Under Pressure

I've been reading the book Under Pressure - Pictures, Subjects, and the New Spirit of Capitalism. Its my favorite kind of book because it is small enough to tuck in a pocket, good for reading on the subway. It has four essays, together with responses, which is not too daunting. Oh, and when I dropped it in the bathtub the other day (my secret is out!), it dried out nicely...

The longest essay is by Boltanski, who, with Eve Chiapello, wrote The New Spirit of Capitalism in 1999. I've read parts of their earlier book, so I was curious to see where Boltanski would go next. I haven't finished the essay yet. The first section is a good recap of ideas from the 1999 book.

A major part of the analysis concerns three shifts in capitalism, what Boltanski and Chiapello call the "three spirits of capitalism," which took place in the 1930's, 1960's and 1990's. Here is a paragraph by Boltanski discussing the shift in the 1960s:

The years 1965-1976 are marked by a very sharp rise in the level of critique against capitalism, culminating in 1968 and the following years. These critiques threaten capitalism with a significant crisis. They are far from being merely verbal and are accompanied by strikes and violence and result in a disorganization of production that lowers the quality of industrial produce and, according to some estimates, doubles salary costs. These critiques are targeted at almost all established tests upon which the legitimacy of the social order was based. The objects of critique are, (a) the tests upon which the relationship between salaries and profits and the distribution of added value are dependent; (b) the tests legitimating asymmetries in terms of power and hierarchical relations (at work, but also in the family); and (c) the tests upon which the social selection is based: in education, professional recruitment, career advancement, etc. The critique unveils that which, in these tests, transgresses justice. This unveiling consists particularly in revealing the hidden forces that feed off these tests and in unmasking the undeserved advantages benefited from by certain actors. This high level of critique alarms those responsible for the institutions of capitalism and, first and foremost, the bosses, acutely concerned with the "crisis of authority" and the "refusal to work in firms," in particular amongst the youth.

According to this model, in the 1960's, social injustices led to a rise in a critique against capitalism, which eventually produced a crisis, with workers and intellectuals going on strike and rioting. Eventually, capitalism responded to this critique, giving rise to a new spirit of capitalism which remedied issues or at least mollified critics.

Today we live the credit card dream. In America there have been relatively few recent riots or strikes. Yet in the absence of a strong external critique, capitalism is now undergoing a drastic shift, we are entering a new "spirit of capitalism". The change is not in response to a rise in a social or artistic critique, but rather it has come from within, from the mortgage and finance crisis. The media blames the current crisis on "toxic" debt, invoking a metaphor of capitalism as a body that has ingested a poison, and whose immune system is responding to internal attack.

If capitalism is capable of enormous change from within, what does this say about Boltanksi's suggestion that it responds to external critique? At first glance, we could argue that the new spirit in capitalism follows a different model from the 1960's. However, let's imagine for a moment that the economy continues a downwards spiral. We can expect civil unrest and strikes will follow, aimed at "unmasking the undeserved advantages benefited from by certain actors." Would these future actions be critique to which capitalism responds, or simply the side effect of ingested toxins? The problem is that neither answer reveals the full picture.

In fairness to Boltanski, he recognizes that capitalism and critique are mutually imbricated, that their relationship is complex. At the same time, I suspect that many who read Boltanski and Chiapelle will take their notions of social and artistic critique literally, as a kind of cause-and-effect explanation of the relationship between capitalism and critique. This narrative is appealing precisely because it suggests critique can have a direct effect.

For my part, I don't believe critique and outcome ever have an easy relationship. I look forward to seeing how Boltanski and Eve Chiapelle theorize the forth spirit of capitalism.

Celeste Prize 09

This just arrived in my inbox:

A new international contemporary art prize in which artists decide who wins the prize money!

40,000 Euro prizes in 5 prize categories: Painting, Photography & Digital Graphics, Installation & Sculpture, Video & Animation, and Live Media.

Final exhibitions and awards ceremony in Berlin, Germany, end-September 2009 at the Alte AEG Fabrik, 5 Voltastrasse.

The 46 finalist artists are chosen by a panel of international art critics: Mark Gisbourne, Adrienne Goehler, and Victoria Lu, while Live Media artists are selected by Claudio Sinatti and a panel of consultants with specific experience in audiovisual performance.

Deadline for prize entries: 30 June 2009 (launched 23 December 2008)

Celeste Prize is organised by non-profit cultural associations in Italy and Germany: Associazione Culturale L'Albero Celeste and Celeste e.V. Both associations were founded by Steven Music, who has organised similar artist-led prizes in Germany, Italy and the UK since 2004.

www.celesteprize.com

The Berlin jurists express some excitement about the idea of artists voting for artists in this competition:

"It is a charming idea to as it were revivify the idea of a final outcome of 'artist(s) choosing artist(s)', and is reminiscent of the traditional idea of artistic body of 'Societies of Artists', such as that which formed the Salon d'Automne of Paris, in 1906."

This reminds me of a proposal I floated at a large corporation a few years back. Once a year the company gave review scores to each employee. The scoring was conducted in closed-door meetings between managers. I proposed an alternative approach - give employees a number of "votes" they can allocate using an online form to members of the their team, and base review scores on these votes.

Voting systems offer some advantages over the horse-trading and nepotism of closed-door meetings. Of course, democratic-seeming voting system are hard to operate fairly in practice. They also favor those who are popular and good at networking. Hard workers who spend their time working solo are unlikely to do well in such a system.

In a company-wide review process, I believe voting has a place. Communication skills and networking are valued assets in a company. But in art, popularity votes miss the point. They shift the focus from the art to the social abilities of the artist.

Perhaps online art voting could be conducted "blind", i.e. with the names of the artists withheld from the website. However, even then, artists with broad social networks would simply email their friends saying "vote for entry 57." There is no easy way to address this in a public vote.

A second limitation of web voting is that viewers cannot experience the actual artwork, only a small imitation of it reproduced on their screen. This favors images which have dramatic impact when reproduced at small size. Works that rely on more subtle affective qualities will do poorly in this context.

The Celeste Prize recognizes many of these issues. The web-based vote is used to include works in the Celeste exhibition, but the shortlist of finalists for the prize money is selected by a group of "expert" panelists. This selection falls back on the traditional closed-door meetings, with the associated challenges of nepotism and horse trading ("you can have this artist if I can have that artist"). Clearly, the jurors are more likely to pick people who they already know. With Celesete, though, there in an interesting twist. The panel selects 46 finalists, and then those finalists themselves select the final winners, in a vote held at the exhibition, after they have seen the artworks. This is a good compromise.

But there is a kicker. €50 per artist! That's how much you pay if you want to submit work. That's more than twice what competitions like the John Moores prize charge, and goes beyond any definition of an "administration charge."

Poof. Any lofty claims the jurors make about being "an accessible entry without barries" go up in smoke. The jurors say "Celeste has de-formalised things and extinguished many of the stultifying aspects of traditional art prize administration." If they really believe €50 is not stultifying, they have lost touch with artists. The jurors should not be so self-congratulatory about using this form of income redistribution amongst artists already strapped for cash.

Critical thinking in education

Over the new year I went to a party and met Andrew, a distinguished intellectual and teacher. Our conversation turned to education.

I casually remarked that schools are good at teaching facts and figures. But, in this test-score driven system, they do a poor job teaching critical thinking.

Poppycock, responded Andrew. Critical thinking is overrated. Everyone in education says critical thinking is important. Its so easy to say, nobody would disagree with you. But it is a platitude. What does it really mean to teach critical thinking.

I took the bait. Critical thinking means knowing what an argument is, being able to break an argument into its constituent claims, then being able to analyze those claims. It means recognizing the difference between reason and rhetoric. This is what is not taught. For example, Obama in his speech in Berlin said "because of these aspirations all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin." That was a powerful moment because it clearly connected to Kennedy, and his "I am a Berliner" statement. Obama was updating that concept, broadening the idea. Rather than declaring his own unity with Berlin, he was saying, we are, all of us, Berliners. The historical linkage to Kennedy is what gave his statement rhetorical force. But the statement is actually assimilationist, it erases difference. And of course it isn't true. If I turned up in Berlin and said "because of my aspirations I am a Berliner" they wouldn't hand over citizenship papers. We are so easily persuaded by things that aren't true - recognizing this requires critical thinking.

Yes. But the voters of this country didn't need classes in critical thinking to know to vote for Obama. They figured it out on their own. Thinking, yes, we need thinking. But don't applying your elitist ideals to everyone.

So what would you suggest instead. If we agree that teaching just facts and figures is not enough, what is needed?

Me? I'm just a curious bystander. I watch the world go by. I write articles. I don't need to prescribe anything.

...

Of course, afterwards I wanted to point out that Andrew was, himself, using the tools of critical thinking to construct an argument.

But something in his words stuck. As Obama prepares to make his inaugural address, I'm still pondering whether critical thinking is overrated.

Puppet Month!

Disfarmer, photo by Dan Hurlin

I love a good puppet show (and a certain puppeteer). Which means I feel fortunate to live in New York, which has a thriving adult puppet scene, with some of the best performers anywhere. January promises a crazy great lineup. If you haven't seen a puppet show recently, check one of the following out:

Jan 7 - Jan 11 Labapalooza at St Ann's Warehouse link

Jan 3 - Feb 4 Culturemart at Here Arts Center link

Jan 27 - Feb 8 Disfarmer at St Ann's Warehouse link

Feb 6 - Feb 8 Trio Molemo at Here Arts Center link

Feb 4 - Feb 10 Dark Space at Chashama link

Happy 2009

<3

link

Problems with Freelancers Union Healthcare

I signed up with Freelancers Union for healthcare in October, after several days comparing plans and filling out forms, so I was dismayed when they announced in November that they were changing all of their health plans come January to a new health provider. That meant more research.

Who is this new health provider? Freelancers Insurance Company, a new independent company setup by, you guessed it, Freelancers Union. As the website explains:

Freelancers Insurance Company (FIC) is a for-profit insurance company that provides health insurance solely to the eligible New York-based members of Freelancers Union, a nonprofit membership organization, and to those members’ dependents.

The new plans offered by FIC not only cost more than the old plans, they also cover less in return. And in all of the hubristic email from FU about the change, nowhere did CEO Sara Horowitz explain how a non-profit union operating its own for-profit health insurance company can be anything other than a conflict of interests. How can the CEO of a health insurance company also in good faith be the head of the non-profit organization that is its sole source of clients?

As if to demonstrate this, in its first act in this new relationship, FU created a transition system which penalized members who did not switch to the new plans promptly - by requiring payment of an additional two months in advance. This move benefitted FIC but cannot have helped members already stressed by the transition.

If the new plans had started out no more expensive than the old plans, and if members had been given a choice to stay with their old plan for a longer grace period, this would have demonstrated that FU still put its members ahead of profits - and I would have made the transition to the new plans. Instead, I felt FU was strong-arming its members to make a choice that many didn't want. The only option was to leave.

I now get my healthcare from Fractured Atlas, a non-profit group aimed towards artists that has no pretensions of being a health insurance carrier.

The NYTimes article glosses these issues as the "grumblings" of a few members. Reading the members-only Forums at Freelancers, it is clear that the frustrations at Freelancers Union are much deeper. I will not return to Freelancers Union unless it offers health plans besides those carried at FIC.

Polaroid in the icebox

Polaroid has been at the heart of many amazing projects (like this one). They cease production tomorrow. I presume I'm not the only one who stashed away a couple of boxes. Won't last long.

On Artistic Research

I'll admit, James Ryerson's obit of David Foster Wallace influenced me here...

Recently I have been researching "artistic research." I wanted to understand the motivations behind artistic research, as well as the difference between artistic research, art and research.

So far, I've identified three main reasons why an academic institution might be interested in artistic research. They are:

1. To prove art ≠ art0, where art is the set of all things that could be described under the label "art", and art0 is the set of art worth consideration in an academic context (not to be confused with W, i.e. Worthy art, or "W").

2. As a way of maximizing $$ = $a + $r, where $$ is the total amount of funds raised by an academic institution, $a is the amount raised for "art" activities, and $r is the amount raised for "research", given that C$a < C$r , for all known countries C. In this equation, confusion over the new factor $ar ("artistic research") between $a and $r is expected to improve $$.

3. As a way of optimizing s + T^s where s is the total number of students, T is the total number of teachers, and T^s expresses the condition that the Teachers be more qualified than the students.

From an artist's perspective, I initially modeled the desire for artistic research as a complex nonlinear formula involving Egg (a Freudian identifier), Cds (desire to spend time alone in a studio listening to music, aka the cave-dwellers coefficient), Pfame (the probability of achieving fame), and Pimportant (the probably of actually doing something important). However, after consideration, I realized in nearly all cases the much simpler factor Nmfa/Nphd dominates, where Nmfa is the number of artists with MFAs, now nearing infinity, and Nphd, the number of artists with PhDs, much closer to zero.

What is curious is that most research papers on art research ignore these compelling pragmatic arguments. Instead they focus on higher level merit claims which, when analyzed closely, reduce to claim art = art research. I have yet to identify any paper which shows how "artistic research" is significantly different from "art", excluding the pragmatics listed above. In other words, in all cases, good art is directly correlated with good artistic research.

On the other hand, there are examples of a worrying alternative: good artistic research can sometimes lead to poor art. In creating the compound formulation Art+Research, it seems some students may become distracted by R, and forget that the goal is to prove the equation A=A+R. This is a topic worth further investigation.

New School in Exile

I am impressed by this student movement - raising awareness through direct action. link

Since...

Since the recession, more
Stretch limos in front of Lombardi's Pizza.