Endgame? Reconfiguring the Artwork
2012; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2012.712768
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Law in Society and Culture
ResumoAbstract This article considers how contemporary conditions of production have resulted in a reconfiguration of the artwork at the outset of the twenty-first century. It offers a detailed analysis of the entrepreneurial output of Anton Vidokle, artist and co-founder of e-flux, focusing on the video A Crime Against Art (2007) which documents Vidokle's mock trial at the hands of invited ‘artworld agents’. This complex work encapsulates dominant tendencies in recent art, namely the turns towards the social, knowledge production, performative documentary and education. Situating it in relation to Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's consideration of the evolving structures of capitalism, the article argues that this is an exemplary instance that illustrates how the artwork itself has been radically reformulated. As part-and-parcel of this transformation it frames the recent rise to prominence of the curator and, by extension, the curatorial function so often appropriated by artists, as a symptom of economic conditions. Keywords: Kirsten Lloydcontemporary artartworkcuratorAnton Vidoklee-fluxA Crime Against Artentrepreneurknowledge productiondocumentaryeconomiesLuc BoltanskiEve Chiapello Notes 1. On the morning of 11 March 2004, 191 people were killed and up to 1800 injured by the explosion of ten backpack bombs on four rush-hour commuter trains in Madrid. Twenty-nine individuals were indicted in connection with the attacks. The trial commenced on 15 February 2007 and ended on 2 July 2007. 2. The mock trial of the author Maurice Barrès was conducted by André Breton on 13 May 1921. Represented by a dummy and accused of ‘crimes against the security of the mind’, the event marked the final stages of the implosion of Dada. 3. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Presses du réel, Dijon, 2006; Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, University of California Press, Los Angeles and London, 2004 4. Stephen Wright, ‘The Delicate Essence of Collaboration’, Third Text 71, vol 18, issue 6, 2004, pp 533–545 5. The Trial was programmed as part of the 5th International Contemporary Art Experts Forum at ARCO alongside lectures and discussions which examined new markets for contemporary art, new systems and channels for production together with collecting art. 6. The Manifesta 6 School was cancelled following a dispute with the Cypriot authorities and the consequent sacking of the curators. For the curators' account of the circumstances, see http://www.eflux.com/shows/view/3270 and Vidokle and Zolghadr, ‘A Disagreement’, in Printed Project 6, available at http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/readingroom.html, 2007, accessed 28 January 2011. 7. The website states that unitednationsplaza is a project by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Boris Groys, Jalal Toufic, Liam Gillick, Martha Rosler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Nikolaus Hirsch, Tirdad Zolghadr and Walid Raad. 8. http://www.unitednationsplaza.org, accessed 18 February 2011 9. To illustrate, in 2005 he persuaded the prolific artist, writer and political agitator, Martha Rosler, to lend her vast collection of books to create a temporary storefront reading room on Ludlow Street in New York City. The itinerant Martha Rosler Library has since travelled across Europe and North America, including to the unitednationsplaza in Berlin, always accompanied by a locally curated programme of talks, seminars and screenings. Thereafter involved in the original proposal for Manifesta 6, Rosler delivered one of the six seminar programmes at unitednationsplaza as well as workshops at Vidokle's second and third temporary school projects: Night School at the New Museum in New York (2008–2009) and unitednationsplaza Mexico DF (2008), a month-long programme hosted by the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo AC (PAC) in Mexico City. 10. For more information, see http://www.e-flux.com. In October 2008, the cost of a single e-flux release was 700 euros. Between three and seven releases are circulated each day. 11. Anton Vidokle and Monika Szewczyk, ‘Curator's Corner, Andrea Viliani: For an Economy of Circulation’, Mousse 18, 2009, p 36 12. This mixed funding approach is common to many of Vidokle's e-flux projects, which are often hosted or commissioned by art institutions. 13. The testimonies of Fia Backström, Lourdes Fernández and Javier Garcia Montes were deleted along with two elements categorised in the programme as ‘Evidence Presentations’: Dirk Herzog's screening of Multitudes, a film documenting the inaugural weekend of unitednationsplaza in October 2006 and ‘I Can't Work Like This, Printed Project, Dublin’, an edition of the Printed Project journal co-edited by Vidokle and Zolghadr and presented as part of the unitednationsplaza programme. 14. Miwon Kwon, ‘One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity’, October, vol 80, spring 1997, pp 85–110 15. Thierry de Duve, Kant After Duchamp, MIT Press, London, 1996, p 391 16. Simon Sheikh, ‘Talk Value: Cultural Industry and the Knowledge Economy’, in Maria Hlavajova, Jill Winder and Binna Choi, eds, On Knowledge Production: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, and Revolver, Utrecht, 2008, p 195 17. Boris Groys, Art Power, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 2008, p 99 18. Screenings venues include Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany (2007); Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark, winner of the ‘New Vision Award’ (2007); unitednationsplaza, Berlin, Germany (2007); Berlin International Film Festival (2008); Zaim, Yokohama, Japan (2008); Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, ‘Official Selection’ (2008); Stills, Edinburgh, UK (2008); The New Museum, New York, USA (2008); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2009). Vidokle openly admits that his projects are ‘aimed primarily at a certain professional audience of artists, curators, art historians, etc’. Anton Vidokle and Stephen Wright, ‘Artistic Agency in the Absence of the Public, Interview with Anton Vidokle’, in Martha Rosler Library, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art Ltd, London, 2008, p 20. 19. Stephen Wright, ‘Users and Usership of Art: Challenging Expert Culture’, in eipcp, http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1180961069, 2007, accessed 28 January 2011. 20. Vidokle and Wright, op cit. This is also true of Vidokle's other projects, which can operate variously as libraries, schools and journals without the attribution of artistic status. 21. The affinities between Vidokle's approach to the artistic canon and those of that master of opacity and oscillation, Marcel Duchamp, are worth mentioning. His campaign to secure recognition for the readymade Fountain following its rejection from the ‘New York Society of Independent Artists’ exhibition included obtaining the tacit support of influential friends (in this case the photographer, Alfred Stieglitz) and attempting to induce the reiteration of his enunciation ‘this is art’ by featuring the work in the second issue of the avant-garde magazine, The Blind Man, which he jointly edited. For a fuller discussion see John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade, Verso, London, 2007, p 38. Vidokle's technological savvy, coupled with his knack for promotion, has ensured that his projects have not suffered the same delay in recognition that Duchamp experienced. 22. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson, eds, Curating and the Educational Turn, De Appel and Open Editions, Amsterdam and London, 2010 23. Bertolt Brecht's strategies for productive participation can be seen at work in Samuel Beckett's play Endgame (1957), in which the protagonists endlessly repeat arguments in a small isolated house. It is suggested that nothing remains outside. One of the key themes explored during the course of The Trial is the impossibility of an exterior position on the basis that, within the current capitalist hegemony, there is no outside. 24. Nina Möntmann, ‘The Rise and Fall of New Institutionalism: Perspectives on a Possible Future’, at eipcp website, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0407/moentmann/en, 2007, accessed 15 January 2011 and Jonas Ekeberg, ed, New Institutionalism, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo, 2003. Many of the protagonists in A Crime Against Art have led such institutions including ‘the Defence’, Charles Esche, who transformed the Rooseum in Malmö into an ‘active space’ that was ‘part community centre, part laboratory and part academy’. 25. Taken from BAK's mission statement: available at http://www.bak-utrecht.nl/, accessed 12 December 2010. 27. Irit Rogoff, ‘From Criticism to Critique and Criticality’, at eipcp website, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/rogoff1/en, 2003, accessed 15 January 2011 26. Sheikh, op cit, p 184. Italics added. 28. Irit Rogoff, “Smuggling' – An Embodied Criticality', published by eipcp, eipcp.net/dlfiles/rogoff-smuggling, 2006, accessed 15 January 2011 29. The difficulties experienced in recent years by institutions like the Rooseum in Malmö well illustrate this dependence. Far from becoming embedded within the very fabric of the buildings themselves, these changes have, rather, been driven by specifically curatorial approaches, whether individual or collective. 30. From e-mail correspondence between the author and Anton Vidokle. 31. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, Gregory Elliott, trans, Verso, London and New York, 2005 32. Chin-tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, Verso, London and New York, 2002 33. Kwon, op cit, p 92 34. Roberts, op cit, p 85 35. Manuel Castells, The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004, p 35 36. Vidokle and Zolghadr, op cit and Vidokle and Wright, op cit, p 24
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