art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

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Pier Luigi SACCO & Marco SENALDI
Zero Interest!
Artistic Strategies for an Economy in Crisis
In a historic phase – in which internal contradictions are emerging in the global
economic system that seem to be more structural rather than occasional – art can
suggest reflections and innovative practices with respect to the dominant economic
logic. These are the assumptions from which imparts the exhibition Zero Interest!
Artistic Strategies for an Economy in Crisis, curated by economist Pier Luigi Sacco
and art historian Marco Senaldi, that was inaugurated March 11th, 2005 at the
Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento.
In a way more or less declared critical, the art of our days examines, in fact, the
status quo of our world economic system, examining thoroughly its disposition and
outlining critical points. Many international artists are concentrated on these elements,
putting to light latent mechanisms and strategies that today structure the system of
exchange of “our” global society. For artists more attentive to a descriptive approach,
the exhibition additionally puts forth the positions of others decisively more critical, in
such a way to create unexpected interferences between who, today, plays the game
of the market and who distorts it and invents new forms of the economy.
The exhibition begins with an examination of historic works by artists such
as Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys, Pinot Gallizio, Marcel Broodthaers
and Mark Lombardi, and follows a path ending at the artistic production conducted
in the last few years. Historic works beside pieces realized specifically for this
exhibition create a complex itinerary – hosted at the Galleria Civica, as well as the
Faculty of Economics (that is actively collaborating in the project) – to demonstrate
the concrete correlations and interferences between two sectors that influence each
other reciprocally. From art, intended in its “pure state”, it refuses those diagrams
and models typical of supply and demand, so that art becomes an instrument of
resistance or revolution with respect to the capitalist system of production, received
as speculations on art as a form and value of investment. In light of these diverse
positions, one also opens a reflection on the role of the artist, who today acquires
a new dimension.
Beside the exhibition a series of thematic encounters took place, in collaboration
with the Faculty of Economics of the University of Study of Trento and The Order of
Commercialist Doctors of the Province of Trento, in which interrogation, opened by
the exhibition, was debated by economists, philosophers, artists, art critics and
anthropologists. To profoundly critique the exhibition, the Galleria Civica dedicated its
twelfth installment of its quarterly magazine “Work. Art in Progress”, which contains
presentation texts by the curators of the exhibition, images and critical essays relative
to the works by artists involved in the project.