Blurring the boundaries? Institutional Critique in Spaces of Conflict

摘要

How are contemporary artistic projects critically negotiating the conflictual condictions of their transnational institutional contexts, and what conclusions to the concept of institutional critique can be drawn from this? The subject of my investigation is the problematization of art institutions through artistic production. The shared context of globalized late capitalism, its interactions of new artistic strategies and flexibilized administration is my main focus. Discussing the possibilities of a specific program of "institutional critique scholarship", I am scetching the processes of canonization of institutional critique. The notion of failure provides access to an understanding of the current debates on a "third wave". Departing from a methodology of cultural analysis (Bal), the aesthetics of artistic production (Clark) and the geography of art (Harvey), I am outlining the key terminology of my project - criticism (Foucault), institution (the public), trans-nationalization (Anderson). This leads me to arguing that the development of institutional critique is defined by shifts within the concept of critique rather than the different notions of institution. Thus the teleology of "phases" need to be replaced by a horizontal model of different institution-critical practices. Its condition of possibility of Irit Rogoff's concept of criticality. The geopolitical and economic implications of institutional critique itself shall be exposed in the interwoven histories of the artistic movement and the Guggenheim Foundation (Buren, Haacke, 16 Beaver). The opposition within and towards ideological claims to power can be theoretized with Chantal Mouffe's development of the concept of antagonism towards the position of agonism, the recognition of a shared symbolic field with the enemy. In her reading of Gramsci institutions are perceived as temporary and dependent hegemonic practices; its reform is the main responsibility of the "organic intellectual". The principle of organicity is underpinning also the stratagem of site specificity that Miwon Kwon has contrasted with the increasing mobilization of artists. To capture the productive quality of that mobility Maurizio Lazzarato's theory of immaterial labor is indispensable. His critique of working conditions in the cultural field of transnational late capitalism sheds new light on the "Bilbao effect". In this case study I examine the nexus deindustrialization-cultural politics-terrorism, some related artistic traditions (Oteiza) and the decentralized 'new' art institutions, such as Consonni, the producer of Andrea Fraser's Bilbao pieces. The fact that Frasers "El Museo" remains unrealized highlights the necessity of a new theory of institution-critical practice that gives evidence to the transnational horizon. Some thoughts on Asier Mendizabal's contribution to the 10th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao seek possible ways of decanonization and temporalization of the "Bilabo effect". What I expected to be a re-politicization of institutional critique proved to be a much more complex interweaving of direct political reference and the negotiation of tensions between local and global positionality, a fundamental ambivalence towards the institutional production, presentation and distribution of art.