QUESTIONING ART TO GO BEYOND ONESELF

1 I think art has always played an active role: the hard part is to understand the premises and the objectives. There is not art there are so many faces of art, so many viewpoints and   expressions. In our present era of  post-globalization, crisis, rewriting of histories, art appears in multiple forms: from a device that sustains and feeds the market alone, to a practice of protest, imagination, action. Between these two extremes lie infinite expressions. In this moment it is not easy to distinguish, to understand, to get oriented. There are no references (ideological, “critical”, of movements or trends), and this – while it is certainly a good thing – creates confusion or gives rise to new appearances, if anything under “key words” that become mere and rather empty points of reference.

2 How to evaluate? I think the answer is quite simple: all this responds to the new forms of the art system. The mechanism is actually always the same: it is just that today what is fed is the container, the frame, the place. So money goes into the creation of new museums, new installations, infrastructures, without worrying (too much) about what will happen inside them, about how these spaces will be used. We could construct an entire cultural program with the help of the internet or with images. The “society of the spectacle” has triumphed.

3 Independent funds come from those who strongly “depend” on an economic system that always favors a few, restricted commercial or financial sectors. Nevertheless, we can try to construct systems of shifting of economic resources, though new forms of cooperation, relation and sharing of projects are needed. It is not enough to go where the money is. Those who have it know how to spend it and the mechanism of investment in art is identical to that of other forms of investment. There’s a lot of work to be done.

4 The imagination has no limits, but reality is something else again. The problem in Italy, perhaps more than in other countries, is a matter of “connections”, of “friendships”, the system of favors and trade-offs. I think what is needed is turnover, competitions with international juries, mixed tables (updated every three years with new figures) to decide on project and program lines. The university should play a major role in public decisions and culture. Some rules are needed, but rules are frightening because they can become constraints.

5 I don’t think it only depends on the crisis of political representation. It is a mechanism similar to the one that makes small and medium businesses close their doors every day. Everything is concentrate in a few very powerful retail chains, in multinational corporations: in art they are the big museums, the big collectors, artists themselves who become organized systems (with employees) of economic investment in themselves. The big “devours” the little and even the medium. So one possibility would be to put together, to connect, to form networks so that the small is no longer an individual, isolated reality, but a link in a strong chain, organized according to strategies of construction of shared platforms: this must be a path that can be taken.

6 The non-profit system has become a big mess. There are foundations or systems focused on collecting that introduce themselves as non-profit, but are actually doing something else. Non-profit depends on a cultural project, not on an appearance that always conceals the same mechanisms as the market. New alliances and “apparitions” emerge from this.

7 The responsibility has to be total and determining: but even this world has been a bit gutted of meaning. In any case, those who decide to make a donation, to institute a public asset (a “foundation”, for example), to put in “common” a legacy of ideas, cultural resources and projects, have an immense responsibility: to maintain their choice, to conserve it in a situation of transparency and autonomy, without remaining isolated, but constructing relations in the project, in the sharing of objectives. It is a big job, also in terms of content.

8/9 It is not a question of faith or of manipulation. The institutions are relatively absent. The artist or whoever intends to proceed with a cultural project cannot rely on the institutions today, because of what they have become. We have lived through a truly “dark” political period and the rebound is very difficult. But in this moment new efforts are needed, to find new platforms of public dialogue, to combine different kinds of expertise and to create tables of encounter, making of projects, reinvention of forms of cooperation. Some people are doing it. The problem is to make everything happen in the most transparent way, in public places, open to all.

10 Yes, perhaps. But first we have to understand our terms: what does municipal or federal mean? Some forms of federalism are dangerous. The forms of connection, of relation, are fundamental, but their construction has to happen starting from below: an enormous, strong network of autonomous structures that can then establish a dialogue with the institutions, with the present political forms. For this, common premises and objectives are required, otherwise the system breaks down.

CARLA SUBRIZI

Professor of History of contemporary art and Semiotics of contemporary art at La Sapienza University of Rome.