Re: <nettime> Fwd: e-flux's vision for the .art domain

[John Stillframe <jstillframe@hotmail.com>]

Dear all,  and thanks Andreas for your note


What is most problematic about e-flux is not necessary its corporate
ambitions, but more so how it disguises a business venture into
a philanthropic one (as Andreas also noted). Here the commodity,
which is the "announcement service" is sugar coated as a cultural
contribution, which hides its exchange-value. It is no doubt great to
hear about biennials in remote places, but only as far as they pay
whatever hundred dollars a pop an announcement costs. This is a great
example of what Boltanski and Chiapello call the connextionist world
where the commodity and the network become inseparable. With every
new person signing to receive the announcement, the corporation?s
penetration expands and its network solidifies, each recipient is an
asset for the company that can further bank on for more requests from
galleries, museums etc. Or to put it another way, each recipient is a
commodity that the company is selling to organizations that use the
service to advertise their programming.

What is urgent here is a call for transparency, as Andears also
pointed out, and which e-flux is constantly shying away from. While
e-flux' model of financial self-sufficiency is definitely interesting
-- especially with the non-profit world?s constant reliance on
grant making -- but it is hardly unique outside the artworld e.g.
the Starbucks or TOMS shoes model of fairness, BP paying for the
beautiful installations at Turbine hall, etc, this is now a norm in
the post-industrial cultural capitalism.

Nevertheless, while maybe e-flux might be a better candidate for the
TDL than some others- or not- , yet if the revenues from such venture
could go to a public institution that provides funding for the art, it
would be more beneficial to the "community," if we look a bit further
than the lower east side.

JSTILL

> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 08:33:26 +0200
> From: broeckmann@leuphana.de
> To: nettime-l@kein.org
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Fwd: e-flux's vision for the .art domain
> 
> 
> john, folks, just to clarify:
> 
> i forwarded the e-flux announcement to the nettime list to contribute
> to the ongoing discussion about the topic; i share john's critique of
> e-flux (and some of these people have names that are well-known in the
> art world) posing as a community initiative when what they do is run
 		 	   		 

<...>


 

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org