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In modern , the increasing resemblance of art objects to everyday objects raised the threat of eroding of any real between works of art and other things. Barnett Newman railed against both Duchamp’s readymades and “Bauhaus screwdriver designers” who were elevated to the ranks of artists by the Museum of

01/09 Modern Art’s doctrine of “Good Design.”1 The danger for art was the same in both cases: the dissolving of the dividing line between works of art and everyday objects. Just as ancient art proper should never be confused with the of “women basket weavers,” modern art should never be confused with a screwdriver or urinal.2 In the 1960s, would also Sven Lütticken worry that a blank sheet of paper or a table would become readable as art, that the boundary between artworks and “arbitrary objects” was Art and eroding.3 While not evincing any Modernist anxieties about readymades, Paul Chan’s recent Thingness, Part assertion that “a is both more and less than a thing” shows renewed concerns I: Breton’s Ball regarding such an assimilation – in a context marked, until quite recently, by an unprecedented market boom in which works of and Duchamp’s art seemed to be situated in a continuum of luxury goods spanning from Prada bags to luxury Carrot yachts.4 đđđđđđđđđđBut what does it mean to say that an artwork is both more and less than a thing? The notion of the thing is prominent in contemporary theory, and one might say that the thing has emerged as something that is both more and less than an object. In W. J. T. Mitchell’s words:

“Things” are no longer passively waiting for a concept, theory, or sovereign subject to arrange them in ordered ranks of objecthood. “The Thing” rears its head – a rough beast or sci-fi monster, a repressed returnee, an obdurate materiality, a stumbling block, and an object lesson.5

Rather than building a wall between art and thingness, the work of art should be analyzed as just such a sci-fi monster. If objects are named and categorized, part of a system of objects, thingness is resistant to such ordered objecthood. If we grant that a work of art is both more and less than other types of things, this should not be regarded as an incentive to

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 3 — b y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P I : B o ’ l D u c m p C exacerbate and fetishize those differences, but rather as a point of departure for analyzing the complex interrelationships of artworks with these other things – and for examining certain works of art as problematizing and transforming this very relationship.6 đđđđđđđđđđA prominent proponent of the thing in recent theory is Bruno Latour, who has taken it upon himself to reveal “the terrible flaws of

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT dualism,” which marked modernity.7 The interest – not in order to create some kind of hubristic project of modernity was based on the oneiric ancestral line leading up to present dichotomy of society and nature, of subject and concerns, but in order to sound out the object; this enables the modern “work of limitations as well as the unfulfilled potential of purification,” the triumph of the subject and the various practices. Working though the relegation of nature and of non-moderns to the contradictions of, for instance, the Duchampian abyss of thought. Underneath this purifying readymade can help focus current debates – dichotomy, however, there is a disavowed 02/09 turning such a historical phenomenon into an continuity of networks, of hybrids; modern anachronistic intervention in the present. binary, “critical” thinking exists by of the đđđđđđđđđđThe rejection of the readymade by critics denial of this continuity, this world of “quasi- and artists such as Greenberg and Newman was objects” and “quasi-subjects” – that which is shaped by a fear of the collapse of categories, “between and below the two poles” of object and the fear of identity, of the work of art subject.8 “Moderns do differ from premoderns by just another “arbitrary” object. In addition to this single trait: they refuse to conceptualize such critiques, which we may label conservative, quasi-objects as such. In their eyes, hybrids the 1960s saw the emergence of a second strand present the horror that must be avoided at all of anti-Duchampian discourse. Its proponents costs by a ceaseless, even maniacal were artists including Dan Graham, Robert purification.”9 Smithson, and Daniel Buren, and an important đđđđđđđđđđLike all good caricatures, Latour’s portrayal point that their different criticisms had in of modernity presents some traits in sharp, even common was that Duchamp’s own practice was exaggerated clarity. And like many good and bad itself conservative in that it merely seemed to caricatures, it is one-sided and self-serving. If confirm and exploit the existing art-world we look carefully at modern theory and (art) structures and their power of definition.10 practice, it should be obvious that there have Apparently working on the assumption that been a number of significant attempts to go Duchamp’s work was fully accounted for by the beyond a static dichotomy of subject and object. then-emerging institutional theory of art, these Reexamining such moments can be of extreme artists felt that Duchamp merely used the

Installation view of the “Good Design” exhibition at MoMA, 1951–1952.

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT (s) of art to redefine objects as readymades became crucial at the moment when artworks, thus multiplying their aura, their the question of the relation between subject and fetishistic allure, and their value. As Robert object, between spirit and matter, became an Smithson put it, “there is no viable in overriding concern: when they placed their Duchamp because he is only trading on the activities “in the service of the revolution,” alienated object and bestowing on this object a entering into a difficult relationship with the kind of mystification.”11 party that claimed to represent and enact

đđđđđđđđđđSuch remarks were no doubt made in view 03/09 dialectical , and which eyed the of Duchamp’s own commodification of his Surrealists’ idealist focus on dreams and visions readymades in the 1960s, with the Schwartz more than a little suspiciously. The Surrealists editions, and of the proliferation of Neo- set out to prove that their approach in fact and Nouveau Réalisme objects, accumulations, complemented orthodox Marxism, in that and assemblages. This type of art object was Surrealism, “within the framework of dialectical tailor-made for the dismal science called the materialism, is the only method that accounts institutional theory of art, which it helped spawn, for the real links between the world and and which statements by artists such as Buren thought.”13 If dialectical materialism can cause and Smithson parallel. However, if we look bricks to be laid, then surely this relationship beyond the horizon of the 1960s reception of was of primary importance.14 Duchamp, at the repercussions of the readymade đđđđđđđđđđOne of the issues of Le Surréalisme au among the Surrealists around 1930 in particular, service de la révolution contained a montage of things become rather more complicated and textual fragments on Hegel and Marx, which interesting. contrasted the lackluster number of Hegel’s đđđđđđđđđđHegel saw modern art as bifurcating into on works available in French with the blockbuster the one hand a “realist” tendency that would sales of Hegel’s complete works in the Soviet show the surface of objects in minute Union, informing us that “the five year plan is “,” and on the other a “spiritual” founded on .”15 In the middle of a page tendency that would place all the emphasis on is a line drawing of Hegel’s death mask; Spirit the subject.12 For the Surrealists, Duchamp’s has become plaster. If the facts about the prices

Drawing of Hegel’s death mask from Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution.

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT André Breton’s crystal ball from the auction catalog André Breton. 42, rue Fontaine, 2003.

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT and sales of Hegel’s works seem to fit into into the web of signification spun in Duchamp’s Aragon’s quite linear remarks on spirit notes. influencing things in the world, the death mask đđđđđđđđđđWhen André Breton’s estate was auctioned complicates things. As an outmoded relic of the off, one of the items for sale was a semiotic nineteenth century, it is a Surrealist object par object par excellence: a fortune teller’s crystal excellence, but it is hardly operative in the ball that had been used in 1933 to illustrate contemporary world – unless one Breton’s text “Le Message automatique.”18 In his instrumentalizes it for the purpose of some 05/09 1925 “Lettre aux voyantes,” Breton had Stalinist personality cult. addressed the fortune-tellers, or “seers,” who đđđđđđđđđđTo some extent, the Surrealist art of the had been marginalized by modern science: object represented an appropriation, a détournement of Duchamp’s project. Surrealist Mesdames, today my mind is wholly on objects were supposed to provide shocks, to give your disgrace. I know that you no longer the viewer a jolt, which sets them apart from dare to use your voice, no longer deign to Duchamp’s more “disinterested” montages of use your all-powerful authority except existing objects and new thoughts. What the within the woeful “legal” limits. I can see in Surrealists saw very clearly, however, is that the my mind’s eye the houses you live in, on the Duchampian readymade was, in David Joselit’s fourth floor, in districts more or less remote words, “a paradoxical object locked in a from the cities.19 perpetual oscillation between its status as a thing and its status as a sign.”16 The bottle rack – Breton pleads with the “ladies” that it is time for sometimes called Hedgehog – inscribed with them to give up their passivity and reclaim their Duchamp’s signature becomes its own double, a proper role. The crystal ball, smaller than one visual pun combining Duchamp’s favorite “ism,” would expect on the basis of cartoons and comic (the phallic protrusions), with strips, speaks of the same ambiguity between references to his arcane geometric and n- exalted visions and the banality of banlieue dimensional concerns.17 Outwardly, the object fortune-telling. An exemplary visual object or remains the same, yet it is dislodged, integrated object-sign, the crystal ball was at the same

Duchamp’s cover for the “Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain” catalogue.

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT time a materialization of desire and a capitalism by supplementing the categories of dematerialization of the object; a proper use value and exchange value with his concept of Surrealist thing. sign value. Referencing Bauhaus furniture, with đđđđđđđđđđThe last major Surrealist exhibition, its “functionalism” that has become , “Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain,” become sign, Baudrillard effectively theorized an which took place in New York in 1960, was also economy in which the circulation of sign value the last collaboration between Duchamp and creates exchange value, in which commodity

Breton (after almost forty years, it would lead to 06/09 fetishism stops an illusion and becomes a a mutual estrangement that lasted until Breton’s .21 While Baudrillard noted that exchange death). Breton’s decision to structure the value is based on “equivalence” and sign value exhibition using a list of mythical “enchanters” on “difference,” the latter is at the service of the sits oddly with Duchamp’s Nouveau former: the difference between Brand A and Réalisme–style environment, with its toy trains, Brand B is expressed in prices that are subject to clock, and real chickens. The catalogue features the law of exchange, hence of equivalence. This another Duchampian contribution: an embossed triumph of fetishism – of commodity fetishism reproduction of the electrical sign, a double red as an active agent – results in object-signs that cone called a carotte, that identified French suppress most traces of their history, of their tobacconist’s shops.20 As a “virtual” readymade trajectories. Their lives seem to be lived in a that does not actually exist as a three- realm of pure semiosis. Are the readymades and dimensional object, this relief, existing in the Surrealist objects they helped spawn not just between two and three dimensions, has obvious as crucial to this development as Bauhaus connections with Duchamp’s n-dimensional furniture – or Bauhaus screwdrivers?22 speculations. In the context of the early 1960s, it đđđđđđđđđđDavid Joselit has equated the readymade’s also seems to acknowledge that the readymade “oscillation between its status as a thing and its has become its own image, that capitalism has status as a sign” with the fundamental tension turned itself into a forest of signs. The between material commodities and immaterial tobacconist’s sign makes the crystal ball look networks in the modern economy.23 However, the like old hat. readymade-as-sign is primarily part of a network đđđđđđđđđđIn the postwar decades, the old three- of signification created by Duchamp’s other dimensional tobacconist’s cones were being objects and texts; in this sense, the readymade replaced by graphic, two dimensional versions; is indeed the model for the branded commodity this transformation suggests that Duchamp here and for “actually existing fetishism.” The opted for an object that was fast becoming consumption of the pre-existing object by the obsolete, but which allowed him to play with artist and its use for the production of new value dimensions in a more interesting way than the is presented as a purely semiotic operation, and new version. For the most part, of course, the readymade’s trajectory in different Duchamp’s readymades refrain from a Surrealist economical networks is obscured. In a flirt with the obsolete, with outmoded roundabout way, we seem to have arrived back at commodities, with the debris of Walter the point of departure – at a rejection of the Benjamin’s Second-Empire Paris, with the refuse readymade as mystifying and complicit in an of modernity’s myths; neither, of course, do the ever-intensifying process of commodification. readymades constitute montages in the manner Were the Surrealists then entirely deluded in of Dali’s lobster-telephone. Once could see an regarding Duchamp’s readymades as object impetus at work in many surrealist objects that, lessons in “thingifying” desires in ways that in a less extreme and overt way than Greenberg radically differed from alienating commodity- or Newman, aims at establishing and objects? emphasizing differences – at distinguishing đđđđđđđđđđIn a letter to , Theodor W. these objects from “arbitrary objects” by imbuing Adorno described the latter’s notion of the them with signs of the psyche, of subjectivity. dialectical image in terms that seem to While many Surrealist objects emphasize that emphasize Benjamin’s indebtedness to they “function symbolically,” the readymades do Surrealism: Adorno stated that “if the use value not. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 3 — b y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P I : B o ’ l D u c m p C of things dies,” these alienated and hollowed-out đđđđđđđđđđIn this, ironically, they foreshadow in their objects can come to be charged with new own way the future of the commodity, in an subjectivity. While the things become “images” of archaic guise: they announce the profusion of subjective intentions, this does not erase their goods that are bought for their coded thingness: dialectical images remain montages, distinctiveness in the later twentieth and early constellations of alienated things and meaning.24 twenty-first centuries. In the 1970s this Adorno neither attempts to eradicate the object becoming-sign of the object would lead Jean nor does he recoil from the horror of the hybrid; Baudrillard to diagnose fundamental changes in the ruined object, charged with new subjective

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT intentions means, becomes precisely a quasi- ask ourselves whether such an exercise cannot subject, one that offers a glimpse of a world also, at some point, become an exercise in self- beyond the false objectivity constituted by the delusion. Even if we try to help the neo- quasi-natural “necessities” ruling industrial readymade by deconstructing it, bringing its production. This point needs to be remembered complexities and contradictions to the fore, such now that we are surrounded by industrialized operations leave intact the structural limitations versions of such quasi-subjects, in which coded of the of readymade, as brought out by its difference creates a kind of generic subjectivity 07/09 decades-long, crushing success. that amounts to a thin layer of paint glossing đđđđđđđđđđLike Duchamp’s and the Surrealists’ over the substratum of false objectivity. How can practices, Adorno’s remark is limited by its focus one go beyond the limitations of the readymade on giving new meaning to existing objects – on and retain the project of making things, quasi- producing meaning, and ultimately value, by objects, that point beyond the limitations of the consuming objects. Of course, such immaterial contemporary commodity? labor is itself dependent on specific social and đđđđđđđđđđTo be sure, it can be argued that any economical circumstances and structures, but readymade object unavoidably be marked by these remain largely implicit with Duchamp, and an infra-thin difference in relation to its allotted even more so with the Surrealists. For all the place in the codified order of objects. In its productive and viable elements in the dialectic of obtuse materialism, it is always potentially a object and subject that marks their mutant thing, which is to say: a ruin. In her photographic commodities, it remains rather abstract and series Detitled (2000), Barbara Visser saves idealist. If one wants to go beyond the modern design icons precisely by showing them exploration of the semiotic system and explore in a ruined state (in different ruined states, each the readymade’s place in a socio-economical with its specificities). And is it not the task of network, such a project – whether in critical critics and art historians to bring out the work of writing or in artistic practice – necessarily art’s potential, the ways in which it resists explodes the logic of the readymade. complete assimilation into the order of things? If đđđđđđđđđđNow that the social and ecological we answer this in the affirmative, we should also consequences of an economy that mystifies

Barbara Visser, Detitled (EAARS20001205/FT/S/bw), 2000.

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT production have come home to haunt us, the Sven Lütticken teaches art history at VU University limitations of the readymade when it comes to Amsterdam. Sternberg Press recently published his intervening in the system of objects are painfully book Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle. clear. At the same time, the legacy of Soviet http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com Productivism, which has often been obscured for decades by the dominance of the type of “Good Design” discourse exemplified by MoMA, takes on a renewed importance. 08/09 đđđđđđđđđđ× đđđđđđđđđđ→ Continued in “Art and Thingness, Part Two: Thingification” in issue 15. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 3 — b y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P I : B o ’ l D u c m p C

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT đđđđđđ1 Latour, We Have Never Democracy (Cambridge, MA and Suhrkamp, See Barnett Newman, “Open Been Modern, 112. London: MIT Press, 2007), 51. 1994), 151–152. Letter to William A. M. Burden, President of the đđđđđđ10 đđđđđđ17 Museum of Modern Art” (1953) Obviously, this summary does See Craig Adcock, and “Remarks at the not do to ’s Notes from Fourth Annual Woodstock the specific characteristic of, the “Large Glass”: An N- Conference” (1952), in Selected and differences between, these Dimensional Writings and Interviews, ed. John artists’ Analysis (Ann Arbor: UMI O’Neill (Berkeley and Los critiques of Duchamp. For Research Press, 1983), 159; and Angeles: University of California Buren, see for instance the Herbert

Press, 1992), 38, 245. essay “Standpoints” (1971), 09/09 Modlerings, “Objects of Modern in Five Texts (New York: John Skepticism,” in The Definitely đđđđđđ2 Weber Unfinished Marcel Duchamp, ed. Barnett Newman, “The Gallery; London: Jack Wendler Ideographic Picture” Gallery, 1973); and for Graham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (1947), in Newman, 108. the later “My 1991), 255–257. Works for Magazine Pages: ‘A đđđđđđ3 History of Conceptual Art’” đđđđđđ18 Clement Greenberg, “Modernist (1985), in Two-Way See André Breton, “Le ” (1960) Mirror Power: Selected Writings Message automatique,” and “Recentness of ” by Dan Graham on His Art, ed. Minotaure 1 (1967), in The Collected Essays Alexander (1993),đ no. 3–4, 55. and Criticism, vol.4, Alberro (Cambridge, MA: MIT with a Press, 1999); for Smithson see đđđđđđ19 Vengeance, 1957–1969, ed. John following note. André Breton, “A Letter to Seers” O’Brian (Chicago and London: (1925), in Manifestoes of University of Chicago Press, đđđđđđ11 Surrealism, trans. 1993), 85–93, 250–256. In “Robert Smithson on Duchamp. Richard Seaver and Helen R. “Modernist Interview with Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Painting,” Greenberg was still Moira Roth” (1973), in Robert Michigan Press, confident that the limits of Smithson: 1972), 199. See also André painting “can be The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Breton, “Le Message pushed back indefinitely before Flam (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and automatique,” in Minotaure, no. a picture stops being a picture London: University of California 3/4 (December 1933): 55. and turns into Press, 1996), an arbitrary object” (90), but 310. đđđđđđ20 “Recentness of Sculpture” is See part 3 of Rhonda Roland marked by concern đđđđđđ12 Shearer, “Marcel that just this was by then See Hegel on “the dissolution of Duchamp: A Readymade Case happening. See also Thierry De romantic art” for Collecting Objects of Our Duve, Kant After Duchamp (by which he refers to Christian, Cultural Heritage along (Cambridge, MA, and London: post-Antique art): G. W. F. Hegel, with Works of Art,” toutfait 1, no. MIT Press, 1996), 199–279. Werke, vol. 14, Vorlesungen über 3 (2000; 2005), die href="http://www.toutfait.co đđđđđđ4 Ästhetik II, ed. Eva m/online_journal_details.php Paul Chan, “What Art Is and Moldenhauer and Karl Markus ?postid=1090">→. Where It Belongs,” Michel (Frankfurt am Main: e-flux journal, no. 10 (November Suhrkamp, 1970), 239. đđđđđđ21 2009), http://www.e- Jean Baudrillard, Pour une flux.com/journa l/view/95. đđđđđđ13 critique de The text was written for The “Que le surréalisme, dans le l’économie politique du signe Return of cadre du matérialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1972). Religion and Other Myths: A dialectique, soit la Critical Reader in Contemporary seule méthode qui rende comte đđđđđđ22 Art, eds. Maria des rapports réels du monde et Baudrillard already notes the Hlavajova, Sven Lütticken, and de la pensée, je strong Jill Winder (Utrecht: BAK, basis le crois plus que jamais, moi ai connection between Bauhaus voor actuele kunst; Rotterdam: vu la dialectique matérialiste design and Surrealist objects, post entasser des considering them two editions, 2009), 56–70. pierres, et parce que j’ ai vu les sides of the same coin hommes transformer la monde (240–241). đđđđđđ5 avec la W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do dialectique matérialiste.” Louis đđđđđđ23 Pictures Want? The Lives and Aragon, “Le Surréalisme et le Joselit, 51. Loves of Images (Chicago and devenir révolutionnaire,” Le London: Surréalisme au service de la đđđđđđ24 University of Chicago Press, révolution, no. “Indem an den Dingen ihr 2005), 112. 3 (December 1931): 4. Gebrauchswert abstirbt, werden die đđđđđđ6 đđđđđđ14 entfremdeten ausgehölt und This text continues a line of Aragon, 4. On this period of ziehen als Chiffern Bedeutungen inquiry from the Surrealism and the herbei. Ihrer bemächtigt sich third chapter (“Attending to privileged role it accorded to Subjektivität, indem sie Things”) of my book Idols of the objects, see also Steven Harris, Intentionen on Wunsch Market: Modern Iconoclasm and Surrealist Art and Thought in the und Angst in sie einlegt. Daduch the Fundamentalist Spectacle 1930s: das die abgeschiedenen Dinge (Berlin and New York: Sternberg, Art, Politics, and the Psyche als Bilder der

2009). (Cambridge: Cambridge e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 3 — b y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P I : B o ’ l D u c m p C subjektiven Intention einstehen, University Press, 2004). präsentieren diese sich als đđđđđđ7 unvergangene und Bruno Latour, We Have Never đđđđđđ15 ewige. Dialektische Bilder sind Been Modern, trans. Catherine “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Konstellationen zwischen Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard (1770–1831),” entfremdeten Dingen University Press, 1993), 54. Le Surréalisme au service de la und eingehender Bedeutung révolution, no. […].” Theodor W. Adorno, đđđđđđ8 3 (December 1931): 1. supplement to a letter to Latour, We Have Never Walter Benjamin, August 5, Been Modern, 51–55. đđđđđđ16 1935, in Adorno/Benjamin David Joselit, Feedback: Briefwechsel 1928-1940, ed. đđđđđđ9 Television Against Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt am Main:

09.17.12 / 20:11:27 EDT → Continued from “Art and Thingness, Part One: Breton’s Ball, Duchamp’s Carrot” in issue 13. đđđđđđđđđđ

đđđđđđđđđđIn a text written in response to the upheavals of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet avant-garde, Carl Einstein claimed

01/08 that tradition “piles up in the object”; that the object is a “medium for passive thinking,” bound to tradition and bourgeois property relations; and that in order to “assert the human person, objects, which are preserve jars, must be destroyed.” Going so far as to state that “every destruction of objects is justified,” Einstein proclaimed a “dictatorship of the thingless.”1 Sven Lütticken Einstein’s text seems to reflect simplistic narratives in which modernity is virtually synonymous with a purist, idealist suppression Art and of the thing. Of course, such idealist tendencies did exist, but so did opposition to them. As if Thingness, Part responding to Einstein’s quasi-Suprematist essay, Adorno once remarked that “someone who Two: looks upon thingness as radical evil, who wants to dynamize all that exists into pure actuality, tends to be hostile to otherness, to the alien – Thingification which has lent its name to alienation, and not for nothing.”2 đđđđđđđđđđIn a Latourian manner, one might present the recent turn to the thing as a break with the project of modernity: after all, isn’t modernity in theory and in praxis the desperate attempt to (re)form the world in accordance with the will of an autonomous, imperious subject that turns things into ordered and emaciated objects? Such an opposition, however, is dubious; as Adorno’s remark may serve to recall, it is not only manifestly “anti-modern” modern philosophers, such as Heidegger, who prefigure the recent thing-turn. Adorno too was far from embracing objects or things as they were, rooted as his thought was in the Marxian analysis of commodity fetishism and the Lukácsian critique of reification or Verdinglichung. After all, isn’t the very term Verdinglichung – literally “thingification,” to which an important section of Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness is dedicated – manifestly idealist? đđđđđđđđđđFor all the problems with History and Class Consciousness – of which Lukács was well aware later in his life – it remains worthwhile to trace the main steps of its argument, whose

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 5 — p i 2 0 đ S v L ü t c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P w o : f c repercussions can scarcely be overestimated. Lukács’ starting point is Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism, in which “a definite social relation between men” assumes “the fantastic form of a relation between things,” which Lukács characterizes as “the basic phenomenon of reification.”3 But the fetishist illusion of commodities – as “social things” whose exchange value appears to follow gratuitous

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg, Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet issue #1-2.

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT whims – is only one half of reification; it is not exclusive focus on the absolute “I” proved only that the commodities form a spectacle of untenable, as idealist philosophy had to take its quasi-subjects, but the subjects themselves, as departure precisely from the split between workers, are transformed. In consequence of the subject and object, which it sought to overcome, rationalization of the work process the human to sublate – to contain within a higher unity from qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker appear which the philosophers “could ‘create,’ deduce increasingly as mere sources of error when and make comprehensible the duality of subject contrasted with these abstract special laws 03/08 and object on the empirical plane, i.e. in its functioning according to rational predictions. objective form.”6 The world was now conceived in Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work terms of a dialectical process that shattered the does man appear as the authentic master of the original, absolute unity, but restored it on a process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part higher level. It is precisely where idealist incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds philosophy finds its limit in the dialectical it already preexisting and self-sufficient; it process – which it conceives in abstract terms as functions independently of him and he has to being enacted by subject and object – that conform to its laws whether he likes it or not. As Lukács begins to reflect upon an economy in labor is progressively rationalized and which the subject is alienated from its objective mechanized, his lack of will is reinforced by the conditions, and in which the products of labor way in which his activity becomes less and less take on quasi-subjective qualities. active and more and more contemplative.4 đđđđđđđđđđMarx broke with the philosophical deadlock đđđđđđđđđđAccording to Lukács, of by using the dialectical method to reflects reified consciousness. Starting with analyze dialectical processes between classes. Kant, philosophy had set itself “the following Lukács himself, however, gave a rather idealist problem: it refuses to accept the world as interpretation to this materialist turn; as he later something that has arisen (or has been created admitted, his explicit presentation of the by God) independently of the knowing subject, proletariat as the identical subject-object of and prefers to conceive of it instead as its own history was still highly idealist.7 In his product.”5 However, with its autocritique, he also argued that he had unduly

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Workers’ Club, in “Forms of Resistance” at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, 2007.

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT Chto Delat/What is there to be done?, “Representing Perestroyka,” 2008, U-Turn Biennial, Copenhagen Denmark.

Graphic illustrating the construction of the billboard from ...deeply__to the notion that the__world is__to the observer...(committed) (real) (external).

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT equated reification with alienation, and warns, “the primacy of the object furthermore that he had tended to identify notwithstanding, the thingness of the world is alienation with objectification; in fact, also illusory. It tempts the subjects to ascribe to objectification is unavoidable, as any type of the things themselves the social conditions of society must to some extent objectify itself in their production. This is elaborated in Marx’s practice, in physical objects as well as in social chapter on the fetish …”13 What is crucial for structures. Alienation, on the other hand, based Adorno is to combine “tenacious opposition on commodity fetishism or reification, is not a 05/08 against that which exists: against its thingness,” given; structures that alienate man from his own with a staunch rejection of attempts to identify nature must be abolished.8 thingness as evil.14 “In thingness there is an đđđđđđđđđđIf at first sight Carl Einstein’s text appears intermingling of both the object’s unidentical to merely celebrate an idealist triumph of pure side and the subjection of people under the spirit – of the abstracted subject – over objects, prevailing forms of production – their own on closer inspection it becomes clear that functional relations, which are obscure to Einstein too wishes to go beyond the dichotomy them.”15 While, on the one hand, thingness (das of subject and object. Stating that “the object no Dinghafte) stands for the subjection of people longer dominates vision; rather vision is now under alienating and mystifying forms of directed against the object, ruthlessly, production; on the other, the thing stands for the dictatorially,” Einstein proclaims a project of non-identical, for that which escapes the clutch revolutionary Entdinglichung (a reversal of of instrumental reason. It does so more fully than Verdinglichung), resulting in a “dictatorship of the object, which is “the positive face of the non- vision, ascetics of the object, destruction of identical”; in other words, “a terminological facts, and accordingly, renunciation of the self.” mask.”16 Objecthood is thingness objectified, It is not so much a matter of the subject subjected to concepts in the same way that a triumphing over the object, but of a new vision subject is a person become concept, a legal- that creates a new “fluctuant of philosophical abstraction; a thing is to an object space.”9 In admittedly idealist terms (that also as a person is to a subject. recall some of Raoul Hausmann’s writings from đđđđđđđđđđHowever unlikely this may sound to those the period), Einstein here sketches a situation in who think of Adorno only as a late-modernist which a form of praxis generates mandarin, his thinking in this respect echoes of that undermine any stable dichotomy of subject debates that raged in the 1920s and 1930s and and object. can be seen as a belated contribution to the đđđđđđđđđđIn this sense, he comes close to the theory of Productivism, of an art aiming to Constructivist/Productivist theorists of the construct new types of things that would be true veshch, the object that would offer an alternative “comrades.” The crucial term veshch can be to the “idolized” commodity-object of Western translated either as “thing” or as “object” (as in capitalism. Writing from Paris in 1925, Aleksandr the case of Lissitzky and Ehrenburg’s journal Rodchenko wrote that “the light from the East is Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet), but a dominant motif in the new relation to the person, to woman, to in Productivist theory was the need to go beyond things. Our things in our hands must be equals, fetishized capitalist object-commodities comrades, and not these black and mournful towards a new type of veshch production and slaves, as they are here.”10 Later, Brecht would distribution that would no longer hide the things’ paraphrase Hegel by stating that “things are histories, the productive conditions that shaped occurrences” rather than immovable states.11 We them. The counterpart of the new veshch-thing is are dealing here with a constellation of Marxian of course a notion of self different from the attempts at redefining the role of objecthood and classical-modern subject; noting critically that thingness – a constellation that also includes Paris was marked by a “cult of woman as thing,” Adorno, in whose development History and Class Rodchenko attempted to redefine both thing and Consciousness played a crucial role. Adorno’s person in their interrelationships.17 most developed thoughts on the matter are to be đđđđđđđđđđIt is above all this aspect of found in Negative Dialectics, where he places Constructivism/Productivism that relates to great emphasis on the dangers of equating e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 5 — p i 2 0 đ S v L ü t c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P w o : f c present concerns – as it was to those of the late objects with alienation. “In Marx one can already 1960s and early 1970s, the period that saw the find the difference between the object’s primacy rediscovery of Constructivism in a different as something to be produced critically and its sense than its formalist reduction by the likes of caricature in things as they are (im Naum Gabo and George Rickey.18 The recent Bestehenden), its distortion by the commodity purchase of a reconstruction of Rodchenko’s character.”12 1925 Workers’ Club by the Van Abbemuseum in đđđđđđđđđđDialectics becomes materialist when the Eindhoven – which already around 1970 played primacy of the object is established; yet, Adorno an important role in the rediscovery of the social

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT and political side of Constructivism – is a didactic exposition molding these elements into significant , provided that the museum a clear-cut narrative, the board’s montage avoids presenting Rodchenko’s furniture (which creates juxtapositions that are, quite literally, rejects the semiotic reduction of chromed questionable. How exactly does the rejection of “functionalism” in favor of flexible constructions the object in conceptual art relate to the collapse that demand an active user) as a nostalgic and of the gold standard, and immaterial labor to the reified image of the early Soviet Union. For all the continuing importance of oil – the oneiric doubts we may harbor about aspects of the 06/08 master-commodity? Having been emphatically Constructivist project, such as its in told that various wars were definitely not about relentless industrialization, Rodchenko’s oil, should we believe such statements any more attempt to redefine and reform things and their than the rhetoric of dematerialization employed role in human life – of which the Workers’ Club in the context of conceptual art? In spite of the forms one partial realization – can overlap with increasing importance of certificates for the present in a momentary Jetztzeit. determining the rights to a work of art, in the đđđđđđđđđđNow that everyday life is increasingly world charted by Haghighian’s Solo Show, the marked by convoluted attempts to gain some concepts faxed or mailed by managerial artists insight into the tangled thingness in which we are still destined for production by specialized are embedded, to trace the origins of the food we companies – a division of labor that Haghighian’s buy, to try and quantify the production of project undermines by instigating a different pollution resulting from our energy consumption, working relationship, one that leads to the to do more than merely survive under ever more production of mutant things. precarious working conditions, Productivism đđđđđđđđđđClearly, today a search for “new ways of chimes with current concerns. It is reactivated in doing things, developing better models” does not current practices such as that of Chto Delat, imply the abstract negation of the past even if the formal means employed in their propagated by Carl Einstein or, in a different videos and installations sometimes court the manner, by the Productivists. Yesterday’s tabula risk of appearing to be exercises in nostalgic is now itself part of the historical repertory retro chic.19 In a less literal way, a similar – at times neutralized through nostalgic impulse can be detected in the activities of quotations, at other times activated in the Temporary Services, for example in the recent form(s) of projects that treat the historical “Art Work,” an exhibition in the shape of a material as a potential waiting to be actualized, newspaper discussing the consequences of the however partially and fleetingly.22 But if Neo- collapse of the economy for artists, and pushing Productivist impulses can be found in a number for “new ways of doing things, developing better of important practices and projects, the models.”20 Here one may also think of Natascha readymade still haunts much of contemporary Sadr Haghighian’s Solo Show project (2008), art; its is not over yet. As part one of this which foregrounded the semi-hidden world of essay has argued, the readymade principle has companies that produce work for today’s big been severely compromised by its integration artists by giving a man used to interpreting into the logic of the market of the past decades, artists’ designs a much more active role in but it continues to inform constructive and determining the show’s content, as well as that Constructivist responses to present exigencies. of her earlier installation, ...deeply__to the notion đđđđđđđđđđ× that the__world is__to the observer...(committed) đđđđđđđđđđ→ Continued in “ Art and Thingness, Part (real) (external).21 Three: The Heart of the Thing is the Thing We đđđđđđđđđđ...deeply__to the notion that the__world Don’t Know” in issue 16. is__to the observer...(committed) (real) (external) contains a video in which two women set up a do-it-yourself billboard in the middle of a highway. The billboard itself, which shares the space with the video projection, consists of a series of photo/text montages that address, in a less than linear way, the consequences of e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 5 — p i 2 0 đ S v L ü t c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P w o : f c multiple events of the early 1970s: the collapse of the gold standard, the rise of conceptual art and immaterial labor, and the transformation of the dollar into a “virtual currency” whose fate is, however, linked to the price of oil. All of its graphic components can be downloaded from the Internet and then printed and pasted onto a self-assembled wooden structure. Rather than a

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT Sven Lütticken teaches art history at VU University đđđđđđ1 1969), 115. Amsterdam. Sternberg press recently published his Carl Einstein, “Revolution Smashes Through History and đđđđđđ12 book Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Tradition” (1921), trans. Charles “In Marx bereits spricht die Fundamentalist Spectacle. W. Haxthausen, October, no. 107 Differenz zwischen dem Vorrang đ (Winter 2004), 140, 142, 145. des Objeks als einem kritisch http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com herzustellendem und seiner đđđđđđ2 Fratze im bestehenden, seiner “Wem das Dinghafte als radikal Verzerrung durch den Böses gilt; wer alles, was ist, zur Warencharakter sich aus.” reinen Aktualität dynamisieren Adorno, Negative Dialektik , 191.

07/08 möchte, tendiert zur Feindschaft Translation adapted from gegen das Andere, Fremde, Negative Dialectics, 190. dessen Name nicht umsonst in Entfremdung anklingt.” Theodor đđđđđđ13 W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik “Trotz des Vorrangs des Objekts (1966), (Frankfurt am Main: ist die Dinghaftigkeit der Welt Suhrkamp, 1975), 191. The auch schein. Sie verleitet die English is my adaptation of the Subjekte dazu, das dismal English translation by E. gesellschaftliche Verhältnis B. Ashton, Negative Dialectics ihrer Produktion den Dingen an (London: Routledge & Kegan sich zuzuschreiben. Das wird im Paul, 1990), 191. Marxischen Fetischkapitel entfaltet …” Adorno, Negative đđđđđđ3 Dialektik, 190. Ashton translates Georg Lukács, History and Class this as: “Despite the Consciousness: Studies in preponderance of the object, the Marxist Dialectics (1923), trans. thingness of the world is also Rodney Livingstone (London: phenomenal. It tempts the Merlin Press, 1971), 86. subjects to ascribe their own social circumstances of đđđđđđ4 production to the noumena. This Ibid., 89. is elaborated in Marx’s chapter on fetishes …” (189). While đđđđđđ5 Adorno’s phrase “den Dingen an Ibid., 111. sich” does evoke the Kantian Ding an sich, clearly Adorno is đđđđđđ6 not actually using the phrase in Ibid., 123. this precise way; in the context of a discussion of commodity đđđđđđ7 fetishism, it would make no Georg Lukács, “Preface to the sense to ascribe the productive New Edition” (1967), in Lukács, relations to “the noumena,” as History and Class Ashton has it. Consciousness, xxii–xxiii. đđđđđđ14 đđđđđđ8 “… zähe Opposition gegen das Lukács, “Preface to the New Bestehende: gegen seine Edition,” xxiv–xxv. The original Dinghaftigkeit.” Adorno, Negative German for “objectification” is Dialektik, 190. “Vergegenständlichung”; “reification” is of course đđđđđđ15 “Verdinglichung.” See Georg “Im Dinghaften ist beides Lukács, “Vorwort” (1967), in ineinander, das Unidentische Geschichte und des Objekts und die Klassenbewusstsein Unterwerfung des Menschen (Darmstadt/Neuwied: unter herrschende Luchterhand, 1978), 26–27. Produktionsverhältnisse, ihren eigenen, ihnen unkenntlichen đđđđđđ9 Funktionszusammenhang.” “Aufgabe der Revolution: Adorno, Negative Dialektik , 192. Entdinglichung, Zerstörung des Translation adapted from Gegenstandes zur Rettung des Negative Dialectics, 191. Menschen.” Carl Einstein, “Revolution durchbricht đđđđđđ16 Geschichte und Überlieferung,” Adorno, Negative Dialektik, 193. in Werke, vol. 4, ed. Germann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar đđđđđđ17 (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1992), Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 146. Although Haxthausen’s 217. English translation is excellent, he was forced to translate đđđđđđ18 “Entdinglichung” with the rather As is perhaps needless to say, stilted “de-reification” (140). Benjamin Buchloh is the art historian who has most đđđđđđ10 consistently and cogently Quoted in Christina Kiaer, related elements from the “Rodchenko in Paris,” October practices of artists such as

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 5 — p i 2 0 đ S v L ü t c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P w o : f c no. 75 (Winter 1996): 3. See also Haacke back to Constructivism in general Kiaer’s excellent and Productivism, often discussion of Rodchenko’s Paris querying the artists in stay and the Workers’ Club, conversations about their 198–240. of this and other aspects of the historical avant- đđđđđđ11 garde during their formative “Meister Hegel sagte: Dinge sind years. As with the shifting Vorkommnisse. Zustände sind reception of Duchamp in the Prozesse. Vorgänge sind later 1960s, the rapidly Übergänge.” Bertolt Brecht, Me- developing historiography of ti: Buch der Wendungen Constructivism during this (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, period in relation to

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT contemporaneous artistic production would merit a more detailed historiographical study.

đđđđđđ19 See, however, the cogent discussions on Productivism in issue 01-25 of the Chto delat magazine (March 2009), http://www.chtodelat.org/ind ex.php?view=article&id=606. 08/08 đđđđđđ20 “Art Work: A National Conversation on Art, Labor, and Economics” exists as a printed newspaper as well as in various online versions that can be downloaded from http://www.artandwork.us/dow nload/.

đđđđđđ21 See “not about oil” at http://www.possest.de/notabo utoil.html, which contains the billboard schematics and graphics, as well as an essay.

đđđđđđ22 For an example of the latter, see also Hito Steyerl’s essay in this issue. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 5 — p i 2 0 đ S v L ü t c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P w o : f c

10.12.12 / 17:28:44 EDT → Continued from “Art and Thingness, Part Two: Thingification” in issue 15. đđđđđđđđđđ đđđđđđđđđđIn Hans Haacke’s pieces Broken R.M… and Baudrichard’s from the late 1980s, Duchamp’s readymades are subjected to transformations that highlight the problematic

01/06 use of the readymade in the commodity art of the era: in the latter piece, a gilded urinal sits atop an ironing board; water is pumped through it from a bucket in a closed, self-referential loop. After Warhol’s canny exacerbation of the emerging image of the commodity, and the focus on the “picture” in late-1970s Appropriation Art, the commodity art of the 1980s focused on Sven Lütticken objects once more, but this time on objects devoid of the Duchampian tension between sign and thing, between a utilitarian object and the Art and meanings projected onto it; these objects were programmed from the beginning to signify, to Thingness, Part create value through the theological whims of their designed interplay. While Haim Steinbach’s Three: The shelves demonstrate this mechanism with considerable , they remain in its thrall. Haacke’s objectified comments on 1980s Heart of the commodity art are fitting epitaphs for such an art of the instrumentalized readymade, and his Thing is the body of work as a whole can be seen as a sustained attempt to think through the readymade’s limitations as well as its Thing We Don’t consequences. đđđđđđđđđđIn the 1920s, both Lukács in History and Know Class Consciousness and, slightly later, Heidegger in Being and Time, critiqued the subject-object dichotomy in modern philosophy.1 Both authors attempted to develop an analysis of the complex situatedness of praxis in the world, but in Heidegger’s case this praxis was a depoliticized and dehistoricized Sorge, a taking- care of being along the lines of the earth-bound farmer taking care of the Scholle (the earth shoal, a favorite term in reactionary and Nazi philosophy during the 1920s and 1930s). Heidegger recalled that the term Ding originally referred to a form of archaic assembly, and in recent years Bruno Latour has latched onto this genealogy to redefine things in terms of “matters of concern” rather than “matters of fact,” as quasi-objects and quasi-subjects that fall between the two poles of the dichotomy.2 As I have argued – contra Latour – this needs to be

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 6 — m y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P : H o f W D ’ K w seen as a critical project within modernity that brings together thinkers and artists (and not only them, obviously) that would be bien étonnés de se trouver ensemble. đđđđđđđđđđLast year, in an exhibition that was part of a series of events on “social design,” curator Claudia Banz combined elements from the publications of Victor Papanek with a selection of multiples by .3 Bringing together

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC Hans Haacke, Broken R.M., 1986.

Haim Steinbach, Ultra Red No.1, 1986.

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC Papanek’s designs for cheap and low-tech radios elements. For a 1977 version, Rosler assumed and televisions for use in third-world countries the persona of a Southern Californian mother with works such as Beuys’s Capri Batterie (1985) with “roots in the counterculture,” who on an and Das Wirtschaftswert-PRINZIP (1981), the audiotape that played in the place mused on the exhibition subtly shifted the of value and function of things: “What is the value Beuys’s works in particular. The works were of a thing? What makes me want it? . . . I paid displayed in the usual way, in display cases that money for these things – is there a chance to tend to turn them into relics; yet the proximity of 03/06 recuperate some of my investment by selling the radio and TV designs brought out aspects of them to you? . . . Why not give it all away?” The these things that often remain dormant. Yes, the woman goes on to quote Marx on commodity appropriated East German package of beans fetishism and to wonder if “you [will] judge me by with its non-design has become a meta- and the things I’m selling.”4 mega-fetish like so many other readymades, yet đđđđđđđđđđIn such a work, the object is placed in a the constellation in which it has been placed network that is social and political, not merely opens up new connections, a new network of one of signs. Semiosis is always a social and meaning. The Capri Batterie, like the 1974 political process. There is a diagrammatic Telephon S-E made from tin cans and wires, may dimension to such a piece, as there is, in be tied up with mystifying anthroposophical different ways, to many works of Allan Sekula or conceptions of energy and communication, but Hans Haacke. If the diagram in Rosler’s piece is this combination emphasizes that it would be a one that primarily concerns the circulation of mistake to see such Beuysian things purely as objects in suburban family life, a number of expressions of a private mythology. In a different Haacke’s works contrast the use of field and in a different register from Papanek’s corporations’s logos in the context of art spaces, work, they too are counter-commodities – and where they become disembodied signs, with while it would be a mistake to lose sight of their those corporations’s exploitation of labor or compromised status, it would be an even bigger involvement in authoritarian or racist regimes; one to be content with that observation. Sekula’s Fish Story and related projects chart the largely unseen trajectories of commodities and workers on and near the oceans. Things and people. These practices, in particular those of Haacke and Rosler, spring from a critical reading of both the Duchampian heritage and the Constructivist project, which was being excavated in the same period by art historians, critics, activists, and artists. In their reading of these two genealogies, these artists recover some of the impetus behind the From left: illustration in Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World. Constructivist/Productivist attempt to redefine 2nd edition, p. 225; Joseph Beuys, Telephon S-E, 1974, Courtesy Edition Schellmann, München-New York © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008. the thing. đđđđđđđđđđA diagrammatic impulse, an attempt to trace the trajectories of people and things, can đđđđđđđđđđEven if we were to disregard Beuys as also be seen in recent work such as Sean regressive and unmodern, many of the 1960s and Snyder’s Untitled (Archive Iraq) (2003–2005) and 1970s practices that are most steeped in the related pieces, tracking the circulation of various tradition of that Latour seeks to types of commodity in the contested terrains of toss into the dustbin of history show that a Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. When Snyder, critique of commodification is something rather in his photo pieces and films, zooms in on Fanta different from a “ceaseless, even maniacal cans or Mars bars, on Casio watches or Sony purification.” Martha Rosler’s various versions of cameras, the “social relations” between these her Garage Sale piece involve her mimicking this commodities are not limited to the fetishistic American suburban version of the Surrealists’s coded differences celebrated by commodity art. đ flea market; having been advertised in art and đđđđđđđđđđFilmic montage can be one tool for keeping non-art media, it is a more or less normal garage track of things, of comparing different modes of sale to some, and a performance to others. production and distribution. In this respect, Allan However, Rosler noted that the setting Sekula’s films and Harun Farocki’s installation transformed even the art crowd into a posse of Vergleich über ein Drittes (Comparison via a Third) bargain hunters, who did not pay that much (2007) are strong demonstrations of the attention to the structure of the space, with odd possibilities of filmic means – and in Farocki’s and personal objects tucked away in the outer case, of their use in multi-channel video corners, or to the slide show and sound installations. A diagrammatic impulse can also

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC 04/06

Sean Snyder, Index, 2009. Installation view at ICA, London. Photo: Marcus J. Leith.

Harun Farocki, Comparison Via a Third [Vergleich über ein Drittes], 2007. 16 mm film, color, sound, 24min.

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC be discerned in such filmic pieces; but here, as in art’s “thingified” status is not a capitulation, an the case of Snyder’s Untitled (Archive Iraq), the assimilation of the work of art to the dreaded aim is not to strive for some suggestion of world of hat racks and other arbitrary objects. complete transparency that would reduce Rather, such projects are interventions into our objects to geometric points for a sovereign society’s production of (in)visibility. If anything, subject to grasp at a glance. Rather, the objects they can more properly lay claim to continuing and subjects are placed in a jumbled the project of modern than those constellation in which they become problematic, 05/06 intent on erecting a wall around the work of art; questionable things and people. Of course, the after all, from Schiller and the Jena Romantics artificial limitations on the availability of film and onwards, the modern aesthetic project was video pieces in the contemporary art economy expansive, aimed at intervening in the “art of make such pieces highly questionable things in living.”5 their own right, and crucial projects such as Snyder’s Index, which involves the digitization and uploading of the artist’s archive, address the limitations of the dominant form of media objecthood. đđđđđđđđđđThe limitations imposed on the circulation of commodities by intellectual property law are also scrutinized in a number of projects by Superflex – commodities that include, in their current project at the Van Abbemuseum, a wall piece by Sol LeWitt. In a less interventionist and (in the military sense of the term) offensive way than Superflex, /Kobe Matthys charts the legal battles waged over the use of objects, images, and programs by collecting, investigating, and exhibiting specific things. A recent installation in Anselm Franke’s “” exhibition at Extra City in Antwerp contained a number of things that have been subject to litigation, as instances in which human authorship is thrown into question because of the role played by the non-human (technological, animal), with items ranging from bingo cards to a video game and a German TV broadcast of a Agency, Assembly (Animism), 1992, various media. Photo: Bram Goots. circus act with elephants. Exhibited in a space lined with crates containing many more items, the space seemed to channel Surrealism via đđđđđđđđđđHowever, avant-garde attempts to abandon Mark Dion. Some of the things on display had an autonomous art in favor of a complete anachronistic quaintness to them, yet Matthys’ integration of art and life were as misjudged by classified readymades go beyond the critics as modernist rappels à l’ordre that limited conventional exacerbation of the commodity’s art to reflecting on the unique properties of its theological (or animist) whims. mediums, or later attempts to limit Conceptual đđđđđđđđđđThere are, of course, other important art to a series of proposals about its own status examples of practices that seek to push the work as art and nothing else.6 Even Constructivist of art to a point where it reveals itself to be a forays into production in the early 1920s special category of thing that reflects (on) the depended on a specialist sphere of practice and state of things. Here one may think of Michael discourse whose confines they sought to escape Cataloi and Nils Norman’s “University of Trash” – a sphere that would soon be destroyed by project, with its investigation into various Stalin. On the other hand, a properly reflexive alternative economies and social structures e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 6 — m y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P : H o f W D ’ K w work of art can never be only about its status as proposed in the 1960s and 1970s, and of Ashley art, about “art itself.” Since art’s apparent Hunt and Taisha Paggett’s project about the autonomy is socially conditioned, the obverse of garment industry and its workers, with its its heteronomous inscription in a global charting of the movements of contemporary capitalist economy that penetrates into ever products across the globe. Some of these more realms of life and parts of the planet, the projects and practices may be more successful work of art’s self-reflection is a sham it if is not than others, but an important characteristic that potentially about everything, and every thing. they share is that their embrace of the work of đđđđđđđđđđ×

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC Sven Lütticken teaches art history at VU University đđđđđđ1 Amsterdam. Sternberg press recently published his Georg Lukács, preface to History and Class Consciousness: book Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Studies in Marxist Dialectics Fundamentalist Spectacle. (1923), trans. Rodney http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1971), xxii. , Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 59. 06/06 đđđđđđ2 Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, eds. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Karlsruhe/Cambridge , MA/London: ZKM/MIT Press, 2005), 23.đ

đđđđđđ3 “Design for The Real World,” Centraal Museum Utrecht, October 4, 2009 – February 7, 2010 (part of Utrecht Manifest 2009, Biennial for Social Design). The designs in question are illustrated in Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985), 81–83, 225–226.

đđđđđđ4 Martha Rosler, “Traveling Garage Sale” (1977), in Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World, ed. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press, 1998, unpaginated section.

đđđđđđ5 See Jacques Rancière, “The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes,” in New Left Review 14 (March–April 2002), http://www.newleftreview.org /?view=2383. Rancière’s writings on the modern “aesthetic regime of art” have become almost suspiciously popular in the ; when Rancière writes that “Aesthetic art promises a political accomplishment that it cannot satisfy, and thrives on that ambiguity,” this seems to generate a pleasant vagueness, legitimizing anything and everything. However, one could and should in fact see it as an incentive to examine possible correspondences and points of connection, however fraught with difficulty, between art and different (especially political) interventions in the sensible realm.

đđđđđđ6 Writing about the conceptual essay-as-a-work- of-art, Jeff Wall argues that it can only be about its own status as an artistic kropsla; it can’t be about any other subject. Jeff Wall, “Introduction: Partially

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 6 — m y 2 0 đ S v L ü t i c k A r t a n d T h i g e s , P : H o f W D ’ K w Reflective Mirror Writing,” in Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press, 1999), xv.

12.20.10 / 03:22:11 UTC