Work and the Immaterial Labour of Music, Marx 200, KARL records, Berlin
Karl Marx critiqued the domination of life by capitalist labour. Increasingly labour has been dematerialised. Music is inherently immaterial: it escapes true physical capture as much as it is increasingly accessible digitally. Music is temporal and from one perspective, un-ownable: we own the music in a subjective sense. We incorporate its rhythms, textures, harmonies and patterns into the organic circumstances of our own lives. We live the music.
Something in the Air: Internet Art as Archive and Strategy Beyond the Gates of the Museum
Internet art’s seeming peripherality to the greater art world is uncanny when the internet has so radically altered the ways in which anyone with access to such technology, views both art and the world generally. Meanwhile, the virtualisation of Capital, labour, art and culture, is far more pervasive, far less obvious and far more insidious than simple ‘VR’ technology would suggest.
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.
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.
Art/Social/Capital
The massive mediation of our contemporary cultural terrain obviously has a notable impact on the activities of contemporary art, particularly in a globalised context. In fact, what is especially noteworthy about much contemporary art impacted by this communication imperative, is its heightened emphasis on the value of communicability itself.
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.