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Arts 'Double Character' Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark
ARTS ‘DOUBLE CHARACTER’.
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Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark, Shades of Noir
Autonomy in Contemporary Art Practice
What if we begin to think of autonomy as a performance, and capitalism as its stage. The opposition between autonomy and commodification - in all its hidden contradictions - is too stark to count as mutual dependence (Hamilton, ).
- Northouse, 2001.
The notion of autonomy is the right or condition of self-government. Known by many other synonyms: self-government, independence, free-will freedom and autocracy. Autonomy refers to a strict freedom from external - and internal pressures - control or influence; independence, capitalist, political or otherwise. What then does it mean to be an autonomous creative in the contemporary art landscape? To attempt to operate removed from the market forces, political climate and critical influences upon this as autonomy should be seen as the remedy to the struggles of self-determination.
Is this state of production sustainable?
Autonomy,, still pertaining to the ‘auto’ emphasis in this article’s title - can be broken down further: ‘auto’, ‘no’, ‘my’ there seems to be active resistance in the singularity of the word alone. It feels that the fiscal lust of the capitalist and autonomy seems entirely opposed, and yet the creation of cultural products is tantamount to capitalist (consumer-producer) gain. Whilst autonomy functions as a
normative foundational principle - of great social power being exercised in modern societies - can we name any practitioners currently displaying an autonomous art practice. Hence the marginalised voice becomes a dominant performers of autonomous activities in the everyday.
But while existing in a dimension of capitalist visual storytelling, the influence of cultural capital in autonomous activities present themselves as an affront to the dominant aesthetic. Hence, calls for ‘‘assertion of meaning’ and the “struggle for coherence” of the art directors championing the narratives of the other, manifesting the nuances of authentic lived experiences by pushing boundaries of visual representation into the mainstream becomes an important exercise in continuing to push the boundaries of creative autonomy and activism at centre stage. While such practices can be placed on a continuum of performative leadership styles, there are, of course, obstacles - such as social pressure and socio-economic difficulties - that remain at the forefront of autonomous practices as a form of positive autonomy; In this instance, this pertains to the extended interrogation in the form of activism or social justice commentary of diasporic identity and culture through visual narrative pertaining to Art Direction - in order for the object to be successful, the distinctive character of its medium (Rush, 2004, p.146) will shine through.
On the topic, Adornoʼs unique brand of Western Marxism presents a complex and elusive treatment of the autonomy of art; which is to task the performer to examine
the economic base/superstructure model of culture in the conditioning of cultural goods, lying somewhere between autonomous objects and its functionalisation in the everyday - Adorno emphasises its social situation in virtue of that in functionless-ness nature of such objects - as work simultaneously became autonomous and commodified through entry into the capitalist marketplace. For Adorno, autonomy and commodification stand in a dialectical relation. Thus, Adornoʼs Aesthetic Theory develops two inter-related senses of autonomy - social and aesthetic - under the provisory that autonomy and commodification stand in a relation of mutual dependence. (Hamilton, u.d.)
The interpenetrating elements of sociological and the aesthetic facts within the cultivation of modern cultural visual storytelling maintain this balance almost perfectly. Therefore in the discussion of contemporary visual storytelling within art, it becomes important to stress autonomy as a defining feature of the modernisation and social proliferation of art is itself an expression of modernism as cultural (capital) products. The quasi-political narrative of the emancipation of artistic activities is not a neutral history but arises from the history of aesthetics under the banner of modernism was both nonideological and and illusion. As Bernstein notes, the art of modernity is characterized by its developing autonomy, and ‘modernism is that increment in which art becomes selfconscious of its autonomy’ (Bernstein, u.d.).
Yet to be inextricably linked to technology, in trying to distance your processes from the cycle of automation, in this vein Irmgard Emmelhainz’s 2013 e-flux article bids farewell to a Committed, Autonomous Art? In a discussion of art from the cultural turn of the century, ‘the commodification of culture and its use as a resource — as well as the fusion of art, politics, and media — have had a significant impact in the way in which capitalist economies operate’ (ibid.) .
While many artists may address exhibition politics as a theme in their work, they are limited in terms of producing something outside of the consensual barriers placed on exhibition politics especially. This is due to the existence of a systemic enclosure which extends well beyond the consensus of the art world: art is fused with political sensibilities that exploit its diplomatic potential in likening culture to be a form of social capital, a resource (Vidokle, 2012).
Under these conditions, is there any room left for autonomous, committed art?
In a context in which the creative, political, and mediatic fields are intrinsically linked, contemporary cultural practices point toward a new social order in which art has merged with life, privileging lived experience, collective communication and performative politics. These works propose solutions for short term improvement, entertainment and satisfaction, but, unlike more traditionally politicised art, it sometimes opposes the status quo and reveals contradictory social truths. Contemporary art and the democratisation of culture being “contemporary,” means that art maintains its existence in the same temporal space as culture and has therefore been integrated into it.
So what are the implications of this for committed, autonomous art? Culture is, therefore, a significant sphere of production that multiplies meaning by mobilising a system of overlapping cultural references in generating, on one hand, economic surplus, and on the other, social life—its forms and styles.
For a Committed, Autonomous Art: Besides artistic production that is at the center of social movements, there is autonomous art — not created specifically to serve social movements or causes - and art that is produced for museums or biennials which occupies a privileged space of politicisation.
When it comes to contemporary art, we must inevitably consider the economic sustainability of its products — alongside the internal conditions of producing, exhibiting, and consuming art. (Steyerl, 2012) This is because contemporary art is a playground for opportunism, competition speculation and manipulation. As such, the contemporary artist embodies the figure of the entrepreneurial worker; managers of their own human capital.
In defence of artistic autonomy however, the art object - in and of itself - must always exist in a critical relationship to capitalist society, Politicised autonomous ar should make visible that which does not exist from a different point of view, spreading the contagious attitude of those who have nothing to either gain or lose. Thus, in all this it becomes clear that there is no one thing meant by the claim that all contemporary art is autonomous. Undoubtedly, the state of contemporary art is quite different from the ideological-emphasis institutional critique in the 1970s. Nevertheless, politicised art, as Hito Steyerl argues, should focuses not on what it shows but on what art does and how it does it (Zizet, 1989) with share objectives intrinsically linked to corporate, neoliberal agendas (Buchohl, 2006) on the modern era.
