Art in the Global Present Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn (Eds)
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Art in the Global Present presents a fascinating collection of essays that Art in the Global Present together reveal how art is currently navigating a globalised world. It addresses social issues such as the impact of migration, the ‘war on terror’ and the global financial crisis, and questions the transformations produced by new forms of flexible labour and the digital revolution. Through examining the resistance to the politics of globalisation in contemporary art, presenting the construction of an alternative geography of the imagination and reflecting on art’s capacity to express the widest possible sense of being, this book explores the worlds that artists make when they make art. Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn (eds) A multifaceted perspective on the complexity of these issues is reached through the words of a diverse range of art practitioners and comment ators, including acclaimed artists Lucy Orta, Callum Morton, Danae Stratou and the collective Postcommodity, international curators Hou Hanru, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ranjit Hoskote and Linda Marie Walker and art critics, academics, writers and theorists Jean Burgess, Paul Carter, Barbara Creed, Geert Lovink, Scott McQuire, Nikos Papastergiadis, Gerald Raunig and Jan Verwoert. Cover illustration: Socratis Socratous, Architectural Strategy, 2011, cprint photograph, 124.5 × 186.5 cm Courtesy the artist and Omikron Gallery, Nicosia Art in the Global Present Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn (eds) ISBN 978-0-9872369-9-9 CSR Books 9 780987 236999 CSR Books Art in the Global Present CSR Books CSR Books is a book series initiated by the journal Cultural Studies Review, and published as an e-book by UTS e-Press with print-on-demand paperbacks also available. The series has two aims: to bring new work in the broadly-conceived field of cultural studies to both current readers and new audiences, and to revisit themes or concerns that have preoccupied Cultural Studies Review since its inception. The general editors of CSR Books are Chris Healy and Katrina Schlunke, guided and advised by distinguished members of the university consortium that publishes both the book series and the journal. We hope CSR Books will be an enduring adventure that will demonstrate the energy and creativity of cultural research and analysis, and the utility of what ‘the book’ is becoming. Keep in touch with both the journal and the book: <http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals> or on twitter @CSReview1995. Cultural Studies Review and CSR Books are supported by Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney; Faculty of Law, University of Technology, Sydney; Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland; Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney; School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University. Art in the Global Present Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn (eds) Published in 2014 by UTSePress University Library University of Technology Sydney PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia Copyright © 2014 the individual contributors This volume was peer reviewed No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the authors. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Art in the Global Present, edited by Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn CSR Books, no. 1 CSR Books is an imprint of Cultural Studies Review General Editors: Chris Healy and Katrina Schlunke Managing Editor: Ann Standish Series design: Brad Haylock (RMIT University) ISBN: 978-0-9872369-9-9 Contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 Nikos Papastergiadis I: Art, Politics and Participation 27 1 n-1. Making Multiplicity: A Philosophical Manifesto 31 Gerald Raunig 2 Operational Aesthetics 45 Lucy Orta 3 Participatory Cultures and 68 Participatory Public Space Scott McQuire 4 ‘All Your Chocolate Rain Are Belong To Us?’ 86 Viral Video, You Tube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture Jean Burgess 5 What is the Social in Social Media? 97 Geert Lovink 6 The Power of Doubt 112 Hou Hanru II: The Geography of the Imagination 129 7 Seeing Red 133 Cuauhtémoc Medina 8 With Salvage and Knife Tongue 157 Postcommodity 5 9 Australians 166 Callum Morton 10 Seeing into Ubiquity 179 Danae Stratou 11 Global Art and Lost Regional Histories 186 Ranjit Hoskote III: Into Cosmos 193 12 Why is Art Met with Disbelief? 197 It’s Too Much like Magic Jan Verwoert 13 The Tender Heart 206 Linda Marie Walker 14 The Elephant’s Graveyard: Spectres of the Abyss? 216 Barbara Creed 15 The Nameless Shadowy Vortex: 241 The Artist of Transition Paul Carter Contributors 281 List of figures 285 6 Acknowledgements This collection of essays has emerged from two symposia held at the Adelaide Festival: ‘Art in the Global Present’ (26 February – 1 March 2010) and ‘Into Cosmos’ (2–5 March 2012). Co-convened by Victoria Lynn, the festival’s curator, and Nikos Papastergiadis, along with associates Lucy Guster and Rayleen Forester, these two events provided a range of papers, workshops and discussions by scholars, artists, curators and critics. Paul Grabowsky, Adelaide Festival artistic director 2010–2012, commented in the 2012 Visual Arts Program that Artists’ Week at the festival digs ‘deep into the conceptual well of art, seeking its roots in the irrational, its specificity in relation to space, its changing meaning in an image-saturated world and its paradoxical proximity to the extinction of consciousness’. The editors wish to extend their sincere gratitude to the writers in this volume; to Paul Grabowsky and Kate Gould from the 2010 and 2012 Adelaide festivals; the presenting partner University of South Australia; the Australia Council, who supported the two symposia; and to all the participants in Artists’ Week 2010 and 2012 who contributed to a lively, creative and enriching experience. In addition, gratitude is extended to Charlotte Day and Sarah Tutton, curators of the ‘2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Before and After Science’ and Natasha Bullock and Alexie Glass-Kantor, curators of ‘Parallel Collisions: 2012 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’. The following organisations and individuals have also provided valued assistance: Samstag Museum of Art (Erica Green), Flinders University City Gallery (Fiona Salmon), Experimental Art Foundation (Dom de Clario), Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (Alan Cruikshank), Jam Factory Contemporary Craft and Design, and Auckland Art Gallery. Further, we acknowledge the support of the Adelaide Festival and the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne in the publication of this volume, and thank Brad Haylock for his design. Finally, we are very grateful to CSR Books for taking on this publication and mak- ing it their first project. Thank you to Chris Healy, Katrina Schlunke and especially Ann Standish for their work in getting this to press. Nikos Papastergiadis and Victoria Lynn 7 Introduction Nikos Papastergiadis The sensory awareness of the world is fundamental to art. Art is a world-making activity. The relationship between the sen- sory faculties and the formal practices of art always lead to the production of multiple worlds. This book explores this rela- tionship between the real and the imagined, the material and the virtual worlds of art. It puts the sensory activity of world making into the heart of our understanding of the political. Given the rapid and profound nature of change in the world, we introduce a wide range of perspectives and concepts. In particular, we focus on the responses initiated by artists and an examination of the intersections between artistic practice and theoretical speculations. In the context of art, the essays in this book address current social issues such as the impact of migration, the ‘war on terror’ and global financial crisis as well as questioning the transformations produced by new forms of flexible labour and the digital revolution. The broad aim of this diverse collection of essays is to provide an insight into some aspects of the function of art in a globalising world. This is not to claim that art is now doing the work of politics but rather to see how art is a vital agent in shaping the public imaginary. The book addresses this in three ways. It outlines resistance to the politics of globalisation in contemporary art, presents the construction of an alternative geography of the imagination and reflects on art’s capacity to express the widest possible sense of being in the world. In short, this book explores the worlds that artists make when they make art. Art, politics and participation One of the inspirational starting points for this collection has been Gerald Raunig’s book Art and Revolution.1 Raunig translated Deleuze and Guattari’s terms deterritorialisation 9 ART IN THE GLOBAL PRESENT and reterritorialisation, smoothing and striating, to redefine the conceptual framework for understanding the context and processes for the production of art. We extend this mode of addressing art from such a framework formed by the dynam- ics of displacement and reconnection. This perspective is vital because the world is becoming increasingly polarised. The emancipatory rhetoric of globalisation has been overtaken by the grim realities of precarious existence and the politics of fear. In the broad sphere of contemporary art some barriers have been broken. For instance, the incorporation of artists from almost every part of the world has challenged the Eurocentric modernist canon and undermined earlier racist classificatory systems. However, new divisions are appearing. Why is the power of so few artists so much greater at a time when the democratisation and popularisation of participa- tory processes is also at its zenith? Given the unprecedented cosmopolitanisation of the art world, why are 50 per cent of the artworks shown at Documenta 12 and the 2007 Venice Biennale produced by artists who now live in Berlin? Gregory Sholette quite rightly claims the vast majority of the artworld exists in a creative equivalent to what physicists call dark matter.