Hal Foster Recesional Aesthetics

OCTOBER 135, Winter 2011, pp. 93–116. © 2011 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Recessional Aesthetics:An Exchange

Following the economic downturn of 2008, many participants in the “artworld” didn’t know whether to mourn or to celebrate. Literally millions of peo-ple across the world had lost jobs or homes and had begun to experience a peri-od of hardship that continues today. But there were nonetheless many shame-faced comments among artists, critics, and art historians along the lines of,“Well, maybe artists can concentrate on art again, now that the boom is over.”Once the huge amount of money that had been pumped into the art market(largely by the same people who pumped it into hedge funds) began to dry up,the thinking went, there might be a new set of opportunities for making andexhibiting art: a renewed purpose, even, for social engagement.

It was with this spirit in mind that October published a series of questions underthe title “Recessional Aesthetics?” in issue number 128 in the spring of 2009. Thesequeries, developed by Hal Foster, Yve-Alain Bois, and myself, were also presented liveat X Initiative, in New York, on March 26, 2009. On both occasions, we encouragedresponses. Two follow here, preceded by the original questions.

—DAVID JOSELIT

Hans Haacke. The Invisible Hand of the Market. 2009. Installation view,X Initiative, New York. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and X Initiative.

Recessional Aesthetics: An Exchange 95

Recessional Aesthetics?

1) What will the effects of the recession be on the social role of the artist? The recent crashhas done some damage to the prestige of the commodity and the spectacle alike,not to mention the virtuality of the data-sphere. Will this reduce the influence ofthese forms on art practice, and thereby open up other models, other spaces? Atthe very least, might it relieve some of the pressure to conform to expectationsassociated with entertainment?

2) Is the art museum of the neoliberal era sustainable? In the 1990s Thomas Krens andcolleagues developed the model of the museum that treats its collection primarilyas a financial asset or instrument; since that time, this has become accepted prac-tice for many institutions. Is there now a break in this logic, and will the failure ornear failure of several museums, ranging from the Rose Art Museum to theMuseum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, lead to different modes of organiza-tion? Might the current crisis present a new opportunity for the under-capitalized,or, on the contrary, will figures like Eli Broad consolidate further art-world power?What can be done to keep the production as well as the presentation of art sus-tainable in New York and other centers?

3) Might art biennials (and related exhibitions) wither away? The globalized art worldsometimes seems synonymous with the institution of the biennial. Is the economicmodel of local development and international commerce that sustained biennialsstill tenable? Will emphasis be placed on other features of globalization, or willthere be a withdrawal to the local—a sort of art-world protectionism?

4) How will art schools adapt? One of the most significant changes in postwar art wasthe shift to academic education for artists; in recent times the MFA has seemedalmost a prerequisite for commercial success, and many artists have pursued theirpractices like professional careers. Will the decay of the art market cause a changein this system and encourage different modes of training and practicing alike?

5) How might art criticism become relevant again? Since the early 1980s, the impact ofart criticism on the institutions of art has diminished drastically: in a period ofpowerful dealers and collectors, the role of the critic as mediator has been all buteliminated. But now that the art market is melting down, can critical discourse,irrelevant as it has been for that market, regain some currency?

6) Does the art world bear any responsibility for the economic downturn? Since contempo-rary art appeared to flourish alongside hedge funds and mega-banks, often by cre-ating products with some of the same derivative strategies for dissemination asthose that created the virtual wealth of those financial entities, do we need to

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think about our collective complicity in this system and do anything about it? Or isthis to project an agency onto the art world that does not exist?

7) Whether the Obama stimulus package represents a break in the neoliberal regime, or sim-ply a neo-Keynesian moment of public spending, might it reawaken a sense of a commonstake that might be extended, indeed insisted on, in other spheres like the artistic and the cul-tural? In short, might we reclaim some aspect of the heuristic value of “the publicsphere”? And how might this affect the production as well as the reception of art?

8) Are there historical examples of socioeconomic crisis that might guide art-world responsesto the current one? Could artists demand a share of the stimulus package on theorder of the Federal Arts Project of the 1930s, which garnered a substantial per-centage of funding for the Works Progress Administration? Are there aestheticmodels to be gleaned from such historical instances? These crises have oftenprompted an emphasis on the real and/or the performative in art: one thinks ofthe predominance of the social-realist and the documentary in the 1930s, the “asfound” aesthetic in the late 1940s and early ’50s, the body-intensive and site-specif-ic practices in the early 1970s, and the concern with abject states in the late 1980sand early ’90s. What modes of art-making might be anticipated??

YVE-ALAIN BOISHAL FOSTER

DAVID JOSELIT


world. Not a symptomatic promptingby the world, but a decision against itsautomaticity. Exceptional decisions arealways subtracted from objective deter-minants: reality, economy, state. The“social role” of the artist is groundedin the decision to work on the creationof a new possibility inexistent within thecoordinates of the contemporar yworld, no less the art world.

2) Is the art museum of the neoliberal erasustainable?

Faced with ever-increasing cutsto funding, combined with the exorbi-tant costs of exhibiting, art museumsare increasingly driven to find fund-ing, and art itself, elsewhere. We arecaught in the era of ready-made showswhere art is pulled off the shelves ofphilanthropist s or any one of thetransnat ional banks—JP MorganChase, UBS, Deutsche Bank. In otherwords, the art institutions’ financialinstability becomes a pretext for collu-sion with a colony of destabilizingfinancial powers. Rather than beingrecognized as the agent whose dailyprerogative is to flatten the world andtake greatness out of circulat ion,“great” wealth becomes the benevo-lent facilitator for the circulation of“great” works. A few rarely circulatedmasterpieces become cultural bar-gaining chips in a philandering thatamounts to nothing more than thethoughtful legitimation of thought-less consumption.

In an environment where institu-tions such as Bank of America annuallyproduce a variety of ready-made showsfor “temporary lending” (mirroring the

To the Editors:

Almost two years have passedsince you posed this set of questions.Since then, the crisis has only acceler-ated, with entire economies and sectorscollapsing or teetering on the verge ofcollapse. A recent meeting of G8 lead-ers confirms a deepened agenda ofausterity policies that will undoubtedlyplunge the global economy further intorecession, with the result of intensehardship, exploitation, and new globaldistributions of wealth and povertyunderwritten by imperialism and war. Isit possible, however, that these basiceconomic facts are fundamentally inad-equate to an aesthetics and politics ofinvention? A common vernacular ofrecession, and an art that would beequal to them, relies on depictions of anormal state of act ivit y visited bymomentary disturbances. Yet nothing isfurther from the reality of capitalism,whose difficult secret is the self-movingcommotion of permanent crisis. Insofaras art is self-moving commotion of a dif-ferent sort, could it be that these twoforms are today at the height of theirincompatibility?

1) What will the effects of the recession beon the social role of the artist?

A collective politics could nevert ake the form of an emergencyresponse to a particular crisis of capitalaccumulation. Equally, artists are notgenerated by the difficulties of profitmaking. Rather, artists become activethrough a subjective decision. Such adecision is not an occurrence alongthe way, but an act in spite of the

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should not be reflexively defended.With respect to museums in particular,the concept of the “public” today has noparticularly redeeming qualities. Aninst itut ion cannot be defended byemploying the antique distinction of“public” versus “private.” Rather, thedebate should be re-articulated in thefundamental tension between the “pub-lic” (co-dependent with the “private”)and the common. For us, the questiontoday is how to turn a public museuminto an artistic space for the common.

The notion of “public” is at oncebulky and miniscule—basically uninter-esting. The “common,” on the otherhand, is a rich and captivating concept.It suggests both the intensity of “being-together” as well as something that isvulgar, profane, and everyday. The twomeanings belong to the “commons” or“common wealth” of the mater ialworld—air, water, food—as well as the“results” of social production necessaryfor further product ion, includingknowledges, languages, codes, informa-tion, affects, and so on. There is nodoubt that in all of these, the “common”is indelibly connected to that excep-tional word “communism.” Grafted ontocommunism—the word that designatesthe potential for the suspension of thelogic of class in the name of equalityand justice—the common is both a sep-arat ion and a being-together thatalienates the museum’s privation in theservice of wealth and power.

3) Might art biennials (and related exhibi-tions) wither away?

All too often in conversat ionswe recede to the naturalized exis-tence of biennials, art fairs, and other

chrematist ics of its everyday lendingpractices1), it might appear liberating,almost archaically so, that curatorsmay still exercise a bit of autonomy.For instance, at the height of the BPoil disaster in June last year, the Tateheld a party celebrating twenty yearsof BP’s “instrumental” sponsorship, asthey put it on their website, since “theincome generated through corporatepartner ships is v it al to the mixedeconomy of successful arts organiza-tions and enables each of us to delivera r ich and v ibrant cultural pro-gramme.” Just as the “mixedeconomy” is the preferred means for asociety dominated so thoroughly bycapital, the neoliberal art museum issustained by its very unsustainability.

For us, it is not a question of find-ing an alternative model of fundinglatent somewhere within the currentneoliberal one, or even making the pre-sentation of art more “economical” or“sustainable” within late capitalism. Onthe contrary, it is a matter of discoveringan inoperative model vis-à-vis the neolib-eral art museum. Collectively run artistspaces should and must thrive. This is afundamental point to hold on to.Studios and other communal art spaces,threatened not only by funding cuts butalso by the rising cost of rent and theinexhaustible pressures of gentrifica-tion, should be nurtured, supported,and defended through collect ivemeans—squatted if necessary.

By extension, public institutions

1. Aristotle defined chrematistics as the artof acquiring wealth simply for the sake of acquir-ing wealth. For Aristotle’s discussion of economicsand chrematistics, see chapters 8, 9, and 10 inBook I of the Politics.


theme, adaptation should be strictlycontrasted with a dedicated defense ofre-invention. Trusting in the power ofan Idea amounts to working throughits logic in every new historical situa-t ion, somewhat in the way AlainBadiou admires Pascal’s abilit y to“invent the modern forms of anancient conviction, rather than followthe way of the world.”2

A great moment of this kindoccurred recent ly at MiddlesexUniversity. When the University’s man-ager s announced the impendingclosure of the philosophy program atthe Centre for Research in ModernEuropean Philosophy the studentsresponded by occupying Manor House,the main building on the NorthLondon campus. During the occupa-t ion, the students—similar to theircomrades in California, Essex, and else-where at the time—attempted to revisethe university in a liberated form. Thestudents held introductory discussionon calculus, Spinoza, the legacy ofMarxism, and Walter Benjamin’s con-cept of t ime. To use their ownlanguage, they constructed a “transver-sal” space—a displacement of ManorHouse in situ and in time. Philosophywas carried out in the exact same spaceas before, only now under the touch ofa world turned about unexpectedly,illuminated, transformed on the spot.How else could friends and strangersfind themselves awake at 3 a.m. debat-ing the nature of Justice?3

2. Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans.Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2006), p.222.3. We would like to thank Jan Sieber, AliAzadeh, Vijak Hiddadi, Hammam Aldouri, Larne

such art-world events. Indeed, this isthe world that many of us live in. Butthere is also a difference here betweenactuality and possibility. The uncriticalacceptance of reality as such—including“critical” theoretical positions—has ledto an unfortunate acquiescence that wemight one day look back upon withbemusement . Should art biennialswither away? Yes. Will they now? Notnecessarily, but remain hopeful, theywill soon! There are other forms of pre-sentation that , by their very being,render commercial and touristic modesof artistic presentation inoperative.

4) How will art schools adapt?Adaptation is the logic of survival-

ism. Against the general consensus, thequestion we face today is not how tocontinue teaching as such. Survival is astate of being that can only be securednegatively, by treating it as somethingto be taken for granted. To preoccupyourselves with survival is both to narrowthe realm of the possible and to endan-ger it s proper virtue: persistence.Namely, the persistence of the Idea.Adaptation is exceeded not by a logic ofhoarding or managing whatever comesin our direction, but rather by recuper-ating the power of the Idea with itsinherent generosity. Against survival-ism, the point is to re-evaluate ourpedagogy so as to effectuate subjectivitywith respect to an Idea, or dependingon the situation, a unique culminationof great ideas.

A collective revision of pedagogyis possible at a distance from today’sconstant threat of imminent demise.By extension, to teach is to teach some-thing immortal. In keeping with this

In the shadow of the students’own idea of the university, the adminis-trat ion’s pro-business emphasis on“applicability” and verified “impact” wasrendered obsolete, strange, and incom-patible. An altered space teaches thatthe threat of survival cannot producetruths: the displacement effected atManor House, for instance, was alreadypresent, perennially incompatible beforewith the managers’ decision to shutdown CRMEP after the fact. The minimalexistence of a radical pedagogy that waspresent before the occupation was mademaximal during the occupation, butprecisely in the sense of a potentialityrather than as a conditionality.

Within the framework of adapta-tion, conditions become primary andare credited with a capacity to generateinvention. This version of necessity comesto grow directly in proportion to ourinability to trust what is inherent in ourown creativity. In place of rational cre-at ivity that posit ions itself squarelyagainst reality, what emerges from a mis-placed emphasis on conditions is a lostpotentiality. The logic is this: “If we winagainst our adversary, our ability to beinventive will be exhausted. So let uspreserve our potential, let us merelydance with the adversary.” What we haveto grasp is that potentiality only exists asself-realization, in which the actualiza-tion of potentiality is the constructionof a new frame of possibility. As AntonioNegri posits in an interview with CesareCasarino in In Praise of the Common, “farfrom being mortified, potentiality thusbecomes more powerful precisely by

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Abse Gogarty, and Adam Lane for sharing theseevents with one of the authors.

actualizing itself.”4 The lesson is that weneed not fear victory in our struggles.

If artists become indebted to theirsituat ion they become finite—im-potential. If they lose potentiality, theybecome grateful rather than generouswith respect to their situation—theymay even thank the situation for givingthem the opportunit y to resist it!Survivalism is tautological: it is thatwhich celebrates the conditions of meresurvival. Debt to the situation translatesinto a sense of “responsibility,” like theartist who today finds him/herself inthe midst of a capitalism in crisis—nothing new there!—and is compelledto make art out of a sense of pathos andguilt rather than affirmation. Aestheticproduction becomes hopelessly deriva-tive and mimetic in the worst sense ofthe operation. It becomes positivistrather than appropriative. And it isagainst this general weakness that wehave thought of a fundamental ques-tion for artistic pedagogy—naturally,many others remain buried beneaththe surface.

The question is: how to changethe classroom so that it will producesubjects (artistic, political, scientific)?Answers to this question could neverrest on a blueprint for their realiza-t ion. Only within the situat ion,through struggle, will their means berealized. There are however twoinvariants upon which we can justifi-ably rely: 1) The struggle is guided bya commitment to the elevat ion of

4. Cesare Casarino and Antonio Negri,“Vicissitudes of Constituent Thought,” in In Praiseof the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy andPolitics (Minnesota: Minnesota University Press,2008), p. 160.


ideas over opinions, including theinterrogation of received opinions infavor of emergent ideas and practices;2) the central a priori pedagogicalaxiom is the following: all meaningfuleducation presupposes an intellectualequality of all students—and profes-sor s—without any recour sewhatsoever to statistics, guarantees,“proofs,” or experiential data.

5) How might art criticism become relevantagain?

Art criticism departs, if anything,from a point of extreme precarious-ness, an empty point in knowledgethat requires receptive and conscioushumility. Rather than educate us aboutthe existence of a work of art, the roleof the critic is to disseminate the oper-ations of the work itself. The existenceof these operations may come as a sur-prise to many critics. Regardless, theyare there, await ing our attent ion.Works of art produce their ownthoughts, affects, and operations, allof which place a demand on writingthat can only be equaled by a sus-t ained, r igorous, and committedencounter with the work over time.

Criticism is increasingly becom-ing a corrupted and dreary practiceprecisely because of how many arbi-trar y master s and ser vant s arerequired to carry out its superficiality.For us, a profession that derives itslegit imacy from the except ionlessenclosure of the art world becomesnothing but contempt ible when itreports this -or-that predeterminedbanality, this-or-that off-hand gestureof some curator, or this-or-that scan-dalous fact of bourgeois politics. Part

of being humbled by a work, or evenbeing awed by it, involves the decisionto turn away from the impulse tointerpret and “locate” it within a dis-t inct and tot alizing narrat ive. Inorder to think an exceptional artisticpractice, criticism should instead sub-tract itself from the status quo. In aword, it should st r ive to becomeunbound. We must “think art’sthought,” to use Badiou’s formulation(penser une pensée). We must enter thework and think what happens in it. Att imes we will be confronted withsomething unexpected.

This aleatory aspect should not beunderstood in terms of a revived opti-mism in which the alternat ive tonegative critique becomes the affirma-tion of the hidden Good, nor as somekind of vitalism in which we sponta-neously accept every unexplainable shiftin perception. The production of thesublime, i.e., the good, and not the pro-duction of falsehood, is the overarchingtask of the bourgeois mass media; itshould not be reproduced by those whocommit critique. It is not a matter ofverifying—or debunking—a particularline of thought within capitalism, evenif the critique of capitalism is a com-mendable and informative practice.Simply put, it is only in our strugglesthat we may verify thoughts, and drawon their novelty to choose our strategiesand indeed our battlegrounds. To para-phrase our friend Bahram Norouzi: thetruly critical writer neutralizes the sub-lime, constitutes the world as mundane,and seeks truths, love, passion, joy andeventality in this mundane world. Thechallenge of the critic is to serve anindispensible role as a mapmaker of

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innovation, which of course can includea rigorous analysis of what there is andwhat hazards may exist , but shouldremain open to the gathering of truths,the possibility of creative innovation,the thinking of collective emancipation,positive affirmation, and the enrich-ment of humans’ senses for theircapacity to present themselves. Allforms of writing that support notions ofjustice, emancipation, equality, and,especially, profanation.

6) Does the art world bear any responsibili-ty for the economic downturn?

Insider trading, money launder-ing, private sponsorship, speculation,public-private partnerships, brand pro-mot ion, arms dealing, hyper-consumerism, professionalized theft,predatory practices of all kinds—thefact that all of these propel the existingart world is enough to demonstrate foreveryone the internal relat ionshipbetween art and the recent downturn.When art is produced and used to legit-imize our elites and invest them withthe necessary cultural capital for ongo-ing dominat ion, we should not besurprised, nor necessarily attracted bythe temptation to analytically “decon-struct” the process. The point is tocreate exceptional practices that, bytheir own logic, overturn the decadencewe are today being forced to endure.

7) Whether the Obama stimulus packagerepresents a break in the neoliberal regime,or simply a neo-Keynesian moment of publicspending, might it reawaken a sense of com-mon stake that might be extended, indeedinsisted on, in other spheres like the artisticand the cultural?

A collective politics is the sharingof a common stake. This quality aloneplaces it at odds with the maneuveringsof the Keynesian state, i.e. the circuitmanager who rescues only itself from theimbalances of capital. We disagree,above all, with the way in which theemergency redistribution of funds bythe treasury have become a crudemeans for secur ing order, with nodemocratic content. Giorgio Agamben,in State of Except ion, has shownKeynesianism to be less noble than“hope” and much closer to a heightenedpolice operat ion. The ineffect iveattempts by the Obama administrationto rescue America’s system of thought-less domination and extreme privilegeshould not be celebrated. If the State’scircuit management is its means of sur-vival, its productivity is only opposed tothe production of the commons. Whatis produced in collective action, at a dis-tance from the State, is the actualcreation of new possibilities—this is theform-of-life of the common.

8) Are there historical examples of socioeco-nomic crisis that might guide art worldresponses to the current one?

We have been born during a per-plexing, possibly indiscernible era. First,we are too young and know too much ofthe world beyond our borders toremember anything except recessions,crises and catastrophes. As youth, wewere asked to be in waiting, perhaps inthe way Dipesh Chakrabarty once saidthe colonized are placed in a perpetual“wait ing room of history.” Wait forwhat?—For it to get worse? It is alreadyworse. For it to get better?—It was alreadybetter. It was definitely good for them,


5. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “1990: L.A., ‘TheGold Field’” (1996), in Felix Gonzalez-Torres, ed.Julie Ault (Göttingen: Steidldangin, 2006), p. 147.

and they continue to be prosperous dur-ing t imes of “relat ive stability.” Foreveryone else: mere crumbs, if not out-right drudgery. The same eight-hourday we fought for in the 1850s, only nowwith ten times more debt and fewer ben-efits than half a century ago.

Recently we came across an arti-cle that Felix Gonzalez-Torres wrote forthe Roni Horn exhibition Earths GrowThick, held at the Wexner Center forthe Art s in 1996. Gonzalez-Torres’short essay, “1990: L.A., ‘The GoldField,’” begins with a cascade of factsdetailing the trenchant austerity, finan-cial speculat ion, bailouts, polit icalimmobility, social fragmentation, andcynicism of the early ’90s. Nothing, inother words, that could contribute toan adequate affective reading of RoniHorn’s Gold Field:

Already ten years into trickle-down economics, a rise in cyn-icism, growing racial and classtension, and the widening gapbetween the very rich and therest of us. Los Angeles beforethe riots of 1992. A t ime ofdefunding vit al social pro-grams, the abandonment ofthe ideals on which our coun-try was supposedly founded.The erasure of history. Thesavings and loan bailout withour tax dollars. The “econom-ic boom” of the Reaganempire thanks to the triplingof the national deficit . . . 5

Throughout the next six para-graphs, the water fall of fact s isdelir iously extended, detailing notonly one interconnected crisis afteranother—housing, banking, mili-tary—but also an analogous crisis inour own collective ability to constructmeaning.6

When we first read this, there wassomething eerie, something surprising(not-too-surprising): we could barelyremember the ’90s, but it all cameback to us. Above all, we came tounderstand that the symptoms of ourown contemporary era are not symp-toms of any part icular “era” atall—instead, they are the transcenden-tal symptoms of that irrational systemof organized inequality: capitalism.

After sketching the economicreality, Gonzalez-Torres recalls, of allthings, a chance encounter with RoniHorn’s Gold Field (1980–82) at theMuseum of Contemporary Art in LosAngeles. The work was, according toGonzalez-Torres, “nothing more than athin layer of gold.” Yet it was also anoffering, an act of grace that enabledGonzalez-Torres and his partner to seeand feel differently. Gonzalez-Torres’reading latched on to the possibility ofGold Field doing two things: firstly, itproduced a displaced field of vision.Secondly, it offered a paradigm offidelity. The first induced the displacedsense required to transform the world.The second was a means to guide andmaintain fidelity in spite of the over-whelming challenge and apparent lack

6. “ . . . this explosion of information,which in reality is an implosion of meaning.”Interview with Tim Rollins in Felix Gonzalez-Torres(New York: A.R.T. Press, 1993), p. 13.

7. Gonzalez-Torres, “1990: L.A., ‘TheGold Field,’” p. 150.

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of potentiality in the given situation.It is thus out of Horn’s Gold Field that,in spite of it all, Gonzalez-Torres comesto declare the persistence of a desirefor truth and justice.

Yes, it was very depress-ing, and very hard to sus-tain any sense of hope insuch a bleak social land-scape. How is one sup-posed to keep any hopealive, the romantic impe-tus of wishing for a betterplace for as many peopleas possible, the desire forjust ice, the desire formeaning, and history?7

Persistence is a tricky quality, sinceit is also a question of perseverance, i.e.how to hold onto a point of truth andrest there “against the flow,” againstthoughtless circulation. For Gonzalez-Torres, Horn’s Gold Field offered up ameans to displace his own perspectiveever so slightly, a displacement onto “anew landscape, a possible horizon, aplace of rest.” And it is here that we canconclude, at a resting point. Let usmerely add a passage of Paul Celan’s,the one that gives us “the most exactimage of what we must understand by‘justice’” (Badiou):

On inconsistenciesRest:

two fingers are snappingin the abyss, a

world is stirringin the scratch-sheets, it alldependson you.8

—ANDREW WITT AND

NATHAN CROMPTON

To the Editors:

Isn’t the current crisis actually amoment of opportunity?* The opti-mism expressed in this suggestion thatseems to produce the “RecessionalAesthetics” questionnaire is representa-t ive of a larger tendency in thediscourse of contemporary art eversince “the crisis” started: while in soci-et y at large the economic declinegenerally meets discontent—to say theleast—and is associated with job lossesand wage cuts, in the art world, it hassparked quite some euphor ia. AsHolland Cotter put it in the New YorkTimes: “The Boom Is Over. Long liveArt!”1 The “Recessional Aesthetics”questionnaire elaborates this sugges-

8. Alain Badiou, “Philosophy andPolitics” Infinite Thought, ed. Oliver Feltham andJustin Clemens, (London: Continuum Press,1998), p. 77.* The ideas and questions formulatedhere spring from intensive exchange and col-laborat ion with fr iends. I wish to especiallyacknowledge and thank Philipp Kleinmichel formany formative discussions and his essay “TheUnknown Artist” in particular. I would also liketo thank Eric Angles, Chad Elias, and TomWilliams.1. Holland Cotter, “The Boom Is Over.Long Live Art!” New York Times (February 12,2009).


tion in the form of eight questions. Thetrue question raised, however, is a differ-ent one: why this euphoria about thecrisis? What assumptions found this ideathat the socio-economic decline we arewitnessing must be a moment of oppor-tunity? And how does this very discourseitself, this discourse around “crisis” and“opportunity,” function? What interpre-tations of the present condition does itallow for and privilege—at the expenseof others? These questions, I believe,have to be addressed if we want tounderstand the current situation andtruly consider the possibilities for socialchange. In order to approach thesequestions, I want to turn to an examplethat the questionnaire evokes.

What will the effects of the recession beon the social role of the artist . . . the artmuseum . . . art biennials . . . art schools . . .art criticism . . . ? The very same ques-t ions were presented at X, a“not-for-profit initiative of the globalcontemporary art community” somemonths before their publicat ion inOctober.2 And, similar to the gesture ofopening up the pages of October to thevoices of its readers, the form and per-formative dimension of the discussionseemed well considered to provide, or atleast point toward, a possible answer.Besides presenting the eight questions,the interventions by the two hosts at theX event, Hal Foster and David Joselit,were extremely minimal; they bothmade a point of withdrawing as authori-

ties and leaving it up to the audienceto take charge.3 Instead of engageddiscussion, however, this move pro-duced a huge void. When, halfwaythrough the questions, a member ofthe audience fainted and fell off thechair, seemingly intoxicated, this dis-ruption almost felt like a relief—thetwo hosts called it a night and thecrowd took off. While the issues raisedhad surely been on everyone’s mind,the sett ing apparently wasn’t favor-able to the emergence of a “newpublic” as was called for in theannouncement.

And this despite the fact that X,one would think, is in it self livingproof for—and a great example of—the “new opportunity” that the crisissupposedly presents: in the face of therecession, the owners of the buildingprovided “the global art community”with four stories of prime real estate atno rent.4 A great opportunity indeed.

2. On March 26, 2009, Hal Foster andDavid Joselit hosted a discussion ent it led“Recessional Aesthetics: New Publics or Businessas Usual?” at X. For mission statement and furtherinformation, please see http:/x-initiative.org/blog/board/ (accessed April 25, 2010).

3. This gesture, as well as the title of thetalk, evokes the figure of the “recessional” asdeveloped by artist Paul Chan in a talk entitled“The Spirit of Recession,” published in the issueof October following the one that included thequest ionnaire: Paul Chan, “The Spir it ofRecession,” October 129 (Summer 2009), pp.3–12. For a critical reading of this text, see:Jakob Schillinger, “Recessional Aesthet ics:Art ist ic Pract ice and the Chrono -logic ofCapitalism,” in Time Out of Joint: Recall andEvocat ion in Recent Art, ed. Luigi Fassi, LucyGallun, and Jakob Schillinger (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2009), pp. 85–105.4. An earlier version of this letter, given toCecilia Alemani, stated: “Forced by the recessionto put on hold the plans to transform the aban-doned site of the Dia Art Foundation into luxurycondominiums and galleries, the developer of thebuilding decided to provide ‘the global art com-munity’ with not just a space—four stories ofprime real estate at no rent—but with a budget of

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A great opportunit y, but forwhom? X was founded and spear-headed by gallerist Elizabeth Dee; theadvisory board reads like a who’s-whoof the art world: gallerists, top-sellingartists, faculty of the most prestigiousart history and curatorial studies pro-grams, and chief curators of majormuseums.5 With very few exceptions,these are hardly “the under-capital-ized.”6 And yet , X is, after all, a“not-for-profit” institution, whose statedgoal, furthermore, is “to inspire andchallenge us to think about new possi-bilit ies for exper iencing andproducing contemporary art.”7 Now,this sounds very much like the “othermodels, other spaces” asked for in thequestionnaire, that would “reduce theinfluence of these forms [of the com-modit y and the spectacle] on artpractice.”8 But while X has certainlybeen presenting cutting-edge shows,these have largely been conventional

exhibitions of widely recognized andexhibited artists (Keren Cytter, TrisVonna-Michell, and Luke Fowler, mak-ing up the summer shows, forexample, were all on view at the sametime at the New Museum’s exhibitionYounger Than Jesus.)

On the more unconvent ionalside was No Soul for Sale. For five days,between installation cycles, X dividedits exhibition spaces into small parcelsand made these “booths” available forfree to non-profits from all over theworld. This extension of the art-fairmodel to the non-profit sector cer-tainly came off as “tongue-in-cheek,”but at the same t ime didn’t fail toestablish a spirit of market competi-t ion. The t arget audience clearlywasn’t a general public; the event wasprett y much treated like a profes-sional convention, whose set-up whilevisually invoking an art fair—hadmore in common with a residencyprogram promising high-profile stu-dio visits. Cramming more than fortyinstitutions onto three floors to com-pete for attention did not really makea formula against “spectacle,” though,and neither did it “relieve some of thepressure to conform to expectationsassociated with entert ainment .”9

(One of the reported highlights, forexample, was the “Forgotten BarProject,” commended for serving freedrinks.10) But not just expectations—the stakes were high as well: whilespace was provided for free, partici-pating inst itutions had to cover all

one million dollars on top of that.” This informa-tion was not confirmed, however, by X; Alemanidenied that they were given an additional budgetby the owners of the building, and confirmedonly that X did not have to pay any rent. Assources of funding she lists: “a European founda-tion in the very beginning,” a benefit, productionand sale of an artist edition, and the hosting ofseveral external events.5. See http:/x-initiative.org/blog/board/(accessed April 25, 2010); Piper Marshall, “XInit iat ive Contends with Cultural Change,”www.art inamericamagazine.com (March 11,2009), http://www.art inamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/finer-things/2009-03-11/x-ini-tiative-elizabeth-dee/ (accessed April 25, 2010).6. Yve-Alain Bois, Hal Foster, and DavidJoselit, “Recessional Aesthetics,” p. 95 of this issue.7. X, mission statement, online: http://x-initiative.org/blog/board/ (accessed: April24, 2010).8. “Recessional Aesthetics,” p. 95.

9. Ibid.10. Holland Cotter, “Restoring the ‘Eek’to Eking Out a Living,” New York Times (June 24,2009).


addit ional cost s themselves. Onewould think that for a non-profitenterprise from Europe flying in andputting up their complete staff mightbe a serious investment—unless thestaff were supposed and willing tocover these costs themselves, treatingthem as a career-investment . Theprospect of presenting oneself in oneof the world’s art centers and of aweek of enhanced networking oppor-tunities was more than worth it, as Iwas assured in conversations.

While “not-for-profit,” X is a hugeoperation, backed by considerable cap-ital, which certainly does generatevalue. Operated by an alliance of keyfigures of the art world, the only differ-ence to “business as usual” seems to bethat, at a moment when the market isdown, the focus is shifted from theaccumulation of financial to that of cul-tural capital—to be cashed in later,when the market is up again, or else-where, in the commercial endeavors ofmany of X’s advisors. (The very firstexhibition at X, for example, was of thework of Derek Jarman, whose work hadalso been exhibited by X-founderElizabeth Dee.11)

This in itself is nothing much new.What is interesting, however, is how theaccumulation of (cultural and financial)capital is here coupled with a rhetoric of“crisis” and “opportunity.” From thestart, X presented itself as an answer tothe kind of questions that had been inthe air and have now been formulatedin the “Recessional Aesthetics” question-naire; it presented itself as a fulfillmentof their promise, or at least an attemptto put them into practice.12 X is exem-plary for a mode of operating whosesuccess depends on the kind of dis-course that conceals the fact that, unlesswe actively change things, things staythe same.

I certainly don’t mean to equatethe “Recessional Aesthetics” question-naire with X. The latter is merely anexample—and a paradigmatic one atthat—that allows us to see how thestructures of the discourse in which thequestionnaire participates relate to insti-tut ional, economic, and polit icalstructures.13 This discourse is organizedaround two central moments: economicdeterminism and kairos, a qualitativeconcept of time which interprets the

11. Asked in an interview how she balancesher role as a gallery owner and board member ofX, Dee responds: “My advisory role at X feels, insome ways, like an extension of my role as anactive member of the art world. To me, the origi-nal boundaries that once existed in the art worldbecame irrelevant long ago. . . . My involvementwith X—engaging the 50 person board of advisorsto think about the mission of X and to explorethese shifting positions and their impact—verymuch feels like an extension of what I do at thegallery.” Katy Donoghue, “Elizabeth Dee,”Whitewall, http://www.whitewallmag.com/2009/04/29/elizabeth-dee-on-x-and-her-gallery/(accessed April 24, 2010).

12. “None of this could be possible hadwe not had such a global economic crisis anddramatic recession,” says Dee in an interview.The initial e-flux announcement of X speaks of“this unique and defining moment in our cul-ture” and “this time of overwhelming changeand transition” and states: “X is about lookingforward and empowering the community totake action and to define this new age for our-selves and each other.” e-flux (March 1, 2009),http://www.e-flux.com/shows/ v iew/6472(accessed April 24, 2010).13. For a related account, see JenniferWilliams, “Hard Work, No Pay,” New York Times,October 3, 2009. I thank Ilya Lipkin for bring-ing this article to my attention.

and curators who depend on sellingtheir labor in order to be able to maketheir living—and their work—and whoare now supposed to work for free—inthe hope to increase their employabilityand at least in the future to attain a posi-tion to sell their labor.

If we are looking for art practicesless influenced by the forms of “thecommodity and the spectacle,” why notlook amongst those unknown artists?15

What if there were artists, writers, andcurators to whom working as art han-dlers, carpenters, bartenders, etc. wasnot a brief episode until they reach asufficient level of success within the artworld? What if these unknown artists,

15. The “unknown artist” might be some-one who intends to succeed in the system werefer to as “the art world,” i.e., someone whotries to be recognized as an artist within thepresent episteme, but who is not (yet) recog-nized and valorized accordingly. The “unknownartist” could, however, also be an individual orgroup whose practice cannot be recognized asart within the present episteme because he orshe “acts . . . from beyond the legitimized realmof art.” This is how Philipp Kleinmichel puts it inhis brilliant essay “The Unknown Artist ,” inwhich he relates Heidegger’s considerations ofart to the Marxist concepts of ideology andhegemony. Considering the question of the crit-ical potential of art under the post-communistcondition, “the absence of Marxism’s dimensionof promise,” Kleinmichel establishes that themarket is no longer merely the material, but alsothe symbolic condition of artistic practice, andthus neutralizes any intended critical or opposi-tional meaning of a work of art to replace it withit’s own meaning: (potential) exchange value.Thus “critical” and “oppositional” works of art,i.e., works that are being discussed as such withinthe discourse of contemporary art, are in realitynot in opposition to the market and the neo-lib-eral capitalist regime it symbolizes, but only toother commodit ies on that market . PhilippKleinmichel, “The Unknown Aritst,” in Landings1, no.1 (April 2009), pp. 6–15.

present as a moment of opportunity orcrisis, as a potential turning point.These implications define the question-naire and produce the not ion of“Recessional Aesthetics,” which, in itsconflation of economics and aesthetics,presents both the questionnaire’s provo-cation and its main insight. What is leftout, however, is the political. To inter-pret “the recession” as a systemicanomaly, a “crisis,” a moment of excep-tion that is an emergency but also amoment of opportunity, is extremelyproblematic. The economistic sugges-tion that the recession will—in and ofitself—lead to social change is mislead-ing.14 Unless social change is effectedthrough polit ical act ion, it will notoccur. In the questionnaire, however,the polit ical figures only as a merereflex of economics. The rhetoric of“crisis” and “opportunity,” then, while itdoes imply a need for action, partici-pates in a discourse that serves to fostercompetit ion rather than solidarity,knee-jerk actionism rather than analysis,self-exploitation rather than critique.

It is the temporary displacement,at a moment when the art market isdown, of financial onto cultural capital,manifesting itself in endeavors like X,and the rhetoric of “crisis” and “oppor-tunity” that surrounds it, which helpboth to conceal a system of expropria-tion and increase its efficiency. Themajority of people in the art world arethose un- or little-known artists, critics,

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14. “The recent crash has done some dam-age to the prestige of the commodity and thespectacle alike. . . . Will this reduce the influenceof these forms on art practice, and thereby openup other models?” “Recessional Aesthetics,” p. 95.


mysterious transformation of the artworld to occur? Why not just abandon itand turn to the other models, otherspaces, and new publics?

The question is whether that’spossible. Aren’t we ourselves so caughtup in the established structures thatour very turning toward such practiceswould mark the end of their indepen-dence, their “other”-ness and themoment of their “recuperation” as apopular “Neo-SI” stance has it? Andisn’t this hunger for that which is dif-ferent, other, new, and its subsequentintegration precisely the mechanismthat keeps this whole system alive? Anddoesn’t our shared understanding ofthis mechanism stain our initial excite-ment about all these “other” practiceswith the suspicion that they might infact not be so independent and other,but the result of strategic calculation,producing the spectacle of the new,the radical, the other? That thoseunknown artists working as art han-dlers, etc. in order to be able to maketheir art , are in fact doing so onlybecause they under st and it as aninvestment, as a temporary phase untilthey climb up the hierarchy—aninvestment just like the tuit ion fortheir MFA? And what would be thealternative? Who can afford to self-fund their artistic practice without theprospect of future redemption?

A truly “other” model of artisticpractice would only be possible within aradically different society; within theexisting socio-economic structure suchan “independent” practice, such an“other space” can merely be part-time—a part-time that one has to be able to

writers, and curators work these jobspermanently, in order to keep their artindependent from, and outside of theart world? What if they form their ownaudiences, develop their own dis-course, their own exhibition formats,even their own educational structures?

What if all of this has been hap-pening all along? Does the answer toour question—to our wish for “othermodels, other spaces,” for art practicesbeyond “the commodity and the specta-cle”16—then have less to do with currenteconomic developments than with ourown perspective, with the way we priori-tize, categorize, and evaluate; with theinfluence of the commodity and thespectacle on our own thinking and act-ing? For these other pract ices arehappening; these other spaces do exist.And yet, we tend to ignore them, as theydon’t register within established jour-nals, institutions, etc. It seems we rely onthese institutions, and we tend to trustthe established criteria they reproduceand perpetuate. Why would someonewho is doing interesting work not havean exhibition record, not have regis-tered in the different iated web ofinstitutional structures? But wasn’t thisthe point? Didn’t we start from the con-clusion that these very structures arelargely conditioned by the forms of thecommodity, the spectacle, and enter-tainment? That they exert a “pressure toconform to [such] expectat ions,”17

which any artist (or writer, curator, etc.)who wants to succeed within them hasto conform to? So why indulge in specu-lations about the possibility for some

16. “Recessional Aesthetics,” p. 95.17. Ibid.

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afford. The threat of “recuperation,”implying the existence of an “innocent”original state, is often invoked to backup a demand for purity, a call to resist.But what is the efficacy of such an ethi-cal approach to a political problem?18

Even if we manage to maintain an“independent” practice and establish aprivate heteronomous sphere, in orderto sustain it, we would still have to func-tion within larger socio-economicalstructures.19 Small circles might turn

into movements, we might abandonloose networks to form communes, andthese communes might multiply; thequestion remains whether a strategy ofwithdrawal can have political efficacy.

Instead of answers, then, I canonly propose a different set of ques-tions in response to this questionnaire.I’ve tried to point at the problem thatwithin the current episteme and itsinstitutional embodiments, within “theneoliberal regime,”20 it is difficult toimagine a pract ice which would becommitted to a truly different politics(to a different socio-polit ical orderthat would mean an epistemic break.)I’ve hinted at strategies of ethical com-mitment that seem to present answersto this problem, not without raisingfurther questions regarding their polit-ical efficacy. These are, in my mind,the problems and questions that we’reconfronting. A change of the system inand of itself (as is suggested by thequestionnaire) is not just implausi-ble—this ver y suggest ion is it selfhighly problematic. In order to con-ceive of an aesthetics that is not simplythe expression of economic relations,we need to consider a politics that isnot simply a reflex of market cycles.

—JAKOB SCHILLINGER

18. There has been a conjuncture recentlywithin the discourse of contemporary art of ethics,as theorized by Alain Badiou or Simon Critchley,to name two prominent examples. The ethicalstructure of “fidelity” (Badiou) or “commitment”(Critchley) seems to speak to precisely this prob-lem: the desire for agency within a situation that isperceived to compromise a priori our every move.In this regard, the art world’s recent embrace ofthe anarcho-communist pamphlet The ComingInsurrection, which draws heavily on Badiou, seemssymptomatic. As opposed to the October question-naire’s economistic model, this ethical modelacknowledges the need for action; while the for-mer projects these “new spaces” into the prevail-ing world as ready-made results of the economiccycles themselves, the latter conceives them ascoinciding with the very act (or “event”) of ethicalcommitment and as co-extensive with the subject’s“fidelity to the event.” See Alain Badiou, Ethics: AnEssay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. PeterHallward (New York: Verso, 2001); Alain Badiou,St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. RayBrassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press,2003); Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. Ethicsof Commitment, Politics of Resistance (London: Verso,2007); The Invisible Committee, The ComingInsurrection (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009).19. In this regard, our historical momentdiffers fundamentally from the one in whichWalter Benjamin could conceptualize an “othermodel,” in the words of the questionnaire, ofartistic practice precisely because the historicalsituation in which “the author as producer” wasto emerge was an “other space,” at least forBenjamin, who saw in Soviet Communism theunified revolutionary struggle that the artist as

producer could align, identify, and integrate her-self with completely. Walter Benjamin, “The Authoras Producer” (1934), trans. John Heckmanin, NewLeft Review 62 (July/August 1970).20. “Recessional Aesthetics,” p. 96.


Cecilia Alemani responds:

I’m wr it ing this response inApril 2010. X Initiative closed in thever y beginning of February 2010,after twelve months of exhibit ionsand activities.

X Initiative was born out of therecession that hit the world during thefall of 2008. As the result of one of themost dramatic downturns in recent eco-nomic history, many buildings andstorefronts remained vacant for severalmonths, especially in New York City’sChelsea district, which relies above allon commercial art galleries for its viabil-ity. 548 West 22nd Street, a massivebuilding that for many years had housedthe Dia Center for the Arts, remaineddormant after Dia’s departure in 2004.Our endeavor was indeed a child of therecession: I am not connoting this as aneconomic opportunity or political ges-ture: it is simply a fact that the recessionhit, many buildings were left unrented,and a few art enterprises temporarilyoccupied these buildings (There aremany other examples of similar ges-tures, see Exhibition in Soho and theorganization No Longer Empty).

When we opened X Initiative inMarch 2009 we didn’t quite know whatto expect. It is still hard at the presentto think what the role of a new institu-tion is, especially in a city like NewYork, in that specific moment in time,with a forceful competition from pow-erful commercial galler ies on onehand, and the public visibility of wellestablished museums on the other.Our main struggle was to define inwords what X Initiative was about tobe: retroact ively we are st ill in theprocess of labeling the identity and

mission of this new art space, but backthen we all thought it would be betterto start working rather than be stucktrying to formulate a formal mission.We believed our ident ity would beshaped throughout the very process ofexhibition making and we trusted thatthe mission would be defined by itsown audience.

I appreciate the criticism comingfrom Mr. Schillinger, but I think it is alsoimportant to say that fir st of all XInitiative wanted to create new spacesand new platforms for contemporaryart. We didn’t think of how to addresspolitical agendas or theoretical needs:we wanted to show the art we believedin, and do it at its best and with very lim-ited resources. We weren’t even sopreoccupied with deconstructing therecession and its myth: we wanted toshow art that we weren’t seeing around,or at least show it with a depth and in amanner we weren’t seeing elsewhere.(For example, yes, Keren Cytter, TrisVonna-Michell, and Luke Fowler wereshown in Younger Than Jesus, but theirexhibitions at X Initiative qualified asearly career surveys—their extensionand complexity was much richer thanjust one art work within a larger groupshow). All this is to say that in the heatof the moment, and concerned as wewere with art and artists, we didn’t dwellon terminology or theoretical positions.Of course you could claim that never-theless we had a political agenda, butour politics were verified in our pro-gram and in our support to art ists,audiences, and all the part icipantsinvolved in our project.

This is another important ele-ment that I think the letter from Mr.

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Schillinger fails to understand: yes,many people worked for free at XInit iat ive, and, yes, many people,myself included, worked like crazy andfor many days straight, but we all did sobecause we believed very much in theimportance of this project. We werenot being exploited by the machine ofthe market; I doubt anyone felt that waywhen we were all throwing the garbageout at three in the morning or installingbeautiful drawings at twelve in the after-noon. I think we all felt part of a projectin which we were all sharing our ener-gies and our enthusiasm to putsomething out there, something thatsimply didn’t exist before and aboutwhich we were passionate and that webelieved was worth sharing and show-ing to other people. Really, it was assimple and genuine as that.

From the beginning we conceivedof X Initiative as a platform for dia-logue and exchange, a site wheremembers of the art community couldget together informally, present theirwork and share ideas. X Initiative wasall about making things happen spon-t aneously, by aggregat ing theknowledge and the t ime of diversepeople with var ied experiences. XInitiative was open to everybody, withno entrance fee and a much easieraccessibility than traditional institu-t ions. Our models were EuropeanKunsthalles and Kunstverein–likestructures that emphasize dialogueand close relationships with artists andhighlight exhibitions as ongoing discur-sive practices. X Initiative was to be aplace that was less concerned with thegeneral public and more focused onartistic communities and engaged view-

ers: less about spectators and moreabout participants. We wanted to beunderground but to maintain a certaininstitutional voice, to be poor but notscruffy, to be D.I.Y. but with a certainelegance.

We opened the space onMarch 6, 2009. Having to manage anenormous space with a very limitedbudget1 we divided the year-long pro-gram into three distinct phases: exhibi-tions (of well-known as well as fairlyunknown artists) would run for aboutthree months each and events (all ofwhich were proposed to us by theboard and by people who were exter-nal to X and approached us with pro-posals) would t ake place ever yThursday night. Our ready acknowl-edgment from the out set that XInitiative would exist for only one yearprovided us with a sense of urgencythat informed all of our decisions. Wethought of ourselves as a type of count-down operation.

During our twelve months of exis-tence, we put together a verymult ilayered program, one thatincluded well-known artists, emergingartists, overlooked artists, and totallyunknown artists. Along with the moretraditional exhibitions, we organizedmany events that activated the space in

1. I don’t know where Mr. Schillinger getsthe idea we had a budget of one million dollars,but it is simply and clearly untrue: our limitedresources consisted of extremely limited privatefunding and an open guerrilla form of fundrais-ing that we carried on during the twelve monthsof our existence, e.g., we organized a benefit, weproduced an artists’ edition, we rented the spacefor a few external events: this is of course nothingnew, assuming Mr. Schillinger is familiar with howa non-profit organization works.


a different way, by establishing a less for-mal atmosphere and a very differentgroup of people. One of these eventswas No Soul For Sale, a festival of inde-pendent spaces, art ists’ collect ives,non-profit organizations, and curatorialoffices from all over the world. The ideabehind the festival was fairly simple: weconceived a format that could stand as asymmetrical alternative to the art fair.Instead of commercial galler ies weinvited non-profit organizations; insteadof financial exchanges we tried to initi-ate dialogues and forums; and instead ofbooths or walls we constructed thewhole architecture of the event as anopen space. The goal was to br ingtogether non-commercial realities in aninformal and spontaneous way: wethought of No Soul For Sale as a festival ora reunion—the model was actually thatof fans’ conventions, in which it is thepublic participation that really definesthe program. No Soul For Sale was meantto be a celebration of the spirit of inde-pendence that animates the initiativesand programs of institutions and groupsexisting outside the market. While weall wish, together with Mr. Schillinger,that X Initiative and all institutions inthe world could financially assist the par-ticipants of initiatives such as this, thatwas simply unrealistic: like its colleaguesinvited to the Festival, X Initiative toowas run with nearly zero budget, andhad to make virtue out of necessity: wecould only provide the space for free.2

I would like to quote art criticBen Davis, who in an article about XInitiative on Artnet.com about ourclosing event , “Br ing Your OwnArt,”3 commented: “The fact thateven a gesture of maximum possiblecuratorial generosity generates suchrecriminations seems to indicatethat the institution can’t win; youcan’t get around the reality of thevery unequal world we live in with aclever programming choice.”4 It isclear from Mr. Schillinger’s letterthat no matter what we did, frominstitutional shows to more experi-mental events, we would have notbeen able to accomplish anything

2. Mr. Schillinger doesn’t seem to have aclear vision of how non-profit organizationswork. Throughout his letter he often goes backto a financial criticism, by attacking the fact thatwe used volunteer interns at X Initiative, that wedidn’t pay for the travels of the organizations

taking part in No Soul For Sale, and that evenour staff wasn’t paid (which is untrue). Mr.Schillinger seems to ignore that the system ofunpaid internships exists in all fields of humanculture: we have all been interns in our life! XInitiative relied on a very small, paid staff,which included myself, our deputy director, theassistant director, one curatorial assistant, ourteam of art installers, and all guards. The restof the staff was composed of volunteers, whichis a normal thing considering many of themwere still students and saw in that a chance toearn experience and credit. 3. Bring Your Own Art was our lastevent: a twenty-four-hour marathon duringwhich X Initiative opened its doors to anyonewho wanted to come and exhibit artworks onthe premises. It was a celebration of the chaot-ic energies of art and a joyful subversion ofhierarchies. Inspired by Walter Hopps’s experi-mental Thirty-Six Hours, an event that the leg-endary curator organized in Washington in1978, during which he installed anything any-body brought that would fit through the door,BYOA was a festive occasion that fosteredunusual collaborations between artists, art pro-fessionals, and dilettantes, while offering analternative to curated group shows. 4. “X Out,” http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/bring-your-own-art2-19-10.asp.

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good: he has his prejudices and he iswelcome to hang on to them, but heshouldn’t judge other people’s inten-t ions based on his own per sonalagenda.

There is a passage in an earlier ver-sion of the letter from Mr. Schillinger (itis hard to keep track of his variousdrafts!) that I find particularly interest-ing: as he described the frustration ofone of our incredibly bitter and brutallyexploited colleagues, Mr. Schillingermentions en passant that he was tryingto hang a poster in the lobby of XInitiative to promote an event of hisown.5 X Initiative opened its doors forfree and invited everyone to come alongand offered itself, its program, and “its”

artists to open criticism. To this gestureof hospitality Mr. Schillinger replies firstby trying to post promotional materialsabout his own work in the building, andthen by attacking the premises of ouractivities and describing us either as vol-untary slaves of the market or naïveaccomplices of the system. I believethings are at the same time much sim-pler and more complex than that. XInitiative was run by people who weretired of having to go to other people’shomes to talk about art and to promotethe artists they believed in. X Initiativewas meant to be a temporary home forpeople who shared some ideas and dis-agreed about others. It was run bypeople who thought for one year toinvest (or shall we say “put” so we don’tget accused of being capitalists?) timeand energies in giving space andresources to artists and people theybelieved in. Was this the product of therecession? Was this a discourse with ahidden agenda? Frankly I am moreinterested in the fact that I and the visi-tors got to see art they would haveotherwise missed; they got to take partin panels and discussions they wouldhave otherwise not have heard aboutand participate in a wider dialogueabout art.

X Initiative was an experiment,an exercise, an attempt to fill a gap weall felt was present in a city like NewYork. We tried to do something mean-ingful and fun at the same time, andabove all we respected the artists andgave them space and resources to havethe freedom of doing what they reallywanted to do. We didn’t want to createan innovative model for contemporaryart nor introduce a new revolutionary

5. As Schillinger put it in the earlier versionof the letter: “While at a regular gallery, just likeat any museum or Kunsthalle, the staff can stillexpect to be paid for their work, here a wholearmy of volunteers is doing the job. ‘I’ve beenworking for free for the last two weeks—almostaround the clock!—to make this happen,’ says a(former) employee of a major New York art insti-tution who approaches me at an event at X. (Hedoesn’t say so, but the fact that he has this muchtime available suggests that he lost his job in thecourse of the recession.) This may sound likegreat team spirit and true devotion. Only thathe is yelling at me while he tells me this, on theverge of physical violence in response to myattempt to post an announcement for a perfor-mance on one of the walls. His exhaustion andfrustration erupt—but not turned against thevery structures and hierarchies that produce aconstant pressure to improve one’s employabili-ty by exploiting oneself, but in their defenseagainst a would-be infr ingement . A fewmoments later and two levels up, I run into afriend who is volunteering for X as well, build-ing seating for the rooftop cinema. A recentgraduate from one of the most prestigious BFAprograms in the country, she feels she has ‘nocareer prospects’ and can't afford to turn down‘a good entry level position.’ (She can afford notto turn it down due to a graduation gift initiallyintended for a new computer but now repur-posed to sustain herself without paid work.)”


system: we had received a gift and wetried to share it with others. We areparticularly glad that our gift also pro-vided Mr. Schillinger with some foodfor thought.

Elizabeth Dee responds:

X Initiative was conceived at amoment of unprecedented uncertainty,one that prompted the art world toreconsider its every aspect. On an inti-mate front, this climate furthered myown ongoing reappraisal of my role as acommercial gallerist. X Initiative wasthe first project to physically expand mypractice as a gallery owner beyond thewalls of the gallery, an abstract directionI have believed for some time promisesthe most growth for artist/gallery rela-tionships in the future. The building at548 West 22nd Street was the perfectcomplement to X Initiative’s concept:monumental but not monolithic, itscurrent function indeterminate and yetits history vital. As the former home ofthe Dia Center for the Arts, its legacyframed but did not constrain the cre-ative gestures that took shape within,which were enacted by the exhibitingartists and the curatorial think tankgathered to steer the project. Contraryto what one might expect of an organi-zation with so much real estate at itstemporary disposal, the financialresources behind X Initiative were smalland the team necessarily nimble.

When the project began therewas much speculat ion regarding XInitiative’s prospects for success or fail-ure. Its very assertion of a new modelfor collaborating with artists to pro-duce programming of the scale and

quality of a museum, but with theelasticity and prescience of a gallery,was immediately called into ques-t ion. So too were the mixing ofrealms traditionally recognized asprivate and public, and of the inter-ests assumed to be independentlyvested in each. The truth is thatthese domains mix all the t ime,especially in the art world, and oftenfor the good of innovation. Plentyof exploitation comes of these cross-ings, too, but that typically leads tobad art. Our intention was not toinst igate a paradigm shift; the“model” that we created is an exam-ple of one solution, which workedfor a particular group of people in acertain time and place.

X Init iat ive was never com-pelled to develop an institutionalagenda that would undermine thefreshness of it s programming,because the organization’s life wasstrategically short—too finite toexist in any t ime or space otherthan the present. The goals of theexhibitions were to generate openexperiences, not measurable out-comes. This is also more in keepingwith the artists’ approach to mak-ing work, reaching closer into theheart of creative practice.

One could argue that in addi-t ion to being an administrat iveactivity, running a gallery is also acreative one, in dialogue with theartists. A way for galleries to repro-duce the strengths of X Initiative inthe future would be for them to doa better job of merging the man-agement of artists’ careers and thepresentat ion of exhibit ions with

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various forms of conceptual dialogue,so that these parallel dimensions ofcreat ive work can be drawn moreclosely in line. One can visualize terri-tor ies in which these synergist icpractices expand, pressing on theirboundaries to force open new spaces.This organism becomes exponentiallymore involved when other spaces andsites—the internet, film, television,newspapers and magazines—enterthe conversation.

Uncertainty and spontaneity arevaluable in any creative practice. It isimpossible to say what will happen withthe future of X Initiative, if it mightreincarnate in a new form or perpetuateas a template for new experiments.Many artists that interest me are eschew-ing formalized contexts for presentingtheir work in favor of those that pro-duce dialogue embracing the expansivedimensions of time and space and ofcollaboration. Their ideas of how to per-ceive our new world will certainlydevelop this tendency further, and therewill be a continued reorganization ofour systems around artistic production.We are obligated to respond with allforms of curating, organizing, represen-tation, collection, and overall patronageand support of artists. Independent cul-tural producers such as galler ist s,publishers, non-profit organizations,and art advisors are in a unique andunfettered place to bring these conver-sat ions about new models ofcollaboration forward. The great chal-lenge will be in finding ways to makethese developments viable in the longterm, to sustain the actuality of thesetransformative ideas.

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Hal Foster Recesional Aesthetics

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