The Dark Side of Art’s Social Turn: Towards a Discourse on the Impact of Art’s Use of Social Forms Upon the Social

The recent “social turn” in art, in which art favours using forms from social life above its own, has been extensively discussed. Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, Conversation Pieces and The One and the Many by Grant Kester, essays by Claire Bishop who supplies the term “the Social Turn,” and her recent publication Artificial Hells, are now as important to the field as the art they scrutinise. Ironically, however, when this discussion regards the implications of the “turn”, it habitually addresses the effects of this development from – and for – art’s point of view, overlooking the way in which artists’ inroads into social life may be differently regarded in the social realm. As much as this represents a failure to illuminate a particular area for knowledge, it also signifies a failure to take art’s revalorised commitment to the social to its ethical conclusion: such, from two perspectives, is the “dark side” of art’s social turn. This article seeks to mitigate these oversights. In particular, it looks at art in which an artist undertakes another person’s professional work. Considering the effects of this on those whose practices are appropriated, I propose a consultative approach, involving ethnographic and empathetic modes of address. Consequently, this article does not present an answer to the question it poses, “how do professionals in the social realm see art’s appropriations of their practices?” but rather, a framework for approaching that.     

Decolonial Hip Hop: Indigenous Hip Hop and the disruption of settler colonialism

ABSTRACT

Contemporary Detroit has gone through many changes – or so it appears. From streets lined with vehicles made by Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors and driven by the nearly 2 million people who called the city home in 1950 to certain parts of the city looking like ghost towns; from a population that dwindled to 670,000 to the revival of downtown. Yet, what has been remarkably consistent is the invisibility of the Motor City’s Indigenous population. Indeed, Indigenous erasure, combined with rhetoric and policies that continue to marginalize and subjugate African Americans in Detroit, create a place rooted in multiple colonialisms. This essay examines how Detroit’s Indigenous Hip Hop artists resist settler colonialism through art, creativity, and culture as well as the practices of Detroit 2.0, a rhetoric and policy used by Detroit elites to reimagine it as a place of opportunity. By making visible the connections between blackness and indigeneity, as well as by linking the struggle of colonized peoples in Detroit to those in Palestine, Indigenous artists are not only asserting their humanity and challenging the longstanding idea of their erasure, but also constructing pathways for artists and activists to disrupt the effects of multiple colonialisms that continue to marginalize people of colour in urban areas. Detroit’s Indigenous Hip Hop artists make socially conscious music and also participate as activists in the city of Detroit. They serve as a window onto contemporary Indigenous identity, represent an exemplar of the urban Indigenous experience, and combine activism with art in a variety of ways.     

Kunst und Preise

How are prices established in the market for contemporary art? Buyers in this market are confronted with fundamental uncertainty since “quality” is only difficult to determine and the development of prices is non-predictable. Since the emergence of a market for contemporary art presupposes at least the possibility for intentional rational decision-making, this uncertainty must be reduced. We argue that the value of a piece of art or an artist is established in an intersubjective process of granting reputation by experts and institutions in the field of art. This is achieved primarily through the institutions of the art market and the training of artists, i.e. through galleries, curators, critics, art dealers, journalists, collectors, and art schools. They participate jointly in the making of artistic reputation of the artist’s work that provides, in turn, the basis for the determination of its economic value. For testing this hypothesis we assembled and analyzed two datasets with data on the biographies of artists and prices for their works.     

Art Without A Market: Creating Artistic Value In A Provincial Art World

Symbolic interactionism is defined as the study of social acts and social objects. Paintings are social objects whose value is almost entirely created in the social acts called art worlds. Important art worlds are currently organized as art markets, in which art is created, exhibited, bought, sold and discussed by artists, museums, dealers, collectors, and critics. In St. Louis, where fieldwork was done, the art market is marginal; art schools and faculty artists replace dealers, collectors, museums, galleries, and critics in the local production of art, the creation of art value, and the determination of artistic status.     

Network Dynamics and Market Structure: The Case of Art Fairs

Annual art fairs are a crucial element of the contemporary art market. Art galleries represent artists and exhibit their work at fairs all over the world. These fairs expose the gallery and its artists and create and maintain relationships with key actors in the global art market. Using data recording artists and galleries presenting at art fairs alongside qualitative interviews with different actors operating in the art market, we study the development of the art fair network over three years, 2005–2007. Our findings suggest significant network and homophily effects regarding the status and age of artists at fairs. However, the internationality of fairs and geographic distances between them do not seem to have any effect.     

Ups and downs of art commerce: narratives of “crisis” in the contemporary art markets of Russia and India

This article develops an analytical framework to study the role of narratives in markets and argues that there is a relationship between the structure and composition of narratives produced by market actors and market dynamics. With respect to theory, the article bridges the perspectives that study markets as cultures and as fields and draws from the organizational studies approach to the analysis of narratives. Two empirical cases of the crises narratives in the emerging contemporary art markets of Russia and India illustrate the use of the framework. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with artists and art dealers as well as observations in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai conducted between April 2012 and June 2013. The article shows that there is a widely shared crisis narrative with a coherent structure in the Indian art market. In contrast, fragmented and contested stories that lack narrative structure dominate in the Russian art market. The analysis of the first case highlights the narrative structure and shows the productive work it does in the Indian market—it provides a moral justification of existing market norms and produces a perspective for the future. The analysis of the second case focuses on the context of narrative production and connects the conflicting interpretations of the crisis in the Russian art market to contested hierarchies and persistent uncertainty.     

From ‘Asylum-Seeker’ to ‘British Artist’: How Refugee Artists are Redefining British Art

This essay takes a case-study approach to examine how culture may be transferred from immigrant cultures to a so-called host culture. Considering the work of three visual artists who came to the UK as refugees but who are now considered ‘British artists’, it examines the effect this curatorial definition may have on gallery viewers. The author proposes that looking at work that previously might have been viewed as ‘exotic’ or ‘foreign’ but that is now classed as British forces viewers to reassess and renegotiate their understanding of the nature of ‘Britishness’ and indeed of place-Britain. Drawing on the ideas of Edouard Glissant and also of contemporary geographers about the nature of place, the study proposes that place-Britain, like all places, is in a constant and never ending state of production. The work of artists from refugee populations, shown now as ‘British art’, becomes a dynamic part of this process and a means by which new elements are transferred and added to an ever-changing British cultural fabric     

Baptism of Blood: Bodies Performing for the Law

This article undertakes an analysis of Ron Athey’s and Hermann Nitsch’s performance art and blood rituals to show how their radical artistic spectacles are necessary acts of defiance in contemporary art and society. They open up the possibilities for subjects to redefine their relationship to the big Other. The author argues that the use of blood is at the centre of both of these artists’ performances and has the potency to unsettle and attack the patriarchal system of social authorities. At the same time, the popularization of such artistic and bloody practices has led to the appropriation of blood in mainstream popular culture. By referring to popular artist Lady Gaga and her use of blood in recent performances, the article demonstrates that blood is divested of its symbolisms and becomes a mere commodified product. The comparison between performance artists and popular artists like Lady Gaga reveals how blood is used in different ways to facilitate each artist’s project. While Athey’s performances stress blood as the site of the reality of the body in pain, and Nitsch’s as a celebration of both Eros and Thanatos, Lady Gaga’s performances by using fake blood separate blood from the body and meaning.     

Investigating the organizational everyday: a critical feminist approach

ABSTRACT

This article considers the possibilities and limits of applying institutional ethnography, a feminist theoretical and methodological approach that contributes to collective projects of investigating and transforming social life. Elaborating on the approach, the article reports on an ethnographic exploration of visual artists’ experiences and struggles in Canada's art world – a project that started from the standpoint of practising visual artists, examined their work and relations, and explicated practices and logics of art and valued work conditioning their lives. Speaking back to formal or text-based investigations of particular institutions, the article grapples with how to engage in research that more fully reveals the ‘social,’ attending to everyday life, to the ‘life work’ that people do, and to social forms that are threaded through intersecting, localized intimate and institutional spheres.     

Reorientalism and globalisation: transnational artists from India and representations of the ‘other’

In this article, I discuss some artists who have emigrated from India to the United States and the United Kingdom whose more recent work contains ‘Orientalising’ imagery influenced by the conjoined forces of the art market, collectors, biennales, globalisation, the Internet, the rapid development of India’s economy and its impact on the global art scene. It seems that fame and fortune for some Indian artists living in the West entails capitulating to the desire for exotic, ornate, sexual and stereotypical representations associated with Indian culture and religion. In contrast, I consider the direction taken by other artists who remain in their country of origin and portray life lived there without being particularly attentive to being Indian, although they may concentrate on social and political issues.     

Residential mobility and the spatial dispersion of personal networks: Effects on social support

Using a representative national sample of personal networks, this article explores how the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and social support are linked. Three issues will be addressed here. Firstly, how is the spatial dispersion of personal networks related to individuals’ social characteristics, network composition and residential mobility? Secondly, how do the spatial dispersion of networks, residential mobility and their combined effect influence the number and (thirdly) the structure of emotional support ties? Results showed that the extent of the support was affected neither by the geographical distribution of the networks nor by residential mobility. Living far from one's birthplace, however, exerted two distinct, and opposite effects on the support network structure. On the one hand, mobility led to high spatial dispersion of personal contacts, which in turn favored a sparsely knit network centered around the mobile individual. On the other hand, by controlling for the effect of distance between the contacts, we found that individuals that cited long-distance ties tended to be part of more transitive support networks than those that cited local ties. We interpreted the latter effect as evidence that transitive ties may survive greater spatial distances than intransitive ones. These findings are discussed in view of spatial mobility and social network research.     

Towards sociology from the arts: An epistemological turn

Over the past two decades, Howard Becker's Art Worlds and Pierre Bourdieu's The Rules of Art were guidelines for the dominant paradigms in sociology of art. Nevertheless, according to Bourdieu, sociology and art do not make a good match. To overcome this dilemma, the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich proposed a “sociology from art,” based on the uniqueness of artists and their works, but she neglected artworks as sociological subject. A realistic and persistent criticism against sociology from the arts claims that artworks are fictions created by artists, therefore epistemologically unacceptable as social realities. Is it possible the making of sociology from artworks? Through theoretical review and using the example of literature, I will argue in this paper that artworks are important heuristic resources and a legitimate subject of sociological research.     

‘Farewell Red Balloon’ – visual analysis of illustrations inspired by a children’s book

Lee Hall’s recent play The Pitmen Painters, based on William Feaver’s account of ‘unprofessional painting’ by miners in a Northumbrian coal mining village, raises issues surrounding the representation of the North in visual culture. This paper considers the now increased visibility of the Ashington Group and their adoption as nostalgic symbols of self-improvement and the intellectual life of the working classes. The reproductions of the Group’s paintings in Hall’s play prompt consideration of current debates around access to education, the use of art as social improvement, the loss of traditional Leftist values in the British Labour Party, the transformation of sites of heavy industry to cultural/heritage sites and the perceived poverty of ambition in communities such as Ashington today. The focus on the Group here also reignites problematic questions for art history itself: the art historian’s urge to critically frame groups of artists and the continued equation of non-professional art with ‘authenticity’ in art history and criticism, as well as the ethical issues involved in ‘speaking on behalf of others’ (Craig Owens).     

Switching labels: The role of Weberian ideas in market change. A case study of the German wine market

How do cultural ideas shape market construction? What do ideas ‘do’ to actors in markets? The paper presents an empirical case study of the reconstitution of the German wine market following an EU legislative intervention. I use Bourdieu's theory of fields to analyse the actors’ economic, social and cultural capitals and the impact of these capitals on the actors’ positioning in the political debate. Sensitised by recurring problems in the empirical data analysis, I then, however, argue that Weber's notion of ideas, as presented in his famous switchmen metaphor, is better suited than, or indeed should serve as a complement to, Bourdieu's frame of analysis. It is better suited, I argue, because it refers to a unique and irreducible source of culture while Bourdieu's capitals remain ‘tools' in a struggle for power and dominance in the field.     

Fabricating Japaneseness? The Identity Politics of Young Designers and Artists in Global Cities

The present study explores the identity politics of young Japanese designers and artists working across national boundaries today. It addresses the following research questions: (i) Do young designers and artists aim to produce works with “universal” appeal or strategically make use of “Japaneseness”? (ii) Do they develop new transnational identities or regard themselves as “Japanese”? and (iii) Who do they think has the power to label their works as “Japanese” in the art worlds? For this purpose, I conducted in‐depth interviews with professional designers and artists who have migrated from Japan to London, New York, or Paris. The results show that most designers and artists who were interviewed indeed aim to produce works with “universal” appeal, while only a few respondents attempt to strategically express “Japaneseness” in their works. However, regardless of whether they make use of “Japaneseness” or not, all respondents regard themselves as “Japanese” without developing new transnational identities. Even so, they do not search for or hold onto Japaneseness; but rather the media, as well as a certain part of the art world, persistently attempt to emphasize “Japaneseness,” due to the structure of the art world, where whiteness continues to be the “norm.” While designers and artists are increasingly oriented toward creating works with new forms and values through the transnational production system, gatekeepers and legitimators of the art world continue to fabricate “the nation” and reinforce boundaries of national culture.     

The Sonoran Desert’s Domestic Bracero Programme: Institutional Actors and the Creation of Labour Migration Streams

This paper traces the journeys of male migrants to Empalme, Sonora, Mexico to uncover the development of the often overlooked domestic bracero programme that operated in conjunction with its well‐known international equivalent. Drawing on interviews and observations with ex‐braceros who met at a park near the Mexico‐US border, I examine their experiences and participation in Mexico’s domestic bracero program, an unintended and unexplored consequence of its international counterpart. The study shows how regulation and control were constantly reinvented at every step of the selection process by state actors and their affiliates in Mexico. The paper reveals how the oversupply of labour and modernization of agriculture in Sonora resulted in the development of a migration industry where local municipal leaders, coyotes, the state, and Mexican agribusiness capitalized from men’s displacement. The migration industry during the bracero selection process controlled who gained access to the United States labour market by capturing migrant labour en route to the United States in the process fueling a thriving cotton industry in the otherwise stagnant Sonoran Desert economy. The study concludes by taking the lessons from the historic domestic bracero programme to show one instance in which internal and international labour markets were closely interwoven. In the end, I call for more research that examines the relationship between markets on both sides of the border that uncovers how networks are not only structured by personal ties but also by state and market relations.     

Almost Like a Real Band: Navigating a Gendered Jazz Art World

Professional jazz has been organized around two contradictory cultures. Historically, the jazz art world has followed norms of meritocracy, which promote equality across boundaries of race and class. At the same time a culture of exclusivity, anchored in gendered essentialism, has severely limited female participation. By analyzing interview data with artists from the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, we illustrate how these contradictory cultures of inclusion and exclusion operate to channel women into feminized roles in the jazz world. We then discuss how women employ a number of strategies to work around the culture of exclusivity and capitalize on the norms and values of musical meritocracy. Despite institutional openings in professional jazz that emerged following the women’s movement, female jazz artists continue to face strong barriers toward full equality in the jazz world. Although female artists consistently demonstrate that they possess equal musical skills to male musicians according to the norms of meritocracy that guide professional jazz, women remain on the margins of the jazz art world.     

Pornography in small places and other spaces

This article investigates pornographic web-based media at a time when commercial pornography has flooded the Internet and pockets of sex activism are budding alongside the porn boom. Pornography moving freely across borders is foremost a capitalist vision, but the web’s sexual potency is equally defined by web users and artists who visit and maintain peer-to-peer networks for producing and sharing sexually explicit materials. Revisiting Foucault’s notion of space as ‘heterotopia’, networked sexual communication and pornography are shown to permeate physical places and other spaces. Web users cultivate attachments to everyday places and spaces other than the ones they routinely inhabit. Networked sexual agency materializes desire far beyond the confines of community rituals and commodity industries. Besides the fact that porn industries expand their markets and diversify products, sex communities emerge alongside these markets and play a vital role in negotiating sexuality. The article shows how the Internets decentralized mechanisms of power and communication, including debating societies and playgrounds, have entered the realm of online porn and sexuality. Developing a theoretical notion of space as other spaces, the article unfolds the sexual web as exuberant, dispersed in bodies and cultures, yet forcefully regulated by global corporations and nation-state governments.     

Communication and medial frontier crossings in the Jewish underground culture

ABSTRACT

In this essay, the author examines Jewish art and literature in the context of the unofficial public sphere in the late Soviet Union. This Jewish cultural underground emerged within a specific communicative niche, which was the result of intensive private exchange, limited knowledge, and collectively discovered sources. The space in which artists and authors shared both their “work surface” and their coffee table, and in which the cultural production coincided with its own reception and analysis, constituted the cradle of very specific aesthetic features: particular forms of intertextual and intermedial links, self-reference, as well as a blend of the alternative lifeworld and art. Moreover, the close contact with “non-Jewish” artists in the same creative and often physical space brought about a synthetic form of culture. However, unlike with the Jewish vanguard artists of the first third of the twentieth century (such as the famous Kultur-lige), this synthesis was also caused by the largely non-Jewish socialization of “new Jews” in the late Soviet Union. This paper will focus on the following questions: How did the communicative context – the partial ban on Jewish topics and the alternative, semi-private public sphere of the Jewish unofficial culture in the late Soviet era – come about, and how did these aspects influence its artifacts?     

The social order of transnational migration markets

The ‘infrastructural turn’ in labour migration studies has shifted attention away from the experiences of migrants to the role of public authorities and private actors in facilitating migrant mobilities. As part of a broader turn towards studying transnational mobilities rather than immigration and settlement, this research shows that the formalization of transnational labour migration has made mobility both freer and more difficult. In this article, I reinterpret mobility infrastructures from a market sociological perspective. Transnational labour migration, I argue, is more clearly conceptualized as the organized ‘making’ of cross‐border labour markets. Moreover, from a market sociological perspective the construction of cross‐border labour exchanges is at the same time a question of how the uncertainties inherent in market exchanges are coordinated by market actors. In its focus on how exchanges across borders are possible at all, a market sociological perspective makes note of the conflicting interests, power imbalances and uncertainties that must be handled for a social order of transnational migration markets to emerge. An important question concerns whether alternatives to the less regulated neo‐liberal market order that is evident in most migration corridors are possible and under what conditions. With reference to the challenges facing the regulation of cross‐border labour markets, in my conclusion, I map an agenda for future research.