A framework for staging Post AutonomyHow do we stage a 'Project examining Post Autonomy' within the material framework of the existing art worlds infra structure?
If we do not as yet have a language to articulate PA, and if the key to beginning to develop a language of PA is through 'disengaging art from the mechanisms of Colonisation, Globalisation, Building the Nation State' and the relationship between Biennials and other international art events to these mechanisms
'How is it possible to participate in an event and discuss these issues without contributing to the problem we wish to resolve?'
i.e. How is it possible to discuss Colonisation, Globalisaion, Biennials and institutions of art without in turn Colonising a culture and people or contributing to Globalisation?
It is precisely this set of key issues that a number of artists under the umbrella of Institutional critical practices raised but could not resolve, that the project staged for Hou Hanrou Istanbul Biennial in 2007 'Art in a period of increasing Global conflict' 'Post Autonomy now' sought to address, and it is this solution that provides the template for subsequent projects materialising PA.
If we do not have a language of PA, and if PA is not a theory, but instead addresse's the actual conditions of art, how or where do we go to develop PA further?
By taking part in a project that was so precise in looking at the actual conditions of the World and Art i.e. Globalisation, Conflict, Art within an actual Biennial context, showed that by taking part in projects that are this precise offers any project developing PA an exact context and opportunity for expanding understanding into Post Autonomy, the projects offer a background against which we develop a project expanding our understanding of PA, without the necessity to produce art works that illustrate these issues, since 'the context' offers the contents, and allows us to work at another level.
This solution has been followed and expanded in subsequent projects
- Your space, Van Abbemuseum, The Nederlands, 2009, developed a new space for art through participatory practices
- Mongolian Biennial, 2010, rethinking the role of Biennials at the end of the process of Globalisation and Colonisation
- Centre for Contemporary art, Baku, ' What mechanisms and systems can we imagine after the existing systems and places for art become obsolete?'
A zone to step out of Biennials to look back at Biennials
People stepped into a zone that was designated outside Biennials, Globalisation and Colonisation inorder to imagine something beyond these mechanisms or to address these mechanisms through a discussion looking at 'Participation' and 'PA'
Start of the process through a series of improvised discussions using 'discussion as the material of art'
Mapping Globalisation against the backdrop of Biennials
Use a Biennial as a backdrop to analyse a Biennials link to the mechanism of Globalization and Colonisation
Since we were part of the Biennial and the Biennial surrounded us, it formed the very fabric and background wherever we went, therefore we didnt have to produce a material object or representation of the Biennial in order to discuss and examine it, this allowed us to overcome the initial problem outlined by Institutional critique
Enter Presentation
Do actually think this is true?
Yes I do, even though I have havent articulated the issues as well as I would like as yet, however i will return to all the material I have written on the site …and revise and clarify them
To add to the above statement – After I staged the project at the Istanbul Biennial Post Autonomy now, any discussion of Post autonomy includes a discussion of Biennials, Globalisation and Colonisation, so that the discourse of PA allows for the possibility to discuss art at a larger sophisticated level. The approach Iam clumsily trying to imagine and realise aproximates a methodology mapped out by the Austrian artist Peter Friedhl in his text “Secret Modernity”, where he suggests that any practice is a complexity comprising research into “Autonomy”, “Colonisation” and the “Politics of display”. In the research I have carried out into Biennials over the past ten to fifteen years or so, nearly all the texts claim that Biennials and other large scale international events have one single purpose to export Western culture. I personally think that at this stage of the development of Contemporary culture we ought to move beyond such narrow objectives. So i agree with Elisabeth Penker that further developments in culture starts with the overcoming of Colonisation in all its forms. I also agree with Hito Steyerls claim for a sophisticated and knowing political art practice, that is aware of how art functions in the World. That said it is difficult to shape a knowing and sophisticated understanding of the terms such as Autonomy, Colonisation, Globalisation, Biennials etc and how they manifest themselves within the current climate, so more research is required. One real problem I have is that since the injection of Neo Liberalism into the system over 20 years ago,notions of the political have virtual disappeared, and the whole system has veered to the right, so there simply is not a working set of tools to understand the political, although a few people are making interesting inroads into this area. If we/Iam to take the notion of Post Autonomy seriously and endure its demands then I have to acknowledge one glaring problem we simply do not have a language and thinking, so how do we register the above problems and look for solutions? All i can honestly suggest is that now how things operate is on different levels, one level which functions as a sort of common stock or common sense of thinking and functions in a sort of space that has no relationship to the real world but nevertheless helps us maintain a semblance of sanity, and the other is the complex, difficult level where we try to get to grips with this real lack of a language and thinking, and the great opportunity this offers for assembling another language and thinking for contemporary art. One last remark I want to add, Iam also in agreement with Peter Osbourne, despite his often irritating conservative observations, that whatever mechanisms that underly Post Modernism is still at work today and is now recupperating so called Political art works and practices, so as far as Iam concerned very few if any art practices today can be said to be actual Political practices, they are more or less tokenistic and often miss the point.