Enduring Value?
Notions such as shifting values or declining moral standards, mostly referring to the way in which traditional values are corrupted or eroded, are bandied about in many quarters. At the same time material value, often associated with interventions rooted in individualism or private mythologies, seems to have assumed greater importance than ever before. How is this development made manifest in art? How have agendas once held to be positive and valuable been reappraised or abandoned over the past decade? What new directions have begun to emerge during this period? What new ways of viewing what is »valuable« and »valid« are currently taking hold, and what are the more or less viable ways of talking about these?
These questions were the starting point for a cooperation we initiated with Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) at the start of 2012. From the outset we envisaged a multi-part project: the exhibition »Enduring Value?«, which was intended to reflect springerin’s 17 years of history and to apply the questions enumerated above to those art practices from this period that we felt to be most relevant ; a concentrated block of events at the end of February in the KUB Arena, where all these aspects would be debated and explored via discourse within the framework of the exhibition; and thirdly, picking up on these discussions, this edition, designed to showcase the presentations from the event, together with some additional commentaries.
It more or less goes without saying that the approaches and lines of argument within the chosen thematic framework assume a wide range of different forms. One of the focal points involves appraising whether »criticality« constitutes something like a steadfast value that might almost be said to transcend time, or is instead perhaps a notion that is per se constrained by time and context. The essays by Simon Sheikh and Alice Creischer/Andreas Siekmann address, each in their own way, the nexus of questions relating to critical values in art and arrive at illuminating findings, in both cases picking up on the work of Michel Foucault: in one instance offering insights into how necessary refractory »conceptual currencies« are, even if these are dismissed by the ruling power/truth monopoly as scandalous or insignificant; in the other case, insisting that there is a need to focus more on the »belligerent dissensus« that rages beneath the seemingly peaceful surface of society, particularly against the backdrop of the current state of the world economy.
Complementing this, Anette Baldauf recalls the promises of freedom, resistance and empowerment once inherent in Cultural Studies’ discourse – and also a defining influence on this magazine. Her sobering findings on what has become of all this in the wake of increasing institutionalisation, coupled with simultaneous neoliberal economic homogenization, lead Baldauf to call for a sharper set of theoretical instruments to be developed once more. However, we are starting from scratch when it comes to the question of the form these should take, just as no reliable means have been developed so far to remedy the acute precarity of contemporary production and working conditions. In this context Süreyyya Evren references the history of anarchism, which he views as an ongoing experiment with new (social, political, artistic) forms. Scope for transposing this to contemporary circumstances can perhaps only be guessed at in the light of artistic approaches that – consciously or implicitly – draw on elements of this history, adopting an open, non-canonical modus operandi in dealing with them.
A further relevant focus against the backdrop of the topics associated with »Enduring Value?« is the dearth of alternatives as the stricken financialised capitalist system advances towards the end of its shelf life. Hans-Christian Dany takes a critical look at the much-lauded Occupy movement now active in many places, asking whether it can help remedy this state of affairs. At the same time, as this sceptical view tacitly suggests, the art of today would do better to reflect on its own economic functioning – such as the fact that for a long time it did rather well out of participating in the financialised capitalism that it now opposes in such vehement critiques of the whole system. Several contributions from artists, for example from Jochen Schmith or Josef Dabernig’s films, seem in this respect to be restricting their frame of reference to their own immediate (artistic) surroundings – a reductionist approach with an inherent, compelling link to notions of incompatibility and irreconcilability. Driving home the same point, Tony Chakar calls on us all to reflect for once on how intermeshed and complex our own immediate vicinity is, rather than spouting grandiose calls for emancipation in the rest of the world.
In this spirit this edition would also like to open up self-critical perspectives on the way in which notions of enduring and transient value are perpetuated in such different formats as the exhibition, the work, discourse or the newspaper as a medium. All these aspects formed part of our joint project development and implementation with Kunsthaus Bregenz, which we would like to thank here warmly once again for this cooperation.