The purpose of this fluidity is to encourage a permanent flux of encounters with people with similar artistic interests and critical outlook; as well as to contest the brand fetishism of the art establishment by making the figure of the individual artist disappear behind the work of art. For the same reasons, we give a renewed attention to the notions of collectively-produced art and participatory art. Through our events we aim to periodically make these interests into a topic of in-depth artistic investigation in ways that contest the dominant social discourses of harmony, progress and passivity. Our shows question our societies’ relationship with artistic production and invite the public to reconsider the idea of art as a particular form of social reflection, away from models of facile and/or purely decorative purposes. We are attempting to refocalize public events around the idea of social commentary and critical selfinvestigation in a way that puts in question the relation between the person, the collective, institutions and dominant modes of thinking. For us, art does not mean flattering the obsessive desires, flaccid tastes and domesticated version of reality of the bourgeois subject. Neither does it mean success, popularity and works consumed smoothly like fancy canapés. Art should disrupt ‘common sense’ and thwart the ravenous appetite for repetitive pleasures of the modern subject. We aim to short-circuit perception, to go beyond the useful and the agreeable, even if it means spoiling enjoyment. Often, our work exposes the obscenity of assuming existence only through the ritualized possession of objects; this is the mechanism that opens wide libidinal motorways that stuff us with plastic made in China (under German/US/etc.licence) and therefore has to be blocked. We are wary of the practice of sponsoring or art patronage and of collaborations that weaken the art and strengthen corporate image and profit. We are rejecting the model of a convenience marriage between art and industry/fashion. It is not true that everyone will profit from such alliances: “You bring the money without which I cannot achieve recognition in an art landscape ruled by profit and professional taste-makers; I give you the arty gloss that sets you apart from the less cool bunch and make you desirable to the trend-consumers”. It is the artist’s hunger to be recognised according to the placid criteria of bourgeois success that needs to be critically scrutinised.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 01:56:52 +0000
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