Art and Celebrity: the Quest for Ultravisibilty
Controversy surrounding Björk’s recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art raises a number of questions about the role of major art institutions in the 21st Century. These questions go far beyond fusty reactions over a pop star exhibiting in the hallowed halls of a high-end museum. Instead they indicate a broader crisis of identity for public art institutions beset by neoliberalism’s privatising demands for ever-greater profits.
Art and the Politics of Withdrawal
The controversy surrounding founding Biennale of Sydney corporate sponsor Transfield, and its simultaneous operation of refugee detention centres, raises much broader issues. At first glance, could there be anything more diametrically opposed than a multi-national corporation capitalising on human suffering and a mass cultural event implicitly believed to democratically celebrate global difference?
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.