Artists on Institutional Critique
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Art and Contemporary Critical Practice Reinventing Institutional Critique Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (eds) may fly Art and Contemporary Critical Practice Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (eds) ‘Institutional critique’ is best known through the critical practice that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by artists who pre- sented radical challenges to the museum and gallery system. Since then it has been pushed in new directions by new generations of artists registering and responding to the global transformations of contemporary life. The essays collected in this volume explore this legacy and develop the models of institutional critique in ways that go well beyond the fi eld of art. Interrogating the shifting relations between ‘institutions’ and ‘critique’, the contributors to this volume analyze the past and present of institutional critique and propose lines of future development. Engaging with the work of philoso- phers and political theorists such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno and others, these es- says refl ect on the mutual enrichments between critical art practices and social movements and elaborate the conditions for politicized critical practice in the twenty-fi rst century. may fly www.mayfl ybooks.org Today, at one and the same time, scholarly publishing is drawn in two directions. On the one hand, this is a time of the most exciting theoretical, political and artistic projects that respond to and seek to move beyond global administered society. On the other hand, the publishing industries are vying for total control of the ever-lucrative arena of scholarly publication, creating a situation in which the means of distribution of books grounded in research and in radical interrogation of the present are increasingly restricted. In this context, MayFlyBooks has been established as an independent publishing house, publishing political, theoretical and aesthetic works on the question of organization. MayFlyBooks publications are published under Creative Commons license free online and in paperback. MayFlyBooks is a not- for-profit operation that publishes books that matter, not because they reinforce or reassure any existing market. 1. Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory 2. Dag Aasland, Ethics and Economy: After Levinas 3. Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (eds), Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique ART AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL PRACTICE Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray (eds) First published by MayFlyBooks in paperback in London and free online at www.mayflybooks.org in 2009. CC: The editors & authors 2009 ISBN (Print) 978-1-906948-02-3 ISBN (PDF) 978-1-906948-03-0 This work has been published in conjunction with the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (www.eipcp.net). The publication has been carried out within the framework of transform.eipcp.net and with the support of the Culture 2000 program of the European Union. It reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Contents Contributors vii Acknowledgments xi Preface xiii WHAT IS INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE? 1 Instituent Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming 3 Gerald Raunig 2 The Institution of Critique 13 Hito Steyerl 3 Anti-Canonization: The Differential Knowledge of Institutional Critique 21 Stefan Nowotny 4 Notes on Institutional Critique 29 Simon Sheikh 5 Criticism without Crisis: Crisis without Criticism 33 Boris Buden 6 Artistic Internationalism and Institutional Critique 43 Jens Kastner 7 Extradisciplinary Investigations: Towards a New Critique of Institutions 53 Brian Holmes 8 Louise Lawler’s Rude Museum 63 Rosalyn Deutsche 9 Toward a Critical Art Theory 79 Gene Ray INSTITUTIONS OF EXODUS 10 Anthropology and Theory of Institutions 95 Paolo Virno 11 What is Critique? Suspension and Re-Composition in Textual and Social Machines 113 Gerald Raunig 12 Attempt to Think the Plebeian: Exodus and Constituting as Critique 131 Isabell Lorey 13 Inside and Outside the Art Institution: Self-Valorization and Montage in Contemporary Art 141 Marcelo Expósito 14 The Rise and Fall of New Institutionalism: Perspectives on a Possible Future 155 Nina Möntmann 15 The Political Form of Coordination 161 Maurizio Lazzarato INSTITUENT PRACTICES AND MONSTER INSTITUTIONS 16 Instituent Practices, No. 2: Institutional Critique, Constituent Power, and the Persistence of Instituting 173 Gerald Raunig 17 Governmentality and Self-Precarization: On the Normalization of Cultural Producers 187 Isabell Lorey 18 To Embody Critique: Some Theses, Some Examples 203 Marina Garcés 19 The Double Meaning of Destitution 211 Stefan Nowotny 20 Towards New Political Creations: Movements, Institutions, New Militancy 223 Raúl Sánchez Cedillo 21 Mental Prototypes and Monster Institutions: Some Notes by Way of an Introduction 237 Universidad Nómada Bibliography 247 The Transform Project issues of transversal 261 Contributors Boris Buden is a philosopher living in Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor of the magazine Arkzin, Zagreb. Among his translations into Serbocroatian are two books of Sigmund Freud. Buden is the author of Barikade (Zagreb 1996/1997), Kaptolski Kolodvor (Beograd 2001), Der Schacht von Babel (Berlin 2004; Vavilonska jama, Beograd 2007) and, together with Stefan Nowotny, Übersetzung. Das Versprechen eines Begriffs (Turia + Kant 2008). Rosalyn Deutsche is a critic and art historian living in New York. She teaches modern and contemporary art, feminist theory and urban theory at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her publications include the influential book Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (MIT Press, 1998). Marcelo Expósito is an artist mostly based in Barcelona. He was co- founder and co-editor of Brumaria magazine (2002-2006). He teaches video theory and history at Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Cuenca), art theory at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), and art and politics at Independent Studies Programm (PEI) at Macba (Barcelona). Marina Garcés is professor for contemporary philosophy at the University Oberta de Catalunya and at the University of Zaragoza. She is author of the book In the prisons of the possible (Ediciones Bellaterra, Barcelona, 2002) and she collaborates with such magazines as Archipiélago, Zehar o Le passant ordinaire and with institutions such as Arteleku (San Sebastián) o Unia-Arte y pensamiento (Sevilla). Since vii Contributors 2003 she co-ordinates the activity of Espai en Blanc (http://www.espaienblanc.net). Brian Holmes is a culture critic who works directly with artist and activist groups. He publishes in Springerin, Brumaria and Multitudes, and is the author of the books Hieroglyphs of the Future (Arkzin/WHW, 2002) and Unleashing the Collective Phantoms (Autonomedia, 2008). Jens Kastner is a sociologist and art historian working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is editor of Bildpunkt: Zeitschrift der IG Bildende Kunst. His recent books are Transnationale Guerilla: Aktivismus, Kunst und die kommende Gemeinschaft (Unrast, 2007) and, together with Bettina Spörr, nicht alles tun (Unrast, 2008). Maurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist, philosopher and independent researcher specializing in studies of relationships of work, economy and society. He is a member of the editorial team of Multitudes. His latest publications include Les révolutions du capitalisme (Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2004) and, together with Antonella Corsani, Intermittents et Précaires (éditions Amsterdam, 2008). Isabell Lorey is a political scientist living in Berlin. From 2001 to 2007 she was assistant professor for Gender & Postcolonial Studies at the University of the Arts Berlin and lecturer at the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Humboldt University Berlin. She has published on feminist and political theory, with special focus on Michel Foucault, biopolitical governmentality and critical whiteness studies. She is currently working on a book about Roman struggles of order, concepts of community and immunization. Nina Möntmann is Professor and Head of the Department of Art Theory and the History of Ideas at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm. From 2003 to 2006 she was Curator at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art (NIFCA) in Helsinki. Currently she is curatorial advisor for Manifesta 7, 2008. She is a correspondent for Artforum, and contributes to Le Monde Diplomatique, Parachute, metropolis m, Frieze and others. Her recent publications include Kunst als sozialer Raum, Köln (Walther König, 2002); Art and its Institutions (Black Dog Publishing, 2006). viii Contributors Stefan Nowotny is a philosopher living in Vienna. He works at the eipcp and has published various essays on philosophical and political topics, co-edited several anthologies, and translated texts from both French and English into German. His recent books include: Instituierende Praxen. Bruchlinien der Institutionskritik (together with Gerald Raunig, Turia + Kant 2008); Übersetzung. Das Versprechen eines Begriffs (together with Boris Buden, Turia + Kant