Conference: Art Work. Accumulation and Availability
Conference: Art Work. Accumulation and Availability
Editors: Kristian Lukić, Gordana Nikolić
Wednesday, 1st December 2010 / 11.00 - 17.30 /
Museum of Vojvodina, Dunavska 35, Novi Sad, Serbia
The conference and discussion entitled Art Work. Accumulation and Availability proceeds from the idea that today the traditional mechanisms of accumulating and collecting art works face the test of finding new models of using artistic creations, which inevitably follows the transformation of the role of cultural institutions.
Proceeding from this starting point, the conference gathers theorists, artists and cultural workers who will analyse various models that exist today when it comes to dealing with, documenting, archiving and disseminating media and broader artistic practice, the status of art collections and their social and economic implications. Also, the conference will deal with the revaluation and financialisation of art in the second half of the 20th century, particularly taking into consideration the neoavant-garde and conceptual art of Eastern Europe.
The strengthening of creative industries in the contemporary post-Fordist conditions of the production and accumulation of capital is indicative of the role that the sphere of art and culture has in the global financial order. Art, with its inherently subjective and speculative nature, corresponds to the speculativeness and relativism of the value of capital, where the economy of attention is the key value generator. The strict policies of ownership and management of art works cannot follow the development of information and communication technologies where efficient exchange is the ultimate goal. Collections of art works with limited access become public archives, and the accumulation of art works loses the aura of social status and bears the (un)easy mark of private entrepreneurship and financial speculations.
In art history there are examples of practices focusing on the critique of commodification and hyperproductivism in art, and also on the critique of the institution of art market and the mediatory role of dealers in the accumulation of art works as investments with a potential for increasing their financial value. The dematerialisation of art through conceptual art and the “new artistic practices” of the 1960’s and 1970’s and their penetration into everyday life unfolded by way of shifting away from the market paradigm and the gallery environment of high art. However, this non-institutional artistic practice has left behind material traces of its critique, which achieve high market values today and are part of great collections of museums, galleries and private collectors, and also of institutionalised historical narratives. The reproducibility of certain art media, among them digital art, film and video, raises the question of the exclusivity of ownership and use of these creations within an institutional and non-institutional framework. This issue gets more acute with the Internet revolution during the 1990’s and movements advocating free software and free culture after the year 2000, and with the increased presence of on-line video archives, which, by affirming the values of networking, communication and creative cooperation, change the meaning of the notion of authorship and ownership of art works. On the other hand, there remains the question: will private and public collections and the art market be able to follow these trends, and if so, in what way?
Production: Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina www.msuv.org
Co-production: New Media Center_kuda.org www.kuda.org
Support: Provincial Secretariat for Culture, EU Culture Programme 2007-2013, Novi Sad City Council, Ministry of Culture of Republic of Serbia, Museum of Vojvodina
Sponsor: Halogen
IT support: Sons
Program and time-line:
Panel 1: Accumulation of Art
What is the nature of the wish to own art works? Love of art? Social status? Long-term investment and profit? Is there a difference between the accumulation of art goods and the accumulation of other value units of exchange such as gold and diamonds? What is the role of art in the global order of financial capital?
11.00 - 11.10: Introduction
11.10 - 11.40: Suhail Malik (GBR) - A Politics of Art Prices?
11.40 - 12.10: Stephen Wright (GBR, FRA) - Overshadowed
12.10 - 12.40: Stefan Heidenreich (DEU) - (Con)temporary collection
12.40 - 13.10: Plenary discussion
13.10 - 13.30: Pause
Panel 2: Openness of content and the new economy
Is it possible to implement the experience of the movement for free software and free culture, which has permeated the subculture and the critical circles over the past decades, in the mainstream art system? To what extent can the openness of archives and access to their content endanger the viability of artistic production? What are the models of regulating the relations between oppositionally positioned open (on-line) archives and the museum practices of collecting that would be convenient to artists, as well as the public and museums?
13.30 - 14.00: Annelys de Vet (NLD) - Mapping the alternative - or new design strategies in an open source society
14.00 - 14.30: Vladimir Jerić Vlidi (SRB) - A time of monsters
14.30 - 15.00: Plenary Discussion
15.00 – 16.00 Lunch Pause
Panel 3: Archives and digitalisation – Digitizing Ideas, a case study
The panel will focus on basic approaches to the digitization of cultural heritage through examples of digitization practice explaining the purpose, possibilities and advantages of digitization, and will deal with specific technical aspects of digitization, including types of equipment and technical conditions, international standards and recommendations, examples of specific problems and solutions to different types of cultural heritage digitization. The case study will present examples of good practice from the museums of contemporary art in the region gathered around the project Digitizing Ideas.
16.00 - 16.15: Luka Kulić, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad
16.15 - 16.30: Martina Munivrana, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb
16.30 - 16.45: Andreja Hribarnik, Modern Gallery, Ljubljana
16.45 - 17.00: Maria Matuszkiewicz, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
17.00 - 17.30: Plenary Discussion
The conference Art Work. Accumulation and Availability is part of the project The Media Practice Collection of f Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, in production of MoCAV and kuda.org