last words
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Julian Stallabrass
Julian is a writer, photographer, art critic, curator and lecturer at The Courtauld
Institute of Art. His primary focus is on the effects of politics, the economy and
globalisation on contemporary art and New Media. He is currently involved
in Inside Out Festival discussing how value is created in the contemporary art
world. The Inside Out Festival runs from 19 - 25 October, and is organised by
LCACE (London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange).www.lcace.org.uk.
Can you tell me about Inside Out Festival and how you got involved?
It s a diverse festival of cultural events. I have been asked to be part of a panel As a result of globalisation, and due to the long
talking about Sarah Rowles book on gallerists, 12 Gallerists: 20 Questions. She war on terror , much art has become more explicitly
asked a wide variety of gallerists questions about what they display and why, political and documentary and there emerges at
collecting and investing, commerce and state support, and their answers are least the ideal of a global cultural consciousness
pretty interesting, often as much for what they do not say as for what they do. in which a great diversity of voices are heard.
There is a curious disavowal of commerce, even among those gallerists that
are purely commercial, which needs examining. Why should selling art be any art world has become more event-driven with biennials and art fairs in far-flung
different from selling any other luxury good? locations. As a result of this globalisation, and due to the long war on terror ,
much art has become more explicitly political and documentary and there
The value of contemporary art seems to mix your economic and political emerges at least the ideal of a global cultural consciousness in which a great
background, is this a crossover that defines contemporary art? diversity of voices are heard. Yet many of the liberal virtues promoted by these
To say that art is defined by economics and politics (rather than merely be events and the art works shown in them also have neoliberal economic and
affected by them) is a scandalous position to take, for art s worth is that it is political inflections. As for the Internet, given the boom of the contemporary
meant to offer a realm of culture which is meant to be relatively free of such art market that only came to an end last autumn, the art world showed itself
vulgar forces, and offers both artists and viewers that chance to exercise their more than capable of holding to its niche creating spectacular conversation
individual autonomy in making and appreciating work. Art does offer that, to pieces, unique or in very limited editions, to decorate museum halls and
an extent, in a way that the standardised products of the mainstream film and the rooms of billionaires. The extreme reproducibility, transmitability of the
music industries do not. Yet contemporary art is also under increasing pressure Net, the lack of control over the environment in which something is seen, the
from businesses and the state to perform various functions: to burnish the erosion of ownership and copyright, the right that anyone has to comment
reputation of an oil company, for example, or to serve as a civilising influence all this is anathema to core art world values.
on the socially excluded . It is increasingly experienced in the heavily branded
environment that museums have become. All this tends to erode art s ideal As artists inevitably aim to push boundaries, where do you envisage this
freedom, and thoughts about money and politics the uses of art intrude going in the near future?
more and more. Arthur de Vany wrote a book about the economics of Hollywood in which he
showed that no one, and certainly not producers, had any idea whether a film
How do you feel the well-documented current economic recession has would be successful or not. The most you could say is that the vast majority
affected contemporary art? would lose money, and a few would make a great deal. A film is released into
The recession may be well documented in that there is a vast amount of a chaotic system, which cannot be predicted, and I suspect that the same is
coverage of it, but it is not yet well analysed. No one knows how long it will true of works of art. Yes, artists will push boundaries as they have to, but we
last, how deep it will be, and whether it will mark the end of the neoliberal should not forget the powerful forces of erasure and forgetfulness, so that the
experiment. The circumstances of its birth, its global reach and the speed with boundaries can be broken again and again.
which it has hit growth are unprecedented, so we are in uncharted territory
here. The effects on the business of art have already been dramatic with In a world where image is everywhere and compassion fatigue sets in,
contemporary art auction sales in London falling in value by three-quarters. It does the image have a world-altering impact any longer?
is too soon to say what the effects will be over the character of contemporary The concerted attempts to control our access to images, say of war, strongly
art though past recessions have produced profound cultural effects, often in suggest that images have power. The image management that surrounded the
pushing artists towards new business models as happened in the UK both in Iraq War, on the part of the press, the PR agencies and the military, helped
the 1930s and with the young British artists . to mould an image of the war that was politically pliant and comparatively
bloodless. Far from seeing too many images of that war, we saw too few. I tried
Do you feel that globalisation and the rise of online culture have changed to show some of the images that I thought should be more widely seen when
the role and value of contemporary art? I curated the last Brighton Photo Biennial, Memory of Fire. Most of the visitors
Globalisation has had a profound effect on the art world since the fall of I talked to and who wrote in the comments books or on the website were not
Eastern European communism. The hold that European and North American suffering compassion fatigue but were shocked by the extent to which their
artists had over the production of contemporary art has been broken, and the view of the war had been censored.
66 Aesthetica
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