Artistic creation in the tidal range 1 Art and economics fighting for over a century Marie-Haude Caraes Pierre Musso lists three stages in the relation - ship between industry and art since the French revolution and the industrial revolution. Each of these cycles occurred as a result of a techni - cal mutation that conditioned the discipline of capitalism on a profound level. The first stage appeared with the industrial revolution and revolved entirely around mastering the uni - verse, what the philosopher Saint Simon referred to as “industrialism”, an association of savants, industrials and artists. The second stage at the end of the 19 th century invented “Be brave enough to leave art and fetishism Fordism, the rationalism of production and behind. Move toward the real, then to ecstasy.” working practices. Some theorists prefer to Mike Kelley describe the birth of the cultural industries –where machines came between the man and Some of the new areas of creativity today need the work (disc, radio, film industry, etc.)– most to be examined in the light of the relationship notably Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in between art and the economy –two domains the Age of its Technical Reproducibility . In that have symbolically and ideologically Notes on Machiavelli 2, Antonio Gramsci opposed one another throughout the 20 th cen - attempts to capture the new industrialism of tury. There would appear to be a convergence the twenties in its economic and symbolic happening between the two models that is dimensions, meaning Fordism as producer of turning into a long-term phenomenon, where goods and services but also as the production one mines the other for organisational sys - of mental construction, narrative and imagina - tems, methods of conception, sometimes even tion. In Germany, the Bauhaus school became end products. So, we have two territories –art the emblematic location for creativity by exper - and economics– coming together, inspiring imenting an alliance between artist, engineer one another, redefining boundaries to the and artisan over a short period of time. The last point where they even build common plat - stage, in other words, post-Fordism was char - forms. The Boolean schema that puts the acterised by the globalisation of trade and the artist, the exclusive guardian of the symbolic domination of financial capitalism. The avant- and spiritual weight of the world up against the garde of this capitalism is without a doubt the entrepreneur, the materialist subjected to the globalised communication enterprise, pro - triviality of the product and to market contin - ducer of immaterial goods backed up with gency is inapt when describing the huge upset narrative that from the end of the seventies in the norms, hierarchies and values in our onwards was to find that technology matched contemporary world: lines are moving, social its expansion with the combination of IT and and symbolic roles are scrambling common telecoms (TIC). The Frankfurt school, fol - sense in a complex game of shifts, openings lowed by the situationists attacked this and splits. There are two antithetical figures spectacular mutation to denounce its lies and –the artist and the entrepreneur– that since excesses. But, in a certain way, it was already the industrial revolution have built a gap too late: since then, the culture of sensibility between the freedom of the former and the and sentiment has been extensively industri - enslavement of the latter. Whether they are alised. “In the R&D labs, inventions, engineer’s real or imagined, these images no longer make and technician’s intuition confront the fiction any sense, as economics have now infiltrated of design, advertising, management, the media all domains. and end-users. The new workshop-laboratory is a “creative city” that creates a network of the The convergence of heterogeneous fields work and exchanges of multidisciplinary col - lectives of engineers, industrials, scientists, Artistic creation and industrial production artists, researchers and end-users. (…) Art and have thus crossed over many times throughout industry find themselves yet again associated the 20 th century. Misappropriated, re-appropri - with the production of fictions, forms and ated, directed, iconized or dematerialised, technologies: a convergence of the two artists essentially used merchandise as their processes occurs: on the “artistic side”, the theme and motif. Industry on the other hand, integration of technology (notably IT) in the has used artistic material to renew its images creative process and on the “industrial side” and products. But the model of art as an the soliciting of artists to enrich the process of autonomous field of production 5, that was innovation.” 3 propounded by the romantics and the 19 th Artistic activity and economic dynamism have century is a thing of the past. The realisation of coincided on many occasions in industrial his - this weakening obliges us to question the sta - tory; industry took the role of the artist into tus of art, the creative process, the very forms account as early as the late 19 th century. But of this process, in a society that has been radi - this encounter, notably on the artistic side has cally reworked and reconfigured by economic always been rife with suspicion and defiance. power, communication and information While at certain points where there were tech - technology, changes in the workplace and nological leaps forward, capitalism often called ecological risk. These changes also condition on art for help; this proposition has not always the economic model involved in what we will been kindly received by the art world. In the refer to as “the economy of knowledge” or the end, each side uses the other for its own ends: “economy of the immaterial”, elsewhere like when business finds certain artistic trends referred to as “the economy of creativity”, in –notably kinetic art, monochrome, minimal search of permanent innovation, calling on the art, contemporary photography, etc.– a source emotions and the senses. To get there, indus - for renewing its own images and emblems, or try turned the artist’s intuition into a raw the artistic world using the objects, symbols material for boosting the process of innovat - and norms of the industrial world to call art ing, creating and renewing of products. New itself into question –we only need to cite pathways were thus built between the worlds Marcel Duchamp’s Fontaine to prove the of the artist and the entrepreneur 6, made of point. The worlds of art and industry mutually agreements and disagreements, alliances and use each other to make their own borders criticism, compromises and refusals, identifica - shift, without necessarily sealing a long-term tion and disorder, shock and interference. relationship. A number of theoretical works from sociolo - “Artists willingly feed the golden legend of sub - gists or philosophers that have been widely versive, anti-conformist, inspired creativity read have attempted to clarify this conver - rebelling against social conventions and mer - gence between art and economics. In 1999, cantile utilitarianism, but one is obliged to Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in Le Nouvel admit that they function within economic esprit du capitalisme established that contem - models that conform to the demand of new porary capitalism has taken much inspiration capitalism –hyper flexibility, autonomy, team from art to renew its markets and that the most work etc. This paradox will perhaps find its recent capitalism is even a structural response solution in the idea that today the artist and to the “artistic criticism” that was formulated post-industrial worker have become one and from 1968 onward. In 2000, Pascal Nicolas- the same, the “talent”. Art is now work but has Le Strat compared artists and cognitive wor - become its hidden double, its futurist proto - kers in Mutations des activités artistiques et type and as such the advanced evidence of the intellectuelles dans une perspective socio-éco - metamorphosis of capitalism.” 4 nomique . In 2002, Pierre-Michel Menger wrote in Portrait de l’artiste en travailleur . Métamorphose du capitalisme that “not only beginning of the nineties led artists to develop were artistically creative activities no longer new modes of production. The ZAC 90. Zones the opposite of work but, on the contrary, they d’activités collectives 11 exhibition took this are being increasingly claimed as the most into account and displayed collective groups of advanced expression of new production artists, designers, graphic artists, theorists 12 modes and new job relations, resulting from acting in lieu of the museum, taking care of the the recent mutations in capitalism” 7. Bernard curatorship, advertising, graphics and general Stiegler has made this question the central scenography. A number of cooperative efforts, ideological and theoretical issue of his work. both long and short term, began at the start of “Our era, he writes, is under threat, all over the the nineties taking on the job of gaining media world, by the fact that the “life of the mind”, to exposure for art: curators, critics, editors and use Hannah Arendt’s expression, has been gallery owners 13 . This led the way for the abo - entirely subjected to the imperatives of the lition of the middle man, notably in market economy and the imperatives of return production. So the manufacturing of pieces on investment by companies that promote the was taken over by certain artists: Wim Delvoye technologies of what we will refer to as the financed his first Cloaca piece, Mathew Barney cultural industries, programmes, media, tele - co-produces his films, Thomas Hirschhorn communications and finally the technologies participates in the financing of his work 14 . of knowledge or cognitive technologies. With — This convergence of the art world and the digital expansion all of these sectors are ten - world of economics found the material basis ding to integrate, what we referred to about a necessary for their mutation in the common decade ago as the convergence of the audiovi - use of communication techniques. These 8 sual, telecoms and information technology.” techniques build both the new conditions There are a number of reasons and conditions for aesthetic experience and for industrial that crisscross to explain the emergence of the production. Artistic research, writes Edmond art/economics convergence. Taking an intro - Couchot 15 , uses techniques common to the ductory approach, we should remind worlds of science and economy, domains that ourselves of the central role of the economy, bleed into one another. not the only field to be covered as it goes hand So the economy became for art what “the in hand with technology and more precisely nude, the landscape or the myth of the new information and telecommunication technolo - were to neoclassicism, impressionism or the gies, both used by art and economics. avant-garde” according to Paul Ardenne 16 . In — Both of these expressions of human activity parallel, the growth of the industries of the –art and economy– have been deeply transfor - senses –those who take the imagined, symbo - med under the effect of a globalised economy lic or cognitive into account– delves directly that has installed new development models. into artistic domains to open up new lines of An economic war is being waged in the cultural consumption and production. field, industrial and mercantile issues are at Once the general context in which this conver - stake that have placed aesthetics and creativity gence can be observed has been outlined, the 9 at the heart of this economy . So it is therefore scale of the task is immense. This is why here I logical that “a society dominated by the econo - will lift a part of the veil –when artistic creation mic produces art that irrigates and shapes a is attracted to the entrepreneurial world. This questioning that is of an economic nature, an movement has provoked a series of questions ars economicus ”, just as “medieval times, the scale of which needs to be shown rather haunted by salvation, gave rise to metaphysical than the content. art” 10 . — The field of art is also a market that has been Forms of artistic enterprise upset by the domination covered by Paul Ardenne: the crisis in the art market at the A number of artists have become entrepre - neurs in the economic sense of the term. these places heterotopias as opposed to uto - Some even set themselves up as service pias; and I think that between the utopias and providers, others like their counterparts in the absolutely other places, these heteroto - business, place the spectator or end-user at the pias, there is doubtless a sort of mixed, centre of their approach. Wim Delvoye, close-by experience, that mirrors them.” 20 Mathieu Laurette, Fabrice Hyber, Joep van A company as a critical heteronomy is born Lieshout, Yann Toma, Jeff Koons, Takashi from the will of artists or artists’ collectives to Murakami, Sylvain Soussan, Christine Hill, etc. come together in opposition from inside the have all built an entrepreneurial model to economic world, to hold an alternative and develop their activity as artists. political discourse, while the cultural field is “I accepted this interview to speak of my status itself part of economic development. The com - as the president of a company. I run a system pany is the model that supplies the working and the system is not a trap, it is a human framework and the raw material integrated adventure. It is a new type of model that claims into works presented as conveying radicalism. the advantages of an ultra-liberal economy as The company as a critical heteronomy thus well as those of a post-society system, which intervenes to “directly take aback the world’s suits me perfectly and that –up until now– economic phenomena. As such they carry a seems to suit my shareholders fine too.” 17 political dimension” 21 . The pieces that result 22 A quick typology of artistic enterprises reveals from this category are direct critiques of the three categories 18 –even if some artists can economic world, often in the form of theatri - belong to several categories– the company as cal, scripted, narrative performances. critical heteronomy, the company as an organi - The vocabulary of the company, its devices, sational and functional structure, and finally, protocols and functioning methods are re-exa - the company as a formal repertoire. The point mined and invested according to aesthetic, of this type of typology, in addition to the fact social and political criteria. The artist Philippe that it reveals a milieu that is already structu - Mairesse, with his companies SARL Grore and red, is to enable us to pose the question of the Accès Local founded respectively in 1992 and relationship between art and economy in a 1998 provides an “observatory of internal frontal manner, to highlight the recent muta - peripheries” for companies: “Interventions tions in the creative field. proposed to groups and companies (…). These interventions are based on the analysis A. The company as a critical heteronomy of the collective creative process developed by Accès Local and applies it to behavioural rules “Due to the daily promiscuity to which the in difficult collaborative situations” 23 . The artist is subjected, he is obliged to invent forms issue is to deconstruct the usual language used of autonomisation so as to be able to express in work meetings: to provoke an event, to himself freely.” 19 make meaning surface thanks to a collapse of “There is also, and this is probably the case in management rules and enable “something” to all cultures, in all civilisations, real places, surface using the device established. We can effective places, places that have made their list names of artists that follow this critical pos - mark in the very fabric of society, that are sort ture using the entrepreneurial model (Iain of counter-locations, the sort of utopias that Baxter, Yann Tom, Joe van Lieshout, Marie are effectively carried out in which real loca - Eichhorn, Pieter Engels, etc.) to propose alter - tions, all other real locations we find within natives to the globalised economic model. culture are represented, contested and inver - The artistic enterprise as a critical heteronomy ted, the sort of places that are out of place, opens up the hypothesis that through the even though they are actually locatable. As work of art there is the possibility of another they are absolutely other than the other places economic model that is not uniquely guided they reflect and as such talk about, I will call by profit. These companies and the artists that carry them aim to open new fields for contem - gans, text, practices, organisation, logo, etc.– porary art. They occupy the unknown place, in to create works with new shapes and contours. a globalised world, that is to say a world that The company gives its coherence and its knows only how to produce the same, the weight to the pieces that are produced; it can similar. This is doubtless where the nodal point be a piece itself. It serves as a motif, as an of this position is located, that takes charge of artistic working theme. It is a place of new the market of the senses and the emotions, as research, of a broadening of the worlds of art. much as traditional business. This mode of organisation as a formal reper - toire participates in the renewal of artistic B. The company as an organisational and functional forms: the practical quality, demonstrative structure quality, seductive potential of the material that comes from the company. The artistic company as an organisational and The causes of the emergence of the company functional structure is created with a purely as a formal repertoire can be found in the economic aim. A number of hypotheses can be needs of the new production modes, not in proposed on the origin of this type of struc - terms of organisation, but the modalities for ture. The growing internationalisation of creating the worlds and even more so the final artistic practices has increased the demands result (Svetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov, on the artist to a considerable extent: the nec - Siegfied D. Ceballos and Brigitte Rambaud, the essary work required to answer the demand in Autravail/atwork collective, Olivier Tourenc, a highly competitive context places the artist in etc., all artists that rely on this formal reper - the position where he or she must find a form toire). This is the issue of usage theorised by of reactive, flexible and universal organisation. Nicolas Bourriaud: the company is but an This competitive context even incites certain example among others, in a society that has artists to create their own name as a brand become a vast repertoire of shapes that are (Laurette Bank Unlimited, 1999, waiting to be activated 25 . Hybertmarché, 1995, etc.). The entrepreneur - In the three forms of artistic enterprises, the ial structure has also been used when the work parallelism between entrepreneurial creation demands a powerful and effective project and artistic creation does not work with the economy (imposing pieces, technical and same intentions. In one case, artists propose complex pieces, pieces that need serious their radical opposition to the world from the investment, etc.) 24 . We can cite the example of very heart of the economic system, without a Daniel Buren ( The Eye of the Storm , 2005), utilitarian aim but with the intention to Maurizio Cattelan ( Hollywood , 2001), Wim denounce. In the next case, the artists validates Delvoye (from Cloaca , 2000 to Cloaca the absence of demarcation between the eco - Quatro , 2005), Paul McCarthy ( Carribean nomic and artistic spheres and builds his work Pirates , 2005), Olafur Eliasson ( The Weather using an organisational system that enables Project , 2003-2004), etc. him to product costly, high-tech or imposing Artists that follow this path do not distinguish objects. In the last case, the honour or the dis - themselves fundamentally from entre- honour of the artists is of little importance, the preneurs. Art is a domain of production, company is a pretext for decoding new formal consumption and profit, like the raw materials territories. The three categories presented or perfume market. There are now production here use the enterprise for what it enables –its structures that manufacture works of art. plasticity, its flexibility, its audience– and what it is –the only organisational model available. C. The company as a formal repertoire
The company as a formal repertoire offers the artist the use of semantic, aesthetic material generated by this world –images, sound, slo - Creation in question municate with the world, by facing up to the question of its place, status and production, If the artist is led to encounter the language one way or another. and structure of business, essential questions “But how far can this will to codify, reproduce, come up: what creations come from this con - arouse, to control the most unique of man’s vergence? And what is at stake? manifestations go and what risks does this Lucy Lippard “saw in what was being establis - involve for society? Art in itself is opposed to hed [the creation in 1969 of the N.E Thing CO. this plan to master everything through sci - Limited by Iain Baxter] a position open up in ence; each piece builds an inexhaustible world the cultural western cartography, one of the that can be questioned by art itself. Herein last culturally new territories or at least without resides the resistance of art to modern society a tradition of contemporary art and as such that has been the least touched by the changes free from pressure from heritage, a piece of in recent decades. Like two centuries ago, the the world that had to make a mark, that had to pieces remain invested with the mission to invent to compensate for its off-kilter aspect.” 26 manifest a desire for a world that defies analy - sis, one that is enchanted and enchanting.” 28 Art that is thought as a business builds shapes and produces creations that are not free from One of the problems provoked by the move - ambiguity. The opening of the art world to the ment of art into economic and precisely world of business sometimes makes it difficult entrepreneurial spheres is the place and status to distinguish between the industrial object of the subversion and radicalism the artist has th and the work of art. This movement and its represented throughout the 20 century. drifts manifest themselves in the relationship Artistic creation sets itself up as the critic between art and new information and commu - within the system in which it produces itself. nication techniques, in the dematerialisation Where does it go? What radicalism does it of the work of art, in the mutation of creation represent? A number of artists perceive busi - towards the tertiary and in the command of nesses as opaque organisations, dehumanising creativity, a condition for the survival of the and alienating structures and try to unmask artist. What forms, what aesthetics will come their real ontology. Do these good intentions from this tidal range zone? Artistic production go beyond the simple caricature of the artist increasingly uses techniques it shares with simply imitating the system, or worse being science and the economy, and can even, in cer - used by the system and sinking into compro - tain cases be associated with industrial mise? How can the spectator find the projects. The artist, the sentinel of the resis - imperceptible difference in the subtle crack tance thus finds himself caught up in between being an entrepreneur and “doing” standardisation and rationalisation, the entre - the entrepreneur? How is one to understand preneurial system. John Armleder claims to the attempt by the artist to invent a new rela - “delegate many of the decisions for the making tionship with the merchant world, commercial of a piece, from its elaboration to the manufac - logics, work rules? And for what economic or th turing choices” and works remotely using symbolic gain? If in the 19 century Courbet assistants, letters, phone conversations or saw the demands of social art as a threat to the faxes 27 . If the de-specialisation of the materials, freedom of the artist, should the worker really tools, supports and languages of art works worry about the much heralded entrance of occurs, the question of the potential of the the artist into the entrepreneurial domain? economic universe as aesthetic material arises. The symbolic shapes compete with one Marie-Haude Caraes another, and in this competitive universe, the Head of Research, Cité du Design de Saint- work of art is no longer the only one to pro - Etienne pose imaginary worlds, to display images and to manufacture symbolic and spiritual weight: it must edify new means with which to com - 1. Tidal range: the difference in the water level between high 18. A census has already been carried out between 1999 and tide and low tide (or vice versa ). 2000 by GAHP (Generic Art History) as part of the contem - 2. Antonio Gramsci, Textes , Paris, Editions sociales, 1983. porary art history department at the University La Sapienza 3. Pierre Musso, « Art, innovation et industrie : le retour du in Rome, known as the Registre International des saint-simonisme ? », Conference Arts, Entreprises et tech - Entreprises Artistiques (ACIR). The ACIR classified artistic nologies , Nice, 24-26 November 2005. companies in three categories: A for artistic companies con - 4. Pierre-Michel Menger, Le Portrait de l’artiste en tra - stituted on a legal level (and “whose activity is concentrated vailleur. Métamorphose du capitalisme , Paris, coll. La on the analysis of the mechanisms of the creation of value”); République des idées, 2002. B brings together companies that develop the same type of 5. Pierre Bourdieu, Les Règles de l’art , Paris, Le Seuil, 1992, work but do not exist as legal entities; C designates artists or p. 190. collectives who have taken on the name of a company but 6. “The way in which the figure of manager today has taken work in a traditional manner. They were dissatisfied with this on the qualities of artist and intellectual tends to fill the gap classification so ACIR proposed a new configuration in 2006: that was instituted since romanticism between the realism of On value analyses artistic practices according to whether the businessman and the idealism of men of culture.” Luc they concern the art/economy/reality relationship directly or Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, Le Nouvel esprit du capital - indirectly in the form or name of a company.