Interview with Andy Cameron guest curator Share Festival 2009
September 29, 2009 4:28 pm
Andy Cameron
Q.:Market Forces is the theme of the 5th Share Festival. What does that mean exactly?
Andy Cameron: It’s one of those phrases that takes me back to the 1980s and the glorious days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It’s a neo-liberal phrase which implies a whole political and economic perspective based around the idea that the market is a kind of technology, a kind of machine. It’s Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. It’s ‘laissez faire’. It’s the Chicago School. The way the idea worked out through the 80s and 90s was as part of the project of neo-liberalism: regulation by government is bad thing because it interferes with the natural working of the machine, the market has it’s own system, it’s own logic and we should let it be, we shouldn’t try to control it.
So there’s a really important set of questions here about control. Do we control the market or does the market control us? Who or what is the subject of history? Are there areas of social life which are beyond the scope of Market Forces? And who understands the market anymore anyway, when the products traded in the market reach such a high level of abstraction and complexity – I’m talking about the complex financial products and systems which were partly responsible for the recent global recession.
I noticed that a number of art pieces and media art pieces seem to model the same set of dynamics – dyanmics which edge in and out of chaos, which are always on the borders of control – but modelled these dynamics in purely aesthetic terms.
And late in 2008 Bruce Sterling (guest curator Share Fest 2008) gave a fascinating workshop in Fabrica in which he talked about Generative Art – artworks based on systems and algorithms rather than direct human expression. Once again it seemed at the heart of the matter is a complex balancing act between control and chaos, and a question about the subject position – who or what is driving the process? Who decides what VALUE is?
Finally of course there was the recent financial crisis, long predicted but still only partially understood.
So, Market Forces was an irresistible title, linking economics and art and hitting the zeitgeist right on the button.
Could you describe the relationship between art and the market? How do you see the relationship between artistic innovation and company communication? In which direction are we heading?
Art has always been a market and I’m guessing it will always be one. In this sense it’s no different to any other system for the exchange of commodities. I’m talking about Fine Art here. From the other angle, from purely commercial communication, there is no contradiction between creativity and commerce, between art and money. Capital has the capacity to release extraordinary creative energy. I love advertising, or some advertising at least. And I’m interested in those artists who straddle the fence between art and the market – Tomato, Random International, Natske, Art+Com to name but four, and of course artists working at Fabrica – Joao Wilbert is a very interesting young artist with his exquisiteclock.org – a website but also site specific installations, marketing applications, an iPhone app.
Do you think that artists could be an alternative source of knowledge about the economy? It would be interesting, don’t you think, to analyse art works connected with marketing, e-commerce, advertising and the like, so as to help dispel common myths about the market economy. Or even prank works and the paradoxical, which often take the supermarket, be it in concrete or virtual form, as their favourite location, as can be seen in shop-dropping, and fake and viral marketing.
I’m not convinced that the artist has a role to play when confronted with the market. In any case, the artist is really living inside the market, like everyone else. But I’d agree that artists can operate successfully within commercial contexts or commercial spaces. What better place to make an art installation than a supermarket? Or a fashion store?
What are your goals as guest curator for the first time of a festival for art and digital culture?
Sorry I don’t understand. What’s it like being a curator? It’s a lot of fun. It’s invigorating, and it’s a privilege.
What is digital culture and what is interactivity?
Not sure about digital culture – what isn’t digital culture? Interactivity is more specific – communication which has two channels, in and out. It’s a sliding scale – at one end you’ve got narrative representations, novels, films and so on, at the other you have xbox live, or a conversation.
Process has become an intrinsic element of digital art. Are we witnessing a shift from a representational universe to a relational universe?
Yes. I couldn’t agree more. It’s very nicely expressed in Italian – reads well.
It’s sort of already happened. Advertising agencies are very stressed out about this. All kinds of people are stressed out about this.
Look at the work done by Kevin Slavin and Frank Lantz at area/code. Commercial, smart and entirely relational – relational aesthetics.
You were a jury member at the Ars Electronica Festival for the Interactive Art section. What impressions were you left with from what is the biggest and oldest event in this field? Do you share Linz’s typical enthusiasm for technology tout court?
It’s less about technology and more about art. Which is the way it should be. Ars Electronica took an enormous gamble 30 years ago and it worked out for Linz. And now Ars Electronica is evolving into something else, something which is more at the centre of things, a centre of art, not the ghetto but the centre, a place where technology and art and design meet naturally. I’m very happy for them.