{"id":1344,"date":"2011-06-11T15:18:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T13:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rwfund.org\/eng\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2016-01-15T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T18:56:00","slug":"presentation-of-the-book-dark-matter-lecture-and-discussion-with-the-author-gregory-sholette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rwfund.org\/eng\/2011\/06\/11\/presentation-of-the-book-dark-matter-lecture-and-discussion-with-the-author-gregory-sholette\/","title":{"rendered":"Presentation of the book \u201cDark Matter\u201d, lecture and discussion with the author Gregory Sholette"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kombinat of Self-organized Initiatives\/ Reconstruction Women\u2019s Fund<\/strong>, TkH \u2013 Deschooling Classroom<\/strong>, Women at Work<\/strong>, Cultural Centre REX<\/strong> and Kontekst Collective<\/strong> invite you to the presentation of the book “<\/strong><\/span>Dark Matter”<\/b>,<\/span>\u00a0the lecture\u00a0and discussion with the author\u00a0<\/span>Gregory Sholette.<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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Thursday, June 16 at 6 p.m. –\u00a0<\/span>CULTURAL CENTRE MAGACIN, Kraljevica Marka 4<\/b><\/b><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
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\"scholette1\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From radical solidarity to \u201cwhatever\u201d collectivism: political art and the rise of crisis capitalism<\/b><\/p>\n

The desire to speak in a collective voice has long fueled social imagination and artistic production. Prior to the Second World War, artists understood collectivization as an expression of the promise or failure of industrial and political modernity envisioned as a mass phenomenon. After the war, artists moved beyond the old ideal of progress by tying, often sardonically, the radicalism of their political dreams to a free-play of differences and tactical positioning. But in the last couple of decades a variation of this informal mode of cultural collectivism has arisen whose impish adoption of group persona is neither strictly ironic nor entirely sincere.\u00a0As if responding to the ruined public landscape of neoliberal enterprise culture, an assortment of ersatz institutes, centers, schools, bureaus, offices, laboratories, leagues, departments, societies, clubs, and bogus corporations have inserted themselves into the deterritoralized space of the spectacular global marketplace. Each of these mock-institutional entities sports its own logo, mission, and website, engaging in a process of self-branding not so much aimed at niche markets or product loyalty, but rather to gain surreptitious entry into visibility itself.<\/p>\n

The most engaging of these phantom establishments do more than just replicate the appearance of lost liberal, institutional structures; they also use their virtual offices to confront and intervene in the real world of actual corporations, businesses, municipalities, and states. Brash, youthful, and disarmingly flippant, this \u201cwhatever collectivism\u201d mixes visual art, politics, fashion, music, and mimetic forms of casual organizing to produce an ambient mode of group work that is more at home with the communal swarms generated by social networking platforms than with older notions of class or political solidarity arising from either labor or the Left.<\/p>\n

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Gregory Sholette<\/strong>\u00a0is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political\u00a0Art Documentation\/Distribution<\/strong>\u00a0(PAD\/D: 1980-1988), and\u00a0REPOhistory<\/strong> (1989-2000). His recent publications include\u00a0Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture<\/strong>\u00a0(Pluto Press, 2011);\u00a0Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945<\/strong>\u00a0(with Blake Stimson<\/strong>); and\u00a0The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life<\/strong>\u00a0(with Nato Thompson<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

He teaches in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, is a faculty member of CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design, and is currently Chair of the MFA Program in Studio Art, as well as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY).<\/p>\n

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