Heidenreich uncurated 1

StefanHeidenreich-uncurated@thenewcentre.org-2017-#1
uncurated
Stefan Heidenreich
seminar & thenewcentre.org
2017 Dec 18 / 2018 Jan 8,15, 22

StefanHeidenreich-uncurated@thenewcentre.org-2017/18-#2
5 types of art environments
1) feudal ~1700
2) bourgeois ~1800
3) modern ~1900
4) investment ~1980
5) network ~2020

collecting, display & selection
set theory basics
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there is a set of elements artworks
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a selection function exists choose, buy, look, post
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the elements have properties name, title, time
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one can assign attributes to them beautiful, modern, contemporary
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every collection creates a subset art collection x,y,z

set theory basics
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discourse theory
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the archive allows for what can be said
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the selection function defines the space for new elements

set theory basics
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discourse theory
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5 types of collections
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feudal, bourgeois, modern, investment, network

set theory basics
discourse theory
types of display
magnificent, galleria progressiva, white cube, freeport, double: digital/analog

set theory basics
discourse theory
types of display
magnificent, galleria progressiva, white cube, freeport, double: digital/analog
selection
owner, expert, jury, curator, user

Art and Data
Art objects have never simply been neutral things.
They are objects wrapped in layers of data:
the artist's name, the date of their creation, and all the
other attributes the cultural archive assigns them.

Museum
The museum was invented around 1800.
One of its most important features is a specific regime of
historical temporality used to index its collections.
Also around 1800, the idea of historic time reshaped most
knowledge domains according to atemporal index.
The museum is one of the many cultural institutions,
which implemented this new, 'modern' mode.

Modernism
The dominant temporal index with its emphasis on the
“new” became a decisive attribute in the arts. It enabled
the unleashing of modernism's momentum.
Before the modern museum, Europe's collections were
held in “Wunderkammern” (cabinets of curiosties).
Indexation was based on provenance, mirroring the
dynastic relationships of feudalism.
Towards the end of modernism, post-modernism attempted
to maintain this temporal momentum, despite the fact that
its underlying institutional basis was crumbling.
The political context of this institutional fade-out is the
replacement of the modernist state by a neoliberal model
which reduces states to competitive economic entities.

Finance
Throughout most of its history, art has been connected
to banks and finance.
Modern finance builds on a very specific treatment of time.
Flows of money are characterized by a derivative structure
that links value to future income expectations. Following
this principle, the art object has been turned into a derivative
with the artist's name as its brand. Since financial invest-
ments in art follow the principles of venture capital, collections
apply its rules of portfolio diversification.
Risk management calls for spreading the collection among a
variety of positions instead of focusing on „taste“ or other
idiosyncratic preferences. Herein lies the main difference
between today's investment collector and the older model of
the connoisseur.

Contemporary Archives
Today, time as a dominant mode of indexing has lost
its hold in a general sense.
Online archives, for example, rarely present search results
according to their successive appearance in time, as every
user of search engines like Google or Baidu knows.
Instead, their results focus on relevance.
Even in the arts, the disappearance of time-based indexation
has had its effects. This can be seen in the rise of the curator
as an agent of the temporary, and the replacement of the
“modern” with the “contemporary.”
The predominance of the term “contemporary” indicates the
loss of temporal indexes.

Technology
Another pillar of the arts has always been technology.
In the 19th century something happened which separated
art from most other cultural domains.
Technologies of reproduction were applied to almost all
cultural fields, except the visual arts. For this reason, the
business model of art based on non-reproduction and
originality, has been affected only very little by the digital
revolution - so far.

Post-Internet
In the 90s, early internet art was trying to take web-pages
for artworks. Twenty years later, post-internet art mobilized
web-based practices for artful purposes.
In recent history, post-internet art has backtracked towards
more conventional sculptural and object-based modes of
art production, most likely in an attempt to serve the needs
of financial collectors and the market.
The regression to objecthood only retains faint echos of
web-based practices, as symbolized through a certain styles,
aesthetic, or modes of production.

Speculative Realism and Freeports
Three theoretical propositions of speculative realism have
delivered a theoretical position in support of by the traditionalist
turn in post-internet art:
new materialism,
the emphasis on objecthood, and an
anti-correlationist, subject-independent epistemology.
This encourages an art based on materiality, art objects
without discourse and criticism, and art practices without
spectator or even exhibition, as exemplified in the freeports where
big collections remain hidden in duty-free isolation.

Objects and Images, online
Most artworks of our time exists in two layers:
as material objects and by way of their depiction in images or video.
In the internet and on social media, the image layer turns out to be
more relevant than the 'real'. As a consequence, exhibitions and art
production migrate to online platforms.
Attention, fame, as well as discourse are being channeled increasingly
through social media.
One of the most important effects of this shift is the replacement of the
canon by a culture based on relevance. While the canon represents a
selection grounded in institutional power, experts' judgments, and
meaning, relevance is constantly re-created by a participatory process
whose actors include spectators, collectors, and artists.

Social media
Social media explore new modes of viewing, discussing,
and appropriating artworks. For now, the visual practice
of the artselfie is one of the primary examples of the new
social media-related spectatorship.
Artworks become embedded in the spectator's life and data.
Despite its often perceived lack of sophistication, social
media can help art to overcome the exclusionary and elitist
attitudes of late modernism and to regain access to a
broader community.

Collections and Networks
In an artistic environment based on relevance, the value
of a collection no longer depends on its conformity with
the canon.
To put it in economic terms: we should not think of wealth
and value as a stack, but as a flow.
Therefore, enabling connections, building stories, providing
experiences and links to artistic practices is what helps
create relevance in a network-oriented artworld.

1) feudal ~1700
2) bourgeois ~1800
3) modern ~1900
4) investment ~1980
5) network ~2020

1) feudal ~1700
Ferrante Imperato - 1599 - Ritratto del Museo

1) feudal ~1700
Frans Francken - 1636 - Chamber of Arts and Curiosities

1) feudal ~1700
Hans Georg Hinz - 1666 - Cabinet of Curiosities

2) bourgeois ~1800
Nicolas de Pigage - 1776 - Düsseldorf - Painting Gallery, Rubens Hall

2) bourgeois ~1800
Philipp G. Pintz - 1784 - Vienna, Belvedere, Floor Plan

2) bourgeois ~1800
Auguste Roux - 1838 - Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amélie visit the Louvre

3) modern ~1900
Henri Dantan - 1880 - A Corner in the Salon

3) modern ~1900
Honoré Daumier - 1865 - A free day at the Salon

3) modern ~1900
Guggenheim collection - 1943 - Art of this Century, Abstract Art

4) investment >1980
Yves Bouvier at Geneva Freeport ~2014

4) investment >1980
Freeport Singapore - showroom

4) investment >1980
inside Singapore Freeport

4) investment >1980
Art Basel Miami, 2015

3) investment >1980
Mera and Don Rubell in front of Liu Wei's „Liberation No.1“ - 2013

5) network 2010+
Larry's List Frontpage

5) network 2010+
artsy Collector's page

5) network 2010+
artselfie by DIS

5) network 2010+
artselfie on tumblr

5) network 2010+
Picasso Faceswap by Teddy Tinnell on Snapchat and Twitter

types of collecting, display and valuation

feudal
1700: feudal mercantilism.
Wunderkammer & provenance
aristocrats - display of wealth - connoisseur
art as one of many „curiosities“, value through beauty
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bourgeois
1800: nation-state - capitalism.
Salon, museum & aesthetics, schools of painting.
bourgeois - art historian, expert - salon jury
„visible history“, education, taste
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modern
1900: colonial state - finance capital.
private collection & time, newness.
entrepreneur - discovery - galerist, collector, artist jury
progress, avant-garde, modern
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investment
1980: global neoliberal finance.
freeports & portfolio management.
investor - risk - freeport
asset class, venture capital, contemporary
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network
2010: platforms, data, algorithms.
social media, community - links, likes
users - participative - wbsites
attention, participation / image circulation and material objects

Heidenreich uncurated 1

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