Art of/or Survival A Reader compiled by Kitch

Art of/or Survival A Reader compiled by Kitch

Inspired with the intro photography of four happy celebrities and having in mind further applications of the governing/managerial logic, for instance in the field of contemporary art (within the field of culture within the neoliberal paradigm), we can claim that: Curators, museum managers and contemporary art collectors and even/especially artist themselves are sustainers of Art System that feeds fetishism of art-related elite thru exploitation of precarious (art) workers, image archives, and the notion of the public. /Write down your association on this claim./ Talking on survival, the key question happens to be: How to survive neoliberalism? Keywords to think this question: necrocapitalism, biopolitics, neocolonialism, racism, political emancipation, self-organizing, disidentification. It has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. (Fredric Jameson) However, let's try to really imagine the end of capitalism. What would it mean to you, what important change would it bring to your life? /Write it down./ Certain questions are rising while thinking position of precarious art-worker the survivor in the biopolitical environment of the Art System: Is it realistic to expect that governments will take real care of workers' rights? Is a government (state, municipality, EU) right address when requesting freedom, equal rights, or good labour conditions in so-called culture? What can we do ourselves from the precarious position, how can we turn it into our advantage? Can our social and project networking be something more than a banal exchange, or interest related activity? What are (conscious and unconscious) capitalistic dimensions of our own behavior? How and do we collectively organize ourselves? 2/9

And what does to survive actually mean? accommodating to having less changing strategies of our labour changing attitudes toward the local and global dominant agenda (e.g. Who do I, in fact, support when I am recycling, and is the nature truly preserved by our efforts in recycling?) changing strategies of exhibiting/presenting our art-related work (e.g. How do I understand the role of the audience, the spectator, and do I actually only support the consumer-related role of the spectators-listeners?) 3/9

Bojana Kunst: Umetnik na delu / Artist at Work. Proximity of Art and Capitalism (book, 2012) B. Kunst agues that the art itself is not an object or part of capital-related speculations, but it's rather the artist's (way of) living. It is virtually a synonym of freedom, however, it only covers and hides actual erasure of art from public space and increasing invisibility of its material and common-based processes. The wasteful (huge amount of production; some kind of art or at least design is incorporated in practically all spheres of life) and creative work of art is so extremely regulated exactly for the reason of being so close, and at the same time, with its autonomy, so radically different from life itself. Transformation and flexibility are key characteristics of contemporary work (labour), yet they actually do not open any possibilities, but often establish even more rigid and exploitative working conditions, where every moment of the present time, even its non-activity, is dedicated to a better exploitation of labour. (p. 148) That potentiality to do less allows permanency to human activity, and gives to art a durational and autonomous power of thinking borders between different ways of human experience: art actually opens an entrance to useless approving of life. To do less can be understood also as a new radical gesture that resists speculation on value of artist's living and instead for the purpose of work perfection starts to autonomously act for the life itself; it is therefore an important aesthetic and ethic attitude of an artist-as-worker. (p. 154) We can say that cooperation, communication and networking are today among most fetishized fields. (p. 73) Creating and preserving connections seems more important that trying to catch and save ideas. (p. 76) Fatigue as a consequence of the project based way of work has its background right in the fact that the legitimacy of a project is not in its actual implementation, in its performer, but belongs to a higher, unnamed bureaucratic and managerial authority, to a power structure. (p. 141) Spaces of art has become spaces of sociality, negotiations and virtual regulation of social relations just because that activity has vanished from the public space. Therefore art institutions take over the role of political space of negotiation and creation of community, yet often in a way that they minimize/erase disagreements on a basis of stability of their space that is closely linked to capitalist economy and production of knowledge. (p. 55) 4/9

B. Kunst borrowed the title for her book from Mladen Stilinović's photo series Umjetnik radi / An Artist Works (made in period 1973 1983, this one from 1978): 5/9

Toward survival toward laziness (further thoughts, links and references) Contemporary concept of labour can not be separated from the rest of life; even more, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Hard and Negri, too, talk about specific production of subjectivity. Ancient Greece and Rome understood work as the opposite of inaction or free time, that used to be the most appreciated for the purpose of political organizing, debate and action. Non-work held higher cultural status than work till Modern Times. The preference of free time has vanished with the appearance and gradual internalization of capitalistic economy ethics. Enough free time (laziness) is a key element that allows organization of work out(side) of capitalistic production. The most subversive factor in the capitalist paradigm is laziness. It is better to do nothing than to formally work for the visibility of that what West proclaims as existing. (Alain Badiou, Tretji osnutek za manifest afirmacionizma / Fifteen Thesis on Art, 2004) The dictate of work has become so total and omnipresent because of the fact that all classes including the proletariat internalized it. Even though John Maynard Keynes announced that according to the technological progress we should work less and less till the end of 20th century 15 working hours per week, majority of people are today far from that, working even a lot more than famous 8 hours a day. At the same time, new jobs, that are actually not needed, are being constantly created. David Graeber names writes on phenomenon of senseless jobs naming them bullshit jobs (http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/, 2013). The endless capitalistic freedom of choice obviously does not include the freedom to refuse to work to reproduce the capitalistic system. The meaning of non-work in capitalist paradigm is extremely pejorative. It is not only about a failure to recognize forms of work that are not tied to employment (i.e. profit related work), but about stigmatization of those who are not included both intentionally and unintentionally in the dominant labour agenda. Such forms/activities are usually marked with special terms, such as creation (creative industries!), hobby, or task (e.g. a household task), and that marking degrades their social value, recognition and influence. In that way the dominant ideology produces subjectivities that are not (hard)working: idlers, slackers, bums, housewives and jobless they find themselves all in the same basket. Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy, 1880: Laziness is mother of art and noble virtues. Lafargue also quotes Cicero: A citizen who gives his labor for money degrades himself to the rank of slaves (De Officiis, 1560). Idleness has long been recognized as a condition for creativity. But contemporary artist usually does not want to be an idler. By that he/she strengthens the existing (the capitalistic system) even and especially when criticizing, thematizing and virtually resisting it. The artist-as-worker: can not recognize him/herself as a political subject and act collectively; runs out of time for real creativity. How to get out of this vicious circle? 6/9

Mladen Stilinović: Pohvala lijenosti / The Praise of Laziness (text, 1992): As an artist, I learned from both East (socialism) and West (capitalism). Of course, now when the borders and political systems have changed, such an experience will be no longer possible. But what I have learned from that dialogue, stays with me. My observation and knowledge of Western art has lately led me to a conclusion that art cannot exist... any more in the West. This is not to say that there isn't any. Why cannot art exist any more in the West? The answer is simple. Artists in the West are not lazy. Artists from the East are lazy; whether they will stay lazy now when they are no longer Eastern artists, remains to be seen. Laziness is the absence of movement and thought, dumb time total amnesia. It is also indifference, staring at nothing, non-activity, impotence. It is sheer stupidity, a time of pain, futile concentration. Those virtues of laziness are important factors in art. Knowing about laziness is not enough, it must be practiced and perfected. Artists in the West are not lazy and therefore not artists but rather producers of something... Their involvement with matters of no importance, such as production, promotion, gallery system, museum system, competition system (who is first), their preoccupation with objects, all that drives them away form laziness, from art. Just as money is paper, so a gallery is a room. Artists from the East were lazy and poor because the entire system of insignificant factors did not exist. Therefore they had time enough to concentrate on art and laziness. Even when they did produce art, they knew it was in vain, it was nothing. Artists from the West could learn about laziness, but they didn't. Two major 20th century artists treated the question of laziness, in both practical and theoretical terms: Duchamp and Malevich. Duchamp never really discussed laziness, but rather indifference and non-work. When asked by Pierre Cabanne what had brought him most pleasure in life, Duchamp said: "First, having been lucky. Because basically I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope that some day we'll be able to live without being obliged to work. Thanks to my luck, I was able to manage without getting wet". Malevich wrote a text entitled "Laziness the real truth of mankind" (1921). In it he criticized capitalism because it enabled only a small number of capitalists to be lazy, but also socialism because the entire movement was based on work instead of laziness. To quote: "People are scared of laziness and persecute those who accept it, and it always happens because no one realizes laziness is the truth; it has been branded as the mother of all vices, but it is in fact the mother of life. Socialism brings liberation in the unconscious, it scorns laziness without realizing it was laziness that gave birth to it; in his folly, the son scorns his mother as a mother of all vices and would not remove the brand; in this brief note I want to remove the brand of shame from laziness and to pronounce it not the mother of all vices, but the mother of perfection". Finally, to be lazy and conclude: there is no art without laziness. Work is a disease Karl Marx. Work is a shame Vlado Martek. 7/9

Kitch: Life's not Work (graphic interventions stickers, flyers, web posts, 2005) Life is not work, it is much more than that. We are against the dictatorship of labour enforced by the managerial structures of society that force classification to employed, self-employed and nonemployed, diligent and lazy ones etc. If the labour is flexible in order with the neoliberal ideology of maximal exploitation let the income for that labour be flexible, too. There is enough capital, the problem is, of course, in its distribution. The revolution is in the release of work, in its elimination, altering and revalorization. ( http://www.kitch.si/?lang=en#life-s-not-work ) 8/9

Kitch: No Politics Just Sex (ad hoc street performance, 2005) In support to the first EuroMayday demonstration in Slovenia on 2 May 2005 in Maribor, Tandem Rich performed a short, ad hoc, (a)political and erotic street act. Two protagonists tried to refer to the background of the protests requesting rights for the precariat, relying on the long tradition of workers May riots. In somehow ironic-humorous manner, they invited passersby to think about the meaning of labour and its connection with the capitalistic exploitation by shouting loudly these slogans: let the one who s not working eat the one who s not thinking is not allowed to eat life s not work immaterial work material income not the problem of production, but the problem of distribution of the wealth it s easier to be submitted and live in an illusion that you are deciding by yourself censorship instead of auto-censorship the work is a work for the other the work serves to the masking of dominion the blurred line between productive and nonproductive labour non-freedom of one is non-freedom of everyone permanent production of crisis for conserving the neoliberalism freelancers on the social bottom cultural workers on the edge of survival journalists are slaves of market laws workers in factories without work cheaper labour force is in the east the budget of the local municipality is still not approved precarious ones are the foundation of the wealth production process postfordist production generates insecurity flexibility is an excuse for suppression of our rights public sector is vanishing global citizenship an answer to the global capitalism aaaaa antiglobalizationaaaaa politicization of labour aaaaa anticonsumerization of life ( http://www.kitch.si/?lang=en#no-politics-just-sex ) 9/9