Disclaimer: This post deals with contemporary art, mainly focused on western contemporary art from wealthy nations.

I’ve been on a 5-year long journey to discover what it looks like to make art outside of the art world or simply not be involved with it at all.

Escaping the centipede.

“However both accelerative projection and decelerative reflection are retrofitted into a world of cognitive templates whose nebulizing function creates a cultural fog of conceptual conflation and practical impotency. It is through this operative fog that some of the more insidious mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism are directly plugged into the cognitive infrastructure under the guise of a world that appears determined to extend the plasticity of imagination and expand frontiers of action. But this is a world in which the financial closure of capitalism is cloned and grafted onto a cognitively maimed economy for accumulating false alternatives in the name of liberation of imagination and action. A suture of different overambitious vocations and driven by the wealth of waste it generates, the resulting beast is a prophetic vision of a tightly connected and controlled society with a single closed alimentary circuit, the human centipede. Those who scheme to infiltrate this world in order to militantly or cunningly liberate it from the inside are locked into the compactly segmented structure of the metameric organism. At once necessary for the growth yet expendable, every insider is a new addition to the iterated sequence of mouths and rectums through which the art world bootstraps itself – a miracle made possible by a simple but efficacious financial and cognitive algorithm. Dreams of acceleration or deceleration, speculative enthusiasm for the outside or critical self-reflection are revealed to be simple changes of frequency in the rate of the said iteration.”

“The Human Centipede, A View From the Art World”, Reza Negarestani

While Reza’s language might be complicated, the description is precisely how I felt being involved in the art world. The many attempts to liberate the art world from its financial, political and wasteful neo-liberal path get eaten and chewed up and turned into financial assets, political “feelgood” exhibitions and spectacular events.

The material conditions on which contemporary art is built involve unpaid labour, mixing of private and public funds for maximal capital extraction, tax-free benefits for the wealthy and a troublesome relationship with immoral individuals such as The Sackler Family, Zabludowicz and Norway’s finest, the Fredriksen family. These problematic relationships have always existed and will continue as long as the centipede still exists.

The lack of environmental considerations (endless flights, the importance of certain metropolitan cities, art fairs, grandiose artwork productions, shipping and storage, oil money sponsorships etc) makes it hard to take its increased focus on social justice seriously. The majority of the unheard voices are not making art but exist outside of it, working in slave-like conditions to make a living. Their labour results in a fancy display at an art fair or a political cg rendered film displayed on the latest Samsung tv model in a museum. The dependence on slave-like conditions to keep material costs low for the artist to deliver the message of social justice makes the centipede argument even more potent. The artist, curator and museum are responsible for the use of technology and the exploitation in the supply chain, the viewer is also accountable for its continued support of this practice.

“Taken together, these results demonstrate that it is indeed the money of the wealthy that
drives art prices. This implies that we can expect art booms whenever income inequality rises quickly. This seems exactly what we witnessed during the last period of strong art price
appreciation, 2002-2007. Indeed, in many countries with large numbers of art buyers, income inequality has risen significantly in those years, mainly due to strong increases in managerial compensation. Andy Warhol, for one, would probably have applauded this evolution: “I don’t think everybody should have money. It shouldn’t be for everybody – you wouldn’t know who was important” (Warhol, 1975).“

Art and Money
William N. Goetzmann, Luc Renneboog, Christophe Spaenjers

Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony

Contemporary art struggles with its relationship with capital and is therefore tied to wealthy individuals in many ways. While there are social justice trends in biennales, fairs and exhibitions, most of these events exist because wealthy people maintain them with capital or rich states fund them. This also sets the standard for what the culture looks like and little is being done on the practical side of things.

The exploitation of cheap labour and exploitation of natural resources leads to a wealthy class of people that can afford to be patrons of art. Norwegian contemporary art is largely funded by exploitation of some kind (directly or indirectly) in the form of natural resource exploitation (salmon, gas, oil), human exploitation (cheap outsourced labour) and investments in companies that benefit from some form of exploitation. The interest in applying Gramsci here is because contemporary art deals with political topics but seems to have little interest in political actions. This duality creates a perfect scenario where you can lead culture to justify the status quo while claiming to be socially conscious. Gramsci argued that society’s intellectuals are detached from social life and often enjoy the privileges of the upper class while maintaining the differences in culture. With its lack of political action, contemporary art becomes an excellent vehicle for this type of cultural hegemony.

Focusing on the intellectual capacity of art through exhibitions, and biennales put the material reality in the background. This seems to follow Gramsci’s idea because it’s the upper class (globally most artists are also considered upper class) that benefits the most from the exploitation of humans and natural resources. Reading and understanding artworks through a material reality would change their content and context.

Champagne Socialists or Gauche caviar is another way of describing what Gramsci calls cultural hegemony. In Paris in the 1980s, they were described as “those who professed allegiance to the Socialist Party, but who maintained a far from a proletarian lifestyle that distinguished them from the working-class base of the French Socialist Party. A more explicit reference identified this group as left-wingers who speak with great passion about the plight of the poor while eating caviar in their spectacular Parisian duplex apartment.”

The phrases Champagne Socialism or Gauche Caviar are often dismissed because it’s impossible to live in a capitalist society and not participate in exploitation (so why not indulge in it??) etc. This is partly true, but there are many ways to limit your exploitation through action. One way is to reduce your consumption and footprint because it directly affects climate change and developing countries.

While there’s nothing new here, the mix of these ingredients makes it impossible to ignore if you are interested in limiting your negative impact on this world.

The recent trends in socio-political and environmentally focused exhibitions are welcomed but eaten up by the centipede. To change the art world, you would need to change the material conditions of the art produced, how it is shown, how it is financed and what is considered art. This would require a general change in attitude from its participants and an increased focus on limiting its material impact (materials used in art production, supply chains, labour conditions outside of the western world, sustainability of art events, its focus on being present, art superstars and who funds contemporary art).

If contemporary art wants to be an essential voice politically, the direction explained above should be its primary focus instead of inviting western “outsiders” to represent political issues. While it is essential to have a representation of voices from different economic backgrounds inside of the western world, the main problem is the continued exploitation and destruction of the future of developing countries and climate change. Representation and discussion are not enough for the material conditions to change. The contemporary art world would look radically different if this change came, possibly so different that most of its current participants would probably not be very interested in it.

Is it possible to change the material conditions of contemporary art?

Any individual with power in the contemporary art world can take action to make these changes a reality.

How many Fairphones do you see at the art fairs or Biennials?

Here are a few examples:

• To meet the Paris agreement of a 1,5-degree increase, emissions would need to be around 2 tonnes per person by 2030. For this to be followed by art professionals it would equal around 3 return flights from Paris to Berlin and 0,8 tons for the rest of the year of consumption.
• Make sure all art materials are ethically sourced (fair pay compared to western salaries, environmentally friendly etc). This should preferably also include technology. If it’s impossible to find out how the materials were sourced, err on caution and limit their use (preferably, do not allow any material where exploitation was involved).
• Show local artists in galleries and exhibition spaces to minimise long-distance travel.
• Art events should have ethically sourced plant-based local food, mainly local artists, no unpaid labour and all infrastructure should be made locally, preferably using locally sourced materials.
• Art fairs should be for local artists and buyers or simply discontinued.
• Art fairs and their participants should use and demand sustainable transport if you involve foreign participants in events etc.

As you can see, this would be a radically different looking contemporary art world. I doubt this would attract wealthy individuals because it does not carry on with the “glamour” and spectacle the contemporary art world currently relies on and that the champagne socialists love.

This blog post will be one of a few posts on the contemporary art world as I’ve decided that I’m not interested in participating in exhibitions and events because of their complicated relation to these issues. Contributing to its discourse ends up being eaten by the centipede. Will I still be producing art? Yes. Will it be accessible? Yes, as much as my living costs can afford it (I’m actively cutting my living costs too). Will I attempt to make art while minimising the issues mentioned above? Yes. Will the art look different? Yes.