This is a great read. Now I want someone to explain to me how a non-material
(non-existent) work of art maintains its immateriality (its non-existence)
despite a record in the blockchain. Personally, I think we have to start
admitting to ourselves that digital existence is material. Especially if its
existence is recorded within a distributed network. It exists. We may not be
able to cradle it in our hands but its existence is broadly verifiable.
Doesn't that change things?
On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 10:32 PM Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote:
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,
? ? ?Ihesitate to bring up issues here which themselves are
problematic,
but here goes.
? ? ?Ifor 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.).
? ? ?Ilove 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) . -
? ? ?Ikeep 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.
? ? ?Iwasnt 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!
? ? ?Iparticularly 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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