The following (which may be difficult to follow in ascii?) is a discussion
between Ruth and myself; Ruth asked that I send to the list. Oddly, given
ascii, it's not clear that I wrote first (in response in response etc.) -
the
"Hi Ruth, I'll intersperse some comments, and thank you so much for
writing back and so much to think about! We're still away, staying for an
extra day (next Sunday) and trying to decompress..."
is mine -
On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 10:32 AM, ruth catlow
<[email protected]> wrote:
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
This is really fascinating! I do find a problem with "Does Art need its
own blockchain?" - "art" needs nothing (can't get rid of the italics,
apologies); perhaps people do, but then which people? and what arts?
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.
I think this held with a lot of conceptual art as well, what artists were
on about around the time of Piper/Siegelaub texts.
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
I think there might be a difference, not sure. In the States, it was a
form of identification with manual labor, that one should be paid for what
one does. This attempted even then to break the inflationary spiral which
is now of course out of control.
Other than that I dont 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.
The idea was a form of levelling in relation to art-stardom. Anyone who
was on the way to success, I think, ran from the idea.
Im 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.
In the States, artists are always statistically on the breadline; maybe 1%
can support themselves by their work. Paying for labour means payment for
all cultural workers. It never took hold of course. -
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 Haackes 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.
For me that doesn't invalidate the work at all; I never expect purity of
intent and production from anyone to be honest. I think even Barbara
Kruger (who I really loved) made some money from her work. And with all of
these people, there were long periods at the beginning when they made
little or nothing. For that matter the Guerilla Girls aren't wealthy after
all these years (I know one of them) . -
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, its 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, 2029-2047 by Lionel
Shriver
The artworld now is very very different from Atwood, traditional
artschools, etc.; everything was changed of course by the digital
'revolution' which we hardly understand. What bothers me about the quotes
is all of them are based in economics; where would for example Carolee
Schneeman fit into this? Where is a resistance to capital? With blockchain
it has to be capital resisting capital which for a lot of people is
already tarnishing, a capitulation. I've been thinking about Kathy Acker
recently because of the biography which came out and the video we did
together; it's becoming an underground 'hit' and I think two
interconnected reasons are that it's based on the body and the
confrontation with the body, which isn't prettified, and also because it's
fundamentally feminist thanks to Kathy (in a documentary made about her,
young girls even now talk about their identification with her). I think
work liked this would either have to be economically "valued" or locked
out of blockchain... I may be way mistaken about all of this, but it seems
to me this is why a critique of blockchain within blockchain - a
fundamental critique - is so necessary. I think of comfortable Marx in the
British Library, writing from within, muddying the capitalist waters,
producing brilliant analysis at the time (although even he couldn't see
the coming digital revolution of course).
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 wasnt going to tell you but I have made a trillion of these artworks
;)
That's interesting! That's also critique right there, that reproducibility
of certain kinds of works, conceptualized works, can self-deflate
economically! I love this; on the other hand I also love the Isenheim
Altarpiece, no matter what it's economic value is; it disturbs me in a way
that invades me, maybe the difference between Godel's work and his
platonism which still found substance outside the matrix of his analysis.
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.
Yes!
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.
Then you have to look at Barry, who did precisely that, I think. But of
course waves/current/fields are also commensurate, not only with
particles, but also with the constituents, 'things,' of the universe. I've
worked a lot with VLF radio, very low frequency radio, and those things
are out there!
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