*
Dear Alan,
I hesitate to bring up issues here which themselves are problematic, but
here goes.
*
I for one am very appreciative of your thoughts here. I am preparing for
our first DAOWO workshop on Thursday and this is very very helpful.
http://www.daowo.org/#reinventing-the-art-lab-on-the-blockchain*****
First, to the extent that art is a Foucauldian discursive formation (at
least as I taught it at RISD in the 70s), labor, in the form of reading/
writing/conversation/declamation/discourse is involved.
With “blockchain art” the financial formulation of the work - its price,
its relationship to, and operation within the markets over time -
becomes another element of its expressive form/ part of the discourse.
Second, at least again at that point, there was a tendency to associate
the value of a work in relation to the labor necessary to produce it; in
other words, an artist would be paid according to the labor she put into
the creation of a work, real or invisible, substantial or insubstantial.
(I remember Adrian Piper talking with us about this, but I may be
mistaken; this was early in her career.)
**
Artistic labour is still discussed in this way by public funders, and
publicly funded arts organisations in the UK
**
Other than that I don’t see how this can possibly still hold true (if it
ever did). The financial value of an artwork by an “art star” hardly
correlates to either the effort or time invested in its production.
Unless we are talking about more craft-oriented work.
I’m not sure at exactly what point in history this occurred or whether
it was always thus. Or whether being (barely) remunerated for 'labour'
has just become a way to keep all artworkers on the bread line.
**
And third, there was within conceptual a discourse of the invisible or
non-existent work, vide for example Lucy Lippard's The Dematerialization
book.
There was of course a heavy critique from Haacke and others of the
commercialization of art (also of course in music, tv (Radical Software)
etc.).
I love a lot of Haacke’s work and also of the Radical Software group.
But they were successful in generating cultural capital for themselves -
through their expressive disdain for the commercialization of art.
*I keep thinking about the hundreds of young artists and art students
that I meet in London who are attempting to make meaningful work and to
pull themselves up into a decent world (and artworld) by their
bootstraps. Should they work, as Annie suggested, from their sense of
personal quest - perhaps it's none of my business, but I have been
questioning my own sense of how we can proceed in relation to **THESE
QUOTES HERE *
**“Like Western civilisation, ‘autonomous art’ – an art that is not a
means to an end, not instrumental - would be a really nice idea” **“If
art is an alternative currency, it’s circulation also outlines an
operational infrastructure. Could these structures be repossessed to
work differently?”** - Hito Steyerl talking about Duty Free Art
https://tankmagazine.com/issue-72/talk/hito-steyerl/
"Noble people don't do things for the money they simply have money and
that's what allows them to be noble. They sprout benevolent acts like
they sprout trees" - from Hagseed by Margaret Atwood
"It was hard to identify with the characters. They live in an economic
vacuum. They make decisions cos they are in love, or they are angry or
they want adventure. You don't know how they afford their houses, they
never decide not to do something because it costs too much. You never
find out how much these characters pay in taxes." Willing, on literature
pre-financial-crash in The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047by Lionel Shriver
So the value of the non-existent work here might well be based on the
discourse; one can imagine a work which is not being discussed to
blockchained, which no one knows about, possessing a labor value close
to the null set itself.
I wasn’t going to tell you but I have made a trillion of these artworks ;)
For me, what's new in the work being discussed here is its relation to
blockchain, and this places it within economic strata and habitus that
makes me uncomfortable. Not that that matters at all, but the point is
the embracing of invisibility and non-existence in relation to
blockchain and (economic) value, doesn't this also relate
problematically to neoliberalism? If one is going to work in this
direction, is it worthwhile to consider breaking the chains of
blockchain (in a way somewhat related to breaking the chains of the male
domination of the artworld, vide Guerilla Girls etc.)?
I think we are now in a very different moment. I am currently
entertaining the idea that the tactics and techniques for “breaking
chains” may need evolve to incorporate more critical finance-play and
experimentation.
I particularly like the invisibility form, less because of its eschewal
of value associated with art objects, but more because it rhymes with
the invisibility of the electromagnetic waves, currents and fields
through which our digital exchanges are taking place.
*
Thanks again Alan!
:)
Ruth
--
Co-founder Co-director
Furtherfield
www.furtherfield.org
+44 (0) 77370 02879
Bitcoin Address 197BBaXa6M9PtHhhNTQkuHh1pVJA8RrJ2i
Furtherfield is the UK's leading organisation for art shows, labs, &
debates
around critical questions in art and technology, since 1997
Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company limited by Guarantee
registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
Registered business address: Ballard Newman, Apex House, Grand Arcade,
Tally Ho Corner, London N12 0EH.
_______________________________________________
NetBehaviour mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
