Postcolonialism and the Arts
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Labor, Work and Art: Collectives, Community Based Art and Hippies Dr. Suzana Milevska Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories Academy of Fine Art Vienna 28 October 2014 Sentences on Conceptual Art by Sol Lewitt •Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. •Rational judgements repeat rational judgements. •Irrational judgements lead to new experience. •Formal art is essentially rational. •Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically. •If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results. •The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego. •When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations. "Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included... something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. It's a Gigantic project." Ivan Shadr, Stone as a weapon of the proletariat, 1927, bronze, Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery Alfredo Jaar "Karl Marx Lounge", 2011, Amsterdam, the space Project 1975 of the Amsterdam's Stedeljik Museum. analyzes the relationship between the theories of the philosopher and today's economy The books that constitute a unique "anti- monument“ dedicated to Karl Marx, one of the thinkers who most marked our modernity, are 350. The Marx Lounge, is the title of Jaar’s work "When the financial crisis broke out, Marx was brought back to life from that capitalist system that had done anything to contradict his theories. Is it not paradoxical?”. From this ironic observation, he decided to make available to a wide audience that ideas' heritage that many experts have suddenly exhumed to analyze the current economy. In a reading room, equipped with desks - covered in volumes - chairs, armchairs and table lamps, the spectator can range from Marxist theory to the post-colonial thought, from the anti-liberalism's key texts to the analysis of globalization. Marxian economics concerns itself variously with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution. We will use some of the basic Marxist concepts of political economy, e.g. - use value and exchange value, - human labour and surplus, - commodity, property, - supply and demand - base and superstructure INTRODUCTION ǀ METHODOLOGY ǀ RESEARCH METHODS ǀ CASE STUDIES that are topical for understanding the contradictions between - the means, - forces, - relations and - modes of production, and - building, distributing and redistributing the capital. INTRODUCTION ǀ METHODOLOGY ǀ RESEARCH METHODS ǀ CASE STUDIES Socialist Surrealism Gezim Qendro, Albanian historian of art and curator Mladen Stilinovic, Work is a Disease – Karl Marx, 2004 (1979) USE-VALUE, VALUE AND EXCHANGE VALUE The worth of a commodity can be conceived of in two different ways, which Marx calls use-value and value. A commodity's use-value is its usefulness for fulfilling some practical purpose; for example, the use-value of a piece of food is that it provides nourishment and pleasurable taste; the use value of a hammer, that it can drive nails. Value is, on the other hand, a measure of a commodity's worth in comparison to other commodities. It is closely related to exchange- value, the ratio at which commodities should be traded for one another, but not identical: value is at a more general level of abstraction; exchange-value is a realisation or form of it. HUMAN LABOUR Marx argued that if value is a property common to all commodities, then whatever it is derived from, whatever determines it, must be common to all commodities. The only relevant thing common to all commodities is human labour: they are all produced by human labour. Marx concluded that the value of a commodity is simply the amount of human labour required to produce it. Means of production The subjects of labour and instruments of labour together Relations of production are the relations human beings adopt toward each other as part of the production process. Wage labour and private property are part of the relations of production. Calculation of value of a product (price not to be confused with value): If labour is performed directly on Nature and with instruments of negligible value, the value of the product is simply the labour time. If labour is performed on something that is itself the product of previous labour (that is, on a raw material), using instruments that have some value, the value of the product is the value of the raw material, plus depreciation on the instruments, plus the labour time. LOUIS ALTHUSSER, ON THE REPRODUCTION OF CAPITALISM 1) Every concrete social formation is based on a dominant mode of production. The immediate implication is that, in every social formation, there exists more than one mode of production: at least two and often many more. One of the modes of production in this set is described as dominant, the others as dominated. 2. What constitutes a mode of production? It is the unity between what Marx calls the productive forces and the relations of production. Thus every mode of production, dominant or dominated, has, in its unity, its productive forces and relations of production. The ‘correspondence’ between the productive forces and relations of production. 3. When we consider a mode of production in the unity productive forces/relations of production that constitutes it, it appears that this unity has a material basis: the productive forces. But these productive forces are nothing at all if they are not rendered operational, and they can only operate in and under the aegis of their relations of production. This leads to the conclusion that, on the basis of the existing productive forces and within the limits they set, the relations of production play the determinant role. the necessity of renewing the means of production to make production possible- the ultimate condition for production is the reproduction of the conditions of production. Starting from the assumption that every social formation is characterized by a dominant mode of production, we may say - that the process of production puts the existing productive forces to work under determinate relations of production. It follows that, in order to exist, every social formation must, while it produces, and in order to be able to produce, reproduce the conditions of its production. It must therefore reproduce 1) the productive forces; 2) the existing relations of production. no production is possible unless it ensures reproduction of the material conditions of production in strictly regulated proportions: reproduction of the means of production. The average economist is, in this respect, no different from the average capitalist. He will tell you that, every year, it is necessary to make provisions to replace what is used up or wears out in production: raw materials, fixed facilities (buildings), instruments of production (machines), and so on. We say the average economist = the average capitalist, because both express the viewpoint of the enterprise; they content themselves with simply commenting on the terms of its financial accounting practice. Targets hierarchy work vs. art authorship/expertise individual/collective authority centralised decision making Praxis School The Praxis school was a Marxist humanist philosophical movement. It originated in Zagreb and Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia, during the 1960s. Prominent figures among the school's founders include Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga of Zagreb and Mihailo Marković of Belgrade. From 1964 to 1974 they published the Marxist journal Praxis, which was renowned as one of the leading international journals in Marxist theory. The group also organized the widely popular Korčula Summer School in the island of Korčula. Basic tenets Due to the tumultuous sociopolitical conditions in the 1960s, the affirmation of 'authentic' Marxist theory and praxis, and its humanist and dialectical aspects in particular, was an urgent task for philosophers working across the SFRY. There was a need to respond to the kind of modified Marxism- Leninism enforced by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (see Titoism). To vocalize and therefore begin to satisfy this need, the program of Praxis school was defined in French in the first issue of the International edition of Praxis: A quoi bon Praxis. Predrag Vranicki (On the problem of Practice) and Danko Grlić (Practice and Dogma) expanded this program in English in the same issue (Praxis, 1965, 1, p. 41-48 and p. 49-58). The Praxis philosophers considered Leninism and Stalinism to be apologetic due to their ad hoc nature. Leninist and Stalinist theories were considered to be unfaithful to the Marxist theory, as they were adjusted according to the needs of the party elite and intolerant of ideological criticism. The defining features of the school were: 1) emphasis on the writings of the young Marx; and 2) call for freedom of speech in both East and West based upon Marx's insistence on ruthless social critique. As Erich Fromm has argued in his preface to Marković's work From Affluence to Praxis, the theory of the Praxis theoreticians was to "return to the real Marx as against the Marx equally distorted by right wing social democrats and Stalinists". Different theorists emphasized different aspects of the theory. Where Mihailo Marković writes of alienation and the dynamic nature of human beings, Petrović writes of philosophy as radical critique of all existing things, emphasizing the essentially creative and practical nature of human beings.