I made a remark on this sense after a conversation I witnessed in which the speakers I thought were referring to artists as if they were brands. They were running into problems that they discussed there, derived from this very fact. I pointed it out with the intention of elucidating, but I think my comment might have been taken as hostile. To use the word “brand” in conversations with and about curators seems to be intended always to say that every one of them is a PR commercial bastard. They might be or not such thing, but that wasn’t implied (consciously at least) on my remark.

As a reply I got a question: if “brand” in my comment cannot be just substituted by “author”. I wasn’t ready for an answer.

I just thought “authorship” is coming from inside, while “branding” is something that describes the exterior. Yesterday Agamben came to my help when I was reading The Remnants of Auschwitz.

“Author” originally is who “authorizes”, who gives legitimacy. The author empowers and assumes responsibility on the deed. The author comes after the object, to certificate it and to confirm it.

“Auctor signifies the witness insofar as his testimony always presupposes something -a fact, a thing or a word- that preexist him and whose reality and force must be validated or certified”.

The “brand” gives identity to the event, object, phenomenon, make it belong to a group of things that share some characteristics, one of them might or might not be to have been authorized by the same person. By separating things from the continuum on regard to certain characteristics, it creates their identity.

Does the brand empower the art work? Does the name of an artist assume responsibility of an art work?

I would say that art works cease having author as soon as the artist who takes responsibility stops doing that, by death in most of cases, but also by abandonment or alteration. After the disappearance of the artist as an author only the brand remains. The reason for the brand to exist is to protect value, cultural, intellectual, aesthetical or economic value, whatever gets more important at each time.

We are against products with a price tag finished in 99. We are against the products, the prices and the sellers. A global information strategy involving social networks, voluntaries, grass root media campaigns encouraging people to boycott products with those prices could easily put such pressure on the commercial world that soon all the prices will finish on 98.

These prices are upsetting. It is as if you can read in the mind of the person at the cashier: We put this price just to play with your psychological weakness, and it is easy to see how well it works.

I have the same feeling when I go to galleries and museums and see works that have an “unusual” display setting. When, let’s say, a collection of drawings or photo prints, instead of simply framed and hanged on the wall, are part of a structure that set them 45 degrees with the floor, or coming out of the wall in a perpendicular manner, or hanging from standalone bulky frames that in the shape of a room divider.

The art world is full of non-specially relevant information displayed in such a way that makes you think that it is something very valuable, that it is more than actually it is. Put the information bluntly and you will see that it is nothing but the display (which means: nothing but design).

And it is put in this way to fool you up, evidently as in the 99 tag. And works as well as the tag does.

Artists are not creators.

The key word in art is DESTRUCTION. There is creation too, ok, but just as a by product.

Art practice is not productive.

 To the barricades. 

Sauve qui peut la vie.

Hiroshima’s camera of commerce.

In Hiroshima I went to the Museum for the Peace. There is a religious silence in the rooms. The development of the bomb is explained in detail on the panels and videos. The suffering of the people is portrayed in the most respectful way. Of course people visiting are interested in the technical aspects of the bombing, in the fate, in the devastation… there is something voyeuristic about it too.

Wendover is the place where the American heavy bomber crews were trained during WWII. The bomb Little Boy was loaded there into the Enola Gay. In the museum next to the airfield the training and the preparations of the atomic bomb are portrayed heroically. The display passes through all the details of the bomb too, but the story is disconnected from the results of the operation. “The project was executed successfully” is the predominant message.

Model on the small museum of the airfield.

I did not realize before I arrived the similarities between the two visits.

Both places are sad. Hiroshima has a new life, new neighbourhoods, but there is something omnipresent on the visit. Wendover is a cluster of casinos, hurriedly planted in Nevada, at the other side of the state limit. Many of the buildings are in ruins and have been vandalized. Hiroshima conserves one building, “the camera of commerce”, that resisted the blast and is has been preserved half in ruins. Life continues.

The Enola Gay hangar.

- There is art, art is fascinating, art must be preserved, so there are museums.

- The biggest recognition for an art work is to be in the museum, so there is a feedback effect that provoques a museification of art works, so art works are museum custom made.

- Art that looks apropriated for museums doesn’t feel like art anymore, so artists start making art which its main characteristic is that cannot be shown on a museum.

-Museums do not get feeling of art anymore, but just of profane objects, they try to catch up.

Ridiculous not due to the desire of being modern but due to the fear of being obsolete.

It is such an altuistic and educational job they do, that different art funding bodies, govermental and private, collaborate with them for the prduction of these events.

Actually art fairs suck until drainage the sources of money. A big chunk of money is diverted to administration and cocktails so the efficiency of the money is scarce. They concentrate all these events in one weekend, so leave empty the art life in town for the rest of the year. But the most important is that the artists taking part in these events or getting that commissions are always represented by a gallery. It is not thinkable that the art fairs will give money and opportunities to artists out of the market.

According this statistic during WWII the proportion was 1:1; during the war in Korea there were 15 people working to maintain one soldier in the front; 25 during Vietnam War and around 100 at the Gulf War, the time in which the statistic was issued.

I like to think how this translates into the changes of forces in the art scene. For each artist “creating” now, how many people is supporting and providing? Let’s consider artists in biennials or international shows in relationship with critics, curators, designers, invigilators of museums, art historians, technicians in iron, wood and plastics, computer programmers, journalists, magazine directors, advertisers, gallery staff, art works transportation, lawyers, auctioneers, etc. How was the relationship when Duchamp presented his Fountain? How was in the times of the abstract expressionism? The amount of people per artist increased rapidly during the 80s, for sure and has just been getting higher and higher till now.

The artist/soldier has to make worth the efforts of these people, has to make good use of the equipment that has been provided to her/him, has to avoid put in danger their lives, the trust of all those people. A poor decision can destroy the salaries of so many… Bad art works have been banned, risky strategies forbidden, not decision can be let to the intuition, and not testing experiment is anymore possible. Those who made a small mistake there in the military school have their careers doomed for ever. Only targets that worth are hit.

I wrote these four paragraphs some five years ago. I was annoyed about the corporativization of the art world. Now these days there are lots of budget cuts in the military realm, and certainly in the art scene. Are these cuts proportional in all the occupations or has the balance between “practising artists” and their “support team” changed? Are less or more artists per art professionals as result of the crisis?

After T. S. Eliot

Unfortunately this association doesn’t exists. It belongs to the same fiction genre than “The Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter”.

However, if taking part on such utopia were possible, the members should comply with these conditions 

1. Not attending to Art Fairs

Not as sellers, buyers or glimpsers. Art fairs have a lot of negative effects in the quality of art, in the perception that general public has of art, in the cultural life of cities, in the justly conditions of competition between artists and galleries and, last but not least, in climate change.

Art Fairs decrease the quality of art by a combination of factors:

• As everybody know the conditions to see art works in fairs (from the point of view or art) are very bad, due to the concentration of works and people, the lack of space, etc. When art fairs become an important way not just to sell but to legitimise artists, only certain type of art that is favoured by this conditions succeeds. The legitimation by art fairs finishes bounding museums and curators, due to the pressure that put on it people that have spent money on certain artists and galleries that expect to sell more of those.

• People go to fairs with the same mind frame that to a shopping mall. The information about art that comes to the media through art fairs always associates the works directly with the price, before any other consideration. This system pre-selects the audience, and then the audience pre-selects the works, which could be very good in certain way (what is from Caesar goes to the Caesar). But in the art fairs there is massive waste of energy and resources that are drawn from other less aggressive sectors of the art scene.

• Art fairs put the decision of who is going to be seen and who isn’t in the gallery owners. Their criteria could be as good as any other, if were not marked by the fact that the main priority is to sell (to survive). This affects directly of how works are conceived and shown because the need of the system of objectuality, style and repetition and the consequent rejection of experimental approaches. It must be repeated that, as the museums are bound more and more to the rankings in art fairs, artists not represented by a gallery (we may say “not under the pressure of market priorities”) are not likely to be seen neither inside nor outside the art fairs.

Art Fairs have a negative impact in cities cultural life.

• The effect of an art fair in a city is devastating. It tends to concentrate in few days of activity the efforts of all the art agents of the city. An art fair encourages corporate collectors to make all their purchases in the same days (due to the promotional effectivity); it makes a strong call for international visitors, who in a healthy cultural environment would be visiting regularly during the whole season and that now only attend to the city and its exhibitions during the fair. Therefore it pushes the public and private art galleries to allocate most of the resources on those days to catch all the international visitors and collectors, letting the rest of the art season unattended and underfunded. The media only find noticeable things happening during the fair, to the spectacular disproportion with the rest of the year events. All those conditions feed back each other.

Art Fairs are filthy, destroy a lot of natural resources and have an embarrassing CO2 footprint.

• Recycling and reusing policies are not considered in packaging, production of booths or installation of works in art fairs.

• Works and people are travelling here and there like if they where going to see new art or to show new art to other people.

• What’s the point of a work made in New York, for a Spanish gallery, which brings it to an art fair in Beijing, to be bought by a Los Angeles collector?

2. Promoting the selling and buying Local Art

A gallery in a town should sell mainly artists living and working in the physical and cultural area in which the gallery is located. This would benefit people involved in many aspects.

• It prevents franchising, having galleries in small towns depending of the decisions of the main galleries, receiving second class art works to be sold to the so-considered second class collectors.

• It allows a unique art scene in each city, with its interests and particular views.

• It increases the equal access to the market of all artists and galleries. Therefore promotes diversity and more space for artists for which experimentation is a key aspect of practising art.

Curators and collectors travelling to see the works in different places would be more efficient than works, always by the same artists, invading every single corner of the art empire, like if it were Hollywood blockbusters.

3. Galleries associated to the AGFASD should sign the Pedestals Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Every pedestal put under or around and art work decreases the chances of surviving of galleries and artists no belonging to the international art lobbies. Examples of pedestalization are: 400 grams invitation cards, to send by FedEx information that can be emailed, luxurious spaces in the high value real state areas, bulky constructions for minimal results (if you are guilty, you know what all this means). Only good art survives in a no frills art environment.

Pedestals are used by lobbies to increase the bet up to a point in which small galleries more adventurous in their decisions cannot cover. Why there is not an Art Antitrust Commission, an institution to prevent dumping and predatory pricing practices in the art market?

Good art works are like juicy vegetables: no fertilizers, pesticides, packaging… Avoid big producers…

Pedestals maintain artificially the value of objects that do no have one anymore. When the object lost its value, what keeps value is the “way” in which is presented. “Style” becomes a value.

4. Promote “patronage” against “investment”

Art ecology responsible galleries should appeal to patronage instead to greed. The collector should be encourage to take part in the art in the present time, in the action of creating it, regardless what the value of the work could be in the future, regardless if the work will exist in any form after the art event has happened.

This association has to remain the realm of fiction because gallery owners accepting these premises will perish as gallerists and will become artists, making impossible the association.

Please send adhesions, proposals of collaboration and militancy, insults and threats to savetheart.com

Art Galleries for Art Sustainable Development is not endorsed by the GGOPG (Greedy Gallery Owners Pressure Group)

There were some videos using footage of Hollywood films as Rear Window and The Searchers. Then some political videos in which the word “OIL” had a predominant role.

But then the image of George Bush appeared. I cannot imaging more dated work that one in which a speech of George Bush is edited in a way everybody can see how evil he is (was).

I guess many of those videos have been removed from compilations.

I would not dare to use an image of Bush to illustrate this post.

Yesterday at www.ironicsans.com the author of the site David Friedman proposed an idea for a sitcom (below). I just wonder if the story can happen at the White House and become a video art installation:

1) A sitcom about a ghost and a zombie… of the same guy.

In the pilot episode, Joe’s roommate Ted has a terrible accident and dies. He’s buried in the old cemetery by the town’s nuclear plant. A few days later Ted’s ghost comes home, much to Joe’s surprise. Later that day, Ted’s zombie corpse shows up to. How will the three of them get along, with all the problems inherent to being a zombie, a ghost, and a single twenty-something grad school student, in an apartment that was just large enough for two people? Hilariously.

I only have one line written so far: “Hey! The brain in the fridge was for biology class!”

Has there ever been a story about a ghost and zombie of the same person before? Does that violate the rules of undead characters in fiction?

I pay attention to the words and as I know very well the text and rhythm of the instructions in English I could identify clearly many Dutch words that were new for me. I thought that flight safety instructions videos will make a perfect image of a contemporary Rosetta Stone.

Wanted Works: Remember this Artstar who never made it to Art Basel Miami

The art world is still behaving as if the art fairs are the centre of the art scene. It was easy to maintain that fantasy some years ago, because money helps to change the perception of reality. It has been for long time already, if not forever, that Art never make it to art fairs.

Art is captured in the fields, and put in cages and transported to the fairs. When the boxes are opened at the fairs, there is only a little puddle on the bottom.

It is nice to see how some restaurants in the Kyoto area have rejected to be included in the Michelin guide.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/shukan-post/view/prominent-kyoto-restaurants-say-no-to-michelin

“Our only concern is our customers, whether they come from next door, who dine at our restaurant and enjoy our food.”

Michelin and Art Basel pretend that the restaurants and the art world respectively cannot exist outside of their control.

Nobody complains. That’s right, as we know that authority is important for the survival of a ship of any kind.

In former times spaceship crews of fiction films were organised military (i.e. Star Treck) or commercially (i.e. Alien). The crew in 2007 Sunshine  and in 2009 Virtuality are scientist, specialists in their own fields and maintaining a very casual relationship between them. They are working together to save the world.

I guess this scene could not have been possible (allowed) in times in which Democracy was at stake, when dark powers in the other side were trying to get over it. The new trend is perhaps, abolish it from inside, and give the capability to decide to those who are in the know. In both cases the decision is put in hands of the specialists in the specific elements of the question “made by the person best qualifie to understand the complexities of the problem”.

In my view only artists and poets understand the complexities of basic problems, so they should take all decisions.

Painting is a very “take-it-or-leave-it” art. There is not possibility of interactivity at all. You swallow it or you go. You can only talk of paintings by relating them to other paintings. All the attempts to related painting with something interesting of the world outside of painting are pathetic. The pathetic aspect of it I would say comes from the interest that painters have of the paintings to relate with contemporary issues, not only to painters of the past, and so escape of the retinian curse and be able to compete in the market that has real money.

But painters enjoy so much spreading the paint that they have a narcotic compensation on it. If an art object is always ready to be sold and pleasant to create, why should it be prestigious artistically too?

Years latter I find myself in the same spot. It is a clear sunny day and I am looking  at a tree. It is 100 years old. What I perceive immediately is “the good beam I would be able to get from it”. A general view of the panorama is full of numbers, like in augmented reality, showing the cubic metres of wood that can be processed out of the landscape. Wild resources. It is time of carreer strategies, using the art works I see in galleries and museums as tools for curating, for build and (scientific?) understanding of the art, my life, my work. The landscape is full HD, full depth of field focus.

Walking through big exhitions, biennals and museums these days is like walking in the park. I look at the works in a group, recognizing shapes and characteristics I feel familiar, but not really paying attention, because I am more into find a good place for my picnic. I think the art as action got completely over the existing works, which are definitively domesticated.