Redefinition of artistic practices in the 21^st century (LSA47)

La Société Anonyme

1. We are not artists, and we are certainly not «art critics». We are producers, people who produce. We are not authors either, for we believe that all ideas on authorship have been overwhelmed by the logic of the circulation of ideas in contemporary societies. Even when we define ourselves as producers, we feel the need to clarify: we are producers, yes, but also products.

Our own work, the activity that specifies it, is really what produces us. Perhaps we could even say that our work basically has to do with the production of people, people like us. The question of author identity, or his/her condition, is a definitively hackneyed question. Nobody is author: every producer is an anonymous society -indeed we would say: the product of an anonymous society.

2. The figure of the artist is living on borrowed time. Nourished by fantasy and imagery belonging to other anthropological ordinances, the aggregate of isolations and inclusions that prefigure her social standing, assigning her a certain share of remaining, no longer relevant totemic power. Nowadays, all who dedicate themselves to such beliefs are either guilty of utter ingenuousness or the most hypocritical cynicism.

3. «Works of art» do not exist. What do exist are labours and practices that we can call artistic. They have to do with meaningful, affective and cultural production,  and they have specific roles in relation to the subjects of experience. Yet they have nothing to do with the production of particular objects, but rather only with the public impetus of certain circulatory effects: effects of meaning, symbolic effects, intensive and affective effects ...

4. For more than one reason, we ought to compare the labour of artists with that of dreams: it is a production that induces superficial formations, which express, translate approximately, a state of unbalanced energies. What is essential about them is not the form or appearance they acquire in a given instant, but the field of intensities -in other words, the differential of potentials- in which they take place.

5. That production ought never to be mistaken for any object or form whatsoever: it is an operator that introduces itself efficiently in a given system, destabilizing the equation of equilibrium governing it. But it is not appropriate to devise a mythology in this respect. The way in which this destabilization operates is something very similar to the introduction of a mere clinamen, something as elemental and frequent as that which makes it possible for two drops of rain, falling at the same time from the same cloud and towards the same earth to have the capacity to, at some point in their relative trajectories, collide -get to know each other, let us say.

6. To describe current societies as «societies of knowledge» -or still worse, as «societies of cultural capitalism»- is to forget to what extent their constitution is carried out, precisely, upon the exalted consecration of foolishness, of ignorance. Nevertheless, we admit that each of those figures is no more than a degree of the others - perhaps their zero degree. And we therefore allow the labeling of ours as «societies of knowledge» or of «cultural capitalism» -but always under the rigorous observation of that quantitative clause gradated precisely to the lowermost position. What we wish to say is that as long as it can be understood that as such societies of knowledge, contemporary societies could in fact be characterized, with utmost certitude, as «societies of (very scarce) knowledge» or even as «societies of (un)cultural capitalism»...

7. Artistic work no longer has to do with representation. Would anyone think that that of the dream -that which induces an «apparent content» in whoever relives the «latent» one, or tells it in the morning- has to do with the «re-presentation»? Of what?

Negative: Dreams express an economy of forces, a tension of energies, a disposition of the differential distribution: it is a melody of desire, never its painting; it is presence, never re-presentation. From now on, that mode of labour we call artistic ought to be consecrated to a similar production -in the sphere of happening, of presence: never again in that of representation. There is nothing worthy left to represent, there is no longer any claim-worthy dignity in the task of representing. It is no longer just that of «not committing the indignity of speaking for another» but rather that no sign, effect, object, figure, no entity or existent can feign any dignity whatsoever if its labour  is only or mainly meant for another, to represent it...  

8. This world and the other do not exist. Art cannot keep claiming to inhabit an autonomous sphere, a separate dominion. Not even to argue the «overcoming» operation of its split up statute. The class of objects is unique, they all enjoy the same calibration and suffer the same «objective» deficiency of fantasy. If art work still has to do with the «phantasma’, with the circulation of ideas (in its characteristic fuzzy fluxing) and the productivity of sense or desiring energies (in their magnificent diffusion), it is beginning to be time to avoid mistaking that halo -that aura- for something adherent to the materialness of some order of «specific objects».

9. The transformations of current societies determines the complete inadequacy of the presently hegemonic regime of public circulation of artistic production. This is particularly true regarding two circumstances: 1. the displacement of the visual signifier toward the territory of the moving image -and the resultant increasing obsolescence of the spatial devices of the organization of reception, of the modes of expectation; and 2. the same spuriousness of any requirement of specific objectification.

It is not only that much of the resultant energy of any artistic practice does not require culmination or specificity in any unique object, but now not even in any multiplied object either.

For the new practices, not only is it senseless to speak of originals -it is also so to speak of copies (for being as it is in music since the transition from disk to MP3 has been accomplished). The time when the regime of public circulation of products resulting from artistic practices referred to some type of «objects» is completely over and finished.

10. In the societies of the 21^st century, art will not be exhibited. It will be broadcasted.

11. Only to the extent that the characteristic mode of the artistic experience is associated with an experience of object in modern societies, the question of the property of said object becomes pertinent (when we speak of fine  arts). It does not, however, for example, if we speak of musical, theatrical, literary or cinematographic experiences -it is not relevant in them who owns a score or who owns a script-. This fact decisively conditions two main articulations relating to the social form of modern artistic experience: first, the mode of the market, the organization of its particular economy (aimed at the circulation of objects supplemented by an surplus-value quite specifically associated with the artistic value: the work of art as merchandise); and second, the mode of its patrimonialization (necessarily and consequently associated with modes of collecting). 

12.The more the new artistic practices move away from their objectives of object production, the less pertinent such traditional articulations of their marketing and their collection will appear. The attempts at adapting the old formats of artistic economy -based on the exchange of merchandise of artistic value and their private or public collection- are increasingly inadequate for the new practices, which demand to be resituated in the sphere of a diversified economy with a service sector expanded (to embrace immaterial symbolic products).

13. In the societies of the 21^st century, artists will not receive their income from the appreciation associated with the merchandising of the objects produced by their work, but instead, they will receive the rights associated with the public circulation of the quantities of concept and affection their immaterial work generates (they will be generators of immaterial wealth rather than the first link of a chain of commerce of sumptous merchandise). The new art economy will no longer consider artists as producers of specific merchandise destined to the circuits of luxury in the economies of opulence, but as generators of specific contents destined to social dissemination.

14. The function of the Art institution as collector, and thereby the guarantor of the public patrimonialization of artistic merchandise, will therefore tend to disappear, as soon as artistic practices abandon the production of objects as petitions of mediation irrevocably necessary for public circulation of the ideas and affections. In the societies of the 21^st century, it will be unnecessary -and virtually impossible- to collect works of art (as it is already almost spurious to collect film or music) and the function of public institutions regarding the new practices, with the intention of guaranteeing their inscription on the public sphere, will more likely be that of promoting or optimizing, within protected spheres, the social circulation of those contents that the free market of the cultural industries disregard in their opportunistic law of audience regulation.

15. We are interested in investigating the growing inadequacy of the old spatialized devices of articulation of the social reception of artistic practices (museums, art galleries...). But not because we wish to remain installed in the antithetical logic between art and Art institution; that logic seems to us to be hackneyed to death and void of any potential effectiveness: those who insist on defining themselves with respect to it immediately fall toward the exhaustively institutionalized pole, for it is inscribed precisely under the figure of this logic. Not then for such a reason but rather because, in the exacerbation of that moment of growing inadequacy, artistic practices as well as the institution regulating their social inscription find themselves forced to evolve.  

16. Yes, it is time to evolve. Far too much leeway has been given to the negativist invention that does nothing but anchor the form of practices in a blockaded past, self-complacent in the paradoxical irresoluteness of its antithetical logic. Anything with the form of calculated negation of itself does but unabashedly prepare the alibi of the accomplished commitment by anticipating the moment of its integrated absorption.

17. What we would describe as the antithetical logic of the Art-institution (in other words: the characteristic of the formation of the objective spirit we inherit as constitutive past, the inheritance of that which is modern ) is as follows: to be art, it is necessary to deny being so; to enter the Art-institution, it is necessary to appear (and adopt the most convincing tone possible to this respect) to question it, to surpass it, to exceed it, to overwhelm it.

18. What we would describe as hackneyed antithetical logic of the work has a similar structure, that of if it is, it is not. If it were not recognized as such, art would claim to become so (logic of the readymade, of the anti-aesthetics). If it is recognized as such, then it ought to be denied some value in that condition (logic of the anti-artistic pronouncement).

19. The time of this «generational logic» -for it soon leaves off being a mere logic of false consciousness to resolve itself in an economy of evolution presided over by the governance of an adaptive principle resembling «natural selection’- is a time that has reached its end. Whoever wants to present him/herself as something other than a repeating chorus of a prefixed academicism must invent lyrics less complacent than that of the antithetical expression. Game over for the heirs of Duchamp.

20. The work carried out by the artistic producer is situated in the orbit of any other activity, of whatever activity. It is, like all the rest of the work carried out by any other citizens, a mere productive activity and its space of inscription is none other than the public domain, the social space, defined by acts of exchange. Whether we like it or not, in current societies, this space is exhaustively prefigured by the economic-productive activity, under whose administration the regulated form of every social exchange is determined.

21. Art no longer belongs to the order of a symbolic economy presided over by the anthropological figures of waste, of overproduction. The contemporary artist cannot accept continuing to act as tribal shaman, as emancipated in the new forms of contemporary potluck. In the new economies of false sustained opulence, artists cannot accept that their practices be inscribed in any way in the registers as any updated form of luxury.   

22. The transformation of the new societies puts in the forefront immaterial labour , the production of meaning and emotions, the making of intellectual and affective labour. The most important challenge that the contemporary artistic practices face is the redefinition of their anthropological role in relation to this great displacement.

23. The old circumscription of the idea of labour to the productive economy and the production of objects is becoming patently obsolete, and not only due to the disproportionately greater weight that wall-street-economy and the outright circulation of capital is acquiring in the new societies, but also due to the fact that the immaterial production and the circulation of meaning, of information, are becoming the most important modes of exchange in emerging societies.

24. Perhaps, the most characteristic aspect of the new societies is indeed their structural transformation regarding the production of relations, their specialization. In the societies of postfordism, the most important part of the work carried out no longer has as aim the production of material goods, but rather it is oriented toward intellectual and emotional production, toward catering to our needs regarding sense and desire, meaning and pleasure. At the same time, also the consumption of immaterial goods, whose circulation is regulated by the cultural industries that are definitively blended with those of entertainment and the media, is tending to become the main mode of consumption.

The consequence is that the centrality once occupied, regarding the creation of wealth, by the possession of capital, now leans toward the possession of intellectual property, the principle objective of the new order of the capitalist system. Artistic practices ought to find their place in relation to all these processes of transformation.

25. Intellectual property and authorship rights, as such, will become the main battle horse of this contemporary re-centering of the relations of production. The figures of utopian plagiarism or the syndication of authorship  -whose best efficiency has been exemplified today in the terrain of free software- represents arrowheads of a great strategy to display whoever directs his/her policy toward the generation of devices and means that permit free circulation and universal access to information, thus definitively modifying the relation between producers and users.  

It is imperative to overcome the vertical scheme emitters - receivers to establish a radial and non hierarchal economy of users, a rhizome of exchangers - updating the utopian formula of the community of media producers. 

26. It is necessary of find formulas that respect authors» rights while simultaneously respecting the collective right to public and open access to the totality of knowledge and practices of symbolic production, profoundly revising the concept of intellectual property. The one we are dealing with has been inherited from a time when the notions of identity, authorship and property were based on legal-bio-religious presuppositions, and not on the bio-techno-political considerations that are currently more appropriate.

27. The refocusing brought about by the immaterial labour at the very operational core of the new economies supposes a great transformation: the whole spectrum of a production that used to be considered «superstructural» has now become the nucleus of the contemporary anthropological commerce.

28. If the new societies can nowadays be defined as societies of immaterial labour , societies of knowledge, it must then be recognized that the practices of symbolic production -the activities oriented toward production, transmission and circulation of the affections and concepts in the public domain (the desires and meanings, the thoughts and passions)- take on a leading role, one that is absolute and of utmost priority. The artist as producer no longer operates in them as a symbolic-totemic figure, but rather as a genuine participant in the social exchanges -of intellectual production and of the production of desire.

29. First responsibility: that acquired insofar as the production of forms of socialization and individualization. The old mechanisms of the social reproduction -the family, education, religion, the nation, ... all the old articulating devices of tales of recognition, those abstract machinations producers of elements of identification through the tacit adhesion to a complex system of implicit or explicit beliefs- have left off working as such, and the charge of offering the subject, in his/her process of construction, recognition or identification tools has been transferred, or displaced, toward agencies much more fragile and flexible, in which the weight of the circulating visual «imagery» capable of collective-flux is decisive.

The power of the image, of the respective «visual culture» is almost absolute and the producers of that «visual culture» would do well in getting to know and assimilating the disproportionate importance that it has acquired, and consequently, its growing responsibility (a responsibility for which, it must be said, they are not always sufficiently prepared).

30. Along three different paths, the new artistic practices are assuming that responsibility. In the first place, via narration. The use of the image-technique and the image-movement, in their capacity to expand in an inner-time of tale, multiplies the possibilities of the generation of narratives. In the second place, via the generation of happenings, events, through the production of situations. Beyond the idea of performance - and of course far beyond that of installation- the contemporary artist works on the generation of contexts of direct encounter, on the specific production of micro-situations of socialization. The third way is a variant of the second: when that production of conversational spaces, of the socialization of experience, is not produced in the physical space, but in the virtual one, by means of the generation of a mediation.

The artist as producer is a) a generator of narratives of mutual recognition; b) an inducer of intensified situations of encounter and socialization of experience; and c) a producer of mediations for their exchange in the public sphere.

31. The artist as producer intervenes, more and more, in the real time of the dominion of experience, not in the deferred time of representation. This becomes more unquestionable inasmuch as we understand the real time in terms of time of the synchronization of experience, shared time and that of encounter among the subjects of knowledge and passion. More and more, the artist is a producer of live...

32. The second great responsibility of the artistic producer in contemporary societies: the one that concerns her in relation to the process of diffuse «aesthetization» of the contemporary world without which the new capitalism would not be thinkable. If the effect of industrial capitalism on the system of objects (hence on the system of necessities, and of relationships) was its generalized transformation into the form of merchandise, it could be said that the most characteristic effect of postindustrial capitalism is generalized aesthetization of such merchandise, its transformation (hence that of the system of needs, and that of relations, thereby subjected to a second metamorphosis) to its aestheticized form. Indeed, what presides over the current social circulation of objects, goods and relationships, is no longer the use we can associate them with or their exchange value, but rather, and above all, their aesthetic value, the promise they contain of a more intense, more inwardly enriched life.

33. The religion of our time is called: aesthetic justification of existence- worshiped under an evidently cheapened, trivialized form -if compared to its design in the romantic program or its assay in Nietzsche. Its effect supposes the realization of our time as the time of culminated nihilism -but once again at a bargain price, like  the second hand.

34. The social mechanisms of recognition and differentiation, of socialization and subjectification, of belonging to a social group and earning distinction within it are placed above all else in the aestheticized value, and the new capitalism adds its content to material and immaterial objects and relations, thus determining their new social value. This is all the more so in a globalized world, in which the circulation of goods, forms and merchandise transcends all frontiers and geo-bio-political zones of specific identification: in this globalized world of stray identities, the need to implement those mechanisms of production of  identity and differentiation grows exponentially.

35. The labour that in this respect concerns artistic practices therefore has to do with the production of imagery in the societies of immaterial work. On a generic, ideological level, this leads to 1. the implementation of imagery alternative to those dominant in the globalization process and 2. the critical approach to the mechanisms and modes of production of representation pertaining to the cultural and entertainment industries. 

36. What is at stake in the new societies of advanced capitalism is the process by which it is going to be decided which are and which are going to be the mechanisms and apparatus of subjection and socialization that are to be constituted as hegemonic, which the abstract and moral devices and mechanisms by which the social inscription of the subjects is to be articulated, the effective ingenuities by which we will endeavor from now on in the process of becoming citizens, members of a social body.

It is necessary to intervene in this dynamic, by recognizing the highly political dimension it entails.

37. Resisting the effect of deintensification, qualitative impoverishment and expropriation of what is authentic in experience inherent in its management by the entertainment industry, could be the leitmotiv of a new politics. A new politics that, before the outrageous potential possessed by the contemporary industries of imagery, may be capable of engineering methods of resistance and modes of alternative production of the processes of socialization and subjection.

Perhaps, in that task -that of that new politics defined in the era of immaterial work- artistic practices will manage to find, in a process of transformation of the current societies that tends to convert them into mere instruments of legitimization -when not into trivial generators of luxurious trinkets for the new immaterial economies- their best arguments for the future, their highest challenge -or at least a good reason for being in the dawning century