This simplicity of interactivity is a new element in De Nijs' oeuvre. Most of his works, including Run Motherfucker Run (2001/2004) and Spatial Sounds (100dB at 100 km/h) (2000/2001), have become interactive media art classics precisely because of the surprising behavior these installations compel the visitor to engage in. The imagery in Run Motherfucker Run may be full of suspense and surprises, yet for the audience the work’s interest resides mostly in the way you have to walk on the treadmill that functions as the physical interface between you and the imagery. If you don’t understand how to interact properly with the piece, the conveyer belt starts to run faster and faster, until finally you’re ejected off the back of the treadmill. Once you’ve found the right walking speed, you have to learn to move left and right on the conveyor belt in order to navigate the empty streets and lots projected on the huge screen in front of you. It requires considerable effort, as the title of the piece suggests.

Spatial Sounds evokes wonderful, amusing behavior in its interactors. They run around the piece, pursued by a heavy machine arm that, if they manage to find the right speed of movement and gestures, will increase its speed to100 km/h, growling and whining at 100dB through speakers affixed to its end. When the arm finally comes to a stop, as if to catch its breath like the visitors, quite a few of them will give the speaker a knock, as if to say, "Are you OK?" or even, "That was better than sex." The machine as an object is imposing when at rest and seductive in action. It lets its visitors know that it is willing to interact with them and encourages them with a graceful wave or an aggressive rush towards them.

This behavioral interest is all but lacking in Exploded Views 2.0. In fact, one could call the interactivity in the piece modest, if not clumsy, since the work functions best when only one interactor at a time approaches the huge projections on the wall. This compels the other viewers into the passive role of an audience, even though you’ll often hear them say things like "Go over to the right a little – there's something reddish over there." The peculiar thing is, as I suggested above, that this passivity is the best way to look at and experience the unique qualities of the work. Although an interactor is needed to activate the work and make the images move, it is the audience as a whole that gets immersed in its beauty without hesitation or shyness. And as the interactor moves, the beauty of that imagery is staggering.

Exploded_Views 2.0 heralds the coming of a new age in interactive media art, in which images not only make sense but are far more interesting and layered – in function, meaning and beauty – than any found in contemporary museum art. The images in Exploded_Views 2.0 consist of point clouds generated from huge Web 2.0 photo collections like Flickr. The work is basically a database of 350 reconstructions of the most famous buildings on five continents, derived from 100,000 web images, rendered in real time as a person moves through the interface.

When the work is navigated by an interactor (who functions as a deputy for the onlookers), you recognize these archetypal temples, cathedrals, museums, city gates, palaces, facades and whatnot as the sort of places you visit in your sleep at night. It is a dark, nocturnal world that is evoked. The buildings seem to be made of whirling stardust, of the unstable, glowing, ever-transforming stuff dreams are made of. It is a realistic world, yet an utterly artificial one because of the absence of real-life distances between the floating, bubbling, sometimes exploding buildings.

The imagery is deeply moving because you rediscover the specious, amorphous, vague, fluttering material your mind is made of, brought together in an arrangement that both is consistent and dances gracefully to the music of time. It is a world of soft buildings and squares, tender walls and windows, gentle colors and suffering hues, fully recognizable yet far beyond words. This is what the world looks like when we navigate the virtual space of our inner life, before the material of our subconscious memories crystallizes into solid forms or discursive meaning.

In Exploded_Views 2.0, Marnix de Nijs has made an interactive media art installation that combines 100,000 mediocre photos from a public database into a mass of imagery of staggering, singular, public yet private beauty. This is the sort of affirmative imagery we need to keep our souls alive and sane, healthy, indeed happy. It goes far beyond a critique of the poverty and shallowness of most contemporary museum art and sets a new 21st-century standard for what art can do.

Interview conducted on 15-03-2013 by Arie Altena.

Entre un dock où s'inscrit l'histoire portuaire de Rotterdam (Java, Bornéo, Célèbes) et une splendeur architecturale contemporaine dont la deuxième ville des Pays-Bas a le secret, sprintent trois individus, chacun accoutré d'un ordinateur greffé à la manche, d'un système de localisation par satellite (GPS) et d'un appareil photo numérique. L'un d'eux s'arrête, clichète un espace vide de présence humaine, annonce la capture de Maria.

A l'intérieur de Las Palmas, le bâtiment décati qui accueille le Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), ancêtre des manifestations internationales liées à la culture numérique, Maria vient d'être sortie du jeu, face à son écran de visualisation en 3D de Rotterdam. Son double numérique a été repéré par l'un des "runners" de Blast Theory, un collectif d'artistes britanniques. "Can you see me now ?" fait se rencontrer des mondes a priori étanches, l'espace réel, tangible, et l'espace virtuel, où se perdent les aficionados de jeux vidéo.

Instabilité. La proposition extrême de Blast Theory est l'une des variations artistiques autour du thème 2003 du DEAF, "Data Knitting" (pour "tricotage de données"), un concept moins technoïde qu'il n'y paraît. "N'est-il pas étrange que, dans nos sociétés hypermédiatisées, si peu de gens s'intéressent aux croisements des bases de données, à leur réalité so cio logique, économique et po litique ?", interroge Alex Adriaansens, directeur du V2, le centre de création et de recherches créé en 1981 par une poignée d'artistes préoccupés d'interdisciplinarité, à l'origine du festival. "Comment construit-on les briques qui structurent la société de l'information ? Qui a la possibilité de collecter les données, à qui appartiennent-elles ? Comment, au niveau individuel, participer à cette réalité ?" Pour répondre, V2 mixe débats théoriques, performances, sets de DJ's et exposition d'oeuvres "pas toujours stables" (entendez: pas vraiment achevées) : "Au DEAF, nous essayons beaucoup, dit en riant Alex Adriaansens. En 1987 déjà, nous lancions le Manifeste des médias instables, pour réfléchir à ces technologies qui perturbent les institutions." Cette savante mixture devrait attirer, d'ici à dimanche, 8 000 festivaliers, chif fre en constante hausse, malgré un budget modeste (500 000 euros).

Tricot. La Britannique Sadie Plant, philosophe et théoricienne des nouveaux médias, a voulu mettre l'accent sur les "conséquences inattendues des technologies", en invitant deux artistes sonores. Kaffe Matthews compose ses mélodies numériques à partir de sons naturels : désert aborigène, vent, pluie et nuages d'une île écossaise. "Un temps typique de ces journées magnifiquement grises d'Ecosse", dit-elle, en faisant écouter une de ses compositions, alternant grésillement et nappes sonores. Brian Duffy et son Modified Toy Orchestra bidouillent des jouets électroniques pour créer des sons inédits. Fébrile dans son strict costume, il transforme en direct un Casio SA (90 boucles en mémoire, 40 pence sur un marché aux puces britannique), à l'aide d'un fer à souder, d'un commutateur et d'un tournevis, pour échapper à "l'ennui" des sons préprogrammés. Face à face, les deux vont "tricoter" un son mêlant captation directe, sons enfantins des joujoux, chuintements et craquements, vibrations de Theremin, pour un final hilarant, avec poupée dansante et sifflante ad libitum...

Pourquoi autant d'artistes s'intéressent-ils aux questions d'archives, de mémoire à tiroirs technos et d'atteintes à la vie privée ? Pour "ramener du fun dans la résistance", comme le duo allemand d'Art d'ameublement ? Les organisateurs des Big Brother Awards allemands (une remise de prix parodique aux entreprises et institutions qui portent le plus atteinte à la vie privée) ont voulu lutter contre les "outils de traque", avec leur "Privacy card" : Payback, société allemande qui centralise les dossiers des consommateurs pour délivrer des points de fidélité, est sur la sellette (procès, stagnation des ventes) depuis que le duo a distribué 2 000 exemplaires d'une carte de fidélité piratée. Du même tonneau, BublSpace, un brouilleur personnel de téléphone portable. Arthur Elsenaar et Taco Stolk, qui ont inventé ce gadget ultime (illégal, mais dont tout le monde rêve), pointent du doigt la perte de contrôle de notre intimité, jusque dans un espace public privatisé.

Absurde. De ces artistes immergés dans les nouveaux médias, il ressort que la dimension technologique n'est qu'accessoire : les oeuvres les plus complexes ne sont pas les plus intéressantes, comme le prouve par l'absurde le Web of life de Jeffrey Shaw : imaginez un film où chaque image serait sous-titrée "production Gaumont" et vous aurez une idée de l'installation en relief du patron du ZKM (le centre d'art et de nouveaux médias de Karlsruhe, en Allemagne), qui affiche en permanence un "Production ZKM" de très mauvais goût....

"In de ontwikkeling van een thema speelt een aantal factoren een rol. V2_'s activiteiten zijn gericht op de relatie tussen kunst en technologie, een breed terrein dat varieert van robotica, internet en radio tot kunstmatige intelligentie en virtual reality – een terrein dat nog niet strikt is afgebakend en waarin mengvormen floreren. Ook heeft het werken met mediatechnologie sociale, politieke, economische en culturele implicaties. Een thema dient als kader waarbinnen de complexiteit van het werkveld van V2_ kan worden afgebakend, terwijl een grote diversiteit mogelijk blijft. Het bindt de soms zeer diverse activiteiten van DEAF en vormt een rode draad voor het publiek. Daarnaast moet een thema aansluiten op de actualiteit en praktijk van kunstenaars en wetenschappers. Het thema van dit jaar, Data Knitting – het verknopen van informatie –, raakt aan een maatschappelijke actualiteit. Veel organisaties zijn bezig hun archieven digitaal te ontsluiten en stuiten daarbij zowel op problemen als op nieuwe mogelijkheden. Data Knitting appelleert aan de basisvoorwaarden van een goed functionerende informatiesamenleving waarin de productie van kennis, via het vergaren, verwerken en bewerken van informatie een essentieel gegeven is. Dus hoe informatie te interpreteren, ordenen en ontsluiten, en hoe de politieke, sociale en culturele implicaties ervan te begrijpen? 
Deze thematiek is niet nieuw. Mensen hebben door de eeuwen heen allerlei methodieken ontwikkeld om de wereld om hen heen te beschrijven. De Wunderkammer, een voorloper van het 19de-eeuwse museum, is daar een goed voorbeeld van. Europese ontdekkingsreizigers en handelaren bezochten in de 17de eeuw exotische oorden en namen voorwerpen, teksten, tekeningen en zelfs inboorlingen mee. Al deze informatieve objecten werden naast elkaar tentoongesteld en construeerden kennis over delen van de wereld, net als digitale databases nu, waarin metadata onze kennis structureren. DEAF03 Data Knittingraakt aan de vraag hoe we de wereld, als een complex geheel van samenhangende delen en processen, begrijpen en interpreteren."

DEAF03 stelt dus methodes voor informatievergaring en –verwerking centraal vanuit een artistiek perspectief. Hoe wordt het publiek hier tijdens het festival in betrokken?

"De tentoonstelling biedt een goede introductie op de thematiek voor een breed publiek. Zij laat interactieve werken zien, die een directe deelname en beleving van de toeschouwer verlangen en laten zien hoe de media een bepaalde realiteit aan ons opdringen, die we niet alleen dienen te consumeren, maar waarin we ook moeten participeren. De tentoonstelling, maar zeker ook de vele presentaties, symposia en workshops tijdens DEAF gaan in op de vele aspecten van Data Knitting. Zo is een onderliggende vraag in het programma wat de sociale, economische en culturele inzet van kennisproductie is. Hoe wordt informatie als bouwsteen gebruikt voor het produceren van kennis en wie beheren deze bouwstenen (informatie)? Dus wie vergaart informatie, wie controleert bepaalde informatie, voor wie is bepaalde informatie wel of niet toegankelijk, wie heeft de copyrights over specifieke informatie en wie bepaalt welke informatie wel of niet ontsloten kan worden?
De verschillende programmaonderdelen en projecten brengen ieder een ander facet onder de aandacht. Zo kunnen bezoekers van Pockets Full of Memories zelf een archief bouwen en spelen met de database die daaraan ten grondslag ligt. Can You See Me Now? toont de manier waarop virtuele informatieomgevingen gekoppeld kunnen worden aan een harde, fysieke leef- en speelomgeving. Naast de tentoonstelling speelt ook de festivalwebsite een belangrijke rol in de publieksparticipatie. Bezoekers kunnen hier informatie over het festival vinden, maar ook de presentaties volgen via video streams waar chatboxen en e-mail aan gekoppeld zijn. Kennisoverdracht vindt plaats in seminars, workshops en een tweedaags symposium met internationale topsprekers uit kunst en wetenschap. Deze laatste activiteiten richten zich op een meer specifiek publiek. Daarnaast worden het thema en enkele subthema's uitgewerkt in een reeks publiekspresentaties. Het muziek- en performanceprogramma Playing Data laat uiteenlopende interdisciplinaire performances zien, waarbij de inzet van diverse media en het bespelen van databases en digitale archieven de rode draad vormen. Op De Avonden van… geven drie gastcuratoren, Lev Manovich, Siegfried Zielinski en Sadie Plant, met de door hen genodigde gasten een persoonlijke visie op Data Knitting. In het programmaonderdeel Open Territories presenteren kunstenaars projecten waar men aan werkt en die aansluiten op de thematiek. Al deze presentaties vinden plaats in een publieke Arena die is vormgegeven door Atelier van Lieshout. Het publieksdebat staat dus hoog in het vaandel tijdens deze editie van DEAF."

Is DEAF03 een soort Wunderkammer, niet van exotische oorden, maar van de complexe en dynamische wereld om ons heen?

"Inderdaad, met een bonte verzameling aan installaties, concerten, projecten en sprekers. Zo kan een paleobioloog in het kader van het symposium een lezing geven over fossielen, terwijl in Pakhuis Las Palmas bezoekers van de tentoonstelling een beeldarchief bouwen en in Calypso muzikanten experimenteren met software waarmee zij beeld en geluid kunnen koppelen. DEAF03 laat zien en horen, debatteert en stelt vragen over de rol en betekenis van informatie en kennis in onze technologische cultuur en laat hiervoor kunstenaars, wetenschappers en andere experts aan het woord die hun onderzoek en projecten presenteren. In de publicatie Information is Alive kan men een goede weerslag vinden van de vele projecten, debatten en onderwerpen die tijdens DEAF03 aan de orde komen."

Rotterdam - Wie zich vanaf morgen meldt bij Las Palmas zal eerst worden gevraagd om het waardevolste bezit dat hij bij zich draagt in een zwart gat te steken. Het object wordt vervolgens gescand om digitaal op te gaan in het kunstwerk 'Pockets full of memories' van de Amerikaan George Legrady. Pas daarna kan de rest van de expositie van het Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2003 - kortweg Deaf_03 - worden bekeken.

De ervaring leert dat mensen van alles in het apparaat invoeren, zegt directeur Alex Adriaansens van organisator V2. "Niet alleen sleutelhangers of mobiele telefoons, maar ook hun hoofd." De computer gaat vervolgens op zoek naar verbanden tussen de verschillende objecten en geeft die weer op een beeldscherm. "Zo ontstaat als vanzelf een profiel van de gemiddelde bezoeker van de Deaf-expositie."

'Pockets full of memories' is een illustratie van 'Data Knitting', het thema dat de biënnale voor electronische kunst voert voor de editie van 2003. De term staat voor het digitaal aan elkaar breien van informatiestromen die te complex zijn om door mensen te worden gecombineerd. "Architecten maken er veel gebruik van," weet Adriaansens. "Met computers kunnen ze tot inzichten komen over stadsgebieden die ze nooit zelf hadden kunnen verwerven."

Rariteitenkabinet

'Van Wunderkammer tot metadata' luidt de ondertitel van Deaf_03. Daarmee wordt samengevat hoe mensen door de eeuwen heen met informatie en archieven zijn omgegaan. De Wunderkammer was vroeger een rariteitenkabinet waarin allerlei objecten en zelfs mensen uit verre gebieden werden tentoongesteld. Het gebruik van metadata is de laatste methode om informatie zichtbaar te maken door met speciale software nieuwe verbanden tussen verschillende soorten informatie te leggen.

Een actueel thema, zegt Adriaansens. "Het combineren van bepaalde soorten informatie is van belang voor allerlei groepen in de samenleving. Musea bijvoorbeeld, of politici." En natuurlijk het bedrijfsleven, dat gretig gebruik maakt van de aangelegde digitale archieven, ofwel databases. "Kijk naar Albert Heijn. Dat registreert het koopgedrag door middel van de klantenkaart en zou dat kunnen combineren met andere gegevens. Het gedrag op de website bijvoorbeeld."

Deaf, voor de dertiende keer gehouden, gaat ook dit jaar op het thema in op verschillende locaties en niveaus. Er is een expositie in Las Palmas, er zijn workshops in het onderkomen van V2 aan de Witte de Withstraat en er is een symposium (titel: 'Information is alive') in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Grofweg is de tentoonstelling interessant voor het grote publiek, terwijl de rest van het programma vooral de liefhebbers en vakmensen zal aanspreken.

Klapstuk is het 'Globe Jungle Project', een installatie van de Japanner Yasuhiro Suzuki, die aanvankelijk een plekje zou krijgen in de Witte de Withstraat. Het gaat om een klimrek in de vorm van een wereldbol, waarop kinderen naar hartelust mogen spelen. Onderwijl registreert een videocamera hun activiteiten en 's avonds, in het donker, wordt de film op dezelfde bol afgespeeld. Daarbij is het resultaat alleen te zien als het klimrek hard wordt rondgedraaid, zodat de gaten zich voor het oog verdichten tot een geheel.

"Het is een installatie die archieven probeert op te bouwen," zegt Alex Adriaansens over het Globe Jungle Project. "Je kunt je voorstellen dat zo'n ding in een park wordt neergezet waar jij speelt als kind. Dan kom je terug als je groot bent en kun je de dag opvragen waarop je er vroeger bent geweest en krijg je direct het beeld te zien, op de plek waar het ontstaan is."

Levendig

Het klimrek is ontworpen om parken levendiger te maken. V2 kreeg een vergunning voor een opstelling in de openbare ruimte van de Witte de Withstraat echter niet rond, zodat de 'Globe Jungle' nu op de jeugdafdeling van de gemeentebibliotheek is te zien. Overdag worden de opnames van de spelende kinderen gemaakt, en aan het einde van de middag wordt het licht uitgedaan. Zo is de projectie goed te zien wanneer de bol handmatig hard wordt rondgedraaid.

De overige projecten zijn opgesteld in Las Palmas. Als vanouds hecht V2 aan interactie, wat bijvoorbeeld naar voren komt in het Britse project 'Can you see me now'. In Las Palmas is een computer opgesteld die een digitale kaart bevat van de Kop van Zuid. Daarop zijn de spelers aangegeven die in het echt rondlopen op de kop van Zuid met een handformaat computer. Zij moeten proberen het digitale personage dat wordt aangestuurd vanuit Las Palmas te vangen door hard te rennen in de realiteit.

Hoewel het een spel is, is er voor zo'n project internationale belangstelling. Want het gaat bij Deaf, dat overwegend de Engelse taal voert, vaak om basisideeën of halffabrikaten die nog verder kunnen worden ontwikkeld. Deaf is een festival dat kunst, techniek en wetenschap combineert en wil het liefst op al die gebieden verder komen, al tijdens het festival. Adriaansens: "Wij zeggen altijd: aan het eind moeten we veel beter weten waar het over gaat dan ervoor."

Uit: NRC Handelsblad van 28-02-2003, pagina 18 (CS)

Het Global Positioning System, ofwel GPS, wordt momenteel voornamelijk gebruikt in de scheep- en luchtvaart, en voor transport. Maar het zal niet lang meer duren of de meeste telefoons hebben GPS-ontvangers, net als elke auto. In de Golfoorlog werd een GPS-systeem aan een zender gekoppeld om een verdwenen piloot op te sporen. Tijdens het hackerfestival HAL 2000 op de campus van de TU-Twente, met duizenden bezoekers die internettoegang hadden in hun tenten, fantaseerde een groep techneuten erover om GPS-systemen aan kleine digitale videocamera's te koppelen. Vervolgens zouden tientallen mensen met camera's eropuit gestuurd worden. Op de HAL-website zou je de plek van je tent op een plattegrond kunnen selecteren. Dan kon je zien wanneer een van de videocamera's in de buurt was geweest en wat er zich dan rond je tent had afgespeeld. Bijvoorbeeld: camera 20, 21.15 uur. Tycho kust Babs voor de Linux-tent.

De mogelijkheid van GPS - dat je kunt zien waar je bent of waar een ander is - prikkelt eveneens de fantasie van de Engelse kunstenaarsgroep Blast Theory, een van de deelnemers op DEAF03, de digitale biënnale die voor de zesde keer plaatsvindt in Rotterdam. DEAF staat voor Dutch Electronic Art Festival. Het zijn de kunstenaars en cyberfreaks die, net als destijds met de webcam, nieuwe technieken onderzoeken en daarbij soms samenwerken met universiteiten. Na het gluren in menig huiskamer, aquarium en kantoor door middel van de webcam, volgde weldra het massale gluren zoals tijdens televisieshows à la Big Brother. Nieuwe technologieën staan nog zo in de kinderschoenen dat de potentie van creatief onderzoek voor het grote publiek volslagen onduidelijk is. Het vereist fantasie en soms voorkennis om te begrijpen dat juist het gefreak met techniek kan leiden tot bredere toepassingen.

Can You See Me Now?, het werk van Blast Theory, speelt zich half binnen/ half buiten af. De acteurs van Blast Theory lopen met een palmcomputer in hun hand en zijn uitgerust met een walkietalkie en een GPS. In hun zwarte uniforms, behangen met apparaten, lijken ze op cyberrechercheurs. Gedurende het festival rennen ze buiten rond op de Kop van Zuid, op jacht naar onzichtbare spelers. Deze spelers bevinden zich binnen, achter een computer in Las Palmas, en kunnen tijdens het spel met elkaar chatten. De computers staan voor een groot raam, met uitzicht op het havengebied. Op hun beeldscherm zien wij een plattegrond van de Kop van Zuid, grafisch weergegeven als een pacman-spelletje. Op de plattegrond zijn de andere aanwezige spelers en de rechercheurs weergegeven als een symbooltje. Door middel van het toetsenbord kun je je symbool over het terrein bewegen. De acteurs die werkelijk over de Kop van Zuid rondhollen, krijgen via hun GPS de posities van hun tegenspelers door. Ze communiceren met elkaar via hun walkietalkie. De cyber-recherche probeert de tegenstander klem te zetten door op dezelfde plek te gaan staan als waar de tegenspeler virtueel - dus op de plattegrond in de computer - op dat moment loopt. Lukt dat, dan is de speler dood. Op straat levert dat een hilarisch beeld op: gewapend met apparatuur rent een vijftal mensen rond langs gebouwen, om hoeken, intussen druk communicerend via hun walkietalkie, op zoek naar? Ja, naar wie eigenlijk. Zodra de rechercheurs een speler hebben uitgeschakeld, maken ze een foto van de plek waar ze hem of haar gepakt hebben. Die foto's kun je online terugzien: stoeptegels, een bosje met wat gras, een hondendrol in de goot. En natuurlijk is er een high-score die aangeeft wie het langst uit de klauwen van de acteurs weet te blijven.

Databank

V2_, het centrum voor kunst- en mediatechnologie in Rotterdam, organiseert al vanaf 1994 de DEAF-festivals, waarbij kunst, technologie en wetenschap samenvallen in internetprojecten, websites, cd-roms, interactieve installaties en discussies. Ter gelegenheid van DEAF is er een expositie in Las Palmas en vinden er lezingen, concerten en symposia plaats. De bezoeker hoeft niet fysiek aanwezig te zijn, hij kan via de V2_website videostreams bekijken en meechatten.

Dit jaar is er gekozen voor het thema 'Data Knitting': het aan elkaar breien van gegevens. Want al lijkt het verzamelen en ordenen van data, op wat voor manier dan ook, objectief - dat is het natuurlijk nooit. V2_directeur Alex Adriaansens verzon een fraaie metafoor: "De eerste Wunderkammer was in feite ook een databank. Mensen reisden zonder fotocamera, filmapparaat of bandrecorder naar den Vreemde, maar wilden wel wat meenemen om thuis te laten zien. De verzamelingen die tentoongesteld werden in zogenaamde Wunderkammers bestonden uit tekeningen, voorwerpen, dieren en zelfs inboorlingen. Ook in een hedendaagse database worden gegevens vergaard en geordend. Wie doet dat en met wat voor doel? Motieven om te ordenen kunnen politiek, sociaal of cultureel van aard zijn en dit heeft zijn weerslag op vormgevers. Architecten als Rem Koolhaas en MVRDV zou je grote data-stouwers kunnen noemen. Ze beschikken over een enorme hoeveelheid gegevens die ze omzetten in grootstedelijke projecten. Data-knitting, het verknopen van informatie, raakt ook de maatschappelijke discussie over het koppelen van databanken. Wat gebeurt er met onze persoonlijke gegevens? Het lichaam kun je trouwens ook zien als een databank."

Adriaansens, gekleed in een zwart pak met roodglinsterende manchetknopen, is verleden week vijftig geworden. Het personeel van V2_ heeft voor zijn verjaardag een wereldbol laten maken, die past in een kunstwerk van Ingo Günther dat te zien is in Las Palmas. Op deze verjaardagsbol zie je per land hoe oud de mensen gemiddeld worden. In Europa is dat 78 jaar, in Midden-Afrika 47. Günther maakt zijn globes al sinds de jaren tachtig. Op de tentoonstelling staan er 25 - aardbollen gemarkeerd met de belangrijkste wereldtalen of routes van olietankers. Ook toont Guenther hoe de wereld eruit komt te zien als de zeespiegel stijgt.

Adriaansens wijst naar een prachtige driemaster die voor Las Palmas ligt. Daar logeren de kunstenaars. Op de eerste verdieping wordt gebouwd aan een arena, vormgegeven door Atelier van Lieshout, waar de symposia zullen plaatsvinden. Een vrijwilligster verheugt zich op de avond van de Duitse professor communicatietheorie in Keulen, Siegfried Zielinski. Onder de naam The Three Princes of Serendip ontvangt Zielinski een mediakunstenaar en een musicus om te praten over serendipiteit als denkconcept. Serendipiteit betekent het door toeval en schranderheid ontdekken van dingen waar niet naar gezocht wordt. Zielinski gaat pasta koken voor het publiek.

Dwerghondje

De bezoeker van de tentoonstelling wordt geconfronteerd met het project Pockets full of memories. Er wordt gevraagd iets persoonlijks in te scannen in de 'collectieve database' en dit vervolgens te beschrijven. Ik scan mijn linkerhand in en geef het beeld de meta-data mee: menselijk, levend, wit. Het gescande object verschijnt op een scherm in de databank. Nu kan ik mijn eigen databank samenstellen, door te kijken wie er nog meer iets menselijks heeft toegevoegd. Zo wordt inzichtelijk gemaakt wat een databank is en wat meta-data zijn en hoe onderling verbanden kunnen worden gelegd: het zogenaamde klusteren van informatie. Het herinnerde mij aan een expositie in de jaren tachtig waar bezoekers een persoonlijk voorwerp moesten afgeven dat vervolgens tentoon werd gesteld: een hoop rotzooi bij elkaar. Het verschil hier is dat mijn hand een verband kan aangaan met een dwerghondje, maar ook - door het woord wit - met een druppel bloed en een Rotterdamse dakloze.

Het spel PainStation van de twee jonge Duitsers Volker Morawe en Tilmann Reiff is gebaseerd op Pong, een van de eerste populaire computerspelletjes waarbij je met behulp van twee balkjes en een blokje virtueel kan ping-pongen. Het is een onschuldig behendigheidsspel: je rijdt er geen mensen of koeien in dood en schiet geen voorbijgangers neer. Pong is voor de gemiddelde gamer een relikwie, het spel 'waar het allemaal mee begon', maar nogal braaf. PainStation is niet braaf. Op de speeltafel leg je je linkerhand op een sensor, terwijl je met je rechterhand het spel speelt. Voor elke gemiste bal krijg je een stroomstoot en ondergaat je hand extreme hitte. De speler die als eerste zijn hand wegtrekt heeft verloren. Enige tijd geleden vertoonde een van mijn kunststudenten voor de klas vol trots een video van PainStation: jonge jongens speelden kermend en gillend Pong, om na afloop hun verschroeide handen als een trofee voor de camera te houden. Een studente vroeg zich af of het wel echt was. "Jazeker", antwoordde haar klasgenoot, "'t is een van de weinige spelletjes waar je nog echt wat bij voelt." Waarop het meisje reageerde: "O ja? Cool."

Een van de meest poëtische kunstwerken is het Global Jungle Project van Yasuhiro Suzuki, in de openbare bibliotheek bij station Blaak. Het bestaat uit een draaiend klimrek in de vorm van een metersgrote bal. De buizen lijken op de meridianen van een wereldbol. Kinderen kunnen hier overdag naar hartelust in spelen, klimmen, zich rond laten draaien. Van dit kinderspel worden video-opnames gemaakt, die 's avonds op de spijlen van de bol worden geprojecteerd. Door de globe een zwieper te geven met je hand, vormen de witte spijlen tezamen een projectie-oppervlak. Zo worden langzaam de videobeelden van het spelende grut zichtbaar. Ze lossen op in het niets zodra de bol vaart heeft geminderd.

Uit: Financieel Economische Tijd (bijlage Tijd Cultuur), 26 februari 2003, pagina 10 (Internet)

      October 2, 2011
      By Diane Ragsdale
      A couple weeks back Thomas Cott published an issue of ‘You’ve Cott Mail’ centered loosely on the theme of innovation and business incubators in the arts world, in which he linked to a post by one of my favorite bloggers/researchers/thinkers, Devon Smith. Devon contrasted the concept of ‘incubator’ in the tech world and the arts world. After reading her post I was curious to read up on technology and business incubators and ask myself what, exactly, arts incubators are incubating and to what end?
      Devon makes the point that in the tech world it is ‘demo or die’ and that, in contrast, many arts incubators tend to be about process without the expectation of a deliverable on a certain time frame. Devon characterizes it as ‘we’re here to support you in however much you get accomplished for however long you are here’. Beyond the expectation to ‘demo or die’, however, there’s something else I learned in my reading: business incubators, philosophically and practically speaking, perceive themselves to be incubating the entire enterprise. At the end of 33 months (the average amount of time spent in a business incubator) it is expected that the startup can leave the nest with a viable business model and product and fly on its own.
      How do these business incubators develop the whole enterprise? Devon talks about this in her post, as well, but I found a couple things particularly interesting. First, while they don’t necessarily provide venture capital, business incubators often serve as brokers and introduce entrepreneurs to venture capitalists, other successful entrepreneurs, or people that have knowledge and skills needed by the startup. Second, a successful tech incubator will provide access to high-​end technology, as well as high-​level marketing support, comprehensive adminstrative support, and hands-​on business planning.
      After reading about business incubators it struck me that it seems important to distinguish the purpose of an ‘incubator’ from (1) a one-​to-​three week ‘workshop’ or ‘residency’, which is meant to give an artist time to further develop a particular project and (2) ‘access to affordable office space, basic equipment, and business classes’ — which seem to be common types of support offered to artists and arts companies. These are not without value; but I would suggest that (particularly when provided by separate hosts) they do not an incubator make, if ‘incubation’ suggests a range of support and services aimed at making a venture viable and launching it into the world with a greater chance at success.
      Devon suggests that art incubators seem to be reluctant to hold the groups they are incuabting accountable for success beyond a ‘good process’ and hypothesizes that perhaps arts incubators are ‘too nice, too forgiving’. I wonder whether the laissez faire nature of many arts incubators is a symptom of two things. (1) The rejection for the past 100 plus years of the notion that great art works can be born of a ‘shared vision’ between patron/investor and artist. (2) The widespread belief in the ‘fine arts world’ that ‘being truly artistic, excellent and innovative’ and ‘keeping an eye to the market with the goal of eventually selling the work to a mainstream audience’ are mutually exclusive endeavors.
      Yes, it’s important to distinguish between the processes that best support the making or preservation of culture and those that best support its exploitation. But distinguishing between these two processes does not suggest that the two cannot coexist or that we should necessarily reject the latter as a goal if we care about the former.
      What is the goal of a successful arts incubator? What should it be? Is it wrong to think that it should be not only about improving the quality of the work but also about discovering avenues by which to exploit it (i.e. derive full value from it) in the marketplace?

Waiting for a new business model for the arts.

      January 24, 2011
      By Diane Ragsdale
      What do nonprofit arts people mean when they say ‘the business model is broken’? I’ve heard this phrased decried ad nauseum in the US for at least the past three years. It was a working hypothesis before the economic downturn; now it seems to be a statement of fact. So what model are we talking about? The American ‘nonprofit’ model for the arts? A particular ‘business’ model used by individual organizations? A Stanford business school professor once gave me the following definition: a model is a representation of your beliefs about causality. Perhaps more interesting questions would be, what beliefs about causality underpin our ‘model’, and are they still valid?
      Last year, in his post, One business model to rule them all, Andrew Taylor referenced a comment Clara Miller of Nonprofit Finance Fund made at an Americans for the Arts conference in 2010. She said, ‘There is one business model: reliable revenue that meets or exceeds expenses. Any questions?’ I was at that session. A lot of people chuckled when she made the comment.
      And then I remember thinking: So, which revenue sources are reliable at a nonprofit arts organization? Government arts programs across the country seem to go into duck and cover mode on a regular basis; corporations are often skittish—lavish one year and austere the next; foundations are overly cautious and generally dole out funds one year at a time, being careful to avoid enabling ‘dependency’; fewer and fewer people want to commit to buying a season’s worth of tickets up front; single ticket buyers are notoriously unpredictable; and individual donors are as varied as … well, individuals: some are dependable and loyal but many are fickle and elusive.
      It seems like most arts organizations start each year with very little of their income committed and spend much of the year on pins and needles waiting to see if they will hit their revenue targets. Are we operating under a delusion that there is such thing as ‘reliable revenue that meets or exceeds expenses’ in the arts? And if so, is there a corresponding faulty belief that underpins our business model? For instance, that the arts are valued by our society?
      Is this what we mean by ‘the model is broken’? Or is it something else? I would love to hear reflections on the ‘broken model’. What’s broken? How do we fix it?

How to avoid a strip-​mall future for the arts sector: Lessons from the boutique label, Pi

      August 22, 2011
      By Diane Ragsdale
      This past week I came across a New York Times article featured on ArtsJournal examining the remarkable success of the indie Jazz label, Pi. The article demonstrates that Pi is bucking trends in the music industry. It is managing to not just keep its head above water at a time when many music labels are struggling, but it is having tremendous impact despite being a relatively small Jazz label focused on the leading edge of its artform.
      Here are a few keys to Pi’s success (which I gleaned from the article):
      (1) Unlike many labels that flood the market with product (often as a hedge against the uncertainty of not knowing which will succeed or not), Pi releases a handful of albums per year and is highly selective in choosing which artists to get behind. Virtually everything it releases meets with critical acclaim. Because it has earned a reputation for consistently putting out great albums and has a very clear niche, it has a devoted (and growing) fan base.
      (2) Given its limited release schedule, and the limited revenue potential of each of its releases (these are not mainstream artists), Pi keeps its overhead low. Its owners are pragmatic and disciplined. By staying small they have been able to maintain artistic integrity.
      (3) Pi has a long courtship with an artist before it makes a commitment. Once in, however, Pi invests deeply in the development of its artists and ensures that each receives sufficient resources, attention, and support from the label. This is a critical factor in the label’s remarkable track record and reputation.
      Pi’s strategies are serving both its artists and its customers.
      Given an overabundance of product and seats to fill on any given night in many communities (relative to current ‘demand’) and (sorry to say) the not-​quite-​ready-​for-​primetime-​quality of much the so-​called ‘professional’ work that is produced and presented in the US, it’s worth considering the lessons of Pi (which are not new, of course).
      It seems that more than a few overleveraged and underperforming professional nonprofit arts organizations need to both better differentiate themselves and hold themselves to higher artistic standards; to right-​size their institutions and reduce fixed costs given the amount of income they can reasonably expect for the forseeable future; and to provide more time, attention, and resources to artists and to the development, production, and thoughtful promotion of artistic works.
      I’d much rather live in a community with a sustainable number of boutique arts organizations than one with a deluxe mall featuring four high-​end department-​stores (the ‘flagship’ orchestra, theater, opera, and ballet companies) that suck up the majority of the resources and a bunch of strip malls made up of undercapitalized retail chains and mom-​and-​pop shops that either saw their best days in 1985 and haven’t been able to make improvements since, or were formed in recent years and (while perhaps promising) are struggling for attention, customers and capital.
      I seriously fear that the strip mall nonprofit arts sector is our future. There are arts boutiques out there, but in many cities they are few and far between and seem endangered.
      How and why so many arts organizations in the US have grown to unsustainable levels in recent decades is a topic that requires more reflection than I can give in a blog post. However, I will say this: it often seems that capacity building in the arts sector is (1) aimed primarily at securing theadministrative futures of arts organizations and (2) resulting in an erosion of quality and distinction in artistic processes and experiences, today. I by no means wish to suggest that the answer to an overbuilt sector is to starve it into a more sustainable state; but it is reasonable to think that we need to seriously rethink how existing resources are distributed (within and among institutions).
      We tend to think of a ‘sustainable state’ for the arts and culture sector as being one in which existing arts organizations have achieved equilibrium and can crank along in perpetuity. This is wrongheaded: even if we could achieve a state in which all existing organizations could secure adequate resources to keep running year-​after-​year, the lack of creative destruction in the sector would eventually lead to its stultification (oh wait, we may be there now). This is one of the consequences of letting some institutions get ‘too big to fail’ (and too big is relative to the size of city you are in and the other arts organizations in your market): the majority of arts sector resources get sucked into the incumbents and rather than creative destruction (reinvention of those firms or their replacement by younger, more innovative ones) we end up with plain old destruction (losing the boutiques and watching the big organizations calcify).
      Pi may or may not last for another 50 years (much less beyond the lives of its owners/founders).But while it exists it is having positive cultural and social impact. That’s more than we can say about many professional nonprofit arts organizations in the US.

The lesson in my new tree for arts policy makers

      August 28, 2011
      By Diane Ragsdale
      About my tree:
      Last month my husband and I hired a small family-​owned landscaping business to help us renovate the small gardens in the front and back of our house. They planted three new trees, two of which are young (thin) but already quite tall. They planted the trees with support poles on either side to ensure they grow straight. As I have never had a garden I asked how many weeks the poles would need to stay. The answer: three years.
      About the production houses in the Netherlands:
      For years the Netherlands has had a unique system of support for promising performance artists and theater makers who have finished their training: dedicated production houses. As I understand it, these houses are often affiliated with larger theaters, drawing on resources they can provide, but are funded by the government and operate independently. They provide multiyear production support for artists after university (e.g. cash resources so artists can invest time in the research and development of their works and pay other artists, tech support, dramaturgy, promotion, etc.). During these post-​grad residencies the emphasis is on strengthening the artist’s work.
      I was with a gathering of artistic directors and performing arts curators last week at which we met several artists, including two that had come through this system and who spoke of the importance of the production houses in helping them become better artists and develop successful careers. We asked how long the support lasted. Their initial residencies were three years.
      About the funding cuts in the Netherlands:
      Among the many orchestras, dance companies, and other arts organizations that are going to be defunded in 2013, the Ministry of Culture has determined to shut down all 23 production houses in the Netherlands. This strikes me as a particularly unenlightened decision. For one, these production houses are relatively inexpensive to operate (they are a big bang for a small investment); second, the production houses play a critical role in the arts ecosystem here; third, they seem to help the Netherlands attract and retain truly talented theater/performance artists.
      I am unsettled by what appears to be a strategy in the Netherlands of maintaining investments to the most high profile fine arts organizations while leaving many smaller organizations, artist companies, and intermediary organizations to fend for themselves. The rhetoric that is being perpetuated in the case of the production houses is that they will be taken under the wing of bigger institutions or become more entrepreneurial and find other sources of support. Given the short timeframe (the cuts go into effect in 2013) both scenarios seem highly unrealistic.
      In any event, it seems that not many in the arts sector are buying the rhetoric. Quite a number of the artistic directors and artists our group met with spoke of planning to leave the Netherlands by 2013. Of course, as someone said to me a few days ago, this could be considered a positive outcome from the standpoint of the government.
      Pfffffff. Cue the flashback reel of the US in the 80s and 90s.
      The Netherlands is not alone in wanting to encourage private sector support for the arts. But there are smart ways and not-​so-​smart ways of doing this.
      About ArtSupport Australia:
      Several years ago now (after changing the tax laws to make it easier and more beneficial for individuals to set up small trusts and foundations), the Australia Arts Council started an arm’s length organization, run by visionary Louise Walsh, whose role is to broker relationships between small and midsized arts organizations and small private family foundations and trusts. ArtSupport Australia (ASA) meets with donors, talks to them about the importance of supporting the arts, and identifies organizations that might fit with their values; it mentors arts organizations to help them develop realistic funding strategies and prepare effective proposals; and it makes matches between the two. It’s a brilliant system and has had tremendous positive impact over the years.
      While Kickstarter and other crowdfunding models seem to be working for some types of individual artists and projects and larger institutions have the capacity to buy fundraising expertise and (as a result of being high profile) tend to be attractive major private donors and foundations, a mechanism for connecting smaller family foundations with smaller and midsized arts organizations and ensembles/companies seems like a missing cog in many arts funding systems (including in the US). Even community foundations and donor advised funds aren’t really set up to fulfill this particular role.
      When ArtSupport Australia was founded it received three years of support from the government. Even before the end of the initial funding period it was clear that it was working and the government has funded it consistently ever since. There’s an important tangential point here: a big part of what makes ASA work (which, not unlike the production houses, is a lean organization that provides big bang for the buck) is that the Australia Arts Council is committed to funding it. It would change ASA (and compromise its mission) if it suddenly had to raise all of its operating expenses by skimming off a percentage of every gift or competing against the organizations it exists to support by competing directly for support from private donors.
      Over the past year I’ve been asked rather frequently for my thoughts on how to encourage private support for the arts in the Netherlands, in light of the pending cuts. I’ve directed people to an an essay I wrote about some of the issues we face with the US system and I’ve said the same thing to everyone: the ArtSupport Australia model is brilliant and I think it would work very well in the Netherlands. I could easily imagine such a system, for instance, helping to broker relationships between a number of enlightened families, individuals and small firms and the production houses here.
      ***
      As I’ve written before, cutting off the sprinklers to the grass and small shrubs while continuing to water the old, tall trees is not the path to a vibrant arts and culture sector. Too often, arts policy makers develop policies that demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about such things as: the interdependencies between large organizations and small ones, and the commercial arts sector and the subsidized sector; what makes a city attractive to artists; how good artists become great artists; what motivates donors to give; how difficult it is for some very worthy organizations to be competitive in the funding process; and the time and personal connections that it takes for donors and arts organizations to form relationships that are beneficial and that will be sustained through good economic times and bad ones.
      My young tree needs supports if it is going to become a healthy, large tree. Young artists need developmental support if they are going to become great artists. Countries without a culture of asking and giving need a support system if effective long term relationships are going to be built between private donors and the arts sector, particularly if there is a hope that more than just the large, historically leading organizations will be supported by private donors. Policy makers need to be smarter about how the arts ecosystem works so that they know where to provide support structures and for how long.
      Australia got it right. I’ll be interested to see what the Netherlands does in the coming months and years.

BY MICHELLE KASPRZAK

For this section of the eBook I have included here documentation of three artworks by Christin Lahr, Lada Nakonechna, and Christian Nold. Each work tackles different aspects of the relationship between money, society, and creativity. Christin Lahr’s MACHT GESCHENKE project uses the banking system itself as a platform to communicate directly with government while also paying down the German national debt; Lada Nakonechna’s Cards relates the labour of artmaking to wealth and wages of the countries where she creates the works; and Christian Nold’s Bijlmer Euro project identifies the flow of money within a community.

Bijlmer Euro

BY CHRISTIAN NOLD

‘The Bijlmer Euro is a Parasitical Currency that piggybacks on the ubiquity of the Euro as a vehicle for its own mobility.’ - Christian Nold
www.BijlmerEuro.net

The Bijlmer Euro is a conceptual and technical evolution of the idea of a local currency. Local currencies are intended for use in small geographical areas where they are designed to improve the way that local people exchange services and locally-​produced goods. The fundamental economic concept, is one of stopping a ‘leakage’ of money out of local areas towards large distant chain stores. By spending money in locally owned shops the money stays within the local network where it benefits the local community in terms of jobs, social contact, cultural identity and encourages shorter supply chains.

The Bijlmer Euro trial came to a close in 2011. It was a test of a new kind of parasitical local currency that builds on official money and adds local value on top. The project has been an amazing success. We setup a network of 18 locally owned Bijlmer shops, who got actively involved in promoting the project and offering discounts. Due to the electronics tag on on the Bijlmer Euros we know that over 3 months, we have had 647 purchases with Bijlmer Euros which means that we have kept roughly €4852.5 in the local economy which might have left the local area. Yet it is the social and cultural value of the project, which is crucial and yet unmeasurable. The project has generated a huge local & national discussion on the role of money in people’s lives and local areas.

The long term goal is to develop a prototype for a global, community run diaspora banking system based on the strength of social relationships between communities across the whole globe. The concept is to setup local currencies in other areas across the globe, where Bijlmer people have strong connections. These local currencies located for example in Suriname, would use the same currency as the Bijlmer. The concept is that these trans-​local currencies will be supporting both the local networks of the places where they are physically located but also to create a global network of community solidarity.

MACHT GESCHENKE

BY CHRISTIN LAHR

Since May 31, 2009, Christin Lahr has been making daily money transfers of 1 cent to the German Federal Ministry of Finance, thus helping to counter the growing mountain of debt in homeopathic doses. In the field ‘reason for payment’, she always writes 108 characters from ‘CAPITAL: A Critique of Political Economy’ by Karl Marx. That way, bit by bit, the entire book will be transferred into the state’s central account via online banking. The transmission of the roughly 15,709 cents and 1,696,500 characters will take about 43 years.

The increase in value of the capital investment is not even included, nor are the required labor and lifetime or the added value through cultural and symbolic capital calculated into this. Due to the exponential effects of interest and compound interest, her donation will be able to pay off the national debt of 31 May 2009, 1,746,599,197,210 Euro, within 300 years.

MACHT GESCHENKE, which inscribes itself irrevocably into accounts and archives, is a donation to the entire people, entered into the state budget, administered by the currently elected representatives, safely stored at the Bundesbank. Each of the money transfers is documented by Lahr by a screenshot, printed out once, signed, and given away to individual citizens. In “over-​subscriptions’ on translucent paper, she crosses out character by character and thus produce an unreadable notation of “Capital’, consisting of counting marks and numerals.
The work counteracts the ruling political economy and senseless, degrading bureaucratism with the gesture of giving, and poses the question of meaning. The system sees itself in a mirror. Once a day, the micro-​donations upset the state’s balance sheet. They triggers a sustained debate on values that produces continuous reflections and echoes.
During an exhibition Lahr is working work at a capital desk, taking over a mayors´s chair to sit on it, exposing bureaucratic structures, delivering an illustrative insight into the cultivation of capital and performing: MACHT GESCHENKE: THE MAKING OF CAPITAL.
www.macht-​geschenke.de

*The German title MACHT GESCHENKE is a play on words implying ‘CREATE GIFTS’, or ‘GIFTS OF POWER’ as well as ‘POWERFUL GIFTS’

Cards

BY LADA NAKONECHNA
In this long-​term project since 2010, Lada Nakonechna spends a full working day from 8AM – 5 PM making a single drawing. The drawings were created in Switzerland, Germany, and in Ukraine.

The price of drawing is determined by the median wage paid to common workers in the country where the drawing is created. For example, the handwritten caption under the Swiss drawing reads ‘Swiss made \ one working day \ from 8 a.m. till 5.30 p.m. \ 9 hours \ average price per hour - 35 Fr \ total 315Fr’

The drawing produced in Ukraine is captioned: ‘Ukrainian made\one working day \ from 8 a.m. till 5p.m. \ 9 hours \ average price per hour – 13Hr \ total 104 Hr’*

The drawings are for sale with the prices indicated in the captions. Using the current exchange rate, the drawing produced in Ukraine, is worth 104 Ukrainian Hryvnia, which is only 13 Swiss Francs. By contrast, the drawing produced in Switzerland is for sale for 315 Francs.

The V2_archive collects documentation about events, people, organizations and artworks, and includes essays, interviews and publications that have played a role in V2_'s history. The emphasis of the V2_ archive is on digital-born information connected to the history and activities of V2_. On November 29th 2010 the contents of the previous archive website were migrated to the current V2_website.

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The software which ran the old archive website alas did not function well anymore. All of the contents of the archive were migrated to the current website at the end of 2010. Not all of this content is available for website visitors yet, as it needs to be editted and sometimes corrected. Next to editing this content, the archive team is in the process of digitizing the most important parts of the physical archive, and will make those files available in the digital archive too.

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      1. The Role of the Arts in the Development of Post-​Fordist Modes of Production
      Presently in avant-​garde and elite art circles there is much talk about precarity in the arts. Four popular notions circulate. First, modern art has been the social laboratory of the immaterial and precarious labor is required in our present post-​Fordist times. (In huge factories like those of Ford there was mass production. In post-​Fordism these have partly been replaced by flexible manufacturing units producing for specialized markets. These units require much knowledge work resulting in immaterial results. Working conditions are precarious.)
      Secondly, artistic criticism enabled the emergence of post-​Fordist modes of production.
      The third notion is that presently modern art is the laboratory of social criticism and resistance.
      The fourth notion partly follows from these three: the precariousness in the arts is part of the general trend in capitalism towards post-​Fordist modes of production and the consequent precariousness of labour in general; hence the causes of the precariousness in the arts rest in capitalism and therefore action to overcome the negative sides of precariousness in the arts should be directed at capitalism, which needs to be reformed or overthrown.
      Even when the four notions were true, I am distrustful of the easy adoption of them and the emphasize that is put on them by an art world elite. This may well serve this elite’s self interest rather than that of precarious and poor artists. It enables individual members of the elite to exhibit their “leftie” orientation, which brings them prestige in many social circles in which they participate. Also and more importantly, it enables the elite to let the arts be victim, while once again emphasizing its exceptionally high symbolic value. This way the own privileged position is accentuated and maintained – see below. (This is not to say that many people within the elite do not honestly believe in these notions and honestly adhere to progressive ideas in general.)
      Before anything else it may be good to ask who belongs to the art elite and who does not. Whereas many readers may have a rather clear idea of people they know or heard of who could be part of it, it is difficult to draw a line. It seems reasonable to say that those in the art world, who are poor, usually do not belong to the elite. This applies to the large majority of people in the art world, foremost artists, but also some volunteers and interns. In case of the elite I am thinking first of successful artists, who are not only successful but also earn a more than decent income – however, this is a small percentage of all artists. Secondly, there are the people in the administration of art institutions, especially those with steady and better paid jobs, as well as many curators and mediators. The latter include a relatively large number of people who mediate between art institutions or artists and local or central government bodies and foundations. Finally, quite a few people within governments and foundations as well as private donors and collectors can be said to be part of the art elite.
      To return to the previous topic, I think that the eagerness of the art world at large in embracing these four notions and the credibility of the notions are enabled and promoted by a deep rooted inclination in society to put art and artists on a pedestal – only if it is bourgeois art or ‘real’ and not popular art. Progressive people are no exception. (Earlier also people like Horkheimer and Adorno de facto wanted to elevate aristocratic art to a privileged position.) Moreover, the notions also appear to be true because of the existing romantic idea of art’s avant-​garde position and hence superiority: ‘art is always important, because it is always ahead in social developments.’ But in my opinion the opposite is true. The major part of art and of the art world is conservative.
      Why are the first three notions not credible? Concerning the second and most extreme notion, it is true that artistic criticism of the rigid post war society largely preceded post-​Fordist rhetoric and may have contributed to the latter. But it certainly did cause the emergence of the rhetoric and even less caused the new modes of production.[1] However, chronological succession does not imply causality. It is far more likely that both artistic criticism and the new modes of production follow from long term developments in technology, production and administration. These notions stem foremost from general processes of informalization and de-​hierarchization in society. Moreover, I think that also the two notions on the laboratory function of art, now and in the post-​war period, rest on a huge exaggeration of the importance of the established arts in society. If there has been and is a laboratory, it is in the culture industry including the popular arts rather than the ‘real’ arts.

      2. Correspondences and Differences between the Typical Artist and the Typical Knowledge Worker
      Whether the first three notions are credible or not, would not be a matter of much concern, if they did not contribute to the fourth notion, which boils down to the statement that the exploitation of precarious and poor artists is a matter of capitalism at large. This would imply that inner art world relations are irrelevant and the art world elite certainly is not to blame. In order to investigate the last notion, let us look at correspondences and differences between the typical artist and the typical precarious or knowledge worker in general. In this I compare artists with knowledge workers with a similar level of professional schooling. At first sight the correspondences are striking.
   
   
      1. Performance is immaterial and tied to the body of the...
      2. There is little routine –de-​routinization being a characteristic of post-​Fordism par excellence.
      3. Working hours are flexible.
      4. If one is not self employed, contracts are temporary.
      5. There is no clear distinction between work and private sphere.
      6. There is much so-​called multiple job-​holding.
      7. Informality (part of the earlier bohemian attitude) is important and there is little respect for hierarchical differences.
      8. The emphasis is on creativity. Creativity is a measure of success.
      9. Individual autonomy is much appreciated.
      10. Continuous development and innovation are important. There is a desire to explore new creative possibilities. One is orientated on the future. (A general strong orientation on the future is not new. It is an important characteristic of modernity and emerged already in the early nineteenth century.)
      11. There is an emphasis on communication and discourse. (Most contemporary artists are indeed good with words.)
      12. And finally there is relatively much work stress, existential doubts, burn-​outs and frustration (depressions) caused by professional failure or the inability to realize one’s own assumed creative potential.

      Let’s next look into some differences.

      1. The typical artist is very poor. In most western countries the income of 40 to 60% of artists from all work (i.e. including second jobs) is below the poverty line. [2] But at present the typical knowledge worker with an equal level of professional training is not poor and often even relatively well-​to-​do.
      2. Parents of the typical artist are higher educated and...
      3. Artists have a stronger work-​preference. Often when more money comes in, it is used not for consumption and comfort but for working fewer hours in second jobs or for investments in the art job. Moreover, in the arts none of the economic logic exists which prevails in non-​art fields of cultural production as shows from the following differences.
      4. In the dominant social imaginary in and outside the arts there is an opposition between artistic autonomy and commercial success.
      5. The artist-​intention is to be as autonomous as possible, that is, occupying an extreme position on a scale that runs from 100% autonomy to 100% heteronomy (i.e. as far as external constraints allow). For other knowledge workers positions closer to the middle are most satisfying and often also financially more rewarding. Therefore other knowledge workers are also interested in autonomy, but they cannot and will not negate the underlying economic purpose of their activities. This particular artist-​intention is celebrated and propagated by artists themselves, but it is also what is expected from artists. This celebration is absent or far less important in the case of other knowledge workers.[3]
      6. Poverty of artists is not regarded as a bad thing, not by artists or in society at large. One does not have to be ashamed of being poor. In the case of the typical knowledge worker this is the opposite.
      7. A comfortable life is no widely shared goal in art worlds. There is a distrust of the pursuit of comfort and a solid career.
      8. Public and private support is regarded as good and righteous. For the typical knowledge worker it is a sign of failure.
      9. Signatures matter more.
      10. Very successful artists are (still) geniuses rather than heroes.
      11. The need for artists to be altogether innovative goes much further than that of knowledge workers in general. For the latter creative variations on an existing theme are allowed and often demanded, while presently for artists this is taboo. Often the art world puts down artists who are not innovative enough or start to ‘repeat themselves’. (This certainly is a cause of suffering among artists.)
      12. Respect for art and artists is (still) much higher than that for other creative workers.
      Given these differences I think that the exploitation of poor artist is not of the same nature as that of other precarious workers. In order to prove this thesis a detour is necessary.
   
   
      3. The Romantic Ethic of Capitalism and the High Value of...
      There exists a relationship between low incomes of artists and the high symbolic value of art. At first the low incomes in the arts seem to contradict this high value: in spite of the high value of art the majority of artists are poor. But maybe it should be: because the symbolic value of art is high, artists are poor. If this is true, it implies that, if the symbolic value would go down, artists would become less poor.
      I am talking of symbolic value. Nevertheless financial value both follows from it and contributes to it. This financial value can be very high. For instance, governments and foundations spend huge amounts on prestigious new museums and concert halls – think of the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi and the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg. Also much public and private support is predominantly a sign of the high value of art. But the typical artist is poor.
      I think that the high respect for art is related to what has been called the ’romantic ethic of consumerism’.[4] The rationalization, bureaucratization and dis-​enchantment in modernity, which has been emphasized by Weber has been accompanied by just as much (re-)enchantment. (Only this can explain the consumer revolution in eighteenth century England. No capitalism without much consumption.) Already in the nineteenth century this romantic ethis went together with an emphasis on creativity, self-​expression and self-​discovery. Moreover, in society there is a romantic longing and search for individuality and authenticity. But for ‘normal’ members of the bourgeoisie the latter was beyond reach. Artists were the exception. Hence the high respect for art and artists.
      Since the middle of the twentieth century this situation has somewhat changed. For knowledge workers and youngsters in general some degree of authenticity and self-​realization is attainable. But artists remain exceptional, in the sense that they are still seen as more ‘authentic’ and better able to ‘realize’ themselves. Even a knowledge worker par excellence, the CEO of a large company is replaceable. Within a week after his departure, another has taken his place. The latter may have a slightly different approach, but the nature of production and the product does not change. However when an artist dies, there will be no more works in his typical style or having his, sometimes very valuable, signature. For instance the death of Karel Appel implied that no more new and genuine Appels are produced.[5]
      Nevertheless, the post war developments are not without consequences for the art world. Presently, to be an artist one needs to be very passionate, have much perseverance and be prepared to handle hardship and poverty, but it is no longer necessary to be a genius or an extremely gifted craftsman. This means that the arts profession can be a ‘realistic’ choice, and therefore many more youngsters enter art schools. Presently in a country like the Netherlands the number of youngsters admitted to the (non-​popular and non-​applied) art departments of art schools is 5 times as high as forty years ago, while the number of not regularly educated artists probably grew as much or more.
      It is true that at the same time prosperity increased, and so did the demand for some art products.[6]
      But because the numbers of artists are so large this demand did not bring work and income for the large majority of artists. This applies strongest to artists making so-​called contemporary work. For instance, in the market of realistic, but not necessarily traditional paintings demand followed prosperity and so grew considerably. Therefore there is less oversupply in this market and the proportion of artists, which are poor, is smaller than in the market of contemporary art. For the latter there was and is little demand, while at present the large majority of visual artists operate in this market. A lack of demand is also characteristic for the market of contemporary classical music. Moreover, over the last decades demand for classical music did not increase, but only went down in spite of increasing prosperity. This is partly due to technical reproduction, but at present foremost due to the reduced demand of a younger generation for live classical concerts.
      The conclusion is that due to the romantic and changing ethic of capitalism the symbolic value of art became very high, which in the second half of the twentieth century made the arts profession more attractive than ever before. Therefore numbers are large and the majority of artists is poor.
   
   
      4. Inner Art World Exploitation of Poor Artists
      Following an economist way of reasoning one could argue that artists are poor, but happy, because
      they are compensated for their low incomes by non-​monetary forms of remuneration. However, more so than in my earlier book, I now think that in this respect the economic approach makes no sense.[7] I moreover think that there is real suffering among poor artists.[8]
      But, as noted, in people’s romantic imagery poverty in the arts is not necessarily a bad thing. Moreover, it is a good thing for those who benefit from the high respect for art. This applies to the art world elite. But also many poor artists believe that they benefit from the high respect. And if they do, there must be at least some benefit. The latter probably applies most to poor artists in the early stages of their career. But this type of benefit does not diminish suffering; sometimes it is the contrary. Therefore, I have anyway no problem in stating that extreme poverty is not in the interest of the large majority of artists, who are poor.
      The art world elite however, whether or not aware of it, has an interest in the high value of art, both for income and prestige. Therefore, at least seen from outside, the poverty in the arts is also in their interest as it accentuates the high symbolic value of art. In this there exists a fundamental difference with other fields of post-​Fordist production. For instance an average very low income in case of IT workers or architects is not in the interest of their elites and investors. (Of course, somewhat lower incomes and the possibility of getting rid of failures and workers with outdated knowledge is in the interest of investors; but very low income are not.)
      All in all there are important differences in the way poor artists are exploited in the art world and the exploitation of knowledge workers in general. This is not to say that there are no common causes as well. In both the romantic ethic of capitalism plays an important role. But the interest is very low.
   
   
      5. Strategies of Resistance
      Let me finish with some notes on, what I think, could be relevant strategies aimed at the reduction of exploitation.
      Foremost, I think that at the moment professionalization and the development of more commercial attitudes among poor artists (i.e. the majority) is a good thing. Down to earth small scale commercialism can well represent an act of resistance against the existing art-​regime. Therefore artists should not always strife for the extreme of as much autonomy as possible on the scale of 100% autonomy – 100% heteronomy.[9]
      In this context one should think twice about producing presumably very autonomous art for which there is very little demand. For instance, the latter was and is the case with the making of huge paintings as was common in the eighties and later on of much conceptual art and more recently of numerous installations. Of all three only a minor part could and can be sold to primarily museums. Or it applies to the composing and performing of contemporary classical music for which there is only demand coming from a very small group of peers and other extremely schooled listeners. Such activities have little to do with independence as they are de facto encouraged by an art world elite, including many well meaning but also reasonably well paid art teachers at art schools, who for their own income do not depend on the market.
      There is no creativity without constraints. The self-​imposed constraint of wanting to get one’s art across to an audience of more than peers and an art world elite can also enhance creativity and innovation. In this ‘real’ artists can learn from popular artists. They can also try to work more often within the popular arts –rather than in Documentas and alike; also when the latter exhibit critical art. When the organizers do, they de facto misuse critical art to celebrate art in general and to safeguard their own privileged positions.
      Moreover, as part of a professionalization process artists should try to develop an artist-​intention in which working for ridiculously low incomes is taboo. They should refuse to do so and make clear to buyers like art institutions, galleries and impresarios that, if they underpay artists, they can no longer count on their services. This may imply that quite a few artists will decide to stop being artists. However, this is not the end of the world –not for them and not for the world–; on the contrary. In this context actions by more or less ad hoc associations of artists backed up by occasional internet support, which lead to a certification of art institutions obliging them to a reasonable remuneration of contributing artists, are important. Presently in the US W.A.G.E (http://www.wageforwork.com) is active in this direction. (At the moment attempts to form strong artists unions are likely to be futile and can easily promote conservatism.)
      Finally, one should realize that art subsidies are not by definition good, or, in other words, that not all art subsidies are good for all groups within the art world. That would anyway be strange, as there are different groups within the art world with different and sometimes opposing interests, as I hope to have made clear.

References
      Abbing, H. (2002). Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.
      Abbing, H. (forthcoming 2013). The Art Period. Is Art becoming less Special? A Study of Art, Artists and the Arts Economy. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.
      Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (2002). The New Spirit of Capitalism. Conference of Europeanists, 14-16 March, Chicago.
      Campbell, C. (1987). The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Oxford, Blackwell.

Notes
      [1] Artistic criticism is a term used by Boltanski and Chiapello (2002). It encompasses much more than criticism by artists. It should also be noticed that Boltanski and Chiapello themselves do not state or suggest that artistic criticism caused the emergence of the rhetoric surrounding the new modes of production.
      [2] For more data on poverty in the arts and their proper interpretation and on ways, in which artists are defined in the surveys, see Abbing (2002) and a draft version of a chapter of the book I am writing —Abbing (forthcoming 2013)—: PDF
      [3] In this context it is worth noting that in practice different rules apply to poor artists and those who are part of the art world elite. Whereas it is a bad thing when poor artists compromise, once artist are successful some compromising is often and acceptable. This applies even more to non-​art participants in the elite. Unlike in the case of poor artists, these people are allowed to compromise and yet have a high status and reasonable to high incomes.
      [4] This is a phrase used by Campbell (1987).
      [5] It appears that within a new romantic ethic which emerged over the last decades, far-​reaching self-​realization and authenticity is no longer a monopoly of artists. (In fact, in order for youngsters to belong they must be and can be authentic, that is, in the imagination.) This emerging new ethos may in due time lead to less respect for the arts and endanger privileged positions in the arts. This a theme in a book I am presently writing, Abbing (forthcoming 2013).
      [6] In principal the growth in the size of the population could have added to the effect. However, the increase is largely due to immigrants, who so far are hardly interested in Western established art.
      [7] This is what I argue in Abbing (forthcoming 2013). The earlier book is Abbing (2002)
      [8] See the before mentioned draft version of a chapter of the new book.
      [9] This certainly does not at all imply that I want to strife for a maximum of privatisation in the arts sector. On the contrary, striving for the continuation or establishment of public spaces where there is room for relatively autonomous art including popular art could be a deed of resistance; also resistance against some of the excrescences of post-​Fordist modes of production in general. However, in which degree public support, i.e. subsidies, are required for these public spaces and must be demanded or maintained, should be a matter of debate.

This was a special event, as it was a collaboration with the Test_Lab programme at V2_. On December 1, The People Speak organised their democracy game show Who Wants To Be? as part of the Test_Lab programme. At the Who Wants To Be? game show, the entry fees from all participants were pooled, and the evening game show was spent generating ideas on how to spend these collective funds. Ideas ranged from planting fruit and nut trees throughout Rotterdam to donating the money to charity to holding a Who Wants To Be? game show for kids. In the end, the winning idea was to give V2_ a new doorbell, accompanied by a plaque listing the names of all who were present at the event. This result surprised just about everyone, and demonstrated how democracy can work in strange and unexpected ways. The following evening at Blowup, three speakers delivered provocations on the topic of art and money: Why are artists poor? Does the so-​called “American model” of arts funding work at all? Are democracies any good at spending money? and so on. Following that, The People Speak rolled out their UFO-​like Talkaoke table, with Zsolt the host at its centre. In all my years of curating and organising lectures, talks, and debates, it was the first time where I noticed that every person in the room spoke.

The texts in this reader provide some insights into the thoughts of the guest speakers at our Blowup event, and also I have added a few projects by artists to further deepen the discourse presented by our speakers. The three artists’ projects in this reader will surely illuminate different ways of thinking and approaching the subject.

(Michelle Kasprzak)

Contents

1. Introduction by Michelle Kasprzak
2. A selection of texts (What are we incubating and to what end?, Waiting for a new business model for the arts, How to avoid a strip-​mall future for the arts sector: Lessons from the boutique label, Pi, and The lesson in my new tree for arts policy makers) by Diane Ragsdale
3. Notes on the Exploitation of Poor Artists by Hans Abbing
4. Introduction to the artist’s works by Michelle Kasprzak
5. Artist’s project: Bijlmer Euro by Christian Nold
6. Artist’s project: MACHT GESCHENKE by Christin Lahr
7. Artist’s project: Cards by Lada Nakonechna

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V2_Organisatie ontwikkelde zich de afgelopen decennia van een marginaal kunstenaarsiniatief voor 'instabiele media' in de provinciestad Den Bosch tot een nationaal en internationaal erkend instituut voor kunst en mediatechnologie, riant gesitueerd in het ambitieuze Rotterdamse 'museumkwartier'. Het bevlogen clubje kreeg met de explosieve opkomst van nieuwe communicatiemedia in de jaren negentig haar gelijk én haar plek in het Kunstenplan van Rick van der Ploeg. Inmiddels bestaat V2 uit V2_Lab, V2_Events, V2_Books, V2_Web, Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), V2_Store en V2_Archief en is de organisatie een belangrijke schakel in een wereldwijd netwerk van individuen en organisaties die zich met mediatechnologie bezighouden. 
Toch is V2_ voor sommigen nog steeds die plek waar 'nerds' op de loop gaan met de technologie, zich daarbij bedienend van hoogdravende vertogen of vreemde jargons. De 'technokunst' of 'netart' die V2_ produceert en presenteert roept in de kunstwereld van de oude media vaak weerstand op door de vermeende overdaad aan techniek en de blinde negatie van het 'klassieke' kunstbegrip. V2_ ligt hier niet echt van wakker. Waarom ook? Vanaf den beginne heeft ze gesteld dat de kunstsector niet per se haar referentiekader was. Haar aanpak is steeds interdisciplinair met de nadruk op onderzoek en experiment. Dat de circuits waar V2_ zich in beweegt niet altijd even 'salonfähig' zijn in de ogen van de kunst, is hoogstens een probleem van de kunst zelf: V2_ en haar achterban hebben allang hun eigen salons. 

En hun eigen boeken: zo is er nu het Boek voor de elektronische kunst, in opdracht van V2_ geschreven door Arjen Mulder en Maaike Post. Bestaat er bij V2_ dan toch de (ouderwetse?) behoefte om haar praktijken te verantwoorden door ze te beschrijven in termen van kunst? Boek voor de elektronische kunst werd in ieder geval niet het zoveelste oppervlakkige of juist ondoorgrondelijke boekwerkje. Door middel van vijf essays over respectievelijk machines, media, kunst, interfaces en netwerken, dertien interviews met kunstenaars en theoretici als Dick Raaijmakers, Stelarc, Peter Weibel, Bilwet, Lars Spuybroek en Kodwo Eshun, en een groot aantal illustraties uit het V2_ archief, genereren de auteurs een theorie /geschiedenis van kunst en media met frisse inzichten. 

Diegenen die de boeken (Het twintigste-eeuwse lichaam en Het fotografisch genoegen) en teksten van Arjen Mulder kennen, weten dat deze essayist, die van oorsprong bioloog is, zo zijn eigen fascinaties en vocabulaire heeft. In zijn meestal lucide essays buit hij zijn biologische begrippenapparaat uit in plaats van het te verdringen, en voert hij naar aanleiding van films, fotografie of andere mediale verschijnselen theorieën op, waarin hij inzichten uit de cybernetica, techniekgeschiedenis, biologie of filosofie geheel naar zijn hand zet. Dit op montere toon en in een onbekommerde stijl waarmee hij de academische methodes van zijn referentiegebieden zonder gêne negeert. De wufte mediatheorie die hieruit voortvloeit is voor sommigen een 'eye opener', voor anderen wazig gezwets. Dat Mulder bijvoorbeeld kunst niet wezenlijk anders behandelt dan televisie of drugs, en de kunsttheorie en kunstgeschiedenis nauwelijks in zijn gedachtevorming betrekt, is een doorn in het oog van velen: de typisch Mulderiaanse manier van associëren, verbinden en metaforiseren is niet aan hen besteed. 

Het schrijven van een boek in opdracht van een instituut, hoe 'losbandig' ook, moet een hele opgave zijn voor een essayist die vooral gewend is om zijn eigen theorieën de wereld in te helpen. In Boek voor de elektronische kunst moest toch ook plaats zijn voor de wapenfeiten en het gedachtegoed van V2_. Dit hebben de auteurs gedeeltelijk opgelost door figuren te interviewen die verschillende disciplines uit het V2_ netwerk vertegenwoordigen. Deze lopen onder de essays door en zijn gebaseerd op sobere, vrij neutrale vragen. De gevarieerde betogen die daaruit zijn ontstaan, fungeren als contrapunten. Daarnaast verslaat het beeldmateriaal uitgebreid en chronologisch de geschiedenis van V2_. De toon van de essays is niet beschouwend of bevragend, maar eerder resoluut en enigszins didactisch -- het traktaatachtige, dat Mulders stijl wel vaker kenmerkt, is ongetwijfeld versterkt door de vraag van V2_ naar een boek voor een 'niet-ingewijd publiek'. De vijf begrippen die het veld van de elektronische kunst moeten karakteriseren, zijn benaderd als 'tegenomgeving', naar het inzicht van Marshall McLuhan dat "kunst één van de weinige middelen van mensen is om te begrijpen wat voor klap hun psyche krijgt wanneer het bereik van hun zintuigen wordt uitgebreid met behulp van technische media". Het gaat aldus om niet-producerende machines, instabiele media, beeldloze kunst, contra-intuïtieve interfaces en non-communicatieve netwerken. "Kunst creëren een tegenomgeving die de technische normaliteiten ontregelt, zodat je daar als het ware van een afstand naar kunt kijken, of kunt voorzien wat ze nog willen aanrichten", aldus Mulder.

In de essays, die je als een soort mozaïek in willekeurige volgorde kunt lezen, lokken culturele, wetenschappelijke, technologische en militair-politieke ontwikkelingen, gecombineerd met interpretaties van bepaalde denkers en wetenschappers (waaronder grondleggers als Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan en Claude E. Shannon en hedendaagse theoretici als Vilém Flusser en Jay David Bolter) visies en waarnemingen uit over de technische transformaties van de wereld in de twintigste eeuw. De nieuwe concepten die hieruit voortkwamen (onzekerheid, interactiviteit, zelforganisatie, emergentie ...) worden vervolgens 'getest' in de elektronische kunst van onder andere Seiji Shimoda, Ulrike Gabriel, Erik Hobijn, Knowbotic Research en JODI. De inzet is niet het 'bijwerken' van de moderne kunstgeschiedenis, maar een historische en structurele analyse van de 'technische blik' en het 'technische geloofssysteem -- geloofssystemen zijn volgens Mulder een soort flexibele, paradigmatische 'ervaringsprogramma's'. En ja, uiteindelijk komt ook de esthetische ontroering aan bod die middels 'technokunst' tussen de machines en hun gebruikers zou kunnen ontstaan.

Het resultaat is geschakeerd en eigengereid. Toch gaan ongebonden essayistiek en dienstbare theorievorming soms wat ongemakkelijk samen -- al is de essayistische formule van dit boek niet wezenlijk anders dan van Mulders eerdere publicaties. Misschien komt dat omdat Mulder vaak het beste over kunst schrijft als het niet onmiddellijk over kunst gaat. In deze publicatie sluiten de besproken kunstwerken zo probleemloos aan op zijn visie, dat je juist het gevoel krijgt dat hij slechts weinig door ze werd uitgedaagd of 'ontroerd', en ze vooral selecteerde op hun toepasselijkheid.

Maar wellicht moet je dit boek, conform de opdracht, ook lezen als een spannend 'leerboek'. Want wat dat 'niet-ingewijde' publiek betreft: in feite schreven Mulder en Post eigenhandig een 'Mulder-reader', als perfecte voorbereiding op Mulders andere werk en vol instructieve uitweidingen over computergeschiedenis, communicatietheorie en natuurwetenschappen. Of Boek voor de elektronische kunst ook een nieuw kunstbegrip oplevert? Dat ligt eraan hoe vast je zit in je geloofssysteem.

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Published in The Modern Language Review Vol. 108 No. 1 (January 2013)

Your re­cent work em­pha­sizes that it is not pos­si­ble to con­ceive of ma­te­ri­al­ity (in­clud­ing ob­jects) apart from pro­cess­es of de­ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion and ab­strac­tion (2008: 101). Such pro­cess­es have very dense, in­ter-​in­flu­enc­ing, ex­per­imen­tal con­cep­tu­al ed­ifices in the art of the 20th cen­tu­ry. In your track­ing of the ob­ject in art his­to­ry, you draw on Adorno’s read­ing of Lukacs’ His­to­ry and Class Con­scious­ness, com­posed at the near ex­act same his­tor­ical mo­ment of Hei­deg­ger’s de­politi­cized phe­nomenol­ogy. Adorno em­pha­sizes that this tra­jec­to­ry of Marx­ist thought (how­ev­er flawed) has been im­por­tant­ly ner­vous about build­ing up ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion, nor­ma­tive com­mod­ity re­la­tions and alien­ation to­geth­er as in­sep­ara­ble and mu­tu­al­ly re­in­forc­ing con­cepts and pro­cess­es. You have sug­gest­ed that ob­jec­tiviza­tion is in­evitable but that alien­ation isn’t nec­es­sar­ily, yes?

I’m es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ed in this quote you pull out from Adorno, which ar­gues that what is im­por­tant is to com­bine ‘tena­cious op­po­si­tion against that which ex­ists: against its thing­ness, with a staunch re­jec­tion of at­tempts to iden­ti­fy thing­ness as evil’ (Lüttick­en 2010: 1). Can you elab­orate on what is meant by the first and sec­ond parts of this quote? How does it link to the dis­tinc­tions you are mak­ing (di­alec­ti­cal­ly and his­tor­ical­ly) in your re­cent work be­tween art ob­jects, ‘things’ and com­modi­ties? I sus­pect this is where the read­er might com­pre­hend how the cri­tique of the com­mod­ity – the fact of art’s com­mod­ity sta­tus – is not equiv­ocal to ut­ter dis­en­chant­ment with art as cat­ego­ry, nor with the re­al­ity of art mak­ing/ap­pre­ci­ation in terms of ma­te­ri­al in­quiry.

Sven Lüttick­en (SL): First off, I have to con­fess to be­com­ing some­thing of a bored teenag­er in the face of on­to­log­ical dis­cus­sions. For bet­ter or worse, I think his­tor­ical­ly, not on­to­log­ical­ly. The be­ing I deal with is his­tor­ical be­ing; you might say that, when deal­ing with the his­tor­ical trans­for­ma­tions of the ob­ject in its var­ious guis­es, you ul­ti­mate­ly end up with a kind of his­tor­ical on­tol­ogy. So I’m in­ter­est­ed in the very fab­ric of the ob­ject and/or the thing chang­ing, and of course I’m look­ing at this from the van­tage point of art – us­ing the art ob­ject as my the­oret­ical ob­ject. And it’s a high­ly in­sta­ble ob­ject, which is good. In the words of one Rus­sian Con­struc­tivist crit­ic, the mod­ern art­work went from be­ing an ‘ele­phant’ to be­ing a ‘but­ter­fly.’ That is a bril­liant­ly suc­cinct way of sum­ma­riz­ing some­thing about a trans­for­ma­tion on which you could write an ele­phan­tine book.

Adorno’s think­ing was it­self shaped by the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ern art, by the trans­for­ma­tions of the mod­ern art­work. My in­ter­est in Adorno in this re­spect stems part­ly from the fact that if you read his work it is patent­ly clear that La­tour’s at­tempt to as­cribe to pret­ty much the whole of mod­ern phi­los­ophy (and cer­tain­ly to Hegelian and Marx­ian phi­los­ophy) a crude sub­ject/ob­ject di­choto­my needs to be ques­tioned. Adorno con­stant­ly prob­lema­tizes and his­tori­cized both terms. He notes that ‘ob­ject’ is ‘the pos­itive face of the non-​iden­ti­cal;’ in oth­er words, ‘a ter­mi­no­log­ical mask’ (1966: 193) As the oth­er of the sub­ject, the ob­ject would ap­pear to be the uniden­ti­cal, what can­not be as­sim­ilat­ed by the tri­umphant sub­ject and by a rea­son that is in­creas­ing­ly show­ing it­self to be in­stru­men­tal. How­ev­er, pre­cise­ly as the sub­ject’s neat po­lar op­po­site, the ob­ject is re-​ap­pro­pri­at­ed by rea­son; it is iden­ti­fied and made ra­tio­nal and pro­duc­tive. The ob­ject, in oth­er words, is al­ways al­ready a com­mod­ity-​in-​wait­ing.

Now as for the thing, for thing­ness in Adorno, a cru­cial pas­sage for me is: ‘In thing­ness there is an in­ter­min­gling of both the ob­ject’s non-​iden­ti­cal side and the sub­jec­tion of peo­ple un­der the pre­vail­ing forms of pro­duc­tion – their own func­tion­al re­la­tions, which are ob­scure to them’ (192). So the ob­ject does have a non-​iden­ti­cal side, which is to say: it can­not be com­plete­ly as­sim­ilat­ed by the sub­ject. This is the thing: the ob­ject in­so­far as it is more than an ob­ject, or less than one. The thing is both lack and sur­plus. This is clear­ly high­ly sug­ges­tive in terms of mod­ern art’s ap­pro­pri­ation of com­mod­ity-​ob­jects.

On the oth­er hand, for Adorno, Ding­haftigkeit al­so stands for the reifi­ca­tion of hu­man re­la­tions. The Ger­man term for reifi­ca­tion is Verd­inglichung, which lit­er­al­ly might be trans­lat­ed as thingi­fi­ca­tion. This very term could cause one to lapse in­to an ide­al­ist dis­par­age­ment of the thing­like, which is what Adorno cau­tions against. In any case, the rei­fied thing­ness of so­cial re­la­tions is it­self a so­cial­ly pro­duced state. Adorno warns that ‘the pri­ma­cy of the ob­ject notwith­stand­ing, the thing­ness of the world is al­so il­lu­so­ry. It tempts the sub­jects to as­cribe to the things them­selves the so­cial con­di­tions of their pro­duc­tion. This is elab­orat­ed in Marx’s chap­ter on the fetish …’ (Adorno 190).

Verd­inglichung, in oth­er words, is part and par­cel of com­mod­ity fetishism. Now, the com­mod­ity fetish ac­cord­ing to Marx is a thing brim­ming with ‘the­olog­ical whims’ (1867: 4). It ap­pears to be en­dowed with au­tonomous life, as a kind of quasi-​sub­ject. In fact, its ‘be­hav­ior’ on the mar­ket can how­ev­er be ex­plained through the la­bor the­ory of val­ue – this is Marx’s con­tention. The com­mod­ity’s val­ue is root­ed in la­bor – in ab­stract la­bor, which is to say in la­bor val­ue sold by work­ers to cap­ital­ist en­trepreneurs. The com­mod­ity that re­sults from all of this is it­self pseu­do-​con­crete: we may be able to hold it, to touch it, but it is in fact shot through with eco­nom­ic (and tech­no­log­ical) ab­strac­tion. You might say that this is the mod­ern ob­ject par ex­cel­lence: it has been as­sim­ilat­ed and ‘sub­jec­tivized’ through in­stru­men­tal rea­son. W.J.T. Mitchell speaks of the ‘or­dered ranks of ob­ject­hood’ (2005: 112).

I want to ar­gue that while con­tem­po­rary ‘thing the­ory’ re­sponds to a gen­uine shift in the­ory cor­re­spond­ing to a shift in the mode of pro­duc­tion – of pro­duc­tion in the widest sense, stand­ing not just for in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion but so­cial pro­duc­tion tout court – we are not deal­ing with an ab­stract break. On the con­trary: the sug­ges­tion of such an ab­stract break with much-​ma­ligned ‘moder­ni­ty’ can gen­er­ate a fa­tal obliv­ion to con­ti­nu­ities and to the on­go­ing en­tan­gle­ment in the di­alec­tics of ob­jec­tiv­ity and sub­jec­tiv­ity.

The one pre­cur­sor who is most fre­quent­ly ac­knowl­edged by con­tem­po­rary the­orists of thing­ness is Adorno’s old arch neme­sis, Hei­deg­ger, to whom the cur­rent use of the term thing can of course be traced back – the thing as third term that desta­bi­lizes the sub­ject/ob­ject di­choto­my and cov­ers any num­ber of hy­brids. How­ev­er, to me (but again, my in­ter­est is his­to­ry rather than on­tol­ogy), the work of thinkers like Adorno and Ben­jamin is ac­tu­al­ly more pro­duc­tive. In their work, too, we are deal­ing not with some es­sen­tial­ized sub­ject/ob­ject di­choto­my but rather with a ques­tion­ing of such a sta­ble di­choto­my; how­ev­er, this ques­tion­ing al­so ac­knowl­edges that the no­tions of ob­ject and sub­ject can­not be wished away, since they are in­trin­si­cal­ly bound up with moder­ni­ty as not just a philo­soph­ical regime, but a so­cial and eco­nom­ical one. And, of course, an aes­thet­ic regime. For me, mod­ern aes­thet­ic prac­tice is it­self a cru­cial form of ‘thing the­ory’ – and the same can be said for con­tem­po­rary art.

ROR: If ‘spec­ula­tive re­al­ism’ is nec­es­sary, ac­cord­ing to Gironi, it is be­cause it ‘cau­tious­ly moves (con­form­ing to the Marx­ian-​En­gel­sian les­son) be­tween sim­plis­tic (and, to­day, plain­ly un­sci­en­tif­ic) re­duc­tion­ist ex­cess­es on the one hand and the yield­ing of pre­cious ter­rain to the ide­al­ism that lurks in an ex­ces­sive­ly logi­co-​ra­tio­nal­ist un­der­stand­ing of ‘mat­ter’ on the oth­er’ (2012: 380). Is it so easy to bring this prob­lem­at­ic in­to art giv­en the dis­tinct­ness of art as cat­ego­ry? I guess my ques­tion is, broad­ly, can art his­to­ry shed light the ‘cau­tion’ Gironi men­tions?

SL: Art his­to­ry as a dis­ci­pline tends to be so cau­tious that it nev­er makes it to the oth­er side of the street! But yes, for me, art his­to­ry is cru­cial in that is it­self some­thing of an il­le­git­imate dis­ci­pline, one taint­ed by the im­pu­ri­ty and opaque­ness of its ob­ject –art his­to­ry is of­ten treat­ed with a kind of pa­ter­nal­is­tic benev­olence (and this is al­ready putting a pos­itive spin on things) by ‘mas­ter dis­ci­plines’ such as phi­los­ophy and semi­otics or lit­er­ary the­ory. But in a strange way, even though the dis­ci­pline is ev­er more marginal­ized, it is al­so tri­umphant – de­spite it­self, one might say. Af­ter all, art his­to­ry was al­ways a dis­ci­pline of un­sta­ble sub­ject-​ob­jects, of vi­su­al and ma­te­ri­al facts that were al­so his­tor­ical acts, of things that were ac­tants.

Art his­to­ry is one of three main man­ifes­ta­tions of the ‘aes­thet­ic turn’ around 1800. In the late eigh­teenth and ear­ly nine­teenth cen­turies, three in­ter­con­nect­ed dis­ci­plines came to con­sti­tute art as an es­sen­tial ob­ject with which the mod­ern bour­geois sub­ject as­sured it­self of its ten­uous grasp of the world: philo­soph­ical aes­thet­ics, art crit­icism and art his­to­ry. All these forms of aes­thet­ic dis­course re­volve around the ob­scure ob­ject of aes­thet­ic de­sire that is the work of art – in its var­ious medi­um-​spe­cif­ic in­car­na­tions. Lit­er­ature and mu­sic held the promise of a high­ly sub­jec­tive art, and in that sense they were quintessen­tial­ly mod­ern; Taine phrased a com­mon­place thought when, in his phi­los­ophy of art, he stat­ed that mu­sic ‘con­vient mieux que tout autre art pur ex­primer les pen­sées flot­tantes, les songes sans formes, les de­sires sans ob­jet et sans lim­ite…(bet­ter adapt­ed than any oth­er art to ex­press float­ing thoughts, form­less dreams, ob­ject­less lim­it­less de­sires…)’ (1875: 1)

How­ev­er, if the aes­thet­ic be­came a cru­cial sphere of mod­ern bour­geois thought, promis­ing – in Ter­ry Ea­gle­ton’s words – a ‘resid­ual­ly com­mon world’ (1990) in the era of in­hu­mane ab­strac­tions and di­vi­sions of labour, aes­thet­ic thought need­ed to re­turn time and again to vis­ible and ma­te­ri­al ob­jects: paint­ings and sculp­tures. Such works of vi­su­al art con­sti­tut­ed ob­jects that coun­tered the tran­scen­den­tal sub­ject of ide­al­ist phi­los­ophy not with blunt and dead ma­te­ri­al­ity, but with a form of ob­ject­hood that seemed it­self trans­formed through and in har­mo­ny with the sub­ject. Art his­to­ry, as it was found­ed or re-​found­ed around 1800, was the dis­ci­pline that sought to re­al­ize the ‘aes­thet­ic project’ for­mu­lat­ed by thinkers from Kant and Schiller to Schelling and Hegel with an im­mer­sion in the minu­ti­ae of at­tri­bu­tion and mean­ing – in the pro­cess some­times los­ing sight of why art mat­tered in the first place.

As Georges Di­di-​Hu­ber­man has em­pha­sized, the ob­ject of art his­to­ry be­longs to a world of sens­es and is there­fore nev­er quite ra­tio­nal. In­deed, art’s sta­tus as ex­hibit­ing a form of mute rea­son that dif­fers from con­cep­tu­al think­ing is what made it in­dis­pens­able to the aes­thet­ic the­ory that emerged on the thresh­old from the En­light­en­ment to Ro­man­ti­cism. To­day, of course, art ha­bit­ual­ly em­ploys me­dia and tech­nolo­gies that are them­selves prod­ucts of tech­no­log­ical rea­son (of pur­po­sive ra­tio­nal­ity, as Adorno would say), but in ways that are more or less un­rea­son­able, or at least ex­hib­it a some­what ob­scure ra­tio­nal­ity.

ROR: La­tour de­rides his­tor­ical ma­te­ri­al­ism as a hyp­ocrit­ical the­ol­ogy, while at the same time much of his re­con­sid­er­ation of the ac­tu­al ma­te­ri­al prac­tices and con­cep­tu­al at­tach­ments of sci­en­tif­ic labour­ers has seemed ex­treme­ly ripe for in­ter­pel­la­tion and re­work­ing by me­dia or trans­me­di­al artists in­ter­est­ed in, for ex­am­ple, me­dia ar­chae­olo­gies (re­al or fan­tas­tic), nat­ural­ized soft­ware log­ics, post-​hu­man ap­proach­es to aes­thet­ics and so on. It seems to me al­so that La­tour’s con­cep­tions of ‘ac­tants’ (which in­cludes both ‘things’ and im­ma­te­ri­al con­cepts) might at the same time be con­ducive to work­ing through art’s his­tor­ical trans­for­ma­tions at the scene of ex­hi­bi­tion (and crit­icism), for ex­am­ple, and es­pe­cial­ly how artists make in­stal­la­tions of ob­jects, con­cepts and things ‘work’ as art. Where does La­tour’s work fit in­to all this for you?

SL: La­tour’s de­vel­op­ment of the no­tion of the ac­tant seems to be to be one of the most pro­duc­tive as­pects of his work, though I would say that there’s a whole la­bor of dif­fer­en­ti­ation ahead of us. I’m afraid this will have to amount to some form of his­tor­ical ma­te­ri­al­ism – or per­haps one should say di­alec­ti­cal ma­te­ri­al­ism – which ar­tic­ulates the dif­fer­ent forms of agen­cy in­volved and their in­ter­re­la­tions. Such a dif­fer­en­ti­ation ob­vi­ous­ly must not re­sult in some Bor­ge­sian en­cy­clo­pe­dia, in an in­co­her­ent list; it must in­volve pre­cise yet mu­ta­ble re­la­tions, which al­so means that it must in­clude an­tag­onisms. And per­haps one has to rein­tro­duce the terms ‘sub­ject’ and ‘ob­ject’ in the pro­cess.

At the risk of mak­ing the good peo­ple shud­der, I would like to sug­gest that there is much to be learned here from Marx, who in the Grun­drisse wrote on the ‘pro­duc­tion of con­sump­tion’ – which could well be tak­en for a les­son in aes­thet­ics. In­deed, in this as in oth­er re­spects, Marx’s po­lit­ical econ­omy takes up tropes and prob­lems from aes­thet­ic the­ory: ‘pro­duc­tion thus not on­ly cre­ates an ob­ject for the sub­ject, but al­so a sub­ject for the ob­ject. […] It thus pro­duces the ob­ject of con­sump­tion, the man­ner of con­sump­tion and the mo­tive of con­sump­tion. Con­sump­tion like­wise pro­duces the pro­duc­er’s in­cli­na­tion by beck­on­ing to him as an aim-​de­ter­min­ing need’ (1857). Marx, the aes­thet­ic po­lit­ical economist who once read Ru­mohr’s Ital­ienis­che Briefe to write an (aban­doned) es­say on Chris­tian art, here shows that the ob­ject-​sub­ject di­choto­my was in fact a di­alec­tic equa­tion in which both parts for­ev­er desta­bi­lized each oth­er – and this was nev­er more clear than in re­la­tion to vi­su­al art, whose man­ifest­ly sol­id ob­jects were al­so in­tan­gi­ble bear­ers and pro­duc­ers of sub­jec­tiv­ity.

I’m re­mind­ed here of the Book Sprint phe­nomenon, and of the email in­ter­view that we’re do­ing right now – though ‘right now’ is, of course, the wrong term, since we’re not in the same place or in the same time zone. A Book Sprint is a way of pro­duc­ing an ob­ject (a new-​me­dia ob­ject re­me­di­at­ing a pa­per book) un­der cer­tain eco­nom­ical and so­cial con­di­tions. This takes the form of a pro­duc­tion pro­cess in which not on­ly an ob­ject is cre­at­ed, but al­so ‘sub­jects for the ob­ject’ – first and fore­most, the peo­ple di­rect­ly in­volved, for here the pro­duc­ers are al­so the first con­sumers. The book-​in-​progress func­tions as an ac­tant im­pact­ing the peo­ple pro­duc­ing it, who have set up the whole pro­cess in re­sponse to the ex­igen­cies and anti­nomies of con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al and in­tel­lec­tu­al prac­tice. As some­one who usu­al­ly spends years on mak­ing a book, I find this vague­ly threat­en­ing, but com­pelling. Per­haps we’re deal­ing with a new kind of but­ter­fly book, a new type of ob­ject that may al­so be an un­ruly thing. The na­ture of the in­ter­re­la­tions be­tween this me­dia ac­tant and the hu­man agents re­mains to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed in much greater de­tail.

In some ways, the books thus pro­duced will no doubt be symp­tomat­ic of the time con­straints, but new qual­ities may be set free that make up for the im­per­fec­tions. What we’re do­ing now is not part of a book sprint strict­ly speak­ing, but I’m cer­tain­ly feel­ing the pres­sure, and we don’t have time to do things ‘thor­ough­ly’ – or ‘prop­er­ly.’ It cer­tain­ly forces me to think on my feet, which is good, but it will re­main a rather sketchy af­fair.

ROR: Think­ing in terms of the eco­nomics of both art and phi­los­ophy’s trans­formed dis­cur­sive in­dus­tries – glob­al ex­hi­bi­tionary com­plex­es, mas­sive­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed pub­lish­ing cy­cles, net­worked dis­tri­bu­tion – the way in which art and phi­los­ophy ne­go­ti­ate each oth­er is chang­ing. Or per­haps the in­dus­tri­al links be­tween art and phi­los­ophy in the form of pub­lic­ity, shall we say, have al­ways been this same prob­lem­at­ic, at least since the 60s.

Ei­ther way, it seems that cu­ra­to­ri­al and artis­tic in­dus­tri­ous­ness can be­come some­what awk­ward when it as­sumes it­self to be in­vest­ed in con­tem­po­rane­ity by re­work­ing (es­pe­cial­ly post-​Deleuzian) phi­los­ophy with­in art works of ex­em­plary ‘re­duced’ scenes of non-​lin­guis­tic thought. Liam Gillick has called this the ‘sin­gu­lar­ity’ prob­lem – the con­junc­tion of cu­ra­to­ri­al-​philo­soph­ical labour re­duced to con­cepts and ‘in­stances’ of art, where each (philo­soph­ical con­cept, artis­tic ob­ject) in­vest in mak­ing the case for the oth­er in a too-​cir­cu­lar fash­ion. At its worst it as­sumes that the con­tem­po­rane­ity of art is on­ly to be found in its sym­met­ri­cal ‘pro­gres­sive’ track­ing of ‘prop­er­ly’ philo­soph­ical labour. Some­times this verges on syco­phancy even.

While that is the risk, I won­der if we can think about how these is­sues are crit­ical­ly and know­ing­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed by artists and cu­ra­tors. It’s in­ter­est­ing, for ex­am­ple, that while the artists were cu­rat­ed in­to this V2 show for their al­ready-​dis­played in­vest­ments (across an oeu­vre) in ex­per­imen­tal­ist eco­log­ical in­quiry and non-​an­thro­pocen­tric ma­te­ri­alisms, they were in­vit­ed to cre­ate new works that specif­ical­ly en­gaged with Levi Bryant and Gra­ham Har­man’s work in the con­text of the larg­er ‘turn’ to­wards so-​called an­ti-​cor­re­la­tion­ism thought in OOO and SR. In oth­er words, they were in­vit­ed to re­me­di­ate philo­soph­ical ma­te­ri­al (not nec­es­sar­ily to ‘do’ non-​lin­guis­tic non-​phi­los­ophy) for a strand of phi­los­ophy in­vest­ed in think­ing mat­ter from out­side the hu­man. Whether this is even pos­si­ble in in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized art that nev­er goes with­out a spec­ta­tor is a very good ques­tion – Smith­son has ex­per­iment­ed with this among oth­ers – but it is per­fect­ly ob­vi­ous to the artists that this prob­lem­at­ic is there. Fur­ther, de­spite cu­ra­to­ri­al se­lec­tion and over­sight of the com­mis­sion, it is al­so the case that the artists re­work such ma­te­ri­al through what­ev­er as­so­ci­ations and re­la­tions of their choos­ing.

In this case we note that philo­soph­ical ma­te­ri­al has been per­haps un­pre­dictably turned to­wards hu­mour and pro­fa­na­tion, and al­so di­alec­ti­cal­ly to­wards fail­ure, pos­si­bly this be­ing the les­son of con­cep­tu­al art. I won­der (al­so in re­la­tion to the first ques­tion) if you can com­ment on the sur­plus val­ue of specif­ical­ly, com­edy and pro­fa­na­tion, re­gard­ing these kinds of deal­ings with the on­tic in con­tem­po­rary art. This sort of pro­fane tin­ker­ing can seem like a great re­lief. Is there any rad­ical philo­soph­ical con­tri­bu­tion that artists make by pro­fan­ing their dis­in­vest­ment in sys­tem­atized and over­ly tax­on­omized on­tolo­gies, with­out re­duc­ing such to ni­hilism?

SL: In gen­er­al I would say that artis­tic prac­tice is tin­ker­ing, brico­lage, even in ‘con­struc­tivist’ art, which Schwit­ters desub­li­mat­ed as col­lage and as­sem­blage. ‘The­ory,’ too, can be among the ma­te­ri­als of artis­tic brico­lage. But ul­ti­mate­ly the work of brico­lage is its own mode of do­ing the­ory; im­pure the­ory, ar­tic­ulat­ed in the form of sug­ges­tions. As an art crit­ic or art his­to­ri­an you ef­fec­tive­ly con­tin­ue this work, de- and re­assem­bling the as­sem­blage.

Now, con­cern­ing an­ti-​cor­re­la­tion­ist thought as ‘a strand of phi­los­ophy in­vest­ed in think­ing mat­ter from out­side the hu­man:’ I’m not that well-​versed in the lit­er­ature in ques­tion (but the more I read Har­man, the more I ap­pre­ci­ate La­tour). The main sub­ject of an­ti-​cor­re­la­tion­ist cri­tique would seem to be Kant. Kant’s ‘cor­re­la­tion­ist’ take on sub­ject and ob­ject was sub­ject to cri­tique pret­ty much right off the bat, with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Ide­al­ist phi­los­ophy ‘solved’ the prob­lems of Kant’s phi­los­ophy by sub­sum­ing the world to thought; the on­tic be­came a re­flec­tion of the Ich or the un­fold­ing of Geist. And art was of such fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance to Schelling and Hegel in par­tic­ular be­cause it showed the un­fold­ing of Spir­it in the form of art­works that were sub­ject-​ob­jects.

But if art be­came cru­cial for phi­los­ophy – for the phi­los­ophy of the ‘aes­thet­ic turn’ – be­cause it showed mat­ter to be im­bued with spir­it, mod­ern art en­gaged in a flir­ta­tion with var­ious forms of base ma­te­ri­al­ism, with mat­ter con­ceived to be out­side the hu­man. The ship­wreck of spir­it. The Bataille of the jour­nal Doc­uments is, of course, a prime ex­am­ple of such a project – which in this case was it­self a tru­ly aes­thet­ic hy­brid of the artis­tic and the philo­soph­ical, and which was in ef­fect one episode in Bataille’s crit­ical long en­gage­ment with ide­al­ism, and with Hegel in par­tic­ular. To­day, in the col­laps­ing An­thro­pocene, to think mat­ter from out­side the hu­man ob­vi­ous­ly pos­es dif­fer­ent chal­lenges, as the ma­te­ri­al fab­ric of our plan­et has been in­ex­orably al­tered by hu­man in­ter­ven­tion. This was some­thing rec­og­nized by Smith­son. On the one hand, he turned en­tropy in­to some­thing of a fetish, seem­ing­ly sub­ju­gat­ing his­to­ry to a nat­ural law (the sec­ond law of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics); on the oth­er hand, he was well aware that hu­man ac­tiv­ity ac­cel­er­at­ed en­tropy, and that a cos­mic giv­en had there­by be­come a so­cial and po­lit­ical prob­lem – which be­came the ba­sis of his aes­thet­ic project.

By now, plan­et earth is it­self the ul­ti­mate art­work, a sub­ject-​ob­ject out of con­trol, an ac­tant act­ing up in ways we can­not con­trol. We may want to think mat­ter from out­side the hu­man, but mat­ter it­self won’t let us.

Works Cit­ed

Theodor W. Adorno, Neg­ative Di­alek­tik, Frank­furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966; trans­la­tions from Adorno by SL, adapt­ing E.B. Ash­ton’s En­glish trans­la­tion, Neg­ative Di­alec­tics, Lon­don: Rout­ledge, 1990.

Fabio Gironi, ‘Be­tween Nat­ural­ism and Ra­tio­nal­ism: A New Re­al­ist Land­scape’, JCR 11.3 (2012): 361-387.

Sven Lüttick­en, ‘Art and Thing­ness, Part Two: Thingi­fi­ca­tion’ e-​flux 15 (2010); http://www.e-​flux.com/jour­nal/art-​and-​thing­ness-​part-​two-​ thingi­fi­ca­tion/

Karl Marx, ‘Pro­duc­tion, Con­sump­tion, Dis­tri­bu­tion, Ex­change (Cir­cu­la­tion),’ Chap­ter 1 of Out­lines of the Cri­tique of Po­lit­ical Econ­omy (Grun­drisse), 1857;

http://marx­ists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grun­drisse/ch01.htm

W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pic­tures Want? The Lives and Loves of Im­ages, Chica­go: Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2005.

Hip­poly­te Taine, Lec­tures on Art: Vol­ume 1, H. Holt and com­pa­ny, 1875.

Bi­ogra­phies

Sven Lüttick­en is an art his­to­ri­an and crit­ic based in Utrecht. In 2004, he was grant­ed the Prize for Art Crit­icism of the BKVB fund, Am­ster­dam. He teach­es art his­to­ry, crit­icism and me­dia the­ory at the Vri­je Uni­ver­siteit, Am­ster­dam. Lüttick­en pub­lish­es reg­ular­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al art and cul­ture mag­azines in­clud­ing New Left Re­view, Texte zur Kun­st and e-​flux jour­nal, and con­tributes to cat­alogues and ex­hi­bi­tions. His book, Idols of the Mar­ket: Mod­ern Icon­oclasm and the Fun­da­men­tal­ist Spec­ta­cle, was pub­lished in June 2009 by Stern­berg Press. He has al­so cu­rat­ed the ex­hi­bi­tions Life, Once More: forms of reen­act­ment in Con­tem­po­rary Art (Witte de With, Rot­ter­dam, 2005) and The Art of Icon­oclasm (BAK, ba­sis voor actuele kun­st, Utrecht, 2008/2009). He is present­ly work­ing on a book about film, video, reen­act­ment, and the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his­to­ry, His­to­ry in Mo­tion (to be pub­lished by Stern­berg Press in the spring of 2013).

http://sven­luttick­en.blogspot.com

Rachel O’Reil­ly is a writ­er, crit­ic and cu­ra­tor with a back­ground in com­par­ative lit­er­ature, and mas­ters in me­dia and cul­ture (Uni­ver­si­ty of Am­ster­dam). Her ex­hi­bi­tions in­clude The Leisure Class (co-​cu­ra­tor) at The Gallery of Mod­ern Art (Bris­bane, Aus­tralia) and Videoground for Mul­ti­me­dia Art Asia Pa­cif­ic. Her re­cent work brings to­geth­er in­stal­la­tion art prac­tices, aes­thet­ic phi­los­ophy, po­et­ics and po­lit­ical econ­omy.

Rick Dol­phi­jn (RD): Re­gard­ing the re­la­tion be­tween spec­ula­tive think­ing and the arts I feel very close to the work of Bri­an Mas­su­mi whose ideas on this re­la­tion might seem to come close to Bo­gost’s, but in the end prac­tice a very dif­fer­ent pol­itics in which the arts are giv­en a much more promi­nent role. Ac­cord­ing to Mas­su­mi, art shows us the tech­niques of ex­is­tence, or the tech­niques of re­la­tion, which is pret­ty much the same thing. Let me ex­plain his ideas by means of an ex­am­ple, con­tem­po­rary dance (which is al­ways a nice in­ter­min­gling of sub­ject, ob­ject and change), and how Mas­su­mi con­sid­ers dance in his last book. He quotes a per­son­al con­ver­sa­tion with chore­og­ra­pher William Forsythe who stat­ed, ‘a body is that which folds’ (Mas­su­mi 2011: 140). Forsythe’s par­tic­ular con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion (in dance) of the body of­fered Mas­su­mi a start­ing point to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween con­tem­po­rary and mod­ern dance. Ward­ing off any em­pha­sis on rep­re­sen­ta­tion and on the use of metaphors (both of which, in my view, hap­pen in the def­ini­tion of Bo­gost), Forsythe’s art of­fers Mas­su­mi a way to get rid of the idea that the dancer us­es its body as a means to ex­press an in­ner feel­ing. This no­tion of in­ner feel­ing is so promi­nent in con­cep­tions of mod­ern dance (Mas­su­mi gives the ex­am­ple of Martha Gra­ham’s sym­bol­ic use of ges­ture). Con­tem­po­rary dance, in con­trast, ex­press­es pure move­ment, Mas­su­mi states. Thus, where­as in mod­ern dance the body dances (bod­ily move­ments cre­ate the dance), the dancer in con­tem­po­rary dance comes to be in the dance (move­ments cre­ate a danc­ing body). An epic ex­am­ple of the lat­ter would be Pina Bausch’s Café Müller where the chairs in the café did not sur­round the dancer cre­at­ing the mise-​en-​scene in front of which the dancer danced: the chairs are in­volved in the dance no less than the dancer. The chairs, the bod­ies of the dancers and ac­tu­al­ly ev­ery­thing else some­what com­plic­it, make up for the raw ma­te­ri­al from which the dance is ab­stract­ed.

This is im­por­tant (keep­ing in mind Mas­su­mi’s def­ini­tion of art as that which shows us the tech­niques of ex­is­tence): Forsythe’s def­ini­tion shows us that con­tem­po­rary dance over­comes the du­alisms that gave form to moder­ni­ty/mod­ern dance. On the one hand, it has no in­ter­est any­more in the op­po­si­tion be­tween the dancer and the world (which it was sup­posed to re-​present or dance-​to). Con­tem­po­rary dance does not con­sid­er the body ‘al­ready in ex­is­tence,’ filled with po­ten­tial­ities to be re­al­ized when­ev­er the sit­ua­tion (the dance) asks it to. On the con­trary, the body is ac­tu­al­ized in the dance, which means that it is on­ly through the act of fold­ing (the dance) that it (the ‘body’, the fold) re­al­izes it­self. On the oth­er hand, this means that the fold­ing ac­tu­al­iz­ing a bod­ily whole is not con­se­quen­tial to (Aris­totelian) mem­ory or an­oth­er agen­cy from which the body is or­ga­nized in ad­vance. Rather, the body (in­clud­ing the mind) hap­pens in the fold, which is to say that it is on­ly be­cause of the fold­ing that its uni­ty ap­pears.

MK: In Hal Fos­ter’s key text, The Re­turn of the Re­al (1996), and his chap­ter on the artist as ethno­gra­pher, he de­scribed how ‘the old artist en­vy among an­thro­pol­ogists has turned the oth­er way: a new ethno­gra­pher en­vy con­sumes many artists and crit­ics. If an­thro­pol­ogists want­ed to ex­ploit the tex­tu­al mod­el in cul­tur­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion, these artists and crit­ics as­pire to field­work in which the­ory and prac­tice seem to be rec­on­ciled’ (Fos­ter 1996: 181). The pro­cess of mak­ing, in this case, mak­ing art, is ob­vi­ous­ly very tied up in con­tem­po­rary no­tions of what artists do and how they do it – so as it be­comes ac­cept­able to con­duct art as re­search. Is there or will there be a sim­ilar drive to con­duct phi­los­ophy in a dif­fer­ent way, to present it in non-​aca­demi­cised forms, non-​tex­tu­al forms?

RD: The pro­cess­es of mak­ing art are cru­cial, as I ex­plained above. But al­so when you do phi­los­ophy, the pro­cess­es are the on­ly thing that mat­ters. Phi­los­ophy is an equal­ly cre­ative pro­cess com­pared to mak­ing art, yet a dif­fer­ent one. For where­as art is all about cre­at­ing sen­sa­tions, about blocks of sen­sa­tions to fol­low Deleuze (and Guat­tari) more pre­cise­ly, phi­los­ophy is all about cre­at­ing con­cepts. Philoso­phers tend to cre­ate con­cepts through lan­guage, by break­ing it open. In that, they act some­what sim­ilar to po­ets, yet po­ets are not in­ter­est­ed in cre­at­ing con­cepts. They aim at some­thing en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent (very par­tic­ular blocks of sen­sa­tion) which is not of our con­cern here. Phi­los­ophy has al­ways had a very dif­fi­cult re­la­tion to academia, which is in many ways its mon­strous child. Es­pe­cial­ly in our days, to do phi­los­ophy is in­creas­ing­ly rare with­in academia. There are ex­cep­tions of course and I think that Rot­ter­dam should be very proud of its phi­los­ophy fac­ul­ty. On av­er­age, how­ev­er, phi­los­ophy does not hap­pen too much with­in phi­los­ophy fac­ul­ties. OOO, spec­ula­tive re­al­ism and al­so new ma­te­ri­al­ism are very strong new de­vel­op­ments in phi­los­ophy yet they don’t or hard­ly hap­pen at phi­los­ophy fac­ul­ties.

But let us re­turn to the is­sue of lan­guage. There is no rule that says that philoso­phers should con­cep­tu­al­ize by means of lan­guage. And I be­lieve that there are many artists that, in do­ing their artis­tic work, prac­tice some sort of phi­los­ophy (cre­ate some sort of con­cept). If we lim­it our­selves to the work of Deleuze – whose def­ini­tions we are now fol­low­ing – we can­not but agree with him that there is much phi­los­ophy go­ing on in the paint­ings of Fran­cis Ba­con (he con­cep­tu­al­izes ‘the fig­ure’ in that sense), in the nov­els of Kaf­ka (who con­cep­tu­al­izes ‘the state’), in the movies of Go­dard (who con­cep­tu­al­izes ‘time’). Deleuze (a philoso­pher), when read­ing these three bright minds, treats their work no dif­fer­ent from how he would treat more ac­cept­ed meta­physi­cians, though this does not mean, of course, that the works them­selves, are not works of art any­more. They are prod­ucts of art, but there is phi­los­ophy go­ing on in them.

To­day we see an in­creas­ing num­ber of cre­ative peo­ple, some­times fol­low­ing the ideas of Deleuze, pro­duc­ing work that is more and more both a work of art as well as a work of phi­los­ophy. The best ex­am­ple in this is prob­ably Reza Ne­garestani (2008), by all means a cen­tral fig­ure with­in con­tem­po­rary think­ing. His nov­el/philo­soph­ical trea­tise en­ti­tled Cy­clono­pe­dia: com­plic­ity with anony­mous ma­te­ri­als is about a fic­tive ar­chae­ol­ogist Dr. Hamid Parsani. It con­structs a phi­los­ophy of oil and per­haps it is al­so at the same time a po­lit­ical man­ifesto that pro­claims the lib­er­ation of the Mid­dle East. For those in­ter­est­ed, this book is al­so about An­cient Per­sian mys­ti­cism (the Cult of the Druj) and Love­craft’s Cthul­hu. Giv­en Ne­garestani’s cur­rent in­ter­est in math­emat­ics I’d say that the long await­ed se­quel (the Mor­ti­logu­ist) will al­so aim to write the ex­act sci­ences.

No­ta Bene, I’m not say­ing that what Ne­garestani does is nec­es­sar­ily ‘new’ to our times. In a way Al­bert Ca­mus, much more so than his con­tem­po­rary Jean-​Paul Sartre, per­formed some­thing sim­ilar with The Plague, and there are many more mo­ments in his­to­ry (no­tably in the his­to­ries that find their ful­crum out­side of the West) where re­search and art as you call it, hap­pen to­geth­er (in the same voice).

MK: In your re­cent book with Iris van der Tu­in, you write: ‘new ma­te­ri­al­ism al­lows for the study of the two di­men­sions in their en­tan­gle­ment: the ex­pe­ri­ence of a piece of art is made up of mat­ter and mean­ing. The ma­te­ri­al di­men­sion cre­ates and gives form to the dis­cur­sive, and vice ver­sa’ (Dol­phi­jn and van der Tu­in 2012: 91). Think­ing of the ex­pe­ri­ence of a piece of art, rather than the mak­ing of it for a mo­ment, what do you think about how au­di­ences read ex­hi­bi­tions as op­posed to texts? In the case of this ex­hi­bi­tion, OOO/SR was a point of de­par­ture, but it can eas­ily be read as an ex­hi­bi­tion about na­ture, giv­en the leg­ible forms con­tained with­in (moun­tains, tongues, fin­gers, gar­dens, clouds). Is it in­evitable that we de­fault to na­ture when at­tempt­ing to get be­yond the hu­man?

RD: That de­pends en­tire­ly up­on the def­ini­tion of na­ture that you use. Be­ing a Spinozist, I’d say that na­ture is not a set of Laws that we came up with (as in the Laws of Na­ture) that you seem to pre­sume with your last re­mark, but rather sig­nals the end­less changes in which we ‘hap­pen’ to­geth­er with ev­ery­thing else. Our ‘hap­pen­ing’ or our ac­tu­al­iza­tion works ac­cord­ing to res cog­itans (thought) and res ex­ten­sa (ex­ten­sion), which are the two di­men­sions we (Iris and me) talk about in the quote above. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, na­ture, Spinoza al­ready tells us, is not lim­it­ed to these two ‘mo­di’; we are. And it is about time that we re­al­ize this. Ac­tu­al­ly, I be­lieve that a ‘whol­ly oth­er’ na­ture, or a def­ini­tion of na­ture that goes way be­yond how we or­di­nar­ily (in­clud­ing so many green ac­tivists) de­fine it to­day, is cru­cial for to­day’s ma­te­ri­al­ist think­ing. When Quentin Meil­las­soux, for in­stance, re­jects the pos­si­bil­ity of ex­plain­ing or even pre­dict­ing na­ture, not­ing (with Hume) that na­ture is rad­ical­ly con­tin­gent and that na­ture’s ‘meta­phys­ical foun­da­tions’ as they can on­ly come in­to ex­is­tence through con­scious­ness and lan­guage, smart­ly cov­er up that na­ture is a con­cept that has hard­ly been recon­cep­tu­al­ized since the reign of du­al­ism, of Kant. Con­se­quent­ly (and in line with Kant’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al­ism), na­ture has been ex­clud­ed from thought. For Meil­las­soux as for many oth­ers then, the con­cept of na­ture, as it sur­faces in pub­lic de­bates as well as in academia, on­ly serves as a ve­hi­cle for an ide­ol­ogy of ressen­ti­ment that is filled with morals invit­ing us mere­ly to ‘con­serve what ex­ists’ (‘it’ then be­ing the false and re­duc­tion­ist idea we have con­struct­ed from na­ture). For these kinds of rea­sons, Tim­othy Mor­ton even sug­gests to write an ecol­ogy that gets rid of the con­cept of na­ture al­to­geth­er, claim­ing that it is too soft to tar­get these days, it is too the­olog­ical. Mor­ton then writes an ecol­ogy with­out na­ture. In re­sponse to Mor­ton, Slavoj Žižek went even fur­ther and searched for an ecol­ogy against na­ture; against the idea of a sta­ble, un­changable, frag­ile equi­lib­ri­um that is per­ma­nent­ly be­ing harmed by cul­ture, by us-​un­able-​to-​know.

Now let me re­turn to the first part of your ques­tion in which you stress the as­pect of ex­pe­ri­ence. What comes to my mind im­me­di­ate­ly is that be­cause we are in the mak­ing, and this mak­ing takes place ex­per­imen­tal­ly or in ex­pe­ri­ence, I wouldn’t make a dis­tinc­tion be­tween the mak­ing of an art­work and the ex­pe­ri­ence of it. In oth­er words, both the art­work and the self come to be in the ex­per­iment. Lets take an ex­am­ple this time from the first of the arts (as Deleuze and Guat­tari call it), ar­chi­tec­ture. Re­cent­ly, Lars Spuy­broek wrote a beau­ti­ful book about the ecol­ogy of de­sign which in­ter­est­ing­ly echoes my pre­vi­ous point con­cern­ing the monist def­ini­tion of na­ture I ad­here to (though Spuy­broek him­self, for some rea­son, has prob­lems with ‘monism’). Es­pe­cial­ly his read­ing of the Goth­ic de­serves our at­ten­tion. We see art-​in-​the-​mak­ing/art-​in-​ex­pe­ri­ence when his study shows us that Goth­ic (so-​called) ‘or­na­men­ta­tion’ hap­pens-​in-​mat­ter. The Goth­ic is nev­er ide­al­ist (like the neo-​goth­ic or mod­ernist move­ment), which is to say that the de­sign al­ways hap­pens in ex­pe­ri­ence, in mov­ing with ‘the forms at work’ (which in­cludes ‘us’). Its two pri­ma­ry forces in ar­chi­tec­tural form, tes­sel­la­tion (from two to one di­men­sion) and rib­bon­ing (from one to two di­men­sions), hap­pen with the very par­tic­ular spa­tial­ity in which the de­sign and the event oc­cur.

The res­onances steer mat­ter in­to J curves and S curves, in­to arch­es and or­na­ments. That is why the Goth­ic, un­like ide­al­ist ar­chi­tec­tures, hap­pens all around us, trav­els in many dif­fer­ent un­fore­seen di­rec­tions and can re­al­ize it­self any­time, any place. To map vi­tal Goth­ic en­er­gy is to re­alise the om­nipres­ence of the curved gable as John Ruskin al­ready put it in the 19th cen­tu­ry. To study the Goth­ic is, there­fore, not about analysing in­di­vid­ual dwellings, but about map­ping the res­onance of dis­parates, as Spuy­broek claims: ‘It is not on­ly a change­ful­ness of columns, vaults, or trac­eries in them­selves, but al­so one in which columns trans­form in­to vaults in­to trac­eries’ (2011, 25).

For Spuy­broek, the Goth­ic played a cru­cial role in our his­to­ry (giv­ing form to it in many ways). It nev­er ceas­es to haunt the Ro­man, Carte­sian or Bauhau­sian lines that still or­ga­nize ur­ban life. The Goth­ic has al­ways been at work at the mar­gins of our built en­vi­ron­ment; and es­pe­cial­ly to­day, in the age of dig­ital de­sign, the Goth­ic proves to be more vi­tal than ev­er be­fore. Spuy­broek’s own de­signs are, of course, a won­der­ful ex­am­ple of how the Goth­ic is so im­bri­cat­ed with ex­per­imen­ta­tion in con­tem­po­rary dig­ital de­sign (which makes him ac­tu­al­ly speak of ‘the dig­ital na­ture of the Goth­ic’). Think, for in­stance, of his Wa­ter Pavil­ion at Neelt­je Jans in which the ceil­ings trans­form in­to the floor, in­to the door, in­to the or­na­ment, while one walks through it.

MK: Martha Buskirk in The Con­tin­gent Ob­ject of Con­tem­po­rary Art says that ‘the idea of the touch, tra­di­tion­al­ly fo­cused on a spe­cif­ic re­gion of the body in the search for ev­idence of the artist’s hand, has been frac­tured and dis­placed in­to the mul­ti­tude of ways artists use their bod­ies to act up­on ma­te­ri­als and al­so turn the pro­cess of rep­re­sen­ta­tion back up­on them­selves to record traces of their phys­ical pres­ence’ (Buskirk 2005: 256). Does this no­tion gen­er­al­ly sup­port the idea of new ma­te­ri­al­ism (and to an ex­tent, OOO/SR) as­sert­ing a fun­da­men­tal link be­tween the dis­cur­sive and the ma­te­ri­al in art?

RD: I wouldn’t know how to talk of ‘the idea’ of new ma­te­ri­al­ism. In the book we were map­ping a new ma­te­ri­al­ism, and I con­tin­ue to do that in my ar­ti­cles. I search for a monism that deals in par­tic­ular with mat­ter re­ceiv­ing form, with ques­tions of plas­tic­ity as Cather­ine Mal­abou talks of it. But you are right that the man­ner­ism (Deleuze talks a lot about this) or per­haps even gen­er­al, the em­pha­sis on feel­ing in­stead of on ra­tio as to­day even peo­ple in the cog­ni­tive sci­ences (think of An­to­nio Dama­sio) and in psy­cholin­guis­tics (think of my col­league at Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty Jos van Berkum) are in search for this, lies at the heart of my in­ter­ests. Spuy­broek too, talks of this when he con­cep­tu­al­izes how beau­ty gives form to life by means of the word ‘sym­pa­thy’. His en­tire book can be read as a man­ifesto for this old and beau­ti­ful con­cept that stress­es the non-​cog­ni­tive in­tra-​ac­tion by dint of which the in­di­vid­ual ob­jects are. Sym­pa­thy, in short, ‘is what things feel when they shape each oth­er’ (2011, 9). Spuy­broek shows us how ‘sym­pa­thy’ – re­vi­tal­iz­ing the way this con­cept was not yet ‘hu­man­ized’ at the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry – gives form to us and to the world around us: sym­pa­thy might hap­pen be­tween us and a vase, be­tween a wasp and an or­chid, be­tween the oceans and the moon. They feel each oth­er… they give form to one an­oth­er in the re­la­tion, in the mak­ing.

All of the philoso­phers and thinkers that I have men­tioned here pre­fer to speak of feel­ing, of sym­pa­thy, of touch (think of Erin Man­ning) in­stead of con­scious­ness. All of them agree up­on the idea that the mind is a con­se­quence of the body (and has the body as its ob­ject) which does not mean that they are against meta­physics per se (al­though Meil­las­soux is), but rather that they would nev­er cut it loose from the physics, from the bod­ily move­ments and mod­ifi­ca­tions that cause it.

MK: From your po­si­tion as a philoso­pher, are there any oth­er points and is­sues with the in­ter­re­la­tion of OOO/SR and art and aes­thet­ics that you think are key to con­sid­er?

RD: Well… I think it is very im­por­tant to un­der­stand that OOO/SR/new ma­te­ri­al­ism are very strong forces that cut across phi­los­ophy, the arts as well as the sci­ences to­day for a good rea­son: the times we live de­mand this kind of think­ing. The var­ious crises that hit us to­day are dif­fer­ent from the ones that caused ’68 to hap­pen. Yet the call for a rad­ical eman­ci­pa­tion that was echo­ing all over the world for decades af­ter ’68 (in the­ory and in pol­itics) some­how comes back to us to­day. Our times too ask for an eman­ci­pa­tion that is re­mov­ing us from hi­er­ar­chies that in­volve race, class, gen­der and age but that al­so ask us to ques­tion our hu­man­ity as such, in oth­er words the an­thro­pocen­trism so cen­tral to our think­ing.

Even more so than af­ter ’68, the state of the earth draws us to re­think the du­alisms so strong­ly con­cep­tu­al­ized by Descartes and for­ti­fied by Kant, and they marked the way in which cul­ture drift­ed away from na­ture, how the mind was cut loose from the body, how man has alien­at­ed him­self from tech­nique. From the ear­ly 1960s it was Fou­cault who most elo­quent­ly not­ed the an­thro­pocen­trism cen­tral to all du­alisms. He named it sim­ply ‘man’ (re­fer­ring to Kant’s An­thro­pol­ogy) fore­see­ing the ‘end of man’ or the way this ‘re­cent in­ven­tion’ was dom­inat­ing (and blur­ring) our think­ing. He sug­gests that Kant’s fi­nal ques­tion, ‘Was ist der Men­sch?’, posed in his Log­ic and his Notes and Frag­ments sum­ma­rizes how the past two hun­dred years of mod­ern thought got locked up in his Sub­ject (the ‘I think’) con­clud­ing that ‘[The space of an­thro­pol­ogy] is en­tire­ly tak­en over by the pres­ence of a deaf, un­bound, and of­ten er­rant free­dom which op­er­ates in the do­main of orig­inary pas­siv­ity’ (Fou­cault 2008: 39). In his lat­er writ­ings, Fou­cault showed how this po­lit­ical ecol­ogy slow­ly but steadi­ly cre­at­ed ob­jects (pris­ons, schools, bar­racks, fac­to­ries) in or­der to in­stall the Sub­ject (the ob­ject of thought), to serve its ex­is­tence. Fou­cault in the end is not push­ing us to ‘ques­tion au­thor­ity’ but rather to ‘ques­tion re­al­ity’, as re­al­ity had been cre­at­ed and mold­ed ac­cord­ing to sys­tems of dif­fer­en­ti­ations that we named, or­dered and in­ter­nal­ized in a thor­ough­ly hu­man­ist way.

That was then. Fou­cault is still a very ur­gent thinker, don’t get me wrong here, but ‘dif­fer­ent­ly’; the class­es he gave at the end of his ca­reer (and that are now be­ing pub­lished) of­fer us this Fou­cault that has yet to be dis­cov­ered. At the start of the 21st cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, we live in such a dif­fer­ent po­lit­ical are­na. We are con­front­ed with such dif­fer­ent threats, all of which asks us to think anew. The eco­log­ical crises of to­day, which by all means have a much more rad­ical ef­fect on how we will soon live com­pared to the eco­nom­ical cri­sis, make Quentin Meil­las­soux (2006) con­clude that the end of man has yet to hap­pen. Meil­las­soux claims that even post-​crit­ical the­ory (in some ways even in­clud­ing Fou­cault, is part of ‘cor­re­la­tion­al­ism’ (as he con­cep­tu­al­izes an­thro­pocen­trism) and that the time has come to get rid of the ‘Kan­tian hor­reur’ that still dom­inates us (which does not mean that he wants to get rid of Kant, rather he pro­pos­es to rad­ical­ize it from with­in). Meil­las­soux claims that post-​crit­ical the­ory still re­duces the ab­so­lute re­al­ity of things to their pos­si­ble ap­pear­ance in con­scious­ness and lan­guage: the ‘two me­dia of cor­re­la­tion’ that de­fine the unique and un­touch­able ‘man.’ Cor­re­la­tion­al­ism (ex­plic­it­ly and im­plic­it­ly) claims that on­ly in con­scious­ness things can hap­pen, on­ly by means of lan­guage they can be ex­pressed.

Even Meil­las­soux, who seemed to be a rig­or­ous, al­most scholas­tic, philoso­pher in his Après la Fini­tude and his pub­lished and un­pub­lished work on God and fideism, now turns to art as his last book in En­glish The Num­ber and the Siren: the De­ci­pher­ment of Mal­lar­mé’s Coup de Des. As the ti­tle al­ready tells us, the book is on Mal­lar­mé, ad­dressed in a very math­emat­ical sense… com­ing close to nu­merol­ogy even. Be­yond this, many con­tem­po­rary schol­ars that are in­volved with new ma­te­ri­al­ism feel an urge to study con­tem­po­rary art. Bioart, think of Na­tal­ie Jeremi­jenko, is of course very pop­ular for those in­ter­est­ed in re­think­ing na­ture, but ac­tu­al­ly all per­for­mance art and in­stal­la­tion art – art forms that are all about mak­ing and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing/ex­per­iment­ing mat­ter – are more and more flow­ing in­to thought, while at the same time new ma­te­ri­al­ist thought flows in­to these art­forms, in­to the very way they re­veal to us the tech­niques of ex­is­tence: new life (and death) un­fore­seen.

Works Cit­ed

Ian Bo­gost, Alien Phe­nomenol­ogy, Or What It’s Like to Be a Thing, Min­neapo­lis: Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press, 2012.

Martha Buskirk, The Con­tin­gent Ob­ject of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Rick Dol­phi­jn, and Iris van der Tu­in, New Ma­te­ri­al­ism: In­ter­views and Car­togra­phies, Open Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2012; http://open­hu­man­itiespress.org/new-​ma­te­ri­al­ism.html

Hal Fos­ter, The Re­turn of the Re­al: Art and The­ory at the End of the Cen­tu­ry, Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Bri­an Mas­su­mi, Sem­blance and Event: Ac­tivist Phi­los­ophy and the Oc­cur­rent Arts, Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.

Quentin Meil­las­soux, Af­ter Fini­tude: An Es­say On The Ne­ces­si­ty Of Con­tin­gen­cy, trans. Ray Brassier, Lon­don: Con­tin­uum, 2008.

Reza Ne­garestani, Cy­clono­pe­dia: Com­plic­ity with Anony­mous Ma­te­ri­als, Mel­bourne: re.press, 2008.

Lars Spuy­broek, The Sym­pa­thy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecol­ogy of De­sign, Rot­ter­dam: V2_ Pub­lish­ing/NAi Pub­lish­ers, 2011.

Bi­ogra­phies

Rick Dol­phi­jn is a writ­er and a philoso­pher. He is an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­ities, and se­nior fel­low of the Cen­tre for the Hu­man­ities, both at Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty, the Nether­lands. He in­ter­est­ed in what he calls ‘new ma­te­ri­al­ism’ a fresh wind in phi­los­ophy close­ly linked to pro­cess thought and per­haps in some ways al­so to OOO and spec­ula­tive re­al­ism. In his re­cent­ly pub­lished book ‘New Ma­te­ri­al­ism: In­ter­views and Car­togra­phies’, coau­thored with dr. Iris van der Tu­in, the ‘new tra­di­tion’ called new ma­te­ri­al­ism is sit­uat­ed in phi­los­ophy, in the sci­ences and in the arts. He is fin­ish­ing a book which is more ex­per­imen­tal and which deals with the ur­gen­cy of this new form of think­ing, en­ti­tled (for now) ‘Mat­ter of Life: earth cul­ture health’.

Michelle Kasprzak is a cu­ra­tor at V2_ In­sti­tute for the Un­sta­ble Me­dia.