nationalism in the Republic of Macedonia was a key agent in the transformation and became a structural quality in building the new system. Reconstruction of the national identity accompanied the establishment of the Republic of Macedonia in 1991.

However, in the decade 2006—2016 under the leadership of a conservative, nationalistic party, named VMRO DPMNE (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization — Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity), the country has been characterized by some aspects of authoritarianism. There is a distinctive concern that “retooling of this small nation’s — a Balkan brand of hyper-patriotism accompanied by the trumpeting of Macedonia’s ancient roots — is raising concerns internationally about growing authoritarianism, the silencing of dissent and accusations of abuse of power by the governing party”35 and “manipulation of independent institutions”.tt Macedonia’s fragile democracy is further hampered by the absence of a free press. In the past decade, owners of Macedonian media have deliberately shifted their political allegiances, constantly depending on the ruling political party

“Warrior on a horse”, a statue reminiscent of Alexander the Great, erected as part of the project “Skopje 2014”, photo Vladan Jeremić.

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and the government’s effective purchase of support through media advertising.37 A member of an opposition political party acknowledged this in my interview, pointing out that “those who declined to consent were shut down, jailed or severely financially strained through libel charges”.38 Under these circumstances the problems with the fragile democracy and human rights in the country are being aggravated.

The leading conservative, nationalistic party in the Republic of Macedonia views culture as a possible means of creating collective memories, patriotic motifs, slogans and symbols, monuments and architecture, pushing it to the level of idolatry in an attempt to reconstruct the historical narrative and establish it meaningfully in the present. Picking up on this, nationalistic art in the Republic of Macedonia usually celebrates proclaimed essences of a national and romanticist spirit. Highly ceremonial, it is heavily oriented towards reconstruction of a national identity39 as a part of postsocialist material culture.40 In this case, the geopolitical instrumentalization of culture has always been related to the local and regional establishment, which instrumentalizes art to sustain these systems. This can be explained, in the phrase “apparatus of capture”41 coined by Deleuze and Guattari, as a geophilosophy of power consisting of the geographical instrumentalization of cultural activities through numerous programs and projects, as well as through networking, documenting and supporting various activities, political goals and programs. In the context of culture and art in the Republic of Macedonia, the instrumentalization can be found in particular schemes where most of the practices are affiliated with governmental programs and strategies. These practices can be understood in the context of various actions, operations and techniques with a political background, attended and financed by the centers of power.42 Cultural institutions and organizations are profoundly influenced by the political establishment in the country and they adapt their program in accordance with the official political dynamic.

In this way the role of the artist in the Republic of Macedonia is instrumentalized.

The artist can simply be defined as a professional fulfilling a certain role in the enactment of state cultural policies and practices relating to the discourse of existing authorities.43 With the exception of some independent artistic productions, artists in the Republic of Macedonia are included in institutional structures and programs.

The purpose of the majority of newly built museums, exhibitions, and cultural events promoted is to achieve materialization of the conservative party VMRO DPMNE’s political narrative.44 This is evident in the case of the project “Skopje 2014” which stands for the reconstruction of national identity as well as the re-representation of Macedonian history, realized in the capital city. The project started in 2010 and involves museums, buildings, and monuments inspired by the past. It is actually a project dedicated to strengthening national identity through neoclassical and baroque architecture and sculptures.45 The project illustrates a crucial element of the way in which cultural production is instrumentalized by the political establishment and governmental politics in the Republic of Macedonia.

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“Skopje 2014”: Fountains and revamped facade, photo Vladan Jeremić.

We turn now to evidence of some subversive artistic practices in the Republic of Macedonia that relate to the breakdown of the previous system and the emergence of authoritarianism and hyperpatriotism embodied in new models of social and political order in this country. This situation poses a challenge to artists who aspire to contemplate new agendas and practices in relation to the overall social and political arrangement. It involves the articulation of a different form of action that is not institutionalized and will serve as a call for social change. In line with this aim, “the artist needs to establish a new attitude, based on radical democratic policy that would call for articulation of different levels of strategy”.46 This requires applied effort on all levels of social relations and practices in order to discover new forms of political life, to support new movements that would stimulate the emergence of new ethics and mobilize new initiatives.

Aiming to develop a vision for social change In considering subversive practices in the Republic of Macedonia, it is important to start by identifying subversiveness on the Macedonian art scene by “the manner in which artists are organized, the situations in which they perform and present themselves, the relations they build, maintain, avoid or break among themselves,”47 as well as the stances they take. Various subversive practices can be identified in Macedonia, generated by day-to-day political circumstances, as well as by the ever

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more present intention in other countries of the region to produce different artistic strategies.

Many debates and initiatives have been undertaken with the aim of developing a vision for social change. These attempts can be defined as unclassified and their goal was to contemplate the possibility of a different political engagement. They emphasize the principles for different practices, where “in the sphere of action of what has been preformulated as artists and critics’ competence, the foundation and the improvement of the ethical principles should be of pivotal importance”.48 As an illustration of this, I would refer to the project called “10-minute Protest”, initiated by myself and realized on May 15, 2014 in the CAC gallery in Skopje, followed by a discussion about redefining and repoliticizing artistic practices with the participation of activists, cultural workers, politicians and columnists. Protest slogans were exhibited as part of the project. The main aim of the project was that protest should be seen as a means of artistic action. The discussion itself produced the opinion that this is not “the time for negotiation, but for confrontation because we are living in a state of siege”49, which indeed distills the artists’ position towards different forms of action. The project laid out the existing situation and opened the prospect of providing preconditions, perhaps even an actual possibility, for action. It illustrates cognitive subversion, as does the observation that in certain cases “we can sense that efforts are being made to draft a certain strategy of negation, a program for foundation of subversiveness.”50 This implies that “political subversion presupposes cognitive subversion” 51 or a change in the vision of the world that would later be embodied in a series of actions. The idea is supported by Mill’s view on the French Revolution, that “the subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversions of established opinions”.52 It was found that several artists, in interaction with individuals and groups, had taken initiatives that can be deemed subversive, mostly in reaction to the current situation in the Republic of Macedonia. These actions have most commonly been organized as civil initiatives. I will start with the intervention provoked by the government plans to erect the statue of the “Warrior on a Horse” and performed by an informal group on February 4, 2010. The intervention consisted of writing graffiti on the metal safety fencing of the monument construction site in downtown Skopje, an action almost immediately interrupted by a police intervention. The police asked the participants for their ID and they were accused of a misdemeanor against public hygiene because they were writing graffiti on a public building. The metal fencing was repainted the following day.

On another occasion, this group intervened by placing stickers to replace the street name signs in Skopje. The wording of all the stickers was identical: Boulevard of Lesbian Revolution. These inscriptions were placed on several buildings in the center of the city on November 12, 2013. This action was provoked by the decision of city authorities to rename many streets throughout Skopje. The new names of the streets were a result of the revision of national history by the government of the

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Republic of Macedonia. The motivation behind this subversive act, according to the official explanation, was to liberate homophobic Skopje. This confirms the position that art uses subversive strategies that appropriate cultural space, while “artists break through the semantic sphere by means of decontextualization and re-contextualization of signs”.53 Regarding LGBT rights in the Republic of Macedonia, another action was aimed at blocking the normal functioning of the institution of the public prosecutor.

Provoked by an act of violence that members of this community suffered from unknown perpetrators and the lack of any legal resolution of the case, a group consisting of human rights activists, members of the LGBT community and their supporters, and artists held a peaceful protest in front the office of the public prosecution or Office of the Republic of Macedonia, underscoring the inefficiency of institutions and the lack of political will to resolve the cases of violence against this group in Macedonia. The blockade of this institution interrupted its normal functioning, making this action exceptionally successful. The protest included a performance which consisted of symbolically placing “corpses” in plastic bags in front of

Left: The monument of the citizens of Skopje shot by the fascists on 13 November 1944, source: Okno.mk; Right: Erection of the improvised cardboard monument, photo: Vanco Dzambaski.

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Protest of the association AJDE. Photo: Vanco Dzambaski.

the public prosecution office with the aim of exposing the attitude of the official authorities towards the LGBT community.

In a different context, a group of citizens consisting of artists, activists, and cultural workers initiated an action that was aimed at reminding the public of the removed monument commemorating the death of nine people shot by the so-called fascists on the morning of November 13, 1944 in revenge for the partisan attacks upon the liberation of the city. The group erected an improvised cardboard copy of the missing monument (see image) at its original site by the Stone Bridge in Skopje.

The monument was removed the very same day, soon after it had been erected. This event was intended to confront the revisionist iconography of the projects for new monuments in Skopje supported by the Ministry of Culture.

Another initiative, combining a public protest and a performance, was organized by the association AJDE, a platform for civil politics, with the participation of several artists and cultural workers. The performance took place on February 19, 2015 in front of the Ministry of Health and the participants wore white masks and dark clothes, symbolically underlining their unequivocal demands that the Ministry of Health should be held accountable for causing the death of a nine-year-old girl by negligence and incompetence. Furthermore, members of the group â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ajdeâ&#x20AC;?, seated on chairs, held a protest performance in front of the public broadcaster MRT and

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‘Colorful Revolution’ protest in Skopje. Photo: Vanco Dzambaski.

demanded it be returned to the citizens. They publicly appealed to MRT that it should be a public service of the citizens, not a government propaganda service.

This action was realized on November 9, 2014 and in the words of the artists themselves, it was a testimony to the necessity of the artists’ involvement in civil movements and initiatives, so that their artistic ideas might help increase the visibility of the action and add creative momentum to help convince the public and the authorities to correct their erroneous policies.54 Finally, all these attempts were summarized in the “Colorful Revolution”, where neo-classical and baroque facades of public buildings were colored and other artistic activities carried out, actions that were subversive with regard to the existing political order in the Republic of Macedonia and thus contributed to political change in the country. The artists involved in this protest hold that the coloring, seen as an artistic practice, is intertwined with activist forms of action that undermine the institutional and corrupt system in the Republic of Macedonia. This is summarized in the statement that “from an artistic point of view, painting buildings and monuments in downtown Skopje is authentic phenomenon for the country, where art becomes a tool for achieving political change”.55 It is astonishing how artistic means — paint — became a weapon for achieving social and political goals in Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution.

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Practices create political stance The cases selected in this study do not exhaust all the practices undertaken in the Republic of Macedonia. They were chosen because they illustrate different forms, imperatives and motivations. All these practices were characterized by subversiveness against the official politics in the Republic of Macedonia which, according to the actors of these practices, run contrary to rather than promoting justice and liberty in a democratically equal society. The activities were realized as nomadic actions outside of the established institutions. They opposed the existing centers of power in the Republic of Macedonia through the occupation of various public spaces, issuing a series of social and political demands. Moreover, these practices can be considered as urban grassroots mobilization and as “a new phase in the development of postsocialist civil societies”.56 Even here, they can be seen as the actualization and concretization of Gramsci’s “series of negations”.57 They represented a vision for redefining and repoliticizing the role of the artist, as well as a refusal of the existing norms and criteria that instrumentalize artistic practices, thus creating the possibility of arriving at a political stance.58 In order to make these practices efficient and to achieve certain goals, the artists forgo privileged positions and transgress institutional lines of the Republic of Macedonia.

The practices discussed here, such as the graffiti on the fencing, the replacement of street signs with stickers, and the improvised cardboard monument, mobilized participants in the struggle to oppose official government policies aimed at recoding the identity of citizens in the Republic of Macedonia. The performance in front of the public prosecution office is part of the struggle of groups suffering sexual discrimination and this particular protest was against the institutions failing to sanction an act of violence perpetrated against members of this community.

The protest in front of the Ministry of Health can be defined as social struggle against dysfunctional institutions whose incompetence led to the loss of a human life. Another important action of this group was the performance staged in front of the public broadcaster MRT and the demands that it be returned to the citizens.

Finally, actions that were part of Colorful Revolution are an example of artistic involvement through using paint-filled balloons against government buildings and monuments that represent current politics in Republic of Macedonia. In this political performance, a lot of people out on the streets were involved in this act of using artistic means in the struggle for democracy.59 At a more fundamental level, all these practices, each of which makes a particular contribution, embodied the principles, forms and agency of subversiveness I have discussed.

The actions described above involved different profiles of participants and in that sense it is fair to claim that they outline the agent of subversiveness which presupposes space of interaction through various forms and principles. Allying these subjects through groupings of initiatives, discussions, political activists, and individuals with cultural and artistic affinities involves different approaches and various degrees of horizontal organization.60 Furthermore, discussing the agent of subversiveness of

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these artistic practices establishes the possibility of a more general subject; that is, citizens who strive to achieve social change. The agent of change can be identified through a combination of individuals and groupings that exist separately. Implicitly, this illustrates how the agent consists of a multitude, and hence is composed of a social subject whose difference cannot be reduced to sameness, a difference that remains different.”61 They represent the possibility of stimulating “the daily struggles of the workers themselves, their coordinated acts of resistance, insubordination and subversion of the relations of domination in the workplace and in society at large.”62 Each of these struggles unfolded separately as an independent entity, raising the question and the challenge of how they could be unified in the Republic of Macedonia.

Looking at this issue, it can be seen that a certain level of partial association has occurred over some political and social issues, but above all, over ethical principles.

The social engagement of the cultural subject, the visual artist, should be encouraged and supported and the ethical autonomy of the artist in the space of public interest should be seen as the key issue of these actions. The principles of freedom of speech or freedom of choice or the struggle against economic inequality, unemployment and poverty, environmental protection and reduction of pollution can all help in unifying different individuals and groups, whose radical stance includes total negation of the unjust social, cultural, political and economic context of the Republic of Macedonia. These practices demonstrate significant and appropriate strategies for authentic action.

Consequently, subversive practices might be the only engaged and significant attitudes under present circumstances in the Republic of Macedonia. The vision of these actions sees the artistic, that is to say, “the creative, political and mediatic fields” as “intrinsically linked”, so that “contemporary cultural practices point toward a new, better society in which art has merged with lived experience.”63 The outcomes of these practices can be twofold: first, they are involved in the specific context; and second, they are part of a wider process of concretizing subversiveness in the field of art.

Conclusion Subversive practices in art consist of radical forms of transgression of established social and political norms through a form of resistance, protest and creativity visualized in public spaces. These practices in art take very different forms depending on the spatial and political contexts of the activities as those contexts are crucial in understanding them. Practicing such acts includes various forms of acting in order to increase public awareness of existing social problems and to initiate changes. This work highlights the complex and ever-shifting relationships between artistic practices and political and social contexts and challenges. This was the initial approach whereby some of the modes of action employed by the artists were identified.

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The study discussed theoretical aspects of subversiveness through the lens of an agent, principles and forms of action and their contribution to the ways in which artistic practices intervene in political contexts and disrupt spatial structures. On this topic, the study continued by identifying these practices within the context of the Republic of Macedonia. Using the Republic of Macedonia for case analysis was productive because of the radical changes and transformations it had undergone in past decade, coupled with the political crisis. Recent cases of subversive practices in art in the country offered characteristics to the core of my argument. The study clarified that the instrumentalization of cultural institutions in the country generates the need for different actions against erroneous and unjust policies, especially in cases where they are reinforced by complex political circumstances and accusations of abuse of power by the governing party. In investigating these acts in the Republic of Macedonia as a research area, subversiveness was detected as set up in a given political context where several important practices were portrayed as a confirmation of performative politics which extend political struggle. This is basically a result of the ever more complicated day-to-day political situation and the impossibility of acting effectively in other ways. The acts demonstrate the ways in which individuals and groups engage in civil movements and initiatives by using the means of artists. and can be considered as a possible strategy of authentic action for the future. I showed how these practices merge in the interface of social and political change. These findings suggest in the most general sense that socio-political contexts make it possible for different artistic practices to interact in public spaces.

This study found that subversiveness can be modified and can contain new explanatory implications and connotations in the field of art. Consequently, subversion is perceived as an important activity in the political arena, offering a significant engagement with burning social questions and problems. These practices gain meaning and importance not only due to the resistance or critical positions they offer. They are important above all because they expand the space of the possible in terms of visualizing new initiatives and forms of creativity. This article discussed the possibility of renewing different art affiliations, since art today is totally usurped or interrupted by its instrumentalization, that is to say, interrupted with regards to the history of subversive practices and the idea of visual arts as an anti-systemic and social movement. The implications of the study lie in the possibility of these findings being applied to other geographical and political contexts that are undergoing political processes of transformation in different circumstances. Establishing new cases and insights of subversiveness in art will contribute to the contemporary debate regarding creativity and accomplishments of these acts.

This paper was published for the first time in the journal Baltic Worlds.

Topuzovski T. (2017) Subversive artistic practices: Visualising resistance in the Republic of Macedonia, Baltic Worlds, X: 1, pp. 9-17

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Tihomir Topuzovski received his doctoral degree from the University of Birmingham UK and was a guest

researcher at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University. He is currently collaborating on research looking at the politicization of space and artistic practices displaying a new understanding of temporary urbanism.

References 1 Jacques Ranciere, “Art of the Possible: Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey in conversation with Jacques Ranciere,” Artforum 45 (2007): 256—269.

2 Alan R. Ingram, “Making Geopolitics Otherwise: Artistic Interventions in Global Political Space,” The Geographical Journal 177, no. 3 (2011): 218—222.

3 Brian B. Holmes, Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society (Zagreb and Eindhoven: WHW/Van Abbemuseum, 2009).

4 Gene Ray, “Toward a Critical Art Theory”, in Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, ed. G. Raunig and G. Ray (London: Mayfly, 2009), 79.

5 Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 12.

6 Anthony Downey, “Towards a Politics of (Relational) Aesthetics”, Third Text 21, no. 3 (2007): 267—275.

7 Bożenna Stokłosa, “Trickster: Mythical Deity, Archetype and Figure of a Creator”, in Trickster

Strategies in the Artists’ and Curatorial Practice, ed. Anna Markowska (Toruń: Polish Institute of World Art Studies and Tako Publishing House, 2013), 27.

8 William Rosenau, “Subversion and Insurgency”, Rand Counterinsurgency Study Occasional Paper 2 (2007), 4.

9 Carl Levy, “‘Sovversivismo’: The Radical Political Culture of Otherness in Liberal Italy,” Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:2 (2007): 147—161.

10 Ibid, 148—49.

11 Immanuel Wallerstein, “Antisystemic Movements: History and Dilemmas,” in Transforming the

Revolution, ed. S. Amin, G. Arrighi, A. Gunder Frank, and I. Wallerstein (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 16.

12 S. A. Chambers and T. Carver, Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

13 Carl Levy, “‘Sovversivismo’”.

14 Ibid, 149.

15 Immanuel Wallerstein, “Antisystemic Movements”, 36.

16 Jacques Ranciere, “Art of the Possible”.

17 Ibid, 263.

18 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

19 Boris Groys “The Weak Universalism”, e-flux, accessed April 2013, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/15/61294/the-weak-universalism/.

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20 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Harvard University Press 1984)

21 Martinez Francisco, “Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flaneur in Late-modern Societies”,

in Hopeless Youth! ed. Francisco Martinez and Pille Runnel (Tartu: Eesti Rahva Muuseum [Estonian National Museum] 2016), 422.

22 Jacques Ranciere, “Art of the Possible”, 266.

23 Irina Gavrash, “Subversive strategies in contemporary Russian art ” in Trickster Strategies in the

Artists’ and Curatorial Practice ed. Anna Markowska (Polish Institute of World Art Studies & Tako Publishing House Toruń, 2013), 77.

24 Glover Michael, “Chto Delat? What Is to Be Done? ICA, London”, Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/chto-delat-what-is-to-be-done-ica-london-2086845. html, accessed May 20, 2012.

25 E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (London: Verso, 2001).

26 Boris Groys, “On Art Activism,” e-flux, Accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/56/60343/on-art-activism/.

27 Ibid.

28 Jacques Ranciere, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, (London: Continuum, 2010), 142; 176.

29 Ibid., 134.

30 Irina Gavrash, “Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Russian Art”, in Trickster Strategies in the

Artists’ and Curatorial Practice, ed. Anna Markowska (Toruń: Polish Institute of World Art Studies & Tako Publishing House, 2013), 78.

31 Irina Hasnaș Hubbard, “Curatorial Performances: Looking for Trickster Curators in Museums in Romania”, in Trickster Strategies in the Artists’ and Curatorial Practice, ed. Anna Markowska (Toruń: Polish Institute of World Art Studies & Tako Publishing House, 2013), 200.

32 “We occupy museums to reclaim space for meaningful culture by and for the 99%. art and culture are the soul of the commons. art is not a luxury!”, Occupymuseums, http://occupymuseums.org/, accessed September 2014.

33 J. Pickles and A. Smith, Theorising transition: the political economy of post-Communist transformations, (London: Rutledge,1998).

34 M. Simai (2006), Poverty and Inequality in Eastern Europe and the CIS Transition Economies. DESA, Working Paper No. 17. ST/ESA/2006/DWP/17.

35 Matthew Brunwasseroct, “Concerns Grow About Authoritarianism in Macedonia”, The New York Times, accessed June 18, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world/europe/concerns-grow-aboutauthoritarianism-in-macedonia.html.

36 Andrew MacDowall, “Fears for Macedonia’s Fragile Democracy Amid ‘Coup’ and Wiretap

Claims”, The Guardian, accessed May 28, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/ fears-macedonias-fragiledemocracy-amid-coup-wiretap-claims.

37 Common Media Pressing Issues in Six SEE Countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, FYR

Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia, ed. Ana Hećimović and Iva Milanović-Litre (Zagreb: Partnership for Social Development, 2014), 31.

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38 Author’s interview with a member of political party.

39 Author’s interview with a writer.

40 Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary, (Indiana University Press, 2013)

41 G. Deleuze and F. A. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

42 Author’s interview with a political activist.

43 M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.

44 Author’s interview with a writer.

45 Author’s interview with an art historian.

46 Ibid.

47 Author’s interview with a cultural theorist.

48 Author’s interview with an art historian.

49 Iskra Geshoska, “10 minuti protest”, accessed June 15, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XnWFgODOoEA.

50 Author’s interview with an art historian and theoretician 51 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1982),127—128.

52 John Stuart Mill, “A Few Observations on the French Revolution (1833)”, in J. S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 1 (London: John W. Parker, 1859), 56—57.

53 Gavrash, “Subversive Strategies”, 77.

54 Author’s interview with an artist.

55 Author’s interview with an artist and political activist.

56 Kerstin Jacobsson, ed., Urban Grassroots Movements in Central and Eastern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).

57 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 273.

58 Ranciere, Dissensus.

59 Author’s interview with a member of political party.

60 Jeffrey Juris, “A New Way of Doing Politics? Global Justice Movements and the Cultural Logic of Networking,”, Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques, accessed January 2, 2015, http://rsa.revues. org/521.

61 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 99.

62 Ibid, 80.

63 Irmgard Emmelhainz, “Art and the Cultural Turn: Farewell to Committed, Autonomous Art?” e-flux Journal 42 (2013), accessed May 2015, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/art-and-the-cultural-turn-farewell-to-committedautonomous-art/.

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Dictionary of Resistance for Beginners Haim Sokol

Artists’ strike (common places) Suppose a miracle happened, and a general artists’ strike began. But what kind of work does the artist cease to perform during the strike? In the case of railway workers, metallurgists, teachers, the answer is obvious. However, what does the artists’ strike mean? Let’s say that this is a refusal to create art works. In this case, we reduce the artist’s work to the work of an artisan, and the work to a commodity. Despite all the non-obviousness of this (however, very common) identification, we can, nevertheless, draw from it a useful conclusion regarding the legal side of the artist’s activity. If an artwork is a product produced by an artist, then the exhibition for which this work is done is a production. This means that the invitation of the artist to the exhibition is equal to hiring an employee for the enterprise and must be carried out according to all the norms of the labor code. That is, not only the creation of work, the technical part (after all, the budget of the exhibition is the capital that its owner invests in a certain way, and this investment has no relation to the artist, just like the purchase of new machines by the owner of the plant does not concern the hired workers). The artist’s time spent on the production and installation of the work must be paid for. If you consider the artist as an individual entrepreneur, then in the case of inviting them to the exhibition they as such provides an inviting institution their creation for an exhibition or loans their already finished work. This is the only way to consistently understand the identification of the artist’s work with the labor of the proletarian or artisan. A strike based on this understanding can lead to a collapse or to a radical transformation of the existing institutional system.

Unfortunately, artists are looking for solutions to their problems not through the law, but through art. For a long time already the refusal to create a work has turned into a form of work. Thus, it seems, this clearly demonstrates the impossibility of the cessation of the artist’s work in this context. This brings us back to the question of what an artists’ strike is. If we insist on the answer to this question that the artist’s work is not material, then what exactly is it and how can we stop it? Does

Poster no. VI from the series “On the Concept of History”. By Haim Sokol.

English translation:

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.

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Doublepages: Haim Sokol, “On the concept of History” The series is titled “On the concept of History” after Walter Benjamin’s last text written in 1940 not

long before his death. I decided to turn these theses into a material of agitation. It can be printed out and used on ralleys , pickets, etc. I mix different historical figures like Benjamin, Hanna Arendt, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg with Russian activists like Anastasia Baburova which was killed

by neo-nazis in Moscow in 2009, together with contructivist buildings and anonymous people. I also

depicted Kazakh poet Abay Kunanbaev because the Occupy Moscow movement was located near the monument to Abay in the center of Moscow in 2011 and was also called “Occupy Abay”. Along with Abay I depicted kazakh women-heroes of the WWII Aliya Maldagulova and Manshuk Mametova with anonymous people from the Kazakh town Zhanaosen where in 2011 a big strike of oil miners

took place which was brutally suppressed by military forces. All this people meet in the poetical di-

mension of History. Above the drawings I wrote by hand quotes from Benjamin’s “Theses” translated into Russian.

Haim Sokol is an installation, sculpture, and video-based artist whose practice addresses the dramatic social histories of Russia and Eastern Europe. Sokol roots his use of literary allusion in historical reality and the

legacy of major 20th century uprisings, revolutions, massacres and genocides. Sokol has exhibited in solo exhibitions at the M&J Guelman Gallery, Triumph Gallery, Anna Nova Gallery and other galleries in Russia.

He has participated in the First Indian Biennale (2012), the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), the Second Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki ( 2009), the First Moscow Biennial for Young Artists (2008), School of Kyiv - the 2nd Kyiv Biennial (2015).

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this mean a rejection of intellectual activity? And even if such a refusal is possible, what impact can it have on the world? In other words, can there be a material stop of immaterial labor? Will not this be another mental exercise, a kind of intellectual product?

Perhaps we can begin to answer these questions if we refuse to understand the strike as a complete (albeit temporary) termination of work. In the case of art, this means stopping to function in a normal mode. Art is the dream of the revolution.

And if this is so, then we must get rid of such art to wake up the revolution or, more precisely, to invent a new art that will no longer distract our mind and our senses. In place of the pictorial regime, when the text dominates the image, and the aesthetic mode, when the form contains a ciphered text, a performative (political) regime should occur in which word, image and action are equal. There are times when the canvas turns into a banner. And such times have come.

Defeat Of course, there is a lot of talk about historical defeat. There is something total, final and hopeless in defeat. In comparison with defeat, failure or error is easy, almost weightless. Failure is fraught with a second chance, a mistake - hope for correction. But defeat is hard like a fist, and crushing like a knockout. It strikes like a blow, throwing the enemy on the ground. In the story â&#x20AC;&#x153;The City Coat of Armsâ&#x20AC;?

Kafka describes a city, whose inhabitants are mired in destructive wars, and who forget about the construction of the tower, the main purpose of its existence. A giant fist on the emblem serves as a warning to them that one day it will fall upon them and destroy the city, punishing the inhabitants for inaction. Historical defeat - forgetfulness of purpose, betrayal of truth. Hence, being associated with oblivion, defeat is rooted in the past. Only there it is possible. We do not suffer defeat, we who live here and now, but our predecessors, generations who lived before us do.

Every time, recognizing our own defeat, we inflict a powerful blow on our predecessors, helping their winners. Therefore, our task - regardless of anything, is not to admit defeat. This is the key to a historic victory, which is non-defeat. This also means that historical victory is inextricably linked with the past. Revenge, a thirst for revenge, resentment have nothing to do with it, because they belong entirely to the present. We keep our account in history. Going to the demonstration in defense of migrants, we continue the fight in the Warsaw ghetto, joining the trade union, we join the general strike of 1905, and by raising tents in the streets of our cities, we are defending the Paris Commune. We fail in our ways, make mistakes, but we do not give up.

Poster no. VIII from the series “On the Concept of History”. By Haim Sokol.

English translation:

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency.

Page 70 / September 2017

Garden-City Nothing blooms in the sand or between pavements, except words.

Jaques Derrida. Writing and Difference, 1967

If this is so, we will plow the asphalt and sow it with letters. Our words will spread around the city like poplar fluff. We’ll open the windows wide. And our feelings will cease to break on the glass monitors. They will again nest in the shady crowns of trees. But for now we will save the seed letters in the alphabets. Our children will grow a garden city. We must win for them our right to this city. For this we need to return to the Gutenberg press. But only to remove the capital letters and cast bullets out of them.

Occupy “Do not demand anything, occupy everything!”. This is the psychology of the virus.

The motto of a bare life. In it, all the weakness of contemporary art. Why do we need everything, if we do not want anything? Or we want, but do not demand? We are already everywhere, and we are silent. And how can we occupy what is rightfully ours? Our streets, our freedom, our future? They can only be defended or won.

Because our cities have long been captured.

Occupy - what fascinated us with this word? A ringing diphthong or an iron taste of militarism? Why are we so careless in our choice of words? And if we have already opened a dictionary of war, why do not we find other words there - for example, résistance or partisans? The sound of metal can also be heard in the combination of “-an” sounds. But this is the ringing of the alarm, it is the blow of the iron pipe into the rail. Why are we so unconscious? Maybe because the iPad cannot be brushed against the grain. But the revolution is not done with the iPad in hand.

“Do not demand anything” - why do we start all the slogans and end up with nothing? Why this shyness? Our will has become entangled in social networks. We are afraid to legitimize power by making demands on it. But who said that you need to make demands that the authorities are able to fulfill?

In Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, one of the witnesses, a former prisoner of Auschwitz and a member of the underground, tells the following story. The German prisoners who headed the underground were against the uprising and fought for an overall improvement in conditions in the camps. To some extent they succeeded.

Conditions have become slightly better, mortality has decreased. But a decrease in the death rate caused a shortage of space. Therefore, upon arrival in the camp, whole echelons of people were, without discrimination, without selection, sending no one to work, sent directly to the gas chambers. Only an uprising could have stopped

Page 71 / September 2017

the machine of death, something which never happened in Auschwitz. We have a chance to fix something. It does not matter that more than eighty years have passed since then. People, time, life have changed. But for us there is still an actual choice the struggle for better conditions or insurrection?

Pity We have forgotten what solidarity is. All we have left is pity. Rejecting politics and history, we have condemned ourselves to loneliness. Pity is the lot of the lonely, a refuge for the lonely. Pity is in essence an emotion, and as such is predominately private. A collective feeling of pity sounds like nonsense. To pity, to feed, to blame.

Who? It does not matter! For pity you merely need an object in the accusative case.

In Hebrew, the word “rachamim”, meaning pity or compassion, is the plural form of “racham”, meaning womb or uterus (the plural, however, emphasizes the capacity for this emotion in both parents). To pity someone is to treat them as a parent would treat a child, as a superior would treat a subordinate, as the strong would treat the weak. Pity always lives in the here and now. It does not know the past.

The dead are not pitied. In the best case scenario, they are mourned. So a world filled with pity is also a world filled with evil. Pity, especially self-pity, is always subservient to evil.

Presentiment Historical events do not have directors.

Osip Mandelstam

A premonition is a visit the day before. This state is between anxiety and expectation. Experience the future experience, knowledge to knowledge. Presentiments do not lead us to action. They torture us and often deceive us. But foreboding is the beginning, the promise. If there is pre-feeling, there will be a feeling. This is the first sign of healing from blind-deaf-dumbness. So, perhaps, this is the beginning of a sense of justice, solidarity, a sense of freedom. A premonition eats signs. As the approach of a thunderstorm can be seen before the first appearance of clouds, so future events are felt in the changed walk of people, in the noise of ventilation, in the excitement of puddles, in the alarming trolley call, in the whispers of monuments.

You just have to see, listen, wake up. And, maybe, then the curtain will open in the Theater of History, and we will all go on stage.

Poster no. XIV from the series â&#x20AC;&#x153;On the Concept of Historyâ&#x20AC;?. By Haim Sokol.

English translation:

History is the object of a construction whose place is formed not in homogenous and empty time, but in that which is fulfilled by the here-and-now [ Jetztzeit].

Page 74 / September 2017

Solidarity Solidarity is a state. It has no verb, just like the words “hunger” or “happiness”. Solidarity can only be. But, unlike hunger, this state is open, this is a state of openness.

This is a state of multiplicity. To be solidary is to always be with someone. To be solidary means to be in the instrumental case. But more than “to be with someone”, solidarity means to be someone. There is no “they”, there are “we”. There is no “other”, there is “the same.” “For the real and incredibly difficult task is to find the Same,” wrote Alain Badiou in his Ethics. To be “the same” does not mean to be the same, but to be greater than you. It means being both yourself and the one with whom you are in solidarity. This means that the strike of the overseer’s whip, falling on the slave’s back, leaves a scar on your skin, the flesh of the rapist, who is torturing his victim, tears your organs, the neo-Nazi knife that attacked the migrant, stabs into your heart. And when your comrade is arrested, the iron door slams behind you. But it also means to be the one who is now in battle, on barricades, in demonstrations. This means that at the moment of truth you will rise and loudly say “I’m Spartacus!”. And thousands of voices will echo “I’m Spartacus!”. Solidarity is the roar of an angel of history. And the words “roar” and “speech” come from one root. And if solidarity has connected you to someone in the word “pain”, become a gentle sign to alleviate this pain. But in the word “fury” become the first. Always like this. Solidarity has no statute of limitations. Solidarity knows no death.

Solitude True solitude is not measured by the absence of people around someone. It should not be confused with isolation or seclusion. True solitude is measured by the preposition “instead of ” rather than the adverb “together with”. Thus the degree of solitude is determined by proximity to death. In death solitude is intrinsic and absolute.

Closest to the limit, it is found in experiences that accompany it (death): pain, suffering, illness, torture, as well as giving birth, being in love, or even in dream.

However, solitude is not solely a physical experience. Rather, it is an experience of the body, i.e. a body as a body is always solitary. And so it is not necessary to die or suffer to experience true solitude. It is sufficient for body to remain merely a body, a “bare life.” To achieve that, a person must be formally taken out beyond the borders of life. That is the essence of exclusion. A person condemned to death is extremely alone. The Jews, walking in a line into the nearest forest to be shot, were alone not because no one could or would not save them, but because, legally speaking, they were already dead. The simple act of resurrection would not save them from solitude or bring them back to life. It is necessary to abolish those laws or formalities that took them beyond the borders of life.

Page 75 / September 2017

Urban nomadism (Tents against the Tower of Babel) Revolutionary nomadism of a new type. Not psycho-geography as a movement of loners who used their own subjectivities to study space, but the procession of the masses through the streets as the new Psyche of the city. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A city without a soul is unthinkable,â&#x20AC;? Mandelstam wrote of the revived Petersburg in 1905. The city is dry bones. To revive them, you need to clothe them with flesh, breathe in your breath.

The tent occupies not so much land as air. Many tents - lungs of the city. But we need air not only to breathe. We need it to speak, to shout. We need a new decree on language. Remove all frozen, dumb graphemes! The city is constrained by morphology. Towers are the obstacles that air strikes from our lungs, turning into consonants. But for songs you need vowels. Our squares, our streets and alleys, like our lips, will give them a shape, stretching or curling. And these sounds will breathe new fathoms into petrified root structures.

This text was first published in Russian in: Moscow Art Magazine # 91, 2013.

Translated by Corina L. Apostol.

Poster no. VIIa from the series “On the Concept of History”. By Haim Sokol.

English translation:

In reality, there is not a moment that would not carry with it its revolutionary chance—provided only that it is defined in a specific way, namely as the chance for a completely new resolution of a completely new problem.

Page 78 / September 2017

We, the undersigned artists and critics, lend our support to the call for an Art Strike on Friday, January 20, 2017, the day that Donald Trump will assume the presidency of the United States.

The call reads: #J20 Art Strike An Act of Noncompliance on Inauguration Day. No Work, No School, No Business.

Museums. Galleries. Theaters. Concert Halls. Studios. Nonprofits. Art Schools.

Close For The Day. Hit The Streets. Bring Your Friends. Fight Back.

This call concerns more than the art field. It is made in solidarity with the nation-wide demand that on January 20 and beyond, business should not proceed as usual in any realm. We consider Art Strike to be one tactic among others to combat the normalization of Trumpismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a toxic mix of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, militarism, and oligarchic rule. Like any tactic, it is not an end in itself, but rather an intervention that will ramify into the future. It is not a strike against art, theater, or any other cultural form. It is an invitation to motivate these activities anew, to reimagine these spaces as places where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced.

We address ourselves to the people who make our cultural institutions run on a daily basis, including many of our own friends and colleagues. Those who work at the institutions are divided in multiple and unequal ways, and any action taken must prioritize the voices, needs and concerns of those with the most to lose. However you choose to respond to this call, Art Strike is an occasion for public accountability, an opportunity to affirm and enact the values that our cultural institutions claim to embody.

The disruptions of J20 are just the beginning. They will resonate with the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s March on Washington, D.C. and other cities on January 21, and will stand as beacons of ungovernability as the darkness of the Trump era descends upon us. Let us assemble for the protracted battles that have long been underway, and those on the horizon.

Signatories (list in formation)

Page 79 / September 2017 [Artists] [Critics] [Other] Artists:

Maximiliano Siñani

Leonor Antunes

Sean Snyder

Frances Barth

Jane Kent

Julieta Aranda

Laura Elkins

Monica Sirimarco

Joseph Urbach

Rebecca Weeks

Andrea Blum (Hunter College)

Ryan McNamara

Sheida Soleimani

Nick Nehéz

Nora Griffin

Kate Fauvell

Blake R Baines

Martha Edelheit

Norm Laich

Amy Stienbarger

Ken Ehrlich

Xaviera Simmons

Erin Johnson

Schandra Singh

Noel W. Anderson Allora and Calzadilla Chloe Bass

Mel Bochner

Imani Jacqueline Brown Paul Chan

Eva Mayhabal Davis Liz Deschenes

Ricardo Dominguez Noah Fischer

Benj Gerdes

Meryl Meisler Kate Rhoades Stephi Bones

Andrea Patricia Drechsler Edward Hillel Lauren Stroh

John Miller (Barnard College) Aura Rosenberg

Andrea Fraser

Despina Meimaroglou

Mariam Ghani

Jeff Kasper

Coco Fusco Kyle Goen

Hans Haacke

Rachel Harrison Sharon Hayes Joan Jonas

Silvia Kolbowski Barbara Kruger Louise Lawler Simon Leung

Simone Leigh Nick Mauss

Julie Mehretu

Marilyn Minter

Naeem Mohaiemen Tavia Nyong’o

Lorraine O’Grady Ken Okiishi

Trevor Paglen

RH Quaytman Walid Raad

Yvonne Rainer

Shellyne Rodriguez Cameron Rowland Marz Saffore Dread Scott

Richard Serra

Cindy Sherman

Gregory Sholette Amy Sillman

Cassie Thornton

Caroline Woolard Anton Vidokle Betty Yu

Or Zublasky Jamie Bee

Tina Dillman

Nada Gordon

Tamara Gayer Annie Felix

Anne Senstad Jordan Weber

Cheyney Thompson Eileen Quinlan

Aliza Augustine

Nika Radic

Priyanka Dasgupta

Lui Shtini

Nancy White

Janet Ballweg

Justin Brice Guariglia

Michael Tan

Pete Driessen

Jan Hashey

Moyra Davey

Mimi Bai

EIDIA, Paul Lamarre, Dara Birnbaum Melissa P. Wolf Shelly Silver

Sandie Lee Butler

Irving Petlin

Vázquez

Katie Commodore

Rocio Rodriguez

Kate Millett

Justin James Reed

Peter Reginato

Anita Thacher

Carlos Motta

Natalia V. Miranda Hope Sandrow

Gerard & Kelly Daryl Chin

Marilyn Holsing

Ralph Lemon

Jennifer Riley, Stronger Together

Donald Moffett

LJ Roberts

Nathlie Provosty Lewis Holman Jill Levine

Laura Neuman

Tauba Auerbach Kaila Howell

Nicole Kempskie Morgan Ritter

Or Zubalsky

Kelly Kaiser Clingman

Drea Howenstein

Aleksa Mara

Paula Stuttman

ED Sontag

Cheryl Gross

Adriana Varella

Carole Feuerman

MOSCO UNO

Lauren Gibbons Roll

Raquel Vasquez

Melanie Flood

Adam Broomberg

Natalie Bookchin

Jose Urbach

Yorgos Maraziotis

Jp Murphy

Ben Wood

Quintan Ana Wikswo

Alicia Chester

Judith Barry

Qiana Mestrich

Eli Thorne

Carolee Schneemann

Ryan Vahey

Jayne H. Baum

Eliane Lima

Sam Lewitt

Marketa Klicova

William Greiner

Ross Bleckner

Eva Bauer

Christian Nagler

Renée Stout

Michelle Charles

Alice Valente Alves

Elizabeth Withstandley

Kristine Woods

Hermine Ford

Cathy Meier Asher

Adam Gildar

Peter Rostovsky

Joyce Conlon

Conn Ryder

Diane Kaganova

A Yeatts Perry

Dominic Gora

Kerry Skarbakka

Chris Collins

Jane Black

Silviana Agostini

Christian Xatrec

Talib Fuegoverde

Otari Oliva Baudze

Gelare Khoshgozaran Martha Wilson Allison Sommers Alli Miller

Lis Brenner

Edith Beaucage

Michelle Mayer

Ken Ehrlich

Liz Cohen

Chris Garofalo

Eric Baden

Kenneth Goldsmith (ubuweb)

Virginia Maksymowicz

Carie Lassman Diane Thodos

Alexandra Leon Frank Johnson

Tania Bruguera John Pietaro

Jennifer Rohn Kim Power

Jochen Gerz

Holly Miller

Karen Donnellan Sarah Blood

Mimi Lauducci

Richard Williams Jean Shin

Daniel Temkin

Stanley Greenberg

Abou Farman Farmanian (The New School) Jon Hendricks

Katherine Jackson Lewis Koch

Catherine Lee David Maisel

Amanda Mean Anke Mellin Gayil Nalls

Lucy Sexton

Lilla LoCurto/Bill Outcault

Ben Peterson

Thomas Rose

Drew Heitzler

Roland Schoeny

Liz Crossley

Ian Alan Paul

Jennifer Crescuillo

Shelley Sacks

Paul Soulellis Valarie Carey

Mark Rutkoski Kevin Noble

Soreyda Benedit-Begley

John Willenbecher Devin Cherubini Joyce Kozloff

Erik Moskowitz

Avram Finkelstein Otto Berchem

Ann B. Murphy David Diao

Ulrike Müller

Jean Carlomusto Red Hammond Joan Scherman

Alejandro Figueredo Díaz-Perera

Jeffrey Hargrave

Corban Walker

Helen Hill

Hope Tucker

Christian Nagler

Paul-Felix Montez

Adam Broomberg

Ryan Decker

Ken Knowlton

Christine Marmé Thompson

Ruth Sergel

Jeanne Hilary

William Inhand

Raphael Fenton-Spaid

Abigail Levine

LOUDER THAN WORDS (S.A. Bachman+Neda Moridpour)

Ethan Rafal

Marina Berio

Dawn Cerny

Maritza Perez

Duncan House

Kate Pruitt

Vincent Zepp

Larry Camp

Dave Loewenstein

Danica Phelps

Simona Aru

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung Paul Mpagi Sepuya (Yale School of Art) Nurhan Gokturk Aliza Shvarts Gloria Deitcher Jonah Groeneboer Claudia Hart Michael Grieve Deirdre Donohue Heywood Damian Lopez Jablowme Alexandria Hafner Joy Episalla (New Orleans) Nancy Grossman Cecilia Mazzocchio James W. Hubbard Lukaza BranZachary Skinner fman-Verissimo Terry Ensor Jo Longhurst Kara Davey

Arias Alea

Andy Miller

Thomas Hirschhorn

Carrie Schneider

Marlene McCarty

Kay Rosen

Myles Beecher-Pimental

Michael Kelly Williams

Eero Hagen C.T. Jasper

Yoni Zonzein

Irene Christensen

Wynne Greenwood Perry Bard

Tom Kalin

Cindy Shih

Lucretia Knapp

Jessie Stead Cindy Shih

Elena Harvey Collins

Stephen Barker Ardele Lister Colin Self

Day Gleeson

Daniela Uremv

Larry Camp

Halsey Rodman

Stephen Truax

Jon Kessler

Tom Goodman

Pamela Klein (Parsons School of Design)

Inbal Amit-Palom- Jane Reiter Susan Fenton bo Jessica O’Hara-Baker

Bernadette Walong-Sene

Johnna Arnold Blake Russell

Polly Apfelbaum Patricia Manos

Cassie Machado Tom Judd

Ambre Kelly

Amanda Friedman David Grubbs

DeeDee Halleck

Karyn Olivier

Reza Nejati-Namin

Adejoke Tugbiyele Jane Weinstock David Maes Gallegos

Robert Yasuda C.T. Jasper

Luba Drozd Leslie Fry

Michelle Leftheris Cheryl Yun

Chris Anthony

Gregory Steel

Gay Isber

David Dempewolf

Marcela Pardo Ariza

Laurie Simmons

Ricardo Miranda Zuniga

Occupy Museums

Alexander GoughSchnapp

Rebecca Hayes

Anna Palma

Kelly Correll Brown Tal Beery

Stanley Greenberg Carolyn Janssen Charles Atlas Anna Dibble

Marilyn Kirsch Andy Nasisse

Amanda Pratt Emily Coates Thomas Cole

Dayna Reggero, Climate Listening Project

Carrie Moyer Merav Tzur

Nancy Lu Rosenheim Julie E. Pincus Ilich Castillo

Melinda Ring

WRRQ Collective Jill Galarneau A.L. Steiner

Vivian Bower

Clark Heldman Vera Lutter

Caitlin Parker

Tamara Albu (Parsons School of Design)

Larry Spaid

Lynn Willscher

Stuart Rome

Katherine Walz Donald E. Camp Elyse Harary

Anthony Viti Pedro Lujan M Berkman

Sharon Church Jason Andrew Turner

Gregg Bordowitz

Geof Oppenheimer Oliver Ressler

Carole Herwig

Marsea Goldberg Robert Fischer Jon Kessler

Guy Mannes-Abbott

Stanley McCleave Mika Tajima

Joan Semmel

Dmitri Hertz

Nancy Grossman Jennifer Parker (UC Santa Cruz)

Jody Pinto (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) Conor McGrady

Nancy Grossman Todd Ayoung Diana Kurz

Natalia de Campos Hope Martin

Jane Hugentober Marcella Vanzo

Lina Pallotta

Mark Mulroney

Rebecca Laine Graham

Lisa Corinne Davis

Brian Block

Emily Roysdon

Harold Batista

PaulaWinokur

Renée Monrose Todd Ayoung

Gayle Marie Weitz

Page 80 / September 2017

Lilla LoCurto

Nancy Rourke

Jaleh Mansoor (UBC)

Cara Benedetto

Laurence Bach

James Meyer

Becky Rosen

Mara Goldberg Rikki Reich

Olivia Booth

Gloria Tanchelev Jennifer Monson

Yates McKee

Joan Copjec (Brown University)

Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU)

Craig Saper

Anna Dumont (Northwestern)

Iva Radivojevic

STEFAN ONE EINS H UNO

Ana Ratner

Mikael Levin

Robert G. Edelman

Lily layman

Will Sloane

Gran Fury

Barbara Friedman

William Wilkins

Sophia Friedman-Pappas

Randall Koch

Steven Nelson (UCLA) Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard) Molly Nesbit (Vassar) Mignon Nixon Ann Reynolds (UT Susan Bielstein Austin) Judith Rodenbeck (UC Natalia V. Miranda (Sorbonne University/ Riverside) Harvard University) Andrew Ross (NYU) A. Joan Saab Barry Schwabsky Katherine Mills Stephen Squibb Serge Guilbaut Claire Tancons Patricia Manos Hrag Vartanian Joseph Tanke (UniverAndrew Weiner (NYU) sity of Hawaii) Brian Kuan Wood Eunice Williams

Luciana Proaño

Eunice Golden Patrick Scheid

Benjamin Young

Sherry Millner Phillip Chen

Kimchi Hoang

Elke Solomon

Kent Roberts

Melissa Louise

Nathan Gwynne

Shan Shan Sheng

Jessi Li

Yona Backer

Jody Pinto

Marcy Rosenblat

Tryn Collins

Jenny Lynn McNutt Susan S. Bank Joni Wehrli

Theresa Ann Panica Matthew Langley Zachary Leener Beau Johnson Cora Cohen

Charles Clough

Sonia Louise Davis Stephen Pusey

M.J. Anderson Sam Fein

Kendra Portier Goran Maric

Alice Zinnes

Critics:

Beth Biderman

Negar Azimi

Marcia G. Yerman Victoria Lesser

Matthew Friday Kenneth Burg

Dean P. Paradis

Walter Weissman Nancy Haynes Lisa Karrer

Chris Dashke

The Rev. Mr. Jeremy Grizzle Diego Contreras Novoa Kelly King Lfader

Barbara E Gruber Iman Issa

William Villalongo Lisa Hoke

Michael Asbill Mary Ziegler

Hilton Als

George Baker (UCLA)

Yve-Alain Bois (Institute for Advanced Study) Julia Bryan-Wilson (UC Berkeley) Benjamin Buchloh (Harvard) Harry Burke

Johanna Burton Douglas Crimp (Rochester) Ben Davis

Soyoung Yoon (New School) Saisha Grayson

Rebecca Zorach (Northwestern)

Seth Kim-Cohen (Art Institute of Chicago) Saul Ostrow

Nizan Shaked (CSU TJ Demos (UC Santa Long Beach) Cruz) Daniel Sherer (Yale Rosalyn Deutsche (Barnard)

Darby English (University of Chicago) Hannah Feldman (Northwestern)

Clara Chapin Hess Diane Pieri

Johanna Bartelt Fette Sans

Katharine Dodge Michele Pred

Suzanne Hudson (USC)

Nicolas Linnert Ann duCille

Mary Pat Brady Libby Rosof

David Turturo Kim Bobier

Robert Brennan Kristin Poor

Edward Vazquez

Lily Tuck

Diane Burkov Marga- Hal Foster (Princeton) Russet Lederman Erina Duganne (Texas ret Morton Jennifer Gonzalez State University) (UC Santa Cruz) Kathy Muehlemann Chloe Wyma Megan Heuer Jim Muehlemann John P. Bowles (UNC-Chapel Hill)

David Joselit (CUNY Peter Christensen Graduate Center) Julia Robinson Chris Kraus

Saskia Verkiel

Lucy Lippard

Bettina Funcke

Pamela Lee (Stanford) Ed Halter

Michael Betancourt Barbara Braun Alexander Provan Tish Evangelista, Maurice Jackson

Lizzie Homersham Bob Nickas

Max Boersma

Susanne Rosen Other:

Amy Taubin (SVA) Catherine Lord Julia Robinson

Matvei Yankelevich

Joan Copjec (Brown University) Robert C. Rust

Karen Corrigan Daniel Daley

April Durham

Kaira Cabañas Miwon Kwon

Marina Urbach, Curator

Lisa Reznik, Filmmaker

Barbara Krulik, Curator

Myriam Erdely, Beth Handler Riebe, Art Advisor & Appraiser Curator Raúl Zamudio, Elise Armani, Curator Curator Designer

Amy Scholder, Editor

Sophie Keir, Curator

Jeppe Ugelvig

Rick Heintz

Bean Gilsdorf

Henri ZERNER (Harvard)

Alexander and Bonin

School of Architecture) Corinna Kirsch Octavio Zaya

Cole Scanlon

Eve Schillo, Curator

Douglas Alden, Ludovica Pellegatta, Author Curator Thea Westreich Wagner, Collector/ Marcus Werner Publisher Hed, Filmmaker

Kenneth White

Maria Gough

Julian Myers-Szupinska Rob Slifkin (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU) Joel Neville Anderson (University of Roches- Amy Sara Carroll ter, Japan Society) Jiangtao (Harry) Gu Leanne Stella Fred Bohrer Innessa Levkova-Lamm Trevor Stark Elsabé Dixon Martha Gever Sarah K. Rich Nancy DemerDiane Thodos dash-Fatemi Philip Tan Christina Crosby Melissa Gronlund

Ernest Larsen

Richard Michael Working Artists and Weisman, Typogthe Greater Econo- rapher my (W.A.G.E.) Valerie Klyman-Clark, Cook Stephanie Snyder, Curator (Reed Abigail Christenson, College Gallery) Curator

Branden W. Joseph Virginia Solomon (Uni- (Columbia) versity of Memphis) Faheem Haider Marc Herbst Maria Gough (HarRachel Churner vard) Tirza Latimer (Califor- Timothy Patrick nia College of the Arts) McCarthy

Kerry Doran

William H Outcault Paddy Johnson, Curator Mostafa Heddaya

Anthony Huberman, Curator Louky and Bart Keijsers Koning (LMAKgallery), Curator

Myriam Vanneschi, Lauren Kelly Curator Edmund Cardoni (Hallwalls ContemRebecca Uchill, porary Art Center) Curator & Art Historian Éric Aubertin Maxwell Graham Alejandro Jassan (ESSEX STREET) Jennifer Gross, Neal Curley (ESPublicist SEX STREET) Eleanor Cayre, Art Thomas Beard, Advisor Curator Colin Thomson, Justin Carter, Curator Musician Susan Backman Joel Sanders, Jamie Harman, Art Architect Advisor Richard Einhorn, Ariel Meyerowitz, Composer Art Advisor Caitlin Gleason, Christian L. Frock Education and Development at The (CCA Center for Art + Public Life) Kitchen Natalia Mount (Pro Geoff Kaplan, Arts) Graphic Designer

Rattanamol Singh Johal, Art Historian & Curator Bobby Rainwater, Curator

Tanja Wagner (Galerie Tanja Wagner)

Alexandra S. Rockelmann (ROCKELMANN &) Monica Espinel, Curator

Lenore Metrick-Chen, Curator Cathleen Miller, Curator

Whitney Independent Study Program 2016-2017 Steven Henry Madoff, Curator

MA Curatorial Practice, School of Visual Arts Michelle Lauren Kim, Art History Undergraduate Student Zeena Parkins, Composer

Leah Pires, Curator Thomas J. Lax, Curator David Bemis, Filmmaker

Brooke Garber Neidich, Trustee

Hillary Geller, Designer

Shelley Young, Monika Szczukow- Editor ska (Nika Kowska), FASHION MODA Curator Juergen Riehm, Jesús Fuenmayor, Architect Curator Marcia Lausen, Nicole Pulichene, Designer Art History GraduJeanine Jablonski ate Student (Fourteen30 ConLaura Braverman, temporary) Art History GraduXuxa Rodriguez, ate Student PhD Candidate Fritz Dietl, Art Hirsch & Associates Services Susanna Singer, Art Red Wedge

Eva Rado

Joseph Tanke, Philosopher of Art

Natalia Mount

Katie Hood Morgan, Curator Peter Kruty, Fine Art Printer Claudia Mueller, Journalist

Mary Evangelista, Curator Jocelyn Miller, Curator

Anna Pettersson, Librarian Camilla Lu, Scientist

Agent

Courtney Fink (Common Field)

Yu Yeon Kim, Curator Rachel Steinberg (SOHO20), Curator

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Art Workers, Art Strikes and Collective Actions Corina L. Apostol

In 1974, the late artist Gustave Metzger, well-known for his auto-destructive art, urged his peers to join him in a three year art strike between 1977 and 1980. His action has endured in the history of art as one of the most powerful, albeit paradoxical rallying call for artists to stop making art. In his manifesto he urged his peers not to produce art, sell their work, participate in exhibition, and in general to withdraw from taking part in the art world machine: To bring down the art system it is necessary to call for years without art, a period of three years - 1977 to 1980 - when artists will not produce work, sell work, permit work to go on exhibitions, and refuse collaboration with any part of the publicity machinery of the art world. This total withdrawal of labor is the most extreme collective challenge that artists can make to the state. The years without art will see the collapse of many private galleries. Museums and cultural institutions handling contemporary art will be severely hit, suffer loss of funds, and will have to reduce their staff. National and local government institutions will be in serious trouble. Art magazines will fold. The international ramifications of the dealer/museum/publicity complex make for vulnerability; it is a system that is keyed to a continuous juggling of artists, finance, works and information - damage one part, and the effect is felt world-wide.1 Metzger’s statement was written for the catalogue of the exhibition “Art into Society/Society into Art: Seven German Artists” at the London Institute of Contemporary Art. Metzger stated he decided to participate in the exhibition only after pressure from the curators, as he became critical of being subsumed by the capitalist art world. The artist’s strike proposal was understood as utopian by his peers and the art strike did not bring about the cessation of all artistic work. Metzger was the only artist who took it up for the entire three years. In his later writings however, he also emphasized a productive aspect of the strike, that of creating a critical understanding of the artist’s practice and theory production. Metzger’s call for strike was not simply about escaping the (art)world, but stemmed from a desire to change it. The question of the politics of art production has also been put under scrutiny

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John Cox (author of photography), Gustav Metzger practicing for a public demonstration of auto-destructive art using acid on nylon, 1960.

by art workers coalitions, syndicates and communes since at least the nineteenth century. Some of these self-organized groups argued and criticized, in the form of protests and public interventions, for artists’ rights and the transformation of cultural institutions embedded in power and capital. The emergence of these groups and initiatives occurred at a critical historical junctures, on the backdrop of social movements from around the world. Central to their arguments was an attempt to position the historically reoccurring notion of the “art worker,” in shifting labor relations bound to the production and dissemination of art and culture.

In the second half of the nineteenth century reactionary appeals to an art for art’s sake clashed with principles of an emerging avant-gardism. During the revolutionary period in France, artist Gustave Courbet penned the famous Realist Manifesto (1855),2 immediately after Marx’s famous Communist Manifesto (1848). Those were turbulent times of class and political conflicts, from the moment the working class entered the scene as an autonomous political force to the French workers’

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Charles Soulier. The fallen Vendôme Column, May 1871. From the series Paris Incendié.

brief, yet powerful Commune – which was brutally suppressed by the bourgeoisie.

Courbert’s confidence in the artist’s role in changing society towards a liberated, socialist future were strongly shaped by his participation in the Commune. In 1871 he called on Parisian artists to “assume control of the museums and art collections which, though the property of the nation, are primarily theirs, from the intellectual as well as the material point of view.”3 Courbet’s statement responded to the paradigm shift of the economic framework, wherein the transfer of capital accumulated by capitalist organizations created a new class, the bourgeoisie, whose image was built through the salon culture. Emerging as new spaces for the presentation and enjoyment of bourgeois art, the salons operated autonomously from the church and the monarchy, as powerful, independent entities. Courbet challenged this system and the political classes it upheld through his support for the communards’ removal of the Vendôme Column (a the memorial to Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz in 1805) in 1871, as commissar of culture in the Commune committee. For his role in this event Courbet was heavily fined and imprisoned for half a year. In 1873 it was proposed to re-erect the column (the bronze panels had survived) at a cost of 323,000 francs, which Courbet was to pay off in installments of 10,000 francs a year. Instead he escaped to Switzerland, where he died in 1877. The transformation of the artist’s subjectivity as art worker and activist during the latter half of the 19th century was a landmark moment that continues to define the relationship between art and social movements today. Courbet’s appeal was one of the first instances when artists’ aspiration for social change led them to align themselves with a wider workers’ movement and break with the bourgeois institutions of art and with the monarchy. Transgressing from artistic praxis into political action, artists could be

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Marc Riboud, 1968 Atelier Populaire, Ex-école des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1968.

considered as a counter-power, occupying political functions in a new order, no matter how briefly this lasted.

In the turbulent 1960s and 1970s artists were once more among the first to self-organize, identifying with the workforce under pressure to accept pay cuts, pension cuts and to disband unions. In 1968 France, artists, workers and students, pent up with anger over general poverty, unemployment, the conservative government, and military involvement in Southeast Asia, took to the streets in waves of strikes and demonstrations. Factories and universities were occupied. Atelier Populaire (the Popular Workshop), an arts organization founded by art students and faculty on strike at the École des Beaux Arts in the capital, produced street posters and banners for the revolt that would: “Give concrete support to the great movement of the workers on strike who are occupying their factories in defiance of the Gaullist government.” The material was designed and printed anonymously and distributed freely, held up on barricades, carried in demonstrations, and plastered on walls all over France. The Atelier intended this material not be taken as, “the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action, both on the cultural and the political plane.”4 In their actions, the students were also influenced by ideas presented in the L’Internationale Situationniste, a periodical written by Guy Debord and a groups of

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Left: Anonymous, La Beauté est dans la rue (Beauty is in the streets), May 1968, Bibliothèque Na-

tionale de France. Right: A statement by Lee Lozano, a central figure in 1960s conceptual art and the Art Workers Coalition.

like-minded artists between 1958 and 1969. A key idea was subversiveness. Everything could be subverted: authority and its representatives, of course, be they politicians, parents, trade unions or trendy intellectuals, but also behaviour and art forms. Situationist graffiti scrawled on the Sorbonne walls proclaimed “Ne travaillez jamais” (Never work) and “Il est interdit d’interdire” (It is forbidden to forbid).5 Unlike its predecessor, the 19th century Artists Commune, Atelier Populaire did not seek to become a political power, but functioned as a critical cultural frame around the left-leaning social movement in France at the time. However, they expressed support for several positive objectives: self-management by workers, a decentralization of economic and political power and participatory democracy at the grass roots. They sought to resist the absorption of any and all critical ideas or movements under a contemporary capitalism, which was capable of bending them to its own advantage. Hence, the need for provocative shock tactics. “Be realistic: Demand the impossible!” was one of the May movement’s slogans.

In 1969, a turbulent socio-political global climate, an international group of artists and critics formed the Art Workers’ Coalition in New York. Hundreds of artists who self-identified as art workers participated in the AWC’s open meetings.

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The Art Strike on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 22, 1970. Robert Morris and Poppy Johnson, strike co-chairs, at right, debate museum vice-director Joseph Noble, at left beside striking artist Art Coppedge. Photo by Jan van Raay.

Perhaps the most radical form of refusal that coincided with the formation and agitation of the AWC was General Strike Piece by Lee Lozano. In a statement read during the AWC’s meeting in April, Lozano declared herself in excess of the limits of the “art worker” identity, identifying herself as an “art dreamer” who would “participate only in a total revolution simultaneously personal and public.”

As curator Helen Molesworth pointed out, her “word pieces” inverted the artist’s role of attending their gaze upon the art object and instead “train(ed) her attention on the public and private functions of herself as an artist.”6 Beginning with Dialogue Piece, Lozano laid a foundation for moving away from the problem of the art as a commodity, not purely by the “dematerialization” of art, but by the flight of the artists themselves. With 1969’s General Strike Piece, Lozano began exiting the art world by refusing to attend “uptown functions” be they openings, parties at museums and galleries, screenings, concerts or any other “gatherings related to the art world,” while simultaneously initiating a “boycott of women” which resulted in her leaving New York for a life of relative isolation in Dallas where she continued to refuse any interaction with either the art world or any woman in public life.

Molesworth, who describes this double refusal as “consummately idealistic” and “utterly pathological” (respectively) recognizes both things being refused, capitalism and patriarchy, as “incredibly powerful parameters of identity... systems with rules and logics that are public with personal effects.”

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On May 15th, 1970, Robert Morris, a well known sculptor and conceptual artist, closed his solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum stating: “This act of closing ...a cultural institution is intended to underscore the need I and others feel to shift priorities at this time from art making and viewing to unified action within the art community against the intensifying conditions of repression, war and racism in this country.”

Morris’s exhibition took place at an especially charged moment in American history: the Whitney show opened, the United States bombed Cambodia, the National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent State, and, in a highly publicized confrontation, New York City construction workers attacked antiwar protesters. Morris decision to shut down his show two weeks early in a self-declared strike stemmed from debates about art labor and laborers in the United States.7 It inspired a city wide day of action undertaken by the AWC: “The New York Art Strike against Racism, War and Repression.” In the spring of 1970, artists felt that their collective organizing as art workers offered a platform for major change, as vital reconsiderations regarding the valuation of artistic labor were being debated. The Art Workers’ Coalition was formed in 1969 to debate questions about museum policy and leftist politics. It became a powerful organization through which New York artists voiced their discontent with institutionalization, gender bias, and the art world’s stance on the Vietnam War. The war became a focus and rallying point, and the Museum of Modern Art in particular increasingly came under fire because of the members of its board of trustees and their economic connections to industries that profited from the war. The group presented the museum a list of demands: subsidies for universal employment, rather than support from private capital from wealthy patrons,8 the introduction of a royalties system by which collectors had to pay artists a percentage of their profits from resale, for the creation of a trust fund for living artists, and that all museums should be open for free at all times, and that their opening hours should accommodate the working classes.

They also demanded that art institutions make exhibition space available for women, minorities and artists with no gallery representing them. In 1970 the AWC formed an alliance with MoMA’s Staff Association and by working simultaneously from both inside and outside the institution, they established PASTA (The Professional and Administrative Staff Association). This was one of the most significant unions of art workers in the United States, as it joined together the interest of artist with those in similarly precarious conditions who are involved in different aspects of artistic production.9 Although the Art Workers Coalition folded after three years of intense activities, their legacy endured.

In February 1979, two years after Metzger’s unanswered call for an art strike, Goran Đorđević mailed a circular asking a variety of Yugoslavian and English-speaking artists if they would take part in an International Art Strike to protest against repression and the fact that artists were alienated from the fruits of their labor.10 Đorđević received forty replies, the majority of which expressed doubts about the possibility of putting the International Art Strike into practice. Because so few artists were prepared to pledge their support, Đorđević abandoned his plan for an International Art Strike.

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Art Strike Action Committee, Cover of the Journal Yawn, 1991

British artist Stewart Home’s Art Strike of 1990–1993 was inspired by the language of Gustav Metzger’s and Goran Đorđević’s proposal and its importance as a symbolic gesture, due, in part, to its embrace of the absurd.11 This Art Strike was a stand against capitalism’s ability to recuperate any image or action, yet, instead of targeting the institutions of art as the main perpetrators, Home looked to artists themselves for their complicity in their own economic manipulation and co-optation. The journal YAWN, co-published by Art Strike Action Committee centers in San Francisco, London, and Iowa City, among other locations, launched its first issue in September 1989. Home’s manifesto, contained within, declared: “We call this Art Strike in order to make explicit the political and ethical motivations for this attempted large-scale manipulation of alleged ‘esthetic’ objects and relationships…to connote and encourage active rather than passive engagement with the issues at hand.” Each subsequent issue was filled with the similarly assertive language of his manifesto, and all images and texts produced in support of the Art Strike were of an explicitly propagandistic nature. The arguments presented around the demonstration’s concept, however, were intentionally inconsistent and contradictory. As suggested in the preceding quote, the active engagement of Home’s Art Strike is not a withdrawal at all. In fact, Home continued to create artwork during the period of the strike under the pseudonyms of Karen Eliot and Monty Cantsin, thereby challenging the privileging of a singular author in the production of art,

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and the celebrity status that this enables.12 Home was interested “not in the prospect of the art world collapsing” but, like Metzger, in the effect the strike might have on his and other artists’ “identity.”

I will now return to the concept of the art worker and its historical associations with the left, exploring the class contradictions inherent in this form of artistic subjectivity.

I explore the affinities between twentieth century avant-gardes and the organized left, and their continuing legacy in the present, given economic and political changes. Between calls for non-participation and withdrawal, on the one hand, at to create new art worlds on the other, today’s art workers are seeking to affect social transformation in myriad ways and through various ideas about what this entails. These efforts can be enriched by a renewed understanding of the past endeavors as important consciousness raising experiences and models for organizations.

In May 2012, the self-organized Citizen Forum for Contemporary Arts (Obywatelskie Forum Sztuki Współczesnej - OFSW), staged a one-day art strike – a day without arts and culture.13 The aim of the strike was to influence the public discussion of cultural matters, including the symbolic and political, but also economical place of artists and cultural producers within the public sphere and social hierarchies. Around the same time, a proposed change to tax law meaning a reduction or elimination of a flat-rate allowance to reclaim up to fifty percent of costs from revenue on contracts was announced. Such a change would further harm the majority of artists and cultural producers who are often reliant on commission contracts and need to then recoup the costs of their production, materials, etc. This provided further impetus for the OFSW action. ‘The day without art’, the first to ever take place in Poland, followed the aforementioned well established, if sporadically enacted and relatively little-known tradition of artists’ refusal of work. Such actions attempted to disrupt the role and position of artists themselves, or to address issues in the cultural economy and creative industries in more general terms. Most recently, in 2012, the London-based Precarious Workers Brigade14, a group organizing for several years around the issue of precarity within cultural and creative work, called for a Cultural Workers Walkout, in solidarity with other casual and public sector workers taking part in a national strike the same day. The Polish art strike was, by all accounts, quite a small and seemingly insignificant event, relatively speaking. A number of galleries and institutions did however express solidarity, and some did indeed close their doors for the day, in addition to a handful of protesting OFSW members, some bystanders, and one banner. In terms of media coverage or turnout it certainly did not stand out amongst demonstrations and strike actions staged that year by workers in other sectors. However, the strike did kick-start a non-going debate about cultural and artistic production in Poland.

It brought, once and for all, the often-invisible working conditions in the arts and culture into the public domain. Most importantly, it cemented the credentials of the autonomous, horizontally organized OFSW as an effective and credible model for artists and cultural producers to represent themselves and each other in a field that is unstable, mostly reliant on decreasing amounts of public funding, and characterized by increasing levels of competition and individualism.

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This first public action of OFSW not only brought the economic conditions of artistic and cultural work into open discussion, but also into the streets of Warsaw, where contemporaneous protests, be it by nurses or taxi drivers, were taking place.

Thus, not only were their often obscured working conditions and labour made visible, but also the ideological distance between the labour of artists and cultural producers, and that of workers in general, was dramatically reduced. Artists and cultural producers on contingent, casual and temporary contracts, without health insurance or pensions, increasingly without the ability to own a home or afford the mortgage and burdened with debt, are, in terms of employment law and economic survival, often leading the way for workers in other sectors. Therefore, when some twisted joke on the original mission of the art avant-garde casts artists are new models of employment in an increasingly deregulated, neoliberal job market, an erasure of the ideological gap between art and labour, and the dismantling of the myth of artistic genius could be an important political strategy.

OFSW joined forces with the trade union movement, or rather, one of the new unions, the recently formed Inicjatywa Pracownicza (IP/ Workers’ Initiative), which began in 2001 as a continuation of various self-organized grassroots and anarcho-syndicalist groups active mainly in and around Poznan. In 2004 it became an officially recognized union. IP was formed as a reaction to the crisis of Poland’s official union movement–its bureaucracy, passivity and links with the antisocial and anti-worker governments – but also as a union that recognizes new forms of employment and contracts not recognized by traditional unions, also paying attention to specific issues concerning female and migrant labour. IP allows for the formation

Citizen Forum for ContemporaryArts / OFSW, Strike - Call for the government to negotiate with artists, 2012.

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of autonomous collegial commissions that can then support workers on casual contracts, or those who are self-employed. To date, the biggest success of the commission has been with regard to the issue of guaranteed minimum fees for artists.

In February 2014 four institutions—Art Museum, Łodz, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta National Art Gallery, Warsaw and Arsenał Gallery, Poznan— signed an official agreement regarding such fees. A further five institutions pledged to sign the agreement as well. While this leaves artists in Poland far off the relative security of other countries’ models, for instance the German system of social insurance for artists, or organizational models, such as the Scottish Artist Union, the commission is definitely a first step towards some more concrete solutions. The formation of such a group, in a sector so heavily reliant on competition and individualism as the art world, and where even a few years ago it would have seemed scarcely achievable, can be counted as a success in itself.

Art workers’ groups and collectives have for the last few years moved towards thinking more critically in the direction of how this system could be transformed, and meaningful ways of engagement in the art world today. What does it mean to re-claim the institutional space, to disrupt the business as usual of auction houses, big galleries, or even take over corrupt state institutions in the long term? What kind of artistic education exists outside the private academia, and can it create real social alternatives and ways of thinking and doing an engaged art, opening the possibilities for resistant political subjectivities? Similarly as it is the case of post-Occupy era activists who grapple with common issues of the ephemerality of their actions when transforming public spaces in cities across the globe, so do present-day art workers strive towards finding depth-reaching strategies to transform culture and society. It seems ever more important then to insist on the yet not consolidated openings and alternatives engendered by the social movements of the past few years, in which art and culture played important roles.

My aim in this text has been to chart different strategies of art workers whose ideas and visual languages go against the grain of the usual aesthetics and discourses. Emphasizing the international character of a growing resistance calling for a different way of making art, running institutions and therefore doing politics, these art workers translate their aspirations into a renewed cycle of struggles. Finally, my research may serve as a tool for connecting and mapping different active groups and initiatives, which do not necessarily come together into a composite solution to all problems. Rather, much is to be learned from areas of overlap and tension between ways of organizing, alternative economies and alternative art production, and cultural and political ties between different groups and sectors of the present-day artistic working class. We can then begin think through coordinating these struggles, and perhaps even how an international union of art workers could function.

While there is more awareness of these activist initiatives around the world, many art workers’ struggles continue to be local/regional and remain atomized. We must continue to act and imagine a larger, international union or coalition that can offer resistance and solidarity.

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Corina L. Apostol is a Mellon Editorial Fellow at Creative Time, where she plans the publication of an ex-

citing book on socially engaged art from the last decade. Previously, she was a Dodge Curatorial Fellow at the Zimmerli Art Museum. She has also organized exhibitions on art and social engagement at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and the Newark Arts Council. Corina obtained her Ph.D. at Rutgers, The

State University of New Jersey. She is the co-founder of the activist art and publishing collective ArtLeaks, and co-editor of the ArtLeaks Gazette.

References 1 Gustav Metzger, “Art Strike 1977-1980,” Art Into Society, Society Into Art: Seven German Artists - Albrecht D., Joseph Beuys, KP Brehmer, Hans Haacke, Dieter Hacker, Gustav Metzger, Klaus Staeck, Christos M and Norman Rosenthal Eds. (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1974).

2 Gustave Courbet, Realism, Preface to the brochure “Exhibition and sale of forty paintings and four drawings by Gustave Courbet,” 1855, republished in T.J. Clarke, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848–1851, (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society), 1973.

3 Courbet, Gustave. “Letter to artists of Paris, 7 April 1871”. In Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. Petra ten-Doessachte. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1992.

4 Henriette Touillier Feyrabend, “Un discours d’agitation par l’Image: Les affiches de Mai 68,” Ethnologie française, 1983, pg. 251-264.

5 Yves, Pages, “Sorbonne 68.” Graffiti. Documents réunis et présentés par Yves Pagès, (Geneve-Suisse: Editions Verticales, 1998).

6 Helen Molesworth, “Tune in, turn on, drop out: The rejection of Lee Lozano,” Art Journal 61.4, 2002, pg. 64-73.

7 Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Hard Hats and Art Strikes: Robert Morris in 1970,” The Art Bulletin 89.2, 2007, pg. 333-359.

8 For a more detailed history of the Art Workers Coalition, see Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, (Oakland, CA: University of California Press), 2011

9 For a more detailed history of the Art Workers Coalition, see Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, (Oakland, CA: University of California Press), 2011 10 Goran, Đorđević, “International Strike of Artists?,” 3+ 4 (b), 1980, pg. 43-85.

11 Clive Phillpot, “Artists’ magazines: News of the Art Strike, Monty Cantsin, and Karen Eliot.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 11.3, 1992, pg. 137-138.

12 Kirby Olson, “Comedy and Political Identity in the Work of Stewart Home,” Performing Gender, 2014, pg. 167.

13 See the Citizen Forum for ContemporaryArts website: http://forumsztukiwspolczesnej.blogspot. com/, accessed April 2017.

14 See the Precarious Workers’ Brigade website:

https://precariousworkersbrigade.tumblr.com/, accessed April 2017.

Gil Mualem Doron, Artist Strike, or How Close Are We to Bouazizi?

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Previous page: Artist Strike, or How Close Are We to Bouazizi?

An Urban Intervention by Gil Mualem Doron (Canvas, paint stripper, fire, projections), 2011 “On The Fence II”, Jaffa

“On the Fence” was initially an art guerrilla event where local artists and residents took over a major street in Jaffa. Before 1948, Jaffa was the cultural centre of Palestine, after which it was annexed to

Tel Aviv and suffered years of neglect, disinvestment and house demolition. The success of “On the

Fence” prompted the city to incorporate it into Tel-Aviv’s White Night festival. However, while the event was advertised as part of the municipality celebrations, no money was invested in it and the

artists were not even paid for setting it up. Moreover, the White Night festival took place at the same time as the evictions of the street and square occupations by Movement for Social Justice (equivalent to the Occupy movement in Barcelona, London, New York and the Arab Spring).

The Performance Artist Strike, or How Close Are We to Bouazizi? was a critique of this exploit-

ative situation. Originally the event was suppose to be a screening of a documentary film about the Arab-Jewish Jaffa’s camp for social justice but the lack of funding for Arabic subtitles meant the screening was impossible.

Using the language of high art, Jackson Pollock’s action painting, the expensive paint was replaced

by paint stripper, and the strikes left hardly any visible marks – until the paint stripper was set alight

on the canvas. The canvas was signed then not with the name of the artist, nor with Jackson Pollock, but with Sam Pollock, a renowned American labour leader. The work’s subtitle and the use of fire

as painting material also memorializes Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation which sparked the Tunisian revolution and the “Arab Spring” in late 2010.

At the end of the performance, the canvas, now covered with abstract burning marks, was cut into pieces and put on sale.

p.s. Four months after the installation posed the question, “How close are we to Bouazizi?”, the answer came in a demonstration marking the anniversary of the Protest for Social Justice Movement. On July 14, 2012, Moshe Silman, one of the movement’s activists, burned himself to death, in the centre of Tel-Aviv, in front of press cameras.

Gil Mualem Doron (1970 UK) is an artist, researcher and a community facilitator. He is the founder of

SEAS – Socially Engaged Art Salon in Brighton. He works in various media including photography, print, painting and mix media installations. Most of his work is as socially and politically engaged. His work has been exhibited in private and public galleries and museums in the UK, Europe and the Middle East, and several of his works are in private collections. http://a4community.org, https://seasbrighton.com.

Poster by Claudiu Cobilanschi

Poster by Claudiu Cobilanschi

Poster by Claudiu Cobilanschi

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Previous pages: www.kunsthalle.ro, posters by Claudiu Cobilanschi Printed newspapers are an endangered species, while the online media is extremely unstable and can

be altered anytime. Today’s journalistic world lost contact with its audiences. The editorial agenda cannot cover constructive social criticism anymore, which is a part of the partnership based on trust with the citizens. The “house dog of democracy” job is diluted by the acid rain of the private equity.

I decided it is time to do something, to reclaim my share of public space. I realized that the indigna-

tion I felt must find a breach, a way of expressing itself. I designed the first A0 poster and placed it in the middle of the city, in one of the most crowded squares of the central area. I resisted answering to

the opinions of those who praised or cursed me, I answered to all the questions regarding the subject of the poster.

After more than 50 interventions of this kind, it became clearer to me why I started to publish

these political posters and where the boundaries of this gesture are. I discovered that Romania is not

friendly to political posters. These interventions ended up on social networks and, soon enough, I was

contacted by similar intentions from other parts of the world. I learned that it is quite simple to make a poster and that the impact is huge if the subject is in concordance with the public conscience of the moment.

Moving forward with this “pseudo-campaign,” the appearance of the posters started to change. If the first posters tried to copy the first page of a newspaper, as I tried to say more and more things, the

aesthetic aspect of the posters became more simple and accurate, and the aesthetic character ended up losing its importance. The “beauty” of the poster became toxic to its message. The more aestheticized the content, the weaker the response.

I also discovered the portability of poster interventions. They became one of the social and political instruments that I carry in most of my international projects. The poster is a guerilla-media type

instrument that can be printed anywhere. My ambition to transform this “campaign” accompanies me

everywhere I go and it’s my own way of making journalism. Thus, the most important circle of silence in which I was a prisoner broke and became closed in another spiral. If anyone can create a poster, then the idea of public space press is saved and we are able to once again communicate with our neighbors.

Claudiu Cobilanschi works at the boundary between art and the press, using, as a journalist, various media

of expression applied to the unfolding and debate of socio-political themes, and is interested, as an artist, in the analysis and aesthetics of the influences of those themes. He approached favorite topics, like thinking stereo-

types, mass media and ego-casting, immigration and poverty, a.s.o., by using techniques and methods such as

photography & performance, super-8 cine-experiments, guerilla publishing & poster bombing. He has collaborated with institutions from Romania and abroad, like ParadisGaraj Bucharest, Kunsthalle Winterthur,

Salonul de Proiecte Bucharest, Depo Instanbul, Rotwand Gallery, idea.ro, GallleriaPiu Bologna, IG Bildende Kunst Vienna, kunsthalle.ro, Tranzit/Erste, Romanian Cultural Institute, MotorenHalle Dresden, Prototyp Prague, a.s.o.

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Dark Matter Games An Interview with Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder and Noah Fischer by Marco Baravalle (S.a.L.E. Docks)

From 11th - 15th of May 2017, S.a.L.E. Docks (www.saledocks.org), an independent and activist art centre in Venice, hosted the Dark Matter Games (www. darkmattergames.net). The project was co-curated by S.a.L.E. Docks and Workspacebrussels (http://www.workspacebrussels.be/).

Artists, activists and researchers animated a program of interventions in the public space, round-tables and activities that responded to the urgency of focusing on the political economy of the contemporary art system, on the gender issues linked to it (issues of discrimination on one side, but also the emerging of powerful practices against any normativity on the other), on the effect of big art events on the urban space and, last but not least, on the need to create new models of cultural production that are autonomous from the neoliberal logic.

Here we publish the interview Marco Baravalle, a member of S.a.L.E.-Docks, conducted with three Dark Matter Games participants: Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder and Noah Fischer.

Gregory Sholette and Noah Fischer are New York based artists, the former suggested the metaphorical use of the term Dark Matter to describe the functioning of the art world, the latter presented DebtFair, a collective project by Occupy Museums that addresses the effects, the nature and the consequences of debt on the life and work of thousands of U.S. and Puerto Rican artists. The other researcher interviewed is the Polish curator Kuba Szreder, who co-curated the project of the Dark Matter Super Collider (https://www.darkmattergames.net/single-post/2017/04/23/ Give-us-more-reclaiming-creative-surplus-Open-call-to-build-a-dark-matter-super-collider-at-SaLE-Docks-Venice), an open call for the construction of a permanent collection of expressions of dark matter (activist, queer, unconventional...) creativity.

Marco Baravalle: On May 12th, in the context of Dark Matter Games you launched your new book titled Delirium and Resistance. Here you claim that a new cultural economy emerged parallel to a new global political phase within these times of crisis, a phase marked by an apparent rupture with the neoliberal order (you mention both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as examples). You call this cultural economy the â&#x20AC;&#x153;bare art

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photo Greg Sholette.

world”. What do you mean by that and in what way this definition develops your previous reflection about dark matter?

Gregory Sholette: In my 2010 book Dark Matter I addressed the fascination that the arts held for neoliberal enterprise culture, arguing that this attraction was not entirely based on the “imaginative out-of-the-box thinking” or “restless flexibility” of cultural workers, qualities cited by most analysts for capitalism’s cultural turn, but it also involved: the way the art world as an aggregate economy successfully manages its own excessively surplus labor force, extracting value from a redundant majority of “failed” artists who in turn apparently acquiesce to this disciplinary arrangement. There could be no better formula imaginable for capitalism 2.0 as it moves into the new century. 1 Thus extrapolating from, but also not completely agreeing with Boltanksi and Chiapello’s “artistic critique” argument, in which capital appears to assimilate the social and affective aspects of art’s Bohemian-inspired refutation of capital itself, I argued

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instead it was the extraction of value from a large surplus population that drew neoliberalism towards artistic production as much as, or more than any other social factor. 2 This integration of art and capitalism is more than a new and inverted work ethic in other words. It brazenly illustrates capital’s fundamental need for constant expansion, a process analogous to the unfettered compound growth that is inherent to all capitalist forms of economic organization. Simply put, capital, David Harvey writes, requires an ever-expanding output of social labor, “a zero-growth capitalist economy is a logical and exclusionary contradiction. It simply cannot exist. This is why zero growth defines a condition of crisis for capital.”3 But this process also means attempting to integrate the so-called dark matter or archival surplus agency marginalized by the mainstream art world system.

The concept of dark matter creativity focuses on three type of cultural producers with differing relationships to the disciplinary regulation of high art, including: 4 1.) Professionally trained “pre-failed” art students whose academic education most likely emphasized subversive “avant-garde practices,” while in reality preparing them to be part of an apparatus of reproduction in which the majority of artists serve the multi-billion dollar industry as museum-goers, magazine subscribers, art supply consumers, part-time art instructors or as poorly paid gallery assistants, art handlers, fabricators and so forth.

2.) Informal, amateur, “non-professional” zinesters, live action fantasy role-play gamers (LARP), “craftavists” knitters, devotees of Goth, Punk, and Do It Yourself (DIY) sub-cultures, fan filmmakers and cyber-geeks who are engaged with creative practices focused on pleasure, fantasy and networked communalism, and therefore seemingly in conflict with both the career artist as well as the work ethic of capitalism and its markets.

3.) A smaller number of artists and artist groups, both professional and also informal, who explicitly link their artistic practices to radical social or political transformation and therefore have traditionally been positioned at the outermost margins of the mainstream art world, its history and discourse, and most of all its political economy.

These three marginal forces resemble what astrophysicists describe as dark matter (and also dark energy): an gravitational force of unknown makeup that makes up as much as ninety-five percent of the known universe. Without the weight of this “missing mass” the visible cosmos would have dispersed into space long ago. Like its astronomical namesake, creative dark matter can be said to makes up the bulk of the artistic activity that is produced in contemporary societies. However, this type of dark matter is invisible primarily to those who lay claim to the management and interpretation of culture – the critics, art historians, collectors, dealers, museums, curators and arts administrators. It includes makeshift, amateur, informal, unofficial, autonomous, activist, non-institutional, self-organized practices – all work made and circulated in the shadows of the formal art world. Yet, just as the astrophysical

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universe is dependent on its dark matter, so too is the art world dependent on its dark energy. This is a phenomenon sometimes called the “missing mass problem.”5 The question my thesis asks therefore is this: if celestial dark matter is the principal anchor that slows down cosmic expansion, what role then do redundant artistic producers play in stabilizing the art world?

All of these questions are compounded by the current state of the multi-billion dollar art world industry. As the American based artist Caroline Woolard and member of the group bfa.mfa.phd asks with incredulity “What is a work of art in the age of $120,000 art degrees?” 6 Whether or not today post-Fordist capitalism now resembles art, or visa versa, virtually everything we thought we knew about “serious” culture has been peeled away with astonishing force, leaving behind a raw, and in some ways vulnerable thing. Today artists are simply another worker, no more or less. Following Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life we might best describe this new mise en scène as simply “bare art.” It is a new cultural reality in which art’s celebrated autonomy and exceptionality have vanished, and in which artistic production has become fully congruent with the political and economic emergency that marks our contemporaneous present. Claustrophobic, tautological, our bare art world is our bare art world is our bare art world. It emerges in successive and accelerating predicaments that keep pace with capital’s ever-quickening swerves from crisis to crisis. But this does not mean all artists like it, or that all are willing to yield to the harsh realities bare art imposes on their practice or their lives.

What I believe we are witnessing under these conditions of bare art is also happening within the ongoing capitalist crises more broadly. It is capital’s aggregating compulsion in overdrive. Our world – both art and everyday world – is evolving into an accelerating demand-machine that seeks to extricate ever more marginal and dispersed gains from an expanding pool of widely distributed participants including indebted art students, underpaid cultural workers, unpaid artists and interns, as well as the innumerable networked contributors, with or without credentials, who assist in reproducing an increasingly bare art world.

Yet it is here that we glimpse the danger capital brings onto itself by subsuming such non-productive, creative labor. For if the latest iteration of system failure has left art naked, with no clear way of restarting the old narrative about art as an autonomous sphere of ideas and creativity no matter how entangled its system is with the marketplace, then this rupture also reveals a significant negation at work for all to see. Because once art’s mimetic non-productivity is subsumed within capital its real threat materializes: art becomes the single most conspicuous demonstration of capital’s delirious con game.

And clearly a growing number of previously invisible cultural producers have begun to see themselves as a hazardous category that is capable of operating in and for itself as the social nature of art is unavoidably made visible. Like some weird re-

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photo Kuba Szreder.

dundant agency, this no-longer dark matter creativity is at once commonplace – the art fabricators, handlers, installers whose own art practice always takes a back seat – and simultaneously bristling with a profound potential for positive change as well as an unpredictable and deep-seated sense of resentment.

Therefore as much as the condition of bare art yields predatory behavior and panic, so too does it give birth to “bad deeds” in the form of boycotts, strikes, occupations and demands for equality. And here, in a nutshell, sits the delirious potential of dark matter in a bare art world. A fully cognizant and ultra-accelerated dark matter agency inevitably questions who is supposed to fabricate the art projects of the art world’s successful 1%? Who will be disciplined into subsidizing museums and conferences and industry journals? Who would be expected to teach the next generation of dark matter surplus artists? It will not be us this shadow agency responds, not under current conditions of the art world’s hierarchies and its system of value extraction.

In the world in which we live what was previously (and perhaps in some instances thankfully) hidden from sight now becomes painfully manifest in the bare art world, for both better, and for worse.

Marco Baravalle: You recently focused your attention on the existence of different art worlds beyond the one characterized by the gallery-exhibition nexus. I’m particularly interested in knowing on what premises these other art worlds are based. Do you think that

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photos Kuba Szreder.

ontologically it is really possible to define a zone completely outside the neoliberal devices of valorization? Especially when these devices have proven to be various and not limited to the aforementioned nexus. And finally, is the dark matter super collider an attempt to create a space of visibility for the creative power of the dark matter? How should this accelerator work?

Kuba Szreder: I will respond with a question - how would you locate activities of such groups like S.a.L.E.-Docks, Macao, Isola or countless other independent art centres in relation to the institutions composing art market and their business models? The theory of art worlds, first coined by an American sociologist Howard Becker in 1984, and recently picked up by such action research projects like Plausible Art Worlds (Basekamp & friends), provides a viable intellectual framework for understanding the ground operations of such alternative, artistic systems. To explain

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this in a language of operaismo, one can hark back to Antonio Negri and his concepts of art of the multitudes as a form of action/imagination aimed at rebuilding our social world and building new ones. Another useful concept is self-valorisation of artistic labour. This is really at stake here – do you really need apparatuses of evaluation embedded in emptied out, speculative biennale-fairs circuits, in order to feel positively valorised as a creative labourer? Obviously, these apparatuses do have their pull, and also are exploitative by nature.

Coming back to our question, the term “world”, especially in plural, sounds controversial. People tend to deride this term as an idealistic theory of alternative universes, supposedly located both outside capitalism and separated from the dominant sectors of art industry (which is far too often simply conflated with neoliberal capitalism per se). But “art worlds”, sociologically speaking, are defined as networks of social cooperation, with their own division of labour and value systems, which enable creation and distribution of what people call “art”. So for example, when S.a.L.E.-Docks organizes a protest in which you make use of radical creativity, which has a mixed status of art and action, you do it by mobilizing labour, attention and resources in a way differing from what happens in the gallery-exhibition nexus.

If such activities are not a one-off event, they tend to build up into a social pattern, which Becker proposes to call an art world. In this way, S.a.L.E.-Docks, Isola or Macao constitute what Stephen Wright calls as “art sustaining environment”. Basically, these art worlds are not separated and localized, but also intersect globally, in a network of affinities and alliances. They constitute value-systems with their own distinctive aesthetical concepts and even ontologies, alternative or even conflicting to the value-systems operational for the gallery-exhibition nexus. Just think about it – people tend to make use of the word “art” to denote many differing things – on the one hand we call as art twenty meters high bronze sculpture which look like a tacky B-movie set design, like the recent line of Hirst-labeled-commodities, on the other we have such actions like Precarious Workers Pageant, which harks back to politicized aesthetics of avantgardes. The problem is that far too often we decry some of the hybrid activities (which happen on the one to one scale of artistic performance as social action) as “just art”, using blanket definition of blue chip art as the only possible and imaginable art. The theory of art sustaining environments (art worlds) tries to deal with this slippage. To repeat – it is about modes of self-valorisation, imagined as an expression of living labour, as art of the multitudes, as a creative surplus, which exceeds exponentially what is defined as an artistic commodity by the market-related art world.

Interestingly, the speculative and self-referential tendencies of the blue chip gallery nexus undermine its own systems of valorisation. In what Greg Sholette calls as bare art world, one does not need to pretend that art differs from a luxury commodity. Not surprising that art thus defined and peddled is so repetitive and utterly degraded. One needs to remember that markets mark the things marketed through them, like Neil Cummings like to say. In other words, art worlds do have some ontological effects. Things produced as art in different economic systems are tainted

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photo Greg Sholette.

by the systems by which they are produced and distributed. They are coloured by political intentions and radical economies of S.a.L.E. Docks or Macao, or flattened by price tags attached to them in blue chip systems (as the market marks the minds of people thus marketed).

There is another element in your question - about the general, totalizing framework of neoliberal capitalism. Just to make it clear. Every social world, including every art world down there, is currently located inside and framed by the global, capitalist world-system. Dominating art worlds are dominating because they ride capital flows and maintain social hierarchies based on huge disparities of wealth and status.

The members of radically politicized art worlds do struggle precisely against these tendencies, with which the gallery-exhibition nexus is integrated. Art labourers populating these art worlds might be exploited by various sectors of capitalist economy (from housing to labour to educational markets), depending very much on their positions in the global system (f.e. for people in mainland Europe student debt is not such an issue as it clearly is for our American colleagues). One also needs to take into account global disparities in wealth, and North-South divide. It is much easier to make art and mobilize free labour and resources when one lives in Brussels than when one lives in Kinshasa, in New York and not in Kabul - and this disparity is a defining element in the emergence of art worlds.

The concepts such as bare art world, art incorporated or art factory, are well tuned to emphasize links between art worlds and global capitalism. The problem is that - in my opinion - they tend to be too generalist and might for example conflate a particular, localized iteration of dominant art worlds with the art world in general. I

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do not think that our art worlds look, operate or exploit in a precisely same manner nevertheless if we are in London, New York, Warsaw or Milano. Even in Venice, there are huge differences between what happens in Giardini, in Hirst exhibition, and in S.a.L.E.. It does not mean that there is no exploitation or inequality or wars for dominance.. But we need much more grounded theory of apparatuses and mechanisms of exploitation, struggles for distinction and emancipation – in order to deal with them appropriately. These apparatuses and nexuses are transversal, they run across differing social worlds, enabling exploitation of many by the few.

We need a kind of string theory of artistic universe, which would support both our understanding and our struggles against the dominance of capital both in economy, politics, and arts. And the Dark Matter Collider is such an exercise in struggle for self-valorisation of artistic, of living labour, of art of the multitudes, which always flows underneath, through and beyond a white box called “just art”.

Marco Baravalle: Together with the Occupy Museums collective you recently presented the DebtFair project at the Whitney Biennial in New York City. Could you briefly explain what is DebtFair and could you please tell us how do you evaluate its impact within such an institutional framework and major art event?

Noah Fischer: The impression was that in the aftermath of Trump’s election even some very institutional parts of the art world were mobilized, taking part in demonstrations and protests. After 100 days what is the state of the art? Beyond the initial shock, what about important issues such as debt, race and gender? Are they gaining visibility within the art debate? Are they fuelling cases of self-organizing?

In 2011 and soon after, Occupy Museums’s direct actions continually clashed with museums from a movement-oriented position that primarily saw them as leverage-points onto a larger undemocratic system ruled by capital. Since this system needed to be called out, and its spaces democratized and revolutionized museums looked like accessible 1% sites that were more penetrable than Goldman Sachs. For years we operated outside rather than from a critical position inside the Art World.

However, when the movement wound down, both our community and our practice became more narrowly art-focused. Our project Debtfair at the Whitney Biennial is an outcome of this transformation of our group and of history. It also begins to address the question of how to politicize the atomized community of artists rather than simply hitting the big art institutions.

Debtfair was also quite a personal project for me. During years of planning direct actions with Occupy Museums, I would continually return to my studio and here was a conundrum. I knew that studio art practice and art objects hold value but the actions against art institutions had radially altered how I understood this economy.

On one hand there is therapeutic, intuitive value in art practice; its an activity in which the end-result – the artwork – may even embody a personal way of seeing,

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even a personal political understanding – as any other format cannot, clearly that is valuable. But can you square this with a fully transactional system? It seemed that objects when installed in most white box art spaces were fully captured by the game of capital. Most people know this and think its only about the art market – the speculative potential for sales and the creation of an art asset class as common measure of success (or more likely measure of failure). However the capture of art into financialization runs much deeper – most artist’s time is literally under a kind of financial control via personal debts paid as price of entry into the art world.

Occupy Museums did a study of this year’s Whitney Biennial for example – As far as we know, 100% of the artists went to college and most went to grad school and a large portion went to the best art schools. Most top art schools have the highest tuition of all colleges in the US, so all this education means debt, but artists don’t pay debt back very effectively, so we stay in debt permanently and this is one way art itself becomes a subject of financial control. This isn’t a conundrum that one could easily avoid. It doesn’t solve it to run away from the studio. I was always thinking that for the Left to give up the whole idea of art object creation to the hyper-capitalists in favor of political direct actions or community projects would be the definition of true defeat as if we have no right to the value of making (or enjoying) artworks.

So Debtfair came out of this sort of personal conundrum as an artist who had largely left the studio for the park. I tried to model a system for artists to shift the potential value of art from speculative to sustainable, proposing a kind of art-currency to trade art objects directly against personal debts. Then I realized this has to be a community project and brought the idea to Occupy Museums members and we decided to bundle artists together and do the whole system collectively just as debts themselves are bundled. Just before this, an OWS group called Strike Debt had initiated their Rolling Jubilee project which seemed to create a mini debt-bailout economy. We developed the Debtfair exchange system for a few years-at first it was based on trying to rethink how an art sale could work. Then we realized we needed to first create a new way to see the artworks – how can you see the invisible debt behind artwork? We would issue an open call for artists in debt, and then organize the participating artists based on their banks. So you have for example a bundle of JP Morgan Chase artists with a debt of ten million and so on. We decided to install these bundles inside of the gallery or museum walls rather than on top of the walls.

We were invited to stage a Debtfair exhibition in Art League Houston and this led to public debates about debt and responsibility. That seemed like a necessary first level of consciousness toward organizing around debt resistance in the art world.

Then, last Spring, the Whitney Museum got interested in Debtfair. Most often in the US, Occupy Museums prefers to work with museums from an uninvited position – that is how we retain full agency for our actions and push campaigns as far as needed. However, exhibiting in a museum like the Whitney which is intimately tied

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photo Greg Sholette.

into hedge funds and real estate mega-companies through their trustees and corporate sponsors wasn’t a problem for us in this case. We had in fact designed Debtfair as a kind of Trojan Horse – a machine to reflect back on the visibility system of the museum itself. Debtfair meant bringing “Dark Matter artists” into a bright space as a lens to reflect on the overall value and selection system. The museum accommodated our project and we felt that they understood it.

In the middle of the process, Trump was elected. Perhaps the least among the many painful outcomes, it changed the political calculation of Debtfair because the project was aimed more at a Clinton Presidency where Neoliberalism could be on full view and targeted. In fact, we had found a specific target: a corporation called BlackRock which is an asset manager at a scale of 5.1 trillion. Much bigger than any bank, BlackRock was like the death star that connected all the types of debt situations American artists might find themselves in: from the colonial debts of Puerto Rico to student debt and credit card or medical debt. All this debt was traded by BlackRock and its CEO, Larry Fink (who is a trustee of MoMA) was talked about as Clinton’s treasure secretary. But then the Trump bomb fell and all of

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Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, May 2017. Photo Greg Sholette.

a sudden the neoliberals became the protectors of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;sanctuary citiesâ&#x20AC;? rather than our corporate enemies from 2011.

As the inauguration approached in a form that looked Fascist it appeared politically strategic to create a large coalition in the arts- a blend of all the left groups and even neoliberal institutions that were willing. Many museums in New York such as MoMA and Met were officially silent. Some others such as Queens Museum, which serves a large immigrant population, were mobilizing very directly to protect their workforce and take on a resistance role. I called up the Whitney curators and discussed Occupy Museums hosting a Counter-Inauguration centering the voices of radical arts activist community at the museum. This was quickly organized as part of the #J20 art strike (or resistance events) around the country. The overall mobilizing against the inauguration as well as the successful Airport protests that pushed back Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anti-immigrant legislation created a feeling that the culture was shifting to one of sustained resistance. Currently however, we seem to be in a lull but in any case we have a long-term problem and need long term solutions.

When Trump was elected networks began to form. Now there are networks between institutions based on defining and supporting sanctuary spaces. There are

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networks of academics like “Art Professors of America” preparing to defend both their students and themselves from right wing attacks. Most of the work I have carried out in the last years – in New York and in Europe (for example the occupation of Guggenheim Venice in 2015) came as a result of the 2011 Occupy/Arab Spring/M15 networks. Effective resistance completely depends on them. But online networks provide structure, not content and here is where the challenge for the Left lies. Occupy Museums’ experience trying to highlight the politics of debt at the Whitney Biennial so far shows that organizing around debt and class is much more difficult in the art world of the Trump Era. Or at least, it’s more difficult to make such politics go viral. As everyone knows, the race debate around “Open Casket” achieved historic levels of traction. Before that, the event we organized for J20 seemed to resonate as well and people can and do rally against some of Trump’s more violent policies. We don’t seem to have a very effective language, attention, or energy reserve currently to respond to the takeover of all levers of power by a group of billionaires and the system that continues to concentrate their capital.

However, part of the problem I think has to do with the way that art activism has over-aligned itself with the feedback loops of news media which are so highly influenced by the algorythms of Facebook and Twitter: a problem which was laid bare in the US election. This makes it incredibly hard to parse what kind of organizing is truly effective in the long run from what is simply sparking people’s momentary need for outrage. We are trying to take a long term view with Debtfair.

Occupy Museums is a platform focused to expose the transfiguration of art by financial power in the arts because its grip keeps tightening. We see sharply increasing debts and the boom of luxury real estate and rent prices in “sanctuary cities. ” This means that such spaces to be continually less safe, there’s really nowhere to run. Now and in the future we have to organize and fight.

Marco Baravalle is a central figure at S.a.L.E. Docks, an independent space for visual arts, activism, and ex-

perimental theater located in what had been a former salt-storage facility in Dorsoduro, Venice. Baravalle is a member of Comitato No Grandi Navi (No Big Ships Committee), which protests against large cruise ships in Venice. He is also involved with the NO MOSE (No MOdulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, Experimental Electromechanical Module) front, which opposes an impractical Venetian flood-protection project that was at the center of a national corruption case. Baravalle researches creative labor and how art is positioned within neoliberal economics.

Gregory Sholette is a New York City based artist, writer, and core member of the activist art collective Gulf

Labor Coalition. He is the co-author of It’s the Political Economy, Stupid; and Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture, and author of Delirium and Resistance. He currently teaches in the Queens College art department at City University of New York.

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Kuba Szreder is a curator, writer and editor. He holds a practice-based PhD from Loughborough University School of the Arts, England. In 2009 he co-founded the Free/Slow University of Warsaw. In his most recent

book ABC of Projectariat, Szreder scrutinizes economic and governmental aspects of project-making and their impact on an ‘independent’ curatorial and artistic practice.

Noah Fischer works at the crossroads between the political road of economic and social inequity and poetic pathway of art practice. His sculpture, drawing, performance, writing, and organizing practice fluctuate

between object making and direct action as well as an ongoing theatrical collaboration with Berlin-based

andcompany&Co. Fischer has a particular focus on art institutions; He is the initiating member of Occupy Museums and a member of GULF/ Gulf Labor; his collaborative work has been seen (with and without

invitation) at MoMA, Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum, ZKM, and Venice, Athens, and Berlin Biennales among other venues.

References: 1 Sholette, Dark Matter, 134.

2 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, Verso, 2007. However, not all ob-

servers agree. For example, Art historian Karen Van Den Berg stresses post-Fordism misappropriates the concept of artistic labor production by denying any difference between autonomous art practices and capitalist labor, an argument she and Ursula Pasero explore in Art Production Beyond the Art Market? California: Ram Publications, 2014.

3 David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2014, 232.

4 See Chapter 3.2 “Dark Matter: Activist Art and the Counter-public Sphere,” as well as the book Dark Matter, 2010, op cite.

5 The term used by some scientists to describe the solution dark matter and dark energy brings to the

standard model of cosmic formation. See “The Mystery Of The Missing Mass,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration website, USA: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-466/ch22.htm

6 BFAMFAPhD/Caroline Woolard, “Pedagogies of Payment”, The Enemy, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2014: http:// theenemyreader.org/pedagogies-of-payment

http://art-leaks.org