ARTIFICIAL HELLS

former west
artists at this time. The Europeans embrace indeterminacy and participation
in so far as it contributes to individual careers (the next project,
another exhibition), while the Russians viewed art as an existential act,
of sabotage if need be. ‘Interpol’, together with ‘No Man’s Time’, also
indicate the degree to which, during the early 1990s, the exhibition itself
becomes conceptualised as an open- ended, process- based, convivial
‘project’ without a definable goal beyond collaboration as a good in
itself. But however worthwhile the motivations for this performative
turn – the rejection of a highly polished exhibition- showroom conceived
a posteriori – the net effect for the viewer was less certain. If fortunate
enough to be invited to the opening night, the audience might gain
access to a glimpse of this collaborative process, but in all other cases the
exhibition would be experienced as only the fragment of a larger, ongoing
interaction.
III. The Projective City
If my suggestion is correct, and the ‘project’ is the indicator of a renewed
social awareness of artists in the 1990s, then this shift is yet to be fully theorised
by art historians and critics. 64 The clearest articulation of the ‘project’
as a way of working is to be found in sociology, put forward by Christian
Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism (1999). 65 They
argue that the current ‘spirit of capitalism’ emerged in the 1970s and ’80s in
response to two critiques that came to a head in 1968 (but which have
remained constant for more than centuries): the artistic critique (a demand
for more autonomy, independence and creative fulfilment at work) and the
social critique (a demand for more parity, transparency and equality). I will
return to this distinction in the conclusion of this book; for the moment it
will suffice to draw attention to their characterisation of the current phase
of capitalism as the dominance of networks and projects, a ‘connexionist’
world in which fluidity and mobility are the most esteemed values. Although
Boltanski and Chiapello draw their conclusions from a survey of management
literature from the past thirty years, many points in their analysis
sound like a description of the globalised contemporary art world, and
even more specifically that of the post- studio, site- responsive artist and the
roving global curator. They describe today’s working life as a succession
of ‘projects’ based on successful connections with others, giving rise to a
universe of value that they call ‘the projective city’: what is valued and
gives status in this world is the ability to be adaptable, flexible and intellectually
mobile. 66 As such, a career today consists ‘not in filling “vacancies”
but in engaging in a multitude of often very heterogeneous projects’:
is not today’s artist, even today’s intellectual or researcher, likewise a
network creature in search of producers, the realisation of whose projects
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