Sunday - 11.20.11 -- Two Events -- Two Teach-Ins -- One Horizon
Contents:
0. Introduction to this Sunday
1. Event I -- Demystifying the Economic Crisis
2. Capitalism's Dismal Future by Paul Mattick
3. Event II -- Art, Work, and Occupation (7:00pm)
4. Writings by Gregory Sholette
5. Related Readings
6. Related Websites
7. About Gregory Sholette
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0. Introduction to this Sunday
This Sunday, the plan was to host two separate events having in common the desire to demystify or elaborate upon some components of the contemporary struggles.
The first event organized was with Paul Mattick and would focus on the economic crisis and its causes. Given the new occupation at 90 5th Avenue as of Nov. 17, there will be an effort to move this discussion with Paul there. The discussion relates to efforts by various students and other groups to organize situations in which knowledge about the financial dimension of the crisis can be analyzed and demystified in common. Please visit http://allcitystudentoccupation.com/ for more details on this event.
The second event with Greg Sholette, which will take place at 16 Beaver on Sunday night, concerns the history of artistic engagements with the politics of work since the 1960's. The event emerges out of interests to address the inter-relations between Art and Labor/Work historically and consider them under contemporary circumstances of production and
exploitation.
Both events connect to various discussions we have been having over the last years both around the governing economic logic and the implications it has on 'intellectual work,' 'cultural institutions,' 'cultural
production,' 'artistic work,' and potential 'political action.'
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1. Event I -- Demystifying the Economic Crisis
What: Teach-in / Discussion with Paul Mattick
When: for details please visit: http://allcitystudentoccupation.com/ Where: moved to 90 5th Avenue
Who: Free and open to all
Some friends will be convening a series of analyses around the economic crisis. This, first in the series, Demystifying the Economic Crisis, will be with Paul Mattick (Adelphi, Philosophy) - author of Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism (2011)
To what do we owe the misery and economic hardship currently sweeping the globe, giving birth to a number of social movements including that of Occupy Wall Street? Reckless banks? Human greed? Amoral politicians? Financial speculation? Partial answers at best, bourgeois obscurities at worst. Come join in a discussion which seeks to expand the discourse circulating throughout the current US occupation movement.
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2. Capitalism's Dismal Future
Capitalism's Dismal Future
By Paul Mattick
Apart from the patently nonreality-based dissent of its Republican members, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission could hardly have expected the report it issued in January to arouse much excitement. After a year and a half of research and the testimony of academics and other economic experts, it came up with no more than the already conventional wisdom that the economic downturn that burst into public view in 2007 might have been avoided, having been caused by a combination of lax governmental regulation and excessive risk-taking by lenders and
borrowers, particularly in the housing market. The same conventional wisdom assures us that swift government action prevented the Great Recession from turning into a full-blown depression, and that the downturn has given way to recovery, albeit a "fragile" one. No matter how often it is repeated, however, this wisdom remains unconvincing.
Why is the recovery so fragile? Why is unemployment stubbornly high? Why are the banks, newly stocked with cash by that swift government action, so uninterested in advancing it for business expansion? Why is the series of sovereign debt crises in Europe echoed in the United States by collapsing state budgets? Why do politicians call relentlessly for austerity even while the economy remains unable to satisfy the need of millions for housing, health care, education, and even food? The bankruptcy of the putative science of economics already demonstrated by the failure of experts to predict the catastrophe is underlined by their apparent inability either to explain what is happening at present or to reach consensus on measures to be taken in response.
A remarkable feature of the commentary on today's economic troubles is that, despite constant reference to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as well as to the many downturns since World War II, there has been little mention of the fact that business depressions have been a recurrent feature of the capitalist economy since the Industrial Revolution. But even the briefest attention to history makes recent events appear far from unusual. From the early 1800s to the late 1930s, in fact, capitalism spent between a third and a half of its history in depressions (depending on how they are dated by different authorities), which increased steadily in seriousness up to the Big One in 1929. It was only the relative
shallowness of the recessions since World War II that gave rise to the idea that capitalism would no longer undergo the ups and downs
characteristic of its first 150 years as the dominant social form. The choice in economic theory seemed to be between the neoliberal idea of capitalism as a self-equilibrating system and the Keynesian conception of the economy as controllable by government manipulation. The inadequacy of both views demonstrated by current economic events calls for another look at the long-term dynamic of the capitalist system.
Earlier students of what by the later 19th century had come to be called the business cycle came to understand it as characteristic of a market economy, in which most goods are produced for sale. In such an economy, the reason goods and services are produced by businesses is to make money; businesses expand and contract, and they move from producing one kind of good or service to another, in response to the level of profits earned by their investments. By the early 20th century, statistical studies (carried out, more important, by the American economist Wesley C. Mitchell and the National Bureau of Economic Research) demonstrated that the alternation of prosperity and depression followed the fluctuations of business
profitability.
The most elaborately worked-out explanation of those fluctuations, Karl Marx's theory of the profit rate, came from so far outside the mainstream of economic theory as to be largely ignored by students of capitalism, including most on the left. But economic history suggests the accuracy of his idea that, while prosperity creates conditions for an eventual crisis, the ensuing depression makes possible an economic revival, as the lowering of investment costs—thanks to bankruptcies, price collapses, the
vaporization of paper claims to investment income, and the decline of labor costs due both to increased unemployment and the improved
productivity of new machinery—brings higher rates of return on investment, producing increased investment and so an expanding economy.
Despite their particular features, the Great Depression and the post-1945 revival of the capitalist economy followed, in broad outline, the pattern set in previous episodes of economic collapse and regeneration. The depression was a long one, and the level of physical and economic
destruction of capital unusually high (especially during the war into which it opened). It is not surprising, therefore, that the revival led to a period of prosperity, lasting until the mid-1970s, that economists dubbed the Golden Age for its length and amplitude. The relative freedom from serious downturns during those years was due also to the continuation into the post-Depression period of what had come to be called Keynesian methods: Government spending as a proportion of gross domestic product in the OECD countries increased from 27 percent in 1950 to 37 percent in 1973. In the United States, as the political economist Joyce Kolko noted in 1988, "roughly half of all new employment after 1950 was created by state expenditures, and a comparable shift occurred in the other OECD nations."
to continue reading please visit:
http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/
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3. Event II -- Art, Work, and Occupation
What: Teach-in / Discussion with Greg Sholette
When: Sunday, 11.20.11 at 7:00PM
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Free and open to all
The evening's event will be a teach-in and discussion with artist, critic, and educator Gregory Sholette concerning the history of artistic
engagements with the politics of work since the 1960s. While focused on past traditions and initiatives, the presentation will open onto a group discussion of more recent artistic, theoretical and political developments related to concepts such as precarity, post-Fordism, immaterial labor, the cognitariat, and what Greg himself has called "dark matter." This
discussion will consider how these histories and concepts might be (re)activated relative to the Occupy movement, including but not limited to that of New York City as it enters a "post-Zuccotti" phase following the eviction of November 15th. Report-backs and reflections from November 17th actions are more than welcome following Greg's presentation.
Here are some points and questions devised in collaboration between Greg and 16 Beaver for possible discussion following his presentation:
1. What does the phrase "art worker" mean today, and how does it relate to the broader field of cultural labor that is so crucial to driving the uneven geographical development of cities such as New York?
2. In what ways have art and cultural workers more broadly contributed to the discourse and practice of occupation over the past two months? How have they been involved with the framing, staging, and messaging of the overall movement, on the one hand, while also beginning to organize themselves qua workers under the umbrella of "the 99%"?
3. How has the advent of the Occupy movement challenged art workers to recalibrate their relationship to the networks, economies, organizations, and institutions involved with the production and consumption of art and culture in some form of another?
4. What would it mean to "occupy the art world"? Does this question make any sense without a moment of self-recognition in which we see ourselves as a kind of culturally-redundant surplus to the very system that stamps out the professional passport for "artist" in first place? Are these very designations not complicated by the structural dynamics of precarious labor itself, in which many artists simultaneously work as art handlers, assistants, interns, janitors, students, adjuncts, parents, and beyond? How might an interrogation of the identity-card "artist" open up new possibilities of alliance and coalition with workers and activists in extra-artistic fields?
5. What is the ultimate goal of organizing art workers? Is it just about making things more fair by redistributing the art world's "real estate"? or should it not also address a deeper set of questions concerning time, labor, and value relative to the disciplinary imperatives of
neoliberalism? How do we negotiate in ideological and organizational terms the fact that the entrepreneurial models of subjectivity mandated by neoliberalism often appeal to an image of artistic flexibility, autonomy, and ingenuity, as exemplified by Richard Florida's infamous paradigm of the "creative class"? What if any new forms of class consciousness might the Occupy movements entail for workers in the artistic field in
particular and the cultural field more generally?
6. If the work of artists today somehow embodies and models the flexible, precarious, socially cooperative yet competitive, professional, cognitive, immaterial, relational, affective dimensions of the post-fordist worker; then what might an inquiry into the specific conditions or qualities of such a work imply or reveal for contemporary political struggles?
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4. Selected Writings by Gregory Sholette:
"Glut, Overproduction, Redundancy," in Dark Matter: Art and Politics in
the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto 2011)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/72989907/Gregory-Sholette-Glut-Overproduction-Redundancy-in-Dark-Matter-Art-and-Politics-in-the-Age-of-Enterprise-Culture-Pluto-2011
"Speaking Clown to Power: Can We Resist the Historic Compromise of Neoliberal Art?" (2011)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/72990182/Speaking-Clown-to-Power-1-NOCROP
State of the Union: Gregory Sholette on Artistic Labor" Artforum (2008): http://www.gregorysholette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SholetteArtLaborArtforum1.pdf
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5. Related readings:
Rachel Singer, "Still Occupying Wall Street: N17 and Beyond" The Nation, November 18, 2011):
http://www.thenation.com/article/164696/still-occupying-wall-street-n17-and-beyond
Xeni Jardin, "Interview with creator of Occupy Wall Street "bat-signal" projections during Brooklyn Bridge #N17 march (November 17, 2011): http://boingboing.net/2011/11/17/interview-with-the-occupy-wall.html
Khujeci Tomai, "Beyond Liberty Plaza" (November 16, 2011):
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/pieces/beyond-liberty-plaza
OWS Arts and Labor Working Group Mission Statement: (November 14, 2011): http://dismagazine.com/blog/25951/arts-labor-working-group/
Steven Greenhouse, "Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics" The New York Times (November 8 2011):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/occupy-movement-inspires-unions-to-embrace-bold-tactics.html?pagewanted=all
Richard Kim, "The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street," The Nation (November 7, 2011): http://www.thenation.com/article/164348/audacity-occupy-wall-street
Franco Berardi and Geert Lovink, "A Call to the Army of Love and the Army of Software" (October 8, 2011):
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/geert/2011/10/12/franco-berardi-geert-lovink-a-call-to-the-army-of-love-and-to-the-army-of-software/
And, And, And,
"Letter To the General Assembly and Affinity Groups of Occupy Wall Street" (October 4, 2011):
http://andandand.org/event10_letter_to_ows.pdf
Chris Kasper, "Open Letter to Labor Servicing the Culture Industry," Dis Magazine (Summer 2011)
http://dismagazine.com/discussion/16545/
W.A.G.E, "The Economy of Trickery, or, Sinking the Ship of Fools," Dis Magazine (Summer 2011):
http://dismagazine.com/discussion/16565/working-artists-and-the-greater-economy-w-a-g-e-the-economy-of-trickery-or-crashing-the-ship-of-fools/
Precarious Workers Brigade, "Fragments Toward an Understanding of a Week that Changed Everything" E-flux Journal (April 2011):
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/225
Martha Rosler, "Culture Class: Art, Creativity, Urbanism" [in three parts], E-Flux Journal (December 2010):
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/190
Brian Holmes, "Come On Cognitarians: One More Effort If You Want Some Equality" Occupy Everything and/or Evacuate (July 2010)
http://occupyeverything.org/2010/come-on-cognitarians/
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6. Related Links:
Dark Matter: http://www.darkmatterarchives.net/
Gregory Sholette: http://www.gregorysholette.com/
Occupy Everything and/or Evacuate: http://occupyeverything.org/
Not an Alternative: http://notanalternative.com/
Occupy Design: http://occupydesign.org/
W.A.G.E Artists: http://www.wageforwork.com/
NYC General Assembly: http://nycga.net/
NYCGA Arts & Culture working group:
http://www.nycga.net/groups/arts-and-culture/
NYCGA Arts and Labor working group:
http://artsandculture.nycga.net/network/thematic/arts-labor/
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7. About Gregory Sholette:
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of REPOhistory (1989-2000) and Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988). His recent installations include “Mole Light” at Plato’s Cave/Eidia House in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (October 2010), and “The Imaginary Archive” at Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington New Zealand (June – July 2010). Recent publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, Nov. 2010); Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, with Blake Stimson (University of Minnesota, 2007), The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, with Nato Thompson (MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008), and a special 2008 issue of Third Text co-edited with theorist Gene Ray on the theme Whither Tactical Media. Sholette is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), a visiting faculty member of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University (Spring 2010), and he teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.
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16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004
for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org
TRAINS:
4,5 -- Bowling Green
2,3 -- Wall Street
J,Z -- Broad Street
R -- Whitehall
1 -- South Ferry
