neil cummings

the enthusiast has the same relationship to capital as the gift to the commodity

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installation

On the 1st October 2008 I screened Museum Futures at Intermediae in Madrid.

Intermediæ is an initiative of the Arts Department of Madrid City Council. It opened in 2007 and is located in the Matadero (former abattoir) in the Legazpi district of the city. It provides Madrid with an arena for contemporary creative arts in which the City Council acts as a catalyst for creativity and its publics.

Intermediæ’s defining characteristic and purpose is process, to make and remake relationships between publics, their city council and creativity.

Intermediæ aspires to extend its processes and practices to other institutions: public and private, local, national and international.

Lapdogs

I intalled the Lapdogs film in the exhibition that produced it, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie at the Arnolfini in Bristol. Curated by Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr, the exhibition/research project has been peripatetically roving for the last two years; to London, Berlin, Stockholm, Istanbul and Cairo. For Bristol, I created an environment; part cheap but chic domestic interior, part Lapdogs Media stand at a media trade fair.

The other artists included Annika Eriksson, Dirk Fleischmann/Michele di Menna, Chris Evans, Liam Gillick, San Keller, Hassan Khan, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marion von Osten and Anup Mathew Thomas

Seven Days

I just finished reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. Thornton guides us through seven different days –constructed over a five year research period. Each day is a description of one of the institutional structures that comprise the market for contemporary art: a Christies auction, the famous art school ‘crit’ of Michael Asher, the Basel Art fair, the build-up to the Turner Prize, the offices of Artforum magazine, the corporate studio of Takashi Murakami and the Venice Biennale. A glaring omission is that one of the days was not spent at a contemporary art museum, or even a particular high-end gallery.

Despite the odd inclusion of Asher’s ‘crit’, and Thornton's insistance that "the art world is much broader than the art market," her mapping of an art world, revolves around the highly visible competitive market.

Trust

First, trust seeped away in the debt markets. They seized, and the repercussions caused financial and 'real' economies to collapse. Trust is the most precious commodity in any market.

I'm reminded of a project I did in 2001 at Tate Modern and the Bank of England, Capital. Capital was a series of encounters between two iconic institutions and the economies they animate; the Tate and the Bank of England.

In Tate Modern and in the Bank of England Museum, at unspecified times during the day a visitor was approached by a gallery or museum official. "This is for you" accompanied the presentation of a beautifully packaged gift -a limited edition print.

Flooded McDonald's

I visited the South London Gallery on 25th February 2009, to see a new film by the Danish artists collective Superflex. Its entitled Flooded McDonald's. I've followed their work for sometime, because I'm interested in how they propose artworks as tools, capable of affecting change; with projects like Supergas, Free Beer - is a beer which is free in the sense of freedom, not in the sense of free (without a price) beer - its a FLOSS joke :-) - and CopyShop.

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie

I was in Cairo in November 2008 to shoot a short film for an exhibition entitled Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie. It's in a ‘reality’ TV style. A broadcast ‘trailer’, in fact a synopsis of a future programme. Its a copy of Faking It.

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie explores issues of class in contemporary art. Faking It is all about class.