DIG Pool 8: Art & Crisis (gLV) 

"Nobody Likes the Art World, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Myself"

The workshop will challenge you to accelerate your artistic production by using a range of different strategies, including but not limited to algorithmic decision making, outsourcing, automated processes, and tools for navigating the art world network to better position and contextualise your work.

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Nummer und TypMFA-MFA-Po00.21F.008 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPool: 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungJonas Lund
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 13
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English
LehrformSeminar, theoretical and practical workshop, individual and group tutorials
ZielgruppenMA Fine Arts students

Open for exchange students

Interested students of other study programmes can register from 3rd to 21st February 2021 by email to: studium.dfa@zhdk.ch. You will be informed at the end of calendar week 8 about a possible participation.
Lernziele / KompetenzenLearning about strategies for how to incorporate system-based algorithmic decision making in ones artistic practice

Acceleration of ones artistic production and output

Engagement in a critical dialogue through group tutorials
InhalteNobody likes the art world; no gallerist, artist, museum director, curator or collector, no one. Don’t get me wrong, we all love art and we all love going to see amazing exhibitions, shows, performances, biennales, and triennials but the Art World (with a capital A) and its extremely hierarchal power mega-structure, you know the one I’m talking about, the one in which a minuscule minority controls the faith of the vast majority. That one, nobody likes. Except perhaps the top 100 most influential and powerful people with all the agency and control. Remember seeing those ‘Top 100 most powerful people in the art world lists?’. Those guys.

So what should one do? Give up and lie flat on the ground? While that’s an entirely valid strategy in the age of pandemics, to take a break and breather, I have another proposal: We shall empower ourselves with all the different tools and strategies to conquer the art world, to either become part of the influential elite, or to use our new-found powers to subvert and disrupt the network from within.

The institutional theory of art by George Dickie teaches us that Art is defined as “art is whatever the art world says is art”. Meaning two things, 1) if the art world determines what is art and what isn’t art, it also determines what is good, relevant art and what is bad art, and 2) in that hierarchal power structure, the higher up you are in the hierarchy the more influence and power you have to determine what is relevant and good.

The Art World power-structure is rigid, yet, given the current distribution of influence and agency, the path towards the attack vector on its fundamental value production is obvious — develop strategies and tools for targeting the top of the power-pyramid, and position and contextualise your work for maximum network transmission.

The Nobody Likes the Art World, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love myself. Workshop is a challenge to increase your production and develop tools and strategies for positioning and contextualising your works and artistic practice. Each day will start with a short lecture to introduce a technique or a tool that can be used for either production or positioning. Followed by a related assignment that must be completed the same day to then be presented in a group critique session.

About the lecturer:

Jonas Lund (1984, Sweden) creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites and performances that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems and power structures of control. His artistic practice involves creating systems and setting up parameters that oftentimes require engagement from the viewer. This results in
performative artworks where tasks are executed according to algorithms or a set of rules. Through his works, Lund investigates the latest issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of contemporary society like authorship, participation and distribution of agency. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms of the art world; he challenges the production process, authoritative power and art market practices.

Lund earned an MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery (2019), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2016), Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2016, 2015, 2014), Växjö Konsthall Sweden (2016), Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam (2013), New Museum, New York (2012), and has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including Centre Pompidou, Paris, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Vienna Biennale 2019, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Kindl – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. His work has been written about in Artforum, Frieze, Kunstforum, The New Yorker, The
Guardian, Metropolis M, Artslant, Rhizome, Huffington Post, Furtherfield, Wired and more.

https://jonaslund.com/
Bibliographie / LiteraturWill be handed out during the course.
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80%); active participation
TermineTime: 10:00 - 18:00 o'clock

CW 20: 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 May
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
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