Boris Groys, “Marx After Duchamp, or The Artist’s Two Bodies,” e-flux journal 19 (October 2010). See →.
Some readers will notice that, while the formulation may sound eerily similar, we found it necessary in this essay to steer clear of the long twentieth-century debate over artistic autonomy, fraught with a paradox that reached its peak in institutional critique. Whereas discussions of artistic autonomy depart from a fundamental distinction between art and life that the avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes were tasked with resolving, this essay presupposes such a resolution to be an ominous fait accompli established by a regime of contemporary art that absorbs art and life in equal measure. We invoke Duchamp here as a figure of paradoxical escape in order to ask whether it is possible to think beyond contemporary art as a de facto End of (Art) History.
Liam Gillick, “Contemporary art does not account for that which is taking place,” e-flux journal no. 21 (December 2010). See →.
But there are new unions attempting to protect artists from exploitation. However, they fight an uphill battle against an idea of artistic freedom that precludes cohesive organization. Among these groups are Precarious Workers Brigade, ArtLeaks, and WAGE (Working Artists and the Greater Economy).
See Dieter Roelstraete’s epic text on melancholic retreat entitled “The Way of the Shovel: On the Archeological Imaginary in Art,” e-flux journal no. 4 (March 2009). See →.
See Hito Steyerl’s “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy,” a short text to which this essay owes a lot, in e-flux journal no. 21(December 2010). See →.
For an amazing analysis of liberal democracy as totalizing container, see Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “After the Last Man: Images and Ethics of Becoming Otherwise,” e-flux journal no. 35 (May 2012). See →.
As has been famously pointed out by Andrea Fraser in her 2005 essay “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” in Artforum 44, no. 1 (September 2005): 278–286.
On the triumph of logistics and containerization, see Alberto Toscano’s “Logistics and Opposition” in Mute Magazine 3, no. 2 (Autumn/Winter 2011–2012): 30–41. See →.
See →.
Stephen Wright often speaks eloquently about the “double ontological status” of many artists who straddle and negotiate this division. What we take for granted here, however, is a more sinister prospect of art and life having already merged into a monolithic singularity.