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2009, Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory
This article aims to reconcile the critical potential of culture with the privatisation of the cultural field and, in the process, to question the autonomous claims of art. Centred on Glasgow, it draws on the methods of investigative social research to reprise the creation of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a private company with charitable status, which assumed responsibility for all cultural and leisure provision in the city in April 2007. Written in the wake of action taken by Culture and Sport Glasgow to prevent published research into its personnel from being distributed, this account explores the role of art in challenging the neoliberal consensus in the face of attempts to block such challenges at the point of research, development and display. Based on interviews with artists practising in Glasgow, this research examines the implications for radical art of Culture and Sport Glasgow controlling the major commissioning mechanism and one of the main funding lifelines for artists in the city. In the process, it demonstrates the repressive intolerance of neoliberal attitudes towards culture.
Variant
The Tyranny of Rent2010 •
Early reflections in Variant on the art of rent, or rent seeking in Glasgow's creative city narrative.
‘The Uncommonality of the Commons’ is the transcript of a talk given by Simon Yuill uncovering tensions and conflicts between different political claims made upon the idea of the commons: the anarchist, the communist, the liberal and the neo-liberal. Drawing upon examples explored in his previous work, Simon addresses this through a discussion of existing and historical forms of commoning in Scotland, such as found in crofting communities and in the Scottish legal concept of the Common Good, and relates these to current issues in artist-run practice and community buyouts.
International Journal of Cultural Policy
The Social Value of Culture: Learning from Revolutionary Cuba2014 •
As the tide turns against econometric calculations of cultural value, scope exists for careful reconsideration of the social value of culture. In Cuba after 1959, culture was placed at the heart of a society undergoing radical transformation. This article examines the socially orientated initiatives to which this revalidation gave rise. It shows that substantial changes were wrought in professional circles as art was acknowledged as a form of social production and remunerated accordingly. It also outlines the sustained efforts that were made to diminish the gap between creative intellectuals and the rest of society, by encouraging widespread appreciation of, and participation in, creative activity. This comprehensive programme was underscored by ideas around democratisation and emancipation that remain vital to contemporary discussions.
2012 •
The current debates about political art or aesthetic politics do not take the politics of art into account. How can artists address social politics when the politics of art remain opaque? Artists situated critically within the museum self-consciously acknowledge the institutional frame and their own complicity with it. Artists’ compromised role within the institution of art obscures their radically opposed values. Institutions are conservative hierarchies that aim to augment and consolidate their authority. How can works of art be liberating when the institutional conditions within which they are exhibited are exclusive, compromised and exploitive? Despite their purported neutrality, art institutions instrumentalise art politically and ideologically. Institutional mediation defines the work of art in the terms of its own ideology, controlling the legitimate discourse on value and meaning in art. In a society where everything is instrumentalised and heteronomously defined, autonomous art performs a social critique. Yet how is it possible to make autonomous works of art when they are instantly recuperated by commercial and ideological interests? At a certain point, my own art practice could no longer sustain these contradictions. This thesis researches the possibilities for a sustainable and uncompromised art practice. If art is the critical alternative to society then it must function critically and alternatively. Artistic ambition is not just a matter of aesthetic objectives or professional anxiety; it is particularly a matter of the values that artists affirm through their practice. Art can define its own terms of production and the burden of responsibility falls on artists. The Exploding Cinema Collective has survived independently for twenty years, testifying to this principle. Autonomy is a valuable tool in the critique of heteronomy, but artists must assert it. The concept of the autonomy of art must be replaced with the concept of the autonomy of the artist. KEYWORDS: art, art institution, autonomy, institution, contemporary art, critique, Exploding Cinema, institutional critique, ideology, politics, political, aesthetic, agency, museum, use-value, underground cinema.
AMBIENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS collects documents and writings from a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (ambientTV.NET). Interrogating the social and political transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this practice recalls aspects of the 1910s-20s avant-garde and 1960s-70s conceptual and systems art. A major essay by media theorist Armin Medosch situates the work of the London-based artists amidst the rise of the ‘creative industries’ idea, inner-city regeneration, and the dot-com boom. Medosch identifies the work as a front in the wave of critical art that has emerged alongside the rise of digital networks and ‘open source culture’, and offers an analysis that draws on systems theory. Other contributors to the book include independent media activist Keiko Sei on the ‘camcorder revolution’ in Burma; policy consultant and writer Naseem Khan on grass-roots regeneration in East London; activist-artist Siraj Izhar on praxis as process; and philosopher-dramaturge Fahim Amir on techno-democracy.
Variant
Glasgow Life or Death2011 •
The New Bohemia reported on the creation of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a charitable company, to oversee cultural and leisure provision in Glasgow. This article examines the ideological flaws and potential for corruption inherent in this new model of delivery.
2014 •
Post-Apartheid South Africa’s government has officially adopted a national cultural policy in 1996 as a primary or overarching guide for cultural considerations. Within seventeen (17) years since its approval, the policy, labelled the “White Paper of Arts, Culture and Heritage”, has been subjected to a series of reviews. This paper examines the review processes with the view to ascertain to what extent the exercises succeed in meeting the objectives for which they are set, as well as to evaluate them against international trends. The paper observes that, internationally, cultural policy is generally regarded as central to the development and reconstruction of cities and rural areas, as well as crucial in promoting social cohesion and economic growth. Thus, the paper advocates a legislative review approach that positions culture as a pivotal part of the country’s overall development framework that incorporates the construction of infrastructure, the creation of economic opportunities, and social transformation.
METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture
Site-Specific Protest: Liberate Tate’s Performances at Tate Modern2019 •
Ethical Scholarly Publishing Practices, Copyright and Open Access: A view from Ethnomusicology and Anthropology
Whose Book is it Anyway? A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and CreativityRethinking Marxism
From Imperialism to Transnational Capitalism: The Venice Biennial as a “Transitional Conjuncture”2006 •
Forthcoming in A Cultural History of Money in the Modern Age, edited by David Pederson and Taylor Nelms. London: Bloomsbury 2017/18.
Money and Art: Six Artists, Two Crises (1973, 2008)2017 •
Sternberg Press
Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive HerbariumProject for a Re-volution in New York
Project for A Re-volution In New York2016 •
Postmodern Culture
Mainlining Postmodernism: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and the Art of Intervention1992 •