[Perfecto] E.3

Scholars: This is a bit of a dense text, even though it is only some six pages long. Read slowly and take notes. The basic summary is this: Installation art dealing with commodities began in 1917 with a stunt pulled by French-American artist Marcel Duchamp in New York: he bought a urinal and submitted it to an art show with a new name “Fountain.” Because of his media savvy he helped create a large polemic about the rejection of the piece from the art show. That polemic started a larger debate: at what point can a commodity become art, or used for art? Many artists throughout the century repeated Duchamp’s “game” with different commodities. Faris (the author here) suggests that before neoliberalism, such art was mostly about space: where do you place the commodity, how do you reorganize it or relocate it? And how does that change our experience of it. But Faris then argues (and I think the argument is right on) that, since neoliberalism, artists working with commodities are less concerned about just relocating them. Instead, artists make interventions on the commodities (changing the labels, hacking videogames, setting up their own “factories” real or imagined), and do this to invite viewers to uncover everything that is normally “hidden” from the consumer: the production process, the labor conditions, the geographical locations, the politics. Faris ends with questions that she will ask of the art in her book. You must take note of those questions, and then do the asking yourself to the art you examine. Best of luck.

Today’s capitalism uses packaging and distance to hide the energy and labor involved in creation of the product. And it hides the history, origins, and geographies of the product. Artists today are trying to expose some of those.

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These are the questions you will have to answer in your own readings of installation art (or in your explanation of your own art project.

Critical: The Neoliberal order of “free trade” zones makes commodity chains so much more complex

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