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In April, Mark Epstein from the Cooper Union Board of Trustees
announced the end of fully subsidized education across the college's art,
engineering, and architecture schools. It was a closing chapter in a
ferocious battle in the college since it announced its insolvency in 2011.
But it may be the beginning of something else.
The details are
too complex to fully describe here. On the one hand, a shortfall in
Cooper's endowment became unsustainable following the market crash of
2007–2008. An extravagant and badly timed building project around the
same time compounded the problem. Subsidizing a free art school costs
money, and the school simply did not have it. But in his address to the
Cooper community, Epstein's brutal pragmatism inadvertently described a
much larger problem.
As we saw with the absurd closing of
Middlesex University's philosophy department in 2010, the logic is
deceptively clear: if you want it, you have to pay for it. But the real
blow in Epstein's remarks wasn't to be found in his numbers, but in the
total evacuation of any idea of why a school should be free in the first
place, as a principle and a right, and as the primary means of leveling
class differences in society. How could that have gone missing from an
address by the school's very own trustees?
Let's try to look at
this another way—and maybe we can even take Epstein's pragmatism at
its word. The big hit to Cooper's endowment came from the market crash.
Essentially, the subsidies to operating costs and tuition had been placed
in a number of risky investments and managed assets, and these lost a
staggering 14% of their value without ever recovering. So even if we are to
take the trustees' argument seriously—that the crisis is a purely
fiscal one—then we must also recognize that the markets themselves
are in the midst of their own financial, and even existential, crisis. And
Cooper Union's solution—to adopt austerity measures at the expense of
the college's own mission, thus liquidating support for generations of
young artists—is to miss a crucial, and even quite interesting,
aspect of what the financial crisis has revealed about how money and
markets actually work.
As the role of the state in ensuring the
value of currency has grown weaker over the past few decades, markets have
increasingly assumed the qualities of language, of a "system of signs in
which the only essential thing is the union of meanings" (Saussure). The
other language economy is of course the internet, where it was thought that
the immaterial qualities of language would evade limits in supply and
demand. But now for some reason, this promise reverses. As language becomes
more free, everything else becomes incredibly expensive. This has made
language, and the internet with it, a class battleground now more than
ever, because it represents access to both knowledge and capital
simultaneously.
Market collapses have only made it more clear
that the money system follows a recursive structure where value is not
absolutely backed but mutually reinforced. And for those whose livelihoods
depend on the integrity of the financial system, or even the state for that
matter, this has produced a deep existential crisis. How can we be governed
by recursive logics and swells of belief and disbelief, by speech acts and
depressive episodes? Could my fortunes be pegged to nothing more than just
this? Artists will tell you: of course. Because that is how the art system
has always functioned. It has always been pegged to language.
The students demonstrating at Cooper Union understand exactly this. And
this is why the cost-benefit ratios of Mark Epstein and the trustees sound
so alien. Furthermore, when the language of financial markets suffers, why
should art education be subordinated to a logic of capital that is not only
itself at risk, but also not backed by an idea? Cooper Union can produce
its own capital, and the students know this. The language that backs it is
the thing to be developed.
—Julieta Aranda, Brian
Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
Hito Steyerl—International Disco
Latin No gallery in Salvador da Bahia, no project space
in Cairo, no institution in Zagreb can of the English language. And
language is and has always been a tool of Empire. For a native speaker,
English is a resource, a guarantee of universal access to employment in
countless places around the globe. Art institutions, universities,
colleges, festivals, biennales, publications, and galleries will usually
have American and British native speakers on their staff. Clearly, as with
any other resource, access needs to be restricted in order to protect and
perpetuate privilege.
Martha Rosler—English and All
That It's one thing to critique double-talk as
gobbledygook, a meaningless jumble of memes and phrases. It's another to
shine a negative spotlight on the word salad as a way of proving that
theoretical discourse, or the very enterprise of theory, is a sham and a
shame, a foreign import, or perhaps simply a fallen discourse.
Geert Lovink—After the Social
Media Hype: Dealing with Information Overload We can
read as many facts as we like, but if we try to add them up, they refuse to
become a system. We struggle to keep track of all the information that
approaches us, making it hard for most info bits to be properly digested.
This is the passive indifference that Jean Baudrillard celebrated during
his lifetime, and which has now become the cultural norm. The result is
"epistemic closure." When we are constantly exposed to real-time
interactive media, we develop attention fatigue and a poor sense of
time.
Ana Teixeira Pinto—The Whole
Earth: In Conversation with Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm
Franke It's important to mention the historical
parallel between, on the one hand, the growth of systems theory and
cybernetics, and on the other, the development of space travel. Another
point is the conceptual similarity between a planet and a system, or rather
between the image of the planet and the system. The image of a planet, just
like a system, is something you watch from the outside. But at the same
time, you're also inside it.
Abou Farman—Towards a
Post-Secular Aesthetics: Provocations for Possible Media in Afterlife
Art But secularism has privatized belief to such an
extent that, outside of Sundays, very little of this sort of thinking is
institutionalized in wider educational, legal, or state spheres. It is
permitted insofar as it is privately held. Even for those who believe in
life after death, the possibility of a person remaining active as an
agent in this world after his or her death is outside the realm of
possibility; their lives are not inflected by either the decisions,
desires, and doings of the dead, or their own post-mortem plans.
Natasha Ginwala and Vivian
Ziherl—Sensing Grounds: Mangroves, Unauthentic Belonging,
Extra-Territoriality Air is the weight of
water—and the leg that ventures into a mangrove swamp is asking to be
eaten. If it isn't snapped up by saltwater crocodiles, a tiger, or tropical
insects, it will at the very least partially disappear in the dense mud
between protruding roots. Memory fails in the mangrove, just as the
marking of claims becomes impossible.
Brian Kuan Wood—We Are the
Weather As the contradictions twist tighter and
tighter, it starts to become clear that a massive reallocation of resources
from infrastructure to intellect produces a bubble economy within the
artist's person as its primary carrier. This means that, as this person
develops strange superpowers just to find expansive solutions for constant
contractions in time and space, an internalized instability emerges as pure
psychosis.
Boris Groys—Art Workers: Between
Utopia and the Archive Still, the impression that the
internet as a whole is unobservable defines our relationship to it—we
tend to think about it as an infinite flow of data that transcends the
limits of our individual control. But, in fact, the internet is not a place
of data flow—it is a machine to stop and reverse data flow. The
unobservability of the internet is a myth. The medium of the internet is
electricity. And the supply of electricity is finite. So the internet
cannot support infinite data flows.
The print edition
of e-flux journal can now be found at: Amsterdam: De
Appel / Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten Andratx: CCA Andratx
Antwerp: M HKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Athens: OMMU
Århus: Aarhus Art Building Auckland: split/fountain
Austin: Arthouse at the Jones Center Baden-Baden: Staatliche
Kunsthalle Baden-Baden Banff: Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff
Centre Barcelona: Arts Santa Monica / MACBA Basel: Kunsthalle
Basel, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Beijing and Guangzhou: Vitamin
Creative Space Beirut: 98weeks Belgrade: Cultural Center of
Belgrade Bergen: Bergen Kunsthall / Rakett Berlin: b_books /
Berliner Künstlerprogramm – DAAD / do you read me? / Haus Der
Kulturen der Welt / NBK, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein / Pro qm Berlin and
Zurich: Motto Bern: Kunsthalle Bern / Lehrerzimmer
Bialystok: Arsenal Gallery Bielefeld: Bielefelder Kunstverein
Birmingham: Eastside Projects / Ikon Gallery Bologna: MAMbo
– Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna Bregenz: Kunsthaus Bregenz
Bristol: Arnolfini Brussels: Wiels Bucharest: National
Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (MNAC) / Pavilion Unicredit
Cairo: Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) / Townhouse Gallery
Calgary: The New Gallery Cambridge: Wysing Arts Center
Castello: Espai d´art contemporani de Castelló (EACC)
Chicago: Graham Foundation / Logan Center, University of Chicago /
The Renaissance Society Cologne: Kölnischer Kunstverein
Copenhagen: Overgaden Derry: CCA Derry~Londonderry
Dubai: Traffic Dublin: Dublin City, The Hugh Lane / Project
Arts Centre Dusseldorf: Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und
Westfalen Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum Farsta: Konsthall C
Frankfurt: Städelschule / Portikus Gdansk: Centrum
Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia Genève: Centre de la
photographie Ghent: S.M.A.K. Giza: Beirut Glasgow: CCA
Centre for Contemporary Arts / Sculpture Studios Graz: Grazer
Kunstverein / Kunsthaus Graz / para_SITE Gallery Grijon: LABoral
Centre for Art and Creative Industries Hamburg: Kunstverein
Helsinki: Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA Hobart: CAST
Gallery / INFLIGHT Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive Istanbul: BAS
/ CDA – Projects / DEPO / SALT Iași: theartstudent at the
University of Fine Arts, Iași Innsbruck: Galerie im
Taxispalais Johannesburg: Center for Historical Reenactments
Kristiansand: SKMU Sørlandet Art Museum Kansas City:
La Cucaracha Press Klagenfurt: Press Kunstraum Lakeside
Leeds: Pavilion Lisbon: Maumaus, Escola de Artes Visuais /
Oporto / Kunsthalle Lissabon Loughborough: Radar, Loughborough
University Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija LLandudno: Mostyn
London: Architectural Association / Bedford Press / Gasworks / ICA /
Serpentine Gallery / The Showroom / Visiting Arts Los Angeles:
REDCAT Luxembourg: Casino Luxembourg Madrid: Brumaria / CA2M
/ Pensart Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academie Marfa: Ballroom
Marfa Melbourne: Monash University Museum of Art / World Food Books
Mexico City: Proyectos Monclova Milan: Fondazione Nicola
Trussardi, Hangar Bicocca, Milton Keynes: Milton Keynes Gallery
Minneapolis: Walker Arts Center Moncton: Fixed Cog Hero (a
bicycle courier company) Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture
Moscow: Garage Center for Contemporary Culture Munich: Museum
Villa Stuck / Walther Koenig Bookshop, Haus der Kunst Munich New
Delhi: Sarai CSDS New York: e-flux / Independent Curators
International (ICI) / Printed Matter, Inc Nottingham: Nottingham
Contemporary Omaha: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Oslo:
Kunstnernes hus Oxford: Modern Art Oxford Padona: Fondazione
March Paris: castillo/corrales – Section 7 Books / Centre
Pompidou / Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers Philadelphia: Bodega
Pori: Pori Art Museum Porto: Museu de Arte
Contemporânea de Serralves Portland: Portland Institute for
Contemporary Art, (PICA) / Publication Studio Prague: Dox Centre for
Contemporary Art Prishtina: Stacion – Center for Contemporary
Art Prishtina Providence: AS220 Reykjavik: Reykjavik Art
Museum Riga: Kim? Rio de Janeiro: Capacete / A Gentil Carioca
Rome: MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma / Opera Rebis
Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute / Witte de With
Saint-Nazaire: Le Grand Cafe, Centre D'art Contemporain
Salzburg: Salzburger Kunstverein San Antonio: Artpace
São Paulo: Kunsthalle São Paulo / Master in Visual
Arts, Faculdade Santa Marcelina Sarajevo: Sarajevo Center for
Contemporary Art Seoul: The Books / The Book Society
Sherbrooke: Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop's University
Skopje: Press to Exit Project Space Sofia: ICA Sofia / Sofia
Art Gallery St Erme Outre et Ramecourt: Performing Arts Forum St
Louis: White Flag Projects Stockholm: Bonniers Konsthall /
IASPIS / Index / Konstfack, University College of Art, Craft and Design
Stuttgart: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
Sydney: Artspace Tallinn: Kumu Art Museum of Estonia The
Hague: Stroom Den Haag Toronto: Art Metropole / Mercer Union /
The Power Plant Torun: Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in
Torun Toowoomba: Raygun Contemporary Art Projects Trieste:
Trieste Contemporanea Umeå: Bildmuseet, Umeå
University Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst / Casco-Office for
Art, Design and Theory Vaduz: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
Valletta: Malta Contemporary Art Foundation Vancouver:
ARTSPEAK / Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British
Columbia / Fillip / Motto / READ Books, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily
Carr University of Art and Design Vienna: Salon für Kunstbuch,
Belvedere Gallery Vigo: MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo
Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) Vitoria-Gasteiz:
Montehermoso Kulturunea Visby: BAC, Baltic Art Center Warsaw:
Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki / Zachęta National Gallery of Art
Wiesbaden: Nassauischer Kunstverein (NKV) Yerevan: Armenian
Center For Contemporary Experimental Art, NPAK Zagreb: Galerija
Miroslav Kraljevic / Gallery Nova / Institute for Duration, Location and
Variables, DeLVe Zurich: Postgraduate Program in Curating,
Zürich University of the Arts / Shedhalle / White Space.
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