Visual Postscript

I discuss Agency's Thing 000809 (Sawing a Lady in Half) in my essay "Secrets of the See-Through Factory" in the new issue of Open. This image, or "specimen," wasn't available on time and is therefore not included among the illustrations. I upload it here as a visual postscript.

Design and Transparency

The publication It's Not a Garden Table: Art and Design in the Expanded Field is an initiative of the Migros Museum and the Institute for Critical Theory in Zurich. I contributed the essay "Beyond Sign Design," which develops aspects of an article that Tom Holert commissioned a couple of years ago for Texte zur Kunst's design issue. In conjunction with a number of theoretical approaches to design, objecthood, networks and systems, "Beyond Sign Design" analyses artistic practices ranging from Frank Stella and John Armleder to Hans Haacke and Allan Sekula, and to Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Sean Snyder. As the title suggests, the aim to go beyond an analysis of design in narrowly semiotic terms.

A related text is "Secrets of the See-Through Factory: Interventions in Opaque Transparency" in the new issue of Open, no. 22 (the next-to-last issue of Open in its current form). Like the design essay, this text examines a number of art projects for their insight in and contribution to a different aesthetic/economic praxis of material things. In response to WikiLeaks, "Open 22 examines transparency as an ideology, the ideal of the free flow of information versus the fight over access to information and the intrinsic connection between publicity and secrecy." In my text, I focus on the structure of the modern work of art as a means of gaining insight into the dialectics of opacity and transparency. Works by Haacke (again), Snyder (again) as well Zachary Formwalt and Agency/Kobe Matthys are discussed in this text—plus Volkswagen's "transparent factory" and Gulf Labor's Guggenheim Boycott.
 
Both assignments allowed me to continue my work still rather embryonic project on objecthood and thingness, which I hope to intensify once the History in Motion book is out of the way. With the intellectual and artistic suicide of the Netherlands in full swing, it will be a bumpy ride.

Autonomy Symposium

On 7, 8 and 9 October the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven hosted the Autonomy Symposium, which was organized in the context of The Autonomy Project, in which I'm involved. The symposium boasted appearances by Franco Berardi, Thomas Hirschhorn, Peter Osborne, Jacques Rancière and Hito Steyerl, among others. The symposium was something of a joint venture between the Autonomy Project and Nikos Papastergiadis, who had proposed a Rancière symposium to the Van Abbe.

For once, a symposium was worthy of the name, as discussions on the ins and outs of aesthetic and/or political autonomy took on a great sense of urgency in the current state of not just this nation. Plenary lectures alternated with smaller workshops and masterclasses in the museum library and various other spaces, though the technocratic term "masterclass" (beloved by funding bodies) seems a complete misnomer for what actually transpired, as the "audience" increasingly emancipated itself and the "masters" took on the role of ignorant schoolmaster. It will no doubt have various and repercussions af in the participants' various practices. A number of publications are being planned; in the meantime, you can find archived videos at http://vanabbemuseum.nl/audio-video.

The symposium sold out in no time and we could easily have filled a larger lecture theatre than the Van Abbe's, but the relatively intimate scale was an important factor in the success. It is disconcerting to hear that the Van Abbe is now being attacked by the social democrats (!) in Eindhoven for not following the populist blockbuster approach that has become the sole norm in the dismal Dutch museum landscape. The Autonomy Symposium, which fostered such a sense of agency in those who took part, is just one example of the Van Abbe's attempt to create forms of publicness and collaboration that go beyond an economistic and deeply contemptuous approach to audiences. If I have been critical of some of the Van Abbe's projects, it is because they deserve to be taken seriously—and the same cannot be said of most other museums in this neck of the woods. Get ready to defend the Van Abbe!

Postscript, 18 October: In a kind of practical extension of the Autonomy Project, a lot of letters explaining and defending the value of Charles Esche's programme at the Van Abbemuseum were written in the last few days. The direct or indirect addressee of these epistles was PvdA spokesperson Arnold Raaijmakers. Rather than supporting an institution that offers one of the most convincing counter-models to a post-public sphere dominated by the destructive "creative industries" approach, this pallbearer of Holland's long Dutch social-democratic tradition obviously thinks it more strategic to mimic the populist-neoliberal logic of Halbe Zijlstra and Geert Wilders, proposing drastic budget cuts and effectively demanding that the museum become another generic machine for churning out provincial and culturally meaningless polder blockbusters. Some sent their letters and statements to the museum or to Raaijmakers directly; others to the Eindhovens Dagblad, the local rag. A selection of the latter (some in Dutch, many in English) is here. At today's debate in the culture committee of Eindhoven's city council only the PvdA and the SP supported Raaijmaker's slash-and-burn plan, yet there seems to be broad support for a less radical, watered-down version from 2013 on.

Photo by Emilio Moreno.

Open emergency issue, "On the New Politics of culture"

September 22 sees the publication of an "emergency issue" of Open, the "cahier on art and the public domain" published by SKOR. As a result of the destructive cuts in Dutch arts funding, SKOR has announced that it will stop publishing Open after the May 2012 issue. This special Dutch-language edition is a magazine-style supplement to De Groene Amsterdammer. All subscribers of this weekly will receive it, and while it will be absent from in-store copies of De Groene, it will be available for free in a number of bookstores and art spaces. You can also download it as a PDF (but beware: it's in Dutch). 

Together with Jorinde Seijdel and Merijn Oudenampsen, as well as managing editor Liesbeth Melis, I was part of the editorial team of this noodnummer (a term that can also be translated as "emergency number," as in 911). Its title is  "Over de nieuwe politiek van cultuur," or "On the New Politics of Culture," and it contains a number of incisive analyses of the reconstruction not only of the Dutch art world, but of Dutch society as a whole. For me, it is a local and more action-oriented sequel to the international survey that was the "Idiot Wind" issue of e-flux journal.

Among the contributors are Bik Van der Pol, Charles Esche, Pascal Gielen, Arnoud Holleman and Gert Jan Kocken, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Zihni Özdil, Willem Schinkel and Lidwien van de Ven. My own text, "Autonomie in actie," is connected to my participation in The Autonomy Project, as well as to a chapter of my book-in-progress, History in Motion. On September 23, there will be a public presentation at Plein der Beschaving, Tolhuisweg 2, Amsterdam Noord.

The English Open homepage is here. 

Image: Willem de Rooij, Chick, 2008.

Texte zur Kunst no. 83: Richard Prince

Texte zur Kunst no. 83 (September 2011) is dedicated to the collector—or more particularly that new breed, the contemporary mega-collector, a global player in an expanding market—going hand in hand, in Europe, with shrinking public funding--that has transformed the art world beyond recognition. I contributed a review (pp. 237-241) of Richard Prince's exhibition American Prayer at the Bibliothèque Francois Mitterand—the BnF’s sprawling fortress by the Seine. While this review is not part of the thematic section, it complements, for Prince's show showcased the artist-as-collector of books, manuscripts and cover art. From the review:

It is clear that the expansion of the art market since the 1980s has allowed Prince to collect not only first editions but also manuscripts on a grand scale. Perhaps it is only fitting, given the ascendancy of the curator in the neoliberal culture industry, that the role of artist and collector seem to be become ever more indistinguishable in Prince’s case. However, this erasure of borders makes odd class distinctions come to the fore: class distinctions between the books themselves, some of which are treasured as fetish-objects while others are integrated into the American English pieces; and between Prince and the viewers, some of whom may have similar interests but dissimilar budgets. As an art of conspicuous collecting, Prince’s work is implicated in the wealth redistribution from bottom (and middle) to top that marks the current phrase of capitalism. Few can afford Burroughs’ letters or Hunter S. Thompson’s manuscripts, and even when one finds a book that one owns oneself, Prince’s copy will invariably be more mint. Such social comparisons befit an exhibition that makes connections and comparisons by the dozens, from the explicit (UK version next to US version, cowboys next to cowboys, Brooke Shields next to Brooke Shields) to the gnomic." 

www.textezurkunst.de 

Smithson's Broken Circle/Spiral Hill Revisited

Welcome to the Indian Summer of Dutch public art. This fall sees a project called Land Art Contemporary, on and around Robert Smithson's 1971 earthwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill near Emmen, Holland. Land Art Contemporary has been instigated by SKOR, the foundation for art and the public domain that will close down in 2012 due to budget cuts that are anything but apolitical.

From 17 September to 27 November, the CBK in Emmen will show the documentary exhibition Robert Smithson in Emmen - Broken Circle/Spiral Hill Revisited, as well as The Ultraperiferic, a show with work by three contemporary artists who respond to Smithson's practice and Broken Circle/Spiral Hill. Also on view at the CBK is Breaking Ground: Broken Circle/Spiral Hill 1971-2011, a video by Nancy Holt on the basis of Smithson's plans for a Broken Circle/Spiral Hill film, which was never completed. Some footage had been shot during Smithson's lifetime, but funding for several crucial extra shots was not secured; Holt's version combines old with new footage.

The final element is the publication Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement, which contains a rich collection of documents pertaining to Broken Circle/Spiral Hill as well as number of newly commissioned texts. Eric de Bruyn and I contributed a dense dialogue on Smithson and the cinema, which manages to take in a great deal of subject matter along its rambling way. Due not entirely to Eric and me, the publication has been delayed somewhat. Robert Smithson: Art in Continual Movement (published by Alauda Publications in Amsterdam) is now scheduled to come out in March 2012.


For more info see http://www.alaudapublications.nl/html/smithson_eng.html


Image (from the book): Lee Ranaldo at the fence. Ranaldo's notes on his searches for/visits to Broken Circle/Spiral Hill are referenced in our dialogue, and they are reprinted in this book.

Praxis 2011

The other day, Frieze asked me to select a favourite book from the last twenty years—the occasion being their twentieth birthday. I picked Hito Steyerl’s Die Farbe der Wahrheit (The Colour of Truth), a book that hasn’t been translated into English (yet). From my short blurb, which will be in the next issue and online soon: “As Steyerl notes in the postscript, the book’s essayistic structure and tone reflect an environment that is markedly different from academia: an international network of residencies and teaching jobs that produce essays that Steyerl herself reads as displaced and condensed expressions of an economy of interruption, of flexibility, and of constant de- and reskilling. As in her recent English-language essays in e-flux journal and elsewhere, Steyerl’s essays make the most of these conditions, reflecting and reflecting on them with lucidity and illuminating Gedankensprünge (which is one of those German words for which no really adequate translation seems to exist).”

Revisiting this book coincided with the drastic culture cutbacks in Holland, and with increasingly dark portents in my other biotope, academia. This conjunction offers much food for thought. Although my circumstances are different from Steyerl’s, my own writings too reflect (for better or worse; probably both) such an economy of short-term gigs. Combining a part-time academic job with freelance activities leads to a life in which the detour is the tour, as projects are shaped by whatever possibilities there are to finance them partially. I too have tried to make the most of these conditions, and attempted to develop a practice that is embedded and tactical. There are times when the strain begins to show. Periods of sloth time are few and far between, and the pressure to perform will trip you up from time to time.

My recent attempt at getting a research project funded having been squashed, it looks I will have to continue working the way I do—which will not become any easier in the Netherlands. Of course, I’m still relatively privileged. What is truly maddening is the situation of the bright graduates of today, whose possibilities in and outside academia have dwindled drastically. They will have to develop new forms that practice that are no, perhaps, fully imaginable as of yet. We know what happened to a certain German philosopher when, in the early 1840s, the Prussian clampdown on the Left Hegelians forced him to abandon his plans for an academic career—and to that other German intellectual whose Habilitation on the German tragic drama was rejected by more than one faculty in 1925. But the current upheavals may well mean that even those that will have a more or less conventional academic biography (in Holland or, the way things are going, more likely elsewhere) will reject a business-as-usual approach to scholarship. Marked by their present experiences, they will hopefully keep reflecting and acting on and against the limits and frontiers of their proper practice—thus making it a true praxis.

Image: scene from the second Autonomy Summer School (July 2011).