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The Self-Conscious Artist and the Politics of Art: from Institutional Critique to Underground Cinema

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The Self-Conscious Artist and the Politics of Art: from Institutional Critique to Underground Cinema THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART: FROM INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE TO UNDERGROUND CINEMA Sophia Kosmaoglou, June 2012 Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. 1 I hereby formally declare that the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who have contributed to this thesis, there are more than I can mention. I would like to thank my supervisor Dr John Chilver for his patient support and incisive criticism. I extend my gratitude to my former supervisors Professor Nick De Ville and Dr Janet Hand who over many years provided consistent support and advice. Many thanks to Lia Yoka for her encouragement. Her excellent writing and passion for scholarly research were the inspiration for this endeavour. Many thanks to all the Exploders, current and former. I especially want to thank Matt Lloyd, David Viey, Angel Daden, Morgan Paton, Amada Egbe, Ben Slotover and Caroline Kennedy for their support. My grateful thanks to Peter Thomas and Duncan Reekie for their advice and support. Their research and critical writing was a constant inspiration for my own. I gratefully acknowledge the support of IKY the Greek Institute of State Scholarships. Without their support, this thesis would not have been possible. Many thanks to my mother Reveka, my sister Maria and my brother Kristos, who contributed an enormous amount of energy to this project. I extend my gratitude to my friends for lending their ear to my rants, for their support and patience. My deepest thanks to Brian Steel for his continuous support and keen enthusiasm for my work. This PhD thesis is dedicated to Mike Riley and Damian Abbott. 3 ABSTRACT The current debates about political art or aesthetic politics do not take the politics of art into account. How can artists address social politics when the politics of art remain opaque? Artists situated critically within the museum self-consciously acknowledge the institutional frame and their own complicity with it. Artists’ compromised role within the institution of art obscures their radically opposed values. Institutions are conservative hierarchies that aim to augment and consolidate their authority. How can works of art be liberating when the institutional conditions within which they are exhibited are exclusive, compromised and exploitive? Despite their purported neutrality, art institutions instrumentalise art politically and ideologically. Institutional mediation defines the work of art in the terms of its own ideology, controlling the legitimate discourse on value and meaning in art. In a society where everything is instrumentalised and heteronomously defined, autonomous art performs a social critique. Yet how is it possible to make autonomous works of art when they are instantly recuperated by commercial and ideological interests? At a certain point, my own art practice could no longer sustain these contradictions. This thesis researches the possibilities for a sustainable and uncompromised art practice. If art is the critical alternative to society then it must function critically and alternatively. Artistic ambition is not just a matter of aesthetic objectives or professional anxiety; it is particularly a matter of the values that artists affirm through their practice. Art can define its own terms of production and the burden of responsibility falls on artists. The Exploding Cinema Collective has survived independently for twenty years, testifying to this principle. Autonomy is a valuable tool in the critique of heteronomy, but artists must assert it. The concept of the autonomy of art must be replaced with the concept of the autonomy of the artist. KEYWORDS: art, art institution, autonomy, institution, contemporary art, critique, Exploding Cinema, institutional critique, ideology, politics, political, aesthetic, agency, museum, use-value, underground cinema. 4 THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART: FROM INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE TO UNDERGROUND CINEMA Sophia Kosmaoglou, June 2012 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................................................... 3 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Interest and ambition ......................................................................................... 8 De-mystification ............................................................................................... 11 Art history and international contemporary art .................................................... 14 CHAPTER ONE: “INSTITUTIONALISED CRITIQUE” ............................................................................................................... 18 Critique and its vicissitudes ............................................................................... 25 What is the “institution of art”? ......................................................................... 29 The art institution as a discursive formation ....................................................... 37 Critique within the institution ............................................................................. 42 The defence of autonomy ................................................................................. 46 Critique and the instrumentalisation of art .......................................................... 50 Critique of institutional critique .......................................................................... 57 Epilogue of institutional critique ......................................................................... 59 CHAPTER TWO: THE VICISSITUDES OF AUTONOMY .......................................................................................................... 61 A self-conscious institution ................................................................................ 64 The critical function of autonomous art .............................................................. 65 Autonomy and heteronomy ............................................................................... 68 What is the value of artistic autonomy? .............................................................. 73 Institutional autonomy ...................................................................................... 77 Autonomy and philosophy ................................................................................. 81 CHAPTER THREE: GREAT EXPECTATIONS .............................................................................................................................. 85 Institutionalisation ............................................................................................ 87 Undecidability, indeterminacy and plurality ......................................................... 99 5 How do we recognise art? ............................................................................... 105 An institution of legitimisation ......................................................................... 113 The museum as parergon ............................................................................... 117 The institution as a productive apparatus ......................................................... 119 Neutralisation and the accretion of value and sense .......................................... 122 Politics and the war of culture ......................................................................... 126 The three fields: society, power and art ........................................................... 131 The Politics of art ........................................................................................... 135 CHAPTER FOUR: NO STARS NO FUNDING NO TASTE ........................................................................................................ 141 ARTISTS MARCH ON THE MUSEUM ................................................................. 144 THE EXPLODING CINEMA ............................................................................... 147 THE LONDON FILM-MAKERS’ CO-OPERATIVE ................................................... 151 PARTICIPATION (PROXIMITY/COMMUNITY/CONTEXT) ..................................... 158 OPEN ACCESS ................................................................................................ 162 YOUTUBE AND THE CULTURE INDUSTRY ........................................................ 167 INDEPENDENCE OR AUTONOMY ..................................................................... 168 THE USE-VALUE OF ART ................................................................................. 176 A DIVERSE NETWORK OF INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS ................................. 179 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................................................. 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................................................................
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