Autonomy in Art Operating System(s)

Master Thesis

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

“Master of Fine Arts (MFA) New Media”

Universitätslehrgang “Master of Fine Arts in New Media” eingereicht am

Department für Interaktive Medien und Bildungstechnologien

Donau-Universität Krems

von

Kruno Jošt

Krems, 07. 2010.

Betreuer/Betreuerin: Geoff Cox

I, Kruno Jošt born on: 22.12.1973 in: Zagreb, Croatia declare,

that I produced this Master Thesis by myself and did not use any sources and resources other than the ones stated and that I did not have any other illegal help, that this Master Thesis has not been presented for examination at any other national or international institution in any shape or form, and that, if this Master Thesis has anything to do with my current employer, I have informed them and asked their permission.

Zagreb, 15 July 2010.

Signature

Acknowledgement

I am heartily thankful to my supervisor, Geoff Cox, whose supervision and support led

me trough the study. His valuable advices and encouragement helped me to endure complex

and critical times. Here, I would also wish to express my deepest gratitude to mentors Sophia

Lycouris and Michael Bowdidge for valuable interpretations and evaluations. Lastly, I offer my

regards to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the project.

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Kruno Jošt

Professor: Geoff Cox

Master Thesis '10

15 July 2010

Autonomy in Art Operating System(s)

Cornelia Sollfrank, in an interview with Florian Cramer, states that market value is the

“. . . governing force in art operating systems” (Sollfrank). This position is taken as a starting

premise to create an argument that art systems which seek autonomy from market or state

influences tend to gravitate towards collaborative, cooperative and process orientated

practices, whose aim is not necessarily the production of object itself, but creation of systems

where dialogue and negotiation arises. In such groups, individual and signature orientated art

work is substituted with group and participative work.

Introduction

Art production that operates under market conditions both alienates and creates

competition because of its inherent systems. To find an alternative to competitive work a

notion of collaboration and cooperation have been supported as the foundations of autonomy

throughout this paper.

When looking at the situation of late capitalism, the pertinent subject of the crisis of

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value and debt makes this argument even more interesting. Crisis of value in monetary

system also reflects on systems of culture and art. A term art operating system refers to

systems of relations between their internal parts. Internal parts of a art operating systems

might be: art product, artist, institution that artist might work for, value that art work has

(symbolic value, monetary value, educative value, historical value, etc.). There are also other

actors to consider: gallery owner, critic, buyer, artwork consumer, tools artist uses to create.

Mentioned internal parts can also be linked to other systems: political, geographical. An a

whole scope of other relations like artist internal aspirations, ideas, points of view come in the

picture.

In many cases art systems working on the subject of social change, especially in

relation to the subject of autonomy are not considered art practices at all. This is why it is

important to ask questions about the relations of value in the art operating system, thus

allowing for the identification of spaces in-between systems that can be hacked and re-

purposed as spaces of freedom and autonomous production where a new possibilities for art

production and creativity can arise.

Art operating systems are agglomerates running analogy that will allow me to define

systems. I will introduce ideas of autonomy in the systems and how this might be applied to

artistic production by referencing to writing of theorists Castoriadis, Berardi, Holmes and

Terranova and artists Kac and Grant. Analogy of computer operating and art operating

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system will help better understanding, providing another layer of actor-network theory

application to the research. References to artistic practices of participation and group work,

for difference of solo, individual artist, and finding aesthetic in the process itself, not in final

object are main methods to understand art operating systems. Near the end of the paper a

multiple identity artist takes negotiating position in a range of art operating systems will be

discussed. I will finish the paper by connecting a research done to artistic practice I was

involved with during year 2009 and 2010.

System

Diagram of the systems can be produced on many levels. Throughout the history art

operating systems can be presented as ones that work in accordance with, or against the

dominant interests of the time. Market and state systems were presented as the dominant

ones, organized to work in the interest of the ruling class, while vanguard ones were

frequently depicted as ones that questioned that dominance. But art theory and history has

often been oriented towards prioritising the object and is therefore less eager to examine the

means of production in the system and system itself.

Nevertheless, many historical influences that engaged with the ideas of systems in art

production began to create a climate which was more supportive to the creation of system

orientated art instead of object orientated art. Jack Burnham introduced the notion of system

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aesthetics in 1968, when he observed that changes were taking place from an object-

orientated to a system-orientated culture where “. . . changes emanate not from things, but

from how things are done” (Burnham, 2). Even if Burhnam's notions are interpreted as ones

that will go hand in hand with latter popular self-generative or computer art (computer as

autonomous creative producer), his interest in 'how things are done' can also be seen as a

orientation to understanding autonomy.

A system can be understood as a collection of interrelated parts, both maintaining its

internal order and also drawing the resources necessary for its survival and reproduction from

the external environment. At this point introducing an analogy between art operating systems

and computer operating systems can bring us closer to understanding which systems are

dominant ones and what are their main characteristics. The analogy between computer

operating and art operating systems was introduced by the art theorist Thomas Wulffen1 : “Art

is not a computer, however, with their structures, processes and rules, contemporary art

forms amount to a relatively self-contained complex revealing certain parallels to the

functional systems of computers” (Wulffen). I would like to extend this notion to computer

operating systems, so the immaterial, process orientated part of the everyday computer. By

the comparison of Microsoft, MAC and GNU Linux operating systems seen in table 1. an

analogy can be made about characteristics and influences on production, which provides a

starting point for a discussion on the stratification of the users, the symbolic value added and

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finally the degree of autonomy inherent to each system.

Operating system Microsoft MAC GNU Linux

How it works? Low customization, no possibility of self improvement – only professionals can adjust.

No need to adjust, what you get is what works, if something stops working, get a new one.

Highly customizing – everyone can improve, community based.

Stratification Consumers, gamers, incognizant users...

Young urban professionals. Autonomists, anarchists, geeks, enthusiasts.

What is it based on? Profit Style Humanism

Ownership Proprietary Proprietary Open source

Orientation Hard-core neoliberal market. Upper-class market of aesthetics.

Exchange markets.

What is the relationship? Monopolistic Elitist From many to many

Work and labour Classical capitalist exploitation system.

Exploitation based on ideology of style.

Sharing work flow, gift economy, high precarious element.

Sustainability Depending on huge advertising machine, monopolistic and unsustainable.

Depends highly on amount of people using it – small amount of professionals make it sustainable.

Sustainable on many levels: adoptable, recyclable, high level of customization and localization.

Waste and recycling Large amounts of e-waste created by advertising stronger, newer and better equipment cyclically. Old equipment is not recycled.

Smaller amount of waste due to longer life span. Motto is “futurists don't look back”, so there is no recycling involved.

Opens up awareness and according actions to possibilities of recycling and reusing: software for older machines, less resources needed.

Analogy to art system Profit based art system concerned with traditional gallery/museum model with pseudo-development.

Elitist, aesthetics regarded as “something beautiful” system, where highly professional independent actors run art system based on novelty.

Always changing, concerned with medium as much as with message, sustainable, localized, exchange makes it work, collaborative, always work in progress.

Table 1. Analogy between art operating systems and computer operating systems. By author,

2010.

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Table 1. reveals the most obvious discrepancies between the systems: their

ownership, labour, stratification, orientation and degree of sustainability. When a system is

analysed by examining these parameters, a simple hegemonic over self-organized system

ratio can be established in both computer and art operating systems.

Parameters that define systems should be the first to be examined if one wants to hack

the system, in other words, to use its good and bad aspects to facilitate self-organization.

Artists that are hacking computer operating systems don't hesitate to apply similar techniques

to art operating systems. Cornelia Sollfrank says:

. . . what interests me most in art is it's operating system, the parameters which

define it, and how they can be changed and what the possibilities of new media

contribute to this change. What also belongs to the operating system is the

concept of the artist, the notion of an artistic program, an artist's body of work,

and last but not least the interfaces - who and what will be exhibited and who will

look at it (Sollfrank).

Sollfrank here also puts into question the correlation between various actors in new media art:

i.e. the concept, or idea, the parameters of the system that this idea has to be produced in

and the interfaces or media that it has to be communicated in. She questions the positions of

agents negotiating what will be exhibited and where, how value will be added and how it will

be promoted.

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In this chapter an examples and analogies are used to bring closer an understanding of

what system is. To go even further into what market operating systems parameters are, cases

will be studied on where and how market influences art operating system. A chance to

analyse systems will be given as to further understand why are systems taken for granted,

and where could we lead our artistic practices by understanding them and working with this

understanding.

Art market operating

A gallery orientated production where a curator is a professional assigned to create an

exhibition using artworks created by artists that eventually has to be sold to create market

value. The market adds value to the artwork by considering theoretical and historical values.

On the top of this a value added by the media and representative institutions (galleries and

museums) which creates a picture of success. This success is assessed and measured again

by certain systems that are market dependent, with internal rules. Media and advertising

industry are helping artists to climb ladders of success and thus increase their value. This

network is, for most of its work seen as a coherent thing, not sum of its parts. This

simplification was discussed by John Law in Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network:

Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity, where an artwork masks a complex system that lies

behind it.

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Regarding the process of art production, from its origin (an idea), to its representation

(an object), in dominant systems where market or policy direct the way in which this process

unfolds, the artist has little or no autonomy over the practice, they become agents that are

forbidden from working autonomously by the system that is than considered all-

encompassing. Artists today still have to obtain their rights on and of the material work they

produce. One way is by applying a signature, as well as by working on the right to apply it

trough creation of recognition systems. Signature is sign of uniqueness, which in turn

enlarges market value of the object that caries it. This system produces an individuality

contest, dominated by pop-star principles of distancing and depreciation of other producer.

But what this system also produces is large amounts of art pollution; a waste amounts of

works that are based on, or re-use, ideas that are fashionable at the time. This is resulting in

new, but not innovative works, works only fuelling dominant systems.2

In her essay Failure to Comply Tiziana Terranova explains how the market system

takes actions against artists that are involved with politically orientated art practices. She

shows, through Steve Kurtz's court case how the shift happens from traditionally censorship

driven cases to economically driven cases against artists and artwork: “ . . . from threat to

security to threat to the market” (Terranova 189). Steve Kurtz was accused firstly of bio-

terrorism3 and then for law-infringement, based on equipment found in his possession. This

equipement was treated as dangerous by a security system that acts as a paranoid one

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considering terrorist attacks and mass weapons threats. But instead of finding out that

equipemnt was used to produce mass weapons, what came out is that it was used for the art

project Home DNA Extraction Machine, a machine that would be used to test our everyday

food for genetically modified organisms, an issue pertinent to the question of autonomy in

food and crop production.4

When Kurtz could not be accused of bio-terrorism, as the equipment and biological

samples were found to be harmless, a charge was changed to one saying that he was

undermining GMO corporate businesses. This important and contemporary observation about

surveillance of the state by the market and how mechanisms (systems) of security are driven

by economic calculus that is based on probable effect calculus (FBI database software that

could connect Kurz to anti-market action) by the security systems shows an example of

system control.5 When looking on how system control can charge one artwork and influence

making of another I valuable for understanding art operating systems.

Another poignant point Terranova introduces us in her writing is the way in which

market art operating systems are constantly introducing us to rivalry and competition, which is

also a form of control “ . . . where rational/realistic conduct is conduct which accords with the

rules of the market” (Terranova 196). Competitions for prizes at art markets, festivals and art

events create foundations for outdated principles of self-centred individuality where artist are

supposed to externalize inner visions: a fashionable yet idealized status.6 By following the

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principles of this art production, people not only became separated from their own product in

the process of production, they are also separated from their fellow man through competition

and class hostility which makes it impossible to create forms of cooperation. Figure 1. shows

diagram where connection of market, institution and added value creates so called art

pollution.

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Fig.1. How did Traditional Values End up Helping the Market. Drawing by author, 2010.

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In relation to art history: historians and critics usually define boundaries of system

much less radically than some artists do. Mainstream scholarship focuses primarily on “. . .

collaborations among and between 'artists' rather than those collaborative projects that

challenge the fixity of artistic identity per se” (Kester). Cooperation is accepted, but only up to

a certain point, i.e. when it doesn't transcend the boundaries of values that the market can

assess. Dominant systems rely on individuals; their needs and obsessions. The strength of

the idealization of individualism can be used as a good source to exploit too. When we have

idols we want to look like them and think like them.

What the market is also dependent on is the material object: the object of production,

something that can change hands and enlarge value. Dominant systems cannot asses

process orientated and non-material art practices done outside of gallery/museum systems.

They cannot connect value to, or assess art practice that is orientated to non-signature

orientated work where “ . . . dismantling of the artistic personality itself [happens] in a splay of

mediatory practices and exchanges” (Kester).

Generally accepted as cooperative and collaborative, the non-institutional systems7 are

sometimes perceived as the only opposition to the market ones. But, they too fall in the same

trap most of the time; leaders, board of directors, the constant search for funding

opportunities, program grants instead of general or operational grants, these are all

contributing to rivalry instead of collaboration. Introducing an alternative resource generating;

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like flexible public spaces, voluntary work and skills sharing, and recycling makes actors

autonomous when compared to market and non-institutional systems. Some of the project

based systems look like attractive trajectories, but one has to bare in mind that in general

most of them have strong policy orientation or a dependence and orientation that are

established at political levels with ensuing elusive purposes and directions that are eventually

brought to bear on the artists themselves.

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Fig. 2. Thinking on Funds and Policy. Drawing by author, 2010.

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Art operating system have been explained trough the case of artist Steve Kurtz,

question of competition vs. collaboration and actor-network theory. An explanation why

assessment of collaborative and process orientated practices are difficult in market art

operating system and how it reflect on the practice itself is now followed by explanation of

what is autonomy and its historical overview, especially on connection to self-organization. If

autonomy is not found in non-institutional systems, where can they be found?

Search for autonomy

Jack Burnham introduced a change from object-orientated to system-orientated culture

back in 1968, when he observed that “changes emanate not from things, but from how things

are done” (Burnham 2). Artists have been looking at how things are done in the 20th century,

and have made a large body of work in this direction: in relation to the process of art making

itself, to relations between people and their environments, of social systems and

interrelatedness to art-work, art-production etc. Systems of production are a major issue in

the struggle for autonomy, starting from questions of alienation from the process and final

product, to questions of self-organization. Both of these issues have been focus of the groups

developing their social consciousness.

To critically approach a question of autonomy in art operating systems we shall

research into the history of political Autonome movements and their ideas in relation to

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artistic production of today. Deriving from Greek (autonomos: auto-, + nomos, law) autonomy

means life in society by one's own rule. Autonomism (autonomia), is a left-wing political and

social movement that emerged from movement of Workerists in 1960s, and is latter

associated also with Situationists, Anarchists and Post-Marxists. The movement is described

in history as one that grew out of the workers and students uprisings in 1968, and one that is

still alive today with Italian Autonomism, French, German and Dutch Autonome movement,

Greek Anarcho-autonomoi, all with resembling actions, thought and proliferation.

Franco Berardi (Bifo), one of the main figures of the movement of 1977 in Bologna, a

writer and media theorist, explains the history of social movement of students, workers, leftist

and unprivileged in Italy as multitudes that created different approaches to class struggle,

fighting long hours of work and low payment, but that were also actively creating new

organizational experiments, looking for equal rights in salaries and abolition of job

classification and following alternative living systems, through occupation of the schools and

vacant houses by homeless proletariat, political strikes and demonstrations.

The view that Berardi is supporting is non-linear, arguing that the Autonomists were an

ever-changing group that never had a central headquarters, but were organized as nodes and

were self-deployed as and when needed. He doesn't see them as dominant systems do: in

terms of a linear development of the movement from its birth to its collapse, but perceives

them as an ongoing struggle of the movements towards autonomy. Multitudes of self

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organized people have been perceived as threat to hegemonic (dominant) order which

introduces violence and 'tensions strategy' into class struggle. This view is something that

makes ideas of autonomy so vibrant today: a multitude of individuals, groups, collectives,

networked in “ . . . a program of self-organization of the production process and of entire

social cycle of production and consumption” (Berardi 150-152). To search for autonomy in art

operating systems is to be concerned with an identical question.

Another autonomist, Cornelius Castoriadis stresses self-examination as a prerequisite

for the autonomous individual (who is in turn the essence of autonomous society).

Individuals, according to Castoriadis, must continuously examine themselves and engage in

critical reflection. About autonomy and self reflective activity he says:

. . . psychoanalysis can and should make a basic contribution to a politics of

autonomy. For, each person's self-understanding is a necessary condition for

autonomy. One cannot have an autonomous society that would fail to turn back

upon itself, that would not interrogate itself about its motives, its reasons for

acting, its deep-seated [profondes] tendencies. (Castoriadis 151)

When motives and reasons for actions are elusive or not addressed at all, a process is

starting to evolve that leads to alienation where substitutional need for self-recognition occurs,

which can easily be co-opted by market systems.

Castoriadis differentiates between capitalist imaginary and creative imaginary, the

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later being an art which constantly re-evaluates the complex structures and symbolic

representations humans are involved with, in which changes are initiated according to this

process of re-evaluation. The simplest way to explain this is by looking at the entertainment

industry, with its overwhelming influence on our everyday life, where the creative imaginary is

not considered of value. The entertainment industry is a system whose lack of self criticism

and self reflection, and lack of a need to ask questions in general, are partly due to

generalized entertainment pressure. This, mediated awareness, becomes cultural violence:8

“What cultural violence does is operate on a symbolic level to make structural and direct

violence look normal and even desirable, i.e. to take away the symbolic foundations of a

critique” (Sützl 11). Here, the self reflection that would condition autonomy in society is

overwhelmed by a simpler, mediated one, that anaesthetizes subjects into secure and

comfortable mode.

Cultural critic Brian Holmes develops the ideas of Castoriadis: for him autonomy

means giving yourself your own law, but being social beings, we can only see and live

ourselves through others, their memories, and the incompleteness of their sensations.

Holmes puts his focus here on interdependencies in society, which is pertinent in the

discussion of what autonomy might be today: not only individual self interrogation and self re-

evaluation according to Castoriadis, but also an understanding of self through sensitivity of

others, a “ . . . collective adventure, as well as cultural and artistic one” (“Unleashing the

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Collective Phantoms” 101). Creating autonomy, for him, becomes complex, experimental and

experiential collective process, one which cannot be resolved for eternity, but is in constant

flux, ever-changing, in constant debate.

In this chapter a standpoint is shown, where process of debating, negotiating, looping

and examining gives us opportunity for creativity different than one run under market art

operating system. To have self understanding and to practice using it in self-organizing is

basis for applying the creativity to autonomy. In next chapter examples of artworks will be

examined to bring closer an understanding what are 'hands on' practices.

Applying autonomy

In the following pages three cases are introduced to gain a better understanding of

what autonomous artistic practices might look like. These are not cases offered to be followed

blindly, but examples that have similar patterns of operations, introducing non-authorship and

collaborative processes. Holmes explains: “ . . . art, in these case, is no longer an elaborately

finished object arising from a unique inspiration; rather it is an ongoing process of relation

which attends exactly to the question of production, cooperation, responsibility.” (“Unleashing

the Collective Phantoms” 148-149). With picking the cases that focus on smaller scale

collaborations I do not wish to disregard large scale actions like Reclaim the Streets,9 but to

show that small-scale actions are also successful on many fronts. To make sure these

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examples are not viewed as radical actions of activists with strong community art references

only, one can follow Eduardo Kac's notion on Dialogic Art where he contributes to notion of

how recent art development “ . . . undermines emphasis on visuality to give precedence

instead to interrelationship and connectivity” (Kac). Focus is placed on dialogues and forms

that are helping new dialogues to emerge, celebrating new digital technologies for being the

right tools for this process and opening to works that cannot be independent entities, but can

exist only as a result of direct interactions.

In Artist Placement Group10 John Latham and Barbara Steveni initiated an experiment

with notion of placing artist in non-artist environment where he or she will engage actively with

day to day work of organization. Placing artist in factories or government bodies was initiating

social context of documentation that later artworks held. Concepts of equality between artists

work, factory work or government work together with notion that creative thinking can bring

positive social changes here can also be seen in projects that foster collective media

documentation and publishing. To mention only one among many: megafone.net11, a

communal web-casting device and collective process that invites people from the fringe of

society to discuss and give opinions by using commonly accessible cell phone as web

publishing tool, thus acting as digital megaphone to groups that wouldn't otherwise get media

access. Recent example of participative action is New Life Copenhagen12, an initiative that

accommodated for over 3000 activists during the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in

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Copenhagen. As city resources were quickly booked by officials, there was no room for civil

society representatives that would take alternative take on climate crisis discussed. This is not

just recognized as an civil action but as social sculpture, as creative forces were joined to

initiate complex logistic process that would balance social differences created in the city, ones

also recognized as presumption for mentioned crisis.

In the above cases relations range from one initiating connections between artist and

worker, artist as and civil activist and community and activist. All three include systems that

have own internal aesthetics, rhythm, shape, content. Still they are giving trouble to

representational systems of market orientated art operating systems. In many sense activities

of DIY (Do it Yourself), DIT (Do it Together) and DIWO (Do it With Others) events are close to

autonomist ideas of self-organization of the production process and the entire social cycle of

production and consumption. In the gallery, as well as the factory, to take organizational and

production aspects in one's own hands means creating autonomy where system is created for

common good, shared by ones who are self-organizing. This argument can go as far as to

say that Pirate Bay is a larger artwork than Mona Lisa, if one considers amount of information,

diversity, aesthetics, number of people involved, participation, complexity, message, artistic

value, group effort, common good, etc. The Mona Lisa becomes two dimensional

representation supporting an idea of the beauty of an individual in a system of perspective

that puts it into the centre of the system, with no external relations at all, while Pirate Bay is all

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about relation.

To create autonomy by collaborating on processes that are questioning dominant art

operating systems and creating alternatives is being discussed in this chapter. In following

one a way how to operate in-between systems is analysed.

Multiple identities

In this chapter I will connect notions of artist as creator of the system instead of creator

of things, multiple identities that artist has to consider when working in such manner, and why

is it important. Autonomy in art was, and is, in constant search for zones between dominant

practices that see no need to change or re-evaluate themselves. If we imagine dominant art

operating systems as market systems working through galleries, museums and mass media,

than autonomous systems would be ones that are not independent (outside of the system),

but part of them, working with a parallel or alternative approach. When Holmes writes: “Only

by actively imagining different possible realities can we engage in operations of

desymbolization and resymbolization” (“Unleashing the Collective Phantoms” 102) he argues

that only by taking control over the means of distribution can we regain our sanity and make

an end to the ongoing pollution of our minds. If museums are the means of art distribution, he

is asking this question: shall we abandon them or shall we occupy them and use them as

distribution mechanisms within the communication society? In today's complex socio-

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technical systems an artist cannot retain a simple posture of manufacturer but has to become

Homo arbiter formae, man the decider of forms, who would shape “aesthetic systems”

(“Security Aesthetic = System Panic” 93). To be able to do this, an individual has to have an

awareness of all areas of art production, not of only one specific area; the artist cannot be

referred to as only painters, or only film-makers in a sense of professional worker in aesthetic

field. These tendencies can be recognized as far back as the Fluxus movement manifesto:

de-professionalization, but now by introducing more than one identity in artistic practice. As

crude capitalism is teaching us to compete for a better position, we have to organize and

understand that the social Darwinism of survival of the fittest actually means that we do not

take competition but partnership as a standpoint for collaborative practice, where autonomy

can strive on the strength of a group of individuals that is in constant change and flux.

Deliberately escaping professionalism and looking for self-organization and sustainability is

the way out from all-encompassing agency of art operating systems of market.

By creating autonomy of operating the artist becomes an agent, activist, educator and

is usually working in collaborative and participative process, with a strong tendency to share,

orientated to communities of like-minded people (fig. 3.). As a nomadic person, not tied to any

community (race, religion, nationality, etc.), but open to all communities, not economically

related, but at the same time dependent, not in need of aesthetically satisfying the norm, but

still in need to create, the art-agent-artivist is in constant struggle to negotiate s/he's position

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inside the given systems s/he operates within. So, the artist is not seen in a traditional way

any more, as an individual with something to show to the rest of the people, but as a person

ready to take multiple positions as, and when needed, to initiate actions, create systems.

Not to forget: artists have throughout the past been directly related to their social

environment, and also have worked for purely aesthetic and personal reasons. Here is where

the question of multiple identities comes: people don't share a common past, but they do

share a common future looked upon from different perspectives. When asking for autonomy

we are asking for possibility to create a common field where multiple identities created by

having different perspectives are possible. To swim in-between systems needs a paradigm

shift – one saying that art is not finished object, but process. And this processes can be done

only by taking many positions and identities, to escape hollow professionalism.

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Fig. 3. Multiple Identities. Diagram by author, 2010.

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Connecting Art and Research Projects

In the last chapter I have connected a notion of dominant art systems having a

difficulties with assessing and evaluating process-based art practices with artists need for

multiple identity that moves art producer from solitary artist genius position to position of

context provider (rather than content provider). In this chapter I will connect my art practice to

what I have been researching in this thesis.

ART0113 project started in September 2009 and is still in process. It is a project where

my everyday practices and media used, networking with similar individuals and organizing

semi-autonomous and self-organized art events are documented with text, photos, videos and

diagrams that represent interconnections inherent to such practices.

Temporal, dialogic and non-representational art practices have hard time existing out

of the context of real-time participation. This is why ART01 project takes a documentation as

starting point of examining what are participatory methods, what are the tools used, what are

the ways of work and what negotiations are undertaken, what were the opportunities opened

when the system-blocks and oppositions in the process appeared. ART01 examines itself, a

process of art operating systems it lives within, its ways of re-contextualisation and analogies.

Blog (web-log) as a tool for documentation responds to complex way of what project is

representing. One can read blog by categories, entry dates, tags, perform a search action

trough its posts, have a look at rich media: videos and animations, interactive material can be

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in the posts for getting information back from the reader, etc. Reader can be active in writing

comments and entries too, so in that way it becomes also a participatory tool. Documentation

done on the blog corresponds to my research material as it was documenting my nomadic

movement and part-taking at events with autonomous, group and collective creative activity.

By taking part at art-events: exhibitions, festivals, workshops, performances, etc. I have also

sketched my interpretations of their system of operating. This is taken as a basis for latter

study in how to organize an autonomous event that would be presented at final exhibition.

Diagrams that I was drawing show methods of understanding a process where many

influences and negotiation are responsible for final outcome. One of the categories that blog

entries were filed under is 'brainstorming', where creative ways of overcoming difficulties, or

showing alternative ways for organization and overall thinking on art production has been

shown.

Envisioned final event that is substituting object orientated exhibition can be seen

trough Bey's temporary autonomous zone ideas,14 where actions can take place in fluidity of

participation and ad hoc collaborations. A post from ART01 blog Second try to define ART01

is showing a process that I was involved with trying to create a methodology for such fluid

event:

”I am looking for the method of how to work around art project that follows my

multidisciplinary artistic practices whatever they might be at given moment

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(multimedia artist, artivist (artist-activist), bureaucrat, nomad, lecturer/educator,

musician, computer based artist…) and wherever they might take place (gallery,

street, festival, theater, NGO space, etc).

• I have successfully took part of couple self-organized “open process”

events with collaborative outputs.

• I have had been in constant contact with Ministry of Culture of Croatia

and other funders to secure the fundings for further events.

• I have been gathering documentations about my everyday life, my travels

and bureaucratic operations I had to get involved with.

• I have started taking video and audio material looking for different media

to capture and document, but all seamed to fail to get the moments I was

looking to represent.

My output was being documented on web-log trough photography and text.

Research is being done in what kind of output would this material take shape,

and what kind of tools could be used. All ideas seemed too narrow though, thats

why I gave this material a tag 'frozen in time', as captured didn’t, and in my

opinion couldn’t represent my need to consolidate art practices and ideas I was

forming.”

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Fig. 4. Sleeping and working place of artist in Manchester. Photograph by author, 2010.

Methods of working together and self-organization, together with group-work principles

were investigated in the post Horizontal distribution at EEII’09 festival

“Experimental Electronic Intervention (EEII) is an event that has 6 years of

existence worked on self-organized principles. It’s main organizational principles

are:

1. there is no audience: event is organized so everyone could take part in

creative process;

2. there is no one-solitary organizer, everyone helps in organization and

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curatorial process is collaborative;

3. there is no final exhibition, but what matter is a process of creativity;

4. focus is on collaborative work and distancing the process from individual

representations and authorship. EEII’09 was focused on collaborative work

where ideas of every participant would be connected into one 'organism'. It was

12 hours event (during December 2009), where participants went trough

proposing their individual projects, to connecting them into jointed event, to

realizing real-time performances that were similar to Fluxus events in their free-

flow.”

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Fig. 5. EEII looping diagram. Drawing by author, 2010.

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Fig. 5. is a sketch used to show loop of informations flow from one participant to other

during EEII '09 event. A suit with light sensors that reflect on light conditions in the space was

generating a sound that was sent over small FM transmitter to radio receiver. Receiver was

connected to computer and mixer where sound was additionally mixed and manipulated.

From here it was send to another computer where a controls to room lights were. Another

computer was connected to camera that was filming an actor carrying the suit. This image

was mixed with other images collected from surrounding and was beamed on the wall. Actor

can thus move according to the light input, sound input or mixed image displayed behind

him/her.

Later in the blog I have introduced diagrams, sketches or scenarios, drawing

representations of systems I was involved with: “This diagram is showing what research

ART01 will focus on and what tools will be used: what is collaboration and how it works, what

are systems of institution that we are working within, and what are systems of representation

in process-orientated art.” Diagram drawings are going hand in hand with written texts

explanations of certain take on issues encountered during the process. Blog takes me now to

the point of 'always in progress' work, where my practices can be followed in time to come.

From explaining my art practice in '09-'10 and its connection to my research thesis I

proceed to conclusion.

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Fig. 6. What shall we do in ART01? Drawing by author, 2010.

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Conclusion

To search for autonomy in art operating systems is not merely a way out from all-

encompassing systems of market or politics. It is a process of actively reconsidering, re-

evaluating, re-negotiating and identity changing. It is important to understand that artist has an

option to consider herself or himself a free person, in position to constantly re-evaluate, and

rethink art operating systems. Only by doing this new meanings and models can be imagined,

such as models of sharing based on ideas of autonomy or free culture based on FOSS. A

question of understanding market art operating system and its inherent alienation and

distancing trough the competition is starting point for re-contextualization. Take football, and

its elements: a player, a business behind the game, supporters, rules and a ball. To create a

space where football players all work together and not as two teams against each other needs

a lot of creative thinking. Now imagine that there is no supporters, but that they all come down

to the playground to play. Creating this opportunity is an art process itself where artist will

negotiate and take roles to distance himself/herself from a routine of unitary system by

initiating system collisions that will open new eddies. To ask yourself questions of how can

world around you look when applying the method of participation and collaboration is

investigation in systems. This investigation means being actively and creatively a part of the

society: a creator of autonomy in art operating systems.

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Notes

1. Text was entitled Notes published in German as volume 125 of the art magazine Kunstforum in 1994, with the

title "Betriebssystem Kunst", http://www.kunstforum.de/inhaltsverzeichnis.asp?band=125. Translated in English

by Florian Cramer.

2. For difference of innovation and fashionable see Helga Nowtony “The Dynamics of Innovation”, Institute for

Theory and Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna, 1994. http://www.anti-

thesis.net/contents/texts/references/nowotny-innovation.pdf.

3. More on http://www.caedefensefund.org/.

4. Find text on localized food production http://www.springerlink.com/content/p5720r2p61480742/ .

5. Article on crime prevention software http://gizmodo.com/5517231/crime-prediction-software-is-here-and-its-a-

very-bad-idea.

6. For more on the subject check “Paradigm Spinning: Artists as Agents of Social Change” by Suzi Gablik,

http://forum-network.org/lecture/paradigm-spinning-artists-agents-social-change .

7. One of the systems is clearly introduced on “Notes for an Artist Run Credit League”, http://joaap.org/7/

tanda.html#note1.

8. Following the three-level model of violence of John Gultung.

9. Actions numbering couple of thousands participants: http://rts.gn.apc.org/ .

10. More on http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/artistsinfocus/apg/ .

11. More on http://www.megafone.net/INFO/ .

12. More on http://www.wooloo.org/newlifecopenhagen

13. ART01 blog at http://genltejunk.net/art01

14. Hakim Bey TAZ at http://hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html

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Works cited

Berardi, Franco. “Anatomy of Autonomy.” Italy: Autonomia. Post Political Politics. Ed.

Barbiani, Leora, and Corlez, Diego, and Green, Denise. New York: Semiotext(e), 1980.

148 – 169. Print.

Burnham, Jack. “Systems Esthetics.” arts.ucsb.edu. N.p. n.d. Web. Feb. 2010.

Castoriadis, Cornelius. "Figures of the Thinkable." Not Bored. notbored.org. Feb 2005. Web.

8 Jan 2010.

Cox, Geoff, and Sützl Wolfgang, eds. DATA browser 04 - Creating Insecurity. New York,

Autonomedia, 2009. Print.

Holmes, Brian. “Security Aesthetic = System Panic.” Geoff and Wolfgang. 91 -100. Print.

Sützl, Wolfgang. “Introduction.” Geoff and Wolfgang. 7 – 21. Print.

Terranova, Tiziana. “Failure to Comply.” Geoff and Wolfgang. 187 – 196. Print.

Holmes, Brian. Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering. New

York, Autonomedia, 2008. Print.

Kac, Eduardo. “Negotiating Meaning: the Dialogic Imagination in Electronic Art.” ekac.org.

n.p. n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2010.

Law, John. “Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network”. On-Line Publications by Author -

Sociology at Lancaster University. Nov 2003. Web. 3 Apr. 2010.

Kester, Grant. “Collaborative Practices in Environmental Art.” greenmuseum.org.

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greenmuseum.org. 2009. Web. Feb 2010.http://greenmuseum.org/

generic_content.php?ct_id=208

Sollfrank, Cornelia. Interview by Florian Cramer. “Hacking the art operating system.” obn.org.

n.p. 28 Dec 2001. Web. 6 Jan 2010.