Approach:
Every ritual demands some sacrifice. For artists, sacrifice ignites a transition of their artistic output into our commodity culture, and further their commodification of themself. Art, is extracted from the artist by the market, leaving a creative gap to be filled, a void to be programmed, the artist becomes known not by the medium or quality by/at which they produce work; rather by the records of sale, the provenance which has developed around their work, and the persona which the artist projects into a commodity market setting.
As an artist, how do you set your price? Where do you choose to sell your intellectually and aesthetically manifested ideas/ideals, and in which way can you define yourself in order to defy yourself? Can you take control of the opportunities provided by the market? Will you let it control your productive output?
How can an artist’s personal aesthetic choices affect their work? How does their charismatic manifestation play into the price which their work reaches and the notoriety they have achieved? How can an artist’s brand affect their product?
Now, the artists role is to proclaim value, to place meaning in commodity, to develop a new associative capital system derived from strong contextualization and locationality. It cannot be assumed that cultural value can be linked to the value of financial capital, in fact they could not reflect each other. The strength of art is its context, no matter if it is literal, surreal, abstract, historical, societal, or anthropological context builds character and is the foundation from which art is constructed. There is value in making connections, and that is the role of the artist. Forming webs, ebbs, and flows between thoughts and ideas, both sensorial and intellectual, acknowledged and subconscious.
Conference:
I plan on creating a psychologically probing intervention in the space of Heimbold, by inserting a performance into the atrium in the form of either a video or a live. I will be distributing fabricated methodologies with which to value your artistic production, based on a series of questions which lead you towards a phantasmagorical journey of self awareness. I mean to inspire questioning of why you produce, and why the value of intellectual work has been removed from our daily lives.
In addition to the creation of a performance, there will be literature and documents prepared to accompany the valuation process. All elements of the project will fall under the same aesthetic umbrella, and will be presented as a uniform branding strategy for the work itself, and in turn the artist.
Criteria For Evaluation:
This project is inherently satirical and therefore the questions are meant to be questioned rather than taken literally or in an outwardly offensive manner, they are meant to be questioned and to probe the assumed societal norms and structures which are used to evaluate commodity values in culture.
Context of the Artist:
What is your name?
Where are you from?
What is your date of birth?
Are you religious? Are your parents?
Does your ethnicity affect your work?
Chosen Pronoun?
Where do you see your work going?
Are you authentic?
In a few sentences describe the space you feel most aesthetically in control of?
Describe 3 objects which stick in your memory? (In detail)
What do you think your value as an artist is? (scale of 1-10)
Yes/Frequency or No:
Do you smoke cigarettes?
Do you drink alcohol?
Do you take drugs?
Are you mentally stable?
Are you diagnosed with a personality disorder?
Have you ever wanted to die?
Do you think you have romantic baggage?
About the Pieces:
Have you ever sold a piece before? For how much?
How many pieces have you made this year? In total?
how long have you been practicing for?
What is your chosen subject?
