value

Free Trade detail ceramic

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:26:08 +0100

Ceramic prices
Free Trade 2003

Economy of Love

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:09:35 +0100

An Economy of Love reflects on and gives some context for our project Capital at Tate and the Bank of England Museum. It was first printed in Economising Culture: On The (Digital) Culture Industry in 2004.

its released under a Creative Commons: Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike v2.0 License.

An Economy of Love

In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer developed an influential critical theory that analyzed the effects of new forms of mass culture on society. Adorno and Horkheimer suggested that in a society driven by relationships of production, there was an inevitable drive for capital to extend itself into leisure, consumption and communication, and eventually the space remaindered by labour—that of culture—would begin to obey the rules of production just like any other industry. Through this trajectory, they reverse the traditional liberal view of culture within society; the evolution of capitalism through culture could no longer hold the promise of freedom, but offers only ever tighter discipline and domination. Adorno and Horkheimer’s influential thesis has passed into common knowledge, but there is another, perhaps an even more sinister vector we would have to add to their trajectory. In recent years, as much as culture has become a re-productive industry, due to the shift in emphasis from the manufacturing of material goods towards the sale of intangible products like services, information and loyalty, there has been a seductive cultural ambition emerging in the ‘economy’. The new ‘cultural’ status of the economy has become a mirror reflection of the economically determined character of culture; the ‘market’ has become an aesthetic experience in and of itself.

If capital dissolves the historical dialectic between work and leisure, production and culture, or production and consumption then many of the traditional theoretical tools bequeathed by Karl Marx for modeling our political economy – like Labour Value or purposeful rationality- loose their critical purchase. Labour might now be reproduced for the sake of the reproduction of labour itself – like paying subsidies to farmers not to harvest their produce. The much derided sociologist Jean Baudrillard in Symbolic Exchange and Death (1993) attempts to develop new theoretical tools to deal with what he considers as ‘the structural revolution of value’. The hypertheorist Baudrillard reaches far back to archaic forms of symbolic exchange, and particularly the gift, to animate forces capable of contesting the power of contemporary capital. Through money, commodity exchange establishes arbitrary quantitative differences between things, expressed as the price someone is prepared to pay; it’s an abstract system of general equivalences. It’s this arbitrary equivalence that enables capital to infect all spheres of a given society, and that allows Baudrillard to make the leap to de Saussurian linguistics by characterising capital as predicated on semiotic exchange. In absolute contrast gift or symbolic exchange establishes personal qualitative relations between the people transacting. While money cancels obligations between people and things, gifts establish obligations between people through things. Within commodity or semiotic exchange the desire for the object – let’s imagine some beautiful shoes- is an extension of the subject extinguished at the point of consumption, the gift object fuses the subject to another through relationships that can never be disentangled, exhausted or made equitable. In many respects the gift is the source of the very idea of an economy itself. While the ideal gift is replete with love and generosity – like blood donation - the gift also carries a destructive power. The unreciprocated gift is a constant reminder of indebtedness, and if the gift cannot be forgotten – and it can never be forgotten- it turns vengeful and nurtures hatred; those who receive a gift are always beholden to the giver.

On Capital

Our project Capital was developed at Tate Modern (May-October 2001), aiming to reflect the Tate’s immediate environment, its geographical location, the social and cultural environment in Southwark, and more generally London. The ambition and power of the Tate is made evident in its different departments and components: Tate St Ives, Tate Liverpool, Tates Britain and Modern, the vast stores in high-security but non-descript industrial buildings in south London, the archive of the artworld that it is buying from artists, galleries and other institutions, the best art library in Britain, huge conservation department, vast art handling, aggressive publicity and development, and its huge educational ambition – from working with teachers and schools, to conferences with internationally renowned writers, historians, theorists and artists. The practice of exhibition, the most public of faces of Tate, is a mere sliver of its activities. With its huge cultural ambition and image in the public consciousness, the Tate may resemble in some ways a central bank: a central bank in a different kind of economy, what Baudrillard and others designate as a symbolic economy; something perhaps like the Bank of England.

Bank

The Bank of England is the banker to the whole British financial system and also plays a major role in structuring global monetary relations. This major role is essentially as the ‘lender of last resort’. Which means the Bank will decide to rescue an ailing financial institution if its economists fear a systemic collapse, or a catastrophic loss of confidence in the whole British or world financial system. The role as ‘lender of last resort’ gives the Bank the authority to guarantee the necessary trust and confidence, to secure the various interlocking domestic, foreign commodity and financial markets. In short, it regulates or distributes trust and confidence through these various economies, by managing the availability and price of debt. Effectively it adjusts the cost of borrowing to accelerate or decelerate the flow of capital debt into the markets, with cuts or raises in interest rates. And this debt, this black hole, this lack that the Bank manages the price of, is principally the governments.

Managing the price of government debt was the function that founded the bank in 1694. When William of Orange and Queen Mary jointly ascended the throne of England in 1689 they needed cash money to continue the war with France in William’s homeland of the Netherlands. The government Exchequer declined, so a group of people got together to form a joint-stock company and on-leant money to the king in return for the loan with interest, but also (eventually) for a royal charter to enable the fledgling company to issue paper notes. The Bank, later to become the Bank of England is founded upon a debt, and the continuation of this debt, or the continuation of the repayment of this debt, is the motor of our present domestic and international financial economies. It would be fair to say that our global financial structure is fueled by debt repayments.

The rise of the joint stock company in the 17th Century coincided with new ways of capitalizing assets through extending credit, and creating debt; like the speculation in all manner of commodities - from slaves to tulips, and the investment in various immaterial potentials - like New Worlds. Debt, the evil twin of credit becomes a key feature in the imaginary of the 17th Century, it’s a figure of anxiety because there are terrifying debtors prisons, and yet it’s a source of hope; it can drive a whole nations economy.

Linked to the cost of loan to the king, was the Bank’s demand to issue notes "paper money" in return for a Royal Charter. Previously all value found its form, as, or in relationship to gold. Coin for instance would embody the actual value in material, as that depicted on its face. These new paper notes, colloquially referred to as 'imaginary money' had little intrinsic value but were contractual agreements against which objects or services could be bought or sold for the value represented. Of course these paper promises were backed by gold in the vaults. The ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten pounds’ printed –and still printed- on British paper notes implied that you could present the note at the bank and retrieve your ten pounds of gold. Paper money linked to credit was in its social impact like the internet of the 17th century. It multiplied previously untapped sources of value because Government debts could be incurred against assets such as stocks of merchandise, or even potential stocks, tax receipts, revenues on land or commercial contracts, and money issued against these potentials. These new, let’s call them ‘obligations’ against which credit or ‘imaginary money’ could be advanced and distributed speeded up and exponentially expanded the economy, to all intense and purposes ‘doubled the effect of our coined Money’ . Money became backed by a collective act of faith, trust and obligation.

The Bank began to undertake what is called a ‘fiduciary issue’, it’s a term to denominate paper money in circulation which is no longer backed by bullion in the vaults ; money which is authorized by other paper promises, to pay, sell or loan services, debts, trades and obligation at some point in the future. It’s clear that the dematerialization of value from gold to paper was continuing out into new instruments and technologies. The first telegraph was installed between the bank in London and another in Hamburg in 1845 to swap stock and currency prices; the first Atlantic telegraph in 1858, and by 1877 telegraphic transfers had overtaken the Bill of Exchange as a means of inter-government remittance. These are the roots of our virtual money, as communication accelerated the means by which value is transacted- the first credit card introduced in 1950 – trust and confidence moves from the material object, to the institutions that evolve to construct, guarantee and manage value through particular economies. Released from the post World War II, Bretton-Woods agreement in 1971, and devolved of political management during the unprecedented ‘ free market’ ideology of the 1980’s, financial markets have grown exponentially in their size, ubiquity and liquidity. The current scale of the principle markets that trade currency, bonds, stock, derivatives and commodities, are staggering. For example the turnover on the currency markets alone are estimated at 1trillion dollars a day, which means that in two months the volume of trade dwarfs the annual turnover from manufacturing and retail of the entire planet.

And yet, ironically, the dematerialization of financial value has accelerated the penetration of the ‘market’ into all aspects of contemporary life. Into healthcare, education, transportation, culture and broadcasting which - in Britain at least - were previously State funded and so protected from the vagaries of the ‘market’. And even if the use of money is inappropriate as a disciplinary system, our ever expanding cultures of audit, service, quality assurance and account use the language of capital to regulate all kinds of social exchange.

Values expressed as money haunt everything; a punch line in a popular TV advert suggests ‘we are all bank managers now’ and another that ‘we are all fluent in finance’ . So, as the signs for financial value become increasingly vast but immaterial, does the central Bank’s role as guarantor grow inversely to compensate?

Tate

On the other side of the same coin/note, would it be possible to situate the Tate - through its ambition and constant expansion - as the principle institution in a parallel symbolic economy? Like the Bank, Tate connects with a vast network of other institutions and agencies; from museums, galleries, curators, collectors, dealers, to various funding and sponsoring bodies both nationally and internationally, that make up the global economy of art. Does Tate guarantee the integrity and value of the artworks - the objects, images, experiences and knowledge it stores, collects and distributes within this economy? And, in a close parallel with a central bank, is its basic currency becoming increasingly insubstantial, and difficult to represent - artworks and images are dissolving into digital media, fieldwork and activism? If artworks are indeed becoming less materially present -partly as a consequence of artistic practice, it also stems from the dissemination of ‘aesthetic experience’ beyond the regulated symbolic economy, out into the culture of promotion, sponsorship, branding, Cities of Culture status, economic regeneration, advertising and marketing. Like the Unilever Turbine hall commission at Tate Modern, Egg the online banks ‘live art’ sponsorship at Tate Modern, and Tate have also issued a range of paints through the B & Q DIY superstores.

Clearly, values expressed through image and information haunt everything. And, as the signs of aesthetic value become increasingly immaterial, does the Museum’s role as regulator and guarantor grow inversely to compensate?

If the Tate and the Bank have more similarities than differences, there is a major structural difference. The Tate was founded by a gift from Sir Henry Tate, in 1887. From a family of sugar refiners and slave traders, Sir Henry bought the rights to manufacture sugar cubes, and like many 19th Century merchants made so much money he did not know what to do with it; he founded hospitals, colleges, libraries, and collected works of art . And again, like many wealthy collectors, he donated his collection of modern British art to the nation as a gift when he neared the end of his life. He also donated funds to build a new gallery to house the collection on the site of an old penitentiary at Millbank - now Tate Britain - on the Thames in London. And although it was officially called the Gallery of British Art, it inevitably took its founders name; is that our reciprocal gift to cancel a nations debt to Tate?

The Gift

The contested idea of the gift has been a central theme in anthropology since Marcel Mauss’ seminal publication The Gift (1950) and more recently its influence has been profound in the other social sciences. Mauss’ work on the gift – a gift received by Baudrillard and retuned in Symbolic Exchange and Death - proposes an economy outside or alongside of the calculations encouraged by the purely financial - the gift economy predates money and yet has not been erased by its presence. Receiving a gift triggers the obligation to reciprocate; the counter gift necessitates a return, and so on, endlessly. Pierre Bourdieu’s reworking of the idea of the gift suggests that one of its astonishing characteristics is our ability to ‘misrecognise’ giving as a disinterested gesture, we pretend it’s replete with charity; while actually it’s a gesture of power and domination. If the gift is surrounded by indebtedness and obligation, these are contractual agreements which cannot be recognised as such, and so the ‘return’ of the gift is left unspecified. Therefore an economy founded on gifting is based on the misrecognition of the financial value, or the social and cultural force that the gift entails, it is an un-economic economy; a symbolic economy.

Clearly the Tate and virtually all other public museums and galleries are completely indebted to private, public and corporate gifting; most public collections are the result of endless private gifts of art, and many public institutions rely on financial gifts to meet exhibition and running costs. These patterns of gifting bind cultural institutions into economic networks of obligation and indebtedness, obscured from public scrutiny. And this in itself is further complicated by the enormous growth in sponsorship: exchanges where some of the repayments on the apparent gift are specified - my logo on your publicity - but others as with the true gift are left unspecified . In an economy of value represented by the movement of money, a debt guarantees a contractual and interested return. That’s why a loan is never misunderstood as a gift. As debt drives our financial systems, the gift is at the heart of our cultural economies.

In the Reading Point on Level 5 West at Tate Modern and in the Bank of England Museum, at unspecified times during the day a visitor might be approached by a gallery or museum official. ‘This is for you’ will accompany the presentation of a beautifully wrapped limited- edition print.

With such a simple gesture, habituated museum visits (the cool aesthetic exchange between an audience and an artwork or exhibition) was transformed into emotional exchange between the visitor and the institution. Curators, administrators, maintenance people, sales staff and others who nominated themselves to give away the gift found themselves trying to explain what they were doing, or, what they thought was happening. And the chosen visitors wonders ‘Why me’? or those not chosen but watching the giving wonder ‘Why not me’? The work of the work of art resides in these encounters, this moment of critical reflection, where the visitor and the representative of the institution negotiate the nature of the exchange; the very nature of the ‘work’ of the work of art.

The gesture of authorising the giving of the gift in the project Capital, was using public money and giving it back (with interest?) to the anonymous tax payer or visitor; to those whose contributions - like that of the blood donor - go unacknowledged and unreciprocated because their contributions are not the calculated bequeathing or sponsorship of the wealthy and famous, but the invisible support of a truly disinterested generosity.

An economy of Love

The intention with the issue of the gift in Capital, and by extension to all those individuals that enter into its orbit - through rumour, publicity, the project, or even this text - was to initiate an engagement with some sense of the social imagination, and to set in motion a series of future encounters or economies; each beautiful print-gift might trigger unpaid debts or cancel others, perhaps it will encourage acts of generosity or love, and that these are obligations have no reciprocal object other than the economy over which the institution through which they received the gift, preside over. Is this the root of a ‘public good’, the commons, the welfare state, and culture itself?

Through the issue of the gift in Capital, the artwork becomes nothing other than a temporary point of punctuation, relevant for those that encounter it in shifting fields of value, attention and exchange. Such artworks are not points of origin or termination but nodes in a network and site of exchange. As huge areas of social life are spiraling into abstraction - largely as a result of the complexity of our globally networked economies - the most basic functions of our daily life, the simplest purchase involves lines of debt and credit, chains of labour relationships and complex supply routes; of materials, capital, images, aspiration and information which circle the globe. If art has traditionally been able to make visible, and give form to the most subtle yet powerful of beliefs, it is understandable therefore that the most ambitious contemporary art would seek to engage with these immaterial forces.

In networked economies the exchange of accumulated value as capital, whether cultural or financial, has becomes slippery and complex. It is no longer clear where the creation of value, the foundation of political economy, fits into our accelerated exchange of signs, services and information. Potentials manufactured in cultural, entertainment and creative industries like Museums and Galleries merge into Public Relations, Development and Sponsorship and produce profit’s, profits of all kinds for Advertising, Retail, Branding and Consultancies. These economies emerge, function and then dissipate, only to be reformulated elsewhere in a slightly different format; like a credit-rating. But what is clear is that art is no longer a luxury by-product of financial capital, but central to these ‘new’ economies, it’s the place where the symbolic economy interfaces and has the potential to interrupt the frictionless running of the merely financial.

So, the financial expert can no longer ignore the force of ‘aesthetic’ or ‘cultural’ experience’, and likewise, the artist cannot be ignorant of the forces of capital, as they increasingly merge with, dissolve and influence the very terrain on which artists are encouraged to work. This is not merely to acknowledge that art is bought and sold, or that artists should be conscious of a ‘market’, but to recognize that exchange is a powerful aesthetic object in and of itself. Clearly capital, as an index of creativity is peerless. The formal structures that frame different economies, their institutions, rules, restrictions and subsidies give form to exchange, and through Marx’s famous extrapolation, the social and creative relations they facilitate.

To contest these forces we have to learn to have an interest in disinterestedness, and invest in a generosity that is not calculated. The gift has the potential to contest the economizing of culture, the reduction of all exchange to financial calculation. Through giving and generosity, economic domination is transformed into mutual dependence, kindness, devotion and love.

1. See the US debt clock

The Value of Things

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:52:00 +0100

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

October 2000

Location

Publisher

an August/Birkhauser publication: London and Basel

Designer

Stephen Coates

Body

Part beautiful artists book, part critical text The Value of Things is the result of over five years research, facilitated by unprecedented access to the British Museum and Selfridges Department Store.

To live in a modern city, is to live in an environment described by an astonishing array of things. Growing mountain of clothes, tools, art, gifts, information, souvenirs, electronic technology and rubbish are piling up around us. Objects are inserted into, and spill out of every shelf, cupboard, display case, shop, home, gallery, museum, magazine, computer monitor and landfill site. Surrounded by a complex mesh of competing 'product narratives' that dispute ownership, contest interpretation, and disagree on value, these vast accumulations of objects are the means by which we make ourselves and our world knowable.

Events in the previous century which led to this daunting state of accumulation, unfolded as the end-game of a revolution which had begun in the nineteenth century. The giant engines of European industralisation that initiated the material avalanche of the modern age necessitated the evolution of massive institutions to both structure and display the energy of production through things.

The Value of Things sets out to explore the narratives of two institutions which perfectly represent the awesome technologies for sourcing, transportation, warehousing, accounting, stocking, display and redistribution of material things. The greatest inventions of modernity, these institutions are the most privileged sites within the social organisation of all objects, images, signs and services: the department store and the public museum.

Although clearly organised around different economic drives, what the department store shares with the museum is the encyclopaedic desire to render the whole world knowable, classified and displayed for the visitor to consume. If the museum inherited its collection and core practices from the previous aristocracy, its driven by a set of values and narratives to protect an image of singularity through souvenirs of the past. In simple contrast, the store holds the promise of a semiotic democracy, played out live amongst the profusion of the present.

But The Value of Things is not merely a task of mourning - it tracks the narrative of the museum and the store through into the newly-diffused territories of the digital age. As we enter the first decade of the new millennium, our traditional play with value has exceeded its previous limits. A principle of value based on the expression of accumulated excess, has far less relevance in electronically connected economies.

While the department store and museum act as a model to structure and narrate previous attitudes towards things, they are also caught in a process of radical transformation - they may even be accelerating towards a strange convergence.

As the store is superseded by out-of-town shopping cities, or its convenience challenged by the point-and-click of e-commerce, the ruthless forces of commerce are subsumed under an image of public service and spectacle. The store becomes a tourist destination dispersed amongst other cultural sites. In turn, as an effect of changes in both public provision and the constitution of its visiting audience, the museum has been forced to aggressively market and license its own collection. Those stored old things, are harnessed as potential new revenue streams via tiers of licensed commercial access. The museum is evolving as a 'brand', competing to control the flow of value through things, as its objects merge with a wider culture of exhibition, our most unique artifacts become seamlessely integrated into the retail present.

224 pages 17 x 23.5cm full colour

to read a review
College Art Association Reviews

to buy from Birkhauser or Amazon

Description

ISBN/ASIN

3 7643 6316 9

ArtWords Link

Rene Gimpel

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:14:55 +0100

Sub-Title

commissioned by Graham Hudson

End Date

Start Date

24 Jan 2003

Location

Royal College of Art: London

Body

Rene Gimpel
GIMPEL FILS
30 Davies Street
LONDON W1Y 1LG

Tel: 020 7493 2488

Dear Rene Gimpel,

Please find enclosed the text of a lecture which I think belongs to you, I found it on a lectern at Chelsea College of Art and Design; as you will see it has been annotated by me.

I should like to explain that I gave the lecture on your behalf, in fact as you, to the students at the Royal College of Art on the 24th January. I was invited to speak about my work as an artist, but during my preparation I read your lecture and began to think how appropriate it would be, not to talk about my practice but to perform it in some way. So, I announced to the students at the lecture, that Neil Cummings was unable to attend because of a personal crisis, and that I, Rene Gimpel had agreed to stand in at the last moment.

I then read your lecture verbatim, as best I could, using my own slides as accompaniment.

There was a very lively question and answer session afterwards, during which I at no time disclosed my ‘true’ identity. Students who already knew me interpreted the lecture as a critical gesture. Several students who did not know me tried to secure appointments to show me their work, or visit the gallery. I declined as tactfully as I could, and made no promises on your behalf.

In exchange for borrowing your lecture -which I should say, the students enjoyed enormously-I include Capital , a book to accompany a project I made with Marysia Lewandowska, hosted by Tate Modern and the Bank of England in 2001.

As you will see the project explores via the gift and it’s subsequent debt, themes of value and trust in the parallel symbolic or financial economies that the two institutions preside over. Issues of power haunt Capital, and my decision to appropriate your lecture was an attempt to embody those themes rather than merely talk about them.

Your lecture and its subject -the commodity heart of the art object- and the various anecdotes -painting over the Basquiat signature for instance- brought gasps from the audience, and fit uncannily into my own recent interest. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Neil Cummings

One Guinea

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:13:11 +0100

Sub-Title

Chalmers Bequest a project by Elizabeth Price

End Date

7 Jan 2003

Start Date

5 Dec 2002

Location

Hackney Museum: London

Body

One Guinea for the Collection Attendant

We were invited by artist Elizabeth Price to enact Clause Six of the Chalmers Bequest, contained within the Will of Alexander Chalmers.

Elizabeth Price has been working since December 2000 to re-enact each of the clauses contained within the Bequest.

At 5.30 pm on Thursday 12th December 2002 the collection attendant in exchange for the guinea, took the opportunity to share his knowledge of the collection with visitors.

And in keeping with the spirit of the collection –it consists of paintings, sculptures, objects of virtue, souvenirs, mantle-piece decoration and jumble sale trophies - mixed the anecdotal with the factual, the intimate with the official and the contemporary with the historical.

Alexander Henry Chalmers, died in April 1927 aged 78. Buried next to his wife in Abney Park Cemetery, he worked for forty years as a ledger clerk in the Provident Clerks Company in the City of London. On his death his will left money for his family, but not his brother, various hospitals, the bellringer at the Old Church in Stoke Newington, for a church organ, the Lifeboat fund and other charitable trusts, but most importantly of all to care for and continue his collection.

Chalmers wanted to found the nucleus of a public museum in Stoke Newington, as other great men –like Hans Sloane at the British Museum- had done before him; to turn his personal taste into public culture. He bequeathed his life-long collection and money for its continuance to the local authority.

Chalmers collected ‘to mimic the joy afforded him by our great National Treasury of Art’ but his collection was humble, feeble even; limited by lack of funds and even more so by lack of education.

What remains is the ghost of ambition, and evidence of a terrible longing. A longing shared with other collections and collectors, to be remembered after death and live on as a public good.

At the end of the project, the remnants of the Chalmers Bequest returned to the sleep of permanent storage.

Trade

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:04:26 +0100

Sub-Title

End Date

19 Aug 2001

Start Date

16 Jun 2001

Location

Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland

Body

On the eastern edge of 'old europe' lies a deregulated strip astride the Polish Ukrainian border. And it is here that traders, traffickers and smugglers from all over the previous Soviet Block congregate. It was formerly the first zone with access to a convertible 'hard' currency.

In the early years of 'free' trade -the 1990's- these fledgling merchants brought their own belongings to sell; after accumulating a small amount of capital they progressed to supplying goods made from their home states - hopelessly cast tractor parts, blunt saw blades, terrible plastic bowls and the like. The outward flow of home-made products and the resulting exchange of currency, slowly enabled the production and distribution of local goods to be replaced with the manufacture of commodities already available in markets further west.

Tentative ribbons of trade hardened into complex supply chains; small objects with a high unit price - software, audio CD's, DVD's, watches, 'branded' or electronic goods are favored; all those things where there is a lot of value in a small space.

In keeping with the texture of this border zone, the market in Przemysl -as though in a caricature of all markets everywhere- only deals in surrogate goods, nothing is ever as it seems. All manner of 'brand', 'label' or copyright designs are available, some closer to the authentic examples than others. Stolen software code and unauthorized cloning, jostle with 'Mike' trainers and 'Addidos' sports clothing, as subtly altered branded goods merge with the carelessly copied. And the market, like the goods it trades, is provisional. Regular merchants hire the 'sharks', lockable corrugated steel containers to store, display and sell goods from. Novice tradeers utilise the display space offered by unfolding a camping bed, their stock stored in bags made from nylon grain sacks, and the whole 'shop' is attached to trolley wheels with elastic 'bungee' straps; the essence of trade encapsulated.

For all its rudimentary nature, the market in Przemysl collapses down two of the architectural models bequeathed to Europe by its classical heritage. The forum, a space intended for the exchange of goods and services is the root of the commerce itself, by conducting trade in a little used football stadium the market also appropriates the amphitheatre, the space of public spectacle. And it's here that Przemysl excels, it unconsciously connects the ancient roots of trade, with its modern incarnation as popular entertainment.

Buy the book/catalogue Trade: Wares, Ways and Values in World Trade Today Published by Scalo, Germany ISBN 3-908247-53-5 at Artwords

and visit Fotomuseum Winterthur

Modern Chairs

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:01:14 +0100

Sub-Title

A commission as part of the Centenary Exhibition

End Date

20 May 2001

Start Date

21 Mar 2001

Location

Whitechapel Art Gallery

Body

For the Centenary celebrations of the Whitechapel Gallery, we revisited the seminal furniture exhibition from 1970, entitled Modern Chairs 1918-1970. The exhibition was arranged by the Circulation Department at the Victoria and Albert museum under the curatorship of Carol Hogben.

The original exhibition and its installation was the first attempt in Britain of a wide ranging 'survey' of modern chairs, and in many ways prefigured the formation of the V & A's 'Boilerhouse' and London's Design Museum. Modern and 'classic' furniture was presented with all the display rhetoric of contemporary art. Chairs were elevated/reduced to objects of aesthetic or iconic status, their utility suspended.

While browsing the catalogue of the exhibition, we were suprised by how many of the selected chairs -several from the 1930's- are still in current production. We proposed to exhibit as many of the 'classic' café or dining chairs from the 1970 exhibition as it was possible to source.

But, in an attempt to reverse the polarity of the delicate tension engendered by the original exhibition, our chairs were to be exhibited in the Cafe space at the Whitechapel. Visitors would be able to 'use' the 'design classics' and consciously participate in the interface between art and life.

Buy the catalogue The Whitechapel Art Gallery Centenary Review

read Adrian Searle's review for the Guardian and visit Whitechapel

documents pound

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 17:33:44 +0100

spread - everything costs £1
Documents, Brighton 2000

Free Trade

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:48:38 +0100

Sub-Title

commissioned by Catherine Dickinson

End Date

23 Feb 2003

Start Date

25 May 2002

Location

Manchester Art Gallery: Manchester

Body

Background

The idea of Free trade is fundamental to the city of Manchester. In 1812 the anti-corn law league set out to break the restrictive practices of the aristocratic landowners, and their ability to lobby Parliament to impose import duty on grain. The middle class merchants and manufacturers who advocated Free trade understood that cheap food would mean cheap labour and increased profits. The subsequent triumph of Free trade enabled Manchester to become the largest import/export and distribution centre in England, and subsequently the British Empire. Throughout the mid 19th century the expansion of trade enabled the city to evolve into the second largest centre for commercial banking and joint stock trading; transforming itself from a manufacturer into the centre of a global market-place

Of course, the explosion of trade and extrusion of wealth began to find expression in a different kind of ‘cultural’ capital.

A stunning example of the complex web of financial and cultural exchange in Manchester, and a perfect vehicle by which to trace their movements is the Beatson Blair Bequest. George Beatson Blair was one of three brothers -James, Alexander, and George- who were all partners in a cotton import/export and shipping company. And like other newly wealthy middle class merchants, James and George turned their financial profits into cultural goods.

On George’s death, the executors of the estate estimated the collection to consist of around 30,000 artefacts, of which 5,000 were paintings. The collection filled the five entertaining rooms, twenty bedrooms, offices for staff, bathrooms, attics, halls, landings, staircases, workshops and even the pig-sty’s of the brothers house in Whalley Range. Each room was overflowing. An inventory of 4894 objects exists in the gallery archive, of which around 458 objects were eventually accessioned by the Manchester Gallery.

Free trade is not only a historical event, it is the origin of the forces of globalisation.

Through the idea of free trade it's possible to trace how national interests have been superseded by corporate priorities, and cultural goods have moved from being a by-product of economic wealth, to its source. In Manchester for instance manufacturing has been replaced by music and television industries, sport has become business, and museum and gallery visits -linked to tourism – have become beacons of economic regeneration.

Installation

After a year of research, we identified in the Beatson Blair Bequest a beautiful example of Manchester’s particular social, economic and cultural history, as well as a device with which to explore the history and conventions of the Manchester Art Gallery itself.

For the first time ever, the remains of the Beatson Blair Bequest –all the paintings, fine furniture, ceramics, silver, hardstones and bric-a-brac - have been brought together into one room. The extraordinary installation piled into the centre of the gallery challenges the conventions of museum exhibition. These precious objects are not sorted into type, period or manufacturer; the rhetoric of the museum classification, nor are they isolated in vitrines for distant aesthetic connoisseurship. Displayed as if in transit, the objects are momentarily arrested, on route elsewhere - from store to exhibition? The installation hints at the chaotic interior of Blair's house, and the huge quantity of all manner of goods that moved continually through Manchester.

Before objects become part of Gallery or Museum collections they participate in circuits of exchange. In this instance bought by the Blair's at auction and from dealers in Manchester; and in an inversion of conventional gallery labeling, each object from the Bequest carries the one piece of information that visitors are most curious about, its 1941 price. These artworks, as well as being objects of trade, were also purchased from the profit of trade.

We have turned the most complete inventory of the Bequest -4894 objects – into Gallery wallpaper. Standing Inside this ghost of the collection, you can grasp the extent of the original bequest, and notice how it was edited to fit the museum's image of itself; rather than represent the taste of the collector. See what was sold at auction, and wonder why that painting was disposed of, and this pewter tankard accessioned.

Films

Two film-loops run continuously in the exhibition, edited from amateur film found at the North West Film Archive at the Metropolitan University. One film records goods and materials pouring into Manchester via the Ship Canal for distribution via the various produce-exchanges and markets. While another pans the endless stream of products manufactured in the city for subsequent export.

Walks

A series of gentle walks took place –lead by local historian Steve Little- around and through the Free Trade exhibition, the Gallery and then out into the city. The legacy of Free trade still dominates the architecture of Manchester; visit the Free Trade Hall (1840)-now a luxurious hotel The Royal, Coal, Corn and Produce Exchanges - all shopping malls, the bridgewater canal, various magnificent wholesale warehouses -currently speculative loft-living appartments and a suite of beautiful 19th century Banks –now extravagant bars.

Lectures

Art Wealth and Riches
Sunday 10 November

A lecture by writer and critic William Morris, was first delivered at a joint conversazione of Manchester Societies at the Royal Institution, Manchester 6th March 1883.' It will be recreated by actor Steve Whitehouse.

In this brilliant and provocative lecture, writer, craftsman and socialist William Morris challenges the merchants and manufacturers of Manchester. With uncanny prescience, Morris describes our current confusion; between art and fashion, art and celebrity, and art and shopping.

Art and globalisation
Sunday 24 November

Writer and critic Julian Stallabrass will upgrade the themes of the William Morris lecture. As Free Trade is subsumed by vast exchanges of corporate capital, Julian explores the success and failure of contemporary art, amidst the commodified cultures of globalization.

A Joy Forever
Sunday 26 January

A lecture by writer and critic John Ruskin, to coincide with the Art
Treasures Exhibition was first delivered at the Manchester Athenaeum, July 10th 1857. Recreated by art historian and former actor Paul O'Keefe.

John Ruskin's extraordinary lecture attempts to build a political economy for art. He suggests that all economies could easily be divided into three components.
1. applying your labour rationally

2. preserving its produce carefuly

3. distributing its produce seasonably.

With devastating effects, this ideal economy is then laid over the production (artist), storage and distribution (museum/gallery) of the art of his time; a model that seems unchanged and relevant today.

Free Trade
Sunday 9 February 2003

Artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, who devised Free Trade, talk about the project in relation to other recent work

catalogue Free Trade

Edited by the artists, with previously unpublished archive material alongside photographs of the gallery installation; features rare lectures previously delivered in Manchester by John Ruskin (1857) and William Morris (1883) and commissioned essays by historian Julian Stallabrass, artist and writer Dan Smith and investment manager Toby Nangle.

Neil's research for the lecture series was assisted by a Research Grant from Chelsea College of Art and Design.

For more information visit the Manchester Art Gallery. Free Trade was sponsored by Axa Art Insurance

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Economy of Love

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