Out of the Past: Beyond the Four Fundamental Fallacies of Artist Run Initiatives
Artist Run Initiatives (ARIs) have, since their inception here in the 1960s and 70s, undergone numerous metamorphoses. Today, the various activities of ARIs are arguably more visible than they have been for some time. Nevertheless, such visibility does not automatically translate to a more enlightened attitude from either artists or audiences regarding the actual or potential roles of ARIs. Indeed, over time the role and function of 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. Naturally, there will always be anomalies and exceptions to the rule. Still, certain problematic assumptions cling to broader perceptions of what ARIs are and do. Such assumptions are the implicit result of changes to the contemporary cultural landscape and to an overemphasis on ARIs as primarily providing professional career opportunities for emerging artists. Against these misleading and limiting notions, alternative ways of approaching ARIs politically can be posed. There are in fact ways that the scope and capabilities of ARIs could be greatly expanded for critical rather than expedient ends. Revivified knowledge of the oppositional capacity of ARIs - who are regularly encumbered with unnecessary bureaucratic terminology - has crucial connotations for the transfiguration of their often needlessly over prescribed self-definitions.
One of the most persistently erroneous notions attached to ARIs now is the idea that they are run primarily by and for emerging artists. As an art school graduate it is true that involvement in an ARI can be one of the most immediate and rewarding means of developing an understanding of the local, and broader, contemporary art milieu. However, this conception has severely limiting connotations as it removes an understanding of ARIs as primarily quasi-autonomous spaces operating independently of government and commercial museums and galleries. Of course, the habitual association of ARIs, an arbitrary descriptor anyway, with ‘emerging’, an equally arbitrary term, operates too as a convenient means for funding bodies to circumscribe the extent of their activities.
Related and equally problematic is the pervasive perception of ARIs as 'training grounds' for future arts professionals. This is a base industry model that identifies art production with utility and quantifiable outcomes. From this viewpoint, an ARI is mainly valuable for the degree to which those who run them can integrate with the dominant cultural landscape as a proven indicator of artistic success. From such a vantage point an ARI is merely a means to an end, nothing but an entrepreneurial finishing school for, ‘tomorrow’s young cultural industrialists’ (1).
Another core fallacy attached to ARIs is a belief in them as fundamentally democratic. While such a claim may seem well intentioned - as anything invoking the sacred name of ‘democracy’ usually does - it is actually dissimulating and disingenuous. The image of ARIs as bastions of cultural democracy only serves to present them as part of a leveled field where, blandly, every ARI is perceived as essentially the same and of equal cultural worth. From here it is subsequently assumed that all ARIs are ‘in-it-together’, working for the same ends and in the same ways.
A further commonly held strategic misconception of the task of ARIs and one connected to the previous point, is the supposition - particularly evident today - that ARIs should aim, like advertising, to reach the largest possible audiences. This is a consensual model of culture that is elsewhere highly evident, to negative effect, in contemporary politics as will duly be discussed.
Given the combined impact of the misconceptions mentioned above it would be fitting to redress them in an effort to suggest more active solutions to the habitual presumptions on which they are based. For example, contrary to assumptions of the fundamentally ‘emerging’ dimension of ARIs is a commitment to ARIs as an ongoing alternative to existing, particularly commercially saturated modes of contemporary art production. In fact, these days it would seem entirely pertinent to abandon the constrictive and essentially bureaucratic term ‘ARI’ for ‘artist space’ or even just ‘gallery’. While this may seem a moot point, it has broader implications. For example - and given that the term ‘ARI’ is attached almost automatically these days to the term ‘emerging’ - to utilise alternative terminology is also to reframe ARIs as not so much temporary utilitarian sites for ‘career-development’, but as possible sites for the development of other methodologies of production and presentation in the longer rather than shorter term. If more established artists were to found and direct artist spaces, the terrain of so-called ARIs would dramatically proliferate points of difference. This would not necessarily discount the entirely valid responsibility of artist spaces in supporting the activities of contemporary artists starting out either. The fact that more established artists do not engage with artist spaces at an operational level, only reinforces a commercialist conception of them as a strategic means to career ends.
Additionally, rather than viewing artist spaces as ‘training grounds’ it would be more positive to see them as spaces of genuine affiliation. Certainly artist spaces locally and internationally will obviously, according to their inclinations, have affinities with others. Similarly, an artist space ideally fosters the affiliations it attracts by supporting the work of artists whose modes of thinking about practice and exhibition it shares. Therefore, rather than being tokenistically ‘democratic’, going through the motions say of reviewing piles of anonymous proposals (some of which may still be accepted), the politics of affiliation is based on choice. More importantly though, such affiliation is based on knowledge: for artists who have been around long enough and who have engaged the terrain of contemporary art over years, connections are inevitably forged. These connections, rather than nepotistic, are primarily based on a politics of faith in the existing practices of artists who have a proven level of commitment to what they do. This does not discount work by younger artists who have not had the time to build up practices in which case emphasis will always be paid, as elsewhere, to the quality of ideas and evidence of a wider outlook. However, the politics of affiliation challenge the very basis of the way politics is understood these days as polarities have slowly been sucked into the black hole of centrism. Here politics is basically a question of administration, especially financial administration. Political differentiation in such a scene is really just a question of lip service where, as Deleuze and Guattari have indicated capitalism’s minimum differential requirement must be seen to be ‘democratically’, enacted (2). Needless to say it is a bland and vastly uninspiring scenario.
For contemporary artists though, and particularly for artists who establish their own domains, issues of lip service to democratic process are irrelevant. Artist spaces construct their own agendas, build their own affiliations and operate within networks according to the principles and proclivities that propel them. Of course, artist spaces are not islands. They exist in an art ecosystem whose existence should not, even if it were possible, be denied. In fact, there is considerable potential, although it is by no means maximized, for productive and critical interactions between artist spaces and other types of contemporary arts organisations. This is especially true when such spaces may share a focus on contemporary work beyond instant deference to a commodifying lens, where the work in question is large-scale, temporal and propositional.
As expected, one of the core differences between the artist affiliations developed by artist spaces and those of government organisations is the fact that the latter are fully beholden to due process. This usually means too that when an artist’s work is accepted by a government organisation, the lag between acceptance and execution is at least a year, often more. A painter, photographer, video artist or object-maker may still produce art in the intervals between exhibiting, even if exhibition dates are yet to be set. On the other hand, if my prima-materia as an artist is space itself, or more specifically the multiple implications of the gallery as a crucially signifying space within contemporary culture, then this option is cancelled out. What does an artist choosing to work with gallery space do in the meantime? One option would be to endlessly script proposals for future projects taking into account statistical laws of attrition. This could be further accompanied by the generation of publicity for projects still to be realised, in the hope that this would amplify a desire to see them in others.
Nonetheless, if this is an answer then it casts art practice not so much as ‘practiced’ but as fundamentally static and bureaucratic like mainstream contemporary politics. Ultimately, the choice of space as a medium is not merely medium-specific either, it is also political: to offer the immaterial and temporal experience of the gallery as art, questions other rampantly commodifying tendencies within a global system already way beyond commodity extremes. And here again, the differential nature of artist spaces comes to the fore. Without having to necessarily wait for the opportunity to employ space as a critical tool, and without having to consider the pressures of automatically preempting work as commercially viable, the artist space provides a means by which spatially propositional artworks may be realised relatively immediately, and not just on paper.
Finally there is the question, related to a politics of affiliation and the notion of artist spaces as ideally providing alternatives, of targeted audiences. Assumed in most self-directed ventures, especially if they are narrowly framed as ‘businesses’, is an unspoken aim to reach as many people as possible. This is a consensual model. The consensual model neatly abuts with the administrative aspect of contemporary ‘non’ politics and seeks to keep genuine frictional differences in check. The truth of engaged and successful artist spaces however lies in the fact that their primary audiences are other artists. Such a realisation should not be surprising though as those closest the coalface will always be most inquisitive as to what is happening there. Likewise, it is at the coalface that contemporary art is ultimately generated. It may be exhibited across platforms but it is from out of affiliated artist cultures that art appears in the first place. What is done with it afterwards is quasi-arbitrary unless once more, artists exhibiting in artist spaces regard them only as springboards for getting out and into pastures viewed as greener, more glamorous and more quantifiably popular.
In the end, if the question is one of a future for artist spaces, then really this question cannot nor should not be answered. There are only futures of artist spaces practiced in the present and resisting pre-determination. As soon as a definitive consensual future for artist spaces is posited along policy-making or other definitional lines then this future is already enclosed, restricted and curtailed. On the other hand, the multiple futures of artist spaces should not seek consensus but should deliberately develop various and conflicting stances and attitudes. At the same time, they should consider the truly political, that is a politics risked in limit testing as opposed to politics as it is habitually understood and which thoroughly misrepresents the political. As contemporary theorist Chantal Mouffe recently suggested, in a true democracy - and this includes artist spaces as sites of possible direct cultural democracy - distinctions between friend an enemy cannot be abolished (3). Artist-directed culture is, as contemporary theorist Chris Kraus, co-founder of semiotext(e) journal, recently ‘where art belongs’ (4). Artist-directed culture should also be agonistic by definition. This means it should be prepared to stake something, a particular view of art and its contemporary role, at the expense of a vision of culture that sees only entrenched hierarchies or undifferentiated sameness. At their most active, engaged independent artist spaces are in reality different; they are vital, actually defining, entities in contemporary culture.
Alex Gawronski
Originally published, September 2011, ‘WE ARE HERE’ Symposium, National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), Sydney, Australia.
1. Craig Owens, ‘The Problem with Puerilism’, in Craig Owens, Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, Loss Angeles and Oxford, 1992, p-265.
2. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s essay ‘May ’68 Did Not Take Place’ in Krauss C. and Lotringer S. eds., Hatred of Capitalism, A Reader, Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, New York and Massachusetts, 2001.
3. See Chantal Mouffe (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Scmitt, Verso, London and New York, 1999.
4. See Chris Kraus, Where Art Belongs, Semiotext(e) Interventions/MIT Press, New York and Massachusetts, 2011.