Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post- Democracy (original) (raw)
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In her text " Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post:Democracy " Berlin: based artist and theoretican Hito Steyerl describes the function of art in a post:industrial society as one of the primary fuels in the accumulation of capital. Art and culture, she writes, is no longer at the periphery of capitalist production but at its very centre driving it forward. This is because post: 1960s economies thrive on cognitive, affective and flexible labour on which the production of art has sustained itself for a long time. Artistic production, as a result of this, is regarded as the perfect labour form in capital's ongoing desire of becoming an autonomous subject complete in itself. That artistic and creative labour today is one of the main components in the necessary expan: sion of capitalism shows itself on many levels in the production of art. For example higher art education has shifted significantly in its aims and methods. Art schools, sociologist Pascal Gielen claims, have since the beginning of the early 2000 increasingly put more and more pressure on stu: dents to become young creative entrepreneurs more engaged in their websites and business cards than in their own artistic work. An example of this is that one of London's major art schools, the Royal College of Art, since a couple of years back, have turned the yearly – before fairly informal – graduate show into a showroom where collectors, curators and gallery directors are invited and so able to capitalise and institutionalise the works of the students before it has even escaped the allowing atmosphere which art schools before have always provided. On top of that can of course be added the new fee system in the United Kingdom, which has turned art schools into amusement parks for the nouveaux riches. The dissolution of capitalist and artistic production, and the yearning of capital to fully subsume the latter is also visible in the politics of many funding bodies. For example, both the Arts Council in the United Kingdom and Kulturbryggan in Sweden, require artists as well as Contemporary art is a brand name without a brand, ready to be slapped onto almost anything, a quick face:lift touting the new creative imperative for places in need of an extreme makeover, the suspense of gambling com: bined with the stern pleasures of the upper:class boarding school education, a licensed playground for a world confused and collapsed by dizzying deregu: lation. If contemporary art is the answer, the question is: How can capitalism be more beautiful? 1
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