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)
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)
RSVP [log in to unmask] so we know roughly how many people to
expect.
Marina Vishmidt, "Speculation as Mode of Production: Art, Money and the
Formalism of Value"
Speculation, as a mode of abstraction that deals with undefined
possibilities, is a faculty common to creative practice and finance. Art
and money draw closer, as risk management becomes the common-sense of a
thoroughly financialised and perilous social world. In the last few
decades, both art and money have de-materialised. They are intertwined
in the ideology of freedom; the emancipatory premises of art are closely
analogous to, historically bound up with, the liberation from necessity
and tradition offered by capitalism. Art is both a commodity and the
alibi for the domination of the commodity; money is both a commodity and
paves the way out of commodity society, given enough of it. Each is a
law that acts most forcefully in its abeyance. But the comparisons also
have a limit, and that is where I would like to bring out the side of
speculation that constitutes a break with the present; this would be
politics. For this, we have to think about work, for work seems to
contradict both art and money; it is necessity, it is unfreedom. But
capitalist work is also close to art and money; it can be anything, it
is an empty form, 'abstract labour'; it is useless without value to give
it a law.
Normally, art and money act as buffers for each other's speculative
urges. Speculation can be said to pivot on an individual relationship to
the unknown; the speculation that constitutes organised political action
being instead an outbreak of singularity that casts individuals and
their relations in doubt. Can this singularity also be found in, and be
fuelled by, the relationship of speculation to art? In other words, if
unchecked speculation results in a crisis for money, where does an
excess of speculation lead art?
Carolyn Kay, "Economics and Gaming" (art presentation)
In economics and gaming, it is the arrangement, movement and speculative
position of familiar ciphers that engages expectations and values. The
illusion of randomness, of chance, fuels participation in a rigged game.
My installations, sculptures, photographs, and drawings reference
abstract systems of valuation and calculation including fiscal and
gambling imagery. The subversion of quantitative expectations as
suggested systems transform or mutate invites subjective narrative to
replace logic and chance. Growing up in Las Vegas with a father who is a
professional gambler and my own experiences with various finance related
day jobs has influenced my art. Georg Simmel's "The Philosophy of
Money," Mark Shell's "Art & Money," Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, Lawrence
Weiner, Maurizio Cattelan, Cildo Meireles, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons,
to name a few, are artists whose work lends context to my own.
My installations use a variety of materials, are often ephemeral and
occasionally recycled. Currently, I am exploring new media including
digital photography and video. www.carolynkay.com
Tessa Garland, Consumerism and Art (art presentation)
Tessa Garland creates illusionary atmospheric video work out of everyday
visits to familiar spaces. In this presentation Tessa will focus upon a
body of work that she made in Gallions Reach Retail Park in Beckton,
East London. The screened videos were made during the boom years of 2006
when shopping and more shopping was the name of the game! The videos
take an ironic view of consumerism and the bizarre nature of the
shoppers. The work made at Gallions Reach attempts to create an implied
narrative that references early science fiction films from the 1950's -
1970's where strange and darker forces are at work.
Tessa Garland is a practicing visual artist and curator based in London.
She has exhibited extensively, in solo and group exhibitions in the UK
and internationally since 1990. http://www.tessagarland.com/
N.B. Tessa will not be able to attend, but she has sent an artist
statement and two of her films, which will be presented by Ricarda
Vidal.
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" (film 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)
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