Documenta Fifteen: The Limits (and Possibilities) of Culture - Radical Art and Twenty-First Century Crises
It will be abundantly clear to anyone who has had even half an eye on current affairs, that we are living in a period of profound, critically intertwined crises, polycrises in fact. Global inequality is arguably more extreme today than it was at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution due to the domination of the system of financialised capitalism. After decades of its academic peripheralisation, issues of class struggle have returned with a vengeance. Disillusionment with neoliberal corporate ‘democracy’ has both challenged and fomented Left solidarities globally. Meanwhile, the same phenomenon has facilitated the ascendancy of increasingly violent right-wing racism and indigenous struggles against it. Meanwhile, mass protests confront mounting unignorable evidence of climate catastrophe. Many such protests have been met by governmental and police attempts to deem them illegal. All these crises intersect in real time and are fundamentally interconnected. Documenta’s last iteration Documenta Fifteen, touted as the ‘first exhibition of the twenty-first century’, touched on all the above crises. Interestingly, the exhibition excluded most big names of the Eurocentric and North American art worlds. Curated by the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa, the exhibition focused, somewhat controversially, on non-mainstream artists, artist collectives and ‘non-artists’ from the Global South.
Go on…? Speaking of Beckett
I can’t go on, I’ll go on
Beckett’s famous line from his novel The Unnamable (1958) has been reiterated innumerably, in different contexts and for different ends. Regardless, these words resonate uncannily with our era. Today, every pretense to enlightenment reveals its obverse: unerring disregard for international law; relentless degradation of human life in the basest of conflicts; retrograde imperialism; ecological collapse; allegiance to capitalist abstractions requiring ever fewer workers, let alone human beings. The impetus to give up seems entirely warranted. Conversely, the motivation to keep going arises reflexively. For most, there’s no way to give up, there’s no outside, no security, no backup, no alternative guarantee of survival. Despite this, continuity can also be resistance, wilful obstinance in the face of circumstances weighted to make us quit, to shut-up, or to simply keep consuming as the passive receptors of content monetised through our inaction.
Art as Critique Under Neoliberalism: Negativity Undoing Economic Naturalism
Is contemporary art still a viable medium for socio-political critique within a cultural terrain almost wholly naturalised by neoliberalism? Historically, negativity is central to the project of critical theory. Today, art’s critical acuity is revivified by negatively divesting from art contexts saturated with neoliberal economism. Criticality is then negatively practiced as an ‘un-’ or ‘not-doing’, defining modes of exodus while crucially not abandoning art’s institutional definition altogether.
In Brief: The Future of Art Schools etc.
There are two principal challenges facing art schools today. Both pertain to the decades-long impact of neoliberalism.
Here and Nowhere: Artistic Identity on Social Media
Social media is a dominant force in contemporary art and culture. Social media attempts to incorporate everything into it. Its underlying consensus is of sharing all with all at all times. The unprecedented popularity of social media among artists suggests they have finally escaped their traditional identity as alienated individuals. Or have they?
Sweeping Art Under the Market
Critical art writing bemoaning a fundamental ‘crisis’ in contemporary art is by no means new. In fact, since the 1980s such writing has become commonplace. A recent article by Camille Paglia extrapolating such a crisis called ‘How Capitalism Can Save Art’ appeared, fittingly enough, in the Wall Street Journal. How exactly capitalism can save art however is by no means convincingly argued.
Artist Run = Emerging: A Bad Equation
If one were to take seriously the autonomy suggested by the term ‘artist-run’, then the assumed natural dominance and superior expertise of many other professional players in the so-called culture industry, would be called into question.
Out of the Past: Beyond the Four Fundamental Fallacies of Artist Run Initiatives
Over time the role and function of Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs) has shifted from one of quasi-resistance and the questioning of commonly held (essentially commercial) perceptions of contemporary art, to one largely of acquiescence and thoughtless professionalism. Luckily, there are still aberrations and exceptions to this rule.
Plenty of Nothing; Art/Money/Installation
Even today, installation art, properly defined by its dependency on site and its irreducibility to isolable components, poses especial challenges. Never is this truer than when the installation art in question appears to exhibit ‘nothing’. In a global climate founded squarely on reinvigorated traditionalist principles of material accumulation, contemporary installations in which ‘nothing’ is exhibited pose important questions concerning art’s value.
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.