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1017 Days Left, Give or Take

by Gabriel Saloman

The next question is “In what ways can artists retrieve their agency?” There are answers to this question that range from pragmatic to utopian, reformist to insurrectionary. Between the latter two there is a dynamic tension which at this moment must be explored. In many ways the history of avant-gardes represents an interplay between these two courses of actions. On the one hand the many “isms” of Modern Art have advocated for an overthrow of Western Culture, ranging from the nihilistic totalizing of Dada and Futurism to the reterritorializatons offered by Surrealism, Viennese Actionism and Feminist Art. Yet, nearly all advocated for their inclusion in the discourse and space of Modern Art as a condition of their program. Even if we can’t simply dismiss these radical positions as good marketing, we have to acknowledge the qualities of their rebellion which did not deviate so greatly from an Art-historical discourse that they couldn’t be wound up within that historical body. All avant-gardes have ultimately been vulnerable to recuperation. Those who held fast to their position of refusal faced exile, prosecution or else were ignored into invisibility. Most chose, consciously or otherwise, to work within culture and within the existent economy rather than face these conditions. ¹

In a sense, reform is the only choice available if cultural workers want to maintain some semblance of what exists now.² There may not be much opportunity left. There is a world on the edge of collapse, perhaps in its state of free fall even now, with environmental disaster, economic ruin, political rupture and social war in every part of the globe. The white cube can not keep this at bay. Which means the white cube and the persons who inhabit that space will have to deal with change or be dealt with by it. There are options to be sure, but they mostly exist outside of the white cube. For those who believe in the value or potential value of traditional spaces for Art, reform is absolutely necessary. Without reform these spaces will disappear into the ensuing chaos, completely unable to sustain themselves in isolation as neo-monastic culture bunkers, they will either be a target along with parliaments, corporate headquarters, banks and police stations or else they will simply be ignored into oblivion. Only a opening up of these spaces, a permeability, and a move towards fluidity and non-hierarchal structure could make these spaces tenable under the circumstances which seem to be developing at a rapid rate.

So in a sense this is a diplomatic call for a reform of the Art World. I call this diplomatic because it is written in spite of my belief that, even with reform, the world of Art is destined to be transformed beyond recognition by the unrelenting tide of current and near-future events.³ It is also written knowing that to try to preserve this current system of Art means in some way fighting to preserve a general system of inequities, oppressions and exploitations that I don’t wish to see continue. It is not that the worlds of Banking Institutions, Transnational Corporations, and the Military depend upon the worlds of Museums, Biennials and Art Schools for their survival, but that it is unlikely that the latter would function as they do now without the former. The Art World is a neoliberal project, an engine of capital, a false front of generosity and a release valve for creative dissent.

None-the-less, I see good work made by good people and I see that work enabled, fostered and supported by good people within institutions. Whether Arts institutions are worth saving or not, there are people within these systems who are empowered to make work that can dramatically affect people’s lives in ways that are both qualitative and to some extent quantifiable. If we are to refuse to see our time in apocalyptic terms, but still acknowledge that we are in a volatile moment of transition, let us at least ask what is our potential? To begin to imagine what the Art World could become we must acknowledge where we are at, what problems exist now and what is within our powers to change and affect.

Art Labor and its Compromise

Tom Wolfe once described the vacillation between the artist’s desire to be consumed and their desire to remain safely outside the system of capital exchange as the “Boho Dance”.⁴ A dance of resistance and desire; attraction/repulsion. Wolfe was unsympathetic to the artists’ dilemma, judging them for embracing neither without remorse. Artists have a somewhat unique position in society where their labor is rejected as invalid and privileged by the proletariat and at the same time seen as worthless by the ruling classes except where it builds their own capital.⁵ If an art laborer can build capital through their labour then their labour has a value, but only so long as the well doesn’t run dry. As soon as the artist is no longer able to build capital for others, their labor is worthless.

This creates a double precarity. From the perspective of the proles, the artist is viewed as part of a privileged class, a result of guilt by association combined with the assumption that only someone of a certain class status could afford to make work when we all know that there is no money to be made. The artist is then rejected as non-laborer, a leisurer, or else a climber who by playing into the tastes of the ruling class reinforces their status and power. A traitor or a dandy, but not a guiltless victim of the capitalist system. If the artist is no longer able to generate capital for others, and thus themselves, they seemingly aren’t entitled to any grievance, but have to pick up the same tool and work the same field as everyone else.⁶

This double precarity leads to a particularly problematic relationship for the artist where they are concerned with “Criticality”. If one is hanging by a rope held by the person whom they are criticizing and below them is a circle of people who will not catch them should they fall, they find themselves hardly empowered to make their case. Certainly if one has barely begun climbing this rope, there is less distance to fall and less at stake. While the opportunity that is embodied in this rope may no longer be theirs, they have less commitment and less distance to drop. However, if one has worked up this rope, with institutions of exhibition, publishing, and education all holding a part, an artist can find themselves remarkably far along and painfully aware of the distance down below. This artist can offer their critique but there has developed any number of implications, relationships and potentialities that are now at risk.

It is to the artist’s minor fortune that the institutional ego takes some masochistic pleasure in receiving criticism – one doesn’t criticize something which is of no importance and thus that criticality reinforces the validity of the institution. It is generally fashionable to curate “criticality” and offer Art as a mirror with which to view the groundswell of global resistance that became most visible in the late nineties and continues today. This is a protectionary ruse, much like a “free speech zone” at an international summit. This criticality is held within the limited parameters of the language and context of art and theory that has come before, constantly reminding us to look back at ourselves in a self-referential feedback loop that continues to diminish our potential for meaningful change. In this activity, Art is not a Hammer.⁷

Institutional change then is always a self-perpetuating act, not a self-sustaining one. That is the fundamental problem with a contemporary neoliberal conception of “sustainability” and Art institutions are not immune to it more than anyone else. This is why in the event of austerity measures within the institution, the structures will remain the same, but the labor that supports these structures will be changed. One less janitor; a few more interns; contracted designers; senior positions (with higher pay scales) laid off; and then the artists. Those known properties which already fill collections, occupying ever more expensive and expansive storage facilities will be exhibited and emerging work will go unacquired. New art that is exhibited will be more temporal, more relational, smaller in scale or “out of the gallery” – both to reflect and capitalize on contemporary trends but also to meet new budgetary expectations. These artists in particular will be asked to make work out of next to nothing, using their skills honed in a state of financial instability to create resonant material out of recycled material or empty space.

Self-perpetuating sustainability means that the institution and its hierarchies will remain intact, as will it’s appearances, at the expense of the labor that seemingly is the purpose for these institution’s very existence… namely Art making. That is unless Art workers – and allies within institutional systems – resist. This resistance does not have to view its struggle in terms of oppositions, nor would it even be beneficial or generative. Instead it is a will towards agency that should be cultivated and deployed for the greater benefit of cultural workers, audiences and culture at large. It is a question of the artist having a hand at shaping the spaces in which they are exhibited, the financial reciprocity which is granted and the other relationships which are developed both in the creating of these spaces and their engagement. Historical examples abound – the museum reform of the Art Workers Coalition, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Women Artists in Revolution, The Art Strike ⁸– though their precidence has clearly not resolved the issues. There are many contemporary groups engaged in similar initiatives – among them W.A.G.E.; Temporary Services’ Art/Work; the Embassy of Piracy, the Scottish Art Union⁹– and since 2008’s re-centralizing of cultural focus from War to Economy, this concern has become less and less taboo. Whether it is placed within “new institutional critique”, “service aesthetics”, or any number of other theoretical frames, what is compelling is that we have returned to the point of praxis.

Ultimately the solution to the economic inequities of the Art-world will require a coalition of visionary desires that cannot exclude those working within institutions. Most employees of any large university, biennial, magazine or museum is equally burdened by the various crisis that confront artists. They are as well in a state of precarity due to various amounts of investment, as well suffering under austerity measures, and as well in state of constrained agency. They are not the “managers of culture” as Hans Haacke once said, so much as the “middle-managers of culture”. Their bosses themselves are slaves to the institution who, in spite of their seeming position of power, are under critical pressure to uphold an institutionalized worldview and to continue the process of self-perpetuation. Frankly, no one in these positions of authority wants to be know as the person who destroyed the NYMoMA or the Venice Biennale, even if there are others outside the gates who would do that job for free. Any change in our system of Art will have to be led by artists, but for it to succeed in rescuing the Art-world it will need to be in concert with other cultural workers within the institution.

Towards a Sustainable Cultural Ecology

To give at least as much as we receive, and to move away from a practice of resource extraction. Art moves through the world in no different manner than any other human activity. While it may appear to exist outside of the mundane, or parallel as it is neither purely mystical nor purely material, Art is of the world and makes the world as much as any other work that humans may engage in. Art making has a vast array of affects, within its spaces of exhibition and exchange and in the psychic and physical spaces it occupies before and after these points of contact. Art has an environmental impact, no matter what material it is (or isn’t) made of. Art participates in an economy, both in its production and in its place within labour and market exchange. Art plays a role as a political actor, both in its cause and its effect, but perhaps most importantly in its context. Art serves a social role, a spiritual role, an intellectual role, all affecting our human relationships and our internal worlds in ways that may not be easily accountable, but must be taken into an account.

In other words, art has an Ecology that all cultural workers are accountable for. Art does not only exist in the realm of white cubes, nor is it somehow different or special in some mysterious way that excuses it from having to reconcile from the repercussions of its actions. As with any action, we can determine that ends justifies the means, but we can’t assume that only the good can qualify as the ends. Art has a footprint, a touch that can’t be ignored except at the expense of Justice. Morality may be debated, but art is not amoral. Unless it chooses to be.

There is a self-serving tendency in Art to give up agency. It is strenuously reinforced by the institutions of Art and the marketers of Culture because it discourages any change in the power dynamics by which they (seemingly) benefit. If the artist is a mystic who is by their peculiarity or exceptionalism unbounded by Earthly responsibility, then they also have no control over their material circumstances. If this is so, then the world can’t support or nourish the artist and thus the only safe haven for them is the mediating forces of the dealer, curator, critic and collector. They guard and insulate the artist from the world. The artist is then free to be a heroic victim of the unjust and unforgiving “free” market, both punished for their inability to change their situation, and on rare occasion rewarded for their willingness to brave the unknown. If so, then the only refuge can be found in the Gallery, the Museum, the Publication or the Private Collection.

Why this illusion is self-serving is because in giving up agency the artist also gives up accountability. If the artist is not responsible for their situation, they are also not responsible for changing it. However much this may insulate some artists from care, for most artists it perpetuates a state of alienation and victimhood. Alienation from their economy, from their fellow members of society, from their culture and of a kind from their labor. Victimhood where the artist is constantly expected to look for someone else’s providence, or else to give up their calling as an artist so that they may simply survive. The “starving artist” myth was invented as an archetypal ideal by marketers, but it survives, perpetuates and thrives because artists allow it.

Artists, however, do have agency. They have a power to discern the effect of their work on an environment based on the work they choose to make and where they choose to make it. They have a power to engage in the economics of their production and exhibition of work, to act according to their values, to say no and to offer transparency. They have a power to discern the political implications of their work, to determine what context it is introduced in and to advocate for a political meaning that underlies or is embodied in the work. They have a nearly infinite variety of opportunities to consider and affect the social, spiritual and intellectual implications of their work – through intention and a mindfulness in regards to the material relationships within their work. While ultimately the latter depends upon a public, all aspects of art making have a relational component. Seen or unseen.

In the same way that it has become more widely accepted that “sustainability” should be a goal of human activities in the fields of most other labor, it is time for Art to also prioritize this ideal. We have to ask ourselves in what way does the current activities of the Art World reflect our values?

Are spaces such as museums and white cube galleries, events such as biennials and art fairs, or systems such as the marketplace, philanthropy or government subsidized art sustainable?

Is the making of art using new or toxic materials sustainable?

Do we need to make more things? If we do, where will they go? Do we need to revisit old forms of exchange (potlatch, gifting, ritual destruction) or invent new ones to accommodate the shear quantity of material that artists are compelled to make?

What would more sustainable forms of art making and exhibition look like? Does it include more economic justice for art makers and institutional laborers? Does it account for its political context, refusing to work at the expense of the communities that surround it? Can it give more on a micro-level rather than justifying its activities on a macro-economic/political scale?

How can the making or exhibition of Art leave a place more healthy, more empowered, more wealthy than before without it being at the expense of others, directly or indirectly? Does sustainability really mean fostering self-sustainability?

In the constant push to create a competing spectacle of Art, one which can compare to the torrential download of information that a post-Millennial person more and more has access to, we have stopped asking “What is Art for?”. Sure the question comes up in an existentialist way, but the question of its utility – spiritual, cultural and pedagogical utility included – is seen as unrelated to our global crisis. An artist shouldn’t have to justify their call to make work, nor the very deep and personal nature of their relationship to art making. Yet we consider many integral and personal acts, from eating to defecating, from sex to parenting, with broadening understanding of how they impact our world or each other. Surely Art does something, or else there wouldn’t be such an illogical compulsion to live as art makers or to make an art of our labour. In holding ourselves accountable for how Art affects the world, we are also opening up ourselves to what Art could possibly do to better the world, to serve.

The Artist as Currency Exchange: From Quantitive Capital to Qualitative Capital

The artist is most clearly akin to an alchemist. If Duchamp can turn a urinal into a priceless icon of Modernity, then we shouldn’t doubt the magical powers at the artist’s disposal. In fact, this power is tragically underestimated by everyone, not the least of which is the artist themselves. Generally the power of this transformation is seemingly in the hands of institutions and the ruling class. They seemingly “make” artists, enacting the legendary transformation from lead to gold. It is exactly because artists engage in relationship with institutions and other financiers of the arts with this assumption in place that artists persist to see themselves as disempowered and their rightful role among the Nicholas Flamels, Robert Fludds and Marcel Duchamps is never seized upon.¹⁰

If we recognize first that artists and their financiers don’t only work with quantitative capital but also qualitative capital, we begin to open up an avenue towards a deeper understanding of their role. As is generally assumed, we can now identify Art as having an abstracted and arbitrary value. In fact, as an abstracted symbol of value it has much in common with money itself, as both are exchanged based on imagined value relationships. As others have noted, “money represents something essential to modern society, though otherwise invisible: the social character of productive labor” and thus is only valued for what it symbolizes.¹¹ This new age numismatics means that we are transferring not actual material values but products of imaginations.

Yet where as money’s imaginary value is systematically regulated, Art’s value is determined through several competing forces asserting their position in relationship to both the material production and the social relationships that exist within the field of Art. We can see that the so-called Free Market determines an artworks price most explicitly – an object of art is worth what someone will pay for it. This may reinforce our assumption that art has a material value, but as most artists know, most art that is bought and sold doesn’t reflect accurately an artist’s time and labor, not to mention that few artists are even granted admittance to this marketplace. There are further complications to clearly designating an artist’s compensation, but it’s enough just to note that Art is neither what Keynes would have termed commodity currency nor fiat currency (though many in the Art-world would attempt to make it the former.) The Marketplace is playing pretend and only for its own benefit.

Of course there are many other forms of capital that are produced by Art, and most are qualitative not quantitative. Cultural capital is the primary currency of the Art world, and as such is generally traded based on a combination of speculation and “a coincidence of wants”¹² where the former tends to define the terms of the latter. While institutional survival (or more accurately self-perpetuation) depends materially on money, it is only through the cultural capital generated by a conspiracy of cultural workers, critics and collectors, and the actual work of artists, that financial capital can be generated. The actual work of artists promises to continue the mythic narrative of Modern Art’s importance, while at the same time continually validating the institution’s necessity by updating its position into a contemporary cultural context. Artists give institutions market share, brand recognition and open new markets, while institutions return this service in kind.¹³ The degree to which one is extracting resources from the other in a way that is unequal isn’t necessarily located in this particular area of exchange.

Other forms of “capital” that are also qualitative venture into the realm of what separates Art from other forms of production. A few I can identify here would be social capital, synchronistic capital, and perhaps what could be called wisdom or spiritual capital. All of these are reservoirs of energy and potentiality from which artist draw upon and which may motivate an artist to engage in an exchange of work. Social capital recognizes that many artists do work to broaden and strengthen their field of relationships. This is different than what cultural capital provides in that the relationships in the former are instilled with intimacy. These relationships don’t simply benefit a “career” but provide meaningful opportunities to relate to peers and others, while reinforcing the bonds that define these people as part of a community. An opportunity to work is an opportunity to connect or reconnect with others in a specific situation or geographical place. Synchronistic capital recognizes that an opportunity may open to a simultaneous multiplicity of needs, desires or benefits. In essence, feeding two birds with one scone. The capital resource of wisdom or spirit recognizes that we often view something’s value as being a purely subjective experience which changes and transforms our lives and holds meaning that is indescribable but dense with substance. Art for example.

What makes it important to acknowledge these various sources of value that are manifest in our exchanges in the art world is not simply transparency, but to also acknowledge that all of these qualitative forms of capital have highly flexible and expandable properties. Material capital can not transform itself into something it’s not, but in the case of these other capitals, their rate of exchange is not fixed. In fact, while material resources are scarce, these other resources are almost limitless. It is in this place that the artist can assert their agency in the realm of exchange, and more importantly it is here that a critical and ethical action can be taken. It is the artist who is responsible for taking the resources afforded them by an institution and transforming those resources into a just, equitable and sustainable practice. Empowered to set their own rate of exchange, the artist can take that capital and creatively redistribute it by any number of means. Literally they can take money from the institution and direct it as a gift or as payment for goods and services to individuals or groups who the artist wishes to support. They can invite others to participate and thus share the cultural, social and spiritual capital that they might otherwise keep to themselves. Perhaps most appropriately they can use capital as it was designed for and invest in something that will not only be generative, but self-sustaining.

Indirect Action, Intimacy and Generative Contact

In many ways it is futile and self-defeating to seek a relationship between art and survival under capitalism that isn’t a contradiction. Capitalism can only exist with contradiction, and no artist creates outside of these contradictions when the crisis of environmental, social and economic dissolution reaches across the globe. Even the hermit is not without their contradiction, as sadly their inaction and non-participation is also an acquiescence to power and the insufferable conditions under which others live (not to mention that the environmental impact of our actions and inactions reaches even the most remote territories.) There is no non-involvement.

To confront an untenable situation creates positions of opposition that seemingly can’t escape dualities. To choose Soft Power (as most artists do) is to for one more day forestall the use of Hard Power, but does it actually work to avoid the need of force? Most art that intends to affect our social conditions hopes to do so with Indirect Action. Some activist-artists will employ the tools and tactics of Direct Action, but most feel called to restraint because of their precarities and because of their complex relationships with institutions and the market. None-the-less, Indirect Action can work to create a culture that has the contextual and experiential properties necessary to actually support a paradigmatic shift in society. While all chaotic models show that emergent possibilities are limitless and that these catalyzed events will eventually stabilize into new systems (“anarchy is the mother of order”), in those moments of rupture and release everything in our culture that has preceded it will determine what it becomes. It can’t be contained but its shape can be influenced.

In “The Affectivist Manifesto” Brian Holmes makes a claim that it is Art’s moment to engage in just this process. “What an installation, a performance, a concept or a mediated image can do is to mark a possible or real shift with respect to the laws, the customs, the measures, the mores, the technical and organizational devices that define how we must behave and how we may relate to each other at a given time and in a given place. What we look for in art is a different way to live, a fresh chance at coexistence.”¹⁴ In my own terms I would agree that Indirect Action, far from being passive in fact is the defining force that determines the outcome of any major social upheaval.

Deeper than the weaving of potentialities, where the artwork is a utopian model, what is cultivated is Intimacy. Intimacy is bonding, an intersection of solidarity and mystery, where that which is shared is integrated into all of our other actions, through memory and dream. Holmes describes Intimacy as “an unpredictable force, a space of gestation and therefore a wellspring of gesture, the biological spring from which affect drinks”, what I would call Generative Contact. All culture is part evolution / adaptation and part mutation, never wholly homogeneous. Even under the worst conditions of colonization, empire and war the mixing of cultures can produce unexpected variation and beauty. Rather than being afraid of how we change culture through our participation, we should anticipate this change, encourage it through our propositions and safeguard it with our relationships. Through Intimacy we can transcend the codes and structures that are otherwise imposed upon our everyday interactions and develop temporal but meaningful engagements that both acknowledge the problematics of our social conditions and speak to that which is not the territories of politics, economics, identity or philosophies.

Not all relationships have Intimacy. In a world where our relationships are defined by spectacle and mediated networks, Intimacy is not even a value that is pursued. Relational Art often succeeds to address this inadequacy, though not all relational art works towards this goal. While Bourriaud may have been correct to say “it seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows”¹⁵, it would be a failing of any intentional work not to have a utopian component. Utopias may arguably be impossibilities, but they also generate a kind of thinking that considers wholeness, instead of the fragmentation that can make a socially engaged art practice exploitative. To pursue a utopian practice is to be holistic, to strive for a Sustainable Cultural Ecology. This merging of near mystical vision and praxis is the least that an artist can strive for. The pursuit of this path leads towards an assertion of values that can not be adulterated by capital, nor can they be exploited as a resource. Their scale is what protects them, and what makes Intimacy fundamentally incompatible with the current system of institutional art. Yet, it is this Intimacy which could alter the course of Art and is the kernel which could actually sustain its institutional caretakers.