Fields And Labs

In 2008 I attended a workshop at Can Xalant. This [art production] center was in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Mataró, a town in the periphery of Barcelona; it wasn&s;t exactly around the corner. But the place was packed when I arrived. The name of the workshop was “The Transparent Factory,” and its aim was to discuss the meanings of “production” in contemporary art. Most of the speakers, artists, critics, curators, between their late twenties and late forties, were relatively fluent in contemporary critical theory, and shared some common view of the contemporary artistic condition. This implied, basically, a frontal rejection of the romantic myth of the artist as genius, and creator; the artist, from their perspective, is a producer among others, a worker. This production is not individual, but collective; many of them in fact belonged to different art collectives. Furthermore, this production should not be commercial, addressed to an exclusive and elitist market, but public. For most of them, art was not a self-justified activity, “art for art&s;s sake,” but a means to an end—this end being, in most cases, social and political.

Art, Politics, and Modernism · Art, Technology, and Culture · Computer Science · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy