The (Art) World

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  The (Art) World | 2016

This project envisions “The (art) World” as a multimedia opera in three acts in English and libretto. The title "The (art) World" refers to the current dominant capitalistic system, and its interrelation with the art scene. “The (art) World” provokes discourses regarding the role of "second-tier artists" towards notorious big players in the art market. We question the morality and validity of the relationships between artists, dealers, auction houses, collectors, and affluent dabblers who aspire to be collectors or even investors in art. The project will be implemented through stage actions, divided in 3 acts, where the instrumental and vocal accompaniment and poetry will run through sequentially operated projections of different videos. Sculptural object will be used for the display of various video and graphic projections. We are interested in the actual museum space, its buying history, how artist enter the collection – what is the geopolitical and gender make-up of the collection, how are donations handled and what institutions sponsor the museum, who has been chosen to represent the interests of the museum in a decision making capacity, what artists receive the most exhibition space and when, how are the hiring practices decision makers handled, what are the marketing practices of the museum and who is their target audience, ect. We want to engage with the “second-tier” artists, female artists, and non-western artists represented in the collection, and who are on view for the public. The music, and a major part of the libretto, in the opera will be derived directly from, and includes, spoken responses from museum archives and employees and from actors within the larger international art market. We will use the archives of the museum to understand your own personal political geography within the art market. In this case, mapping contemporary art market trends represented in the museum, through studying the political and economic power alignment in the museum space. This will be done through researching archival material, collection history, and speaking with interviewees who were asked question regarding practices surrounding the museum’s collection (recordings from the decision making meetings). The sound track will also includes readings of canonical art world texts that details the historiography of Modern and Contemporary art, maintaining a narrative that engages only a handful of artists. We view this historiography as imperative in maintaining the toxic capitalistic art system. We interlace this historiography with with stories about artworks and the people that surround them, including contemporary art critics, and recording of the ambient sound that is found in the institutional buildings that surrounds the art site. The outcome will culminate into site-specific and temporary installations. Through these installations, we hope to make apparent the grotesqueness, or deviancy if you will, of the art market, arresting the viewer from placing the museum or gallery space as a locale for escapism. Instead, we hope to provoke the viewer to engage with the space as a site in which capitalistic binaries between Euorpean and non-European, high and low art, and male and female are re-enacted for viewers. As ‘second-tier’ artists, this project will also engage with our own relation to the art market as precarious workers, often moving from space to space in order to live within the means of artists grants and residencies.