Michel Journiac's Contract from 1974

Georgy Ostretsov at the Venice Biennale

Artout's Gosha Ostretsov represents Russia at the 53rd Venice Biennale:
http://vernissage.tv/blog/2009/07/24/victory-over-the-future-russian-pavilion-53rd-venice-biennale-2009/

Mark Boswell and Anton Koslov Mayr at Jason Rulnick Gallery

Opening night of "UN is Deacdent and Depraved" at Jason Rulnick Gallery in New York on May 21, 2009

Artout's Georgy (Gosha) Ostretsov scores on Volta

The Art Newspaper, 6-8, March 2008

ARTOUT at Bridge Art Fair in NY, March 5-8, 2009

Mike Rimbaud

Mark Boswell

Sena Yoon

Per Platou


Per Platou, Sena Yoon, Mike Rimbaud

Michael Workman, organizer of Bridge with Per Platou, Mark Boswell, Mike Rimbaud

Artout Escort Service was a special feature event during Bridge Art Fair. Considering that this was Artout's first collective public event, it was an unconditional success. We were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal as the new model of art, and Flavorewire.com called us a "noteworthy programme" . And we had many new applicants who want to participate in the project.


Per Platou with two hot admirers

Artout's good friend, curator Olga Kopenkina

Per Platou and a client




Visitor listening to Pearl & John's album

Kenny Scharf on art whoring

From The Art Newspaper, 6-8 March 2008

Stephen Shanabrook joins Artout

American artist Stephen Shanabrook joined Artout project as its newest particpant! Stephen is now a part of Artout's NY crew.

ARTOUT's New Participant

Artout is proud to welcome SENA YOON of the ROYAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS in Antwerp, as its newest participant!

Artout at Bridge/Armory

ARTOUT is participating in BRIDGE ART FAIR in New York, March 5-8, 2009

Eric Pougeau in Nice, 7 Feb. to 18 Apr. 2009

Artout's Elena Kovylina at the Lens Politica festival in Helsinki November 19–23, 2008-10-2

Elena Kovylina
Dying Swans
Russian video and performance artist Elena Kovylina’s video installation Dying Swans deals with the concepts of a national community and the unconscious identity. In the era of the Soviet Union, after the death of Stalin, it was a tradition in the Soviet to show Tschaikovsky’s Swan Lake every time an exalted statesman passed away. According to Kovylina, Russia hasn’t succeeded in finding equally powerful cultural characteristics after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nowadays, the tacky consumption craze of the newly rich is the most visible form of Russianness; the same can be said of the rest of the world. In the heyday of the new, hard liberalistic values funding for the arts is scant. Reporters, writers, and artists do not dare to express hemselves, fearing serious implications.

During the past ten years approximately 200 Russian reporters have been murdered or have disappeared – in Finland the best-known case probably being Anna Politkovskaja. Dying Swans is Kovylina’s interpretation of Tschaikovsky’s ballet, and a homage to all these reporters. Soviet Union symbolism meets oday’s brutal political reality in the video installation, the meeting taking its form in a charged dance. Open social criticism in art is rare in Russia. Kovylina is one of the few artists who dare to take a stand, to both the polemical national and international issues. Dying Swans has been exhibited in Paris, but in the artist’s hometown the gallery owners have not dared to show it.
Minna Långström
20.11.-30.11. / Open Mon-Sun 11-18, Free Entrance / Kaiku Galleria & Kuvataid

http://www.lenspolitica.net/

Artout in FLASH ART

Artout full page ad just appeared in October/November issue of Flash Art. Design by Mark Boswell.

Mark Boswell at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Oct.14 2008

Our participants at the MoMA

New Artout Participant

Artout Projects welcomes Susi Krautgartner, an Austrian artist, who recently joined our project!

OUR FULL SUPPORT TO STEVE KURTZ

.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 11, 2008

CONTACTS:
Email: media@caedefensefund.org
Dr. Steven J. Kurtz: (716) 812-2968
Lucia Sommer, CAE Defense Fund: (716) 359-3061
Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center: (716) 854-1694

ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal Kurtz Speaks about Four-Year Ordeal

Buffalo, NY--Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government's entire indictment against Dr. Kurtz as "insufficient on its face." This means that even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept as "fact") were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara's ruling and will not seek any new charges against Kurtz.

For over a decade, cultural institutions worldwide have hosted Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects, which use common science materials to examine issues surrounding the new biotechnologies. In 2004 the Department of Justice alleged that Dr. Kurtz had schemed with colleague Dr. Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to illegally acquire two harmless bacteria cultures for use in one of those projects. The Justice Department further alleged that the transfer of the material from Ferrell to Kurtz broke a material transfer agreement, thus constituting mail fraud.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was increased from five years to twenty years in prison.

Dr. Kurtz has been fighting the charges ever since. In October 2007, Dr. Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from continuing the struggle.

KURTZ SUMS UP END OF FOUR-YEAR NIGHTMARE

Finally vindicated after four years of struggle, Kurtz, asked for a statement, responded stoically: "I don't have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it is sworn to protect?"

Said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria, "I am glad an innocent man has been vindicated. Steve Kurtz stared in the face of the federal government and a twenty-year prison term and never flinched, because he believes in his work and his actions were those of a completely innocent man. Clients like him are a blessing, and although I have had many important victories, this one
stands at the top of the list."

As coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, a group organized to support Kurtz from the beginning of the case, Lucia Sommer sees the end of the prosecution as bittersweet, and like Kurtz, is thoughtful about the broader significance of the case: "This ruling is the best possible ending to a horrible ordeal--but we are mindful of numerous cases still pending, and the grave injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration following 9/11. This case was part of a larger picture, in which law enforcement was given expanded powers. In this instance, the Bush administration was unsuccessful in its attempt to erode Americans' constitutional rights."

Referring to the international outcry the case provoked, involving fundraisers and protests held on four continents, Sommer said, "The government has unlimited resources to bring and prosecute these kinds of charges, but the accused often don't have any resources to defend themselves. This victory could never have happened without the activism of thousands of people. Supporters protested, vocally opposed the prosecution, and refused to let it go on in silence. And without their efforts at fundraising, Kurtz and Ferrell would not have been able to defend themselves from these false accusations."


The Department of Justice brought the charges in spite of the fact that the alleged "victims of fraud"--American Type Culture Collection and the University of Pittsburgh--never filed any charges or complained of any wrongdoing, and the fact that in bringing the charges the Department of Justice was acting completely outside its own Prosecution Policy Relating to Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud (http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm).


For more information and extensive documentation, including the Judge's dismissal, please visit: http://caedefensefund.org

FROM THE EDITORS OF THIS BLOG: Steve Kurtz is a supporter of ARTOUT

National Front against Artout participant

Artout members are stirring controversy again. This time Eric Pougeau’s work was labeled "disgusting" by France’s extreme-right National Front Deputy Francoise Grolet. Grolet referred to Pougeau's work exposed in the city of Metz, in a group show “Unfamily” and demanded the regional contemporary art center to remove Eric's pieces. We express our complete and unconditional solidarity and support for Eric Pougeau and fully condemn any attempt to impose artistic censorship and limit the freedom of expression by the self-appointed guardians of public morals. The days of "Degenerate Art" and its exhibitors had long gone.

Foto Fictions

Per Platou and Mark Boswell, at the openning of Photo Fictions, Showcave Gallery, Los Angeles, 26 April 2008

Artout and Friends rock LA!

Artout and friends after a champaign dinner in Dresden Room, Los Angeles, April 25, 2008

Evgeny Nikitine at the Paris Opera

Artout participant Evgeny Nikitin is singing at the Paris Opera Apri 10 through May 6, the Prisoner by Luigi Dallapiccola, directed by Lluis Pasqual, with Rosalind Plowright and Chris Merritt.
Photo curtesy Opera de Paris.

ARTOUT IS GROWING

We are proud to welcome Staš Kleindienst and Sebastjan Leban, our art colleagues from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design as the latest addition to the Artout Escort Service family!

Mark Boswell and Anton Koslov at the Showcave Gallery in L.A.

Mark Boswell and Anton Koslov (Mayr) participate in a group show Photo Fictions: New Narrative Photography at the Showcave Gallery in Los Angleles. The show opens on April 26. The show is curated by Rodney Archer.

www.showcave.org

Eric Pougeau, part of the Freakshow.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY ARTOUT PROJECT

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.