KANTUTA QUIROS & ALIOCHA IMHOff - Overlapping Biennial

We believe in the continuous re-examination of class theory
by considering the contemporary development of the antagonism
between labor and capital. We believe this antagonism
remains central. The transformation of society has not lead
to its disappearance; on the contrary, this antagonism has
only been amplified and therefore it requires a new interpretation.
We also face the question of rethinking the strategies
and tasks of the critical intellectual in a conjuncture where
the configuration of productive forces is changing.
DR: The question of class composition in post-socialist societies
is a very difficult one, especially because we are now
experiencing the tail end of a momentous transition from
obsolete socialist Fordism to some version of post-Fordist
resource economy, a normalization phase after the primitive
accumulation. However, one thing that is already very clear
is that the classical image of the white male factory worker,
still dominant in leftist politics, is a reactionary limitation. It
leads to political clientele and it does not include many disenfranchised
groups that do the labor which is socially necessary
to keep capitalism’s productivity growing under the
conditions of the global economy. This would not just include
migrant labor, but also unpaid domestic work within a society
where traditionalist patriarchal gender relations are being
re-instituted, wage slavery is being used in private industries,
massive “reserve armies” of semi-employed consumers,
freelancers, and even office clerks are being created ...
Within this puzzling class structure, we should question the
role of the intellectual and the entire intelligentsia: is it the
privileged urban elite that represents “creative capital”, is
it a potential “cognitariat” or “precariat”? How can we avoid
idealizing ourselves while posing this question as “engaged
intellectuals”?
07. THE TASKS OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Contemporary art that is produced as a commodity or a form
of entertainment is not art. It has become the conveyor-belt
manufacture of counterfeits and narcotics for the enjoyment
of a “creative class” which is sated with novelty. One of our
most vital tasks today is to unmask the current system of
ideological control and mass manipulation. The so-called
creativity of this particular system is nothing more than the
very commodification of their labor fruition, of all their ways
of life.
We are convinced that genuine art de-automates consciousness—
first the artist’s, then the viewer’s. Given art’s openness
to the wide public, neither power nor capital could have
a monopoly on art. One answer to the everlasting debate
over art’s autonomy regards the possibility of independent
production of art institutions, whether state owned or private.
Self-negation is essential, for the development of art
takes place outside institutional practices.
As a public form of unfolding individual creative potential, the
place of art during revolutionary struggles has always been
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and will always be in the very heart of events, on the squares
and in the communes. In such cases, art takes the form of
street theater, posters, actions, graffiti, grassroots cinema,
poetry, and music. At this new historical stage, a genuine
artist’s task is to renew these expression forms.
DR: The last paragraph of this part of the declaration was
long debated on. Some members of Chto Delat considered
it too media-specific: an exclusion of more traditional, less
“open” forms of creative self-fulfillment. However, the assertion
of art in Russian public space has opened a new
dimension, precisely because such practices have been
minimized or even abolished under the current conditions.
Contemporary art depends on the initiatives of oligarchs and
their wives. In order to meet this hyper-bourgeois appetite
for representation, artists tend to universalize certain values
into certain sensual forms: the truth of art is proclaimed as
the autonomy in the great bazaar and as the heteronomy
in its adjacent Turkish bath. One could juxtapose this to a
different task for contemporary art, one working outside the
bourgeois institutions. A shortcoming of this text is that it
does not admit – not even at this crucial point –, that art creates
new institutional practices when operating outside the
bourgeois institutions, thus becoming a counter-institution.
Counter-institutions face one central task: to ensure that
the means of cultural production shall not fall back into the
hands of the privileged (genuine) artists, or participate in a
market economy of cultural commodities.
08. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF REVOLUTIONARY ART IN
TIMES OF REACTION?
Although mass movements supporting social transformation
are temporarily absent, the purpose of art is nevertheless to
be on the side of the oppressed. Its central goal should be to
create new forms for the sensual and critical apprehension of
the world from a collective liberation perspective. Art should
not exist for museums and dealers; it should develop and
articulate new modes of “emancipated sensuality.” It should
become an instrument for seeing and knowing the world in
the totality of its contradictions.
Museums and art institutions should function as depositories
and laboratories for the aesthetic exploration of the world.
We should, however, keep them safe from privatization, capitalization,
or subordination to the populist logic of the culture
industry. That is why would consider it wrong to refuse any
kind of work with cultural and academic institutions. Still,
most of these institutions all around the world are engaged
in flagrant propaganda of commodity fetishism and servile
knowledge. The political propaganda of all other forms of
human calling is either harshly rejected by the system or
turned into a spectacle by the very system. The system itself
is not homogeneous – it is greedy, it is stupid and dependent.
This now leaves us room for using the same institutions in
order to advance and promote our own knowledge. We have