art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

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The approach underlying the entire “Dossier ‘96” project can be called a performative
act, since it exemplifies J. L. Austin’s definition that performative exhibits produce
meaning even when they are themselves rhetorically empty. [12] That is, the very
demonstration, articulation and proclamation of the performative utterance carry out
the act. The separation of rejected objects from their original real context and their
transposition into gallery spaces is in fact similar to Duchamp’s first performative
artistic act: the displaying of the urinal with the signature “R. Mutt,” in conjunction
with its proclamation as a work of art. [13] If a work of art is a work of art because
the artist designates and proclaims it to be such, then what becomes of the original
manufacturer of the object that has now become art? In this case, Tosevski takes
heaps of rejects from bankrupt factories and exhibits them as works of art; are not
the producers of these objects--the workers and the managers--deprived of their origi
nal function? Do they now become artists themselves?
According to the theory of speech acts, there are certain criteria by which to
judge the success of a performative act. These utterances/acts are outside the
consideration of truth or falsehood; they are semantically empty--they can produce
only meanings. These are, above all, the intention, and the awareness of the
intention of the performance, the competence and legitimacy of the performer and
the institutional setting in which the act is performed. According to these criteria,
the “producers,” whose “products” have been proclaimed as works of art, can by no
means be considered the artists. However, because of their metaphorical association
with unusable objects, once they are labeled “technological surplus”--the term used
in Macedonia for workers dismissed from their work--their status approaches that of
the art objects in question, and not subjects with control over their products. [14]
If we pursue the analysis of this paradox further, starting from the same premise,
we can pose a question as to the status of the insolvency official. If the manager,
rather then trying to use discarded material by recycling or modifying, proclaims the
material unusable for no obvious reason, has the official become an artist? Is not this
act similar to that of an artist carrying out a performative act? Of course, the answer
is no. If we take into account the circumstances of this official’s involvement then
the criteria of the institutional theory prevents us from regarding these two acts as
identical. That is, the manager’s motivation is not artistic. He is concerned more with
rendering production sites insolvent so that they can be purchased more cheaply.
In contrast, the artist’s awareness throughout the process--the relocation of the
rejects to the gallery, the organization of exhibitions, the preparation of a catalog,
and the intention itself--has met the necessary preconditions for the illocutionary
power and success of the performative act. By fully exercising his right to judge and
confirm the universal validity of his act, he remains subjective. In this way, according
to institutional theory, theories of taste and aesthetic views are surmounted and the
skeptical observer who believes that something has been deemed artistic merely
because it has been placed in a museum cannot develop alternative criteria, as even
the act of naming is validation.
In linguistics there has always been a dichotomy between speech and action,
language and body, and their association has been in place since the appearance
of the first ready-made in the case of Duchamp, through the conceptual art of the