[artinfo] micropolitics: seminar Art and money

[Galerija Miroslav Kraljeviç]

m i c r o p o l i t i c s
	 
	seminar
	 
	ART AND MONEY
	 
	In the company of Hanson's circle of 
people from the world of finance, such as 
Rotschilds, Jagoda says, one only talks about 
art, while artists among themselves talk mostly 
about money.
	(«Moje kuçe, moji snovi», an interview 
with Jagoda Buiç, Globus, no. 1086 , 22 July 2011)
	 
	 
	Saturday, 20 April 2013 (11-13h & 15-19h)
	 
	Gallery Miroslav Kraljeviç, ·ubiçeva street 29, Zagreb
	 
	Speakers: Annie Dorsen, Fokus group (Iva 
Kovaã & Elvis Krstuloviç), Andrew Haydon, Marko 
Kostaniç, Jelena Vesiç
	 
	The seminar Art and money is the final 
part of the thematic cycle under the same title 
within the framework of the program 
Micropolitics, which in various formats 
(workshops, lectures, projections, discussions) 
explores the (im)possibility of artistic 
articulation of the social function of money. 
Starting from the claim that money is not a 
closed system, but plays an important function in 
the structuring of various societies in various 
cultural contexts and historical conditions, we 
decided to go beyond economic examinations, and 
to explore this complex and politically dense 
theme on the background of art. The final seminar 
brings together research that will be gathered 
and published in the thematic issue of the 
performing arts magazine Frakcija. The 
forthcoming issue of performing arts journal 
Frakcija, under the working title Art and money 
can be considered a follow-up to the 2011 issue 
entitled "Artistic Labor in the Age of 
Austerity", which attempted to articulate the 
first steps in the materialistic analysis by 
questioning the state of politics and the 
economic logic of public finances as determined 
by the so-called austerity politics, the 
constitution of an autonomous art field from the 
perspective of establishing the market of wage 
labour, the political function of culture, the 
relationship between cultural policies of higher 
education and the operational mechanisms of the 
media, the artistic treatment of the conditions 
of reproduction in terms of political economy, 
and the logic of self-organization in artistic 
work, including its methods of production. By 
follow-up, we mean a close reading of chosen 
artistic works/practices and positions in order 
to understand how is this layer of capitalist 
reality, that is, money, reflected in artistic 
processes and narratives. We are interested in 
money as an artefact, as a physical object, but 
also as an abstraction. How is art dealing with 
the (im)possibility of representation of money, 
considering that money is relation? How are the 
processes of value creation functioning in the 
artistic world, where we are dealing with a 
particular type of goods? How is political 
sovereignty of money economy (financialization) 
reflected in the artistic language? What does 
dematerialisation of the reproduction of capital 
mean in the art field, especially on the basis of 
conceptual art's idea that something ephemeral, 
flexible, short-term can resist its dependence on 
conditions of reproduction?
	 
	The seminar will bring together several 
researches in progress, and some of them will be 
presented here for the first time. It will work 
as a meeting point of research notes where 
participants, together with the interested 
audience, open towards a joint reflection.
	 
	 
	PROGRAM
	11:00-13:00
	 
	Marko Kostaniç
	ART AND MONEY: from epistemology to politics
	 
	The paper will focus on a simple, but 
important question: why is art necessary in order 
to understand the social function of money? Are 
there artistic mechanisms, actions or instruments 
which have a privileged epistemological approach 
to the question of money? If so, do they 
presuppose the lack of economic and sociologic 
analysis which then compensate or serve as 
supplementary epistemological tool? Or are they 
used as visual help, ornaments or mystification? 
If we presuppose that for the understanding of 
money as a social phenomenon we do not need 
cognitive mapping of artistic origin, are we then 
only moving in the domain of agitprop? Always 
having in mind that art as a social practice is 
the result of a certain social distribution of 
work, I will try with the help of Marxist theory 
of money and several examples from artistic 
practice to articulate political implications of 
the question I pose in the beginning.
	 
	Jelena Vesiç
	'Administration of aesthetics' or 
subterranean streams of contracting art work: 
between love and money, between money and love
	 
	In my presentation, I would like to 
engage with the ideologies of "administration of 
aesthetics" placing in focus unofficial and 
para-legal forms of work agreements (production 
of content) as dominant forms of contracting 
delivery or participation in cultural 
events/publications etc.
	The main question would be how is the 
discomfort of talking about art as work, and as a 
paid job, distributed through this 
para-contractuality. Or, in other words, how 
exactly is this discomfort between the relative 
autonomy of art and real heteronomy of work 
positioned in negotiations that firstly affect 
independent and flexible content makers or 
precarious cultural workers. The concepts of 
«love» and «money» will be thought through in a 
co-extension of a tense relationship between 
autonomy of art and heteronomy of work which 
survives either on idealistic presuppositions of 
the love towards creation, knowledge, beauty 
(Plato), disinterested pleasure (Kant) or social 
responsibility of a public intellectual (a 
specific form of socially useful work), as well 
as on materialistic presuppositions of the 
liaison between ideology and economy as basic 
(self)exploitation of cultural work (including 
objective difficulties in quantification and 
normativization, and, consequently in financial 
compensation for this type of work).
	 
	 
	 
	Jelena Vesiç's research is dedicated to 
the politics of representation in art and visual 
culture, practices of self-organization and 
politization of cultural work. Her curatorial 
practice often experiments with frameworks, 
methodologies, and contextual and collaborative 
aspects of art.
	 
	15:00 - 19:00
	 
	Annie Dorsen
	 
	Annie Dorsen works in a variety of 
fields, including theatre, film, dance and, as of 
2010, digital performance. In 2008, she 
co-created a Broadway musical Passing Strange, 
which she also directed. Annie will talk about 
some practical issues regarding her experiences 
in the commercial theatre sector, such as how the 
imperative of having to sell the performance to 
as many people as possible influences its 
production to the greatest detail, how it 
influences its structure, its form, its focus, 
and what are the specificities of such theatrical 
machinery. She will engage in a close-reading of 
a work process and of value creation in a 
Broadway type of production. 
	 
	 
	Andrew Haydon
	A chronological account of selected 
pieces seen on the British stage between 2009 - 
2013 and the way that they suggest a marked 
change in strategies for portraying money on stage
	 
	I intend to argue that at the beginning 
of the "credit crunch" - which became "the 
financial crisis", which became "the recession", 
which became "the global financial crisis, the 
double-dip recession and the euro-zone crisis" - 
representations of "money" occurred mainly within 
the context of staged plays, which adapted either 
classic works of literature, factual situations, 
or personal accounts of the nature of the crisis 
(or earlier, similar crises, scandals, crashes, 
etc.). As "the crunch" spiralled further into 
catastrophe, representations of money 
correspondingly became more tangible, more 
physical and more violent, culminating (thus 
far), in audience members being invited to shred 
their own money on stage or watch performers bat 
10,000 pounds-worth of coins about a stage for 
their entertainment.
	I also hope to offer a few thoughts on 
what all that might mean, and where British 
theatre might go from here if it wishes to defy 
prevailing cultural/financial circumstances and 
present alternative futures.
	 
	Andrew Haydon was a freelance UK theatre 
critic (FT, Guardian, Time Out,. Most recently, 
he has written the history of British theatre in 
the 2000s for Methuen's forthcoming book 'Decades 
- Modern British Playwriting: 2000-2009'. His 
blog, Postcards from the Gods, is here: 
<http://g-mk.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=97b6f85a62&id=7912cd7d77&e=a762eba68c>http://postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/
	 
	 
	Fokus grupa (Iva Kovaã & Elvis Krstuloviç)
	 
	Exploring art as a field of human labour 
and political activity, Fokus group reflects on 
the history of art of the 20th and 21st century 
as a history of changes of social and economic 
relations between cultural workers and artists. 
Using various examples, we are looking for an 
adequate way of marking of entwined and often 
fragmented narratives. The research includes 
cannonized actions, such as Artist Worker 
Coalition, via the attempt of legal regulation of 
art system on the examples of Seth Siegelaub, 
Daniel Buren, Sanja Ivekoviç, Dalibor Martinis 
and others, as well as less available 
informations on local events related to the group 
Earth and Croatian naive art. In the framework of 
the seminar, we will present segments of research 
based on particular case studies.
	 
	Through their activities, Fokus group 
questions the ideas of political and subjective 
in cultural and artistic production. In 
accordance with a materialistic understanding of 
artistic practice Kovaã and Krstuloviç explore 
legal, economic and social consequences of 
artistic production and methods by which politics 
takes hold of and instrumentalizes emotions.
	 

	 
	organizers: 
<http://g-mk.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=97b6f85a62&id=5770bd194b&e=a762eba68c>[BLOK]and 
<http://g-mk.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=97b6f85a62&id=5ae685930a&e=a762eba68c>Centre 
for Drama Art
	support for the programme: Ministry for 
Culture of the Republic of Croatia and Zagreb 
City Office for Culture, Education and Sport 




	Gallery Miroslav Kraljevic
	Subiceva 29
	10 000 Zagreb

	telephone: 00385915122028
	working hours:
	tue-fri 12-19
	sat     11-13