Eric Pougeau at the Louisiana Hotel

Eric Pougeau has a new gallery - Eva Hober in Paris. Eric is also participating in the CURATING CONTEST show at the Hotel la Louisiane. The show is organized by Olivier Robert gallery at 60 rue de Seine 75006 Paris from Dec. 12 to Dec. 22 décembre 2007. The openning is on Dec.12. At 10 PM Eric will perform with Pearl & John.


Eric Pougeau piece that will be presented at the show.

ARTOUT in the news in Russia

AFISHA, Moscow society & entertainment magazine rented Georgy Ostretsov using Artout and run a five-page account of the experience in its December (n.27) issue.

Арт кромешный
Текст: Светлана Репина
В Москве появилась контора Artout, работающая как служба эскорта. Только вместо девушек и секса Artout предоставляет клиентам художников, писателей и оперных певцов. «Афиша» решила разобраться в происходящем и заказала себе на целый день художника Георгия Острецова

Кафе «Жан-Жак»
В «Жан-Жаке» я встречаюсь с художником Гошей Острецовым — он давно и вполне успешно проводит свои перформансы в Европе, а в России его выставляет Марат Гельман. Нам предстоит провести вместе целый день. И я выступаю в роли клиента — хочу, чтобы он нарисовал мне картину и устроил какую-нибудь культурную программу. Кстати, Гошин час по прайсу Artout стоит 400 долларов. «Это оплата сервис-коммуникации, — рассуждает художник. — Очень смелый проект, поэтому мы можем относиться к нему благосклонно. Мне важно отобразить эпоху, создать прецедент нового языка, а деньги потом придут. Разве у искусства задача — заработать деньги?» — «А представь, какой-нибудь русский медведь из Уренгоя, — начинаю я, — ну там, я не знаю, он устал от жизни, ему все надоело, теперь он жаждет искусства, но в своем понимании…» — «Какой медведь, а-а, человек, — перебивает он. — Да, знаю таких, медведицы тоже есть, и много. Всяким богатым папикам прикольно иметь в собственной компании художников. Потом еще кино про них снимать. Например, они едут в путешествие и берут художников, чтобы поднять статус путешествия, а художники ведь любят халяву. Это не меценатство, они именно берут художника, чтобы развлекаться: им нужен умный человек в компании. Это существует. Тот же Кулик недавно в Монголию ездил». Интересуюсь у Гоши нашей культурной программой, но больше всего меня волнует — что мы будем рисовать. Почему-то предлагаю нарисовать купюру 500 евро. Гоша отказывается: «Давай все-таки создадим произведение искусства». — «Отлично, — говорю. — Только что мы будем рисовать? Не Путина же…» — «А давай мадам Путину».

«Винзавод»
В просветительских целях мы отправляемся на «Винзавод», побродить по выставкам и там же нарисовать «Портрет первой леди» (из соображений политкорректности мы решили назвать картину так). Для начала зашли к Гельману — Гоша хотел показать свои работы, но их уже сняли и вот-вот повесят художества Мэрилина Мэнсона. Идем в соседнее помещение, что-то вроде склада-запасника, и разглядываем творения музыканта. «Мэнсон — это курьез, — комментирует Острецов. — Как рисунки Андрея Макаревича. В принципе, никому не запрещено мазюкать. А вообще это какие-то дети нерожденные, да?»

Идем дальше. Заходим во все попадающиеся на пути галереи. В Photographer.ru мы встречаем местного начальника Безукладникова и сообщаем, что собираемся рисовать первую леди. «Я думаю, потом вам нужно продать этот портрет Путину, — с серьезным выражением лица заявляет Андрей. — Ну когда он выйдет на пенсию, займется бизнесом и коллекционированием».

Далее по плану выставка, организованная журналом «Арт-хроника», под сомнительным названием «Премия Кандинского» (Гоша говорит, что в Польше уже есть такая премия и давно). «Чей это был отбор — непонятно. А вот, кстати, Врубель, — кивает Гоша на гигантского гопника. — Это выставлялось недавно в Галерее Гельмана».

Гоша комментирует практически каждый объект на выставке — скульптуры, анимации, картины. Мы приходим к выводу, что все сделано очень качественно, точно выверено. Но ничего нового и сверхвыдающегося мы не обнаружили. «Только время сможет определить — искусство это или нет. Как говорил Маяковский, зайдите ко мне через 200 лет. Время рисует за человека. Вот, например, смотри, Сергей Сайгон — молодой художник, взял и начал работать под Костю Латышева. Костя уже давно в этой стилистике работает. — Мы проходим мимо экрана с очередной тридэшной анимацией. — И разницы-то нет. Многие начинают работать под кого-то. Простому человеку сложно отличить рыночное искусство от музейного. Нужно быть очень серьезным специалистом. Да, я отличаю. У меня, как у художника, есть очень четкое мнение. Но это мнение может со временем меняться — сейчас мне нравится, а потом может разонравиться».

У местных граффитчиков Гоша раздобыл ключи от одной из мастерских — там мы и будем рисовать. Из соседнего помещения раздаются «Яблони в цвету» — там Алексей Калима со своей беременной женой разгребают завал после вчерашнего открытия «Премии Кандинского». «Да, угорели вчера, — сообщает он нам, убирая с прохода прямоугольную ржавую штуку с красной надписью «Кислота». — А зачем вам рисовать первую леди, лучше сделать плакат и идти на демонстрацию, сегодня ж 7 ноября, поздравляю, кстати. Вот, кстати, хачапури, угощайтесь». После хачапури мы закрываемся в нашей каморке, берем холст метр на метр, и Гоша разводит краски.

«Мне очень нравится серебряный фон, давай сделаем. Потому что золотой означал бы святость. Но серебряный тоже — такая народная дешевая позолота», — предлагает Гоша. Я, в свою очередь, настаиваю на зеленом: первая леди на пленэре. Мне хочется изобразить ее на лугу. «Да, конечно, у нас же совместное творчество, — соглашается Гоша. — Опять же, «Завтрак на траве», да, точно! Делим полотно на две ровные части — серебряный верх и зеленый низ. Нам же нужна перспектива. Мадам Путина — это прежде всего собирательный образ. Образ дамы, властительницы, первой леди, высшей женственности. А я прежде всего — русский художник, поэтому стараюсь воплощать в своем творчестве русскую традицию. Сейчас ты увидишь и элементы Серова, и Репина, а также дымковской игрушки — в этом нет ничего зазорного: наши женщины похожи на матрешек…»

Мы заканчиваем грунтовать. Получается почти Куинджи с его лунным светом. «Ну вот, теперь можно и подпись ставить», — смеется Острецов.

Я нахожу на столе среди дисков, карандашей и красок детскую книжку Сутеева и начинаю читать вслух рассказ про гриб и лягушку, в это время Гоша изображает силуэт женщины со сложенными, как у Моны Лизы, руками. Через несколько секунд появляются декольте, шляпка, манжеты и грудь. Я предлагаю нарисовать горящую избу и красного коня — как символ настоящей русской женщины. «Ты меня заставила делать такую живопись, м-да. Но мы не отчаиваемся», — на самом деле Гоша явно получает удовольствие от нашей импровизации.

«Заказ художника через Artout — это возможность понять психологию и работу мысли художника, — говорит Острецов, делая трафарет коня. — Возможность попытаться проанализировать мотивы художника. И одновременно задать ему вопросы. Так процесс творчества становится понятнее». Тут для пущего реализма я решаю подрисовать волосы. Гоша дает добро, и я приступаю. При этом немного нервничаю, поскольку рисовать не умею вообще.

«Слушай, я понял, — восклицает Гоша, когда волосы готовы, — ты внесла в картину элемент пластического идиотизма. У тебя, кстати, отличное чувство симметрии. И талант. Ты сделала картину более невменяемой. То, что нужно, — нужно уходить от эстетического, не должно быть легкости, нужно пройти через испытания».

Мы включаем радио, оно настроено на волну радио «Дача». «О, — говорит Гоша, — как раз лубочная музыка. У нее курносый нос, нет?» Красные кони готовы, в голове изба горит. Вдруг Гоша неожиданно одним махом делает аэрозолем зеленую маску. Теперь все вроде как на месте — художник доволен.

«Можно ставить подпись. Вместе подписываемся, а?» — смеется Гоша. Но я хочу, чтобы он подписывал картину без меня. Упаковав «Путину» в целлофан и перевязав ее белым скотчем, мы отправляемся выпить за нас всех, а главное, за искусство в кафе «Маяк». Едем на метро.

Московский метрополитен
В моих руках «Первая леди», Гоша стоит рядом и рассуждает о том, что в нашем обществе потребления нет культуры производства: «Вот когда люди начнут покупать заводы, чтобы создавать там музеи, тогда можно говорить уже о штучных произведениях и об их потреблении. А у нас за последние 10 лет ничего не изменилось — холст и масло, все! Даже графика не ценится: бумагу не считают произведением искусства».

Кафе «Маяк»
В «Маяке» мы ждем заказанного, и Гоша показывает мне фотографии своего недавнего перформанса в Париже. В одной из галерей буржуазного района Марэ он выступил так: снял вывеску, вместо нее повесил свою — «Салон красоты». Сделал на фасаде несколько трафаретных надписей: «Здесь хорошо вые…анные сучки», «Каждый художник должен знать, где его миска с едой», «Также е…ем пидорасов в жопу».

Я распаковываю «Путину» и предлагаю Гоше устроить аукцион и заработать. «Я против аукционов при жизни, умру — пожалуйста». — «Тогда нужно оценить картину, знаешь, для проформы», — говорю я. Оказывается, что за соседним столиком сидят-выпивают знакомые кураторы — Алексей Новоселов из Московского музея современного искусства на Петровке и Алена Лапина из галереи «Рефлекс». После нескольких виски и долгих переговоров они оценили картину в 15 тысяч евро. «Первоначальная цена, да, а за двенадцать точно возьмут», — обнадежила меня Алена.

На следующий день я решила самостоятельно найти покупателя. Изучив записную книжку, позвонила Марату Гельману. «Знаете, мне для драматургии репортажа было бы здорово продать картину, ну вы понимаете…» — говорю я. «Да, понимаю, что у вас в голове, — ответил мне Марат. — Но я сотрудничаю лично с Гошей, поэтому давайте через него или вместе с ним».

Звоню Игорю Маркину. У него в коллекции Острецова нет и в ближайшее время не запланировано. В общем, феерического финала не получилось, зато теперь «Портрет первой леди» Георгия Острецова висит у меня дома.
http://www.afisha.ru/article/55/

Dana Wyse joins ARTOUT

Per Platou in Paris

Per Platou speaking at Paris/Berlin round table, Paris/Berlin Festival, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 1-12-2007

The Geopolitics of Pimping

By Suely Rolnik
Translated by Brian Holmes

Birth of a Flexible Subjectivity

Until the early 1960s we lived beneath a disciplinary Fordist regime that reached its height in the “American way of life” triumphant in the postwar period, when a politics of identity reigned in subjectivity, along with a rejection of the resonant body. These two aspects are in fact inseparable, because only to the extent that we anesthetize our vulnerability can we maintain a stable image of ourselves and the other, that is, our supposed identities. Without this anesthesia, we are constantly deterritorialized and led to reconfigure the outlines of our selves and our territories of existence. Until the early 1960s, the creative imagination operated mainly by sneaking away to the fringes. That period came to an end in the course of 1960s-70s as a result of cultural movements that problematized the governing regime of the time, calling for “l'imagination au pouvoir.” Those movements brought the dominant mode of subjectivation into crisis, and it soon collapsed along with the entire structure of the Victorian family at its Hollywood apogee – a structure which had been fundamental for the regime whose hegemony began to fade at that moment. A “flexible subjectivity”[5] was then created, accompanied by radical experimentation with modes of existence and cultural creation which shattered the “bourgeois” lifestyle at its politics of desire, with its logic of identity, its relation to otherness and its culture. In the resulting “counter-culture,” as it was called, forms were created to express that which was indicated by the resonant body affected by the otherness of the world, at grips with the problematics of its time. The forms thus created tend to transmit subjectivity’s incorporation of the forces that shake up the environment and deterritorialize it. The advent of such forms is inseparable from a becoming-other of the self, but also of the environment. It can be said that the creation of these new territories has to do with public life, in the strong sense of the phrase: the collective construction of reality moved by the tensions that destabilize the reigning cartographies, as these affect the body of each person singularly, and as they are expressed on the basis of that singular affect. In other words, what each person express is the current state of the world – its meaning, but also and mainly, its lacks of meaning – as it presents itself within the body. So, the singular expression of each person participates in the endless tracing of a necessarily collective cartography.

Today these transformations have consolidated themselves. The scenario of our times is completely different: we are no longer beneath the regime of identity, the politics of subjectivation is no longer the same. We all now have available a flexible and processual subjectivity as instituted by the counter-cultural movements, and our force of creation in its experimental freedom is not only favorably viewed and welcomed, but is even stimulated, celebrated and frequently glamorized. However, in all this there is a “but,” which is hardly negligible. In the present, the most common destiny of flexible subjectivity and of the freedom of creation that accompanies it is not the invention of forms of expression motivated by an attention to sensations that signal the effects of the other’s existence within our resonant body. What guides us in this creation of territories for our post-Fordist flexibility is an almost hypnotic identification with the images of the world broadcast by advertising and mass culture.

By offering ready-made territories to subjectivities rendered fragile by deterritorialization, these images tend to soothe their unrest, thus contributing to the deafness of their resonant body, and therefore to its invulnerability to the affects of the time that are presented within it. But that may not be the most deadly aspect of this politics of subjectivation, which instead is the very message that such images invariably convey, independently of their style or their target-public. At stake here is the idea that there exist paradises, that these are now in this world and not beyond it, and above all, that certain people have the privilege of inhabiting them. What is more, such images transmit the illusion that we could be one of these VIPs, if we simply invested all our vital energy – our desire, affect, knowledge, intellect, eroticism, imagination, action, etc. – in order to actualize these virtual worlds of signs in our own existence, through the consumption of the objects and services they propose to us.

What we are faced with here is a new élan for the idea of paradise developed by Judeo-Christian religions: the mirage of a smoothed-over, stable life under perfect control. This kind of hallucination has its origin in the refusal of one’s vulnerability to the other and to the deterritorrializing turbulence that he or she provokes; and also in the disdain for fragility that necessarily derives from such an experience. This fragility is nonetheless essential because it indicates the crisis of a certain diagram of sensibility, its modes of expression, its cartographies of meaning. By disdaining fragility, it does not call up the desire for creation anymore; instead it provokes a sentiment of humiliation and shame whose result is the blockage of the vital process. In other words, what the Western idea of a promised paradise amounts to is a refusal of life in its immanent nature as an impulse to continuous processes of creation and differentiation. In its terrestrial version, capital has replaced God in his function as keeper of the promise, and the virtue that makes us worthy of it now becomes consumption: this is what constitutes the fundamental myth of advanced capitalism. In such a context, it is at the very least mistaken to consider that we lack myths today: it is precisely through our belief in this religious myth of neoliberalism, that the image-worlds produced by this regime turn into concrete reality in our own existence.


Flexible Subjectivity Surrenders to its Pimp

In other words, the “cultural” or “cognitive” capitalism that was conceived as a solution to the crisis provoked by the movements of the 1960s-70s absorbed the modes of existence that those movements invented and appropriated their subjective forces, especially that of the creative potential, which at the time was breaking free in social life. The creative potential was in effect put into power, as was called for by those movements. Yet we know now that this rise of the imagination to power is a micropolitical operation that consists in making its potential into the major fuel of an insatiable hypermachine for the production and accumulation of capital – to the point where one can speak of a new working class, which some authors call the “cognitariat.”[6] This kind of pimping of the creative force is what has been transforming the planet into a gigantic marketplace, expanding at an exponential rate, either by including its inhabitants as hyperactive zombies or by excluding them as human trash. In fact, those two opposing poles are interdependent fruits of the same logic; all our destinies unfold between them. This is the world that the imagination creates in the present. As one might expect, the politics of subjectivation and of the relation to the other that predominates in this scenario is extremely impoverished.

Currently, after almost three decades, it is possible to perceive this logic of cognitive capitalism operating within our subjectivity. Yet in the late 1970s, when its installation began, the experimentation that had been carried out collectively in the decades before in order to achieve emancipation from the pattern of Fordist and disciplinary subjectivity was quite difficult to distinguish from its incorporation into the new regime. The consequences of this difficulty are that the cloning of the transformations proposed by those movements was experienced by a great many of their protagonists as a signal of recognition and inclusion: the new regime appeared to be liberating them from the marginality to which they had been confined in the “provincial” world that was now fading away. Dazzled by the rise to power of their transgressive and experimental force of creation which was now thrusting them beneath the glamorizing spotlights of the media, launching them into the world and lining their pockets with dollars, the inventors of the transformations of earlier decades frequently fell into the trap. Many of them surrendered themselves voluntarily to their pimp, becoming the very creators and constructors of the world fabricated by and for the new-style capitalism.

This confusion undoubtedly stems from the politics of desire that characterizes the pimping of subjective and creative forces – a kind of power-relation that is basically exerted through the sorcery of seduction. The seducer conjures up a spellbinding idealization that leads the seduced to identify with the seducer and submit to him: that is to say, to identify with and submit to the aggressor, impelled by an inner desire, in hopes of being recognized and admitted into the seducer’s world. Only recently has this situation become conscious, which tends to break the spell. This transpires in the different strategies of individual and collective resistance that have been accumulating over the last few years, particularly through the initiative of a new generation which does not in any way identify with the proposed model of existence and understands the trick that has been played. It is clear that artistic practices – through their very nature as expressions of the problematics of the present as they flow through the artist’s body – could hardly remain indifferent to this movement. On the contrary, it is exactly for this reason that these questions emerged in art from the early 1990s onward, as mentioned at the outset. Using different procedures, these strategies have been carrying out an exodus from the minefield stretching between the opposite and complementary figures of luxury and trash subjectivity, the field in which human destinies are confined in the world of globalized capitalism. Amidst this exodus, other kinds of worlds are being created.

From
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/1106/rolnik/en

New ARTOUT Representative in Italy.

Sara Vanacci, art critic and curator, joins Artout as its Italian representative. Sara gradauted from the University of Pisa and is currently residing in Prato where she works with various galleries and art fairs.

Elena Kovylina joins ARTOUT

ARTOUT team welcomes Elena Kovylina, a well-known performannce artist who has recently joined the ARTOUT Project. Elena is currently working in Paris.

Roundtable discussion in Paris

Published by PNEK

It is now confirmed that Per Platou will participate in one or more roundtable discussions at Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, taking place at the Centre Pompidou, the musée national du Jeu de Paume, the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art centre and other locations at the end of November (Nov.22 - Dec.1)

The debates in this years edition will focus on issues in art programming between new cinema and contemporary art - film, video, installation and net art.

Participants will be curators, artistic directors and programmers from European and extra-European national museums, contemporary art centers and biennales, in the fields of contemporary cinema, video and new media. The presence of these participants in Paris, each of them having an expert view on cultural and contemporary art issues, is of genuine interest.

The debates that will be proposed have a real stake : presenting a panorama of preoccupations and tracks explored in each country to give an account of this contemporary practices, and to accompany them, from the criticism side as well as from the side of audiences and artists themselves. The issues approached in each round table are subject to a preparation according to the specific participants of each round table, to their centers of interests and their artistic and professional preoccupations.

ARTOUT'S Mike Rimbaud is showing his work

Nov.6 - Dec. 11

Abron's Art Cente,
466, Grand Street,
NY NY, 10002

Georgy Ostretsov, performing in Paris

24 Oct. 2007
Photos Curtesy Galerie RABOUAN MOUSSION, Paris 2007

The Yes Men support Artout.

Andy Bichlbaum, artist, activist and founder of The Yes Men expressed his support for the Artout Project. So did Nic Nicosia, Jens Haaning, Steven Kurtz, Sarkis, Judith Hopf, Dmitry M. Shostakovich and many others. Thank you to all of you.

ARTOUT participant Alexander Kosolapov

Artout participant Alexander Kosolapov in front of his sculpture at the openning of Sotz-Art show, Maison Rouge, Paris, 19 October 2007

New ARTOUT participant

ARTOUT is proud to welcome its new participant Georgy (Gosha) Ostretsov. The multi-media artist Georgy Ostretsov has worked in the Moscow art scene since the mid-1980s, when he advanced the so-called “man style” (chelovek-stil') of avant-garde fashion, and participated in projects of the Detskii Sad group. At that time he also formed a partnership with the artist and komiksist Georgii “Zhora” Litichevskii, one of the very few Russian artists to utilize comics iconography in his work as early as the 1970s. They called themselves “George & George” a creative partnership that remains active to this day. From 1988-1998 Ostretsov lived in Paris, working for the fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. He also took part in projects by Jean Paul Gautier and Luc Besson. Georgy is currently participating in the Sots-Art show at the Maison Rouge foundation in Paris.

Regarding our pricing

We are cheap in comparison to these guys:

Mariah Carey private performance - $1,000,000
Usher private performance - $1,000,000
Dr. Phil speech - $750,000 - $1,000,000
Nicole Kidman party appearance - $500,000 + jet
Jessica Simpson private performance - $400,000
Scarlett Johansson party appearance - $200,000
Demi Moore party appearance - $200,000
Nick Lachey party appearance - $100,000 (negotiable)
Pam Anderson party appearance - $75,000 - $250,000
Adrian Grenier private performance with band - $35,000
Tara Reid party appearance - $10,000 - $50,000.

Source: http://www.hollyscoop.com/

On Artout and Economy

ARTOUT is an experimental art service that allows those (with the financial means) to spend time with an artist. To get into their minds and hear first hand what they believe and how they represent it through their work. A novel idea, but not an insane one. Like it or not, we are in the thick of capitalism, which means that any and everything we as consumers can conjure up to ‘need’ have and will be addressed and cured. But it’s not just the collectors and lovers of art that will benefit from such a service. Artists too, being sales people in their own right, can also gain perspective in the mysteries of art through the lens of those who adore it. For the artist, art is and outlet for the recreation of the mindful feelings, observances, ideas, and commentaries of society and life. Given the opportunity to see these reflections from another the point of view, that of those who buy it.

The law of the capitalist market with its emphasis on the ever-narrowing specialization of labor and maximization of profits invites artists to reinvent themselves over and over in order to escape the market-imposed limits to their identity. This limited identity confines artists to seek satisfying the ruling class’ demand for the special commodity fetish known as ‘Art’ and reproduce institutionally-defined ideology of culture. In both cases the producer and the consumer of ‘Art’ are limited in their freedom by the traditional modes of material exchange.

We, at ARTOUT, believe that art is an open concept and artistic praxis is the process of becoming that corresponds to the totality of individual temporality. Artistic creativity results from the dialectical relation between the acceptance of the market as the underlying principle of social reality, and the need to escape its imperatives of obedience and consensus; its locus is the individuality of the artist. The artist plays the “messenger” and the “message”, the self-medium that finds its legitimacy through the charismatic negation of conventionality and in the process renegotiates his identity.

We believe that the individuality of the artist is far more significant than the material end-product of his/her labor. As Dimitry Prigov used to say "Artist is more important than his art. Man is more important than the artist." We are extending the limits of the traditional market-model to recognize the artist as the self-defined commodity whose value resides in the immateriality of artist's “creative becoming”. Spending time in the company of the artist is a creative act; it reveals power relations within the existing artist-patron paradigm and leads to the mutual liberation of both artists and art-patrons from the condition of simple material production and accumulation to the next level of the direct creative exchange and immediate human solidarity.

ARTOUT is the first to create such an open forum of exchange between the art producer and the art consumer and help the artists to retake the economic territory that is rightfully their. This is the territory of instant utopia and today we are here to claim it.

By Olivia Wadsworth

Artout Particpant Kate Pendry as Dead Diana.

Kate Pendry, born in London, currently resides in Oslo. Multi-artist/performer. Winner of Best Stage Performance 2003 – National assoc. for Performing Arts (Norway); Woman Of The Year 2003 – Radio Orakel (Oslo).

Trained at Mountview Theatre School (London) and the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain.

Within the electronic art field has exhibited at Kunstnerneshus Oslo, the Melbourne Biennale 99; “Electra 96” at Henie-Onstad Art Centre, the 5th International Biennale in Istanbul, DEAF-Rotterdam; Awarded an honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica ’96 for “sense:less” (w. mork/stenslie/watz)

Curator of “Cunt Club”, an alternative World Women´s Day Celebration including women´s fight club and pornographic embroidery exhibits.

Current solo works include “Sex In The Warzone” and “Marilyn Peepshow” and “Tales From a Wicked Child” - all performance/installations involving a degree of ‘extreme art’, and exhibited internationally.

Currently writes and presents the DDC World News (Dead Diana Corporation) a satirical, maverick weekly radio show on Radio Orakel, Oslo.

Dr. B, an Artout participant

Photo by Rodney Ascher

Staging Cultural Prosperity

by Jon Refsdal Moe

There is general agreement now that culture is capitalism. Whether their value is financial or symbolic, the processes and products of cultural expression are widely acknowledged as submitted to an advanced network of capital transactions. The processes of global capitalism have long since invaded the sphere of artistic production.

Cynical as it may seem, this assertion has never been acknowledged by artists themselves. From the cut-up paintings of the early avant-garde to the degradation of the body in contemporary performance, art has always challenged the ideological concept of its own autonomy: the idea that aesthetics is secluded from the processes of commercial and cultural production. In the early 00’s, the scrutiny of art’s socio-economic and ideological premises that the nineties knew as postmodernism, has led to the development of a new aesthetics, based on a deconstruction of boundaries between aesthetic, political and intellectual experience, and on the consequential cultural interchange between artists, intellectuals and political activists. Be it publications, exhibitions or concrete pieces, traditional institutions of modern art have become vehicles for political as well as aesthetic discussion, allowing these discourses to interweave.

Despite repeated efforts to recycle its political relevance, no similar development can be said to have taken place in European theatre. There is little critical discourse surrounding the traditional institutions, and aesthetic experimentation as well as political discussion is left to off-off companies, operating in the margins of both subsidy and publicity. Theatre in Europe seems not to have undergone the same deconstructive process as that of the visual arts, and one might ask whether theatre is still protected by the modernist illusion of artistic autonomy that once governed the art institution as a whole. The answer to this question is yes, but only insofar as artistic autonomy is a viable currency; an appropriate means to increase theatre’s market potential in the symbolic economy of culture.

Theatre in Europe has never reached the visual arts’ level of aesthetic autonomy. More than artistic presentation, theatre has always been a re-presentation: a more or less pertinent display of something prior to it. For this reason, governing principles of theatre have always been sought beyond the borders of the theatrical event. Theatre’s own worth has been examined only in its ability to conform to an ‘exceeding logic’ ( i.e. a logic that goes beyond the boundaries of the specific discourse in which one is operating). Consequently, there has not been much of an autonomous discourse to deconstruct in theatre.

Historically, theatre has played an important part in the nation building of young countries throughout Europe. And although its ambitions may no longer seem so lofty as establishing a supreme national essence, theatre still holds a primary function in representing national identity. This identity, however, is not an imagined common ground for the citizens of a particular nation, but rather an indicator of the nation’s cultural prosperity, its assets in the circuit of the symbolic economy.

European theatre today works mainly as a provider of symbolic capital, not only to the respective countries in intra-continental competition, but also to Europe itself as a continent and economic union. Through a high level of high culture, the challenges to European identity presented by the culture industry of Asia and the US are kept at bay. As are the challenges raised by contemporary aesthetic and political theory, which have long since left these ideological notions of art and culture behind.

Based on the assumption that commercial interest is an impediment to artistic excellence, theatres throughout Europe are sustained financially as autonomous institutions. However, this simulated autonomy actually becomes destabilised, as theatre simulates its own submission to the market economy!

This tendency that emerged in the early nineties has been central to the cultural politics of small countries like Norway and Denmark. Demands are made of the heavily financed theatre institutions of these countries to exercise a certain amount of hard-headed economic competence, in order that they regain some small share of what they have been given through public subsidy. And so, with a paradoxical twist to classic culture consecration, European theatre simulates market submission, to render its own withdrawal from the market legitimate.

All this has meant that Theatre has become a showcase of successes from other media. It has submitted to the circulation that renders the products of other media as trademarks, and, because it has withdrawn from the same circulation, it is deprived of the possibility of producing similar trademarks of its own. Which might explain last year’s production of Jerry Springer: the Opera at Britain’s Royal National Theatre, and the movie star Emanuelle Seigner playing Hedda Gabler in Paris, not to mention the many state-financed re-stagings of movie blockbusters on national theatres in Scandinavia, such as A Clockwork Orange, The Celebration and even The Full Monty.

Withdrawn from the circulation of cultural capital, theatre is deprived of the discussions governing contemporary aesthetics. Nevertheless, as a result of demands for its economic self-sufficiency, it is submitted to the same circulation. Through this double strategy, European countries maintain their theatres as impotent institutions, without commercial potential, but with strictly commercial boundaries. This mixture of withdrawal and submission ensures that theatre is kept alive as a symbol of cultural prosperity, while a discussion of theatre’s aesthetic, political and socio-economic premises is kept at bay. Now, as this discussion has been crucial to the proceedings of contemporary art, there is good reason to insist that theatre, not least from an aesthetic viewpoint, should be its next object of scrutiny.

Original Artout Participants

Kate Pendry, Serguey Bolmat, Mark Boswell, Petra Groen, Alexander Kosolapov, Yevgeni Nikitin, Peral & John, Per Platou, Eric Pougeau, Mike Rimbaud, Meike Schmidt-Gleim, Ira Waldron, Anthony Zito, Jon Refsdal Moe, Anton Koslov.