Artservis

Context

Alen Ožbolt: On Money

3, 2, 1 – 0 (The Money project, 1990)

We dream money. I do not think it useful to break commonsense notions of the power of money attaining everything. In fact, the situation should be made even more radical. That is, it should be taken even more as a matter of fact – not only that money is a measure and equivalent of everything but that it is actually a signifier of everything. It is at this point (the point of money) that the world reflects itself; it forges its image around this point. It measures itself with and even it sees itself in money. Everything is what it is and, at the same time, the least it is (its own) measure expressed in money. To face money is to face our inner supposition in which to have or not to have, to be or not to be is the game that is played. The modern world is so captured in its own monetary basis that money represents the basic foundation and the first impetus. Time is money. The exchange of words and the exchange of money constantly interchange. This circuit tells us that material existence requires daily prostitution. It also speaks of the transitions of the subject into the object, and vice versa – and it does not deny the difference. We witness an interiorised relationship with money in which numbers reflect man: we look at quantities and live numbers. In this place the art of business and art as business intermingle. Andy Warhol was not only the first to express this pattern in its extreme but he also expressed in painting what he liked the most, and did it by painting money. Not any money, of course, it was money of high value (backed by gold); not the Yugoslav dinar but the American dollar. In the era of serial reproduction, the artist systematically repeated and printed images that “went for money”. Warhol sold a painting for money but also placed money on the painting. Thus after this ultimate gesture it only remains to place painting onto money so that painting becomes money ‘in its pure form'. MONEY IS PAINTING and PAINTING IS MONEY. This gesture of course no longer belongs to the sphere of dreams, for it comes closest to the sphere of death. The glorification of money is a form of the death of the painting.

THE SOWER/1,000,000 . MONEY INTO EYES (2001)

‘A curious thing. If I did not yet know whether anything good could be done with money, I would certainly be convinced – after spending money on bread and feeding several thousand people – that one can do nothing with money but evil.' Leo Tolstoy, Ripe Ears

1xxxxxLook at money. Money shines, money blinds. The back side of every artwork is material , the economy, production that measures and is expressed in its costs, in money. In The Sower/1,000,000 project, money is its back side but also its front side. Here money is merely an appearance , the only ‘means', ‘expressive' material and also ‘contents', the motive of the project. We look at the aesthetic mode of the existence of money. Money – cash – is on the floor. Here money is out of circuit; ‘frozen' outside exchange, it represents ‘basic contents', the object of the gaze and the motive of the exhibition.

10xxxxThus money is the thing here; however, I am not interested only in its explosion, its global expansion but primarily in its implosion , its (if we can put it this way) micro-situation – something called ‘personal economy'. Look in your wallets, look from the global to the private, from the global economy and expansion to the personal, narrow, small, micro-economy. Thriftiness, prudence, stinginess and certainly also egoism, selfishness, greediness… – are these not entirely the natural feelings and ‘life strategies' of man in his micro-economy, in micro-capitalism? Are these not, as it were, natural capitalistic feelings?
We breathe money and, while we dream it, we desire, earn, store, even accumulate it and, certainly, we enjoy and spend it. We are niggards; we take great care of our accounts and wallets. The key words here are the (‘first') personal pronouns: me, for me, to me, my, for my… Just like counting, calculating. Man's character and his ‘personal' views are, of course, created in the intertwinement and entanglement with ‘encircling' surroundings, and the surroundings are somewhat ‘interior' to man. Capitalism has filled neighbours' shops and shelves, illuminated the city and shop windows, improved car engines and sheet metal… – all primarily to empty man as much as possible, or at least his pocket and bank account. We are consumers ordained to spend, to buy, to purchase. What is real and basic in the existence of man in capitalism is his vanity , for only in this way can he be a good consumer. A good consumer is not a dead consumer, although even the dead cost; a good consumer is self-loving (loves himself and his body), egotistical (buys for himself and for his nearest and dearest at most), selfish (wants to have as much as or, better, more than others) and greedy, in fact rapacious (he has and buys much more than he needs and spends, much more than required). Men have become bigger than men. How many times more does a ‘Westerner' spend (didactically/narratively we could say devour) in comparison with a Third World man? Fifty, a hundred, a thousand times more?
Stinginess at the one side, greediness on the other – these are, hand in hand, the main guidelines of life, the attitude of capitalism. Perhaps stinginess and greediness are not exactly real feelings but they are fully installed in the brain of a (100-per-cent) Westerner. In order to survive under capitalism, people cannot only spend and spend again – they also have to save so that they can spend more and more intensely. But to save is also stinginess, to give credit is stinginess, to invest is stinginess, to economise is stinginess. One always counts on gain , surplus, interests, profit – on more and even more capital. Stinginess shows itself even where we are beggars, where we do not have and where we give, for giving is not giving, ‘offering' money, since the ‘offerer' always acquires a great personal or even social gain and possession in the form of a beautiful, generous and unspoiled self-identity and wider social respect. Who are gala benefit events meant for? For those attending and acting in their rich vanity garments, or for the ‘poor' who are not there and only wear wornout ready-made clothes?

100xxxWe are in numbers. The ‘measure' is not man (Homo mensura) for there are many forms not only for man (something that can delight, strengthen or give pleasure to him, for example) but also against him (something that is bigger, stronger than him, that can hurt or even kill him). The financial system – money – is the universal ‘measurement system' that defines the measure, the value of things, forms and also men. We know the value of bread, milk and eggs; we know the value of a house, a computer, shoes, a car or quick sex. And most directly, we know the value of an investment, a share or (‘heavy') bank account. Numbers are something we have to believe in, for in surveys, pictures, graphs, diagrams and scales the ‘wider social reality' or ‘objective presence' are frequently measured and described in percentages. Things in diagrams are like numbers; society and the world are captured in numbers. In capitalism, to be or not to be means to have or not to have.

1,000xxWhat was first, the word or the mobile phone? The concept of traditionally conceived capital has changed radically. Money no longer has a fixed form ; money is fast, constantly moves and changes, transforms itself; as a matter of fact, global capital is more and more widespread today. It uses the most modern means and weapons to achieve this goal. Globalism is actually total imperialism. ‘The state of things', therefore, is movement, even faster movement – an explosion. Capitalism is an engine in the fast, more rapidly rushing movement that generates increasing amounts of money. Today this is still made possible by smart plastic , and tomorrow it will be ‘digi-cash'; the market of tens of billions of dollars shows itself on the crimson early morning horizon. The global market is a kind of all-embracing – global – multiplication and fertilisation of money. This is happening through a modernised and sophisticated contemporary system which is increasingly successful in organising the circulation and distribution of money and goods and, as a side-event, certainly of words and information – it is much more effective than any previous system. Money requests an effective, unlimited, constant, rapid circuit of profit.

10,000xxxMoney is an all-inclusive and profound relation of man to the world, achieving such dimensions that we can speak of dependence and addiction. There is no life – or decent life at least – without money. At the personal level, for example, the economic law of profit is an entirely practical and pragmatic logic; its nature forces it constantly into proving its profitability and functionality, into renewing itself on a daily basis. It is necessary to ceaselessly recreate the wish to possess things, information, mass-consumer goods and also unique objects – if they still exist at all, of course. And this wish or need also has to be fulfilled. We live in a system where stakes are on the wish and we are left with freedom of choice; even though this freedom of choice is merely illusory, we nevertheless experience it as a freedom, as our freedom (of) choice. As a matter of fact, however, they (both freedom and choice) are imposed on us. Here the consumer is a victim of a wide and profound ‘ multi-media ' (advertisement) campaign. Is this effective ‘brainwash and stainwash' not in actual fact mental terrorism?
The market is rectangular but the products of the market are round; therefore the market will never become satiated, filled up. What used to be a profane and even banal activity, such as buying, has been transformed into a complex aesthetic event whose witty dramaturgy relies on seduction, on the production of needs, desires, final satisfaction, pleasure. Although we cannot yet say that the user or consumer, in his act of purchase, is engaged in a sexual relation with the shop, the merchandise or the producer, possession is nevertheless both physical and oral. (It is true that with money we can also buy a body, another body – we can pay for an orgasm, but it is not sold in Spar, Mercator or Leclerc).
The sower, the sowing, the harvest. Capitalists (these C-s are no longer merely men but also women) are no longer ‘wicked and fat drones', of course; they are nice, beautiful, attractive, supple, dynamic, careful and laborious initiators (inseminators) who adequately analyse the market (plough, prepare and manure the soil), study business risks (the weather), invest (plant) minor and major means (seeds), which then grow into smaller or bigger successful (fertile) and strong enterprises (trees) that give (bear) rich products (fruits), which sell well and are consumed with the help of a wide distribution network and, of course, positive and affirmative advertisement. Perhaps this is an absurd rustic or, better, ‘agricultural' caricature or impression, but it is also in this manner that we can describe the market and its range, business subjects, wishes, goods and products.

100,000xxWhat about the measure and price of art; who is ‘beloved or valued' and how much? In the past the image of Christ, for example, used to be reproduced to infinity, but at the beginning of the 20th century the enlightenment ‘aesthetic of the beautiful' finally broke down. Aesthetics as ‘the philosophy of taste' has become ‘merely' a matter of good taste , and the criterion of the beautiful has gradually become entirely relative since we get numerous ‘non-aesthetic', remarkably ‘ugly', mechanically ‘uniform', corporately boring, notionally ‘sterile' or aggressively visual artworks. The beautiful as an (aesthetic and ‘measuring') criterion has once and for all declined.
They beg politely to see. When Slovenian television once embarked on a programme on the art market in Slovenia, they invited and presented only gallery managers and critics. Artists and all others were excluded – they had no voice. ‘Privatisation' in art has been underway since the second half of the 19th century, i.e. for over a century, but the word private in this case points merely to the acceleratedly greater autonomy of art from the Church, King or State. Today, art is in the grasp and clutch of various ‘plural ideologies' and primarily of the market. Painting does not exist merely within the painterly field, on canvas, and not merely in galleries and museums. What is beyond the edge, beyond the very physical limit of artwork, frequently turns out to be more important and decisive for art than what is seen on its surface.
Art is not created merely by artists. If modern and postmodern art is captured in one way or another (in the ideological, social, societal, historical, or spatial context), this speaks of the split nature of art itself. The place and relation of art to the outside, to its surroundings, to the public and to the actual social structure speak of the very intrinsic in art, of the essence itself. The essence is not the object of art, nor the artist, but the very split in art between ‘art and the world', between object and perception, interpretation; the essence of art is the split between the inside and the outside, and the indeterminable nature of this limit. It would be nice to speak of the openness of the medium and the freedom of language in art in contrast to the determinism of the ruling art system; however, the intrinsic dependence and subordination of art actually functions not only and merely at the primary level, as an apologetic justification of this very reality, or its disfiguration or excess, which is also or even most incorporated within the market system itself. It is interesting in this context that a large part of contemporary art – just as frequently in the past – wishes and endeavours to almost entirely approach and cover itself with ‘life', to thoughtlessly meld with the art environment, or reflect society in an attitude of servility. Court artists were mainly servants of the ruling oligarchy, and others were its victims.

1,000,000xxWhat is worse: to conquer museums or tear them down? What is better: to ‘conquer' the internet or turn it off? The Saatchi factor, an artwork on the wall or in a collection, is value, money on sight. An artwork is not merely a field, the scene of sublimation, the sublime; the Artwork has its price and thus its defined value. Both collectors and artists pay a high price to be able to cooperate and participate in this brave art system. Here the artist is not the first nor the last. There is a plethora of artistic, critical and market presentations, interpretations, qualifications, estimations, evaluations and judgements. How defining and contrasting and contradictory these ‘external' instances and powers are can be seen in the multiple and chaotic establishment of criteria and in different dispersed systems of re-presentation and distribution (art schools / galleries / museums / curators / critics / collectors / audience / catalogues / magazines / media). Old systems decompose or change and adapt themselves. Today it is better to speak of a network; a system presupposes a hierarchical model while contemporary networks show diffused centres and knots. Therefore we cannot say that the art market is centralised – which does not mean, however, that it is merely international, for it is still specific, local, dependent on local conditions, relationships and taste. Sometimes simply one voice can be decisive. The modern notion of art was based essentially on the ideology of autonomous art: those art practices that took art as their own ideology were modern. Thus the autonomic ideological structure of modern art constructed its autonomy on the subject, on individualism, on the illusion of freedom of expression. It is only today that we can clearly see how strong this illusion, this lie was. Modern art functioned unbound and free from religion as an ideology, the Church as a religious institution and the Bible as a text, which was the literary source of the large majority of art in Romanticism, Gothic, the Renaissance and Baroque. But even the 20th -century art that was called avant-garde, subversive, destructive, unpurposeful, physically fleeting, unfunctional and the like had a deep relationship with society, and finally even achieved its place within it, in interpretations, books, galleries, museums and with collectors. And even the current post-postmodern and international and multi-discursive dimension of art still retains this very position, the place where artwork is situated, although this place is split, diffused, manifold or virtual – it is where many interests cross.
Overdetermined ‘international pluralism', the multiplicity of artistic styles and products, speaks of a dispersed and polymorphous image, a situation in art which only conceals the dictatorship of Western curators and gallery managers, the power of Western museums and collectors, the power of capital (now, even in New York, one hears complaints that art is excessively monetary). The centres of art are primarily where the centres of capital are. Where art is represented, it is also captured. The contemporary art market is obvious and simple, literal only in its price value, in the measure of money. However well-founded this measure / price is, whatever its professional bases and market foundations, it is not objective, it lacks a firm basis, and is irrational, random and imaginary. A rich fantasy.

Sidenote: love occupies first place.