Researcher Theory
01.01.07 – 31.12.08
My research will be the attempt to formulate, and to problematise, what would constitute a specifically political praxis in art production and mediation via notions of temporality, exchange, autonomy and abstract labour developed principally in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Marx and Adorno. A parallel strand will consider the broadly autonomist Marxist concept of ‘affective labour’ within a dialectic of the term’s complicity with and subsumption into a thoroughly informalised and rapacious extraction of value in creative as in menial sectors (with salient distinctions) and the possibility of an analysis that would draw out its challenge to the predominance of exchange value and abstract labour. If cultural work, like housework, can be looked upon as a service which functions as an exception that confirms the rule of the capitalist social relations (for a minute ignoring the art market), this paradigmatic role can also dramatise the negative dialectic that hinders the full absorption of the object under the sign of the concept – the universality of value. Concomitantly, the encounter of the biopolitical and conceptual in much contemporary art prompts an assessment of whether there is the potential for a political praxis to be staged in art production and mediation that is ever constrained to most splendidly embody the logic of capital and point beyond it, in Adorno’s renowned dictum. Can art disrupt its immemorial symptomatic bind between being alibi of ‘untruth’ and the ‘laboratory’ for other ways of life? What kind of instantiations would such a move give rise to? Does the effort to elaborate such a set of possibilities already partake of an institutional grammar of evasion? To find out, I would like to materialise my research in a plurality of formats, social situations and temporo-spatial frames throughout the year.
In addition to Marx, Deleuze and the Frankfurt School, touchstones for my research include Marxist feminist writing on waged and unwaged labour, the work of autonomist Marxist theorists such as the Midnight Notes and Aufheben groups and Jacques Camatte, Paolo Virno on ‘virtuosity’, Jacques Rancière, dissident Modernists, feminist media and conceptual artists such as Valie EXPORT, Mierle Lademan Ukeles and Bonnie Sherk, and contemporary practitioners and phenomena too plural and, yet, ephemeral, to name here.
Kharkov, UA.
Copyeditor/proofreader/editor
Selected projects: Camera Austria, Casco Issues, Dave Hullfish Bailey and Annette Krauss artists' books published by Casco, 2007.
The RFID Chip Under Your Skin, Armin Medosch, SPACE Studios, London.
Moderator/Transcriber for PLENUM, a Kingdom of Piracy (KOP) project for NODE.London, Limehouse Town Hall, London, 31 March – 1 April.
Notetaker for deaf and disabled higher education students through The City Lit, London.
Writer for Britart online art marketing site.
Co-editor of Casco. Issues XI. June.
Media Mutandis. A NODE. London reader (surveying art, technologies and politics). Node London; MVTE, London. March. http://publication.nodel.org
Immaterial labour. Work, research & art. London and New York: Black Dog Publishing.
Interview with Annette Krauss. In: Hidden Currriculum. Utrecht, NL: Casco Projects.
Art now live programme. (8 September). Tate Britain and Electra. Contributor to Coming to have a public life. Is it worth it? publication by Emma Hedditch, September.
Line describing a curb. Asymptotes about Valie EXPORT, the new urbanism, and contemporary art. In: Will Bradley and Charles Esche (eds.), Art & social change. London and Los Angeles: Tate Publishing and After All.
It was the market that did It. In: Producta50, a collection of texts reflecting on contemporary strategies of knowledge production and critical culture. Barcelona: Y Productions. March. http://www.ypsite.net/eng/MAIN.htm
Introduction in Media Mutandis. A NODE. London Reader (surveying art, technologies and politics). March. http://publication.nodel.org
Twilight of the Widgets. Notes on immateriality and value. In: Data Browser 03. Curating, immateriality, systems. London and New York: Autonomedia. March. http://www.data-browser.net/03/
Untitled. In: Mind the map! History is not a given. Revolver. Archiv für aktuelle Kunst Leipzig, March. http://www.projektrelations.de/en/explore/eam_uni/index.php
Untitled. In DoubleCheck. Re-framing space in photography (exhibition catalogue). Slovenia and Austria 2004-05. http://www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net/projects/at_Double+Check/
Introtuction. In: Immaterial labour. Work, research & art . London and New York: Black Dog Publishing.
An aesthetic education in fictitious capital. To be published in the next Moscow Art Magazine, ed. by Victor Misiano. http://xz.gif.ru/
All the virgin eyes of the world are made of glass. Chto Delat? (What is to be done?). A newspaper for engaged creativity. Special Issue: Becoming a mother. http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=17&id=180&Itemid=0
The Dutch are weeping in five universal pictorial languages at least. Published 2 May on Mute. http://www.metamute.org.
Melting the ice. In: Untitled magazine, issue 40, Spring. http://www.untitledmag.co.uk/
Lights, camera, now-time! Polly II: Plan for a revolution in Docklands'. In :Untitled magazine, issue 39, Winter. http://www.untitledmag.co.uk/
The auto-destructive community. The torsion of the common in local sites of antagonism'. In: ephemera: theory & politics in organization. November. http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/6-4/6-4index.htm
Something in the Interval. Review of Interval (2): Film can help us think thought. Conference, installations and screening. Slade School of Art and Cine Lumiere, London, March. Published in Vertigo magazine, Autumn. http://www.cinemaintothereal.org/interval2/
Review of Panacea Superspa at Le Parvis centre d'art contemporain, Ibos, FR (March– April 2006). Published in Untitled magazine, Summer.
http://www.panaceaproject.org/show/parvis/parvis.html
Maybe the people would be the times. Published (5 January) on Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/node/7030
Feature writer for Rhizome.org, online media art and information resource. http://www.rhizome.org/
Enjoy your system! Published (13 September) on: Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/Enjoy-Your-System
Precarious straits. February 2005 and October 2004. In: Mute precarity reader. http://www.metamute.org/en/Precarious-Straits
Time keeps on slipping. (Some recently projected videotapes by Alexander Kluge). Published (25 February) on Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/Time-Keeps-on-Slipping-Some-Recently-Projected-Videotapes-by Alexander-Kluge
Interviewed by Marion van Osten, Spring. http://www.republicart.net/disc/precariat/vishmidt-osten01_en.htm
Feature writer for LUXOnline artists' film and video online catalogue.
Text on Lewis Klahr: http://www.lux.org.uk/featured/klahr.htm
Text on Jeanette Iljon: http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/essays/jeanette_iljon/detail1.html
Minima Cartographia or, The patient becomes the agent. Published (15 July) on: Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/node/6306
Writer for BFI/LUX Screen Online education project. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1002186/index.html
Coming round the mountain. (A conference on feminist geographies at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London) Published (20 November) on Mute.
http://www.metamute.org/en/Coming-Round-the-Mountain-A-conference-on-feministgeographies-a t-the-Austrian-Cultural-Forum-London
Pack to the future. Published (9 May) on Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/Pack-to-the-Future
Writer for Britart online art marketing site.
2001
Can you bear it? Published (10 May) on Mute. http://www.metamute.org/en/Can-You-Bear-It
It begins in a celebration of the rights of alchemy... In: Ontophony, a publication and recording of fiction, poetry and experimental writing, Difficult Fun record label. http://www.difficultfun.org/items/ontophonie.html and The High Horse, Winter 07-08 issue.
Airport novel. In Cosmic Transformer issue of Guestroom artists' publication, produced in London and Munich, distributed internationally, June. http://www.guest-room.net/cosmic1.html
Performance screening for “Radio Nadezhda”, women's independent radio project, RampART Social Centre, London, February.
Collaboration in Film London-funded 'Mary Kelly' research and screening programme and publication. http://www.andiwilldo.net/marykelly.htm
Cumulative video installation and text, 'Cartographic Congress' at the Limehouse Town Hall, London, May and June 2003.
http://twenteenthcentury.com/uo/index.php/CartographicCongress
Concept, curation and Me Plus Ultra video piece at Convulsive Initiatives, Century Gallery, London, September. http://www.centurygallery.org.uk/archive/2002/20021030_2_initiatives.htm
Numerous international group exhibitions of video work, including "Non-Stop Video Window International", Copenhagen, January – March.
Contrapolis; or flexible accumulation, enclosures and creativity in today's city. A weekend of workshops, discussions, walks, presentations, installations and screenings that articulate approaches and experiences around the contentious nexus of culture and urban regeneration in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Glasgow and Barcelona. To take place 26 and 27 March.
2007
A video genealogy of Bohemia. Screening programme and presentation with Stephan Dillemuth and Katja Diefenbach. 5-7 December. Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Screening programme during Jan van Eyck Video Weekend. May. Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Guy Debord 'cluster', with presentations by Stewart Home, Stephane Montavon and Marcus Klamer, Nicolas Siepen, March. Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.
Screenings and presentations at Unionising Workshop, Flaxman Lodge, London, June.
http://flaxmanlodge.omweb.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=23&forum=11&post_id=177#forumpost177
An aesthetic education in fictitious capital. In seminar: Can art change politics, does politics determine art? At Forms of Resistance (12 October). Eindhoven, NL: Van Abbemuseum.
Unproduction. Antagonistic subjectivity and value in contemporary art. (12 January). In: Opening Week. Maastricht, NL: Jan van Eyck Academie.
Workshop at 'Back to the Future' programme at Digitales, organized by Constant VZW, Interface3 training centre, Brussels, June. http://www.constantvzw.com/cyberf/reload-en.html
2005
Presentation of research at CASM (Centre d'Art Santa Monica) and San Andreu Free University, Barcelona, May. http://www.ypsite.net/eng/MAIN.htm
Panellist in Mute/Greenpepper magazine-orchestrated “Precarity Ping-Pong”, Middlesex University, European Social Forum, October. http://www.greenpeppermagazine.org/
Participation in Manifesta Coffee Break 'Occupation: Unknown' workshops at Liverpool Biennial October. http://www.manifesta.org/frame0.html.
Presentation of research at AtelierEUROPA, Munich Kunstverein, Munich, April. http://www.ateliereuropa.com/3.0_exh_conference.php
http://www.republicart.net/disc/precariat/vishmidt-osten01_en.htm