By way of responding to some, if not all, of the excellent points being raised in the blog so far, I’d like to begin by thinking about one of the points raised by Peter Gorschlueter’s in his most recent talk (17/02/09)

For me, one of the most interesting things about Peter’s talk was his attempt to situate/contextualise the recent Fifth Floor show at Liverpool Tate within a more general set of shifts which seem to be underpinning the art world at a fundamental level. For example, to see that Tate has aspirations to become an ideas led (rather than collection led or exhibitions led) institution gives quite a lot away about developments in contemporary art practice. I guess the argument would go something like this – that ‘relational aesthetics’ (or whatever you’d like to call it) is less of a ‘flash in the pan’ or ‘fashionable’ way that artists are propagating local, national and international practices and more of a symptom of deeper underlying changes within our culture. These changes would include, of course, the whole issue of globalisation and the new roles and functions that culture (and by proxy art as we know it) are undergoing within a neo-liberal economy of exchange. (So far we have been re-looking at the term autonomy and, as primarily artists, this has led us to consider the possible autonomy of individual or group practices. However, these debates would/should also include – perhaps - notions of art itself as an autonomous practice; as a practice which could, in an ideal world, continue to operate over and against the insturmentalised mechanisms of capital).

This leads us back, immediately, to the common assumptions (which Catherine points to in her ‘It’s a Doing Thing entry: 18.02/09) that we tend to share about art and autonomy – namely, that at the core of any useful debate about autonomy lies the argument concerning the possibility/impossibility of art’s or the artists separateness from a common world of everyday life. Whilst this seems a rather over dramatic schism (and equally naive from our oh so informed standpoint of the postmodern), it actually arises from the deepest philosophical problematic of Enlightenment thought – that of the (mainly Cartesian) subject/object split that underpins the shift towards a secular and science based epistemology; a world view that sees ‘Man’ as the centre of the world, capable of measuring all he purveys in ‘His’ own image, a world view that premised ideological and technological advance on the ‘Truth’ of Scientific ‘Fact’ – a Scientific Fact that was, itself, underpinned by the guarantee of ‘Objective’ observation. Although such a world view has, over the last 40 years, come under sustained critical, theoretical and philosophical bombardment (and the Foucault that Catherine usefully quotes is a major player here) as being a fundamentally white, western, male and historically specific world view, it still leaves us with a fundamental problem - that of the split between an observing and isolated subject and a supposedly exterior and observable object. It was the problem of the subject/object split which drove Kant to propose the aesthetic as a kind of universalising - and autonomous - experience which was capable of resolving (or at least pointing towards/suggesting) some kind of ideal community/consensus beyond this divisive dichotomy.

So, fast forward to a post-autonomous age of instrumentalised reason which now sees its apogee as the relentless, promiscuous, disingenuous, adaptable, permeable and liquid form of the commodity. A world in which objects, whether they be sweaters, CDs, paintings or footballs, only have meaning in so far as they can function, at least temporarily, in a consumer driven of kaleidoscope of shifting meaning and exchange. A world in which one longs for the comfort of an object (let’s call it ‘art’ for arguments sake) that could resolve the irresolvable – but we know that such an object will immediately be insturmentalised by its very existence as a site of exchange and not necessarily by the heavy hand of political interest. (I’m thinking of Zizek’s critique of ideology here, or at least his critique of a post monopoly capitalism where ideology works far below the surface of the skin of a political body which is controlled by consensus).

One argument is to say that there simply is no longer an inside or outside to this new form of spectacular society. This is a line followed by Baudrillard in a series of essays/talks surrounding 9/11 (published by Virago as ‘Degree Zero’) Baudrillard saw/read the atrocity (and others like it) as forms of globalised suicide, a kind of protest/fracture from within. He was morally and politically suspicious of the Bush administrations attempts to re-engineer a ‘them and us’, ‘good guys and evil doers’ dichotomy which typified the so called ‘Cold-War’ (or World War Three as Baudrillard would have it). Whatever one thinks of Baudrillard (and I, perhaps un-trendily, have a lot of time for his thought) this poses an interesting set of questions (ones that have underpinned my thought and work for over a decade). What if one simply accepts that there is no longer any possibility of stepping outside the world of the commodity form? What if we are all encoded to our roots by its language and discourse? What if art, as we know it, and museums and galleries, as we know them, allow no real possibility of a theoretical, political, moral ‘safe-haven’ from which to quantify, objectify and critique the world of commodity controlled insturmentalisation? What if the real site for experience of art is what was once called its ‘legacy’ i.e. journals, articles, images, websites etc? What if artists and art works are no longer points of contradiction to the flow of consumer society? Does this mean all is lost? Or can we accept that artists (as we know or knew them) make art works (as we know or knew them) as nodal points within a constantly shifting network of provisional choices and refusals?

This would perhaps begin to make sense of a more general shift towards the concept of art as ‘knowledge production’ (Sarat Maharaj vie Feyerabend) and a world in which Tate sees itself as an Idea – led institution (with Tate Online functioning on an equal footing with its physical manifestations). This would also still enable us to conceptualise/critique a world in which high profile artists made high profile art objects for high prices (because, as we know, the commodity form finds no intrinsic value in ‘objects themselves’, the artists ‘name’, ‘reputation’ or ‘brand’ is what sells here). It would also allow us to begin imagining a continually negotiable production of art works/projects which may work in many different ways and across many different platforms (one of the problems, ironically, with the ever so post ‘relational aesthetics’ is its commodified collapse back into a ‘one size fits all’ kind of Modernist art form/commercially viable entertainment – well, everybody’s doing it/showing it aren’t they?)

Beginning to think this way – having not inside out or outside in – allows us to start thinking of relationships, and potentially autonomous circuits/communities of relationships, in potentially different ways. It also enables us to begin thinking about and mapping lines of resistance in different ways and new places. Having no inside out or outside in also enables us to begin thinking of a range of contributory factors, which go towards making up that thing called art, as essential to the production of possible meanings (in this way, audiences and the art market will always play a crucial role in the production and analysis of art works – their role may shift in a kind of topological kind of way, but they will always be there). Thinking this way also allows us to decentre the role of the artist – or even individual artistic agency for that matter – without running the risk of losing a concept of autonomy (or at least of a project/possibility of autonomy). Of course, autonomy in this sense would have to be continually negotiated and, ipso facto, ideas would be at the centre/driving force of art production – but we would gain the possibility of re-engaging critically with the instrumentalising forces of the commodity form across and within the very fabric of its mechanisms.

I hope these propositions, rather than questions, can provide us with a bit more food for thought (and latitude for experimentation) in our discussions. Perhaps people could also begin to look at examples of their own or other peoples projects (call them art if you will) that enable us to unpack and elucidate these ideas. I’ll attempt to do this also in future entries.
John Byrne 23/02/09