Upcoming AN event at ICA on 2 December

OCCUPATION, CO-OPERATION & SELF-ORGANISATION BY AMATEURS

Salon organised by the Amateurist Network at ICA on 2 Dec 2011 with invited guests Simon Bedwell (artist), Sion Whellens (Calverts Workers’ Co-op) and Anthony Gross (DIY Art Centre) to discuss the following questions:

- what is the potential of self-organised activity?
- what can we learn from the autonomous status of the amateur?
- how does a self-organised amateur negotiate his / her rights and responsibilities?

To reserve a place at this event please follow this link:

http://www.ica.org.uk/?lid=30945

‘Self-organization links outwardly not as identity, interest, or affiliation, but as a mode of coexistence in space.’

Having tried to deconstruct what “free” might mean in relation to knowledge, in relation to my hoped-for-academy, I think that what has come about is the understanding of “free” in a non-liberationist vein, away from the binaries of confinement and liberty, rather as the force and velocity by which knowledge and our imbrication in it, move along. That its comings-together are our comings-together and not points in a curriculum, rather along the lines of the operations of “singularity” that enact the relation of “the human to a specifiable horizon” through which meaning is derived, as Jean-Luc Nancy says. (1) Singularity provides us with another model of thinking relationality, not as external but as loyal to a logic of its own self-organization. Self-organization links outwardly not as identity, interest, or affiliation, but as a mode of coexistence in space. To think “knowledge” as the working of singularity is actually to decouple it from the operational demands put on it, to open it up to processes of multiplication and of links to alternate and unexpected entities, to animate it through something other than critique or defiance – perhaps as “free.”

Rogoff, Irit (2004) Free. In: J. Aranda, B. Kuan Wood, A. Vidokle, ed. (2011) Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art, E-Flux Journal, Sternberg Press 183 – 205

(1)    Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), xi.

Symposium: Marginalia: Towards an Invisible College Whitechapel 3 Nov 2011

The AN is looking forward to attending this conference at the Whitechapel. Here's the description of the event: Through contemporary artists’ practice, this conference examines the role and influence of the peripheral and the marginal on art production and the framework in which it's received. Speakers include Maeve Connolly, Brian Dillon, Sean Dockray, Richard Grayson, Caleb Kelly and Jennifer Thatcher.

 

 

 

 

‘The Professional Amateur’ by Shumon Basar

 

From the book ‘Did Someone Say Participate?’ by Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar, MIT Press 2006

Seth Siegelaub on the ‘Artists’ Contract’ he conceived of during the 1960s

Hans Ulrich Obrist: How did you conceive the “Artists’ Contract”?

SS: The ”Artists’ Contract” is a much more modest project than you suggest by your question. Its intention was just to first, articulate the kind of interests existing in a work of art, and then, to shift the relative power relationships concerning these interests more in favor of the artist. In no way was it intended to be a radical act; it was intended to be a practical real-life, hands-on, easy to-use, no-bullshit solution to a series of problems concerning artist’s control over their work; it wasn’t proposing to do away with the art object, it was just proposing a simple way that the artist could have more control over his or her artwork once it left their studio. Period. But the broader social-economic questions of the changing role and function of art in society, the possibility of alter native ways of art making or the support of the existence of the artist; all these important questions are not addressed here. As a practical solution, the contract did not question the limits of capitalism and its private property; it just shifted the balance of power in favor of the artist over some aspects of a work of art once it was sold.

HUO: It would be about protecting the artist within the existing system.

SS: Right. The problem of art as private (capitalist) property, of the uniqueness of objects, this was certainly a problem in the air during the 1960s and behind certain art making projects. But it wasn’t just a theoretical-political problem, in the context of art making at the time it was also a practical problem, in that the selling of ideas or projects was something that the art world had never come up against before on any generalized scale. This has to do more with questions of how to transfer property ownership of an art work, and these questions were ” more-or-less” resolved by treating them in a way similar to the rights and interests given to authors or composers.

HUO: Or musicians? Whenever a piece of music is played in public the author gets a royalty on it. We could apply this to publications and exhibition. But, of course, there is the problem that it will never be popular enough for the royalties to be significant.

SS: Yes; and that was precisely the problem at the beginning, because the catalogues were barely sold, or sold for $2 or something. The idea of royalties of 20 cents for four people on a book, added to the fact that there were not that many people interested to begin with, makes for very little real money. But the idea or pos-sibility is still very important. This may change of Course if there is more interest or if the prices become expensive enough to make royalties.

http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/notes/interview/i001_text.html

2 PDFs containing Seth Sieglaub’s 1960s artist’s contract

siegelaub-e-a

siegelaub-e-i

“Specialization also kills your sense of excitement and discovery” said Said

‘Specialization means losing sight of the raw effort of constructing either art or knowledge; as a result you cannot view knowledge and art as choices and decision, commitments and alignments, but only in terms of impersonal theories or methodologies.

… Specialization also kills your sense of excitement and discovery. In the final analysis, giving up to specialization is, I have always felt, laziness, so you end up doing what others tell you, because that’s your specialty after all.’

                                                                                                Edward W. Said Representations of the Intellectual, 1994 from the chapter on ‘Professionals and Amateurs’ p77