Seminar in Visual Culture

Money Money Money

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 275

(School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London)

 

Thursday 26 Feb, 6.30 - 8.00pm

Samuel Thomson, "Artist Futures" (art presentation)

It is certainly no secret that trading in Fine Art can be an extremely profitable enterprise and the idea of a financially speculative art-purchase fund has been touted at various points over the last 25 years.  A number of such funds have been waylaid by the recent Crunch and Recession, Art prices apparently having reached their peak.  As dealers and collectors look to leave Europe and America for emerging markets overseas, perhaps now is a good time to ask if such speculation has had an identifiable effect on Western Art production in recent years.  

Of course, as soon as outsider interests get involved, claims for the autonomy of art wear increasingly thin.  How does this affect the status of progressive and critical art?  To address these issues we must venture back to the beginnings of Modernism, to the Rationalist's belief in their own ability to change the world, and to the highly politicised, debt-funded architecture of Baron Haussman and Robert Moses in Paris and New York.  

Does the recent debt-funded art-boom similarly reflect an aggressive occupation of our culture by particular ideologies?  

We visit galleries!

We visit art fairs!

Clement Greenberg admits he was wrong!

 

Jon Purnell, Cack-U-Like (art presentation)
The presentation will showcase Cack-U-Like's ceaseless attack on the commodification of art since the art group's formation in 2001. Works shown will include their seminal video/performance 'Demonstration Against Toffs' as well as more recent works such as 'Public Request' and 'Hypno-Cack'
Cack-U-like spokesperson, Jon Purnell will not only highlight these aforementioned but will give explanations of Cack-U-Like's intent and  underling ideas

It is a rare chance to see an overview of a much discussed, ground-breaking art groups oeuvre; a display all the more poignant in today's financial quagmire. 
http://jonpurnell.co.uk/   

 

RSVP [log in to unmask] so we know roughly how many people to expect.



The Seminar in Visual Culture aims to create a forum for practicing artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual culture to present, discuss and explore the various aspects of a given theme within the field. In 2009, to keep apace with the present credit-crunching times, the theme is Money.

While the media are providing us with endless analyses of the credit crisis from all imaginable economic angles, it is now perhaps time to look at how artists and writers are responding to Nasdaq and FTSE100, to shiny coins and colourful banknotes and to the repetitive images of worried brokers shouting into their mobile phones. After all, money is itself an object of design and has long been the subject of the creative arts and the credit crunch has not only inspired economists and journalists. 

The seminar looks at the relationship between art, money and the everyday - in times of crisis and of affluence. Sessions include theoretical papers, art presentations of new and existing work as well as film screenings.
For more information please contact [log in to unmask] 

 

Programme: 

Thursday 29 Jan, 6.30 - 8.00pm 

Dr. Yair Wallach, "Money becomes Text: Gold and Paper in Palestine"

Rebecca Ross (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design), "Doing Visual Culture: Currency and Graphic Design" 


Thursday 26 Feb, 6.30 - 8.00pm

Samuel Thomson, "Artist Futures" (art presentation)

Jon Purnell, Cack-U-Like (art presentation)

Wednesday 25 Mar, 6.30 - 8.00pm

Marina Vishmidt, "Speculation as Mode of Production: Art, Money and the Formalism of Value"

Carolyn Kay, "Economics and Gaming" (art presentation) 

Tessa Garland, Consumerism and Art (art presentation)

Thursday 28 May, 6.30 - 8.00pm

Dr. Diane Gabrysiak (Birkbeck College), "Let's Make Money - Representing money on film"

Morgan Adamson (University of Minnesota), "Inflation and the Image: Film, Financial Crisis, and the End of the Gold Standard"


Wednesday 24 June, 6.30 - 8.00pm

Dr. Gavin Grindon (Kingston University), "Art-Activism, Anticapitalism and Value - from the Situationist International to now"

Robin Priestley, The Space Hijackers (art presentation)

The Vacuum Cleaner (art presentation)

 
 
 
Dr Ricarda Vidal

Lecturer in Visual Culture

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
School of Advanced Study
Stewart House, 32 Russell Squ, London WC1B 5DN
<http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=530011&y=181908&z=0&sv=WC1B+5DN&st=2&pc=WC1B+5DN&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf> 

phone: 020 7862 8961