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Molly Hankwitz on Mon, 29 Mar 2021 19:22:53 +0200 (CEST)
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Re: <nettime> re art & monetary value -- "art in the information economy"
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Dear Sandra, Brian,
Thank you from me for your very clear and concise breakdown of Art in the information economy, Sandra. A good read and interesting sets of research from your own forays into aboriginal culture to innovation as a driver of the economy. Very apt for this conversation coming out if the NFT boom. And very structured, which is calming amidst the boom frenzy, too, meaning that along with the potentialities of the NFT boom comes uncertainty, somewhat calmed by insights and speculative questions in your paper. It’s economic history.
At the same time, I would argue two things—one, the information/digital economy is substantially different now than it was in the 1990s, just as web art from then operates on a different digital footprint, different coding; than such art does now with Web 2.0, and that information has changed dramatically and in terms of capital, flows, taxing of flows, etc. This is probably also induced by what we might call the “smart” information economy, and as yet, I’ve seen no comprehensive studies on flows in smart comm, but that might be helpful to know how ideas and information is circulating.
Secondly, and I attended recently several sessions of the Berlin MoneyLab, what is potentially transformational about cryptocurrencies and NFT type currency making practices is that much if the drive to produce capital is emerging from within local networks and self-defined communities of practice. The opportunity may be upon collectives, for instance, to better act on their own behalf when it comes to determining value, and that this in turn can potentially reshape arts role in culture. I was impressed, and then a discord thread started, on the introduction of “feminist economics” to the discussion of value in a presentation by DisCO, and by several projects which projected possibilities for underserved communities of artists being able to become more self sustaining and more in control of their “market” representation, so to speak. What this has to do with post-COVID, remains to be seen.
At the same time it might be scary to conceive of splintering away from institutions, just as institutions appear to be becoming “inclusive”. But, if there is a sure reason, it might be the recent pay debacle for African American artists at the Whitney(will supply links later)
A few events from my part if the world, which is the ever-imaginative and challenging Bay Area. I am reminded of Pro Arts gallery announcing recently that they now have their own copyright, as they work to produce a “commons” and of the several Universal Income programs that are currently being piloted here for artists. Another positive, progressive local direction is the SF Community Land Trust which buys buildings from their owners and sets up cooperative ownership.
All this time at home may have improved the house on a macro and micro scale!
Cheers,
Molly
<Do white people also undergo acculturation? How was the information economy imposed in the 1990s? How did it affect all of us, with its particular forms of money, its codes of communication and its modes of transport, its hierarchies and its violence? I wrote a lot about it, back in the day. But it looks quite different today.
Cultural politics is a very slippery business, because it is also part of states and corporations. What I'm trying to say is that, just as in the early Nineties, a new kind of world order is likely to come together in the wake of a major crisis. The crisis today is the pandemic - a relation to animals, zoonosis - and the first big blows from climate change - a relation to destiny. But such crises are resolved, at least temporarily, and this one surely will be too. Still the challenges to the old order are immeasurably more powerful than they were in the 1990s. The declarations of the curent administration contain many things that the US left has been calling for over the last twenty years, yet in the face of everything that could take form as Green Informational Capitalism I have the feeling that the critical blinders better come off very soon, as Bronac was also saying.
This piece from 1996 on art and various forms of capital in the digital world has some things to say that are pertinent to this interesting conversation. You'll see some theorists not as present in ongoing conversation these days as they were then, but I stand on the piece.
"Art in the Information Economy"
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