The East Asia Multitude Submit in Hong Kong 2012

Objects of Art After Industrialization

by Yuk HUI

A drafted essay made as intervention to the DOXA’s event in ‘ArtHK2012′ : Art and Spatial Resistance: Emergent strategies in Asia [PDF version]

What is an artist? An artist is an exemplary figure of individuation — understood as process of psychic and collective individuation where a ‘I’ is only inside of a ‘we’, andwhere a ‘we’ is constituted at the same time by the saturated potential and strained by the preindividual background that it supposes….it is an operator of transindividuation of available preindividual: it creates the works, that is to say the artifacts… which typically open up the future as the undetermined singularity by an access to the repressed which contrives the power of the noetic soul as its possibility — which is only by irregularity– of passing to acts[1].

-Bernard Stiegler, De la misère symbolique, tome 2 : La Catastrophe du sensible

Who envisions this image of evolutionary alternative, has a clear fundamental understanding of the SOCIAL SCULPTURE which is formed by MAN AS ARTIST. Who says that there must be a change, but instead skips over the ‘revolution of concept’ and runs against the external manifestations of ideology will fail. He will either resign, or be content with reforms or end up in an impasse of terrorism. All three forms are the victoryof systems’ strategy. When it is finally asked: WHAT CAN WE DO? so that we can each the goal of the reorganization of the foundations, then we must make it clear:there is only one way [nonviolent transformation] to change the status quo– but these require a wide range of measures.[2]

-Joseph Beuys, Aufruf zur Alternative

Industrialization after Duchamp

At the beginning of the 20th century, when Marcel Duchamp stated to exhibit his ready-made, we see clearly a subversive act which sublates, in a Hegelian term, the practices and conceptions of art. The act of Marcel Duchamp is not a negation per se, but one that also preserves art according to its essence, unveil it from its historical and socialcontexts. While the significant things, that is probably not the fundamental change in the perception of art, but rather the objects of art merged with the industrial objects, and exhibit an esthetics that is closely associated with their intended nature in the factories,workshops, and most importantly, the everyday use of them. Thierry de Duve recalled when Duchamp was asked in an interview what is a ready-made, he replied simply that it is not made by the artists, who even have no involvement in choosing the color, the texture. Duchamp anticipates a new form of art that blurred the boundary of arts and industrial objects, the bicycle wheels, the urinal, the bottle rack, the comb, etc. The extension of the bourgeois taste of art to industrial objects, for example furniture hasbeen already described by Walter Benjamin in his description of Paris as the European capital of the 19th century. But it is probably the first time, that an ordinary industrial object enter the realm of art, and reorganize the sensible through the link of industrialization and art. The art historian Boris Groys also emphasized this point:

“And the main change lies not so much in the presentation of industriallyproduced objects as artworks, as in a new possibility that opened for theartist, to not only produce artworks in an alienated, quasi-industrial manner,but also to allow these artworks to maintain an appearance of being industrially produced.”[3]

This peculiar relation appeared in Duchamp’s readymades in related to the industrial aesthetics must be rethought today and go beyond the discourse of the Kantian aesthetics (specifically the third critique). Here I would like to take a departure to look at the relation between industrialization and art, and the transformations that it has brought to our everyday life.Today, if we want to differentiate the current development from the revolution carriedout by Duchamp, it is that these objects no longer present us the ‘dysfunction’ posed byart, but rather the multi-functionality of art. Duchamp suspends the urinal from its everyday use by putting it in the museum, that is also to say, to dysfunction it andproduce a force that disturb the imagination and anticipation of art in his age. In his own words, the readymade is based on the ‘visual indifference’ and ‘total indifference ofgood or bad taste’. Now, we see that art becomes multi-functional, the ‘indifference’ is turned into differences in multiple forms of commodities, luxury goods in auctions, etc; no matter it is intended to be suspended in terms of functionalities following the artists’ will, it is also always disposed at the same time in a social milieu that renders it multifunctional. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk states clearly that today weare witnessing the integration of art, design and technologies, and more conceptually the reconnection between functionalism and perception – the reorganization of the sensible by the technical artifacts if we follow Stiegler here. This differs from the critique of the Situationist International, though not entirely, when Debord was criticizing Dadaand Surealism, he wrote ‘Dadaism sought to abolish art without realizing it; Surrealism sought to realize art without abolishing it. The critical position since developed by the Situationists has shown that the abolition and realization of art are inseparable aspects of a single transcendence of art.’[4] The Situationists are proposing that, in my own interpretation, Dada and Surealism only resist in the context of art, while it is necessarily to totally smash art and take it away from the context of art. In other words, they proposed the dissolution of the objects of art situated in the discourse of the market, ofart critics and the superimposition of art and radical politics. The Situationists’ vision ofart, through firstly dysfunctioning art, and reinventing new functionality in the everydaylife in favor of revolutionary moment, is unfortunately never fully realized.

Merhwerk after Surplus Value

A mutated form of art is taking place, as what I described before, the reinsertion of art into the wider perspective of everyday life through industrialization, the reconstitution of art in everyday life termed ‘lifestyle’. The multi-functionality of art object in the newsocial milieu, didn’t gain itself a substantial form of existence as a work, or ‘oeuvre’. This French word gives a better sense of the working of artwork meaning to craft, to make, to work and to ACT. Instead, art becomes, as the art critic Diedrich Diederichsen shows,becomes a ‘mehrwerk’[5], or where one can say an ‘added-value’. Marxists used to translate merhwerk as ‘surplus value’, but it is much more accurate to call it ‘add-value’in this context, since surplus value is almost the profits gained from the difference between the price of the commodities and their cost in terms of labor time and machine maintenance. The add-value is not direct project, but one that elevates the price of the commodities, for instance through the packaging of a commodity.

This is obvious when we look at the mobile phones and tablets we are using; the software that allows us to take photos while adding a few artistic touches, the furniture that matches the functionalities of these devices. Beyond the interiority of the living space, architectural design is taking very much its surroundings into consideration, for example, the relation to art galleries, to celebrated schools, to luxury shops, to high-end supermarkets, etc. The exterior design of buildings are full of ‘artistic’ elements that sometimes have to compromise some of the intended functionalities, where aesthetics is taking lead of functionalities, in an ironic sense. This is what we know as gentrification, the reinsertion of art and design into the everyday life that constantly constitutes lifestyle that follows the dynamics of the market. We see two movements of art objects. Firstly, the move from museums and colleges to everyday urban lives, as giants posters on the buildings, and one should recall that during the Louis Vuitton show in Hong Kong in 2009, the Hong Kong Art Museum demonstrated us one of the bestcase studies by wrapping itself with wallpapers; and secondly, the museums loadedwith art objects are installed in gentrified areas that become the merhwerk to the property or land. Back to the context in Asia, the rapid development of the cultural industries, and the commitment of the government to build cultural economies already anticipate that the above description would take an even more extreme form. In China,we can see that almost every city wants to rediscover their culture and render them as touristic objects, and at the same time build contemporary art museums and galleries to show that they also anticipate the future, and not only looking back to their cultural heritages.

What I tried to described briefly, is that the relation between art objects and gentrification, which is familiar to most of the art practitioners and dealers, but not necessarily so to those that live within the spectacles of lifestyle. What would be the possibility to break this new configuration of art? Perhaps we should step back and ask,why should we break it? Isn’t it doing very well, at least, we can see that some artists like Damian Hirst are becoming billionaires. Artists, as producers of art objects are becoming the important player of this economy. This doesn’t mean that the artists aregoing to thrive, since producing added-value is not equivalent to producing surplusvalue. Instead, this will contribute largely to the precarity of artists, since it is those who can produce added-value survive the market and the cultural economy, while those produce value don’t. Works don’t open, but immediately close, not by its own intention,but the economic milieu that encompasses it. Any future works that intend to criticize the rampant development of the cultural economy will be immediately and perfectlyabsorbed by the market realism, once Brian Holmes was describing a huge sculpture by the Chinese artist Liu BoLing of a fist pressing the ground installed in 798, one of Beijing’s earliest art space, but such sculpture seems to him produces no effect to the political and economic situation in China, the gesture that was intended to be anti-authoritarian was totally absorbed and became an object that tourists would like to take photos with[6]. Any attempt to produces subversive acts through the art objects is destined to go to museums or galleries that may be funded by one of the propertydevelopers. All is subsumed to the ‘economy’. The hyper-industrialization of consumerism through art, land, commodities is the destruction of the ‘I’ and ‘We’ by reducing the acts to consumption, work to commodities, and art to added-value.

Art after Economy

The question is whether we can imagine anew? What possibility remains in us? Obviously there is no simple answer, but I would like to propose something that will hopefully provoke further thought and to go back firstly to the role of artists, and secondly, the objects of art in association with what Joseph Beuys calls ‘nonviolent transformation’. The two quotes from Bernard Stiegler and Joseph Beuys at the beginning of this article point in a similar direction. For Stiegler, an artist is one who produces artifacts that act as tools for transindividuation, the formation of communities through the identification of the ‘I’ and the ‘We’. Aesthetic in this sense must be social,and artists are those who organizes the sensible, but also if we follow Jacques Rancière who distribute the sensible. The translation of Rancère’s ‘le partage du sensible’ as the distribution of the sensible, ignores for the most part that ‘partage’ is also to share, that is also the constitution of the ‘We’. Joseph Beuys’ quote is on what has been known as ‘social sculpture’, again one shouldn’t forget that Beuys also calls it, or even prefers tocall it ‘Soziale Plastik’ instead of ‘Soziale Skulptur’. What is more interesting is the concept of ‘plasticity’ that opens up all forms of artistic intervention to the formation ofthe ‘We’ and the ‘I’ — communities. Beuys as we recall of his intervention in theDocumenta 7 in 1982, his artwork resulted in 7,000 oak trees in Kassel that transformed the local landscape and created a new ecology. The work acted to open a new passageto act. My question can be simply put in this way: if gentrification is a process that utilizes art and design to transform the economy of the communities, can artists take economy as an object of art and reinvent an economy that cannot be easily absorbed by the market realism in a way that reorganizes the sensible to allow new forms of social relations to emerge or re-emerge? Or more precisely, taking economy as object of art.

The first inspiration of this question is not from Beuys, but rather from the Frenchphilosopher George Bataille, though Bataille proposed it in a quite different way. Whatinspired Bataille is the gift economy elaborated by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss following the works of Franz Boas who did extensive research in Pacific Northwest,especially Kwakiutl at British Columbia, and Bronisław Malinowski who researched theculture reciprocity in Melanesia. Mauss published his research in 1925 as a journal article titled The Gift. The gift economy operates simply like this: people mostly in theform of tribes give away their properties as gift, and the people who receive these gifts have the obligation to return the gift. Gift giving is not simply something for expressing one’s generosity, for example in marriages, funerals, etc, it is rather totality, which Mauss called the total social fact, or the total prestations. These festivals of gift-giving are called potlatch. Within the guise of reciprocity, are both private and public warfareas sanctions to those who violate this principle. Mauss, the great promoter of free associations, challenged the liberal conception of economy that economy is defined by individual transactions and based on the scarcity of resources; instead Mauss showed that another economy is possible, and it demonstrates another rationality.

To exemplify Mauss’ answer to the economy of potlatch, we will confine to the case of Maori, a Polynesian tribe. The answer can probably be identified in two keywords, one is called hau, and the other mana. Firstly in Maori culture, when someone gives away a gift, a kind of spiritual substance is attached to the gift, this spirit within the gift comes from the person who gives. When the person receives the gift, he has to take care ofthe spirit, and has the obligation to return the spirit back to its place. This place is not necessarily the individual, but also the place of its birth, to its sanctuary of forest and clan and to its owner. It is dangerous to keep this gift, as Mauss states ‘not onlybecause it is illicit to do so, but also because it comes” morally, physically and spirituallyfrom a person’. A very important point to note is that an object one receives in this sense is both a poison and a gift. Mana means prestige or in the Chinese case ‘face’,failures to return the gift is a losing of mana, one’s prestige or status in the society. This operates on the level of individuals, but more rigorously on the level of the chiefs of thetribes, when it comes to the inter-tribal exchanges. Gift giving acts are sometimes amiable rivalries, in common cases, they are the basics of antagonism and war. Mauss compared it with the Chinese ‘face’, “The expression is more apt than it is even in China; for to lose one’s face is to lose one’s spirit, which is truly the ‘face’, the dancing mask, the right to incarnate a spirit and wear an emblem or totem.”

Bataille further based on the gift economy and proposed a ‘general economy’, one that is not like the economy of scarcity, but rather an economy of excess. For Bataille the potlatch can act as a weapon against the continual economic division. Since in the potlatch described before, all economic division is shattered, it is rather a festival. It is by no coincidence that the Letterist International named their journal after ‘potlatch’. It doesn’t seem to us that an everlasting festival is going to be possible, but it points out that an artistic intervention is not only imaginable but also firmly grounded; and probably it is much more creative and imaginary for artists to do this than the dogmatic economists who cannot act outside a formal and rational framework. So for us, the point is not only to return to the economy of excess, but also to take the economy as anobject of art.

During the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, Luke Ching (a brilliant artist and agood friend) and I collaborated to explore the relation between art and gift economy; thisactualized that Luke is now doing a research project on rediscovering the gift economies existing or in a way disappearing in everyday life of YauMaTei, probably one of the only district in Kowloon one can still marginally identify communities. For him, the gift economy present in art also defends it from being totalized by the one-dimensional economy. For me, the question is how can we develop it further, and to create a new economy as a social sculpture in the communities, to rephrase the words of Stiegler,that favors psychic and collective individuation, recognize the inseparability of the I and the We by recreating the hau and mana. There are many very interesting struggle shappening in East Asia, for example the Amateur Revolt in Japan, the Squatting Art in Korea, the Go Straight Café in Taiwan, and the Wooferten in Hong Kong, etc, all these seem to me the effort to reimagine the community and activism through the reconceptualization of art, but not limiting it to a squat, a isolated occupation, a demonstration against the demolition of communities.

Taking such a detour from Duchamp to the situation of art today, is to take a departure from the relation between art and industrial objects, and look at the role of industrial objects qua industrialization in the organization of the sensible. The revolutionary act inDuchamp’s ready-made is to give new power to the industrial objects through art, as Thierry de Duve showed in an archaeological approach in Résonances du readymade(Duchamp entre avant-garde et tradition) the four conditions Duchamp demonstrated (the object, the author, the public and the institution). Art also inherited its power fromits history that allows it to suspend the appearance of an object and redistribute the sensible in the aesthetic experience. But these revolutionary artifacts today mostly lie quietly in the museums and storages, it is not simply that time changes the public’s perception of them, but also the absorption of these creativities in a flexible neoliberal economy. It seems that for any resistance not to be futile, it must take its enemy as object of art, for the artists to become again transducers that produce an individuation against the alienation and proletarization imposed by the system.

[1]Bernard Stiegler, De la misère symbolique, tome 2 : La Catastrophe du sensible, 2005, quote translated by the author. I would like to thank Bernard for kindly showing me his unpublished manuscript on esthetics that has inspired me a lot.

[2]Joseph Beuys, Aufruf zur Alternative, quote translated by the author from German.

[3]Boris Groys, Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies, e-flux, www.e-flux.com/journal/marx-after-duchamp-or-the-artist’s-two-bodies/

[4]Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacles, 1971, 133

[5]Diedrich Diederichsen, On (Surplus)Value in Art, Witte de With, 2008

[6]Brian Holmes, One World One Dream – China at the Risk of New Subjectivities, 2008, www.brianholmes.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/one-world-one-dream/

DOXA is pleased to announce its publication project Creative Space—Art and Spatial Resistance in Asia. The edited volume consists of contributions from artists and theorists of different parts of Asia(Japan,Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc), and investigates the strategies to resist the intensive gentrification and the privatization of land (and the commons), which were turned into tools of exploitation. All of these spatial politics at the same time also create a new urbanism and aesthetics by adopting art, design, cultural apparatus, etc. The central question of this book is: when art and design are used as tool to transform the economy of the community hence also its social landscape, what could be the position of art and what kind of resistance one can imagine, if not one that is rapidly absorbed into the capitalistic realism? This book shows different experiments, ranging from Womenjia Autonomous Lab in China[1], the Amateur Revolt in Japan[2], Go Straight Café in Taiwan[3]to the occupation movement in Asia; it also reviews some of the historical legacies for example the situationist international. The present edition will be in Chinese, edited by Yuk Hui and DOXA, published by Roundtable Synergy Books(HK), it is estimated to be out around summer 2012. We are proud to announce the list of our contributors:

Jaspar Lau 劉建華 (Hong Kong, Art Critic, Wooferten)

Kang KIM金江 (Korea, Artist, Oasis)

Law Man Lok 羅文樂 (Hong Kong, Artist)

Mai Dian 麥巔 (China, Musician, Wu Han Youth Autonomous Lab)

Kao Jun Honn 高俊宏 (Taiwan, Artist)

Jeff Leung 梁展峰 (Hong Kong, Curator)

Hajime Matsumoto 松本哉 (Japan, Activist, Amateur Revolt)

Yuk Hui 許煜 (Paris/Hong Kong, Philosopher, DOXA)

Ou Ning 歐寧 (Beijing, Curator/Poet, Chutzpah Magazine)

Yang ZiXuan 楊子瑄 (Taiwan, Activist, Go Straight Café)

Damian Cheng Wai Pang 小西 (Hong Kong, Theatre Critic)

Nin Chan 陳寧(Montreal/ Hong Kong, Theorist, Occupy Hong Kong)

Min K. Shin (Korea, Producer, Moonji Cultural Institute)

Ashley Wong 黃詠欣(London/Hong Kong, Co-founder, DOXA)

Nicolas Sauret (Paris/Hong Kong, Film Maker)

[1] Brian Holmes, Meetings at Womenjia Youth Autonomy LabIs Wuhan Really the Chicago of China?, 2011

[2] Textinnitiate, Interview with Matsumoto Hajime, 2011

[3] Brewing the Perfect Cup of Activism: An Interview, 2011
This publication project is kindly supported by OpenVizor

More information about DOXA’s Creative Project.

“All That is Solid Melts into Air”, by Yuk Hui/DOXA, No. 6, Chutzpah!, edited by Ou Ning, 2012

Abstract: This article started with the mediation of fire in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s “Par le Feu”, and the metaphysical and symbolic meaning of fire in the myth of Prometheus. It aims to analyze the revolutions (industrial revolutions, silent revolutions, conservative revolutions) of capitalism and the deterioration of human condition through the works of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. It also attempts to identify the possibilities of revolutions by looking into the history of the late 19th century and 20th century with relation to anarchism (especially the Paris Commune and Spanish Civil War), and proposes to renew the concept of civil war, occupation and communities through the works of Tiqqun, Guy Debord and David Graeber.

“The apparently permanent can be temporary, while the temporary could be very permanent.” - Ackbar Abbas

‘NønSpace’
2-channel installation
dir. Nicolas Sauret & Ashley Wong
23min, 2009

NønSpace is a work that attempts to probe at the often puzzling and elusive space of Hong Kong. Through its unique history, geography and politics, Hong Kong has sprouted from a small Chinese fishing village to a globalized financial city. From British influence of Western capitalism to a return to a long lost Chinese reality, Hong Kong has formed into a place of in-betweenness.

Through interwoven voice interviews with artists, academics, architects, NønSpace approaches notions of space to reveal aspects of a city and culture that is difficult (and perhaps impossible) to underpin. Topics of density, public/private space, colonialism/post-colonialism, identity, society, urban development, and government policy quickly emerge. Through collected materials, photographs and field-recordings from a two and three year stint in Hong Kong, the creators piece back through memory in a desire to understand and in a dialogue with the city and self.

NønSpace is hazy in content and in form. The fluid construction of photographic stills and voice, speak around a city, but never at it. It is an approach to space that can be used to navigate any city and environment to explore what is behind the construction of a space and place.

Conversations with:

Linda LAI (professor, City University), Andrew LAM (director, Museum of Site), Kit LAM (sociologist, Chinese University), Warren LEUNG (independent artist), Map Office (Laurent Gutierrez & Valérie Portefaix, artists/academics), Alvin YIP (architect, Poly University) Music: Oren Ambarchi (Touch music)

‘Nønspace’ has been presented in:

2010
video installation, This is Not a Gateway, London
video library, Rencontre Internationale, Paris/Berlin/Madrid

2009
screening, Asian Cultural Council, New York
screening, Urban Nomad Film Festival, Taipei
preview exhibition, Goldsmiths College, London

Nicolas Sauret is a filmmaker and producer based in Paris. He has worked 6 years in Laos and Hong Kong where he pursued an MFA in Creative Media at City University. Since his return in France two years ago, he has co-founded Inflammable Productions, a production company that focusses on new forms of narratives for documentaries, and a dynamic collective of authors, filmmakers and photographers. He also works as project manager with the Institute for Research and Innovation of the Pompidou Center. His work has been featured in a number of exhibitions and festivals including Cinéma du Réel, Vidéoformes, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Tokyo Video Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and Urban Nomad Film Festival. inflammableproductions.com

Ashley L. Wong is an artist, cultural producer and researcher based in London.  She has produced numerous artistic and curatorial projects internationally and has presented work in Taipei, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Madrid, New York, and Gothenburg. loudspkr.org

Eva Weinmayr is an artist, lecturer and co-director of AND, a new platform for experimental publishing. AND’s current activities include the Piracy Book Project producing new collections for the Byam Shaw Library. Recent and upcoming exhibitions by Weinmayr include The Cult of The Difficult 2011; The Institute of Mental Health Is Burning Newport Museum and Art Gallery 2011. http://www.andpublishing.org/

Sion Whellens is Client Services Director at Calverts, a common ownership worker co-operative. He also works in co-operative development, particularly within the creative and cultural, arts and communications fields and is an elected member of the UK Co-operative Council and a Director of Co-operatives UK. http://www.calverts.coop/

16 April 2011

Images from our last event are now up on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61884352@N02/sets/72157626553118748/

Listen to the audio from the three panels here:

The Amateurist Network panel with Eva Weinmayr and Sion Whellens

…ment panel with Anthony Iles and the University of Strategic Optimism

DOXA panel with case studies of Mutant Space, Public Work Group and Invisible Venue

www.publicworksgroup.net

The debate about ‘Commons’ seems to be growing by the day. It is a term that is close to what we do and how we think. This text is an attempt to look in more detail at our own commons, at what we have in common as colleagues and friends. The reason for starting from our own immediate, tangible situation is not to move the subject  into the private sphere, but on the contrary to reflect on the wider implications of what ‘to common’ could mean starting from our own actions, within the public and private spheres we are part of.

For this purpose, a conversation, speaking amongst and with each other to try and think together, seems to be the most appropriate way to approach these questions; this both reflects the form of this essay and the process which generated it in the first place. We – Andreas, Céline and Kathrin – have done things in common for a long time already: education – both given and received, projects, friendships, holidays, studio space, dinners, etc. Rhyzom was also a sixteen months project during which many common things were shared, discussed and practiced. We want to use this conversation to explore some of the experiences and observations from those shared activities further – also in regards to each of our own practices and research. We wish to reflect on the genuine common spaces, subjects and activities that arose during this time of being and working together, and speculate on their potential.

Kathrin

What is our own ‘self-interest’ and the ‘common interest’?

We try to balance this carefully in our projects, which allows us to work with others and invite others into our work, without feeling that we are being patronising or manipulative.

If someone has enough self-interest (as in declared by themselves) in an idea or structure proposed by us, then this is the first step towards common ground.

Both motivations need to coexist, they seem complementary, and as reasons they  bridge between the personal and the shared.

Andreas

I think that moment is crucial: self-interest or an understanding of personal motivations often gives meaning to an action, which is an important aspect for others to see and understand in order to relate.

In most of the projects we (public works) act as agents within a local context trying to implement self-managed or participatory processes. Acting as an agent immediately means being an outsider and being limited by funding resources that support the time for our involvement. As public works we collectively articulated a desire to work on larger projects. Larger in terms of physical scale, time scale or the networks of people involved. One way of starting a larger project for me

was Abbey Gardens* and I made a conscious decision of getting involved first a citizen and, if appropriate at a later stage, as a professional. This has also meant that my involvement is limited to my spare time and all my input is unpaid volunteer time.

* Abbey Gardens is a public space, which is open daily for anyone. What was a neglected wasteland has been transformed into an open-access Harvest Garden where anyone can grow and harvest flowers, fruit and vegetables.  Abbey Gardens was initiated by the Friends of Abbey Gardens, a group of local residents with the help of ‘somewhere’, a multi-disciplinary, non-profit creative company  run by artists Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie and Newham Council.

CéLine

Why the commons?

Hannah Arendt has a clear reasoning towards providing us with an answer, she defines the public domain as corresponding with the Commons, of the city and of politics, as opposed to the private. The domain of the private, on the other hand, relies on excluding others from claiming one’s property, and by extension, where one is deprived of the possibility of being, acting and talking together, which defines the common world, the public domain, the world outside the door.

Thinking with commons should prevent us from creating (or hiding behind) redeeming ‘common good’ projects, good for all, for the public good etc… but it requires that  we articulate our own motivations, our underlying interest in relationship to these. This is important because it clarifies our position (to ourselves, to others) but also contains the expectations we may have

about projects we do, preventing latent expectations of gratitude, engagement, appreciation, and understanding that these are the (patronising) underbelly of so many participatory projects. I would even say that through this question we are talking and raising issues that are very similar to questions that were posed 500 years ago by people in different situations, but resembling needs and desires – this perhaps is another way of speaking in common. We are, in effect, taking sides in these struggles, and that is what is meaningful in friendship. I take friendship very

seriously in these terms, as a political alliance and responsibility. To be friends in projects also means to rely on each other and work collectively towards productions that exceed individual authorships or appropriations. This leads very practically to sharing on different levels, sharing resources or conditions, but also to forming support structures for activities and practices, that are just simply to be inhabited by each of us. A lot of our commonality came through very pragmatic decisions to set things up together: our studio, networks, projects, ideas and resources, which in our case also include sharing mobility (it was Kathrin who realised that my constant travelling could be useful to things we did together rather than the opposite).

I’d like to call upon Andrea Fraser’s ‘The critique of artistic autonomy’1  to reclaim some of the issues and their ancestry – where this all comes from. Whether we are totally conscious of this or not, I think the kind of work suggested and taking place with commons, is work against capitalistic modes of production – and by this I really mean against exploitation. This does not mean that exploitation does not or cannot take place, and there are a whole set of new problems that one has to deal with (exhaustion and repetition not being the least of these), but this is where this starts from.

Working on forms of commons and commonality means not working on the creation of objects, or commodities, and therefore not working on things that can be capitalised upon. This is really important in terms of what kind of artistic practice this proposes, and it comes straight from some of the important work that artists were doing in the 70s and 80s, including Andrea Fraser. But of course this is a position, and not a solution – we still have to deal with how to sustain a practice taking place in social labour when social labour in itself is rarely given value.

‘Commoning is embedded in a labour process’ says Peter Linebaugh;2  the idea of entering a commons by working together, added to that beginning taking place in our own everyday life, resonates with larger concerns around feminist practices. Which existing commons do we feel the need to engage with and support further and why? Can we use this text to make commons and commoning more of a concrete activity for ourselves and the world at large? Could we work towards not only clarifying a terminology for this, but also a more propositional language or ideas that can filter back into our practice and projects, as well as the ongoing Rhyzom ‘movement’?

While we know theoretically that togetherness is not based on similarity but on difference (Derrida would say this is the danger of fraternity, or ideas of brotherhood: if we are included and belong together because we are the same, that means anyone coming from an external, or different position would be automatically excluded) this is in fact what happens with us in our collaborations already. We work well together because we bring very different things to the table, or as Katherine shonfield once put it, Although it sounds very obvious to say, a collaboration is about difference, otherwise why bother? Acknowledging difference opens up a space to recognize what you don’ t know, what you do know and what you didn’t know you knew.

Invisible Venue

http://invisiblevenue.com/

Christian L. Frock@Invisible Venue | Yuk Hui@DOXA

(The following conversation was conducted through emails in preparation for the AMASS workshop)

YH: What was your motivation of organizing the invisible venue? Your emphasize the term ‘alternative’ many times in your writings, what is that ‘alternative’ you want to develop?

CF: I created Invisible Venue in 2005 in response to these questions: Is it possible to show something (artwork) that is also nothing (conceptual, digital, ephemeral), everywhere (public spaces) and nowhere (online)? As a curator and cultural producer, I wanted to collaborate with artists to explore their ideas and through this collaboration interrogate the relationship between contemporary art and daily life. Intrinsic to my objectives was finding a way to work both independently and publicly—to what extent could I interject the work of artists into the public realm through the force of personal autonomy? What kinds of opportunities exist in between the margins of regulations and special permissions? What, in short, are the alternatives to the institution?

YH: How does your work relate to the theme of our workshop the ‘commons’? what is your particular take on the term ‘common/s’

CF: Invisible Venue is largely preoccupied with the establishment of artistic autonomy through the use of public space, commonly available resources and the far-reaching capacities of the Internet.  In this regard, my work relates to themes of self-organization and sustainability, though perhaps in unexpected ways.

If maintaining control over the work equates with creative freedom, then creative freedom means freedom from the market, art or otherwise. While creative autonomy within my work can be established through an indifference to the art market, real autonomy and independence in the world at large is predicated on financial independence. This does not mean amassing a fortune—living standards are variable—but rather that independence is achieved when my financial obligations are within my means. So a job that is unrelated to my primary objectives and drains me of all creative impulse compromises my autonomy. Establishing fiscal stability on my own terms and maintaining creative production are the key components of an alternative autonomy.

Cultivate an alternative autonomous model within the existing capitalist system, developed in keeping with the integrity of my work and ideas. Develop a multi-pronged approach to financial independence through a range of tactics and a broad application of skill set.  Explore alternative entrepreneurial methods for fiscal independence: micro-patronage, crowd funding, and fiscal sponsorship. Consider ways to apply business tactics to conceptual endeavors. Use all of the resources available including websites, social networks, and video publishing.

YH: Sustainability is always a major concern, one of your project ‘Project Space Survival Strategies’ in collaboration with Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization investigate the sustainabilities of galleries and organizations across the globe, what are your findings and what are these strategies for survival?

CF: As the alternative operates outside of conventional models, there is no established source of sustainability, per se. Projects are produced within one’s means and personal economy, within the surplus, with the help of friends, and outside of business hours. (Day jobs, and sometimes night jobs, preclude regular business hours.)  Experiments are finite by nature, as are experimental models, and exist as a course towards sustainability; they are not financially sustainable, in and of themselves, without an injection of cash or revenue. Sometimes alternatives evolve into conventional business models—there are only two:  commercial and non-profit—in order to achieve sustainability. Sometimes they are gone overnight.  Change is a necessary constant. Alternatives last as long as they last—their relevance is not linked to physical longevity, but rather to the ambition of the investigation and to the quality of the discourse that circulates in its wake. Alternatives have been known to be experimental platforms to launch long careers.  In this sense, they are sustained as narratives within these legacies.

By investigating the motivation for each of these spaces and how they are funded, I have found an incredibly diverse set of ideas, manifestations, and community connections that are articulated through the financial strategies. A very different meaning is created when a project is funded entirely from the administrators’ careers vs. when the artist passes a hat around to get donations from visitors. Each of these strategies articulates a unique perspective on the value of contemporary work within its community and even a stance on how it ought to be positioned in society.

YH: Your works impressed me that you are playing with different social relations (for example when you talked about your experience of distributing cards in the London frieze art fair and bring people to your screening somewhere else), that also seems to me an important elements concerning the commons, what is your reflection after these projects?

CF: When I started the Invisible Venue project space in West Oakland, I was contacted by a young reporter from a local paper who wanted to ask me about how Invisible Venue was going to engage the local community and surrounding region in the projects.  The assumption was that I was creating a community space that was geared towards the betterment of my neighbors, even though I hadn’t lived in the neighborhood for very long and didn’t yet know my neighbors.  It struck me there were conventional expectations around the function of art and how it relates to an audience that hadn’t quite caught up with the new paradigm.

I am interested to engage both an accidental and an art-invested audience, but I am not interested to evangelize art or make converts of my neighbors.  The vast diversity of the commons today–public space in the built environment and in virtual sphere–creates an unprecedented platform from which to reconsider ideas around community.  My first responsibility is to the integrity of the work.  I put the work out in public space–whomever takes note is the community and the rest can pass it by.  The process isn’t completely democratized, of course, but it is no longer limited to physical space; this perhaps allows for a greater commons than has ever existed before.

Writings by Christian L. Frock

Invisible Venue(s): Alternatives to the Institution

Notes on Alternative Autonomy

What is the Visible Alternative? And Other Infrequently Explored Possibilities: