Beyond the Global 1000

CIMAM 2005 Annual Conference
“Museums: Intersections in a Global Scene”

We are dealing with two groups of ideas on this panel. The first, presented by Walter Grasskamp, challenges the twentieth-century claim that the museum can be the container or institutional frame of a universal aesthetic language, and points rather to the impressive globalization of an essentially Western or North Atlantic set of cultural codes, including the all-absorbing code of exoticism - which makes the contemporary art museum comparable to the Wunderkammer, or curiosity cabinet. The second set of ideas, presented by Maurizio Lazzarato, and embodied by the B-Zone project including the work of Ursula Biemann and Angela Melitopulos, posits the museum as something like a support base and relay point for an engagement with the outside, with the very infrastructure of globalization, approached through critical studies and experimental devices whose  cooperative process of elaboration helps to requalify or even to transform the infrastructure in question (for instance, the Trans Asian Highway system mentioned by Maurizio, which becomes a quite different experience when you approach it through the experimental processes of Timescapes). There is also a further suggestion, developed by Suely Rolnik, that these kinds of experimental devices can ultimately transform even the universalizing frame of the Western self, or ego, which structures the very gaze of both artist and viewer.

Now, the amusing thing about this panel is that we all know each other, we are friends and colleagues, we are on the same wavelength. I write for the same journal as Maurizio, I have just finished working on the B-Zone catalogue, I have the honor of translating Suely’s texts, etc. We are not part of the 100 international artists that Walter mentions, but we are part of something like the Global 1000 of people who make the museum into a crossroads of art, the social sciences, and politics. Our work is transversal with respect to the traditional art world, and the factor of the outside is essential to us. We try to constitute critical laboratories, mobile theaters, virtual editing tables or even experimental clinics for the exploration of possible alternatives to the world as it is. Because of the recent decay in the basic political, economic, and I would even say, affective or psychological conditions of human coexistence, our star has risen a bit, to the point where it is now actually visible on the museological horizon (as it was not until the mid- or even late 1990s). In this context I would like to take it upon myself to describe, from my own personal perspective, some of the difficulties that I see ahead for the type of work that is being proposed by the Global 1000. And then I’d like to offer a few ideas about what can be done to overcome those difficulties..

The first difficulty of the context, which maybe could be added to what Walter Grasskamp has said, is that the contemporary art museum, as a kind of globalized Wunderkammer, has only become so successful because of its function within the massive economy of tourism, itself inserted into a dynamics of metropolitan rivalry. That phrase, “metropolitan rivalry,” describes the competition between major cities for visibility and connectivity; for human, semiotic, and financial flows. As you probably know, the basic formula that contemporary urbanists have found for success within this metropolitan rivalry has been to develop what has been called the “creative city,” which is the overall product of the so-called “creative class.” You can read the book called “The Creative City,” by the urbanist Charles Landry, and the book called “The Creative Class,” by the sociologist Richard Florida. The basic  concept is that cities must use cultural facilities and amenities to attract the most talented stockbrokers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and of course, artists, who are estimated to make up a bit less than 2% of the world’s population - that is, around 100 to 150 million people.

This competition between cities merely intensifies the age-old concern of the most powerful economic elites for the accumulation of cultural capital, and for the acquisition of that superior kind of mental and sentimental agility that is stimulated by the contemplation of the objects in the Wunderkammer. In a more general way, art has always been inseparable from upward mobility. Reflect for a moment on Immanuel Wallerstein’s idea that the very definition of the bourgeoisie has historically been the desire to become an aristocrat - that is, to live off invested capital and thereby acquire the leisure time to partake in cultural life. Some modified version of this historical dream of the bourgeoisie is still an underlying motive for many creative class people, even those who just do graphic design or interior decorating. Now, the important thing for us is that the power elites and cultural prosumers of the creative class form the social base of the contemporary art museum. And because of the contribution that artistic activity makes to the overall project of economic growth and upward mobility in the creative city, even the most experimental museums are able to draw on the sponsorship of the  elites, and they can also gain some allegiance from the creative-class public. All of this provides the legitimacy, financial support and interest for the critical and alternative practices of what I’ve jokingly called the Global 1000.

Nonetheless, a contradiction invariably develops between the interests of the elites in terms of metropolitan rivalry, and the appearance within the museum of art that is situated between aesthetics, the human sciences, and politics. Because let’s face it - this kind of art is not about upward mobility. And you can only hide that for so long. If we want the star of these transversal practices to rise a little higher above the horizon, and if we want to enlarge the number of people participating in them, then sources of support, legitimacy and interest for this kind of work must be found outside of the financial elites themselves, and outside the creative-class subjectivity they foster - and this, precisely at the time when the national states are abdicating most of their institutional control to these same elites.

I will return to the questions of support, legitimacy and interest in a moment. But first I want to update the picture I have just presented. Because today one must also understand the fact that global tourism, and the economy of financial flows into which it is inserted, is coming under a state of siege - because, no doubt, of the huge inequalities which made it possible, or at least, which have accompanied its development at every step. The sociologist Richard Florida, whose first book contained nothing political at all, is now speaking about “creative class war” - by which he really means, the revolt of the poor against the rich. It’s significant that tourists have in a few cases been directly attacked, in Luxor, Egypt,  in Bali, Indonesia, or in Charm El-Sheik, also in Egypt. During the recent race and class riots in France, at least one prestigious theater in Cergy-Pontoise in the western suburbs of Paris was attacked by some 20 youths using what was described as a “Twingo battering-ram,” that is to say, a car deliberately crashed into the building. It is even more interesting to note that one of the widely expressed fears, during the Paris riots, was that levels of tourism would be negatively affected. However, they were not. Tourists are apparently getting used to this. A similar phenomenon was observed in the recent October bombing that struck Bali once again. I quote from a news article: “Song Sen Wun, a regional economist with G.K. Goh-CIMB Securities in Singapore, says that even though Bali will probably suffer, the fact that the world is getting used to terrorism may limit the overall economic impact.”

I stress this gruesome point because I have recently become quite concerned about the role that the “creative city” can play in what might be called “the urbanization of blindness.” This idea came to me in the south of Spain, in Almeria, near the town of El Ejido, where I was able to observe how fantastic tourist complexes have been built on the coast right next to zones of industrial greenhouse agriculture, where undocumented African laborers are employed under conditions of extreme exploitation. How is it that people can travel through conditions of such severe inequality, without being deeply troubled by them - perhaps without even seeing them? What kinds of dark glasses do they put around their subjectivity, so that they only see each other, within the narrow confines of their pacified environment? The recent conditions in Paris, where dramatic social conflict on the peripheries left life in the center city almost completely undisturbed, have underscored the necessity of looking further into this notion of the urbanization of blindness. My hypothesis is that sentiments of fear, lassitude and powerlessness, experienced by the so-called “creative class” in particular, tend to stimulate the desire for ever more fascinating aesthetic diversions. And it seems likely that this sort of flight before the storm - this intensification of the basic drives of neoliberal subjectivity, even as globalization is coming under siege - will also work against the legitimacy of forms of transversal art. I was told, for instance, that the basic message received from the Berlin arts establishment by the organizers of the Klartext! conference on the status of the political in contemporary art and culture was this: “OK, you have done all that, but now we want to have our fun again.”

So what are we going to do, if in fact all these trends continue, and if the pressures of increasingly conservative and nationalist governments are also applied to the art museums? Everyone has noticed that since the late 1990s, activists and social theorists have come to play an increasing though still minority role within the contemporary art institutions of Europe, and to a lesser extent, of North America. There has also been a very interesting opening to the former East, which makes possible an intense questioning of Western capitalist values. In Latin America, the rise of leftist movements has brought very strong political practices into the art world, particularly in Argentina, in Colombia and in Mexico. Now that race and class issues are coming so clearly out on the table, we may also expect a resurgence in Europe of the kinds of  postcolonial discourses that emerged in England after the Brixton riots of the early 1980s. All of that is, to my mind, both positive and necessary. But whenever any of these experimental political practices are developed to their fullest consequences, there is going to be a tendency for ideological conflict to develop, or even more likely, for support to be quietly withdrawn. And in the face of this high likelihood of conflict, I think some collective preparation has to be done, on at least two levels.

The first is that of criticism. It seems to me that a concerted effort ought to be made to stimulate a sophisticated debate about what the new practices actually are, and how they transform the old definitions of art - like the ones that Walter Grasskamp recalled here today. Boris Groys, for example, has made some very interesting moves toward renewing our understanding of the relations between the outside of the museum and the inside, between life and art, between participation and representation (I’m thinking of his text on the “logic of the collection,” which Grasskamp also mentioned). However, I think it would be necessary to go one step further and add social theory, so as to begin dealing with the complex circulation between participation, representation and evaluation, or the hybridization between political engagement, art and social science. Curiously enough, it is social theory that adds a truly utopian dimension to art today, because it asks whether it is possible to go beyond small, one-off experiments. Yet it is also social theory which opens up room for the new – new forms, new logics, new sensations, new situations and modes of interaction – by means of its critical power of negation, which identifies repetitions and structures of power, there where one might have been seduced or fascinated by apparent novelty, surface effects, etc. And so the strong presence of the social sciences in art discourses over the last ten or fifteen years is not an unfortunate accident, but instead an integral part of some of the most challenging and interesting work now being done inside – and always partially outside – the field of art.

I think the kinds of processes that link political engagement, aesthetic experimentation and social theory should be deliberately defined as one of the legitimate objects or fields of art - and what is more, I think that a more concerted effort must be made to show that these processes, with all their critical and experimental character, are vital not just to economic growth and upward mobility, but to peaceful coexistence, social justice, and sustainability. You have to go so far as to theorize the kind of society into which these experiments would really fit. Because only then will you have a criticism and a public perception that is really adequate to the experimentation. If such an effort is not made, I’m afraid it will be impossible to defend a kind of art that is drifting further and further away from its modernist definitions, and also from its status as exciting or titillating exoticism.

The second point where we could all gain from some kind of concerted reflection has to do with the actual program of the museum, and the way it opens up the experience of its outsides to its visitors. The problem is that over the past ten years there has been a very deep transformation of what certain kinds of artists do, but this has not really affected the formats of public presentation very much. The multiplication of social sites and actors for lectures, screenings, performances and even exhibitions is something that should really be pursued. What I mean is, the museum should find ways to project its activity outside its walls, and to involve people who are not necessarily among the creative-class prosumers. Involve does not mean just giving people a script to read or a preconceived role to fill. It means It means opening up the triple question of participation, representation and evaluation, with people who do not necessarily agree in advance and on a territory that you do not control. Only in this way can a real taste be developed, among at least a fraction of the public, for the complex human texture of activities that traverse aesthetics, politics, and social theory. If this effort is not made, and if there is not some coherent and transformative institutional support for the kind of we are talking about here, I am afraid that the Global 1000 will basically remain in the position that has been sketched out by the theorists of relational art, who are really something like the organic intellectuals of the creative class. That is the position where a relatively narrow transnational network of participants take each other as objects of exotic fascination within the contemporary Wunderkammer, while remaining more or less blind to the increasing decay of the world outside. I can assure you that this position felt very uncomfortable, during the last couple of weeks in Paris.