Navigation

Home

markets

Catalogue

Global Contemporary

Museum Futures: Distributed was exhibited at ZKM in Karlsruhe as part of The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989

A year later a magnificent catalogue is published. The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989 examines the way in which globalization, both with its pervasive mechanisms of the market and its utopias of networking and generosity, impacts upon the various spheres of artistic production and reception. The project, which consisted of research, exhibition and publication attempts a critical analysis of the key institutions of the art. And to illustrate the manner in which globalization has both shaped and itself become a theme in artistic production that intentionally reflects upon its own conditions of possibility. With The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989,  ZKM | Karlsruhe reimagines itself as a utopian factory, a place in which local experiences of time subvert the unity of the new universal time.

Museum Futures: Distributed - is a machinima record of the centenary interview with Moderna Museet’s executive Ayan Lindquist in June 2058. It explores a genealogy for contemporary art practice and its institutions, by re-imagining the role of artists, museums, galleries, markets, manufactories and academies.

Communomics

I contributed to

Questions of Value - From Commons to Communomics: Resisting Privatization

Someone has to do it. If we are to think through structures of evaluation, even momentarily, we have to grapple with money. Money represents only %2 of the financial value in circulation, and yet nestles in every pocket, purse or consciousness. Nationally denominated monies – that store, easily transfer and index wealth - have overwritten alternatives. I’m learning to invest in the future, and to speculate. A future for money will explore micro-currencies that circulate value in specific communities, to resist State expropriation. And macro-monies, commons based currencies emerging in networks of trust, coproduction and abundance that existed before, and will flourish again, as faith in States and their currencies, evaporate.

A Joy Forever

I contributed a presentation to the international conference  Labour of the Multitudes: Political Economy of Social Creativity which took place at the Free/SlowUniversity of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland,  October 2

A Joy Forever

 

I contributed a presentation to the International Conference: Free/SlowUniversity of Warsaw in October 2011, and two month later a beautiful 430 page publication is out. Amazing! 

An English version of the written-up presentation, without footnotes, is here

A JOY FOREVER: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIAL CREATIVITY

Free/Slow University of Warsaw. Volume 4
Free/Slow University

FSUWI'll be contributing to the International Conference: Free/SlowUniversity of Warsaw

The Free University of Warsaw is a nomadic centre of interdisciplinary studies, critical reflection, and independent thinking about art and society. The FUW operates parallel to the official centres of artistic and academic education. Its principle is to combine theory with praxis within culture while working as an informal research centre.

The Labour of the Multitude: The Political Economy of Social Creativity

 

when: 20th - 22nd October 2011


where: Warsaw, Campus of the University of Warsaw: Old Library (Hall 205) and Warsaw University Students' Council Hall, 26/28 Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw

participants: Hans Abbing, Luc Boltanski, Neil Cummings, Diedrich Diederichsen, Isabelle Graw, Matteo Pasquinelli, John Roberts, Gigi Roggero, Martha Rosler, Hito Steyerl, Joanna Bednarek, Isabelle Bruno, Dusan Grlja, Precarious Workers Brigade, Johsua Simon, Stevphen Shukaitis, Britta Timm Knudsen, Ewa Majewska, Jason Francis McGimsey, Vlad Morariu, Yiannis Mylonas, Alexander Neumann, Bojana Romic, Massimiliano Tomba, Marina Vishmidt and Patricia Reed



the conference is free of charge, although the 
number of places is limited


reservations: szymon[at]funbec.eu


description: there

program: here


In December, just two months later a beautiful 430 page publication was produced, inspired by the conference.

Circulating Artworks

I wrote a short text, commissioned by katya Sander for Circulation, a special issue of Printed Projects.

Backsourcing

"We have to discuss speculation, because the ultimate test is not the probable, but the possible. The possible implies creation, and obliges us to move beyond the probable."

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitiques review

Capital is being screened as part of Backsourcing: a film program Video Lounge selected by Vincent Meessen, at the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC), Xiamen University, China, Dec 18-Jan 17, 2010.

In the world of enterprise, outsourcing delegates tasks that are no longer seen as profitable, or no longer core to a company's business, to an exterior contractor. Outsourcing enables a company to concentrate elsewhere, by diffusing risks, investments and costs to others.  The  recent economic collapse has necessitated ‘backsourcing’, when previously outsourced processes have had to be reappropriated.

A Prior

Working SessionCome and join me at the launch of the journal

A Prior #19: Olivia Plender

to coincide with an exhibition at Gasworks.

Wednesday, 25 November 2009
6.30 until 9pm 

Donlon Books
210 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9NQ

I contributed a text inspired by Bouvard and Pecuchet.

The issue has been edited by Anna Colin, Kim Einarsson, Olivia Plender and Els Roelandt. Other contributors include Agnus Cameron, Rudi Laermans, Dieter Roelstraete, Frank Maes, Marina Vishmidt, Robert Storr, Goldin & Senneby, Pablo Bronstein, Runo Lagomarsino, and others.

see you there!

[...] The great long wave of financialization, in which every need and desire is reconfigured as an asset to be securitized and competitively traded, only succeeded in submerging the world in a deluge of financial technologies.

Flaubert’s 19th century satire of Bouvard and Pecuchet, has returned as tragedy. Adrift in a world of our own-making, alienated by knowledge that returns to us as failure, we the financialized middle-class are indeed the new cognitive proletariat. And all the while, distributive markets endure, even flourish. Connecting peoples’ needs and desires through material things, via mediums of exchange, interlocked to form an ecology.

To imagine the world as a competitive market was to invite our own alienation from it.

Wysing

At the Wysing Arts Centre just outside Cambridge, I took part in an all-day workshop for artists and students from the Curatorial Course at the Royal College of Art.

It was organized by Kit Hammonds and included Sarah Thornton, and Francis Outred from Christies.

"The Economics of the Art System will take an in depth look at the art market, exploring the financial and cultural economies that drive the industry. From commercial galleries, collectors and art fairs, to the influence of auction houses this retreat will question the value of art as commodity and the commercial influences on artists' practices, as well as considering survival tactics for artists, curators and gallerists."

Bouvard and Pecuchet

These are short extracts of a larger text comissioned by Anna Colin at Gasworks to accompany an exhibition of Olivia Plender. The full text will be online shortly, the publication was launched by A Prior

Intro

In Bouvard and Pécuchet, Gustave Fluabert distills the curse of the middle class into a deadly poison. Comfortable after a financial windfall, the two leisured bureaucrats, Bouvard and Pécuchet retire to the countryside to indulge their pleasure in knowledge. They buy, devour and study books on every subject that drifts through their attention. They read on agriculture, landscape gardening and food preservation, whereupon every animal they buy dies, crops wither, rot or burn, fruits waste and preserves are not. They read chemistry, anatomy, medicine, biology and think themselves doctors, whereupon they fail to treat or cure any patients, make themselves ill and estrange the local doctor. They read Romances, have romantic interests and quickly contract venereal disease. They study gymnastics, occultism, theology, philosophy and religion; they adopt an orphan to ‘improve’ who runs-away, they fall-out with the parish priest, argue with everyone around them, and finally contemplate suicide.

images

Lapdogs14 timelinePamplona cathedralcardboard furnitureProspectusruta de molinas